Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast today. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: have doctor Dan Siegel on the show. Dan is a
Speaker 1: clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine,
Speaker 1: the founding co director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center
Speaker 1: at UCLA, and executive director of the Mind Sight Institute.
Speaker 1: He's the author of multiple best selling books on mindfulness,
Speaker 1: development and neurobiology, and his most recent book, Mind, A
Speaker 1: Journey to the Heart of Being Human, offers a deep
Speaker 1: exploration of our mental lives as they emerge from the body,
Speaker 1: and our relations to each other and the world around us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for chatting with me today, Dan, Oh, what pleasure. Scott.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here with you. I'm just your
Speaker 1: book is. All of your books are absolutely fascinating and
Speaker 1: really quite refreshing to read. You know, from a scientist,
Speaker 1: this very feeling, this very spiritual feeling of there's something,
Speaker 1: there's always I feel like you're always seeking for something
Speaker 1: more than just what's immediately observable by our numbers. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's so much about the mind, and this last book,
Speaker 1: Mind is a deep dive into that for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So why did you write this book? You've written about
Speaker 1: the mind already in a lot of publications. Why what
Speaker 1: was the impetus for this one? You know, with this one,
Speaker 1: I was really wanting to focus very specifically on the
Speaker 1: questions about who we are, what the mind is, even
Speaker 1: questions like where is mind? Or when does life occur?
Speaker 1: All these questions that you know, a journalist might ask
Speaker 1: as the what are called interrogatives, you know, who, what, why? Where?
Speaker 1: Or when? How? And even to address the fundamental reality
Speaker 1: that we have an inner, subjective life that is both
Speaker 1: something we feel in everyday moments but also something that
Speaker 1: we share with each other when we tune into each other.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to really look at those questions. And
Speaker 1: there's a really strange reality which was so weird. I
Speaker 1: just thought I should write a whole book on this reality,
Speaker 1: which is the word mind doesn't have a shared definition
Speaker 1: in any of the fields that explore the mind, and
Speaker 1: so this book really says, okay, can we actually have
Speaker 1: a shared view of what the mind is and then
Speaker 1: see how views from let's say, anthropology studying culture, or
Speaker 1: sociology study groups, or psychology studying our mind's experience of
Speaker 1: memory and attention. Can we look at all those and
Speaker 1: combine them with things like neuroscience or even physics and
Speaker 1: study the nature of energy. So all that is in
Speaker 1: the book, and it's really a journey together with the
Speaker 1: reader looking at what the mind is. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: how you set it up as a journey as well
Speaker 1: as an invitation. I really like that. You know, you're
Speaker 1: so right about the mind being lacking a consensus in
Speaker 1: any field of what that is. And sometimes I see
Speaker 1: the mind use synonymously with self. And that's interesting too,
Speaker 1: that we sometimes use as synonymously. And you go and
Speaker 1: talk a lot about in your book about the relationship
Speaker 1: between mind and identity, right exactly, you know, and people
Speaker 1: sometimes make mind and self the same, and sometimes people
Speaker 1: make mind and brain the same. And when you see
Speaker 1: the self has something bigger than just the body, and
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of people would agree this self comes
Speaker 1: from the mind. Then you start realizing, well, if the
Speaker 1: self includes our connections with each other, like right now
Speaker 1: between me and you Scott, or between our conversation and
Speaker 1: people who might listen to it. We connect to each
Speaker 1: other in these various forms of communication we have, so
Speaker 1: that if you say, well, myself is created in connection.
Speaker 1: Im Forster said that as well, and we have this
Speaker 1: issue of looking at these connections as a source of
Speaker 1: our identity, then maybe the mind is not just restricted
Speaker 1: to the brain, as has been talked about for so
Speaker 1: many years, since times of Hippocrates twenty five hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: It's been said mind is only an output of what
Speaker 1: goes on in your head. So in the book, you know,
Speaker 1: I say, look, I know it's the accepted view that
Speaker 1: mind is basically what brain does. But maybe that's only
Speaker 1: part of a much bigger story. And the reason I
Speaker 1: made the book a kind of journey between the reader
Speaker 1: and myself. As we go through these sets of questions
Speaker 1: of who we are, where are we? What is the mind?
Speaker 1: All that kind of a set of interrogative questions, what
Speaker 1: we do as a sort of a companion journey is
Speaker 1: look at what the reader's own experience is of mental life,
Speaker 1: both internally and interpersonally, and we look at the science
Speaker 1: of what mental life may be about. And I share
Speaker 1: also my own journey of subjective explorations, just as a
Speaker 1: way of being present with the reader as shere he
Speaker 1: goes through their own journey of exploration. Good, I would
Speaker 1: like to talk a little bit about your own journey,
Speaker 1: if that's cool, Well, usually keep it private. I've written
Speaker 1: a book about it. I guess it's public. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: figure now that it's public. Now I want to know
Speaker 1: how long, Like, when did you first discover mindfulness meditation?
