Speaker 1: I don't believe we necessarily have control of what is
Speaker 1: going on in the world outside our skin, but we
Speaker 1: have a great deal of control of how we react
Speaker 1: to it. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers 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 m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Rick Heller, the author of the new book Secular Meditation
Speaker 1: thirty two Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion, and Joy,
Speaker 1: a guide from the Humanist Community at Harvard. Rick received
Speaker 1: a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. He also
Speaker 1: holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy
Speaker 1: School of Government and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
Speaker 1: from m I. T Rick leads weekly meditations at the
Speaker 1: Humanist Community at Harvard. And here's the interview with Rick Heller. Hi, Rick,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi, I am glad to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have you on and talk about your
Speaker 1: new book, Secular Meditation. I think it's a very interesting
Speaker 1: book about the Buddhist tradition to mindfulness in meditation, we
Speaker 1: can bring them into our secular lives. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite books of all time is Buddhism Without Beliefs by
Speaker 1: Stephen Bachelor, which is a similar approach in looking at
Speaker 1: what we can learn from Buddhism even if we're not
Speaker 1: willing to accept some of the supernatural beliefs there. So
Speaker 1: we'll get into all that in a second, but we'll
Speaker 1: start like we always do, with the Parable. And in
Speaker 1: the Parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother 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 as
Speaker 1: a humanist, well, what it connects to me is um
Speaker 1: this idea that when something negative occurs in life, if
Speaker 1: we try to push it away and try to negate it,
Speaker 1: it often actually ends up building on it. And this
Speaker 1: is something actually that comes out of in Buddhism, something
Speaker 1: called the Foreign Noble Truths. But this is something that
Speaker 1: I believe there's research that shows that this is actually
Speaker 1: valid from the way the brain works. I may talk
Speaker 1: a little bit in the book about how this works.
Speaker 1: That when we experience something as negative and then we
Speaker 1: make a judgment, and if you build up these judgments
Speaker 1: to a version in a lot of life, a double
Speaker 1: negative becomes a positive in mathematics, let's say. But within
Speaker 1: the brain, when you're trying to get a negative, you're
Speaker 1: actually still activating the brain areas that are negative, and
Speaker 1: it just builds and builds. So one of the concepts
Speaker 1: is that when you encounter something that's negative, if you
Speaker 1: can actually bring some acceptance to it, some friendliness to it,
Speaker 1: that actually kind of brings you back into neutral and
Speaker 1: into equal comity. So rather than feeding that fear and
Speaker 1: making it worse and worse and words, you can get
Speaker 1: yourself back to a neutral state. Yeah, excellent. That's a
Speaker 1: particular area that I want to focus on as we
Speaker 1: get into the questions. Let's start off though, this is
Speaker 1: a guide from the humanist community at Harvard. So let's
Speaker 1: start off by talking briefly about what a humanist is
Speaker 1: and what the humanist community at Harvard is. Well. Humanists
Speaker 1: is short for secular humanists. Uh. It's a community of
Speaker 1: people who have no religious beliefs, though we often describe
Speaker 1: ourselves as a community of atheist, agnostics and allies. There's
Speaker 1: a national association called the American Humanist Association, and the
Speaker 1: humanist community at Harvard is affiliated with it. It specifically
Speaker 1: was created to serve the needs of students at Harvard University,
Speaker 1: but over time it's evolved to actually serve anyone in
Speaker 1: the Boston area who I would like to come and participate.
Speaker 1: And uh, so the idea of humanism is that even
Speaker 1: if you do not actually believe in supernatural, we still
Speaker 1: do have some beliefs. We believe in helping our fellow
Speaker 1: human being. Excellent. So the book is called Secular Meditation,
Speaker 1: and you go through thirty two different practices, the subtitles
Speaker 1: thirty two Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion, and Joy.
Speaker 1: We're not going to go through all thirty two by
Speaker 1: any stretch, but I'd like to hit on a couple
Speaker 1: that I thought were particularly interesting to me. Let's start
Speaker 1: with one that's pretty common. You hear a lot in
Speaker 1: Buddhist meditation around meta meditation, loving kindness meditation, and I
Speaker 1: found it interesting as a secular approach to Buddhism. This
Speaker 1: is one that you still focused on quite a bit.
