The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1062 - Dan Harris & Jeff Warren

00:00:05.000 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dan Harris and Jeff Warren.

00:00:09.000 I don't know why I started off that way.

00:00:11.000 It just felt weird.

00:00:13.000 It's always weird to start.

00:00:14.000 Starting these things is always very odd.

00:00:17.000 Welcome, welcome Jeff.

00:00:18.000 Very nice to meet you.

00:00:19.000 Thank you, man.

00:00:19.000 And Dan, first tank experience.

00:00:21.000 We didn't talk too much about it.

00:00:23.000 No.

00:00:23.000 He just got out.

00:00:24.000 Yeah, you dragooned me into your tank.

00:00:27.000 I don't even know if that's a word.

00:00:29.000 Dragoon? 0.89

00:00:29.000 It is a word. 0.89

00:00:31.000 You know, we should tell people how you did it.

00:00:33.000 Okay.

00:00:34.000 You basically taunted me on text, which was awesome.

00:00:37.000 Well, it wasn't quite a taunt, but you were saying that you were scared of being in there.

00:00:42.000 I'm like, how can you be scared?

00:00:43.000 There's nothing to be scared of.

00:00:44.000 It's just water.

00:00:46.000 Yeah, but it's not just water because you're in this enclosed space and you can't see anything or hear anything.

00:00:53.000 All danger is in your mind, though.

00:00:55.000 Well, that is absolutely correct.

00:00:57.000 I just happen to have a mind that is really good at panicking.

00:01:00.000 I mean, I've demonstrated that time and again to myself and others.

00:01:04.000 So I was a little wary. 0.99

00:01:05.000 Then you called me a chicken, and I was like, well, fuck, now I have to do this thing. 0.99

00:01:09.000 So I did it, not without trepidation, but it was really interesting. 0.99

00:01:13.000 Really interesting.

00:01:14.000 I know you spend so much time exploring your consciousness and meditating and just being in your head that I felt like this is something that you really should be exposed to.

00:01:24.000 You're absolutely right, and I appreciate it.

00:01:25.000 I really do.

00:01:27.000 What I realized is I think...

00:01:29.000 I need to do more of it.

00:01:31.000 Yeah.

00:01:31.000 Because the brief discussion we had, I know we wanted to not fully explore it until we got on the pod.

00:01:37.000 The brief discussion we had afterwards, one of the things you said is that it's good to kind of explore your boundaries when it comes to fear.

00:01:45.000 This is something actually that my meditation teacher has said to me before.

00:01:48.000 And it made me realize, I think I need to get in there and start pushing it a little bit in this...

00:01:56.000 In the tank, because it will help me in lots of areas of my life, because when you don't test those boundaries, your life becomes smaller and smaller.

00:02:05.000 And that happens to people with panic.

00:02:07.000 Well, it happens just people in general, and I think it's one of the reasons why people fall into panic.

00:02:13.000 It's because they don't have enough experience with stressful situations to the point where they can just relax and just let it happen.

00:02:20.000 And that's one of the reasons why I think martial arts training is very good for people.

00:02:25.000 Not just for the self-defense aspect of it.

00:02:28.000 For the aspect of just dealing with stressful situations on a regular basis to the point where you're very comfortable with them and then you realize that the consequences of this is it's not really as bad as you think it is like Most people are terrified of physical confrontation But when you have physical confrontation on a regular basis,

00:02:47.000 especially through my favorite, which is jujitsu training, because there's no striking, so you don't get hit in the head.

00:02:53.000 You're not worried about brain damage or any of that stuff.

00:02:55.000 It's just basically grappling.

00:02:57.000 But that through the continual process of testing yourself and stress and regular life stresses sort of become diminished.

00:03:08.000 I think it's really important.

00:03:10.000 You know, I do some of this in my life.

00:03:11.000 I mean, live news presentation is stressful, and I do that a lot.

00:03:16.000 I've covered many war zones, which is very stressful.

00:03:22.000 But I think there are areas in my life where I've closed off.

00:03:25.000 Because of claustrophobia in particular, I need MRIs for certain...

00:03:30.000 I've jacked up both of my shoulders and my knee, and I haven't been able to deal with them because...

00:03:35.000 I just won't get in a scanner.

00:03:37.000 Jeff and I were down actually at Vanderbilt where they wanted to take a look at my brain in a scanner while I meditated.

00:03:42.000 I couldn't do it.

00:03:43.000 That was a great opportunity.

00:03:45.000 It's really expensive to get a neuroscientist to look at your brain while you meditate.

00:03:49.000 And I wasn't able to do it because I'm afraid.

00:03:53.000 And so I think...

00:03:54.000 But what are you afraid of?

00:03:55.000 It seems like there's no physical fear, right?

00:03:58.000 It's not like there's a dog in the room that's going to bite you, right?

00:04:01.000 So why not just force yourself to go through it?

00:04:03.000 Well, have you ever had a panic attack?

00:04:06.000 No.

00:04:24.000 And you either fight or flight.

00:04:27.000 In this case, it's flight, flee.

00:04:29.000 And you can't control your body in many ways.

00:04:35.000 And because I've had so many panic attacks, primarily the ones that...

00:04:42.000 People know about it.

00:04:43.000 The one in particular was on television on Good Morning America in 2004. When your brain learns how to do this, it gets really good at it.

00:04:51.000 And you can't hurl yourself into the...

00:04:54.000 At least I can't hurl myself into the lotus position and meditate it away.

00:05:00.000 It is overwhelming.

00:05:02.000 And so I can't tell myself a story about, hey, I'm not in physical danger because the brain is just...

00:05:10.000 What you're saying is very interesting about getting really good at it.

00:05:13.000 There's a term in archery called target panic.

00:05:16.000 And it happens to people.

00:05:17.000 It happens to target archers.

00:05:19.000 It happens to bow hunters.

00:05:20.000 And there's a thing that happens where you literally can't keep the pin on the target.

00:05:26.000 Your brain won't let you.

00:05:29.000 And no one understands.

00:05:30.000 Like, the people that are having it, while it's happening, they don't understand it.

00:05:34.000 Like, I can't believe I can't do this.

00:05:36.000 But your brain gets so...

00:05:40.000 Used to freaking out in this moment that literally you no longer have control and you just you try to Make the shot go off as quick as you can you'll miss by feet and you just you can't understand it like I practice every day like how is this happening, but if there's this Weird,

00:05:56.000 overwhelming sensation of adrenaline and fear and nerves and the chaos of the moment.

00:06:02.000 And you just slam the trigger and the arrow goes flying nowhere near the target.

00:06:06.000 And it's really, really common to the point where people seek psychologists and sports trainers and there's all these different methods that they use to try to keep in a controlled loop system of thought process to try to handle this.

00:06:19.000 It's probably like you said, athletic trainers.

00:06:22.000 Probably the fighting it and the getting in your head about it is probably the same as when you get in a slump in baseball.

00:06:29.000 You're just locked up in yourself and it takes a long time to get over it.

00:06:34.000 In the tank, I was thinking a lot about how that has been just a huge...

00:06:38.000 Recurring theme in my life where the ego steps in, the thinking mind, the mind that won't surrender to what is actually happening right now comes in, I get locked up and can't do what I want to do.

00:06:53.000 One of the things Jeff and I have talked a lot about in our My time together is dancing.

00:06:58.000 And I can't do it.

00:07:00.000 I mean, can't do it isn't the right way to say it.

00:07:02.000 But I've struggled for a long time with dropping my self-consciousness enough so that I can dance in a way that, you know, I have a three-year-old around the house and we like to dance.

00:07:10.000 And even around him, I get a little in my own head about it.

00:07:14.000 And I think all these things are related.

00:07:17.000 Yeah, they have to be.

00:07:19.000 It completely makes sense.

00:07:20.000 But it doesn't make sense to me that you can't get your brain examined when you spend so much time examining your brain.

00:07:27.000 Yeah, so I think what's different is this is an interesting time to talk about, like, the difference between the brain and the mind.

00:07:33.000 Right.

00:07:34.000 So I'm looking at my mind, and, you know, the idea of, first of all, Just because I've spent the last nine years looking closely at my mind doesn't mean that I've conquered all of my neuroses.

00:07:51.000 And I don't know that that's on offer.

00:07:53.000 I think it's a gradual process.

00:07:55.000 You pointed to something important about testing those limits, and I think meditation can be really helpful in testing those limits.

00:08:01.000 And I was meditating most of the time that I was in the tank.

00:08:05.000 And that allowed me, bringing that kind of focused attention to what was happening, allowed me not to get carried away with the waves of fear that came and I was able to let them pass without hopping out and embarrassing myself.

00:08:18.000 But I don't know that I can magically...

00:08:23.000 I think it's going to be a process before I can get in an MRI, is what I'm trying to say in a long way.

00:08:28.000 Well, if you have damaged shoulders, man, you kind of have to.

00:08:31.000 I do.

00:08:32.000 I do.

00:08:33.000 But you don't even know what's wrong with them?

00:08:35.000 I think it's bursitis, but I need to get a diagnosis before I can figure out whether I got to get surgery or cortisone shot or whatever it is.

00:08:42.000 Do you have full range of motion?

00:08:43.000 Can you put your arms over your head?

00:08:44.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:08:45.000 You should try hanging. 0.71

00:08:47.000 Have you ever looked into hanging? 0.99

00:08:48.000 Is this something else crazy you're trying to get me into? 0.90

00:08:50.000 No, just hanging from your shoulders. 0.79

00:08:51.000 This is a dangerous dude to hang out with.

00:08:52.000 Grabbing onto a bar and hanging your weight.

00:08:55.000 Yes.

00:08:55.000 It's really important for the shoulder joint.

00:08:58.000 And it's something that very few people do on a regular basis.

00:09:01.000 I don't do it on a regular basis.

00:09:03.000 Yeah, most people don't.

00:09:04.000 And even people that work out don't.

00:09:06.000 And you're constantly compressing your shoulder.

00:09:08.000 Yes.

00:09:08.000 Compressing it with poor posture, compressing it with stress, exercise, and your shoulder needs to expand and it also needs this sensation of hanging your body weight from your hands.

00:09:23.000 It's like tremendous for your shoulder.

00:09:25.000 Yeah.

00:09:25.000 No, I like that.

00:09:26.000 And there's some doctors, there's one doctor in particular that explored this, see if you can find that guy's name, who stopped doing most shoulder surgeries and started putting people on hanging therapy, where he just tells them, you know, at the beginning, just have a bar that's not quite above your head so that you could just sort of relax your knees and,

00:09:46.000 you know, if you can't, Carry all of your weight in your hands.

00:09:49.000 Just carry a good percentage of your weight in your hands and try to relax your shoulders.

00:09:53.000 And it releases impingements.

00:09:55.000 It stretches that joint out.

00:09:57.000 The idea is that we came from tree-swinging primates.

00:10:00.000 And then as tree-swinging primates, we're constantly doing that.

00:10:04.000 And that's what the shoulder joint is meant to do.

00:10:06.000 It's meant to articulate in that way.

00:10:07.000 We grab something, swing, and then not having this full range of motion and not using it on a regular basis.

00:10:14.000 Here's this guy's book.

00:10:17.000 Dr. John Kirsch, John M Kirsch, and he came up with this many years ago when he realized that one of the things that was messing people up was just, they just, their joints weren't being put through the full range of motion and that by hanging you could release a tremendous amount of the pain and discomfort that a lot of people are facing.

00:10:40.000 That makes a ton of sense.

00:10:42.000 It seems to me that you guys are actually talking about the same thing.

00:10:45.000 When you're talking about the mind, and you're talking about the body, and talking about impingements, and you're talking about where your mind is limited, I think it's the same exact dynamic, actually, of what's going on.

00:10:56.000 How would you define what an impingement is in the body?

00:11:00.000 A blockade, lack of range of motion, poor exercise habits, there's a variety of factors, ignoring potential injuries, and then restricting your motion to the point where everything sort of tightens up.

00:11:17.000 Muscle tissue in particular, joint tissue, like around the shoulders and any time where you're dealing with range of motion issues, you have to stretch.

00:11:27.000 And most people very rarely stretch their shoulders.

00:11:31.000 It's just something that we don't do.

00:11:32.000 And also most people very rarely strengthen their shoulders.

00:11:36.000 And I think it's a very complex joint.

00:11:39.000 When you look at the way your shoulders articulate, there's not anything in your body that can do these sort of things in the range of motion that your shoulders exhibit while carrying weight.

00:11:49.000 So you think about all the different things, carrying your kid, picking up a briefcase, you're doing a lot of weird motions.

00:11:54.000 With your shoulders, and occasionally you develop little tears.

00:11:57.000 Those tears, they start out superficial.

00:11:59.000 They get larger.

00:12:00.000 You injure them more.

00:12:01.000 You're playing.

00:12:02.000 You don't warm up.

00:12:03.000 Something pops.

00:12:04.000 You ignore it.

00:12:05.000 It hurts you for years.

00:12:06.000 There's a lot of things that we do to our bodies.

00:12:09.000 It just compiles, and you never handle it.

00:12:13.000 You never deal with it.

00:12:14.000 You don't get that MRI. You don't get therapy, and it just gets worse and worse to the point where you see a lot of people get shoulder replacements.

00:12:21.000 So the exact same thing is true.

00:12:23.000 Everything you just said is true for the mind.

00:12:25.000 It's exactly the same.

00:12:26.000 It's conditioning.

00:12:27.000 It's repeating the same pattern over and over, having some kind of involuntary response that gets a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper each time.

00:12:36.000 And it's like your mind is a mental body.

00:12:39.000 And it has habits, and it develops bad habits, and it develops limited range of motions, what it can do.

00:12:46.000 And so we end up in this really narrow situation, inevitably, because we end up with a particular set of conditioning, and it starts to limit us.

00:12:53.000 So you use practices, just like you use physical practices to open up your range of motion, to work through impingements, to, you know, have more flexibility.

00:13:02.000 You do the same for, you know, with meditation or with other kind of mental practices.

00:13:07.000 I think it's literally the same thing and that there's just this sort of isometric nature between the mind and body.

00:13:13.000 It's the same kind of stuff.

00:13:15.000 It completely makes sense.

00:13:16.000 Yeah.

00:13:16.000 And what we were talking about before the podcast when we were in the hallway about just dealing with stressful situations and the tank, like, if there's a weird freakout that happens, like, how do you handle it?

00:13:29.000 Like, what do you do?

00:13:30.000 And I was saying that the more stressful situations that I experience, the more I understand what they are and the more I can relax.

00:13:38.000 But it's also, like...

00:13:40.000 It's a matter of constantly being exposed to these stressful situations where there's not a long break in between doing stand-up or a long break in between martial arts training to the point where anxiety can build up.

00:13:55.000 And then once you get into it, it's an unusual situation instead of a usual one.

00:14:00.000 That's probably why I probably need to get in the tank reasonably soon.

00:14:04.000 This is your show, but if you don't mind, would you say more about that?

00:14:10.000 Because you're able to get in the tank not only regularly, but you'll dose yourself with some stuff before you get in the tank.

00:14:17.000 Well, the thing about...

00:14:22.000 Stressful situations is you're always trying to, once you get comfortable, you're always trying to push them and make them more stressful.

00:14:28.000 And the most stressful way to experience the tank is either edibles or mushrooms.

00:14:34.000 Those are the two for me.

00:14:36.000 Mushrooms?

00:14:36.000 Yeah.

00:14:37.000 Wow.

00:14:37.000 Yeah.

00:14:38.000 Well, it's just, it's basically mushrooms without any of the distractions of your body.

00:14:44.000 Right, so it's distilled.

00:14:46.000 It's a pure culture.

00:14:49.000 It's pure culture mushrooms.

00:14:51.000 But edibles can be just as potent in there.

00:14:55.000 Edible marijuana is...

00:14:57.000 Do you know the difference?

00:14:58.000 Most people aren't aware that it's a completely different psychoactive substance when you eat it because it's processed by your liver and your body produces something called 11-hydroxy metabolite that's four to five times more psychoactive than THC. And it's not psychoactive in the smoking version.

00:15:16.000 It's very different.

00:15:17.000 That's why a lot of people, when they eat brownies... 1.00

00:15:19.000 Yeah, they eat so strong.

00:15:21.000 I'm sure you...

00:15:22.000 There's a famous 9-11 case where there's an audio recording of these cops that took some pot from some kids and made pot brownies of it and then ate it and then called the police and called 911 on themselves because they thought they were dying.

00:15:38.000 But it is one of the greatest audio recordings of all time.

00:15:41.000 The guy...

00:15:42.000 He's a cop!

00:15:43.000 And he's like, I think I'm dying.

00:15:45.000 I think time is moving really slow.

00:15:46.000 Please send help.

00:15:48.000 Oh my god, that's awesome.

00:15:49.000 So what do you do in those moments?

00:15:51.000 Like, do you have...

00:15:52.000 I'm just interested because you've had, from what I can tell, quite a bit of experience with psychedelics and also isolation tanks.

00:15:59.000 What's the right term for it?

00:16:00.000 Yeah.

00:16:01.000 Sensory deprivation tanks.

00:16:02.000 Sensory deprivation tanks.

00:16:03.000 So what do you do when the little imp in your head starts telling you, like, the world's ending or time is passing slow?

00:16:10.000 Just let it go.

00:16:12.000 You have to just relax.

00:16:13.000 I mean, I've been there a hundred times more, you know, many more than a hundred times, really.

00:16:17.000 But where you're really nervous and really scared.

00:16:19.000 But what compounds it is trying to control it.

00:16:23.000 What compounds it is trying to wrestle the moment away from this experience and just taking control of it and try to sober yourself up. 1.00

00:16:31.000 No, fuck this. 0.99

00:16:32.000 I'm gonna, you know, I gotta get... 1.00

00:16:34.000 Getting control of the situation, and that freak out is really what compounds it.

00:16:38.000 That's where the, that's the root of all, you know, air quotes, bad trips come from, is this desire to control.

00:16:46.000 Failure to surrender.

00:16:46.000 Yeah, you gotta surrender.

00:16:47.000 You gotta relax.

00:16:49.000 It's resistance.

00:16:50.000 Yeah, nothing's gonna happen to you.

00:16:52.000 You're gonna be fine.

00:16:53.000 It's gonna feel really crazy, and you're gonna...

00:16:56.000 It brings up memories from years ago, from weird conversations you might have had where you acted poorly, or weird choices that you might have made decades ago, or things that crossed your mind a couple of days ago that you're embarrassed about.

00:17:12.000 There's all these different things that will come out that will just...

00:17:15.000 Your brain, your mind, your consciousness wants to explore these because it feels that you neglected them or that you put them on the back burner or that you didn't give them enough attention.

00:17:26.000 You didn't give them the attention that they deserve, so they're festering and bouncing around the inside of your mind.

00:17:32.000 And I find that edibles in particular, it's a very self-exploratory experience.

00:17:38.000 And your brain desperately wants to point out all these areas that it feels that you might have neglected.

00:17:45.000 And that's terrifying for people.

00:17:47.000 And you just start really freaking out, not to mention the concepts of mortality.

00:17:52.000 You start thinking about your children's life and your life, and you get freaked out in there.

00:17:58.000 Why would you want to do that?

00:17:59.000 Because I think exploring those things makes regular life more...

00:18:06.000 It makes it more palatable.

00:18:08.000 It makes it more relaxed.

00:18:10.000 It gives me a perspective.

00:18:12.000 It's almost like having a near-death experience on a regular basis.

00:18:16.000 Well, you get out of a near-death experience and one of the things that people say is even if it's a near-death experience like from a severe illness or an injury, you have a perspective enhancement from that and you come out of it.

00:18:29.000 Feeling like, well, I kind of have a new version of life now.

00:18:34.000 I understand life now because I understand the full spectrum.

00:18:37.000 Before I was operating in this very comfortable spectrum of everything being safe.

00:18:40.000 And now I realize, like, no, it doesn't have to be safe.

00:18:43.000 There can be terrible things where everything can go wrong.

00:18:46.000 So appreciate this with much more zeal, like much more lust for life.

00:18:51.000 Sounds like what we do in meditation.

00:18:53.000 Oh my god, dude.

00:18:54.000 I was just thinking it sounds like a meditation retreat.

00:18:56.000 I think they're all connected.

00:18:57.000 Yeah, they are.

00:18:58.000 No question.

00:18:59.000 Yeah.

00:18:59.000 You don't need to ingest anything for all that stuff to start coming up.

00:19:03.000 Sure.

00:19:04.000 In fact, there's a kind of classic progression in a retreat or even in a sit, you could say there's sort of these terrains you move through.