Speaker 1: Let me start there, Well, mindfulness meditation is really pretty
Speaker 1: new in my life. I mean my wife Caroline Welch,
Speaker 1: who runs our mind Sight Institute here, she's been meditating
Speaker 1: for decades. But for me, I wasn't a meditator and
Speaker 1: you know, didn't really focus on mindfulness meditation until I
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Parenting from the Inside Out with
Speaker 1: Mary Hartzell, and we use the word or the phrase
Speaker 1: be mindful as a parent, meaning be conscientious and intentional
Speaker 1: and aware of what you're doing as a parent. And
Speaker 1: parents who took our workshops and who read the book,
Speaker 1: said you know, when we're going to teach them to meditate.
Speaker 1: And you know, neither of us, Mary nor I was
Speaker 1: a meditator, and we were already saying things pretty wild,
Speaker 1: like relationship shape the brain. So you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: really want to be doing something that to us seemed
Speaker 1: kind of I hate to say this, but kind of
Speaker 1: out there. This is now, back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: So you know, we said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And they would say your book, and they show us
Speaker 1: the phrase be mindful, and we said, well, that's be conscientious.
Speaker 1: They said, no, let's be a meditator. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of meditation is that? And they looked at
Speaker 1: me like I was nuts, and they said, that's mindfulness meditation.
Speaker 1: So around two thousand and four, I got invited to
Speaker 1: be at a conference with a fellow I had never
Speaker 1: met before, I didn't really know about, named John cabots In,
Speaker 1: and he had brought mindfulness into an application in the
Speaker 1: clinical setting. So I read his couple of books and
Speaker 1: you know, read a few papers that were at at
Speaker 1: that time. This is two thousand and four. We then
Speaker 1: met in two thousand and five at a meeting and
Speaker 1: you know you can hear the audio recording of that
Speaker 1: thing that John and I did together. But Diane Ackermant,
Speaker 1: it is hilarious because I know nothing about meditation, but
Speaker 1: I did have some experience as an attachment researcher. And
Speaker 1: what I said to John on this panel, as I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know anything about meditating, but your
Speaker 1: research was adults are basically identical to the research on
Speaker 1: secure attachment. And you know, I'm not sure why a
Speaker 1: relationship that's secure between a baby and a parent would
Speaker 1: result in the same regulatory capacities developing as you get
Speaker 1: from doing this thing called mindfulness meditation, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: So John encouraged me to go get training in meditation,
Speaker 1: which I did with actually with him at a silent
Speaker 1: retreat for a week, and I wrote a book about
Speaker 1: that experience called The Mindful Brain. And then John and
Speaker 1: I started teaching a bit together, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was really fascinating because I'm not a meditator by background,
Speaker 1: but I work in a field that looks at relationships,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to me mindfulness meditation was a kind
Speaker 1: of way you were making your relationship with yourself more secure,
Speaker 1: almost like transforming what for many people is kind of
Speaker 1: either neutrality or hostility to one that's more of a
Speaker 1: compassionate way you might relate to your own best friend.
Speaker 1: It's almost like befriending yourself. So that's exactly what secure
Speaker 1: attachment is is where you realize you can rely on
Speaker 1: your caregiver and kind of relax into becoming the best
Speaker 1: you you can become, which I think is what mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation done with compassion can really achieve. You know, I
Speaker 1: never thought of that link before, and it makes so
Speaker 1: much sense when you bring that up. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're it's in a way like the interesting So you're
Speaker 1: you're secure. You know, you kind of trust your own
Speaker 1: experiences in your own thoughts, and you don't you're not
Speaker 1: as attached to them in an insecure, anxious, dependent way exactly.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I in a personal disclosure, I just finished my own
Speaker 1: eight week MBSR course here at Penn wonderful. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: Michael Beam the pen mindfulness and noticed can resonate now
Speaker 1: with a lot of things you talk about in your
Speaker 1: book that I would not have before the course. Few
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that I will say that becoming
Speaker 1: going through it and meditating does make me more of
Speaker 1: a caring, compassionate person, both towards myself and others. But
Speaker 1: it is kind of amazing that, like, why is that
Speaker 1: the case? You know, like really like getting beneath the surface,
Speaker 1: because I mean, all I'm doing seemingly is sitting there
Speaker 1: for forty minutes a day and listening to my thoughts
Speaker 1: and becoming aware of my breath. Why is something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, why does that lead to compassion? It's fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, Well, there's a couple ways of approaching
Speaker 1: that question. The first way would be on the surface
Speaker 1: and the way a lot of people describe it, which
Speaker 1: I'm happy to try to articulate that view. And the
Speaker 1: second would be a kind of a deep dive, which
Speaker 1: I do in the Mind Book to address this question.