Speaker 1: So could you share a little bit about, maybe briefly,
Speaker 1: what the idea of meta meditation is to you, how
Speaker 1: you do it, and why you think it's so important
Speaker 1: and figure so prominently in a secular meditation book. Well, Meta,
Speaker 1: which is a word that is often translated as loving kindness,
Speaker 1: is uh, it's really um. When I've spoken to some
Speaker 1: good of teachers, it's actually the attitude that one brings
Speaker 1: in the concept of mindfulness. Mindfulness is often spoken of
Speaker 1: as paying attention to the present moment with a non
Speaker 1: judgmental attitude. But um, as one of the people I've
Speaker 1: studied with, says that non judgmental may sound neutral, it's
Speaker 1: actually not. It's actually friendly and welcoming. It's actually meta
Speaker 1: or a kind feeling toward what is going on. So
Speaker 1: I do start off with a meta or loving kindness meditation,
Speaker 1: which is something in which one um starts out with
Speaker 1: contemplating people we call benefactors who make us feel warm,
Speaker 1: and then we let those feelings flow toward ourselves and
Speaker 1: then towards what we call a neutral person, could be
Speaker 1: the person who served us coffee at a Starbucks this morning,
Speaker 1: and then also even towards difficult people. I say, let's
Speaker 1: say a co worker who we find some difficulty in
Speaker 1: our relationship, And it's a way of trying to expand
Speaker 1: this feeling of kindness. And I do think this is
Speaker 1: something that is actually very consonant with humanism. So and
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons I sort of chose to
Speaker 1: lead off it is as I think it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more social than a mindfulness of breath meditation and
Speaker 1: mindfulness of bread meditation. You are sitting quietly and you're
Speaker 1: really not interacting with anyone else. The loving kindness meditation
Speaker 1: while you really actually are sitting quietly and not physically
Speaker 1: interacting with someone else, but in your mind you are
Speaker 1: actually thinking about other people. And then when you get
Speaker 1: up off the cushion and go out into the world,
Speaker 1: you may actually be more kind to the people you encounter.
Speaker 1: So I think it's consistent with the what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do with humanism. Yeah. I think it's very interesting
Speaker 1: because one of the complaints often about the secularization of
Speaker 1: meditation and mindfulness in general is the fact that people
Speaker 1: lose that sort of thing. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: very interesting that in a book titled secular meditation, Uh,
Speaker 1: it was, it was front and center. Yeah, I'm aware
Speaker 1: of that critique, and I do have a great deal
Speaker 1: of respect for mindfulness based stress reduction program. Uh. That's
Speaker 1: actually um A lot of the research that shows that
Speaker 1: this works comes from the program, and I think the
Speaker 1: program does in fact include some of these ideas of
Speaker 1: compassion as well. But perhaps as this idea of mindfulness
Speaker 1: is going more and more away from people who know
Speaker 1: a great deal and is being applied often in the
Speaker 1: corporate setting, to just being a sort of intentional training.
Speaker 1: It might be getting away from that. So you go
Speaker 1: through a lot of the basic meditation techniques. I like
Speaker 1: any book that shows a bunch of meditation techniques because
Speaker 1: I spent the better part of probably fifteen years thinking
Speaker 1: that the only real meditation technique that was taught or
Speaker 1: was useful was following the breath, which is not one
Speaker 1: that works for me. So I'm always a fan of
Speaker 1: seeing different techniques laid out as a way to um
Speaker 1: perhaps mine the same same ground, but with some different approaches. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually started off again, like like you, with mindfulness
Speaker 1: of breath for many years, and I didn't know these
Speaker 1: other techniques, and I actually, um, I'm not that creative
Speaker 1: mindfulness of I think actually a lot of people aren't
Speaker 1: that great at that. It's it's actually can be somewhat challenging.
Speaker 1: So some of these other techniques, uh, you find you
Speaker 1: find a way into meditation throughout. So I like ambient sound.
Speaker 1: Many of the people I lead a weekly meditation. A
Speaker 1: lot of people like the ambient sound meditation where you're
Speaker 1: listening to whatever is going on the environment. Often there's
Speaker 1: a bus going by outside, and uh, you actually learn
Speaker 1: the message in the ambient sound meditation that no stimulus
Speaker 1: is necessarily negative inherently like a bus going by. If
Speaker 1: you're actually meditating to sound, bus going by is good,
Speaker 1: it's actually helping you toward your goal. So it's not noise,
Speaker 1: it's just sound. Yeah. That is my favorite one too,
Speaker 1: is meditating on sound. And there's a place that I
Speaker 1: do it often, which is a very interesting mix because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nature sounds. There's birds, and there's crickets,
Speaker 1: and and there's industrial sounds. I hear truck doors and
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of get it all and and
Speaker 1: I like that because you know, to your point, it's
Speaker 1: really that focus on not saying this sounds good, this
Speaker 1: sound is bad. And I've actually been able to use
Speaker 1: that technique, like when I've been on an airplane with
Speaker 1: a crying baby, you know, which is for me one
Speaker 1: of the most stressful sounds. Um that you know agitates me.