00:19:12.000 Where first you're just trying to get going, and then you're kind of having all these breakthroughs and insights, and then you can get into this really challenging stage where it's like you can't meditate, all your dark stuff is coming up.

00:19:22.000 Sometimes I think of it as like you're exfoliating the brain. 0.99

00:19:26.000 You know, you just exfoliate, exfoliate, and all of a sudden you hit an air pocket of some old school shit, like your old shame and your rage and your childish petulance and everything. 0.99

00:19:36.000 And it all comes bubbling up and you're inside this atmosphere. 0.99

00:19:39.000 And then from inside that atmosphere, you're seeing everything through that filter.

00:19:43.000 You're now seeing how everything sucks and your life's a catastrophe or whatever.

00:19:47.000 And just like you were saying about the body and about the psychedelics and about the tank, you've got to learn to be okay with your own uncomfortableness.

00:19:57.000 You've got to learn to be okay to sit inside this discomfort and say, actually to welcome it.

00:20:01.000 To say, well, this is just part of what's going on with me right now.

00:20:04.000 And if you can do that without resistance, like you were saying, without fighting with it, then it can actually work its way out.

00:20:10.000 And then you can get into this really beautiful stage of a practice where it's the equanimity stage, they call it, where it's just...

00:20:18.000 You're really open and available to things.

00:20:20.000 You're super present.

00:20:21.000 It's not exotic.

00:20:22.000 You're not in some peak experience where you're melting in oneness and having energy shooting up your spine.

00:20:29.000 But neither are you in one of these low experiences.

00:20:33.000 It's like the beautiful ordinary.

00:20:35.000 And you go around and around in those cycles.

00:20:38.000 And from actually that beautiful ordinary place that you can have these breakthroughs.

00:20:43.000 That's the kind of classic place where people have these Shifts, you know, they have like no self-experience. 0.98

00:20:49.000 It's pretty interesting.

00:20:50.000 The phenomenology of it is really cool.

00:20:52.000 People describe very specific kinds of things happening that drop them into this next level or next progression of insight, you could say.

00:21:00.000 I don't want to overstate my meditative capacities, but I had, I would say, probably like a JV version of what you're describing.

00:21:10.000 Last month, just a few weeks ago, I was on a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

00:21:14.000 I could see, as you describe this progression, I could see in hindsight that that was what I went through.

00:21:21.000 As your mind starts to settle and you get more concentrated, there are fireworks.

00:21:27.000 You get a lot of sensations in your body that feel really good.

00:21:31.000 You're seeing things behind your eyes.

00:21:35.000 The mind releases a lot of dopamine and serotonin in response to the reduced chatter that can happen when you're more focused on what's happening right now as opposed to being caught up in the...

00:21:48.000 In, you know, our egoic chatter.

00:21:52.000 And I, at one point, though, I hit a stage that's sometimes referred to as life review, where I just, all the things I'm most ashamed of just started coming up.

00:22:04.000 I couldn't avoid them.

00:22:06.000 I couldn't sleep.

00:22:06.000 And it was all just right there.

00:22:08.000 I was just thinking about them.

00:22:09.000 And then I started questioning the whole practice and what am I doing here?

00:22:14.000 Is this a waste of time?

00:22:15.000 And I had a conversation with my teacher Who is a brilliant individual.

00:22:20.000 I mean, you could argue, some have argued, and I would agree, that one of the greatest living meditation teachers, his name is Joseph Goldstein, and he doesn't walk around in robes or anything like that.

00:22:32.000 He's a Jewish guy from the Catskills, and he's in his 70s.

00:22:36.000 I was staying in a cabin, and he would pop in and see me in this cabin every once in a while, because it was right near his house.

00:22:43.000 One day, I was kind of complaining a lot about The futility of my practice.

00:22:50.000 And he said, surrender.

00:22:52.000 He said, you gotta surrender.

00:22:54.000 You gotta just stop, you know, just stop getting in your head about are you doing it right and all that stuff.

00:23:01.000 Just let the practice do its thing.

00:23:03.000 As Jeff sometimes talks about it, it's like let time and nature do its work.

00:23:07.000 Just trust that the practice is, we've been doing this for millennia, human beings.

00:23:12.000 There's a reason for that.

00:23:13.000 Just do the practice.

00:23:14.000 Stop worrying about it.

00:23:15.000 And the next sit I had, It was this kind of equanimity thing that you're talking about where I could see it was two hours long.

00:23:26.000 I could see everything coming up, all of my urges, desires, thoughts, physical sensations, things I was hearing, things I was seeing.

00:23:34.000 I was very focused at this point.

00:23:36.000 It's all just coming at me and I'm not reaching for it and I'm not pushing it away.

00:23:41.000 The unpleasant stuff, I'm not trying to push it away.

00:23:43.000 I'm not trying to grasp onto the pleasant and it's just...

00:23:48.000 And it's like this incredible video game, right?

00:23:52.000 Where you can't, I sometimes describe meditation as like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward.

00:24:01.000 It's the anti-video game.

00:24:01.000 And once you stop wanting, once you just surrender into this thing where you're just non-judgmentally observing whatever comes up in your mind, whether it's fear, whether it's planning lunch, whatever it is, pew, pew.

00:24:15.000 You just start to move forward.

00:24:17.000 And then the ego comes in and tells you, you are the best meditator ever, dude.

00:24:22.000 And then you fall for that for a minute, but then you stop falling for that.

00:24:26.000 Anyway, at the end of it, I looked down at my watch and two hours had passed.

00:24:30.000 But then I was fully in this zone of like, oh, this is the end of my next book.

00:24:35.000 I'm enlightened.

00:24:36.000 This is the best thing ever.

00:24:38.000 And I then, a couple of hours later, started to realize that I had been telling myself a story about how amazing I was and how they should put a plaque up in that room.

00:24:47.000 This is where the best meditation sit ever happened and the next meditation I went to, the next time I tried to meditate, it was as if I had never meditated before.

00:24:57.000 I didn't know what I was doing anymore and it all collapsed.

00:25:03.000 Wow.

00:25:03.000 There's so much there.

00:25:06.000 There's an experience that you have in the tank where you try to let go, and you let go and relax, and then you realize, no, you just...

00:25:13.000 There's one layer of relaxation...

00:25:18.000 Totally.

00:25:18.000 But they're stacked on top of each other.

00:25:20.000 There's infinite layers.

00:25:21.000 And as you get deeper and deeper into these layers of relaxation, you hit another layer, and you go, okay, now this is relaxing, and then you, nope, nope, there's way more than this.

00:25:31.000 There's way more to this.

00:25:32.000 And the more you think about the fact that, oh, now I'm on a new level of relaxation, well, now you're not.

00:25:38.000 Now you're probably two or three levels above where you were before you addressed it.

00:25:43.000 That's the exfoliation you were talking about.

00:25:45.000 It's almost like the layers of the onion, and you just have to peel those layers.

00:25:49.000 Dude, you're blowing my mind. 0.99

00:25:50.000 This is all the shit that I always talk about. 0.99

00:25:51.000 It's exactly, you're describing exactly, it's the layers of the onion. 0.99

00:25:55.000 It's like you're holding this fist, and you don't even realize you're holding this fist.

00:25:59.000 You're walking around going, yeah, everything's fine, but you're holding this fist.

00:26:02.000 And then you realize you're holding on so tight, and then first you don't even know how to open the fist.

00:26:06.000 It's been closed the whole time.

00:26:08.000 At some point, the way you open it is not trying to open it.

00:26:12.000 You have to just be so okay with the fact that you've got this tight fist here that eventually it just opens of itself.

00:26:17.000 And then you think you're free.

00:26:18.000 And I describe it as like walking the onion.

00:26:21.000 It's like you're walking on top of the onion.

00:26:23.000 Imagine the planet is an onion.

00:26:24.000 You're walking and you're turning the onion as you walk and you've got the huge open air all around you.

00:26:28.000 You've got the universe.

00:26:29.000 You feel like you're free.

00:26:30.000 But very slowly, you're sinking into the onion, this layer of...

00:26:33.000 of tension is kind of appearing or coagulation that starts to kind of coagulate in your experience and eventually you realize that there's this layer of tension here and you're not free, you're inside this thing and then you have to figure out how to exfoliate that or let that go and it just keeps going on because it's Turtles all the way down.

00:26:50.000 It's like it's onion layer after onion layer.

00:26:53.000 And every time you get into a new place of freedom, the fact and the act of living is creating more coagulation.

00:26:59.000 It's creating more just natural frictions and things are coming up.

00:27:03.000 So it's not just that you're going through.

00:27:04.000 So the progress of insight, the progress of what they call purification in Buddhism is a process of kind of working through your conditioning.

00:27:13.000 But also simultaneously learning to work through the new conditioning that's accreting by virtue of just being a human being.

00:27:20.000 And that's the game.

00:27:22.000 And that's why a lot of people say there is no end to it.

00:27:24.000 You don't get to some final liberation because just the act of living is creating its own blind spots.

00:27:30.000 So you've got different people in different camps who argue different things about what real freedom looks like.

00:27:35.000 But that to me seems the most realistic.

00:27:38.000 At least it's the one that...

00:27:40.000 That fits with my experience and it describes exactly how you describe it.

00:27:43.000 The two really line up.

00:27:45.000 I think most of us are operating on momentum and I think you learn things as a child and those become whatever your personality is, whatever thought process you sort of have carved into your mind,

00:28:03.000 like the grooves and patterns that you normally find yourself.

00:28:06.000 Thinking in and I equated to a lot to martial arts training like I I used to teach martial arts for a living one of the things that I found incredibly difficult Was to reteach people it was way easier to teach a person with no training than it was to reteach someone with poor training so when someone has poor training They have these paths carved in their movements and their thought process,

00:28:30.000 and when they're in a situation, they fall back on those patterns.

00:28:33.000 And it's extremely difficult to get people out of that and learn to do things correctly.

00:28:38.000 But if you can teach them how to do things correctly from the beginning, then they naturally, like, this is the stressful situation.

00:28:45.000 Here comes the problem.

00:28:46.000 Here's the issue.

00:28:48.000 What's the technique?

00:28:49.000 Now you know it.

00:28:49.000 And it's locked into your brain.

00:28:51.000 You know the right pathway.

00:28:53.000 Whether it's like, don't go to the technique you've been using all your life, now use a new technique and remember to manage that situation under pressure.

00:29:01.000 I think that's how most of us are handling our lives.

00:29:05.000 We're handling our lives with poor techniques and poor management skills and these Yeah.

00:29:32.000 Because you know where they're going, and so you slide right into them.

00:29:36.000 And then as an adult, you start trying to remap your consciousness and remap those patterns.

00:29:41.000 And in doing that, it's very difficult to sort of rethink how you think.

00:29:47.000 I mean, I think what you're pointing to here is close to what has become for me the animating insight of my whole side hustle as a meditation proponent, which is that the mind is trainable.

00:30:03.000 Now, you describe, I think, very accurately the ruts in which many of us find ourselves or don't even know we're in.

00:30:11.000 But the good news is that there are ways to retrain the mind.

00:30:16.000 And I didn't know that until my late 30s when I started reading books about Buddhism.

00:30:21.000 And all the things we want the most.

00:30:25.000 Calm, patience, compassion, generosity, happiness, whatever that means.

00:30:30.000 These aren't factory settings, non-negotiable factory settings.

00:30:35.000 These are skills that can be trained that you can take responsibility for just the way you take responsibility for your body in the gym.

00:30:41.000 And there are lots of ways to train them.

00:30:43.000 Jeff and I obviously talk a lot about meditation, but...

00:30:47.000 You've talked about other ways to do it as well, from martial arts to, and there's now been a lot of, there's a growing body of research about psychedelics as well.

00:30:56.000 It was obvious to me from being in the isolation, from the sensory deprivation tank, that that is a training too.

00:31:02.000 There are lots of ways to get at it, but the fundamental good news is you aren't stuck with the patterns that are making you miserable.

00:31:09.000 Yeah, you're definitely not stuck.

00:31:11.000 And I think that all these things are related.

00:31:14.000 And I think that even running, even exercise, yoga, I think in particular, all these things that are difficult, when you do these difficult things, you're stressing your mind, or I should say, don't even stressing your mind, exercising your mind,

00:31:30.000 and exercising your body's ability to manage intense situations.

00:31:35.000 Like, Yoga poses are very intense, especially hot yoga.

00:31:38.000 It's hard.

00:31:39.000 It's very difficult.

00:31:40.000 It's very testing.

00:31:40.000 And in doing so, you lessen the stress of regular life.

00:31:46.000 Exactly.

00:31:47.000 You're tied up in a reef knot. 0.76

00:31:49.000 And if you can be equanimous with this ridiculous pose where you're shaking with exertion, then how much more equanimous can you be?

00:31:57.000 How much more present and open can you be in your life?

00:31:59.000 It's the same thing.

00:32:00.000 Do you think most people know how to translate what they're learning in something like...

00:32:04.000 Because for me, what broke through about meditation was it was so obvious how to translate what I was learning with my eyes closed to my life, whereas all the other things, you know, I had been running since I was in my teens, and while it's absolutely good at staving off depression,

00:32:22.000 which I've dealt with for a long time, and making me feel just generally fit, I don't know that I was explicitly taking the lessons of running or any of the other things that many people do that they sometimes refer to as their quote-unquote meditation and applying it to my life the way meditation was,

00:32:39.000 again, so obvious.

00:32:41.000 It seemed like the obvious aspects of meditation are conscious, like you're looking for these solutions, whereas with running, you might be getting them without being conscious of them or at least getting some of the benefits of it without being conscious.

00:32:53.000 But those benefits would certainly be enhanced with a different perspective going into the running, like going into the running with the thought process of testing your consciousness to endure this very difficult thing in front of you like hill running in particular.

00:33:08.000 There's something about Anything that's like very uniquely physically stressful like that, which requires the mind to stay the course.

00:33:16.000 And in doing so, especially in the other end, once you come out of it, there's this great feeling of euphoria and peace.

00:33:22.000 And it's not just a physical release of energy, but it's also an understanding that the brain has exercised the demons that are responsible for the anxiety while you're overcoming this stressful.

00:33:33.000 And the limits you told yourself were there.

00:33:35.000 Yeah.

00:33:35.000 It's funny, you know, my wife and I have been doing a lot of soul cycle, which I know.

00:33:40.000 My wife does it too. 0.99

00:33:41.000 Okay, so...

00:33:42.000 She was trying to talk me into it.

00:33:43.000 You don't do it with her, but I do. 0.99

00:33:44.000 I have other shit to do. 0.99

00:33:45.000 Because I'm a better husband than Joe Rogan. 0.98

00:33:49.000 So, although she's out in the green room right now raging against me because she's angry that I'm not...

00:33:55.000 At SoulCycle right now?

00:33:56.000 No, that I haven't said what I'm about to say, which is that I'm the one who got her into it.

00:34:00.000 So, in her defense.

00:34:02.000 So, but they are often giving these...

00:34:05.000 The teachers are often giving these really...

00:34:08.000 Sort of affirmations from the front of the room.

00:34:12.000 And my traditional approach to those is to completely ignore them as incredibly and irretrievably annoying.

00:34:20.000 And however, what they're saying is what you're saying.

00:34:24.000 What they're saying is pedal through your resistance.

00:34:27.000 You're telling yourself a story that you can't turn the knob up to the right right now, the resistance knob up to the right right now.

00:34:33.000 And stay on the beat and sprint and do all the...

00:34:36.000 You're telling yourself a story you can't do it, but you actually can do it.

00:34:39.000 Try it.

00:34:40.000 Try it.

00:34:40.000 Get over the limiting stories you're telling yourself.

00:34:43.000 And in fact, yesterday morning when we did SoulCycle, the guy at the end said something I normally would have ignored, which was, next time somebody proposes something to you that you tell yourself you don't want to do, do it.

00:34:56.000 Hence, the sensory deprivation tank.

00:34:59.000 Direct link to what he said to my being willing to do it.

00:35:04.000 So there's some there there. 0.99

00:35:05.000 Yeah, there's something about things like SoulCycle, like even if they're right, even if the motivational speech rings true, you want to, like, fuck this. 0.99

00:35:14.000 You want to... 1.00

00:35:15.000 Absolutely.

00:35:15.000 It's the problem with spiritual teachers, right?

00:35:18.000 It's a problem with somebody who's, or anybody who walks around that has the answer.

00:35:22.000 And often the answer can be this sort of Pollyanna-ish Disney Channel thing that maybe, it probably is true in some way, but it's just the delivery of that kind of certainty that's so annoying.

00:35:36.000 Yeah, I always say that my, you know, there are millions of meditation books. 0.98

00:35:41.000 The only thing new about the books that I write is that I add the word fuck a lot. 0.94

00:35:47.000 And that is just a new way to talk about this stuff. 0.96

00:35:51.000 And because our tendency, or at least guys like us, I think, or people like us, men and women like us, is to...

00:35:57.000 Some people, when you hear...

00:36:01.000 When you hear this kind of affirmation uttered, you reflexively reject it, which is, again, normal.

00:36:07.000 But if you can just say it to people in fresh language, the reason why these things are cliched is because they're true.

00:36:14.000 And they become cliched through sort of mindless repetition.

00:36:17.000 But if you can find new ways to articulate them, they can land.

00:36:20.000 I think also, whether it's your book on meditation or anybody's just life experiences that they're writing down, we gather information from other people's life experiences in a very unique way.

00:36:34.000 And it's one of the reasons why people really enjoy autobiographies.

00:36:37.000 It's one of the reasons why people really enjoy Truly reflective, introspective thinking.

00:36:45.000 Because we can pick out little gems in ourselves.

00:36:49.000 So even though you might be talking in your meditation book about things that other people have talked about in meditation books, you're talking about it from your unique personal experience.

00:36:58.000 And when someone reads that, or hears you say it, You get something intangible out of that.

00:37:04.000 Well, we talk a lot about...

00:37:06.000 So my favorite comedian of all time, other than Joe Rogan, is Dave Chappelle.

00:37:11.000 And you came on my radar screen because you were on his show, the Chappelle show back in the end, the Fear Factor bit he did years and years ago, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

00:37:23.000 And Chappelle, in one of the seasons, Jeff and I were talking about this last night, as a matter of fact, talked about how he was doing one of these outtake episodes.

00:37:32.000 I can't remember which season it was in because I only did two and a half.

00:37:36.000 He was doing an outtake episode, and at the beginning he did a riff about how back in the day African-American communities never got the good part of the pig to eat.

00:37:44.000 The white people got the good parts of the pig. 0.98

00:37:46.000 So the African-Americans had to figure out how to make good food out of snout. 1.00

00:37:52.000 And that's, he said, what this episode is going to be.

00:37:55.000 We're going to take the snout and we're going to make good stuff out of it.

00:37:58.000 And my approach to writing books about meditation is the snout is the good stuff. 0.99

00:38:02.000 The embarrassing shit that happens to you when you're meditating is the good stuff. 0.98

00:38:06.000 It is what will allow people to see what the practice does for you. 0.99

00:38:10.000 So I take the worst, most embarrassing stuff that happens and talk about it because that gives you a front row seat at what training the mind actually looks like. 1.00

00:38:19.000 And if you can't have a sense of humor about how crazy you are, You are truly fucked. 1.00

00:38:24.000 I agree. 1.00

00:38:25.000 I think that those uncomfortable moments are so important for other people to hear about, too.

00:38:31.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:38:32.000 We need to know we're not alone in all our madness.

00:38:36.000 What was it like on the set when you were working with Dave Chappelle?

00:38:38.000 It was great.

00:38:39.000 Well, I've known Dave for a long time.

00:38:40.000 I was actually on the very first episode by chance.

00:38:44.000 I was walking through New York and I saw Dave.

00:38:47.000 And this was before the show had even been...

00:38:50.000 I didn't even know it existed.

00:38:51.000 But I ran into Bobcat Goldwaite, who's there.

00:38:54.000 And I'm like, what's up, man?

00:38:55.000 What are you guys doing?

00:38:55.000 He's like...

00:38:56.000 He goes, oh, hey, Joe.

00:38:57.000 We're doing a TV sketch, man.

00:38:59.000 You want to be in on it?

00:39:00.000 And I go, I only have like 20 minutes on my way to a meeting.

00:39:03.000 He goes, here.

00:39:04.000 He goes, we're handing out...

00:39:05.000 Ribbons for New York boobs and he had a box so it's me and him walking through Manhattan and he's got this crazy fake mustache on he's like you've got the best New York boobs and he would give someone like a ribbon for having New York boobs and it was really silly but fun and so I was like wow Dave's got a show and then you know turns out it's the greatest sketch show in the history of the world and a year later he calls me up again And asked me to do this thing for,

00:39:33.000 they wanted to do a Fear Factor sketch with Tyron Biggums. 0.75

00:39:36.000 Yeah, so that's me and him, a fresh-faced Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle.