Speaker 1: You're asking, Scott and looking, you know, as best I
Speaker 1: can at what the science of that might be. So
Speaker 1: let's do the one that's often said, and there is
Speaker 1: a bit of a debate, just to start with the
Speaker 1: controversy that, you know, the word mindfulness itself doesn't have
Speaker 1: an absolutely accepted definition in the world of research, so
Speaker 1: we generally mean, you know, from the word meditation. Meditation
Speaker 1: simply means a training of the mind. So when it's
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation, then you're learning to train the mind to
Speaker 1: be mindful. Then you have to say, well, okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: but what does that mean. So some people would say
Speaker 1: it's a way of strengthening attention so you can then
Speaker 1: open the mind up to be sensing whatever is arising
Speaker 1: as it arises. So it has two parts to it.
Speaker 1: It's paying attention with more stability, and then it's creating
Speaker 1: a receptive state that you know, John kevins In would
Speaker 1: say is not judgmental. Jack Cornfield and Trudy Goodman Cornfield
Speaker 1: would call it basically a kind of loving awareness. Seana
Speaker 1: Shapiro might call it kind attention. I love the term kindfulness.
Speaker 1: I think that's an awesome phrase. I'd before that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that nice? And you know, so in each of
Speaker 1: these views you've got receptivity and acceptance. You've got in
Speaker 1: some views not all, you've got a kind regard, a
Speaker 1: compassionate stance towards the self and others other people. And
Speaker 1: this is the controversial part. Don't see mindfulness in this way.
Speaker 1: They actually see it as an attention training practice, which
Speaker 1: is cool, it's good. Like we did a study at
Speaker 1: UCLA where we got people with attention deficit disorder, you know,
Speaker 1: to hugely increase their capacity to pay attention, sustain attention,
Speaker 1: and not get distracted better than you would get from
Speaker 1: any medication anyone has ever discovered. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of an awesome discovery of this, you know. So people
Speaker 1: would say yes, of course, because mindfulness is an attention
Speaker 1: training practice. But if you return to what I said
Speaker 1: at first, it's got the two components attention training and
Speaker 1: a kind of state of awareness which is different from
Speaker 1: attention that has this kindness to it, this love to
Speaker 1: its compassion to it. And so those are two different views.
Speaker 1: And I share this with you because some compassion researchers
Speaker 1: of various backgrounds would tell you that mindfulness is not
Speaker 1: enough that you need to add compassion training, whereas other
Speaker 1: people would say no, no, no, mindfulness is by the
Speaker 1: very nature of how we teach it compassion training. So
Speaker 1: I just want you and your pod listeners to realize
Speaker 1: that in the literature now there's a bit of a
Speaker 1: tension between is mindfulness enough and I think the term
Speaker 1: kindfulness kind of gets around that. It's like it's mindful
Speaker 1: and kind at the same time. I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up. Yeah, you know, so this is just something
Speaker 1: to put out there. Now you can ask me, well,
Speaker 1: what do I think is the deeper mechanism of it?
Speaker 1: And the short version of the surface one is you know,
Speaker 1: what you train gets you stronger because you know, neurons
Speaker 1: and fire together, wire together. There's another phrase basically where
Speaker 1: attention goes, neural firing flows and neural connection grows. And
Speaker 1: you know what that means is that when you do
Speaker 1: forty minutes a day of this stuff, you're changing your brain.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty amazing and pretty fantastic, and that's why
Speaker 1: you see a shift. Now I see mindless the way
Speaker 1: I just describe it. Yes, but when you get to
Speaker 1: a deep, deep dive into what the mind is, you
Speaker 1: look at the mind as this is all in the
Speaker 1: book mind, you know, as this self organizing, emergent property
Speaker 1: of energy flow that's happening both within you and between you.
Speaker 1: So this is a way of saying that you're mental
Speaker 1: life is shaped by things that happen not just in
Speaker 1: your brain, but in your whole body, and not just
Speaker 1: in your body, but in your connections to other people
Speaker 1: and nature and all sorts of interconnections we have. So
Speaker 1: in this view, optimal self organization is something you can
Speaker 1: look at which arises when things are differentiated and linked.
Speaker 1: So differentiated means allowed to be different linked means connecting them.