Speaker 1: And so if I kind of try and focus on
Speaker 1: that in the in the terms of a meditation, it
Speaker 1: actually helps me to deal with it a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Now there was a type of meditation that you brought
Speaker 1: up in the book that I have to say, I
Speaker 1: have never heard of before, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting and the science behind it particularly fascinating. This is
Speaker 1: face meditation. Can you tell us about that? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's really um uh a way of talking
Speaker 1: about in kind of it's not any specific meditation, but
Speaker 1: it's focusing on the musculitcher of the face and making
Speaker 1: sure it's very relaxed because there's certain research. It's actually
Speaker 1: kind of old research, and I'd really like some scientists
Speaker 1: to take another crack at it with the brain imagery.
Speaker 1: But going back about thirty forty years, there's research that
Speaker 1: shows that our inner speech is actually associated with activation
Speaker 1: of the muscles of speech at a very low level.
Speaker 1: And there's also what's called facial feedback where if you
Speaker 1: put your mouth in particularly like if you're if you're
Speaker 1: clenching a pencil in your mouth and puts you your
Speaker 1: mouth in a smile, uh, it actually changes your mood.
Speaker 1: So there's research that shows that inner speech effects the
Speaker 1: muscle at your of speech, including the jaws, the allowynx,
Speaker 1: and so if you can actually relax those peripheral muscles.
Speaker 1: There's evidence that it actually quiets inner speech. There's probably
Speaker 1: a couple of mechanisms whereby inner speech is at it
Speaker 1: during meditation, and that's probably one of them. But I'd
Speaker 1: like to see this research repeated now with neuroimaging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be really interesting to see if as you
Speaker 1: relax those muscles, if those parts of the brain quieted
Speaker 1: down beyond just like what you said, the previous studies
Speaker 1: around sensing the musculature. But it's a very interesting concept,
Speaker 1: and there's certainly seems to be a variations on that theme.
Speaker 1: There's the there's the you know, the common one right
Speaker 1: that you mentioned is if you smile, you feel better.
Speaker 1: But there's also been some studies lately showing that botox
Speaker 1: to sort of paralyze the frown muscles can have a
Speaker 1: positive impact on depression, which is a bizarre one. But
Speaker 1: it seems that these things are interconnected in a way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think they are. I don't think
Speaker 1: just putting a pencil between your teeth is the cause
Speaker 1: for depression, right, But every little bit helps with these things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of one of the scientists I I spoke to,
Speaker 1: uh Paul larr I said that you don't just think
Speaker 1: with your brain, you think with your whole body. It's
Speaker 1: really your whole nervous system, including the crippl nervous system
Speaker 1: is involved. So let's talk a little bit about relating
Speaker 1: to emotions through mindfulness. So you touched on this at
Speaker 1: the very beginning where you talked about if we relate
Speaker 1: with our emotions a little bit differently versus resisting them.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to spend a little bit more time
Speaker 1: on that, and I've got a few questions deeper about that.
Speaker 1: But can you start us off by sort of talking
Speaker 1: about what the practice of mindfulness of emotions is and
Speaker 1: what some of the benefits are. Well, there is this
Speaker 1: practice called mindfulness of motion where you might be doing
Speaker 1: your regular meditation, could be a breath of meditation, but
Speaker 1: every thirty seconds or so, you hold yourself and use
Speaker 1: a word that described your meditation. It could be sad
Speaker 1: or joyful, whatever it is. Uh. And and there is
Speaker 1: actually evidence that when you recognize an emotion, it does
Speaker 1: tend to bring it more toward neutral. So I don't
Speaker 1: think they really actually know why that's the case, but
Speaker 1: there is evidence. They call it affects labeling, and that
Speaker 1: it does seem to work that simply recognizing your emotion,
Speaker 1: it's almost like your body is sending you a message,
Speaker 1: and then when you recognize that message, it feels like
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to send it to you. That's kind
Speaker 1: of a metaphor. I'm not really sure what's going on.