00:39:39.000 Look at you.

00:39:40.000 Yeah, well this is like, what year is this?

00:39:42.000 That's 2003, 2004?

00:39:43.000 Yeah.

00:39:44.000 I think it's before that.

00:39:45.000 Is it?

00:39:46.000 I think it's before that.

00:39:47.000 I want to say it's 2002. Maybe, yeah.

00:39:50.000 Because I wasn't even doing the Man Show back then, and I was doing that in 2003. So I think it's 2002. The Fear Factor bit is one of my favorites.

00:40:00.000 That's in season two, if I recall.

00:40:01.000 I think so, yeah.

00:40:02.000 And is really one of the funniest bits in a show that is, I would argue...

00:40:10.000 Perhaps the greatest television show of all time.

00:40:12.000 I think it's the greatest sketch comedy show of all time.

00:40:14.000 Yeah, I'm saying something bigger.

00:40:17.000 It's hard to say that, though, because if you boiled down a lot of the all-time great shows, like In Living Color or some of the other ones, they had so many seasons.

00:40:25.000 If you boiled them down to two seasons, maybe there would be some...

00:40:29.000 But he's got some sketches that were just groundbreaking, like the black white supremacist who was blind...

00:40:38.000 What about, I was watching last night, because Jeff and I were talking about Chappelle last night, so on the car ride home from this event we did together, I was watching Black Bush, which was another, I think, unbelievably brilliant.

00:40:49.000 Which one was that?

00:40:50.000 Season 2, where he plays George W. Bush, his version of George W. Bush, and all the rationales for going into the war in Iraq.

00:40:57.000 And it's unbelievably funny.

00:41:00.000 Yeah, he's a genius.

00:41:01.000 He's a real comedy genius, but also a guy who's – you wouldn't get it if you just sort of see him do stand-up, but he's deeply introspective, like very intensely well thought out.

00:41:14.000 He's not a surface guy by any stretch of the imagination.

00:41:21.000 I love him.

00:41:22.000 I really do.

00:41:22.000 Yeah, I love him too.

00:41:23.000 I keep thinking that show's gonna come back at some point. 1.00

00:41:25.000 Nah, fuck that show. 1.00

00:41:27.000 His Netflix specials are better. 1.00

00:41:28.000 I just like seeing him unfucked with.

00:41:31.000 Unless Netflix let him do a Chappelle show where they just left him alone.

00:41:35.000 Then it would be genius.

00:41:37.000 So do you think that was the problem in season 3?

00:41:39.000 100%.

00:41:39.000 I know it was.

00:41:41.000 They were telling him what to say.

00:41:43.000 They were telling him there was so much money involved that they were trying to get him to slightly water down his content in order to make it more palatable for advertisers.

00:41:52.000 They were asking him, does not say the N-word.

00:41:54.000 There was a lot of behind-the-scenes nonsense that I dealt with the exact same administration at Comedy Central, so I'm well aware of how silly they were about certain things.

00:42:05.000 They had these corporate ideas. 0.98

00:42:07.000 And this was also right around the same time Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during the Super Bowl, which fucking, oddly enough, changed everything. 0.99

00:42:15.000 People started freaking out about content because of a nipple. 0.99

00:42:20.000 It was a very weird time for television.

00:42:23.000 And in their defense, what they do is they're producers.

00:42:28.000 They're not creative people.

00:42:30.000 They're executives.

00:42:31.000 And they didn't know how to handle, how to keep it funny and keep it free and loose, but also figure out a way to make it fit into what their corporate structure is of what's acceptable and not acceptable for advertising.

00:42:45.000 So it was just a clusterfuck of control and neediness and too many cooks in the kitchen and people's ego.

00:42:53.000 There's a lot of people that just wanted to affect the show just so that they could put their greasy fingerprints on it.

00:42:59.000 And that's a really common thing with television, that ego aspect of these different people who are high up on the food chain in the executive world wanting to put their stamp on a show and then talking openly about putting their stamp.

00:43:14.000 Well, that was my idea.

00:43:15.000 I thought it was really important we get Dave out there like that. 1.00

00:43:18.000 And for him, he was like, fuck this. 0.99

00:43:20.000 I'm going to Africa for a couple months and I'm just gonna come back and quit. 0.99

00:43:23.000 And everybody was like, whoa.

00:43:25.000 But that's who Dave is.

00:43:27.000 I mean, there's not a lot of people that walk away from $50 million.

00:43:31.000 But he's one of them.

00:43:33.000 He's just like, I don't need to do this.

00:43:35.000 I could do something else.

00:43:36.000 I'll just do stand-up.

00:43:37.000 And he, in fact...

00:43:39.000 Even weirder, he didn't do stand-up for a long time, and when he did it, he did it for free.

00:43:44.000 He would just show up places.

00:43:45.000 He would show up places with a speaker and plug it into a microphone in a park in Seattle and just start doing stand-up.

00:43:52.000 There was a lot of stories of that.

00:43:54.000 People would just gather around, hundreds of people, and he would just be doing stand-up for these random people.

00:43:59.000 And they were like, what's going on?

00:44:01.000 So how does a guy get to be like that?

00:44:03.000 Just be yourself.

00:44:04.000 That's who he is.

00:44:05.000 But was that, do you think, is that something, I mean, because that sounds to me like somebody who had a practice or something, or like, or an inner compass that was...

00:44:12.000 Smoked a lot of weed.

00:44:13.000 That's a big part of it.

00:44:15.000 He smokes weed all day.

00:44:18.000 I mean, if you watch his new Netflix special, he's smoking a vape pen through the entire special.

00:44:22.000 To the point where I watched it and like 40 minutes into the special, I started getting anxiety.

00:44:26.000 I'm like, how high are you right now, man?

00:44:28.000 Were you high in your Netflix special?

00:44:31.000 Yes.

00:44:31.000 Okay.

00:44:31.000 Yeah.

00:44:32.000 Yeah.

00:44:33.000 Because you said at the beginning you were baked, and I was like, is that a bit?

00:44:35.000 No, I was high, but I didn't keep getting high through the special.

00:44:39.000 Dave keeps hitting that vape pen, and I don't know how strong that vape pen is, but he's like 7, 8, 9, 10 hits deep in 40 minutes in.

00:44:47.000 I'm like, yo, this could get super slippery.

00:44:50.000 Yeah, he just kept pulling out this vape pen.

00:44:55.000 Yeah, I mean, it was literally with him through the entire set in his hand.

00:45:01.000 That's increasing the degree of difficulty to levels that I would not want to explore.

00:45:05.000 That's testing the mind.

00:45:06.000 Talk about an isolation tank.

00:45:08.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:45:09.000 But also, it's freeing in a way, because you're so comfortable with that experience of giving in to the marijuana, giving in to the THC, where you just sort of float away on it and don't question it.

00:45:23.000 But as you were high backstage getting ready to do your Netflix special, and I would imagine that's a pretty stressful environment because they're taping this thing.

00:45:29.000 It's going to be your special.

00:45:30.000 It's a big deal. 0.99

00:45:32.000 Did you not have a moment of like, holy shit, I shouldn't have smoked that. 0.99

00:45:36.000 No, no. 0.99

00:45:37.000 No, it's fun.

00:45:39.000 It's just...

00:45:40.000 This is an incredibly privileged position I find myself in.

00:45:45.000 This whole thing is amazing.

00:45:47.000 It's a crazy wild ride.

00:45:48.000 So I'm about to do the wildest part of the wild ride.

00:45:51.000 Film a Netflix special.

00:45:53.000 And...

00:45:54.000 It's just joy.

00:45:56.000 It's just taking it all in and going, this is so...

00:45:58.000 Like, all the hard work is done.

00:46:00.000 The material's in place.

00:46:03.000 The writing has been done.

00:46:04.000 The rehearsal's been done.

00:46:06.000 There's been hundreds and hundreds of sets.

00:46:08.000 Everything's tightened up, and all the notes are in place, and I've run it a hundred times.

00:46:13.000 And by the time you saw the film, the Netflix special was mostly the fourth show, right?

00:46:20.000 Of four tapings.

00:46:21.000 So I've already taped three tapings.

00:46:24.000 So I've already got it in the can.

00:46:26.000 So most of the pressure's off.

00:46:28.000 So it's just like a regular show almost.

00:46:30.000 Gotcha.

00:46:30.000 Okay.

00:46:31.000 Yeah.

00:46:31.000 So it's just happiness.

00:46:34.000 Just let it happen.

00:46:36.000 You seem happy while watching it.

00:46:38.000 It was fun.

00:46:38.000 Yeah.

00:46:39.000 It's a good time.

00:46:41.000 But it's one of those weird things where...

00:46:44.000 You know, live stand-up is weird itself because you're dealing with all these factors, the people's consciousness.

00:46:55.000 You're trying to manage your material as well as bring them in and make sure your timing is right and everything's smooth.

00:47:02.000 And then on top of that, there's the filming aspect of it.

00:47:06.000 Like, this will be locked in and recorded forever.

00:47:11.000 This is going to go online and then people will have copies of it and then it will be – this is your material.

00:47:19.000 This is your thought process.

00:47:21.000 Do you have this ironed down?

00:47:23.000 Do you have this edited and parsed and sectioned and have you thoroughly examined it?

00:47:29.000 Have you used the correct economy of words?

00:47:31.000 Have you boiled it down into the best possible version of itself?

00:47:36.000 It's so funny with stand-up, though, because you watch it as a, because I've never done stand-up, but you watch it as a consumer, it looks casual, it looks off the cuff.

00:47:44.000 It has to be.

00:47:45.000 There's an enormous amount of work that goes into it.

00:47:47.000 But it's both casual and off the cuff and incredibly well thought out and rehearsed, and it has to be both of those things.

00:47:56.000 So you prepare like crazy so you got that, but then when you're actually there, isn't there a certain amount of just having to let go and be actually responsive to what's happening in the audience?

00:48:07.000 That must be the skill.

00:48:08.000 It's like you do the preparation so you can almost let go of it.

00:48:11.000 Yeah, this is both.

00:48:12.000 You have to be prepared, but you also have to be loose.

00:48:15.000 And you have to be completely engrossed in what you're talking about, but also in the moment.

00:48:22.000 Yeah.

00:48:24.000 It's tricky.

00:48:24.000 But the bottom line is when it's done, it's worth it.

00:48:29.000 Like all the weirdness of it.

00:48:30.000 Like when you get it done or something like triggered when it was done, I finished it.

00:48:34.000 I was like, I did it.

00:48:35.000 Like this is what I wanted to do.

00:48:37.000 Like I wanted to accurately represent a real live stand-up comedy set that feels like any other set that you could catch me in San Francisco on a Saturday night.

00:48:49.000 And so it was that.

00:48:50.000 So it's all worth it.

00:48:52.000 Yeah, it felt like that.

00:48:53.000 Yeah.

00:48:54.000 So then I wait about a year, and then I start doing it again.

00:48:57.000 And now I'm in the process, a couple more months, I'll do it again.

00:49:00.000 It sounds a lot like actually the experience of teaching.

00:49:04.000 Like when you're teaching meditation, it's sort of like, because you've got to be, you kind of got to know, you have to have experience and sort of know your stuff.

00:49:10.000 But the other hand, you actually got to be super open to exactly what's coming up and what someone's describing or what's happening.

00:49:16.000 Right. 0.99

00:49:16.000 And so if you try to bear down too hard on that, then you're just going to be repeating your own shit back again. 0.99

00:49:23.000 So can you have that total openness to actually see what it is that someone's saying and not have put your projections on it? 0.98

00:49:30.000 But you have to have also done your homework in a way.

00:49:33.000 And it's just having that balance.

00:49:35.000 And then there's that really beautiful thing where you get into flow when you're kind of in the zone.

00:49:41.000 And it just...

00:49:42.000 It's like you hardly even, you know, the words are coming out or a response is happening and it's not remotely deliberated at all.

00:49:48.000 But it's the right thing in that moment or the right thing that someone needed to hear or you needed to hear.

00:49:52.000 And it feels incredible.

00:49:53.000 It feels effortless.

00:49:55.000 But it's the effortlessness that comes out of preparedness.

00:49:58.000 Yeah.

00:49:59.000 Previous effort.

00:50:00.000 Yeah, you have to have both.

00:50:01.000 You can't just wing it, right?

00:50:03.000 You have to be prepared, but you also have to be able to just be flexible in the moment and to be able to ride the wave.

00:50:09.000 And it comes back to the word that we started with is surrender.

00:50:12.000 Yeah.

00:50:12.000 And I notice this a lot because I do a lot of traveling around and giving speeches and always about meditation.

00:50:19.000 And I have my little shtick that I do, but then we open it up for questions.

00:50:24.000 And actually, the same thing is true for when I'm live on Good Morning America, you know, where...

00:50:29.000 I have to, if I'm in my head, if I'm thinking about what I should say or how things should go, I make the worst mistakes.

00:50:38.000 If I can get myself to surrender and just be there, I've been playing with that a little bit even in the course of this discussion.

00:50:47.000 As a big podcast, don't screw it up, don't say the dumb thing, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

00:50:52.000 Yeah.

00:50:53.000 Actually, if I can just let all that chatter go away, play itself out, then you have a better conversation.

00:51:02.000 Then you say the thing that you couldn't have planned.

00:51:06.000 Yeah, that is the art of the podcast.

00:51:08.000 It's the art of conversation in general, is to get out of your own way and to be able to also at the same time find the right words, articulate the right thoughts, figure out the right way to piece the sentences together so it's both entertaining and engaging,

00:51:25.000 but also rings true.

00:51:28.000 And there's not an air of bullshit to it or ego to it. 0.93

00:51:34.000 You know, because people can...

00:51:35.000 There's a unique thing about a conversation, especially with people interacting with each other, that people, they tune in to, like, and I tune into it.

00:51:44.000 Like, if I listen to certain conversations with people that I find awkward, and I'm like, well, what is uncomfortable about this?

00:51:50.000 What is this weird?

00:51:50.000 And see, a lot of the times it boils down to, like, one person trying to be too much in control.

00:51:55.000 Absolutely that.

00:51:56.000 Yeah.

00:51:57.000 One person?

00:51:58.000 Yeah, I'm usually that person.

00:51:59.000 Everybody is.

00:52:00.000 And you can tell when you're hanging out with that person, because it's like, there's this grippiness, or when I have that, it's like, you're slightly fearful, you're slightly worried, you're trying to a little bit hold on to the narrative, and it just creates this unnaturalness.

00:52:11.000 And then everyone's got a little bit, feels a little bit weird, and then someone's trying to overcompensate for someone over here, and it just wrecks the whole flow of it.

00:52:19.000 You know, when I first started reading a little bit about Zen Buddhism, which is one of the flavors of it, they talk a lot about spontaneity.

00:52:26.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:52:26.000 And I didn't quite...

00:52:27.000 The Zen bounce.

00:52:28.000 Yeah, I didn't quite get that, but this is what we're talking about, actually.

00:52:33.000 They also use this word, freshness, that if you can get rid of the stale, planned, canned stuff, and just touch in on what's happening right now, which is fresh...

00:52:46.000 Then the spontaneity arises.

00:52:48.000 Actually, there's a... 0.99

00:52:50.000 So I got a teacher, this guy, Shinzen Young, who I think is the fucking bomb. 0.99

00:52:54.000 You've got to get him on the show. 0.98

00:52:55.000 He's amazing.

00:52:56.000 He's incredible.

00:52:56.000 He is truly amazing.

00:52:57.000 He's a super nerd of consciousness.

00:52:59.000 And he is really articulate about the dynamics.

00:53:02.000 And he's trained a lot within the Zen tradition, but also in kind of old school Theravada, like the more strict...

00:53:08.000 How do I say his name?

00:53:09.000 Shinzen, S-H-I-Z-E-N. Zed, Canadian, sorry. 0.99

00:53:14.000 Z-E-N, Shinzen Young.

00:53:16.000 And he actually likes mixed martial arts, and he guides people while watching mixed martial arts in his undershirt, and he's the wicked dude.

00:53:22.000 I can fully second that.

00:53:25.000 Yeah.

00:53:26.000 But he talks a lot about something called the Zen Bounce.

00:53:29.000 He's interested in how do these different practices from different traditions work?

00:53:34.000 What is the way in which they free you or they reduce your suffering?

00:53:39.000 Because they can look so different on paper or actually inexperienced.

00:53:42.000 So you might have one kind of meditation tradition that's all about just sitting with your eyes closed, not moving, all about that kind of stoicism.

00:53:49.000 And then when you do move, it's very slow and deliberate and you've got to be mindful and all that stuff.

00:53:54.000 But then you have other traditions, like within certain kinds of Zen schools, where you're actually, it's frenetic.

00:54:00.000 It's like, go, go, go, all the time. 0.93

00:54:02.000 You're moving fast, you're like, unwrapping your shit, and you're putting your shit back together, and you're eating your food in a particular kind of way, and you gotta get to this thing over here, and you gotta get to this thing over here, and then you gotta sit and stop at a dime. 0.91

00:54:10.000 And what they're doing is they're deliberately... 0.97

00:54:13.000 Shaking things up.

00:54:14.000 They're deliberately creating all this agitated energy to teach you how to ride the energy, to teach you how to be calm enough in the center that that energy turns into spontaneity, turns into creativity, turns into genuine being available in the moment-ness,

00:54:29.000 as opposed to being stuck in some way.

00:54:32.000 That's what's getting trained.

00:54:33.000 And when you see these guys from those monasteries or from those traditions who practice a lot, they've got this bouncy, available, turn on a dime, do this.

00:54:44.000 It's like they're just available to what's going on because they've trained that quality in their experience.

00:54:48.000 They've gotten out of their own way.

00:54:53.000 He, you know, I've had like hundreds of hours of discussions where I'll call him up, I'll be like, and the best thing about him is he'll answer the phone if he's ready to talk, he's ready to serve, you know, whatever you got going on.

00:55:03.000 I'll be like, I'll call him in the morning, Shinzen, so what's going on right now?

00:55:06.000 What's your experience of consciousness?

00:55:08.000 And he basically describes You know, it's like he's just there and it's like he's sort of part of this upwelling of the world and it's all kind of vibrating up through him.

00:55:16.000 He has no center.

00:55:17.000 You know, you ask him where his center, he experiences the center of himself.

00:55:20.000 Sometimes it's over here.

00:55:21.000 Sometimes it's over on the right.

00:55:23.000 And he's just like, yeah, it's just, it's all reality.

00:55:26.000 Just kind of this free flow of reality that he's just responding to. 1.00

00:55:30.000 Now, and then he'll tell me, this is the shit that would blow my mind. 0.99

00:55:34.000 Because you're like, okay, that sounds awesome. 0.99

00:55:36.000 But he's like, no, there's challenges.

00:55:38.000 For him, the challenge is, Taking conditions seriously.

00:55:43.000 Taking conditions seriously.

00:55:45.000 He has to convince himself that the stakes are enough that he should work on this thing or that, yeah, I guess I should get out of the way of that bus.

00:55:54.000 I mean, he will because his instincts kick in, but it's like he's so in the unconditioned that his danger is just becoming one of those dudes sitting on a mountain not doing anything. 0.91

00:56:04.000 But the world is fucked and it needs people like him who can help us out. 0.92

00:56:07.000 So he... 0.96

00:56:07.000 And he's very inspired to try to do his best to be a great meditation teacher. 0.96

00:56:13.000 But that's his battle.

00:56:14.000 He's no longer...

00:56:15.000 So most practitioners, their battle is trying to get to taste that more unconditioned quality, that spontaneous, that free, yourself as just a process.

00:56:25.000 His is the other direction.

00:56:26.000 He's gone so far into that.

00:56:27.000 Now he's trying to remember what it was like to be a human being.

00:56:31.000 He's more like a cosmic...

00:56:32.000 Rock, like just vibrating into infinity all the time, which is, you know, great for stress, but not so great for maybe other things.

00:56:40.000 Very interesting.

00:56:41.000 Yeah.

00:56:42.000 So he's just been doing this for so long that he's achieved this very high level of...

00:56:46.000 He's another Jewish guy from, in this case, from Los Angeles.

00:56:49.000 He, you know, was born in the 40s, I think, or in the 50s, Eisenhower, America, and he basically was way into Japan.

00:56:56.000 Japanese culture, learned Japanese as a teenager, went to Japanese school, and then went to Japan when he was like 19 or 20, and decided he wanted to study some of these Zen practitioners.

00:57:08.000 Eventually got in with what's called the Japanese Vajrayana School, so it's sort of a particular school of Buddhism, started training with them, and then that was never finished.