Speaker 1: So for me, my understanding from my own personal experience
Speaker 1: and as a science person, my understanding of how to
Speaker 1: see what you're saying, has got Why these kinds of
Speaker 1: trainings alter the way we live is the following. We
Speaker 1: are creating an integrated state in our practice, so that
Speaker 1: what that means is you're differentiating the receptive awareness or
Speaker 1: the sense of knowing from that which is known. Like
Speaker 1: your thought is not your awareness of the thought, or
Speaker 1: your sense of the breath. The feeling of the air
Speaker 1: coming in and out at your nostrils is not the
Speaker 1: awareness of the breath. So when you distinguish knowing from known,
Speaker 1: and we do this here at the Institute with something
Speaker 1: called the wheel of awareness, where we place the knowing
Speaker 1: in the hub, the known on the rim, and we systematically,
Speaker 1: you know, move this spoke of attention around. This is
Speaker 1: the practice I was doing before I ever heard of
Speaker 1: something called mindfulness meditation, but it was done to create
Speaker 1: integration of consciousness, to take the experience of consciousness and
Speaker 1: differentiate and then link it. And people started getting better
Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways. They reduced anxiety or dysphory,
Speaker 1: or you know, they started getting a handle on post
Speaker 1: traumatic symptoms they are having and just having a sense
Speaker 1: of thriving. And you know, for me it may be
Speaker 1: a distorted view, but when I learned about mindless meditation,
Speaker 1: to me, it was a profoundly integrative practice. And what
Speaker 1: I wondered about was could the differentiation of knowing from
Speaker 1: known also spread out to the brain, So would you
Speaker 1: see a more integrated brain. And the key thing about
Speaker 1: integration of the brain is you have different areas that
Speaker 1: become linked, and then the brain is able to participate
Speaker 1: in more optimal regulation of attention or emotion and mood,
Speaker 1: thought behavior, interpersonal relationships, things like that. And then the
Speaker 1: reason I think, in terms of your questions, Scott, why
Speaker 1: we become more compassionate is number one, integration means compassion
Speaker 1: because what you're doing is you're differentiating me from you.
Speaker 1: But if you're suffering, then I want to link with
Speaker 1: you to help reduce your suffering. So ultimately integration made
Speaker 1: visible as kindness and compassion. So that's on the relational side.
Speaker 1: From the deep energy side, you know, I just finished
Speaker 1: this study of these ten thousand folks who participated, and
Speaker 1: it's a long story but and it's in the book.
Speaker 1: But at the bottom line is you know, I think
Speaker 1: that when you look at what energy is, what mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation does, and what that receptive hub awareness represents. Is
Speaker 1: this what physicists call sea of potential, this kind of
Speaker 1: spacious openness that we can talk more about if you want,
Speaker 1: But basically from that spaciousness that you access with your
Speaker 1: forty minute day practice, I think it's the origin of love. Wow,
Speaker 1: you said so much interesting things I would understand really
Speaker 1: dive into what you mean by integration. You don't just
Speaker 1: mean integration within our own system. You're really referring to
Speaker 1: a really getting outside of ourselves and integrating in a
Speaker 1: larger world and then ultimately the whole universe. I guess,
Speaker 1: so I really, yeah, yeah, I mean, if you that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful way of sitting back and saying, Wow, there
Speaker 1: are layers at which energy flow is arising, and if
Speaker 1: integrating it is well being, then I am a part
Speaker 1: of the larger universe. Yes, and yeah, exactly, you know
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. And then love, I mean, do you view
Speaker 1: loves the same thing as compassion? Because I had doctor
Speaker 1: Keltner on my podcast and he differentiates between those two
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you kind of view them synonymously. Well,
Speaker 1: I love Daker. I mean he's a buddy, and I
Speaker 1: think his work is absolute genius. It's fantastic. And you
Speaker 1: know we've talked about this. So yes, compassion and love,
Speaker 1: I completely agree with Daker. They're different kinds of entities.
Speaker 1: I mean he also does these beautiful studies of awe
Speaker 1: and all compassion, love, these are all what Barb Frederson
Speaker 1: and I just wrote a chapter in a textbook for
Speaker 1: Paul Gilbert, which is a textbook all about compassion. And
Speaker 1: Paul asked us to write a chapter. So we individually,
Speaker 1: so we decided to do it together. And you know,
Speaker 1: Barb Fredrickson wrote a book called Love two point zero, right,
Speaker 1: and she talks about this thing called positivity resonance. And
Speaker 1: so what you'll see in the chapter or in this
Speaker 1: workshop we did together basically the idea that if you
Speaker 1: apply the notion of integration. You're raising Scott here that
Speaker 1: integration is differentiating, allowing things to be different, and then
Speaker 1: linking them. So what I said to doctor Frederickson is this,
Speaker 1: and I said this to Dakar too. In fact, the
Speaker 1: end of the Mind book is talking about both their
Speaker 1: work and both about love and about compassion as well
Speaker 1: as all. And then I show some photographs of this
Speaker 1: place that Dacker did this amazing study of all, which
Speaker 1: I can tell you about in a moment. Maybe he
Speaker 1: talked about it on the podcast, But the bottom line is,
Speaker 1: here's what doctor Frederickson I talked about. If you view
Speaker 1: positive emotions like all, compassion, love as increases in integration,
Speaker 1: so they fits into what Bart Fredrickson has written about
Speaker 1: called the broaden and build view of positive emotions. You
Speaker 1: can look at what are called negative emotions as decreases
Speaker 1: in integration, like sadness and anger and fear and shame.
Speaker 1: And when you see these views of emotion as shifts
Speaker 1: in integration, then you can look at love and compassion together.