Speaker 1: So there is a mindfulness of emotion practice where when
Speaker 1: you accept the emotion that you're feeling and bring you
Speaker 1: back to a neutral state. And actually, I should say
Speaker 1: that what I'm trying to actually get at in the
Speaker 1: book is not just a perfectly neutral state, but what
Speaker 1: I call positive equanimity, that you actually have this feeling
Speaker 1: of meta or kindness moment to moment, and that what
Speaker 1: you are experiencing on the day to day basis most
Speaker 1: of the time you can be in this place where
Speaker 1: things are good at least in terms of what you're
Speaker 1: bringing to it internally. Happiness doesn't have to come from
Speaker 1: what is going on outside in the world. You can
Speaker 1: actually self generate these positive feelings as long as you
Speaker 1: have your basic needs met for food, shelter, having a
Speaker 1: place to sleep, and things that because the ability to
Speaker 1: self generate happiness does make demands on the resources of
Speaker 1: your body. So you do have to have adequate nutrition
Speaker 1: and adequate sleep to be able to make this shift.
Speaker 1: But if you do that, you can make this shift. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we've explored this topic a lot on the show,
Speaker 1: this idea of working with emotions in a more skillful
Speaker 1: way by recognizing what you're feeling, by not resisting it,
Speaker 1: by not adding stories on top of it, not adding
Speaker 1: all the narrative on top of it. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the key. It's easy to think like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I know what emotion I'm feeling, right, But I think
Speaker 1: for a lot of us, and certainly for me in
Speaker 1: certain cases, I might sort of know how I'm feeling,
Speaker 1: but I'm not in touch with the emotion in any
Speaker 1: sort of conscious, mindful way. I'm in touch with the
Speaker 1: emotion and the stories that are generating around it and
Speaker 1: all the things I'm telling myself and and to your point,
Speaker 1: when we can stop, and I think in the book
Speaker 1: you referred to uh Dr Segel is saying, you know,
Speaker 1: name it to tame it as as a way to
Speaker 1: do this effective label. And I definitely find it to
Speaker 1: be very helpful to stop and become conscious of the
Speaker 1: emotion sometimes to become conscious of how it feels in
Speaker 1: the body versus just just pushing it away. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: mindfulness is you know, it's one practice. There are also
Speaker 1: practices in psychotherapy. I'm not a psychotherapist, I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert in this, but one form of therapy is called
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy. And in that case, when often recognizes
Speaker 1: that if one is having an overreaction to something, one
Speaker 1: kind of works with rational thoughts to say, okay, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm overdoing and things like that, and that can be
Speaker 1: very effective. But there are other situations where you may
Speaker 1: have a let's say you have a very serious illness
Speaker 1: and there's actually no way to sort of out argue
Speaker 1: the fact that this is quite serious. But sometimes mine
Speaker 1: from those techniques by of acceptance, UH can bring one
Speaker 1: to equanimity even in such cases where there really is
Speaker 1: no way to sort out argue it. Yeah. That was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the book was the
Speaker 1: discussion that you had around this idea of affect labeling
Speaker 1: versus sort of what you were just describing, which is
Speaker 1: known as cognitive reappraisal. Right where I try and tell
Speaker 1: myself a different story about what's happening, and I love
Speaker 1: how you talk about how in different scenarios those things
Speaker 1: can be useful. Because one of the things that again
Speaker 1: comes up on this show a lot, is this idea
Speaker 1: of positive thinking. I'm not a huge fan of excessive
Speaker 1: positive thinking because at a certain point, you don't believe
Speaker 1: what you're telling yourself, and if you don't believe what
Speaker 1: you're telling yourself, it doesn't do any good to keep
Speaker 1: trying to do it. And that's where really what I
Speaker 1: think you were getting at. It's certainly good to put
Speaker 1: the best spin on whatever is happening and to be
Speaker 1: as rational as you can and recognize like, am I
Speaker 1: overreacting and I misinterpreting? Am I taking personally something that's
Speaker 1: not personal? Those are all, you know, forms of this
Speaker 1: cognitive reappraisal. But at a certain point, sometimes you just
Speaker 1: feel lousy, and there's a there's good reason to feel lousy.
Speaker 1: But what you can do is work with that so
Speaker 1: that it's not such an overwhelming and you don't make
Speaker 1: it worse by resisting it and causing it to stick
Speaker 1: around very much. So, and I you know, there is
Speaker 1: a critique of positive thinking that sort of is if
Speaker 1: you just think hard enough and believe hard enough, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the rays at work, or you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lovely home. I don't believe we necessarily have control
Speaker 1: of what is going on in the world outside our skin,
Speaker 1: but we have a great deal of control of how
Speaker 1: we react to it, so we can bring this equanimity
Speaker 1: and get to a reasonably positive state of feeling in
Speaker 1: most cases. Yeah. I like the use of that word
Speaker 1: equanimity because it really to me, it strikes that sort
Speaker 1: of balance of there's a realism to it, and there's
Speaker 1: also yet a peacefulness with what is. It's a great word,
Speaker 1: and you you make good use of it throughout the book. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd like to change directions a little bit right now
Speaker 1: and and talk about there's a whole section on, you know, mindfulness.