00:57:17.000 He was getting a PhD program.

00:57:19.000 Well, they do hardcore stuff, like they have you on ice baths and things like that.

00:57:23.000 Yeah.

00:57:23.000 Yeah, I mean, so it's all what we're talking about, building up resilience, building up equanimity.

00:57:27.000 Can you sit in these seriously...

00:57:28.000 I mean, in Japan, they do the thing called, he'll talk about this, the marathon monks, where basically these guys sit for, like, no joke, for days on end.

00:57:38.000 Days.

00:57:38.000 Not going to the bathroom, not moving, not eating, not drinking water.

00:57:43.000 I mean, it's hard to imagine how it would even be possible, but apparently it's a televised event in Japan.

00:57:48.000 Like, they do these long walks, and then they do these sits.

00:57:51.000 And these guys, it's all about what Shinzen would say.

00:57:54.000 It's about recycling the reaction.

00:57:55.000 So it's all about you have these responses in your body.

00:57:58.000 You're feeling uncomfortable.

00:58:00.000 You're feeling hungry.

00:58:01.000 You're feeling this stuff.

00:58:02.000 But if you can bring enough equanimity and openness to those sensations, then they just...

00:58:07.000 And I had this happen to me thousands of times meditating where the sensation just boils off.

00:58:12.000 It goes from being pain in your knee to just vibrating.

00:58:16.000 It feels like maggots squirming.

00:58:18.000 And then it just...

00:58:20.000 It's all about how completely present can you be.

00:58:23.000 You can metabolize anything stuck.

00:58:26.000 And guess what?

00:58:26.000 You can metabolize stuck physical stuff too.

00:58:29.000 So if you put your attention on a knot in the back of your shoulder or something, I've had the experience in meditation where I'm just feeling this tension in my body and I just hold my attention there long enough in this open way.

00:58:42.000 I'm not trying to make a change, just curious about it, looking at it.

00:58:45.000 I've had the experience of knots dissolving.

00:58:48.000 Where like an actual impingement or a physical thing seems to change.

00:58:52.000 Now that's really weird because then you realize, wow, like the mind and body, it's all part of one process, you know?

00:58:58.000 And a part of what was keeping that tension there wasn't just the problem in the muscle.

00:59:03.000 There was some part of me that was keeping it there.

00:59:05.000 There was some way in which I was holding onto it a little bit, like holding my breath a bit.

00:59:09.000 You know, or like when you said about releasing layers of tension, you sit down on a meditation cushion and you think you're relaxed and then you realize you're actually Kind of uptight, and you're like, and then you let go of that, and then you settle a little bit more, and then you realize there's another layer of tension.

00:59:23.000 And you can just let go, and let go, and let go, and it just seems to go on, and on, and on.

00:59:30.000 And it's like, that can be, I mean, there's some, I know another teacher, all he teaches is lying down.

00:59:35.000 He teaches people, Reggie Ray, go to his meditation, or sits, you just, you're laying on the ground, you're not doing anything.

00:59:41.000 You can fall asleep, doesn't matter.

00:59:42.000 For a month, you're just laying on the ground.

00:59:45.000 And he's teaching you how to actually Land on the ground.

00:59:49.000 You can spend a week, two weeks learning how to actually lay on the ground.

00:59:53.000 You think you're laying on the ground, but you're still a little bit tense.

00:59:56.000 You're still a little bit holding yourself up in some way.

01:00:00.000 And it's like you're just letting go of those layers and letting go of those layers until you're just like a pool.

01:00:05.000 It's funny because we all know that we need conscious awareness.

01:00:10.000 We need to be here and present.

01:00:14.000 But also that thinking of conscious awareness and the control that we try to enact on our environment and all the different ways that the ego forces us to think and pushes us and nudges us.

01:00:29.000 It really is about getting out of your own way, in a lot of ways.

01:00:34.000 It's a paradox, too. 0.98

01:00:35.000 Because the only way to truly surrender to reality is to not fucking care. 0.97

01:00:41.000 It's absolutely true. 0.97

01:00:43.000 And that's what's gonna free you up to be the most effective in your caring. 0.99

01:00:47.000 You cannot get around that headfuck, and that is absolutely true. 0.99

01:00:52.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:00:52.000 I mean, this is the thing that people really struggle with because a lot of people will hear everything you just said and all this stuff about Shinzen not caring and think, okay, if I meditate, well, I'm going to be ineffective. 0.99

01:01:07.000 I'm not going to be able to do anything.

01:01:09.000 But that's what I'm saying is the paradox.

01:01:10.000 It's like the person who's most effective is the person who gives up needing to be effective.

01:01:15.000 It's like you, because that's how you free up all the energy.

01:01:18.000 It's like if you're trying to control everything all the time, you're gonna be really limited in what you can actually do.

01:01:22.000 If you just let go and let things be as they are, you're kind of like, it's like you're conserving all this deep, deep well of energy that's there.

01:01:30.000 And then when you really do need to make a move, because it does fucking matter, then you've got the energy to act and you act in a way that's probably more effective because it's less distorted.

01:01:38.000 So it's just skillful use of energy.

01:01:41.000 And that's actually, that's what I've learned from practice, even from getting older, because I'm 46 now and I don't have the energy I used to have.

01:01:48.000 It's like choosing your battles.

01:01:49.000 And seeing like now, I'm like, that seems really tiring.

01:01:52.000 I'm not going to do that.

01:01:53.000 I'm going to actually just sit here and chill and relax so I'll have the energy to do what I need to do when I need to do it.

01:01:58.000 That's kind of, that maturity is sort of, I think, a big part of the meditative learning.

01:02:03.000 Well said.

01:02:04.000 It's so interesting what you're talking about as it relates to like how when you're on Good Morning America like sort of figuring out a way to just be in the moment and guide the conversation but don't think too much about what you're saying but say the right things and have poignant things and good questions and being able to engage but not being too conscious of how it sounds or what you're trying to achieve by your words or the image that you're trying to portray There's

01:02:34.000 so many parallels that would exist in stand-up comedy, they exist in podcasting, they exist in martial arts.

01:02:41.000 When you're doing martial arts, that's a big part of being able to train effectively, is to focus almost entirely on the movements themselves, to have them trained into a way where they're a pathway that you can almost observe.

01:02:58.000 Yeah.

01:02:58.000 Like, you're an observer and a passenger as much as you're the driver of the experience.

01:03:04.000 And it's all just sort of taking place.

01:03:05.000 And when you start tweaking and freaking out about it, that's when everything tightens up.

01:03:10.000 And that's when you start to run into all these, like, real issues with training.

01:03:15.000 But that's why I find basic, you know, we've talked a lot about, Jeff has talked, as he always does, very beautifully about deep end of the pool, you know, mysticism and, you know, highly attained meditators.

01:03:28.000 But the nuts and bolts basic application of...

01:03:36.000 Beginner mindfulness meditation, which Jeff and I talk about, is what allows you to get out of your own way.

01:03:42.000 Because saying to people, hey, get out of your own way, get out of your head, is a very frustrating thing to hear because you're like, how the hell do I do that?

01:03:49.000 But the basic move of beginner meditation, which is to sit with your eyes closed, I think?

01:04:00.000 I think?

01:04:22.000 Over and over and over ad infinitum.

01:04:25.000 And that basic bicep curl for your brain allows you to have a less hostile relationship to your inner chaos.

01:04:32.000 It allows you to see it clearly.

01:04:34.000 And that is the mechanism by which all of, for me at least, by which all of the things we're talking about here, you know, not freaking out on live television, being able to survive in a sensory deprivation tank when you think Joe Rogan might judge you for freaking out and jumping out.

01:04:48.000 Ha! 0.89

01:04:48.000 All that stuff allows you to see the chatter arise, this basic move that we're doing in meditation, which is just sitting back and allowing all this stuff to come up without trying to grab it or push it away. 0.89

01:05:00.000 Can help you in the things that we're talking about here?

01:05:03.000 Martial arts, stand-up comedy, all of the things.

01:05:06.000 So, can I just say something about where it turned a corner for me when I was practicing because I was a terrible meditator?

01:05:13.000 It was understanding the actual skills that we're building.

01:05:17.000 And that's the thing, I think, that links all what we're talking about here.

01:05:20.000 When you talk about martial arts, when you talk about being a broadcaster, when you talk about comedy, talk about practice, it's like...

01:05:28.000 There are particular kinds of mind-body skills that we're training.

01:05:32.000 And those skills are actually, they have names.

01:05:34.000 There's a feeling that's happening that you can experience when you're training that muscle group.

01:05:39.000 And that was, you know, when I started understanding things that way, because of Shinzen, because he talks about it that way, but Buddhism talks about it that way.

01:05:45.000 They talk about the factors of awakening.

01:05:46.000 That you're building up concentration, which is your capacity just to pay attention to what you want to pay attention to.

01:05:52.000 It's like a commitment.

01:05:53.000 Your mind wanders, you bring it back.

01:05:55.000 That's one skill.

01:05:56.000 You're building up clarity, which is your ability to be clear and make discernments of what's happening in your experience.

01:06:02.000 What's happening in a social experience?

01:06:03.000 Is this the right time to say this thing?

01:06:05.000 What's happening inside me?

01:06:07.000 What am I really feeling versus how am I acting?

01:06:10.000 So dialing up that resolution dial and building up equanimity, which is just the...

01:06:15.000 Can I actually not fight with my experience as it's unfolding?

01:06:19.000 Can I have this centeredness in the middle of what's going on, whether I'm doing martial arts, whether I'm doing comedy, whether I'm doing meditation?

01:06:26.000 The beauty of a meditation practice is it makes explicit what those skills are.

01:06:31.000 In a simple situation with your eyes closed, you can notice when you're being concentrated, when you're being clear, when you're being Aquinas, when you're being friendly, which is another good skill.

01:06:39.000 You notice when that's happening.

01:06:41.000 And because you notice when it's happening, you can start to notice how to apply it in every other area of your life.

01:06:46.000 So that's all it is.

01:06:48.000 All practice is about being explicit and deliberate about what qualities of existence, of being, that you want to train in your life.

01:06:56.000 And then you just try to apply it everywhere.

01:06:58.000 And so that's why you can get people who are...

01:07:00.000 I see them as basically meditation masters on a comedy stage.

01:07:03.000 Or people who are basically meditation masters in a sports arena.

01:07:06.000 Or in a cage match.

01:07:08.000 Or whatever it is.

01:07:09.000 They're applying the same principles.

01:07:11.000 So all these are paths that can bring you into more of a...

01:07:16.000 More presence in your life.

01:07:18.000 And the problem comes when people start saying, no, but my path is a good path.

01:07:21.000 Oh yeah, but I teach meditation, that's more fundamental.

01:07:23.000 Or no, no, no, no, but I do a body practice, this is more fundamental.

01:07:27.000 It's about the skills.

01:07:29.000 Those are what's fundamental.

01:07:31.000 Yeah, and the more you can concentrate on that, the more you'll enjoy this weird experience.

01:07:37.000 The mystery of this weird experience.

01:07:39.000 Yeah, this weird experience that doesn't have an owner's manual.

01:07:43.000 That's one of the things that's always freaked me out about the mind and the body.

01:07:47.000 It's like you have this incredible vehicle and this amazing resource that's sort of operating this vehicle.

01:07:54.000 No one gets a manual, and you're taught how to handle it by people that don't know what the fuck they're doing, whether it's teachers in school, or whether it's the kids that you grow up with, or maybe even perhaps your parents or sports coaches. 0.56

01:08:08.000 You get shitty operating advice. 0.62

01:08:11.000 They're grinding the gears and banging into trees, and no one knows how to handle this thing correctly.

01:08:16.000 Particularly in our culture.

01:08:18.000 I mean, one of the points that Sam Harris, mutual friend of ours, great podcaster, great writer, has made in his book, Waking Up, which was one of his many books, but I think my favorite, is that, you know, in the West, we've developed an intellectual and scientific culture that is really robust and has changed the world and is unquestionably valuable.

01:08:41.000 But in the East, they actually were working on the owner's manual for the mind for millennia. 0.74

01:08:46.000 You know, you've got two Buddha statues in here.

01:08:49.000 2,600 years ago, this guy, if he even existed, or we don't know, but this culture of Buddhism, and before that the Hindus, were working on how do you operate this mind?

01:09:02.000 What is this mind?

01:09:04.000 And...

01:09:05.000 I think the beautiful thing we're watching now globally, this trend, is the meeting of these two things.

01:09:11.000 And Jeff is one of the people who's most excited about this.

01:09:14.000 It's partly why we're such good friends.

01:09:16.000 The meeting of this Western scientific rational culture and this Eastern exploration of the mind.

01:09:22.000 But, bro, I want to just call you on something.

01:09:25.000 Like, I think that's absolutely true.

01:09:28.000 But I also think this understanding, this way of thinking about it, is there in the West as well.

01:09:35.000 That it's like, the East has made it explicit in very particular ways.

01:09:39.000 But even within humanistic traditions, if you look at, like, some of the Greek philosophers, who a lot of them were really mystics, if you look within the Abrahamic traditions...

01:09:47.000 There are these understandings are there as well and they're describing it in similar ways and like you hang out with some badass Catholic priest who spent his entire life like in poor neighborhoods helping people out and like totally being present and working on service and like the way in which that human being like has learned how to survive and has learned how to flourish and has learned how to be present for his community or her community it's a lot of the same skills and did not there's obviously shadowy aspects everywhere too but But

01:10:17.000 these are human universals.

01:10:19.000 That's right.

01:10:20.000 And there's a book, speaking of badass priests, there's a book called Tattoos on the Heart, which was written by the guy who ran Homeboy Industries here in L.A. And he, as far as I know, doesn't have any meditation practice, but he talks about...

01:10:35.000 This is a bit of a sappy word, but compassion. 0.99

01:10:38.000 You know, actually giving a shit about other human beings about whom very few other people give a shit. 0.99

01:10:43.000 And his whole life, as the organizing principle, is taking care of these gang members who've been discarded by their families, grown up with parents who were in prostitution or drugs or whatever, and had no shot. 0.99

01:10:57.000 And this guy, his whole life, has given them a shot.

01:11:00.000 And if that's not living this stuff out, then I don't know what it is.

01:11:04.000 So why do we think compassion is a sappy word?

01:11:07.000 I'm just wondering.

01:11:07.000 Because I know that it's so common to have those responses.

01:11:10.000 Like, what is that?

01:11:11.000 Do you think it's a sappy word?

01:11:11.000 The same problem that we were talking about with SoulCycle before.

01:11:15.000 It's the presentation.

01:11:18.000 It's through repetition.

01:11:19.000 It loses its meaning.

01:11:20.000 And then sometimes you get the sense, I get the sense at least, that the people who are saying this to me have no idea what it is they're saying or why.

01:11:28.000 Yeah, they've co-opted the words.

01:11:30.000 That's right.

01:11:30.000 They get clunky.

01:11:32.000 Yeah, they're just signaling their tribal allegiance to unicorns or something by just repeating these phrases without really embodying what they mean or something.

01:11:41.000 Right, like the people that say that I'm not religious but I'm spiritual.

01:11:44.000 Yeah.

01:11:45.000 Right?

01:11:45.000 When they say that, you're like, oh, Christ.

01:11:48.000 Yeah.

01:11:48.000 On the other hand, I hear that.

01:11:49.000 I just hear somebody who's trying to connect these principles and doesn't want to necessarily identify with some of these structured forms of religion that are all these fucking problems. 0.96

01:11:58.000 Sometimes it's that, and sometimes it's just weird people that are just making noises with their face because they want you to think a certain way about them. 0.94

01:12:06.000 Making noises with your face by Joe Rogan.

01:12:09.000 You know that thing that people do where they're just really just saying noises that they hear other people say, and they're not connected to them, and you feel they're not connected to them, so you're just kind of waiting it out.

01:12:19.000 So it's hypocrisy. 0.88

01:12:20.000 So it's a hypocrisy that makes you want to puke.

01:12:22.000 Because it's a disconnect between what's real, because you know what's real, because you can feel their body language, and then what they're saying, which is the opposite.

01:12:28.000 But even when it's real, I mean, this was my problem when I first started getting into meditation.

01:12:31.000 Even when it's real, there's an earnestness.

01:12:34.000 There's a lack of sense of humor.

01:12:36.000 A sappiness, a saccharine-ness about the presentation of these really fresh, amazing, invigorating ideas that I... This is why I wanted to write a book with you because you talk about these things in ways that get me interested as opposed to sometimes...

01:12:52.000 The preciousness.

01:12:53.000 It's like the preciousness. 0.98

01:12:54.000 I have this beautiful little box that I'm going to unfold for you and it's so holy and perfect and it's just like the whole thing around it just makes you want to fucking vomit as soon as you get anywhere near it.

01:13:03.000 Yeah, it's like certain yoga teachers can say the exact same thing, and it's calming, and when they say namaste, you say it back and you mean it.

01:13:12.000 Totally, exactly. 0.98

01:13:13.000 And then other ones say it, and you're like, will you please shut the fuck up, buddy? 0.98

01:13:16.000 So I have a trainer that I work with. 0.97

01:13:21.000 This is a badass woman named Jade, Jade Alexis, who is a former... 1.00

01:13:25.000 Shout out to Jade Alexis. 1.00

01:13:26.000 Jade Alexis, former Golden Gloves boxer.

01:13:29.000 And she's just...

01:13:30.000 I would take spin classes from her, not just straight up spin classes.

01:13:34.000 She would just scream in your face, turn up your resistance dial for you while you're in the middle of a sprint. 1.00

01:13:39.000 Just a total badass.

01:13:41.000 And so I started working with her one-on-one.

01:13:43.000 She is the first person who got me to do yoga.

01:13:46.000 Because when she says namaste, I'll say it right back to her.

01:13:49.000 Absolutely.

01:13:50.000 Yeah.

01:13:50.000 Yeah, I used to take yoga from this guy from South Africa.

01:13:53.000 He was amazing.

01:13:54.000 And he would say all the things that you would hate most coming out of insincere people, but you knew he really believed it.

01:14:01.000 And he also was one of the rare guys, and I've ran into a few people that do this, that run a donation-only yoga class.

01:14:09.000 Which was fascinating for me because I would watch these people pull in in a Mercedes and not donate and take class for free and leave.

01:14:18.000 And I'm like, this is amazing.

01:14:20.000 It's amazing to watch how many people take advantage of that.

01:14:24.000 The concept of it is the purest expression of yoga you can get.

01:14:28.000 Like, give what you can.

01:14:30.000 I'm not going to charge you anything.

01:14:31.000 That's not what this is about.

01:14:32.000 This is about the yoga itself.

01:14:35.000 If people contribute enough, I can continue to do this and we can pay the rent.

01:14:39.000 And he managed to keep the place open that way because he was so good and it was so real.

01:14:45.000 Many meditation teachers operate this way.

01:14:47.000 Many of them.

01:14:48.000 That's how the CEC operates.

01:14:49.000 Donation owning?

01:14:49.000 Yes.

01:14:49.000 Yeah.

01:14:51.000 It's great if it can work, right?

01:14:53.000 That's how kind of it should be.

01:14:55.000 Yeah.

01:14:56.000 I have a group in Toronto called the Consciousness Explorers Club that my friend James and I started like eight years ago or something.

01:15:03.000 And we try to do that principle.

01:15:05.000 And the idea is that every week we get together and we explore different practices and we explore.

01:15:11.000 Then we do a part two, which is like a social practice or interactive or body practice.

01:15:16.000 And the whole thinking is basically like we want it to be kind of one-stop shopping.

01:15:20.000 Whoever you are, whatever your background, however much money you have, you can come once a week to this place and it will cost you nothing if you have no money.

01:15:28.000 The sliding scale is 10 to 20 if you have money.

01:15:30.000 You'll get the absolute best of what we can do with guest teachers.

01:15:34.000 Every Monday is a different set of programming and that's what we'll do.

01:15:39.000 We'll do that as much as we can for you.

01:15:40.000 And then you can go home and go back to your life.

01:15:42.000 And if you need referrals for more help, they're potentially there.

01:15:46.000 But this idea that once a week, anywhere in any community in the world, you could just go to a place where you could get the best and it's affordable, there's no reason that can't happen.

01:15:54.000 Because there are so many skilled practitioners out there and Teachers and facilitators in different modalities and it's just exploding across the board.

01:16:02.000 Psychotherapy is exploding.

01:16:03.000 Meditation is exploding.

01:16:05.000 Body-based therapies are exploding.

01:16:08.000 Insights about how sports work, how the mind-body works, exploding.

01:16:13.000 So there's all this diet stuff, movement stuff, all this expertise out there.