Speaker 1: This is why I put them together and say these
Speaker 1: are states of higher integration. You can even put all
Speaker 1: in there. So on the broad view, I think compassion
Speaker 1: and love share this common ground of increasing integration. How
Speaker 1: when you love someone, you're honoring the differences and promoting
Speaker 1: deep close connections. When you're compassion with someone, you are
Speaker 1: honoring that that person's suffering. You yourself are not the
Speaker 1: sufferer in the same way, so you're differentiating. But then
Speaker 1: you're reaching out to see as Paul Gilbert beautifully teaches us,
Speaker 1: how to figure out how to reduce their suffering. And
Speaker 1: in that let's say B is the person suffering as
Speaker 1: you trying to help. When an act of compassion is engaged,
Speaker 1: the A being separate from B shifts to A and
Speaker 1: B becoming part of one interconnected system. And so the
Speaker 1: level of integration, what in math terms it's called the
Speaker 1: level of complexity, is raised with an active compassion, And
Speaker 1: in that sense we also get the level of integration
Speaker 1: raised with love. But we also get that level of
Speaker 1: integration raised with awe. So they're both sharing this similarity
Speaker 1: in my view of relational experiences that raise integration. But yes,
Speaker 1: they are distinct aspects of ways you can raise integration.
Speaker 1: You want to have experiences of all like this morning,
Speaker 1: I took my dog for a walk in nature. Both
Speaker 1: well I can't speak for him, but for I speaking
Speaker 1: for myself, I was filled with awe. I was filled
Speaker 1: with you know, compassion for some problems that were happening
Speaker 1: in the world. And I was filled with you know,
Speaker 1: love of life and all this stuff. And I even
Speaker 1: felt connected to the community I'm part of. So I
Speaker 1: tweeted all this with some photographs that you can see.
Speaker 1: And then there was a quote on a bench from
Speaker 1: a Cherokee view of the beauty of silence. So I
Speaker 1: took a picture of that was carved into a bench
Speaker 1: and anyway, you know, so there's all these ways we
Speaker 1: can have love, compassion off together, but they are distinct
Speaker 1: agree fascinating. Let's talk about personality differences. I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you make of people we label psychopaths? And there's
Speaker 1: been research trying to integrate mindfulness into prison and the
Speaker 1: evidence is still mixed on just how effective that is
Speaker 1: or even just you know, like I think of like
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, like he became I guess enlightened. You know,
Speaker 1: he went on this spiritual journey and he meditated, but
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people would say that he
Speaker 1: really wasn't didn't treat his coworkers terribly compassionately. So I
Speaker 1: don't know what do you make of I mean, what
Speaker 1: maybe you're just like a really nice guy. You know,
Speaker 1: you just have been your whole life, and mindfulness just
Speaker 1: takes all the clutter and fear and all the things
Speaker 1: that are blocking it out of the way. I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's you. That's very interesting. You know, if you
Speaker 1: apply this view we're talking about about this what's called
Speaker 1: a probability distribution curve, that is, you know, this energy
Speaker 1: the way of describing energy from a physics point of view,
Speaker 1: and say, you know, the spaciousness you can achieve from
Speaker 1: this planet possibility to see a potential physicists call it
Speaker 1: is a spaciousness that has room for love and compassion
Speaker 1: and awe and all that stuff, you know. And what
Speaker 1: it does is it lets you drop beneath these what
Speaker 1: are called plateaus and peaks of separate identity. Now, it
Speaker 1: may be and I'd have to look at the research
Speaker 1: that's been done and see what research might might be
Speaker 1: done in the future, but it may be that someone
Speaker 1: with not just psychopathology. You're talking about a psychopath right, correct.
Speaker 1: So the way I was taught this in Skyatric training was,
Speaker 1: you know, a person who lacks a conscience has this
Speaker 1: inability to respect the life of another person, that there's
Speaker 1: just this way in which you don't see the importance
Speaker 1: and honoring of another person's subjective life, of their integrity,
Speaker 1: their dignity, all these kinds of things. So of course
Speaker 1: actions then are done that you could call purely selfish,
Speaker 1: and if they're combined with you know, violence and hurting
Speaker 1: another person, we use the word a psychopath, or sometimes
Speaker 1: the sociopath is used. And I know there's lots of
Speaker 1: different studies of that, and I'm not an expert in this,
Speaker 1: so this isn't an area I can talk about the research,
Speaker 1: but in the general notion, I think there can be
Speaker 1: and Jack Cornfield talks about this really powerfully about a
Speaker 1: spiritual bypass. There can be ways where people use mindfulness training,
Speaker 1: can even say they're enlightened or stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: their relationships are really filled with selfish acts that don't
Speaker 1: reveal compassion at that person's core. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason Jack uses this term spiritual bypass is that sometimes
Speaker 1: what you find is there are some profound personal histories
Speaker 1: of pretty severe trauma that the individual is using mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation to only be in quotes. This is a lot
Speaker 1: of quotes in the present moment to avoid reflecting on
Speaker 1: how they were hurt by important other people in their past.
Speaker 1: They then become an attachment terms, you know, dominated by
Speaker 1: a strategy of adaptation, you know, to what they went through.
Speaker 1: But they're not reflecting on what they went through. So
Speaker 1: that strategy completely organizes how they interact with other people.
Speaker 1: It shapes as you're mentioning the word personality, it shapes
Speaker 1: their personality. And they're not very nice people, you know.
Speaker 1: And yet they can say they're masters at being in
Speaker 1: the present moment. But that's not actually what mindfulness is
Speaker 1: all about. Only it's a part of it. And when
Speaker 1: people only focus on that, they can be very unpleasant,
Speaker 1: very interpersonally, not very well developed people if they had
Speaker 1: this bypass. Oh wow, that is so interesting that we
Speaker 1: can actually use mindfulness selfishly more, we can totally, we
Speaker 1: can become really self focused through it. And it depends.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing, Scott you mentioned earlier about
Speaker 1: the self in the mind. This is another reason I
Speaker 1: wrote the book, because if you consider that the self
Speaker 1: is actually not just this kind of private, singular noun
Speaker 1: type thing that I have myself, and I want to
Speaker 1: accumulate things for myself. It's all about this self and
Speaker 1: this body, and this body lives about one hundred years
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do whatever I can for this body.
Speaker 1: If you start realizing, and this is why I wrote
Speaker 1: the book the way I did with the experiences and
Speaker 1: the photos in the book, if you start literally experiencing
Speaker 1: a widening of that restricted sense of self to include
Speaker 1: other people, to include nature even, and this is where
Speaker 1: the sense of all comes in. Literally, the self expands.
Speaker 1: It doesn't disappear, it expands. And then we want to
Speaker 1: be careful about how we use words like it's just
Speaker 1: about the self, because for some people, this self is
Speaker 1: the planet. So you go, I'm going to work hard
Speaker 1: to help the climate change issues, you know, not be
Speaker 1: so devastating. I'm going to recycle, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: all things because Earth is part of myself and so
Speaker 1: it is a selfish act then to clean up the
Speaker 1: garbage in the sense of myself is Earth. So it's
Speaker 1: a fun, you know, moment in our human family because
Speaker 1: we are faced with huge challenges of non integrated policy
Speaker 1: and non integrated approaches of racism and exclusionary views. That
Speaker 1: are ramping around the planet, and so what we want
Speaker 1: to do then is I think lean on a scientific
Speaker 1: perspective on where we need to go as a human family,
Speaker 1: and integration takes you there, Because an integrative view of
Speaker 1: the self is not just something happened in your head,
Speaker 1: that's for sure, And the mind is more than what's
Speaker 1: in the head. The self is more than what's in
Speaker 1: the head, includes your whole body and includes your relationships
Speaker 1: to other people on the planet. No, I definitely agree
Speaker 1: with that. What is this final line between you know,
Speaker 1: there is something that is in my that just is
Speaker 1: within the confines of my body. I take your point
Speaker 1: very valid, But there is something that I want, some
Speaker 1: potentialities that I think that only I can uniquely develop
Speaker 1: in this life that can contribute positively to the world.
Speaker 1: What is that fine balance between keeping an identity but
Speaker 1: also mastering that, you know, the Buddhist conception of non self.
Speaker 1: To me, it's it's a it's a high wire act
Speaker 1: because I don't want to, you know, take it to
Speaker 1: the extreme of just integration. Then I sort of feel like, well,
Speaker 1: then what's the point of me waking up in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm me as my I'm useless in my own in
Speaker 1: my own body, because I'm really just part of earth,
Speaker 1: or I am Earth, which you would say, obviously is
Speaker 1: not a good way to think about it. But it
Speaker 1: is a balancing act of self actualization versus self transcendence.
Speaker 1: What is that, right? Right? So beautiful questions, Scott, thank you. So,
Speaker 1: integration is defined as elements of a system being differentiated.
Speaker 1: They're made different and honored for their uniqueness and really
Speaker 1: thriving on their uniqueness. But then they're linked. So let's
Speaker 1: look at what you're describing about the cel Someone who
Speaker 1: says I have no inner what I call it mindscape,
Speaker 1: like the inner landscape of your mental life. Let's just
Speaker 1: call that a mindscape, right, I have no mindscape. It's
Speaker 1: all an illusion. It's all delusion. It's all ridiculous. There
Speaker 1: is no internal bodily experience of my feelings, my thoughts,
Speaker 1: my memories. They're nothing. And if I think there's something,
Speaker 1: I'm living in delusion. So that's a very common view
Speaker 1: actually among certain individuals. And it isn't allowing for a
Speaker 1: differentiation of your memory, your narrative. You are in terms
Speaker 1: of your internal life making sense of this internal mindscape
Speaker 1: if you will. If you take on that view, that's
Speaker 1: all nothingness, it's meaningless, it's delusion. You're actually not participating
Speaker 1: in integration because you're not allowing that to be differentiated.
Speaker 1: So already you've obliterated integration. If you, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: just say I am only what I think, I am
Speaker 1: only what i've experienced, and forget everyone else and forget
Speaker 1: the planet, then you're excessively differentiating this mindscape and you're
Speaker 1: not honoring the fact that you're a part of You know,
Speaker 1: if there's an atmosphere that's around us, there's a kind
Speaker 1: of mind sphere that we also participate in this interconnected
Speaker 1: mental set of lives we have, So you know, then
Speaker 1: you're obliterating linkage in many ways. So you're also obliterating integration.
Speaker 1: So what would an integrated life be. Integrate Let's keep
Speaker 1: this in mind. It's more like a fruit salad than
Speaker 1: a smoothie. You know, you're not grinding everything up and
Speaker 1: obliterating any differences and just making a homogeneous, blended mixture,
Speaker 1: not at all. The thing that's absolutely crucial about integration
Speaker 1: is that you differentiate and you link, and the linkage
Speaker 1: does not in any way reduce the differentiation. So does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah? I like that. Yeah. So here's
Speaker 1: what I say, you know, because I am a therapist
Speaker 1: and I have some patients who you know, ascribe to
Speaker 1: non dualistic views and tell me the self is an
Speaker 1: illusion and they shouldn't look at their history of what
Speaker 1: their parents did to them, and you know, their lives
Speaker 1: are actually, you know, pretty filled with suffering because they're
Speaker 1: so averse to just sitting within their own history, right
Speaker 1: because they see the present moment as some kind of
Speaker 1: sanctuary and anything to memory or narrative is, in their view,
Speaker 1: just part of the dualistic delusion of things. So this
Speaker 1: has happened over and over again with patients. But here's
Speaker 1: what I've discovered is that that is a form of
Speaker 1: impaired integration. And when you have integration and paired, you
Speaker 1: tend to go to chaos or rigidity, and this is
Speaker 1: what can arise. So here's the thing about you waking
Speaker 1: up in the morning. You can wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning and you can go Scott, good morning. You have
Speaker 1: a real differentiated inner mindscape that you can explore with
Speaker 1: a lot of fun and awe and appreciation. This inner mindscape, well,
Speaker 1: if you're lucky, it's going to last about one hundred years,
Speaker 1: and you get this hundred years to play with it.
Speaker 1: Not that time is real, but we do have clocks
Speaker 1: that are real, and you should really have deep gratitude
Speaker 1: and appreciation for the mindscape life you're able to have.
Speaker 1: But if you believe, if you say to yourself that
Speaker 1: all you have is what's inside you, then you're missing
Speaker 1: the opportunity to actually differentiate the interconnected self that you have,
Speaker 1: where you're connected to people you care about. You're connected
Speaker 1: to people even you don't care about. You're connected to
Speaker 1: your enemies, You're connected to all human people all the planet,
Speaker 1: all non human people on the planet, all living beings.
Speaker 1: You're connected to Earth. And you know this morning when
Speaker 1: I walked around this park with my dog and I
Speaker 1: saw the birds and they literally the squirrels running around
Speaker 1: and the trees and the wind was blowing and the
Speaker 1: clouds were there, and it's just this magical moment of going, WHOA,
Speaker 1: you know, this is us, you know. And there's this
Speaker 1: word that I use called wei. You know, me is
Speaker 1: the internal mindscape we have that's differentiated, and it's connected
Speaker 1: to an interconnected identity as a wei, so you don't
Speaker 1: need to get rid of me. You can have both
Speaker 1: as a mui, you know, MWe. And that's how I
Speaker 1: felt this morning. And it's a beautiful way to live.
Speaker 1: And I think it's what the planet is waiting for
Speaker 1: us to embrace, because when you live as a we,
Speaker 1: you take care of Earth like you take care of yourself,
Speaker 1: because it is a part of your integrated self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's human kind. And it's the first time I ever
Speaker 1: looked at that word and realize kid is relate to capassion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well totally, you know. And the last section of the book,
Speaker 1: you know, human guind can we be both? You know,
Speaker 1: here's the beauty of it. All I think is that
Speaker 1: if we take kindness as our guide toward integration. Think
Speaker 1: about what life would be like if you were kind
Speaker 1: to your inner life, kind yourself, kind to other people
Speaker 1: you meet, and kind to Earth. What a world we
Speaker 1: would have that'ud be an integrated world. And yet we
Speaker 1: can do this, we really can't. Yeah, I agree, and
Speaker 1: I love this this. I want to use the word positivity,
Speaker 1: but I feel like that doesn't fully capture what you're saying,
Speaker 1: because it is it's quite realistic, but it does require
Speaker 1: this certain layer of consciousness that you talk about. So
Speaker 1: in the last couple of minutes, I want to get
Speaker 1: really existential for a second. So this what are the
Speaker 1: implications of your thinking about the mind for death anxiety?