Speaker 1: I'll just call it mindfulness of life, right like paying
Speaker 1: attention to being out in the world. You bring up
Speaker 1: a study that I've referenced a couple of times from
Speaker 1: Daniel Gilbert, where you know, basically the title of the
Speaker 1: research of the study was that a wandering mind is
Speaker 1: an unhappy mind. And it's been staggering to me since
Speaker 1: I I've heard that. The more I look at that
Speaker 1: in my own life. How often that is really true?
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of different approaches to basically
Speaker 1: stop in our mind from wandering. And you say, and
Speaker 1: I'll just read this from the book. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason we get bored is we cut ourselves off from
Speaker 1: the sensations around us. If we can do a task
Speaker 1: without paying a lot of attention, we think we're better
Speaker 1: off if we don't pay attention. But if we do
Speaker 1: pay close attention, there can be a lushness to the sensations.
Speaker 1: Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I do something, let's say, um, like washing
Speaker 1: the dishes, I can get where I'm paying close attentions
Speaker 1: my actual movements, the sensations of let's say, warmth of
Speaker 1: the water that I'm washing the dishes, reflections on the dishes. Um.
Speaker 1: The first time you do this, it probably is actually
Speaker 1: better to do a meditation, like a breath meditation. After
Speaker 1: quieting your mind, settling your mind and you've quieted the
Speaker 1: distracting thoughts. When you actually then get up in your
Speaker 1: eyes and start doing things, you actually still have this
Speaker 1: meditative consciousness where your inner thoughts are quieted and you
Speaker 1: can really be open to what is going on out
Speaker 1: in the world, and there really is a lot more
Speaker 1: coming at us in terms of stimuli from the world
Speaker 1: that then we normally notice we the brain has some
Speaker 1: certain shortcuts. It's kind of efficiency to be able to
Speaker 1: do a lot of things. But if we focus on
Speaker 1: one thing and kind of allow ourselves to observe it,
Speaker 1: uh in more detailed there, there's actually quite a bit
Speaker 1: of invigorating stimuli that come, and it can be very pleasurable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that is one of the benefits of mindfulness
Speaker 1: practice that I've gotten that I didn't really necessarily expect
Speaker 1: or or look for, but have started to consciously cultivate
Speaker 1: more is that sort of sensory perception about sharpening of
Speaker 1: the senses and thus being able to be more engaged, entertained,
Speaker 1: enraptured by the normal small things in life. Like there's
Speaker 1: that cliche like, well, it's the small things that matter.
Speaker 1: But there's a certain state of mind and in a
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world that makes that statement work.
Speaker 1: And it's very easy for that not to be the
Speaker 1: case if your mind is always not attuned to those
Speaker 1: things and doesn't become receptive in the same way to them.
Speaker 1: One of the mindfuless practices is walking in nature. And
Speaker 1: it used to be that I'd like to get to
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain and have a great view
Speaker 1: about I've kind of bored along the way and leaves
Speaker 1: and trees and things. And now once I've started a
Speaker 1: mindfulness practice and I actually bring the meditative mind to
Speaker 1: the walk through the forest, I actually find the lower
Speaker 1: parts of the forest to be very invigorating and I'm
Speaker 1: very attuned to the space but negative space in between
Speaker 1: let's say, the plants and and leaves, and it's it
Speaker 1: really there's a sort of sensory amplification that goes on.
Speaker 1: And I actually, I think I give a story that
Speaker 1: my wife and I were an Ireland a few years
Speaker 1: ago and I was walking along in the cliffs of
Speaker 1: More which is fabulous spectacular and it was really wonderful.
Speaker 1: But then on the way back on the very same path,
Speaker 1: I was actually starting to get bored and distracted because
Speaker 1: I've seen that cliffs before. So what I actually did
Speaker 1: is bring my mindfulness to my steps and and it
Speaker 1: actually came back to me and the walking um the
Speaker 1: path that I was on brought back that same sense
Speaker 1: of wow that I had had by looking at the cliffs.