01:16:19.000 It's like we wanted to create a framework where we could start to channel some of that expertise.

01:16:23.000 Get together, have an adventure, explore what this particular modality has to say, and then do it all in community so you get that community support.

01:16:31.000 Well, I think that's good with everything.

01:16:33.000 I think having these shared experiences and sort of relating what are the hiccups that you found along the way?

01:16:40.000 What are the pitfalls?

01:16:42.000 How have you overcome those?

01:16:44.000 There's a great value to that.

01:16:46.000 Whether it's in meditation, or we use that in comedy a lot.

01:16:50.000 There's a lot of, like, one of the great things about communities like the Comedy Store is that we get together and talk about the pitfalls.

01:16:57.000 Like, yeah, I'm in the middle of the set, and all of a sudden I'm in my own head, and then I'm realizing that this bit's kind of clunky, and I'm trying to get out of it, and I'm like, oh, what do you do?

01:17:06.000 So it's like a group therapy for comedians?

01:17:08.000 For sure, yeah.

01:17:09.000 There's a lot of that.

01:17:11.000 One of the things that's really interesting about stand-up in general today, as opposed to in the past, is that the consciousness of it has sort of shifted.

01:17:19.000 In the past, it used to be a very solitary pursuit, and everybody was sort of fighting in a scarcity mindset.

01:17:27.000 There was a famine thinking mindset.

01:17:30.000 There's only a certain amount of slots on sitcoms.

01:17:33.000 There's a certain amount of host jobs for late-night talk shows.

01:17:36.000 And there's only a certain amount of jobs for comics.

01:17:38.000 Certain amount of clubs to work at.

01:17:40.000 Well now...

01:17:41.000 There's so many clubs to work at.

01:17:43.000 There's so many theaters on top of the clubs.

01:17:45.000 There's all these internet places where you can do podcasts, and there's so many different avenues that comics don't feel this famine mindset anymore, and it's much more of an open and supportive community.

01:17:59.000 Do you think that in part is driven by the fact that there are more women in comedy as well?

01:18:03.000 And they can sometimes bring a more civilized approach?

01:18:06.000 No.

01:18:07.000 I think that's true that they do do that in a lot of ways, but no, that's not what it is.

01:18:12.000 I think it's a lack of scarcity.

01:18:14.000 It's really structural.

01:18:15.000 Yeah, and it's also more people who have meditated, who have explored their consciousness, who are aware of the pitfalls of the ego entering into comedy, and then more people sort of fostering that idea of community through comedy.

01:18:33.000 I'm surprised.

01:18:33.000 I know a reasonable amount of comedians, and some of them have come on my podcast to talk about how meditation helps them in what they do.

01:18:41.000 John Mulaney in particular.

01:18:43.000 He's great.

01:18:44.000 Really good?

01:18:44.000 Very funny and very nice guy, too.

01:18:46.000 You kind of realize that the comic is kind of like the canary in the coal mine.

01:18:50.000 Because comedians are really...

01:18:53.000 Sensitive, right?

01:18:54.000 I mean, that's kind of part of what it means to be a comedian is to be sensitive to noticing cues and subtleties and things in the culture that other people overlook.

01:19:01.000 So it's not surprising because what I hear you saying is it's almost like some of the most, like I hate this word, but evolved or mature people out there, professionals in the world or creative people in the world or people in that comedy community because they have that sensitivity and they've had to learn how to work together in some way.

01:19:18.000 I mean, it's just interesting.

01:19:19.000 Maybe there's something we could learn from that population, you know?

01:19:22.000 If we look around and say, who can we learn from?

01:19:24.000 Is there something in comedians and the way they're doing things that other people can learn from?

01:19:28.000 And what is it?

01:19:29.000 Can we distill those lessons?

01:19:31.000 Well, I think in a lot of ways it's an exploration of the mind.

01:19:34.000 And I think comedy is an exploration of the mind, not just in your own mind, but also in how do you relay those thoughts to other people in the most efficient way possible.

01:19:42.000 And a lot of that has to do with how much have you managed your own mind and your own ability to communicate.

01:19:49.000 And meditation can greatly assist you in that regard.

01:19:52.000 Do you?

01:19:53.000 Do you do any meditation?

01:19:54.000 Yeah, I meditate.

01:19:55.000 What's your practice like?

01:19:56.000 Well, I do a bunch of different things.

01:19:58.000 Like, one, I do a lot of yoga breathing exercises, and I do them by myself where essentially just completely concentrating on the breath, just breathing in and breathing out and forcing out all the thoughts and allowing them to come in and allowing them I like to do that also inside the tank.

01:20:19.000 One of the things that I really like to do is get myself into a position where I've settled in the tank and then just completely concentrate on my breath and just concentrate entirely on the breathing in and the breathing out and get into this almost like hypnotic cycle of breathing in and breathing out.

01:21:02.000 It's the same thing.

01:21:04.000 Yeah, I mean, that's it.

01:21:05.000 You just described what we teach.

01:21:06.000 I do a practice almost exactly like that.

01:21:09.000 The tank enhances it.

01:21:11.000 The tank, well, it's interesting.

01:21:12.000 I was just going to say that I was trying to figure out what, when I was noticing my breath, like, what am I noticing here?

01:21:18.000 Am I actually feeling the breath or am I just hearing the breath come through the nose?

01:21:23.000 And just identifying that was actually a little bit interesting.

01:21:26.000 It actually boosted my level of attention to the breath when I decided to go in that direction.

01:21:31.000 Yeah, it's, excuse me, it's both.

01:21:33.000 I mean, you're hearing it, you're feeling it, but it's just the act of it, you know, the thing, the doing it, the doing it, and like this sort of like hypnotic in and out thing that happens when you have no sensory input whatsoever.

01:21:47.000 You're not feeling your feet on the ground, you feel weightless, you're not hearing anything, you're not seeing anything.

01:21:52.000 It's just a particularly effective environment for exploring your thoughts.

01:21:57.000 There's an expression sometimes that's feeling or an experience of being breathed.

01:22:02.000 So it's like you're no longer doing the breathing.

01:22:05.000 The breathing is just happening.

01:22:06.000 It's like you're being breathed by a giant cosmic lung.

01:22:11.000 And it's like that.

01:22:12.000 You know that feeling?

01:22:13.000 That letting go?

01:22:14.000 Yeah.

01:22:15.000 Try to do that in the tank. 0.55

01:22:17.000 And it's just like you just let go of any sense of that.

01:22:20.000 There's a doer.

01:22:21.000 And it's just that you just start to taste yourself as this process.

01:22:25.000 This thing that's just happening, you know, and a bird is passing outside.

01:22:29.000 The clouds are passing and someone's walking across the street talking on their phone and you're being breathed.

01:22:34.000 It's all just one system that's just happening.

01:22:38.000 It's also interesting, too, when I'm in the tank, I lose the sense of what is up and what's down.

01:22:45.000 Like, you lose, like, what...

01:22:48.000 When you're lying there and you're floating, you kind of lose this.

01:22:51.000 Everything seems like all over the place, but in the thought of relaxing and letting go, it's always going down.

01:22:58.000 It's always like a deeper thing.

01:23:00.000 It's always like settling in more, settling in more.

01:23:03.000 It always seems to go towards your back, like you're just sinking in deeper and deeper and deeper.

01:23:09.000 It's one of the only times we have a sensation of a very particular direction that you're going in.

01:23:13.000 I found the directionlessness of it, that initially was quite scary for me.

01:23:18.000 That I was, you know, am I moving?

01:23:20.000 Or is this inner ear stuff?

01:23:22.000 You know, like, it was just that...

01:23:24.000 You feel like you're flying, right?

01:23:25.000 Yeah, but I didn't experience it as a soaring, I experienced it as more terrifying.

01:23:31.000 Falling.

01:23:31.000 Do we have footage of Dan clawing the inside of the isolation tank?

01:23:36.000 It's a practice, man.

01:23:38.000 I see the value.

01:23:40.000 I mean, another thing that actually kind of reminds me of my last meditation retreat where we're talking about physical discomfort, my teacher and I, and because I was experiencing a lot of physical pain from long sitting for a long time, pain comes up.

01:23:52.000 And I was asking, you know, is it okay for me to quit at some point because this pain is too intense?

01:23:57.000 And he, Joseph, was arguing, you know, I think you want to test your limits on this.

01:24:02.000 Obviously, at some point, you're going to get up.

01:24:04.000 But you want to...

01:24:05.000 We're gradually increasing the amount that we can stand.

01:24:10.000 And that to me seems very similar to the value that I can perceive of getting back in the sensory deprivation tank of being able to be with that fear a little bit more, test the limit a little bit more consistently so that my world isn't getting smaller.

01:24:26.000 People echo that same sentiment when it comes to psychedelics.

01:24:29.000 I was about to think about that.

01:24:30.000 I was thinking that's the next test for Dan.

01:24:32.000 I've long been very interested.

01:24:33.000 There's a lot of, as you know, there's been a growing body of research into the salutary effects of psychedelics.

01:24:41.000 A lot of it's being done at NYU on cancer patients who have anxiety, but there's also some specific work being done at Johns Hopkins on meditators.

01:25:01.000 I've had a long-standing desire to get into this study.

01:25:05.000 My shrink and my wife strongly argue that I shouldn't.

01:25:10.000 Somebody with my kind of Brain chemistry, who has to go on and perform under pressure when the red light's on on TV, probably not a great idea to dose myself with psychedelics, but this is something I've been wrestling with a lot.

01:25:23.000 What are you worried about?

01:25:24.000 Psychedelics?

01:25:25.000 Yeah, what do you think is going to happen?

01:25:26.000 It's right back to my worries in the tank.

01:25:30.000 To me, I was thinking a lot about psychedelics, and I've had, you know, when I was a kid and...

01:25:34.000 And would smoke weed, I would have panic attacks.

01:25:36.000 And I think it's about the desire for control, the ego, the thinking mind moves in.

01:25:41.000 And it's like a vampire confronted with garlic.

01:25:44.000 My ego is recoiling and can't handle the lack of control.

01:25:49.000 And it's not just the energy of those experiences that's so intense, where you just have no control over it, but it's also, it just blows apart your worldview.

01:25:57.000 Like, you had this idea, you think, oh, you think you know what's really going on, and then you have one of those experiences, and it just shows you that you don't know anything.

01:26:03.000 Well, and you think you are there.

01:26:05.000 You think you are you, that there's some solid you there, and that is called into question fundamentally.

01:26:10.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:26:10.000 It is called in question.

01:26:11.000 But it's humbling to be shown that all your ideas about how you think things are are just that, you know, that it's just like that, you know, you don't know fuck all. 0.91

01:26:21.000 And that has been, that's my experience from doing that stuff. 0.97

01:26:24.000 It's like, it just shows me that I'm just, you know what, just sit back, dude.

01:26:28.000 Sit back and let nature do what nature's going to do in some way.

01:26:33.000 But how can you say sit back, dude, when there's no dude there?

01:26:35.000 When that's what you're starting to see.

01:26:37.000 Well, you get exploded, so you get...

01:26:40.000 Basically, it's a win-win situation.

01:26:42.000 Either you win because you're able to stay super equanimous with the greater and greater intensity of what you're experiencing under a trip, or you win because you don't stay equanimous, you fight with it, and you get ripped to shreds, and in that humbling moment, that in itself is deeply consoling and healing.

01:26:59.000 I think it's like both sides of that are positive.

01:27:02.000 It's like a net positive gain on both sides of that.

01:27:04.000 That's how I legitimate it when I'm getting ripped apart.

01:27:10.000 Getting ripped apart.

01:27:11.000 Yeah, it does.

01:27:12.000 You see what I'm worried about?

01:27:14.000 Yeah.

01:27:14.000 That's what I'm worried about.

01:27:15.000 Yeah.

01:27:16.000 I think if you just relax, you'll be fine.

01:27:18.000 Yeah, I know, but that's one of those things like when people say relax or get out of your own way, for somebody as tightly wound as me, it's a frustrating thing to hear because it's hard for me to operationalize.

01:27:29.000 You just got to resist that clench.

01:27:32.000 Resist the clench.

01:27:33.000 Just...

01:27:35.000 Let it go.

01:27:35.000 But sometimes you do get ripped apart.

01:27:38.000 Yeah, most of the time, if you do it right.

01:27:40.000 If you do that hero's dose, it's like...

01:27:42.000 That's part of the thing about it, though, is you're supposed to.

01:27:45.000 Is that a thing?

01:27:45.000 Hero's dose?

01:27:46.000 Terrence McKenna.

01:27:47.000 Yeah.

01:27:48.000 Five dried grams.

01:27:50.000 Heroic dose.

01:27:51.000 I thought it was seven.

01:27:52.000 You can go to seven if you're interested, but five dried grams is the recommended threshold.

01:27:58.000 Yeah, that's a different kind of mushroom experience.

01:28:00.000 Yeah.

01:28:01.000 Yeah.

01:28:02.000 I think it's one of those things where if you test yourself slowly but surely in those waters, you'll get more and more accustomed to the feeling of relaxation and letting go.

01:28:15.000 And treat it like it's a shamanic experience, like it's a very deep, intensive search to the very meaning of your existence.

01:28:25.000 And don't think of it as like, oh my god, I'm about to do drugs.

01:28:30.000 Right.

01:28:31.000 But they're not dissimilar in the way that when you don't know up from down, when you have no sensation of your body anymore, that is exposing the fundamental fact that,

01:28:46.000 as Jeff has used as this description over and over, I think quite beautifully throughout this discussion, which is that we aren't as solid as we think.

01:28:54.000 We are, in fact, a process.

01:28:56.000 Right.

01:28:58.000 You're trying to console the dude, it's okay.

01:29:00.000 That dude or dudette, there's no there there. 0.99

01:29:04.000 And that, I could see myself going in that direction in the tank.

01:29:08.000 That's inexorably where it takes you.

01:29:10.000 And that is where psychedelics take you.

01:29:12.000 And again, I'm in this weird position because I'm deeply interested in that experience.

01:29:17.000 And I've tasted it in my own meditation for sure.

01:29:20.000 But I'm also scared.

01:29:22.000 Yeah, I mean, this is where meditation goes.

01:29:24.000 But what's the fear?

01:29:26.000 Seeing that the you that you've been defending and protecting since sentience actually doesn't exist is, I think, ultimately very liberating.

01:29:38.000 Really is the true liberation, but seeing it initially as a newbie...

01:29:47.000 Is it tears apart, as Jeff says, your worldview.

01:29:50.000 Our worldview is based on us at the center.

01:29:54.000 It's a death experience.

01:29:55.000 Yes, exactly.

01:29:56.000 So it seems to me it's like you want to learn how to swim, but you're really only interested in calf-high water.

01:30:02.000 Because if you really want to learn how to swim, what happens is they take you out in a jet ski out into the middle of the ocean and they go, jump off, dude.

01:30:12.000 You're now in the center of the ocean.

01:30:13.000 And that's the psychedelic trip. 1.00

01:30:15.000 The psychedelic trip is you are fucking swimming. 0.99

01:30:19.000 There's no ifs, ands, or buts. 1.00

01:30:21.000 You must keep going or you're going to drown.

01:30:23.000 I think there are different approaches based on different people because I think you're exactly right that I want to swim but my tendency is to stick to the calf high water but you're from what I know about you and having spent a little bit of time with you and just following you you're kind of a baller like you're ready to go out on the jet ski and jump in or do all this crazy stuff that traditionally I mean I have done some crazy things that we've discussed but traditionally I'm more cautious and I think for somebody with my kind of brain chemistry somebody who's Brain

01:30:53.000 is very good at panicking.

01:30:54.000 I think there's a more stepwise approach, which is what I'm intrigued by, which is what we keep discussing, which is test those limits time and again.

01:31:03.000 Keep testing them.

01:31:04.000 Don't let up.

01:31:05.000 For example, my shrink, the one who got me to stop doing drugs after I had a panic attack on television and helped me kind of straighten myself out.

01:31:17.000 I had a panic attack or the beginnings of a panic attack on a subway about five years ago.

01:31:22.000 And it was, for me, it was devastating because I was like, this is such a setback.

01:31:27.000 I'm right back at stage one and my world's going to get smaller again.

01:31:30.000 So I went to go see him kind of on an emergent basis.

01:31:33.000 And he laid out a plan, which is...

01:31:35.000 I think?

01:31:51.000 A car.

01:31:52.000 And then get off before the door closes.

01:31:54.000 Five to ten days.

01:31:56.000 And then after that, I want you to get on and go one stop.

01:31:59.000 And basically, he got me back on the subway.

01:32:02.000 Because I was able to gradually get through.

01:32:05.000 I'm not Joe Rogan.

01:32:07.000 I would never be able to host a show called Fear Factor the way you did unless it was a completely different show where you're not getting in a tank full of torrentulas on the first day.

01:32:17.000 I have to do it in a stepwise progression because that's the way my brain is wired.

01:32:21.000 That's legit to me.

01:32:23.000 That's legit that there's going to be different ways for different folks to do it.

01:32:26.000 There definitely is.

01:32:27.000 Were you exposed to a lot of difficulty when you were young?

01:32:32.000 Did you have to overcome physical adversity?

01:32:35.000 Did you participate in any one-on-one sports or anything like that?

01:32:38.000 I think the problem was just the opposite.

01:32:40.000 That I had two incredibly loving former hippie parents and was a bit of a spoiled kid.

01:32:47.000 And Jeff and I have talked about this, that to the extent that I experience anger or frustration, Sorry.

01:32:55.000 It's because I'm not getting what I want.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:32:59.000 But I did do some competitive sports.

01:33:01.000 I just wasn't very good at it.

01:33:03.000 So have you guys heard of somatic experiencing?

01:33:06.000 No.

01:33:07.000 Somatic experiencing.

01:33:08.000 It's this super interesting way of addressing trauma that is starting to get really influential in the body work community and psychotherapists and psychiatrists and psychologists are starting to look at it and there's been a bunch of good papers out about it.

01:33:22.000 But basically the thesis, it comes from being really a guy named Peter Levine who spent a lot of time looking at animal behavior.

01:33:29.000 And what he noticed is that when animal goes into a fight or flight situation, so you're a gazelle and all of a sudden there's the tiger and then you just explode into action.

01:33:41.000 So there's this explosive release of energy running or fighting, whatever it is.

01:33:45.000 Afterwards, they'll often go into this shaking effect where they'll start trembling unconsciously or they can't control it.

01:33:52.000 And what they think is that it's like discharging all the excess energy.

01:33:56.000 And then they go back to homeostasis.

01:33:57.000 And so his theory is that what happens with human beings is because we have these giant frontal lobes that we get shocks to our nervous system and we can't discharge the energy. 0.63

01:34:08.000 We can't We can't fucking punch our boss in the face or we can't run or whatever. 0.75

01:34:12.000 And this is the same as when we're kids. 0.99

01:34:13.000 We just swallow it up.

01:34:14.000 We swallow it up.

01:34:15.000 And that trapped energy in the nervous system starts to become our neurotic habits.

01:34:20.000 It becomes chronic It becomes anxiety.

01:34:23.000 It becomes panic attacks.

01:34:24.000 It becomes chronic aggression or irritability.

01:34:27.000 Also, chronic freeze responses get stuck in there, too, which is sort of like chronic not-there-ness or someone who's sort of a little bit dreamy.

01:34:34.000 And so somatic experiencing is the whole way of working with it where basically it's sort of like exposure therapy, but it's not the same.

01:34:43.000 It's very meditative.

01:34:44.000 It's like you're working with somebody and they go, Okay, why are you—come into the room, where do you feel comfortable sitting?

01:34:50.000 It's like, oh, I feel comfortable sitting over here.

01:34:52.000 Why did you sit there?

01:34:54.000 Well, I kind of like having my back to the wall.

01:34:56.000 Well, what is it about having your back to the wall that makes you feel more comfortable?

01:34:59.000 I just feel this.

01:35:00.000 And it's like, well, then what's the opposite?

01:35:01.000 What's the discomfortable thing?

01:35:20.000 I'm trying to make it vivid or visual.

01:35:24.000 That's how you work with this stuff.

01:35:25.000 So you can start to drain out these patterns of chronic fear, these patterns of chronic fight.

01:35:31.000 You do it by noticing how that pattern is in your body, connecting to it, and then it can kind of empty out.

01:35:38.000 It's so interesting because it also just blows the lid off trauma.

01:35:44.000 Trauma is going to be different for every person.

01:35:46.000 All trauma is is just shock to the nervous system.

01:35:48.000 It's not just about, you know, surviving a terrorist attack or, you know, all this horrible stuff.

01:35:53.000 It's like someone might do something to Dan in the smallest way when he's a two year old.