Speaker 1: A lot of people have existential terror, and you know
Speaker 1: there's a whole few error management theory. Do you think
Speaker 1: your work could be useful for managing terror? Death? Terror?
Speaker 1: You know, I can tell you from my personal experience
Speaker 1: relating to this in my own life. You know, writing
Speaker 1: the book has changed my relationship toward death. That's important,
Speaker 1: that's huge, you know, yeah, really it was a big thing.
Speaker 1: And people have read the book share that with me too,
Speaker 1: that it's changed their feelings about it. And you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that's come up a number of times because
Speaker 1: people asked me about interestingly, you know, how does this
Speaker 1: view of mind change your view of death? And I
Speaker 1: can say, you know, and I've said this before, but
Speaker 1: when my father was dying about four and a half
Speaker 1: years ago, now, he was a pretty staunch mechanical engineer,
Speaker 1: didn't really believe in things, you know, beyond the mechanical. Really,
Speaker 1: he was getting very close to death, like it was
Speaker 1: going to happen that day, you know, when he asked
Speaker 1: what was going on? And I looked at his Bible
Speaker 1: signs and I said, yeah, Dad, you're dying, he'd asked me.
Speaker 1: And so we held hands and he said, where am
Speaker 1: I going? Yeah? And I said, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know where you're going, and I don't know if anyone knows.
Speaker 1: But in you know, thirty years of practice as a therapist,
Speaker 1: you know, no one's ever come to me. I said
Speaker 1: to him, worried about where they were before they were conceived.
Speaker 1: So he kind of looked to me, like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? And I didn't want to get him upset,
Speaker 1: you know, he as moments we had at our fathers
Speaker 1: in relationship. So I said, I mean, I said, but
Speaker 1: what if there's a chance that you're going to go
Speaker 1: to exactly the same place you were before you were conceived?
Speaker 1: And he goes, well, where was that? So I said, well,
Speaker 1: one way to think about it is, before you were conceived,
Speaker 1: there was a sea of potential, of all possibilities, and
Speaker 1: one sperm and one egg. Of the gazillions of sperm
Speaker 1: and egg that could have gotten together, only one of
Speaker 1: each got together, and they made you the very unique
Speaker 1: person that you are. And he smiled with that, and
Speaker 1: that was a good starting place, And I said, so,
Speaker 1: if you actually look deeply at consciousness and our mental lives,
Speaker 1: it looks like the actual experience of consciousness arises from
Speaker 1: this same sea of potential, and in terms of you,
Speaker 1: the sperm and egg arise from that they form you.
Speaker 1: You get about one hundred years to live on life.
Speaker 1: But then after you've had the experience in this body,
Speaker 1: these actualities that have arisen from the sea of possibilities,
Speaker 1: this plain of possibilities, you know, the sea of potential,
Speaker 1: these actualities called your life. As they come to finishing
Speaker 1: up the one hundred years, you've got to play around
Speaker 1: with them. You know, you're going to melt back into
Speaker 1: that sea of potential possibly, which is exactly where you
Speaker 1: were before you were received. Wow. And then that sea
Speaker 1: of potential that you were back to then eventually contributes
Speaker 1: to integration again. You know, you exactly won't be aware
Speaker 1: of it though, I mean this, this won't be aware
Speaker 1: of it. Whatever I have right now won't be aware
Speaker 1: of it. But exactly a new potentiality will be aware
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. So he got a big smile on
Speaker 1: his face. He said, you know, thank you. That makes
Speaker 1: me feel very peaceful. And you know, I got to say,
Speaker 1: you know, writing the book was after he passed. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just intellectual, you know, blathering, it's
Speaker 1: I deeply believe that we collectively are a part of
Speaker 1: this emergence of energy flow patterns, and that we do
Speaker 1: get this time in these bodies, and you know, and
Speaker 1: that we are a part of this deeply interconnected world,
Speaker 1: and that if we allow that to be differentiated, that
Speaker 1: we do have these inner bodily experiences, but we also
Speaker 1: have this interconnected set of experiences. It just relaxes the
Speaker 1: fear and the worry and the concern so that you
Speaker 1: can actually become open to being a part of a
Speaker 1: much larger hole. And you know, as Daker would say,
Speaker 1: fill with awe. And this is something we can all
Speaker 1: help each other live while we're still in these bodies,
Speaker 1: but realize how deeply interconnected we all are. Man, great interview.
Speaker 1: I want to stop there because I don't think anything
Speaker 1: else can top that. So Ok, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: chatting with me today, and thanks for the really awesome
Speaker 1: work you're doing. All some work you're doing. My pleasure
Speaker 1: and awesome work you're doing. To Scott, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: barrk Kauffman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot
Speaker 1: com