Speaker 1: In the book, you quote the neuroscientist Daniel Segel multiple times,
Speaker 1: but you talk about his concept of bottom up and
Speaker 1: top down flows of nerve signals. Could you walk us
Speaker 1: through that. It's a bit challenging. It really goes to
Speaker 1: the neuroscience. But the cerebral cortex has various layers where
Speaker 1: the signals that are coming from your periphery, let's say,
Speaker 1: your fingers, going up through the spinal column up into
Speaker 1: the brain, and there is a sort of higher level
Speaker 1: process where they are being brought together in more abstract form.
Speaker 1: And what he says, and there's some evidence for I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it's ironclad proof, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good hypothesis, is that the more you're sort of
Speaker 1: in your head, you're actually dealing with abstractions, you don't
Speaker 1: actually see the physical object that you are observing, but
Speaker 1: you're actually bringing some of the patterns in memory. There's
Speaker 1: actually evidence for this that the when we actually observe
Speaker 1: something ing. Uh So, for instance, if we see an apple,
Speaker 1: we are actually imposing our recollections of other apples to
Speaker 1: this patch of red to see that this is an apple,
Speaker 1: and we have the sort of generic apple in our
Speaker 1: memory that sort of we sort of impose on this
Speaker 1: top down basis, And when we're doing that, it's actually
Speaker 1: a little bit more boring because we're not seeing the
Speaker 1: individuality of whatever the apple or the rose or whatever
Speaker 1: we're seeing. And when we quiet the mind, there's more
Speaker 1: focus on the actual signals that are coming up from
Speaker 1: the senses, and we see the individual object in greater detail,
Speaker 1: and it actually fires. Uh, there's more novelty. There's which
Speaker 1: actually probably fires a sort of the dopamine neurons, and
Speaker 1: it is a lot more interesting. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of dopamine pursuited two points way beyond what was even
Speaker 1: reasonable or advisable. But I agree completely that when you're
Speaker 1: busy and your mind is running like mine is running
Speaker 1: off and on my next plan, my next scheme, what
Speaker 1: am I going to say on the podcast? You know,
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's happening, And then the shorthand for
Speaker 1: the apple, which is that I don't really have to
Speaker 1: see the particular apple because my brain sort of already
Speaker 1: has this placeholder for it. You know, that's a useful skill,
Speaker 1: But what it does do, at least for me, it
Speaker 1: sort of deadens everything around me, until everything becomes sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, like there's just no no novelty
Speaker 1: in it. And so I think the point that you
Speaker 1: were making, and that you know it's talking about from
Speaker 1: the bottom up, is to spend a lot more time
Speaker 1: on those sense signals and and allow those two occupy
Speaker 1: more of the mind versus the representation. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: all these shortcuts of the brain has they do help
Speaker 1: us with our efficiency. So if you're trying to work
Speaker 1: very hardly, very productive, uh, it actually might be more
Speaker 1: efficient to pursue these pasts. But it's not going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun. And I believe that mindfulness
Speaker 1: can help get you from a negative state to neutrality
Speaker 1: and then from neutrality to a joyful state. But it
Speaker 1: does require slowing down a bit, and you might not
Speaker 1: be quite as productive, but you might be if you
Speaker 1: can focus right. Well. I think this idea of I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we tend to take everything too far sometimes,
Speaker 1: or you know, any one thing taken too far can
Speaker 1: become problematic. I mean, I don't think that mindfulness is
Speaker 1: the right tool for every job all the time. It's
Speaker 1: not like my goal is to be mindful every second
Speaker 1: of every day in a particular way. It's like, depending
Speaker 1: on what I'm doing and what I'm engaging in, is
Speaker 1: you know, different methods of using the brain are more effective.
Speaker 1: But to your point, I think we had a guest
Speaker 1: on who said, you know, the brain is very optimized
Speaker 1: for survival, but not necessarily for happiness, correct, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I also say that you don't necessarily have to be
Speaker 1: present focused all the time. Actually, one of our meditations
Speaker 1: is I called a day dream meditation, where you actually
Speaker 1: sit down quietly and then you quite the mind first,
Speaker 1: and then you actually open yourself up to envisioning the future,
Speaker 1: so you're not actually focusing on what is going on
Speaker 1: at present, but what is going on, you hope, in
Speaker 1: the future. I think one of the insights of mindfulness though,
Speaker 1: is that if you're trying to do something in the present,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be distracted by these anxieties over
Speaker 1: the future. And uh so in that case, it's great
Speaker 1: to be able to focus on the present, but there
Speaker 1: are also times when you do need to focus on
Speaker 1: the future, and that is something that can be worthwhile. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think it's the ability to have your brain, your
Speaker 1: your mind do what it is you're trying to do
Speaker 1: in the most effective way is really the goal into
Speaker 1: your point, to get to more positive mood. States one
Speaker 1: of the things that you talk about and you say,
Speaker 1: one way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, what if I had never seen this before?
Speaker 1: Or what if I knew I would never see it again?
Speaker 1: All Right, I didn't write that. That was Rachel Carson,
Speaker 1: uh the the environmentalists in her book The Sense of Wonder,
Speaker 1: And as far as I know, Rachel Carson was not
Speaker 1: aware of these sort of mindfulness sort of practices. She
Speaker 1: was right, she wrote this more than fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: but she hit the nail on the head with that exactly.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: concepts of enlightenment and the concept of there being no self.
Speaker 1: And I think it's very interesting to hear people's perspective
Speaker 1: on that who are not representing a certain orthodoxy, like
Speaker 1: I find Sam Harris's takes on this to be very interesting,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to have you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about those two ideas and how you see them
Speaker 1: in terms of what you do well. I definitely feel
Speaker 1: that as a direction trying to be let's say, more selfless,
Speaker 1: more caring for others is the way to go. But
Speaker 1: you know, I read Sam Harris is Waking up in
Speaker 1: I find a little bit confusing. I have not achieved
Speaker 1: a state of no self. I do think there is evidence,
Speaker 1: you know, from Harris and from James Austin, here's a
Speaker 1: neurologist who has written about this, that one can get
Speaker 1: to sort of a state where this uh sense of
Speaker 1: self is less present. I am somewhat skeptical of that.
Speaker 1: That is something that should be a major goal for
Speaker 1: most people. I think there's not a great deal of
Speaker 1: evidence that, you know, the people who achieve such a state.
Speaker 1: I do think the state exists, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that the people who achieve such a state are let's say,
Speaker 1: are happier or actually necessarily even more compassionate. And one
Speaker 1: of the problems is you can't do a placebo control
Speaker 1: trial of that. Takes years and years to get to
Speaker 1: that state. So it's as impossible to do a study
Speaker 1: of that in any sort of controlled method as far
Speaker 1: as I can see. I know there are some scientists
Speaker 1: who are trying to look into this, but I think
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult. But I think as a
Speaker 1: goal to to try to raise one's compassion, so every
Speaker 1: moment you are bringing kindness, hopefully to other people, but
Speaker 1: also to your perception of what is going on. If
Speaker 1: you're just walking down the street and you're looking at
Speaker 1: a tree, a street house, and and and kind of
Speaker 1: see these stimuli with accepting friendly attitude, that is sort
Speaker 1: of getting toward, I think, an enlightened state. But I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit skeptical of sort of traditional Buddhist notions
Speaker 1: of enlightenment as the state when the cheese and that
Speaker 1: the person who is enlightened is cru er in any way. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: you certainly point to which is obvious in a lot
Speaker 1: of scenarios, as people who claim enlightenment do things that
Speaker 1: seem awfully unenlightened, sometimes at least to the people around them.
Speaker 1: Which doesn't mean the state doesn't exist, and doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's not valuable, because perhaps people are self reporting
Speaker 1: enlightenment that aren't. But I think it's an interesting idea
Speaker 1: that one of the things you said was that and
Speaker 1: I won't get this right, but you said something along
Speaker 1: the lines of that a working definition of enlightenment for
Speaker 1: you is being able to find happiness regardless of what
Speaker 1: your outside circumstances are. Yes, that's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get it, and I'm not saying that I'm at that place.
Speaker 1: And the other question I would add is I actually
Speaker 1: bring in the logic of the serenity prayer, which I've
Speaker 1: reconstituted as the surrender a new statements. It's easy enough
Speaker 1: to get rid of the supernatural language. And uh, in general,
Speaker 1: I think most of us, uh in the West are
Speaker 1: living um lives that are very advantageous compared to our
Speaker 1: grandparents or great grandparents, and we we can and should,
Speaker 1: I think, be grateful for this most of the time.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, there are sometimes crises as
Speaker 1: things going on in the world that are bad, and
Speaker 1: we shouldn't accept everything. So I'm not advocating accepting everything.
Speaker 1: There are times where we have to decide to have
Speaker 1: the courage to challenge things that are wrong, even if
Speaker 1: we need to suffer somewhat to do that. But overall,
Speaker 1: I think we can bring this state of of kindness
Speaker 1: and acceptance to what is really something where we have
Speaker 1: so much more than previous generations had, and uh, there's
Speaker 1: a great deal to enjoy. Will you walk us through
Speaker 1: your restatement of the serenity prayer. I just have to
Speaker 1: the words, I would like to have the courage to
Speaker 1: change the things that can be changed, the serenity to
Speaker 1: except the things that can't be changed, and the wisdom
Speaker 1: to know the difference. So I just say I would
Speaker 1: like as opposed to God, grant me simple as that.
Speaker 1: I like that. I think it's one of the wisest
Speaker 1: things that's ever been said, and sort of the you know,
Speaker 1: that wisdom to know the difference is sort of the
Speaker 1: holy Grail in certain respects. I think if you can
Speaker 1: figure that out, boy, life gets better and easier or
Speaker 1: harder to your point, right, Like I think my natural
Speaker 1: tendency is to accept anything I kind of have, you know,
Speaker 1: I can have the effort attitude, right, So for me,
Speaker 1: sometimes what I need is not the serenity to accept things,
Speaker 1: but the courage to change him is often the area
Speaker 1: that I need to look more at. Coming up in
Speaker 1: a twelve step recovery program, everybody always focuses on that
Speaker 1: acceptance piece, and I'm like, well, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what everybody needs to work on. Yeah, And actually
Speaker 1: I will say at the at the humanist community is
Speaker 1: quite a bit focused social justice and uh, and I
Speaker 1: do think that loving kindness or meta and social justice
Speaker 1: can go together. We really need to work more to
Speaker 1: try to bring those together because there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of I would say the traditional humanist community is organized
Speaker 1: to change the outer world, but not so much the
Speaker 1: inner world. What I'm doing is really mostly focused on
Speaker 1: the inner world, but hopefully can also help the outer world.
Speaker 1: I think that's a perennial challenge and it's one that
Speaker 1: I look at and I wrestle with, which is if
Speaker 1: you work on the inner world and you find that
Speaker 1: inner peace, how does that manifest in the outer world.
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in the question I ask a lot
Speaker 1: of guests is how do you balance because a lot
Speaker 1: of people that come on this show are are relatively ambitious,
Speaker 1: driven people who do a lot of good things in
Speaker 1: the world, And how do you balance that that's striving
Speaker 1: that ambition with accepting and being present and grateful in
Speaker 1: the moment you're in. And I think that's just an
Speaker 1: interesting conundrum. It is, and I don't think I necessarily
Speaker 1: have success all the time in doing that. Sometimes, particularly
Speaker 1: now that my book is is coming out, I have
Speaker 1: had this sort of desire to let people know about it,
Speaker 1: and I have noticed myself perhaps flipping in my mindfulness
Speaker 1: and kindness at times because I feel a little self
Speaker 1: induced pressure to try to get this word out. I
Speaker 1: think as more people know about this, it will be
Speaker 1: helpful to many people. But the pressure that I put
Speaker 1: myself under to try to um communicate this can sometimes
Speaker 1: actually be at a bit of a cost, and I've
Speaker 1: been trying to recoup my my serenity on certain occasions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with the dilemma. Part of it for me
Speaker 1: is just accepting like I think I want myself to
Speaker 1: be like I only have the best motive, Like I
Speaker 1: only do this to serve other people. And then I'm
Speaker 1: like no, But then there's a part of me that
Speaker 1: does things for success or for recognition, and I try
Speaker 1: and get comfortable with the fact that I think most
Speaker 1: of us have a mix of motivations happening within one thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, And I um, I do think that the
Speaker 1: book is something, hopefully where a certain amount of personal
Speaker 1: success would actually accompany. Others have been able to read
Speaker 1: it and benefit from it. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: two are necessarily inconsistent, but one has to sort of
Speaker 1: calibrate one's way as one goes through that. Absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: that you know the success If the book is successful,
Speaker 1: a lot more people read it and get a message
Speaker 1: that I think can be very important. You're absolutely right
Speaker 1: that that you know that that is a positive motivation,
Speaker 1: and it's it's watching when the other things start to
Speaker 1: creep in. Well, we are out of time, but I
Speaker 1: want to say thanks so much Rick for taking the
Speaker 1: time to come on the show. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the book a great deal. We'll have links
Speaker 1: in our show notes at one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: where people can get a link to the book and
Speaker 1: a link to your other online presence is I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed talking to you as well. Thank you, right, thanks
Speaker 1: so much, Take care bye bye. Yeah, you can learn
Speaker 1: more about Rick Heller and this podcast at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash Heller. That's h E L L
Speaker 1: E R. Thanks