01:35:58.000 That wasn't any big deal.

01:36:00.000 But it completely freaked him out.

01:36:01.000 It basically shocked his nervous system so intensely that now there's that pattern of shock that's in there that still lives in there.

01:36:08.000 And what happens?

01:36:09.000 It just grows and grows and grows.

01:36:11.000 Because if you don't release that energy, it just keeps causing havoc in the system.

01:36:15.000 That's the thinking of somatic experiencing. 0.91

01:36:18.000 It's And I've been working with somebody, and just to make it real, I've had a lot of injuries in my life, like broken neck and busted shoulder and different things from just being a jackass.

01:36:29.000 But one time I got hit by this truck. 0.98

01:36:32.000 I was on my bike, and it blew up my shoulder, hit the ground, and then the back of the truck hit me in the ass, sent me spinning. 0.95

01:36:41.000 And so one time I was in there working with this somatic experiencing lady And she's like, what direction do you want to look in? 0.95

01:36:47.000 I'm like, I kind of feel like looking this way.

01:36:49.000 You don't want to feel like looking that way?

01:36:50.000 And I'm like, I don't really want to turn my head this way.

01:36:54.000 And I realized that that's always there.

01:36:56.000 I kind of don't want to look this way.

01:36:57.000 And she's like, well, what happens when you look this way?

01:37:00.000 And it was like...

01:37:01.000 I started looking this way and it was hard to do and suddenly I remember the fucking impact of this truck from when I was 17 years old on this side of my body and I could feel that the impact was still in my body and she got me to work to turn my head and like she got me to connect to that to that so I'm thinking of that memory and I'm feeling that memory in my body and she gets me to work through that turning my head and the act of doing that was like all of a sudden I felt all this new freedom and 0.86

01:37:31.000 this pattern.

01:37:32.000 I've now not had that issue as much.

01:37:34.000 And that's just to give you an example of how you would work in that mode.

01:37:37.000 Isn't that cool?

01:37:39.000 I mean, I find that unbelievable.

01:37:41.000 I do too.

01:37:41.000 That is interesting.

01:37:43.000 Listening to your story about your life, about the lack of difficulty, it sort of reinforces my ideas about martial arts in that...

01:37:52.000 It's not about learning how to be a great fighter, learning how to beat people up.

01:37:58.000 It's learning how to battle your own internal demons and confront insecurities and fears.

01:38:05.000 And to do it on a regular basis frees up a lot of the mental landscape.

01:38:11.000 It allows you to just be more relaxed about a lot of different approaches to life and this tension and control that we have.

01:38:20.000 It's a lot of time just pointless, and that's highlighted by martial arts training.

01:38:26.000 Yeah, I think it's almost always pointless.

01:38:28.000 Yeah, but although, you know, the thing is, if you look at a good fighter, just like if you look at a good dancer, there's definitely a sense in which they're just flowing and they're responding, but then when they need to be tense, boom, they got it.

01:38:40.000 It's like they got that power behind them.

01:38:41.000 It's like if you were dancing, for example, and all you did was just flabby There'd be no form to it.

01:38:49.000 It's like you need the pulling in, you need that.

01:38:51.000 So it's about the intelligent use of tension, knowing when to be soft and then having those two sides.

01:38:59.000 Yeah, but what I'm talking about, though, is the management of stressful, physically difficult things on a regular basis frees the mind.

01:39:08.000 It's just the getting comfortable with conflict.

01:39:13.000 And in the absence of conflict, then you look to try to restrict and control everything.

01:39:18.000 And then every little affront to that, any little questioning and challenging of your control over things can cause anxiety.

01:39:25.000 Because you're uncomfortable with this idea of surrender, of relaxing.

01:39:29.000 Totally.

01:39:30.000 Whether it's in psychedelics or whether it's meditation or all these things, there's so many parallels.

01:39:35.000 Yeah.

01:39:36.000 And stand-up comedy, communicating, podcasts, hosting Good Morning America.

01:39:40.000 I mean, there's so many parallels because a lot of it is in managing the mind and just being able to, again, get out of your own way.

01:39:49.000 I agree. 0.99

01:39:51.000 We got that shit sorted out. 0.99

01:39:53.000 For now. 0.99

01:39:54.000 Tomorrow it'll pop up again.

01:39:56.000 That's why you gotta keep doing it.

01:39:58.000 It's like, hey, these books are all saying the same thing again and again and again, but you still need to read it because you forget.

01:40:04.000 Yeah, and it gets a little bit easier all the time.

01:40:07.000 Managing the mind gets a little easier, and part of it you can chalk up to maturity and life experience, but it's also just this continual practice of paying attention to what's going on inside your head.

01:40:17.000 Exactly right.

01:40:17.000 I mean, Jeff doesn't like my analogy that I'm about to use because he thinks it's slightly aggressive, and he's right, but it's mostly meant for comic effect.

01:40:25.000 But it's like when you have a dog who takes a shit on the rug, sometimes you've got to put their snout in the shit. 0.99

01:40:30.000 And that is what we're doing in meditation and in all of these practices. 1.00

01:40:35.000 Seeing over and over again how crazy we are, how the fear arises, how the anger arises, how the discontent with whatever's happening right now arises and not getting owned by it.

01:40:47.000 And that's why these practices are so useful and why you've got to stick with them.

01:40:51.000 You don't get just fixed.

01:40:52.000 You know, it doesn't work that way.

01:40:54.000 There's nothing like that.

01:40:54.000 No.

01:40:55.000 There are a lot of people out there selling them.

01:40:58.000 Yeah, they are, right?

01:40:59.000 But they're not selling something real.

01:41:01.000 What's the most annoying aspect of that to you guys?

01:41:06.000 Please.

01:41:06.000 The power of positive thinking.

01:41:08.000 Oh, you know, we were talking about that yesterday, where people were talking about President Oprah, and I reminded everyone about Oprah and the secret.

01:41:16.000 Yes. 0.83

01:41:16.000 I'm like, do you know how many fucking people ruin their lives because they thought all they had to do was have a vision board and think positive, and this is going to be the key to happiness? 0.83

01:41:25.000 I think it's one of the most pernicious ideas that's ever been sort of released into our culture. 0.93

01:41:32.000 And it even predates the secret because there's a book called The Power of Positive Thinking.

01:41:37.000 There's another book called Think and Grow Rich.

01:41:38.000 I don't want people to go buy these books because I don't think you should.

01:41:43.000 The idea that you can solve all of your problems through the power of positive thinking is so easily disproved.

01:41:52.000 Just engage in the following thought experiment.

01:41:56.000 Anybody who's born right now in a refugee camp, were they thinking incorrectly in utero?

01:42:02.000 In 2010, when the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was everybody in town thinking incorrectly?

01:42:09.000 Did they bring that upon themselves?

01:42:11.000 Of course not.

01:42:12.000 Of course not.

01:42:13.000 And yet, we're telling all these people that if you make a good vision board, you can cure your cancer.

01:42:18.000 Well, you don't have to go to the doctor.

01:42:20.000 It is demonstrably false and recklessly dangerous.

01:42:25.000 And most of the people that have had success with the power of positive thinking, they attribute it to that, but you're not talking to any of the people that thought the exact same way and failed.

01:42:36.000 You're only talking to the successful people.

01:42:38.000 The sampling is so biased. 0.99

01:42:40.000 The only people who've had all their problems solved through the power of positive thinking are the people writing those fucking books and selling all the copies. 0.98

01:42:48.000 And by the way, if it was that easy, there'll only be one book. 0.99

01:42:51.000 They keep writing books.

01:42:52.000 They keep saying, come back to this next seminar in this freezing cold room with your credit card.

01:42:57.000 But I will say, like, the one part of it that the idea that you can have an intention, that having a clear intention of something of how you want to be or something you want to have happen, that that can be helpful, I think that's common sense.

01:43:08.000 There's a difference between having a positive attitude.

01:43:11.000 Yeah.

01:43:12.000 Which is absolutely beneficial.

01:43:14.000 Yes, absolutely.

01:43:15.000 Do you guys, have you heard, you know William James, the great kind of psychologist, mystic?

01:43:20.000 He was a mystic.

01:43:22.000 He had this really cool, he talked about, I think it was called First born versus twice born, or once born, once born and twice born.

01:43:29.000 And it was a fundamental way in which he distinguished people who had, who had maybe had a spiritual outlook in life.

01:43:35.000 And he said the once born people were people who were just naturally, they were kind of the positive thinkers, the kind of like, Everything is perfect.

01:43:42.000 Everything is awesome.

01:43:43.000 This like rose-colored view of reality and really not able to kind of see suffering and everything, that kind of a thing.

01:43:50.000 And we all kind of know people like that, like kind of the classic, naive spiritual person.

01:43:56.000 But he was really interested in what he called the twice-born, and that's what he was, and I feel like that's certainly how I identify, which is somebody who can come into a kind of perspective, like a mystical or a spiritual perspective, but only did it via having to look hard at the reality of suffering, 0.77

01:44:13.000 at the reality of evil, of fucked up shit in the world, like that you can't wave away the world's unfair distribution of wealth and hardship, and that you had to come to that You had to come to your view through honest reckoning with the crappy stuff about being a human being and the crappy stuff that's out there and that you couldn't not look at it.

01:44:34.000 And if you could do that, like Tolstoy was the famous example, then you kind of could be reborn into a perspective that was wide enough to include the full bittersweet. 0.99

01:44:45.000 And so I think that's what...

01:44:46.000 I think to the twice-born, the first-born outlook is kind of repellent because it seems like it's not looking at the truth of All the very real challenges that are going out there.

01:44:57.000 It's like you could just go to your yoga class and eat your perfect raw food and be in your perfect bubble.

01:45:02.000 But meanwhile, the world is just contracted in pain.

01:45:06.000 To really be a kind of true expansive humanist is to kind of look at all that and to still find your way into thinking that life is worth living.

01:45:15.000 There's a mystery there.

01:45:19.000 I guess you have to recognize that there are these horrible things in the world, but concentrating on them fully and only is not going to benefit you in any way, shape or form.

01:45:30.000 It's like there are amazing things to this life, and the more you concentrate on them, the more you'll recognize them, the more you'll sort of bask in the amazing experience that we're all going through right now.

01:45:44.000 And so what you're describing is elements of positive thinking.

01:45:47.000 Sure.

01:45:48.000 That's the good side.

01:45:49.000 That's totally legitimate.

01:45:50.000 It's positivity or positive attitude as opposed to positive thinking, which is loaded up with this idea of sort of mental control of the external world.

01:45:59.000 And that, I think, is...

01:46:01.000 What's dangerous?

01:46:01.000 What I think Joe's describing is gratitude.

01:46:04.000 Yes, gratitude is giant.

01:46:05.000 Absolutely.

01:46:06.000 That's so important.

01:46:07.000 But it's important to parse this out.

01:46:08.000 What part of this is healthy and good and what part of this is destructive is what we're trying to do.

01:46:12.000 Yes, I agree.

01:46:13.000 Right, and what part of it you could parse out from what you would call the law of attraction, which is not a law.

01:46:19.000 No, it is not.

01:46:20.000 I mean, that's another part of the problem, too.

01:46:22.000 Like, the woo is written in the title.

01:46:24.000 Yeah.

01:46:24.000 Like, it's not a law.

01:46:26.000 It's just, that's not what it is. 1.00

01:46:28.000 So you calling it the law of attraction lets me know you're full of shit. 1.00

01:46:31.000 That was law made by Zeus, dude. 1.00

01:46:33.000 Did you see that episode of Hercules?

01:46:35.000 There's something that's undeniably important about positive thinking.

01:46:43.000 Yeah.

01:47:01.000 Say that, that this is what they use.

01:47:03.000 Like, you know, you might have been successful, and that might be your underlying thought process, but there's a wide series of factors.

01:47:14.000 There's a big spectrum of things that had to happen for you to be successful, including luck, including the great fortune of being born in America.

01:47:22.000 Privilege.

01:47:24.000 There's so many different places you could be, so many different life experiences you could have had, horrific parental situations and household situations you could have been born into.

01:47:33.000 You're extremely lucky.

01:47:35.000 No question.

01:47:36.000 Look at the case of James Arthur Ray.

01:47:37.000 I covered it extensively for ABC News that he was one of the gurus in The Secret, in the DVD of The Secret.

01:47:45.000 He was one of the guys talking about how the universe is like Aladdin's lamp.

01:47:49.000 And he held a sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Arizona, in which several people died, and he went to prison.

01:47:54.000 So how well was the law of attraction working for him?

01:47:57.000 Yeah.

01:47:58.000 Or maybe it did work.

01:48:00.000 Yeah, maybe. 1.00

01:48:01.000 He put out a bunch of bullshit and got some bullshit. 1.00

01:48:02.000 Yeah, they also found in his hotel room a lot of, like, HGH and testosterone and stuff like that. 0.99

01:48:08.000 So he definitely wasn't as buff just through the power of positive thinking.

01:48:13.000 And he was trying to do what with the sweat lodge?

01:48:17.000 Like, what was the idea?

01:48:18.000 Like...

01:48:18.000 Look, the sweat lodge is a beautiful ceremony for Native Americans.

01:48:22.000 Did he get people too hot or something?

01:48:23.000 He got them too hot and they overheated and their electrolyte balance got crazy or something.

01:48:28.000 And how many?

01:48:29.000 Two people died or something like that?

01:48:30.000 You know, it was a while ago, so I can't remember, but I think it was two people.

01:48:35.000 The problem with a lot of those people, too, is that what they do is they put together some sort of a program.

01:48:42.000 Maybe it's a book.

01:48:43.000 Maybe it's a guideline that you're supposed to follow.

01:48:46.000 Then they start teaching seminars in it, and they start putting it into practice and leading all these people with this stuff.

01:48:52.000 And then it becomes who they are.

01:48:53.000 Who they are is like a guru.

01:48:56.000 Who they are is like this spiritual person.

01:48:58.000 And people come to them.

01:48:59.000 That's the dynamic they have.

01:49:01.000 People come to them.

01:49:01.000 What should I do?

01:49:03.000 The universe provides bounty.

01:49:06.000 Oh, and everybody claps and goes along with it.

01:49:08.000 And they live in this sort of bubble.

01:49:10.000 Yeah.

01:49:11.000 It gets really odd with those folks.

01:49:14.000 Yeah.

01:49:14.000 I mean, that was why...

01:49:15.000 I mean, I had been assigned years and years ago to cover faith and spirituality for ABC News, even though I'm an agnostic.

01:49:22.000 And I ended up covering a lot of these New Age gurus.

01:49:25.000 And that was why I ended up...

01:49:27.000 The first book I wrote was called 10% Happier.

01:49:29.000 Because I was trying to... 1.00

01:49:30.000 Counterprogram against the howling sea of bullshit. 0.98

01:49:33.000 Yeah, that is America's 11 billion dollar a year self-help industry because I was watching what this was doing to people's lives It's so far. 0.59

01:49:41.000 I mean we've been talking about that a lot lately There's so many people that are trying to get in this on sort of the open mic level when you see it on Instagram like there's a lot of people like Promoting these inspirational little posts and you know they'll have these little inspirational videos like you know what you got to do today is go out there and embrace life and just go after your goals and like and there's so many people that are trying to give people this fuel and give people this info and They

01:50:11.000 might not necessarily really even be in practice with that themselves.

01:50:18.000 Yeah.

01:50:18.000 I like your analogy about the open mic.

01:50:21.000 That is what it's like.

01:50:22.000 It's like they're trying it out.

01:50:23.000 They're learning how to be an Anthony Robbins or a Tony Robbins.

01:50:26.000 It's funny.

01:50:27.000 I had a friend who was living in France, and he came back to Canada.

01:50:30.000 And he'd been in Paris, living there for like 10 years or something.

01:50:34.000 So he's walking around the streets of Toronto, and he said it was the same when he was anywhere in North America.

01:50:40.000 And he kept feeling like there was something wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

01:50:43.000 He was like, what is wrong?

01:50:44.000 Something wrong.

01:50:45.000 And then he realized that everyone was actually having the same conversation all the time over and over again, which was, everything's going to be all right.

01:50:51.000 Everything's going to be all right.

01:50:52.000 Everything's going to be all right.

01:50:53.000 It was just this constant peppy cheerleading from everywhere. 0.99

01:50:56.000 Whereas in France, it's just like, things are fucked. 1.00

01:50:59.000 That is fucked. 1.00

01:51:00.000 No, you are shit. 1.00

01:51:02.000 That's what it's like being in France. 1.00

01:51:03.000 It's like, at least they're honest.

01:51:05.000 Well, that has its downside.

01:51:06.000 Of course it has its downside, but I mean, there's also a realism where people are just going to call it out as it is, where here there's a tendency just to kind of, there can be this kind of Pollyanna-ish, everything is fine, everything is fine, because people don't really want to lurk at what's lurking underneath.

01:51:20.000 Well, everything's fine right now.

01:51:23.000 In this moment, right?

01:51:25.000 Most of the time.

01:51:26.000 No doubt, bro.

01:51:27.000 Most of the time.

01:51:28.000 Can we talk about the mystical mystery underbelly weirdness stuff?

01:51:34.000 This idea that everything is fine in the moment, this exact moment right now.

01:51:40.000 So in practice, this is something Shinzen taught me, that the more you...

01:51:44.000 It's almost like the present moment is on a continuum.

01:51:48.000 And that doesn't make any sense, but it's like you can be present and you can be more present and more and more.

01:51:54.000 And you can start to get a feeling for that, for practice of just the absolute now.

01:51:59.000 It's like you're getting closer and closer to the absolute now with ever actually getting there, which I know just sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, but the feeling on the inside is just this...

01:52:08.000 Everything is, it's like the silence, this presence, it's like this sacredness, you know, the no bullshit kind of sacredness.

01:52:17.000 That, what is that?

01:52:18.000 You know, that to me is like, I wrote about consciousness for a long time before I started realizing that there's this thing here, and how do you talk about it?

01:52:26.000 How do you write about it in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous, you know?

01:52:29.000 And yet, it is the most important thing.

01:52:31.000 It is the most, it orients you, you know, to be able to come into that understanding.

01:52:37.000 Yeah, how do we talk about it?

01:52:38.000 You know, the mystics have always said it's, you can't talk about it.

01:52:41.000 It's ineffable, but it's true as an experience.

01:52:44.000 But where is it being talked about intelligently?

01:52:46.000 Where are you going to read about that in the New Yorker magazine or whatever?

01:52:50.000 You know, it's like it's either talked about in this Disneyland way or it's not talked about at all.

01:52:55.000 It's like we got to try to talk about it.

01:52:57.000 We got to try to or at least maybe not talk about it coming to find practices, you know, but honor that it's real.

01:53:03.000 And, you know, that's something I'm really interested in.

01:53:07.000 And I'm trying to learn how to do it.

01:53:08.000 Now, let me ask you this.

01:53:09.000 As an outsider, if someone is coming to this with zero meditation experience, no thought whatsoever about pursuing this, and they're listening to you say these things, like, okay, what's in it for me?

01:53:21.000 What do I get out of that?

01:53:22.000 What do I get if I can get to this?

01:53:25.000 What's in there?

01:53:26.000 It seems like you're just alive.

01:53:28.000 It doesn't seem like anything changes.

01:53:31.000 Well, I think that is what you get.

01:53:32.000 You get your life.

01:53:33.000 You get your life back.

01:53:34.000 Most of the time, you're not in your life.

01:53:35.000 You're freaking out about your life.

01:53:37.000 You're in your head thinking about this, this, or that happening, or you're responding to situations.

01:53:41.000 What you get is...

01:53:43.000 Yeah.

01:53:48.000 Yeah.

01:53:51.000 Yeah.

01:53:59.000 Even when things are objectively shitty.

01:54:00.000 Even when things are objectively shitty, there's bittersweetness.

01:54:02.000 So, you know, this poignancy to things.

01:54:04.000 It's like you get exactly your life, just more of it.

01:54:07.000 And that's why, you know, Shinzen used to say it's like you get to live ten times deeper or one time or two times deeper or three times or four times the more you practice.

01:54:18.000 It's the same surface, but it's the depth dimension that's getting richer and fuller and broader.

01:54:25.000 Yeah.

01:54:26.000 And so then it gives you the capacity to also to appreciate more and more what's going on.

01:54:30.000 Because most of the time we walk around like, this is the stuff I like looking at, but I don't like this stuff over here.

01:54:35.000 I don't want to feel these things or I don't want to see these things.

01:54:37.000 So we're like, we're kind of, you know, it's like we live, the analogy I use is like we're born into a mansion, but room by room, we're like, no, can't go in there.

01:54:46.000 Can't go in there.

01:54:46.000 That's my ex-girlfriend or that's my relationship with my parents or, oh, that's this limitation, this limitation.

01:54:51.000 At some point, we're just sitting there under the stairs.

01:54:54.000 Everything is fine.

01:54:55.000 Everything's fine.

01:54:56.000 Yeah, I'm really enjoying my life.

01:54:57.000 We're hiding in the dark under the stairs.

01:55:00.000 It's about reclaiming the mansion.

01:55:02.000 It's like, can you be...

01:55:03.000 Like you said, exactly.

01:55:04.000 Can you be free in more and more situations?

01:55:07.000 And can you begin to appreciate the beauty of even these difficult situations?

01:55:12.000 And that way, your whole life just can open up to you.

01:55:15.000 That's what the practice is about.

01:55:16.000 Another way of thinking about it is...

01:55:18.000 And this is a bit of a New Age trope, so it's a little annoying, but it's like what I said before that...

01:55:23.000 Clichés become clichés for a reason, and the reason is they're true, generally. 0.60

01:55:27.000 All you get, ever, is right now.

01:55:31.000 Everything you've experienced in your whole life happened to you right now, and everything you ever will experience will always happen to you right now.

01:55:39.000 Non-negotiable.

01:55:40.000 We live most of our lives, however, in an autopilot of, in a fog of rumination and projection, and we're not paying any attention to the only thing we ever get.

01:55:50.000 Meditation, digging more deeply into the present moment, is giving you your life back.

01:55:56.000 Now, how do you address, because what we're talking about is managing the mind and increasing happiness by 10% or more, hopefully.

01:56:07.000 How do you address psych meds?

01:56:10.000 Because a lot of people that are going down this road have already gone down the pharmaceutical road and might be inexorably connected to it in some sort of a way.

01:56:18.000 They might...

01:56:19.000 Be on anti-anxiety medication, be on antidepressants.

01:56:24.000 How do you address that?

01:56:25.000 I think I can speak for both of us in that we are maximalists.

01:56:29.000 That when it comes to well-being, you've got to surround the ball.

01:56:33.000 You've got to use every arrow in the quiver.

01:56:35.000 And...

01:56:37.000 Just because we're into meditation doesn't mean we're not into all the other scientifically proven ways of dealing with your mental health.

01:56:48.000 I often say that we, as a culture, we spend so much time working on our bodies, on our Stock portfolios on our cars and no time on the one filter through which we experience everything and that's our minds.

01:57:01.000 And so if you have clinically diagnosed anxiety or depression, which again, we need to be talking about more openly because there's so much stigma around it.

01:57:09.000 I've dealt with both since I was a kid.

01:57:11.000 If you have that, you should avail yourself of every possible remedy.

01:57:15.000 And if your doctor recommends that you take psych meds, then you should investigate it.

01:57:20.000 If it works for you, then stay on them.

01:57:21.000 Meditation is just another thing you can also use, along with exercise, getting enough sleep, having positive relationships, having a healthy diet, all the other no-brainers.

01:57:31.000 What Jeff and I are saying is, in the pantheon of no-brainers, meditation needs to be included.

01:57:38.000 Yeah, I think with the meds thing, sometimes meds can get you to the baseline of, then you can meditate.

01:57:46.000 And it's almost like, I mean, I know too many people whose lives have been, including people I know really, really well, really, really helped by these meds.

01:57:55.000 I know other people who have had a super hard time with it.

01:57:57.000 Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

01:57:58.000 And some of them, it's like it gets you to a place where it's almost like the meds can help buy time for your own system to work itself out.

01:58:06.000 And so you get to a place where you're – like I have a lot of trouble with crazy energy surges up and down.

01:58:12.000 Like a manic thing?

01:58:14.000 Yeah.

01:58:14.000 Like I get hypomanic and then I get disparate and then hypomanic.

01:58:18.000 I actually just got a diagnosis two weeks ago that I probably have a mild form of bipolar.

01:58:23.000 This is 46 years old.

01:58:25.000 I'm finally learning.

01:58:25.000 But it's not a surprise.

01:58:26.000 I kind of knew it.

01:58:27.000 How do they diagnose that?

01:58:28.000 So it was an interview.

01:58:31.000 So it's an hour long.

01:58:32.000 In this case, it was like an hour and a half or an hour long interview where a guy just really took my history, like how I've been challenged.

01:58:39.000 I had ADD, big-time ADD. That's been diagnosed multiple times just because of the way my attention works.

01:58:45.000 But he basically really asked me lots of questions about my history and when things started to get into the more surges.

01:58:54.000 And they've been getting worse the past, and this is interesting because I meditate a ton, and there was a period where the meditation was super, super working really well and stabilizing everything, and then there was a period where the meditation felt like it wasn't working as well and all this energy, it's like that trauma stuff I was talking about, all that stuff started to come up.

01:59:10.000 So I go more into these ups and downs, and I found that the practice would help, it would help me from feeding the spikes But it hasn't been totally addressing it.

01:59:20.000 Now, I haven't actually started any meds or done any lithium yet, although I'm thinking maybe I would try that because I won't understand what folks go through.

01:59:28.000 But basically, he just asked a lot of questions.

01:59:32.000 There's, you know, I guess they have a diagnostic criteria around a set of like, does that seem to make sense for what we know about it?

01:59:38.000 And because they've seen all these patients, they've got all these ideas.

01:59:41.000 And it's so new, I don't even know what to do with the information.

01:59:44.000 In fact, I'm kind of can't believe I'm talking about it, because it seems a bit premature.

01:59:48.000 But the way I think about it is I would consider doing meds because I just want to be able to get to a place where I could then let my body kind of heal itself, help itself out, figure itself out.

01:59:59.000 And the meds might buy me time to do that.

02:00:01.000 And the meditation can be part of that as well.

02:00:03.000 And that's just the messy human reality of it. 1.00

02:00:05.000 But you seem like you've got your shit together. 0.99

02:00:07.000 So what is it exactly that's bothering you so much that you'd actually be considering medication? 0.99

02:00:13.000 Well, it's...

02:00:14.000 Try writing a book with them.

02:00:15.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:00:17.000 So, I'm like fine six days a week, and then one day a week.

02:00:21.000 So, there's the attentional stuff, just being overexcited about things and getting pulled in every direction.

02:00:26.000 That's not really a problem so much anymore.

02:00:28.000 Like, I've learned to... 0.98

02:00:29.000 The problems there were more like you disappoint people, you feel like you can't get your shit together, you know, you're just... 0.98

02:00:36.000 You're just so scattered. 0.97

02:00:38.000 That can happen, and that can create its own challenges.

02:00:41.000 But the energy ones are more fundamental.

02:00:43.000 It's like, I wake up in the morning, you know, maybe once every week or two, and all of a sudden I can feel my heart pounding, and I can feel like this incredible energy in my hands, in my body, and I just, I'm in this hypomanic state, and I, and I, and it feels good.

02:00:58.000 I don't even realize it, but I'm going around, I'm talking, I'm excited about stuff, and I'm just jacked up on this like, on this energy.

02:01:05.000 And what comes up must go down.

02:01:07.000 So I usually like it, but then what will happen is I realize later that I've exaggerated.

02:01:13.000 Like, oh, I've gone into something and I've been too aggressive of a situation or I've been exaggerating some situation or I got grandiose about something. 0.97

02:01:20.000 And I feel super embarrassed that I was in this sort of like high and in a way that – and I didn't have my shit together at all. 0.86

02:01:27.000 And then I end up in the downswing, which is the – The catastrophizing, the despair sometimes. 0.55

02:01:34.000 That thing about being in the center that I was talking about, when it's there, it's so true and it's so there.

02:01:41.000 And all of a sudden I'm not there at all.

02:01:42.000 I don't feel anything.

02:01:44.000 I feel like there's no meaning to anything.

02:01:46.000 And I'm just in this desolation thing.

02:01:48.000 And that lasts for a few hours or like a day or something.

02:01:51.000 And then I'll pop out and I'm fine.

02:01:53.000 And I know that once a week or once every week, two weeks or something, I'm going to go into that cycle.

02:01:57.000 Now, I've done my whole life without having, I've tried to manage it entirely with meditation, with exercise, with diet.

02:02:03.000 And I may just continue to keep doing that.

02:02:06.000 Have you gotten better at it?

02:02:07.000 I have gotten better at managing it, absolutely no question.

02:02:10.000 I've gotten way better at not believing in it when I'm in a high, and not believing when I'm in the down.

02:02:15.000 I don't want to interrupt you, but the thought process, like when it kicks in, are you aware of it?

02:02:21.000 So, yeah, it starts as, well I am, because it starts as energy in the body, so I feel the vibratiness, and I'm like, okay, that's first my early warning sign.

02:02:29.000 And then it gets bigger and bigger, but the thing is, it's addictive.

02:02:33.000 Do you monitor your heart rate while this is happening? 0.99

02:02:35.000 No, but I can feel the fucking heart sometimes is going like a jackhammer. 0.99

02:02:38.000 And other times the heart, it cools out, but it's like the... 0.99

02:02:41.000 I mean, the power is still there.

02:02:44.000 The feeling of...

02:02:45.000 And it's that feeling of power, which is very...

02:02:47.000 Why don't you work out when that hits?

02:02:48.000 That's...

02:02:49.000 Dude, that is what I do. 0.99

02:02:50.000 I hit a punching bag. 0.99

02:02:51.000 This has been the best thing in the world for me is hitting a punching bag. 0.99

02:02:56.000 Meditation can't do shit when I'm in that place. 0.98

02:02:58.000 But punching bag, I feel calm and centered afterwards. 0.97

02:03:01.000 So that is the main intervention of what I'm doing.

02:03:03.000 I may never go the med route.

02:03:05.000 I think I can handle it.

02:03:06.000 I've been doing it until now.

02:03:08.000 But what makes me want to do it is I want to know what other people have to deal with.

02:03:12.000 I want to know what it's like to be on those things.

02:03:15.000 So I can help those people maximally and say, This is what I can tell you about what meditation can do, and this is what I can tell you about what it can't do.

02:03:21.000 This is what I can tell you about how physical practice can help, but how they might not be able to help.

02:03:25.000 This is what I can say about how meds have helped and haven't.

02:03:28.000 So if I can get experience with those different things and talk to lots of other people who've done it, then I can triangulate it on helping people out in a more effective way.

02:03:36.000 So when you get these surges, you get this energy surge, you exercise, you hit the bag, you feel great, does that even everything out?

02:03:45.000 Yeah, usually it can discharge the energy.

02:03:48.000 Then why on earth would you be thinking about taking lithium?

02:03:51.000 That seems insane if there's a very organic solution to this problem.

02:03:55.000 Well, I don't know that it always will work with the punching bag.

02:03:58.000 But it's working right now, right?

02:03:59.000 It hasn't perfectly worked every time.

02:04:02.000 When you say it hasn't perfectly...

02:04:04.000 So sometimes I go and I hit the bags and afterwards the energy is still in me.

02:04:07.000 It may not have the same edge, but I can still feel it.

02:04:11.000 Now when you say energy, it's really interesting to someone who doesn't get these surges.

02:04:16.000 I'm just trying to like...

02:04:17.000 Do you feel like you're on caffeine?

02:04:20.000 Do you feel like a speed thing?

02:04:22.000 Like speed.

02:04:22.000 It feels like...

02:04:23.000 Out of nowhere.

02:04:24.000 So you wake up and you're on speed.

02:04:25.000 I'm on speed.

02:04:26.000 Wow.

02:04:26.000 And there's nothing I did externally.

02:04:29.000 I didn't take anything.

02:04:30.000 I didn't do anything.

02:04:30.000 All of a sudden...

02:04:31.000 So this is the thing.

02:04:32.000 Is there a corresponding thought process that goes with this?

02:04:34.000 Is there a zest for life?

02:04:36.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

02:04:36.000 You're like, fucking life is awesome! 1.00

02:04:38.000 It's amazing. 1.00

02:04:38.000 I want to go kick some ass! 1.00

02:04:39.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:04:40.000 It's pure exuberance.

02:04:41.000 That sounds great.

02:04:42.000 It is great.

02:04:43.000 But that's the problem of it.

02:04:44.000 It's great, so you feed it.

02:04:46.000 So you're like, you want more of it.

02:04:47.000 So you just...

02:04:48.000 It's like...

02:04:48.000 So basically, it's like this.

02:04:50.000 It's also not always great for the people around you.

02:04:52.000 It's not always great for the people around you.

02:04:54.000 We're like this, right?

02:04:55.000 We have our ups and downs.

02:04:56.000 This is like, foom, foom, foom.

02:04:59.000 And the more you feed the up, the higher you go.

02:05:02.000 But that means that the bigger you have the fall.

02:05:04.000 So, like, that's what I've learned, is that when I... When I feed the grandiosity, the energy, the exuberance, like I'm super fun to be with at parties, for sure.

02:05:14.000 Like I'll do crazy shit. 0.96

02:05:15.000 That's usually when I've had all my injuries, like my various breaks because I've been on one of these crazy highs. 0.95

02:05:19.000 So that's another reason not to do it.

02:05:21.000 But inevitably, there's going to be a part where it's going to crash.

02:05:23.000 So now my whole job from being a meditation teacher is I feel the energy start to come up and I back off.

02:05:31.000 So it's like I let it just come through me.

02:05:33.000 I try to let it just...

02:05:34.000 Come up like a wave.

02:05:36.000 And it's really uncomfortable being in that vibrating energy and not acting on it. 1.00

02:05:41.000 Not saying some stupid shit or not being more... 1.00

02:05:45.000 Whatever. 1.00

02:05:46.000 Not acting on it and keeping it going.

02:05:47.000 I have to kind of let it...

02:05:48.000 So I just try to keep myself calm and centered.

02:05:51.000 And I try to let it just feed itself through.

02:05:53.000 Now with the punching bag or with the biking or with these things, that really can help with that process.

02:05:58.000 So I do think I might be on the verge of...

02:06:01.000 Maybe I won't do that.

02:06:03.000 Maybe I won't, but I don't know. 0.86

02:06:05.000 Because the thing is, dude, it's fucking hard. 0.87

02:06:08.000 Talk to anyone who's bipolar or in those ups and downs. 0.98

02:06:10.000 It's hard to be in that.

02:06:11.000 It's exhausting.

02:06:13.000 Every week, it's like you wake up, you don't know who you're going to be this week.

02:06:16.000 Who am I going to be today?

02:06:17.000 Or if you're in a down place, like now you've made all these plans with somebody and then you've got to cancel the plans.

02:06:22.000 But you're talking, you were saying this is a slightly bipolar situation for you.

02:06:27.000 So it's not, I think the bipolar, I'm not sure, one of them, there's bipolar 1 and bipolar 2, one is more extreme, like real mania, where you go and fucking buy 50 couches, and like, hey honey, I bought 50 couches, we're gonna put couches all over the neighborhood, you know, like your classic manic episode.

02:06:43.000 It doesn't go, for me, I never had that happen.

02:06:45.000 I just have the hypomania, so like, the lots of the energy, but I don't go into total craziness.

02:06:51.000 And biologically, what is the process?

02:06:54.000 What is actually happening to you that's causing this?

02:06:57.000 I don't know.

02:06:58.000 They don't understand that?

02:07:00.000 No, I mean, so this is new for me.

02:07:03.000 I just found out in two weeks, so I haven't really done the research on the brain science yet.

02:07:07.000 They do say there's a brain signature, just like there is for ADD, for bipolar.

02:07:11.000 There's a particular signature of what...

02:07:14.000 Of what it looks like.

02:07:15.000 It has some kind of dampening of the frontal activity.

02:07:17.000 So probably a lot of activation and maybe the amygdala or something.

02:07:21.000 I don't know.

02:07:22.000 All I know is from the inside, it really feels different.

02:07:25.000 It feels like...

02:07:26.000 I mean, I'm sure people can relate.

02:07:29.000 Like when you've had a coffee and you've got that vibrating energy or you're feeling super confident about yourself, but it's almost like your confidence goes too far.

02:07:39.000 You're a little bit, like, overconfident.

02:07:41.000 You know, you're kind of delusional.

02:07:44.000 And that actually happens in meditation, too.

02:07:47.000 Like, that stage, the upstage in meditation, people call it the arising and passing.

02:07:51.000 You can get into a stage where suddenly you really feel like you get it.

02:07:54.000 Oh, yeah, I understand.

02:07:55.000 It's like what Dan said. 0.99

02:07:56.000 They're going to put a fucking plaque here on the wall. 0.99

02:07:58.000 I'm the best meditator on the planet. 0.99

02:07:59.000 Because you've got, you're just, all that energy is coming through you.

02:08:04.000 And then inevitably, there's the crash.

02:08:07.000 So actually, that is why I didn't get diagnosed for so long.

02:08:10.000 I thought it was just meditation.

02:08:11.000 I was just noticing the cycles because of my meditation.

02:08:15.000 And it was really just ADD. And it wasn't until it started just to become, I started to see, okay, there is a real pattern here.

02:08:21.000 Like, I need to just talk to somebody and get some other perspectives on this.

02:08:26.000 I just, I think it's worth pointing out that it's highly unusual and very courageous for somebody in Jeff's position.

02:08:34.000 It's highly unusual for anybody to talk about having mental difficulties at all in our culture.

02:08:40.000 Unfortunately, we need more people who are willing to say, you know, I deal with anxiety, depression, bipolar, ADD. But for somebody who's a meditation teacher to do it, because as Jeff has said, that the traditional understanding of meditation teacher is,

02:08:56.000 Someone who's got their shit together on every level.

02:08:58.000 For somebody who's a meditation teacher to come out and say, yeah, I have these challenges, is incredibly brave and also really important.

02:09:07.000 Because I think, and working with Jeff on writing this book, one of the things, you know, there were times when these patterns that he's describing were very annoying to me to deal with as his co-author.

02:09:17.000 But over time, it actually, I started to see that He was wrestling with this stuff and in many ways felt like a meditation teacher.

02:09:25.000 It was obvious to me that he is a meditation teacher with imposter syndrome.

02:09:29.000 And now I think he gets, and I think you can hear what he's saying, that actually these challenges make him a better teacher.

02:09:36.000 That he's more in touch with the things that we're all dealing with and sometimes on...

02:09:40.000 On an exponentially higher level, you know, of degree of difficulty, and that therefore he's better at getting under the hood and helping other people with their mental challenges.

02:09:49.000 Yeah, like, so in many ways, like, what you're experiencing for your own profession is almost a gift.

02:09:56.000 That's why I see it.

02:09:57.000 Yeah, because you have this unique opportunity to explore your own consciousness in a very challenging way and also to be completely honest about it, which is very, very beneficial to not just your students but a lot of the people that are listening to this right now.

02:10:12.000 It's snout.

02:10:13.000 It's Dave Chappelle's snow.

02:10:14.000 It's living inside the snow.

02:10:16.000 It just makes everything more dramatic.

02:10:18.000 You can see the dynamics because it's so freaking dramatic in you.

02:10:22.000 You're then able to see the more subtle way it plays out for everyone.

02:10:25.000 The stuff I'm talking about, it's just the human condition, man.

02:10:28.000 Everyone is struggling with a version of this.

02:10:31.000 It may not be to that extreme thing, or they have an orthogonal challenge over here, something a little bit different.

02:10:36.000 So you're continually training your compassion for how hard it can be in life, but you're also learning very practically how to work with the dynamics of that stuff.

02:10:44.000 Is the downside of that the reaction to the upside, or is there a corresponding physical feeling?

02:10:52.000 I think of it as like a rope.

02:10:53.000 You've got a rope and it's like this.

02:10:55.000 It's just physics.

02:10:57.000 What comes up must come down.

02:10:59.000 And mine is a bit unusual in that I'm more up.

02:11:02.000 I don't have a ton of...

02:11:02.000 I don't stay down long.

02:11:04.000 That sounds great.

02:11:05.000 So that's why it took so long to get diagnosed.

02:11:08.000 But trust me, being up is deranged too.

02:11:14.000 I go back sometimes.

02:11:15.000 I had an experience where I just was trying to fix up my website.

02:11:17.000 I look back at an old talk I did. 0.74

02:11:20.000 And like that, I was video, I was in this big room, and I'm like, holy shit, I was so manic. 0.98

02:11:23.000 You know, I just had, I was crazy. 0.99

02:11:25.000 I was like, what the fuck was I doing? 0.90

02:11:27.000 What about the memos you sent me when we were writing a book? 0.97

02:11:29.000 Yeah.

02:11:29.000 So you're like...

02:11:30.000 Just say some crazy...

02:11:31.000 What was the...

02:11:32.000 Yeah.

02:11:33.000 Go ahead.

02:11:35.000 What was so crazy about the memos?

02:11:36.000 So, you know, I mean, do you want to explain it?

02:11:39.000 Okay, so we would be...

02:11:42.000 The book we wrote is for beginners.

02:11:44.000 It's like I wanted it to be really simple.

02:11:46.000 And we were doing it on a crazy deadline.

02:11:49.000 So we did a road trip across the country in January 2017. So not long ago.

02:11:56.000 And at the end of the road trip, we recorded all of it.

02:11:59.000 We got the transcripts back.

02:12:01.000 And we had to hand the book in in June.

02:12:03.000 That set me up on a schedule where I had to write a chapter a week.

02:12:06.000 Which is insane because I have a...

02:12:07.000 I anchor two shows at ABC, and I have a wife and a child.

02:12:11.000 And it would be insane even if I didn't have that.

02:12:13.000 And so my job was to write the narrative, the overarching structure of the book, and Jeff was going to write the meditation instructions that got inserted in. 0.97

02:12:21.000 And all I wanted from him was to give me some basic fucking meditation instructions. 0.80

02:12:26.000 I did not want an exegesis on like the... 0.98

02:12:30.000 The Upanishads, you know, like I didn't need him to go through and explain to me like the whole Pali canon from Buddhism or, you know, do his version of the Bhagavad Gita.

02:12:42.000 But he would send me these memos with his grandiose, he would be on a manic upswing.

02:12:47.000 He would have these ideas about how he was going to explain meditation as it's never been explained before as a series of exfoliations of the mind, blah, blah, blah, 17 pages.

02:12:56.000 50, 17 pages of like, of like tightly, you know, cause like you get the energy comes up and you get super excited.

02:13:02.000 And now I'm just pumped.

02:13:03.000 I want to talk about all these little kind of like, uh, complicated bits and put it all together and create this really elaborate scaffolding and a metaphor to describe exactly how the mind works.

02:13:11.000 And, and that's why, you know, uh, that's why I had, that's why I didn't get the book done before I was working on with Dan.

02:13:17.000 I spent 10 years working on this book about enlightenment, about the, about the progress of insight and meditation.

02:13:23.000 And I just kept getting more and more complicated because I would kind of simplify it and be very sane.

02:13:29.000 I'd have it all understood.

02:13:30.000 And then I would suddenly go into one of these episodes and I would explode it all and elaborate whole new dimensions of stuff.

02:13:36.000 And it was like I would never get anything done.

02:13:39.000 I want to say in your defense that the memo, because I've gone back and read the memo, they were great.

02:13:44.000 It's just not what I needed while writing a very simple book on a deadline.

02:13:48.000 And I would get these memos.

02:13:50.000 I don't know what to do with this.

02:13:52.000 Yeah.

02:13:53.000 And so that actually, you're putting your, so that is the reason why the ups are challenging.

02:13:58.000 Because when you're in an up, you're not really seeing the world as it is.

02:14:01.000 Like, this is a person who needs a very particular thing.

02:14:04.000 If you're just centered, you know that, you respond with that.

02:14:07.000 But you're in your own story about something.

02:14:09.000 And that is the part that's so pernicious or dangerous about the ups.

02:14:14.000 And, you know, and so that happened in the process of working in the book.

02:14:18.000 But then we got to sort it out.

02:14:19.000 But...

02:14:20.000 Yeah, of course.

02:14:21.000 Of course.

02:14:21.000 And there's something about being on an upswing like that.

02:14:25.000 And this can happen for everybody.

02:14:27.000 It's not just Jeff.

02:14:28.000 We're picking on Jeff here.

02:14:29.000 But when any of us is on an upswing or any of us is just caught in any mental state, your capacity for empathy and compassion goes way down because you're stuck in your own story.

02:14:41.000 And...

02:14:43.000 The name of the game here, at the end of the day, notwithstanding my already stated misgivings about words like compassion, that is where the rubber hits the road. 1.00

02:14:52.000 Because you can talk about performance, that is important, but I think the real measuring stick for how well you've trained your mind is, are you an asshole? 0.99

02:15:04.000 Yeah, that's huge, right? 0.99

02:15:06.000 How well are you interacting with other people?

02:15:09.000 That is the money.

02:15:12.000 Do you care enough about other people to actually see who they are?

02:15:14.000 Yes.

02:15:15.000 To see the character in their face, what they're really telling you? 0.99

02:15:19.000 Can you actually just get out of your own bullshit and see what's going on in front of you? 0.98

02:15:24.000 That's the name of the game. 0.99

02:15:25.000 Right, and the most awkward conversations you ever have are when people are just talking at you.

02:15:29.000 They're not even taking you into consideration.

02:15:32.000 Why would you even talk to that person anyway?

02:15:34.000 They're just talking to themselves.

02:15:35.000 For me, it's about what this journey is often about.

02:15:39.000 Journey is another word that I don't really like.

02:15:41.000 But what this exploration is all about, adventure, whatever you want to call it, is...

02:15:46.000 I see sometimes I'm that guy.

02:15:48.000 I'm that guy.

02:15:49.000 I'm not really listening.

02:15:50.000 And you've got to see that.

02:15:52.000 You have to see that stuff in yourself instead of just complaining about it in others in order to really get to the good stuff, which is actually then learning how to listen.

02:16:03.000 And it's also, like we're talking about, it's very important for people to hear because everybody's that guy sometimes.

02:16:09.000 Exactly.

02:16:09.000 We may not like to admit it.

02:16:12.000 Many of us like to spend a lot of time complaining about how everybody else is a schmuck. 0.99

02:16:16.000 But you've got to see that stuff. 0.99

02:16:18.000 It gets back to the snout, man.

02:16:19.000 You've got to see that stuff.

02:16:21.000 And actually, that's the good stuff.

02:16:23.000 There can be a real pleasure, truly a pleasure in seeing it.

02:16:28.000 There's a great expression from this eminent spiritual teacher named Ram Dass who lives in Hawaii.

02:16:33.000 Many of your listeners may have heard of him.

02:16:36.000 He talks about how meditation doesn't conquer your neuroses.

02:16:40.000 It makes you a connoisseur of your neuroses. 0.97

02:16:43.000 You're like a sommelier of your own insanity. 0.78

02:16:46.000 And there's a real pleasure every time you see anger come up or your own selfishness come up. 0.96

02:16:54.000 Oh, I see you.

02:16:56.000 I see you.

02:16:57.000 There's a real pleasure in that because then in the seeing you're then not owned by it.

02:17:00.000 And you're not in it.

02:17:01.000 You're not in it.

02:17:04.000 That's playing the game well.

02:17:05.000 And that's what this game is.

02:17:07.000 Now, for the uninitiated, all this is very hard to absorb.

02:17:13.000 They're sitting back and then listening to this long conversation and trying to put all these pieces together.

02:17:20.000 What's the best first step to take?

02:17:22.000 Actually try meditation is the best step to take.

02:17:27.000 And here's the thing to know.

02:17:29.000 This doesn't require a ton of time.

02:17:31.000 I often point out to people that a 5-10 minute a day habit is a great habit.

02:17:37.000 Everybody wants to know what's the least amount of meditation I can do and get the advertised benefits of meditation.

02:17:42.000 All this stuff we've been talking about in high-minded terms, but there are some easier to comprehend benefits from meditation.

02:17:48.000 Lower blood pressure, boosted immune system, literally rewiring key parts of the brain that have to do with focus and things like that.

02:17:55.000 People want to know, what's the least I can do to get that good stuff?

02:17:58.000 We haven't cracked that by we.

02:18:00.000 I mean, the scientific community that studies meditation, I'm actually part of it, but I know a lot of these men and women.

02:18:06.000 They haven't figured out exactly what it is, what's the minimum dose.

02:18:10.000 But I've asked them, you know, is five to ten minutes probably enough?

02:18:13.000 And the general consensus is probably enough to derive many of these benefits.

02:18:18.000 So that's the good news, but I think the even better news is, if five to ten minutes sounds like too much for you, one minute most days, one minute daily-ish, is really enough to see what you need to see. 0.99

02:18:31.000 What you need to see is that you're fucking crazy. 0.99

02:18:34.000 You need to see it over and over again. 1.00

02:18:36.000 This is the schnauzer getting his snout put in the poop.

02:18:39.000 You need to have that happen to you over and over again.

02:18:42.000 Why?

02:18:43.000 Because every time you see that, every time you sit, try to focus on your breath, See that you've become distracted.

02:18:49.000 In that moment, that's the moment when most people think I've failed at meditation.

02:18:53.000 It's actually the victory.

02:18:55.000 And when you see how crazy you are when you've become distracted and learn how to start again and again and again, every time you see that you've become distracted, that's a win.

02:19:05.000 And it's a win of really towering consequences because then you see that you don't have to be owned by all that craziness.

02:19:12.000 You could recognize it.

02:19:13.000 You could nip it in its tracks.

02:19:15.000 Another thing that I think that people should take into consideration about this talk of this meditation and trying to manage the mind is that one of the big issues and struggles that we face with today is addiction to social media.

02:19:26.000 And it is the exact opposite of meditation.

02:19:30.000 Yes, it is.

02:19:31.000 Yes, it is.

02:19:32.000 Constant, like, clicking and being distracted and just getting all this weird input from stuff.

02:19:40.000 I enjoy social media on occasion, but you've got to recognize that this is something that can overwhelm your consciousness.

02:19:49.000 And I'm not going to present myself as wholly around this because I too enjoy it and sometimes I take it too far.

02:19:54.000 There's no question about it.

02:19:55.000 I'll get lost in social media.

02:19:58.000 Where meditation is useful is because, again, what you're training is self-awareness.

02:20:02.000 You're just training to see your own stuff clearly so that it doesn't own you.

02:20:07.000 In the course of meditation, if you have some meditation under the belt, when you're so deep in a Twitter hole that you're, you know, spent three hours on the thing, maybe meditation can kick in at some point and say, oh, my stomach is bubbling, my head is aching,

02:20:24.000 I haven't eaten, I'm not ignoring my children, and you can pull yourself out of the spiral.

02:20:28.000 And you just get better and better at doing that.

02:20:30.000 I don't think perfection is on offer.

02:20:32.000 I don't know that all of us are going to live like Shinzen Young, where... 0.74

02:20:35.000 The universe is just bubbling up through us all the time, and we're not craving anything.

02:20:40.000 He's been meditating for 50 years.

02:20:41.000 Yeah, okay, so great.

02:20:43.000 It's nice to have those aspirational figures out there.

02:20:45.000 It's also great to have masters out there who can get in and help us with our meditation practice. 0.95

02:20:48.000 For most of us, at a level of 5 to 10 minutes a day, or 1 minute a day, or 1 minute most days, it's just that you're going to become marginally less of a schmuck, and that's really valuable.

02:20:59.000 It does not have to be complicated. 0.89

02:21:01.000 Sit down for 5 minutes, do it for 10 minutes.

02:21:04.000 Notice your breath.

02:21:06.000 Then if you get distracted, you come back.

02:21:07.000 Notice what got you distracted.

02:21:09.000 That's it.

02:21:09.000 You do that, you'll find your own way into these insights.

02:21:12.000 You will start to learn how it works.

02:21:15.000 Take the time to do that.

02:21:16.000 You don't even have to do it in a sitting practice.

02:21:17.000 You could do it when you're exercising or something.

02:21:20.000 It's just harder to do it when there's more going on.

02:21:22.000 I mean, normally we lead with that.

02:21:25.000 But since you're a beautiful weirdo, you took us into all sorts of crazy spaces, and that's where we went first.

02:21:31.000 And Jeff is, in my view, one of the best people in the world at talking about meditation at the deep end.

02:21:38.000 But normally we leave with what we just discussed, but, you know...

02:21:42.000 Such is life.

02:21:43.000 Well, I think that this is an important aspect of it to focus on, that social media use and this addiction that we have is literally the exact opposite of this mindfulness and meditation and really concentrating on being completely free of all these devices and things that you're distracting yourself with.

02:22:07.000 Living is making habits.

02:22:09.000 What habit are you reinforcing?

02:22:11.000 You are what you repeatedly do.

02:22:14.000 So if you're training your attention to be fragmented, it's going to only get more fragmented because things just keep changing.

02:22:22.000 They get deeper and deeper and deeper.

02:22:23.000 So at some point you need to start training A different set of circuits.

02:22:27.000 It's just about that.

02:22:28.000 It's about what you're going to train and what you're not going to train.

02:22:31.000 Most of us don't think of life that way.

02:22:32.000 We land in life and you just start doing stuff, but the things you're doing are the things that are going to become your inevitable conditioning.

02:22:39.000 That's a very sobering thought, but it's also a liberating thought because it shows you that if you can start to do the stuff that's better for you, better for your brain, your body, then you can start to reverse that stuff as well.

02:22:50.000 Amen to what you just said.

02:22:52.000 And just to amplify your point about this mindless use of social media being the opposite of meditation, I actually think that it's interesting.

02:23:01.000 I think the proliferation of communication technology is in part why meditation has become so in vogue.

02:23:08.000 Because people know on some level whether they can articulate it or not.

02:23:14.000 That something's wrong.

02:23:16.000 We are, there's this really interesting woman, Manoush Zamarodi, who has a podcast called Note to Self, and it's all about our relationship with technology, and I was talking to her recently, and she said, we're conducting this massive science experiment.

02:23:30.000 With these devices.

02:23:31.000 And we don't know what the outcome is going to be, but it's happening globally.

02:23:35.000 And people have a sense that something's off.

02:23:38.000 And that, I think, is why meditation has become such a big thing.

02:23:40.000 But, you know, actually, what I think is really interesting is, have you guys heard of the slow technology movement?

02:23:46.000 There's a few different ideas around this, like slow design.

02:23:49.000 The basic idea is that right now the interfaces that we use, these flat screens, and all the notifications, the buzzing, the flickers, that's kind of blowing our attention apart.

02:23:59.000 But that...

02:24:01.000 So it's training the brain and the mind in a particular kind of way.

02:24:04.000 But in the exact same spirit, if you were to start to design these interfaces in a way that according to basic mental health principles, you might be able to create more positive habits.

02:24:15.000 So it's just starting to think, like, actually, how could we design our devices, our interfaces, our technology in a way that's promoting more, you know, happiness, more connection, more of all the good stuff?

02:24:27.000 And that's like a question people are just starting to ask.

02:24:30.000 And I think it's really, really cool to, like, think about things in that way that it could be an opportunity.

02:24:36.000 There could be an opportunity with the technologies to do something really awesome.

02:24:39.000 So it's not like it's...

02:24:41.000 Because they're neutral in a way.

02:24:42.000 It's just a tool.

02:24:43.000 It's how you use the tool and the way in which the tool is designed.

02:24:47.000 Except the allegation is that actually many of these devices and platforms have been designed specifically to make you...

02:24:55.000 But that's not neutral.

02:24:55.000 They're like salty potato chips that you can't stop eating.

02:24:59.000 Yeah.

02:25:01.000 I'll just put in one plug, but while we're waiting for slow technology to come to fruition, there are ways that it's on us as users to use these things wisely.

02:25:10.000 One thing I would say is, as somebody who does use Twitter and Instagram, is there's a great tweet from this guy Ian Bremmer, who's a big thinker about current affairs.

02:25:21.000 I think his pinned tweet is something like, if you're only following people you agree with, you're doing it wrong.

02:25:29.000 I think there's a way in which actually our social media use in that we create these cocoons, these bubbles, these ideological echo chambers.

02:25:38.000 We're only following people who give us visceral, satisfying, ideological red meat.

02:25:44.000 If in fact you can use these platforms and podcasts I think?

02:26:03.000 Toxic tribalism is a really good way of putting it.

02:26:07.000 Everyone's just stuck in their own Facebook feeds.

02:26:09.000 The Facebook feed is your reality.

02:26:12.000 Yeah, but you can use Facebook to connect with your neighbors who disagree with you and to actually be able to hear their arguments in a way that isn't blindly reactive.

02:26:24.000 It's about doing the rounds of the community.

02:26:27.000 Can you actually go out there and do the rounds of the community and check out some different perspectives?

02:26:31.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:26:33.000 I think that's very important.

02:26:35.000 I do that a lot.

02:26:36.000 I follow a lot of people that I don't agree with.

02:26:39.000 And I also try to talk to a lot of people that I don't agree with.

02:26:42.000 I think that's also important, too.

02:26:44.000 And to have some sort of common ground where you can explore the ideas themselves and not look at the person who presents the ideas as your enemy.

02:26:52.000 That's a real problem today in this country, obviously.

02:26:54.000 I agree.

02:26:54.000 I mean, we've never been more divided in terms of right-left and, you know, the ideologies.

02:26:59.000 Especially when you have such a...

02:27:02.000 Divisive president.

02:27:03.000 I mean, you have this person at the very top of the heap who literally chastises people and mocks them on Twitter.

02:27:11.000 I mean, you have a mocking, insulting president who uses social media.

02:27:18.000 And there's a trickle down from that.

02:27:21.000 Unquestionably, there's people that look to the guy who's at the top of the food chain as being the one who we should sort of model ourselves after in some way, shape or form.

02:27:29.000 And so the idea that people are leaning in that direction now, where they weren't for eight years, it's weird.

02:27:36.000 It's a weird time for interaction and debating ideas.

02:27:40.000 Yeah, well it's also, again, one of the negative things with social media is that thing of just like, The whole trolling thing.

02:27:46.000 You can just say whatever you want because you don't actually have a real human being right in front of you.

02:27:49.000 That's right.

02:27:49.000 You can't see their hurt expression.

02:27:51.000 You don't see their hurt.

02:27:52.000 So people are just this unbridled reactivity that just creates more reactivity.

02:27:56.000 I see it in my own Twitter feed.

02:27:57.000 Snowballs.

02:27:58.000 With people saying things to me that I doubt they would ever say to my face.

02:28:02.000 Of course.

02:28:02.000 Yeah.

02:28:03.000 I mean, that's what we do.

02:28:04.000 That's what people do.

02:28:05.000 And that's one of the things that's so bizarre about the lack of social cues.

02:28:10.000 You're not standing in front of someone.

02:28:12.000 There's no consequences.

02:28:13.000 It's...

02:28:15.000 Communication in an incredibly unnatural and unrealistic way.

02:28:19.000 All our lives, throughout the time that we were monkeys coming out of trees, our exchanges have been face-to-face until very recently.

02:28:28.000 Yes.

02:28:28.000 And again, I know we're Flogging the meditation thing, and I don't want to present it as a panacea because it's not, and nor is it the only approach to increasing the sanity quotient in our society, which badly needs to happen.

02:28:41.000 But again, I do think that meditation, mindfulness, the sort of self-awareness that's generated through meditation can play a positive role in this situation.

02:28:50.000 The aforementioned toxic tribalism, because if you're so caught up in your own story, you can't, as we've discussed, have the kind of empathy that is needed to understand people who have differing views.

02:29:02.000 And meditation is a way, among other techniques, to kind of just reduce How seriously, how personally you're taking your own inner chaos.

02:29:11.000 And I think that can be very useful right now.

02:29:14.000 Do I think everybody in the world is automatically going to hurl themselves into the lotus position?

02:29:18.000 No.

02:29:18.000 But I think each individual can take a personal responsibility for making things less crazy.

02:29:26.000 I agree with you 100%.

02:29:27.000 I think that's a good way to wrap this up.

02:29:29.000 Yeah, bro.

02:29:29.000 We're good?

02:29:30.000 Thank you very much.

02:29:30.000 Anything else?

02:29:31.000 Anything else to add before we wrap this?

02:29:35.000 Thank you for putting me in the tank.

02:29:36.000 I really appreciate that.

02:29:37.000 There's an expression, gratitude is the expectation of future favors.

02:29:41.000 So I expect to be back in that tank.

02:29:43.000 Anytime.

02:29:44.000 You let me know when you're in town.

02:29:45.000 We'll hook it up.

02:29:46.000 And by the way, there's...

02:29:47.000 Hundreds of tank centers all over the country now.

02:29:50.000 I'm sure you're in New York, right?

02:29:51.000 Yes.

02:29:52.000 I'm sure they have them.

02:29:53.000 I know they have them in New York.

02:29:54.000 They have them all over California now, so they're everywhere, all over the states, so find them.

02:29:58.000 Thank you, guys.

02:29:59.000 Sure.

02:30:00.000 I appreciate it.

02:30:00.000 The book, to people, the title.

02:30:02.000 Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.

02:30:04.000 There you go.

02:30:05.000 That's it.

02:30:06.000 Bye, everybody.

02:30:10.000 That was three hours.

02:30:11.000 Wow.

02:30:13.000 That was

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 10, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1062 - Dan Harris & Jeff Warren

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript