Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 410: Mitch Horowitz

Episode Date: November 21, 2020

Mitch Horowitz, teacher of powerful philosophy one of our most-requested guests, returns to the DTFH! You can learn more about Mitch and find all of his books at MitchHorowitz.com. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order. Hello Fresh - Visit hellofresh.com/duncan90 and use code DUNCAN90 at checkout for $90 off, including free shipping!

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Place your order at officedepot.com and pick it up in just 20 minutes at your nearest Office Depot or OfficeMax store. That's French artist La Tois, the track I fell in love with a deep fake. Welcome! My name is Duncan Trussell and you have made the sacred decision to cross through a kind of portal into an alternate multiverse where you are now listening to the DTFH, the podcast that has received over five stallion of light awards from the Schringender Peace Association. I welcome you. Today's guest is one of the most requested guests on this podcast. If you, like me, have some inexplicable inner threat of puritanical guilt because you desire

things like PlayStation 5s and polyamorous foot jobs instead of longing for some austere mountain hut where you're eating bowls of tasteless oatmeal and chicken broth, then you're going to love today's episode because Mitch Horowitz teaches a powerful philosophy that invites us to examine our desires not as though they were some kind of crusty hell barnacle growing in the coral reefs of our souls but rather the actual bridge that can connect us to who we truly are. I love it. It's okay to want a PlayStation 5. It's okay to want a nice car. It's okay to dream of one day laying on your back in some beautiful exotic location while your many lovers rub oil on your moobs and make you suck their feet.

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of a website or a domain thank you Squarespace and now everyone please welcome back to the Duncan Trestle family our podcast the brilliant author lecturer and philosopher Mitch Horowitz it's Duncan Trestle Mitch welcome back to the DTFH it is so nice to get a chance to talk with you because i got a lot of questions for you today all right thank you my man great to be here your book the miracle habits uh it's fills me with a little bit of envy only just because like what you just randomly put out a book like when i the last time i chatted with you you just put out a book but suddenly there's just another book tell me about how this came about uh i i sit in front

of the keyboard a lot and um i don't know it's funny i'm at a stage in my life i'm turning 55 this month congrats November 23rd yes so it's i don't know if that's quite as much of a milestone as turning 50 but one does feel it uh in some way yeah and i've reached this point in my life where there seems to be this weird sort of tipping point where i sit down to write something and if i'm being honest and if i'm being sincere a lot of accumulated material comes pouring out of me i don't know that'll continue forever you and i might talk in another year and i'll say oh my god you know i feel this crisis of of content of material i feel like i'm i'm faking it or something i hope that day won't come but at this point when i sit down to write something particularly in the

area of self-development a lot a lot comes pouring out of me and so that's how the miracle habits was born and since habits rule our lives and since habits can direct us into catastrophe my contention is that habits can also direct us to extraordinary things and so the book consists of 13 habits that i think can can can prove helpful and what's beautiful about a prolific author giving a prescription like this is that the proof is in the pudding you clearly whatever you're doing is working because you're you're i don't you're shotgunning out books and they're good that's the other they're they're good they're concise they're smart i was um reading the miracle habits and i wanted to tell you about a weird secrecy that happened so and and also i want to

engage you for some free self-development help if you don't mind i know it will make me seem like a greedy pig but hey what am i gonna do what else are we gonna talk about uh i'll take it out of your skin later all right okay so okay here's my here's something that has been happening to me and it's driving it's driving me crazy i keep losing my keys i keep losing my wallet i don't know what's going on it's like really like annoying me and so i lost my the most reason thing i lost was my wallet and i stopped for a moment and i really was thinking of neville goddard i really was thinking of like okay this whatever this is is it's gotta stop like we've got to turn a corner i'm a dad i've got another son coming i can't be losing my shit all the time

you know so i thought all right we're gonna use this ridiculous irresponsible moment of absent mindedness as a catalyst to enter into a new dimension where i no longer lose my keys or my wallet and i know that's not a big deal it's not asking for a mansion it's not you know all the other stuff i would like an infinity infinity pool looking out over the mountains i want it and i love how in your book you teach us don't be afraid of wanting those things it's okay but oh absolutely before i get to that i gotta be able to keep track of my keys you know i'm not like a nine-year-old so that's when i found in your book moments into miracles and i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and how i might be able to use this ridiculous embarrassing moment

of absent mindedness to get into my future mountain palace with an infinity pool yes there's so much unpack there it's interesting you know i i mean i want to say three different things okay the first is i it as much as i've entered a deeply prolific stage in my life and as much as i can point to extraordinary things in my life that i feel give me perspective from which to write about the miraculous i also try to be really transparent in the book about the failings weaknesses that i feel in my life and not just in some sing song bullshit way like today i lost my temper in traffic but you know i will lay awake at four o'clock in the morning staring at the ceiling because uh i don't know the right way to talk to the you know energy company about switching my gas service or

right bullshit thing that you know to another person sounds like some very minor silly little detail of life but for me for various reasons is loaded with emotional triggers we all have them and none of them have to be rational they're just ours yeah and so i i try to be really transparent about the weaknesses that that that i also have because when people who write in the space of new age or alternative spirituality or self-development aren't naked in front of the reader they're they're liars in two realms you know they're liars in their own lives and they're liars and what they're telling the readers so i try to be really transparent about that too um the other thing is i do believe the small things in life like finding lost keys are very important

it's to add to your synchronicity i actually lost my keys this morning and i found them in the bathroom where everybody should leave their keys just go right now and put your keys right by the toilet where they belong so they can get flushed um you know i i do believe small things are important because what we and i i i try to make this point throughout the miracle habits what you could do in a macro fashion what you could do in a micro fashion you could do in a macro fashion what you could do on a small scale can be repeated on a large one as above so below and so if you use some methodology to straighten something out that might seem modestly important you're getting a cent trail you're getting a hint and you can use that same methodology i think

on a larger scale so it's it's actually in a certain sense if i had to wax philosophical i could even venture the argument that maybe you're training yourself we're all training ourselves that when lost keys or lost wallet which do need finding i mean it's not so minor i mean you do need those things it's it's it's important yeah when those things are lost and found and when there seems to be a certain method behind the the the the finding behind the success it begs the question can i now use that method on some larger scale which the person the individual must experiment with and then as far as your your mountain fortress and your infinity pool and that kind of thing i i feel that it's profoundly important for all of us to be very frank with ourselves about what

we really want and not to get put off the trail of that by by someone else's decision by someone else telling us that superficial yeah there's a story i tell in the book where i had a shrink a good man and i must say you know a really positive good shrink who asked me what i wanted in life and i started to talk about all these kind of markers of success that i want and i was very frank with him about it and he said to me but that's superficial and i said to him now look you've known me for a long time and you know that if i bring something to the table it's something i've thought about i've wrestled with if i am telling you that these markers of success are things that i really feel having considered the matter from different angles are vital to my

sense of happiness accomplishment selfhood how can that by any definition be called superficial i mean we're calling it superficial because there's a book of quotations somewhere where there's a set of translations of translations of translations of ancient spiritual literature somewhere that says we're supposed to do that but that's someone else's decision that's not my decision that's not even your decision it's you know by which i mean my peer group that's a decision that really is just hollowed by repetition and so i would say to the individual and this is why i sort of push back against the people who complain about spiritual materialism and so forth which i think is another one of these tropes that needs to be tested in each individual experience rather than just applied

in a general way if someone comes along and says i want a beautiful new car whatever it may be that person may have profound reasons for wanting that car and if you speak to that person about it it's like un unrolling a ball of twine and you find that you're you that ball of twine is attached to something very very very important and i think we've got we as a spiritual culture have got to get off of this trip of judging things as material or superficial or inner or outer everything functions as part of one whole the way that the you know constituent particles of an element ultimately function as one whole and i really think as neville teaches desires are sacred and i think that's more than just a pretty expression i think that there's something very deep from

within a person that that bespeaks itself as desire and that we make a very big mistake and we generalize when we classify a desire as being good or bad based on some ethic that is actually the product of somebody else's decision oh i love it it's such a it it's such a bitter feeling to have a legitimate authentic desire for something and then to have whatever your particular you know whatever spiritual fascist lives in your head i don't think you do but some people do appear and shake their fucking finger at you like no no no no no no that's a trap and it's like yeah but that's what i want i want to get in the trap i i want that and so i love that's one of the many things i love about what you're teaching

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dot com slash Duncan and you'll get 50% off your first order with free shipping that's f e a l s dot com slash Duncan to become a member and get 50% off automatically with free shipping that's feels dot com slash Duncan thank you feels i wonder if you could go into a little bit more detail about this holistic conceptualization of the self and specifically this is something i've been ruminating over which is where do i stop and where does the rest of everything start you know what i'm talking about the the what is totally okay great well dig this you know william blake wrote opposition is true friendship and i really take that principle seriously

because sometimes it's when people insult us or fuck with us that we learn things and are open to things and years ago um there was an artist on facebook who called me uh outer looking he said you know i'm outer looking and i took it as an insult because in spiritual culture we all want to think in terms of essence and the higher and the numinous and the the inner journey you know and if we're called outer looking the implication is obviously that we're being superficial or we're getting attached to the ephemeral and i understand that and you know i got thinking you know okay is he right you know am i outer looking and i thought to myself well yeah you know he is right if you interpret what he's saying in the strictest terms but if you keep unraveling the onion

it seems to me and this became a real opening for me this is all just artifice this idea of higher lower inner outer permanent temporal material numinous personality essence you know it's all part of one whole life it's all part of one whole existence if one takes seriously the maxim as above so below from hermetic literature or takes seriously the idea that the creator fashion the individual in its own image it stands to reason that there is a wholeness to life and when we create these these lines of demarcation it's artifice you know where would one begin in the other end you know where does the numinous begin and and and the temporal end you know where would i draw that line where does inner begin and outer end where does higher begin and lower you

you know end you know a friend of mine used to joke vis-a-vis personality and essence if i do something or i say something and i like it you know i assume that must be essence and and if i don't like it i assume that must be personality these are all you know that i can't get my arms around any of this you know show me ego show me it show me super ego etc you know and i began to feel so this is all one thing this is all one thing now there are questions of am i behaving violently am i behaving with reciprocity there's there's there's a whole other you know issue there and and and i take very seriously the question of reciprocity for the same reason that i'm describing which is there's a wholeness to our existence there's a wholeness to our existence and and i mean

this i want people to really feel i want people to really feel that they can take a break that they can really take a break from sweating the question of whether something that they desire is somehow in sync with spiritual principles you know whether that might be a job or a money or a mate or something sexual or a car or whatever it is because again you know how do these lines of demarcation get drawn and i can say from personal experience that i've met so many people within the alternative spiritual culture as well as the traditional mainstream culture however one defines it but i've met so many people who would just describe themselves very willingly as being on the spiritual or religious path and they are absolutely torn in two they're torn in two by people telling them

you have to practice non-attachment you have to practice non-identification you know that's the answer yeah so they're telling themselves you know non-identification non-attachment or they're reprocessing their desires through some kind of perfumed language like well you know thy will be done if it's thy will may i get this job and i'll use this job to help people and it's like if you're going to help people whatever that means you know do so but don't reprocess your desire through that as if it's somehow tricking the cosmic we're tricking the higher mind or tricking god that it's like you know yeah i want that Mercedes so i can help drive poor children to the circus you know whatever i mean so and and and i really feel that we as a generation and we

as individuals have to test and verify you know these principles because we wind up enforcing them self-enforcing them enforcing them out of the people i don't think they produce happiness in the individual i think that the individual is capable of defining happiness for him or herself i really do and should not have that that that definition taken away i i love i love it so much and that sort of i don't know contortion that twisted pretzel that can come from misunderstanding some of these spiritual teachings or correctly understanding them is it feels like a life-ruiner it feels like some of these philosophies are inviting people in a kind of a state of permanent disassociation you know like and and that seems that seems like the

opposite of happiness it's you know it's like a it's like almost like a weird form of suicide or anesthesia or something where you're supposed to you know the whole concept of the ego you know and i i love that you suggest that there isn't a real difference between the ego and what some people call the soul is that what you're saying that there isn't like this metaphysical biology because that is like oh the the if you were to draw a diagram of one of the ways that some paths some spiritual paths break down the human being it's you've got your body and all your organs but then you've got your you know your aura you've got your chakras somewhere in there is the soul and the soul is a pure perfect you know moat of divine love and everything else is

going to cause you suffering it's going to cause you pain it's a misunderstanding or kind of like you being in a dream state as you go and try to get the Mercedes to bring the kids to the circus because the soul only emanates love only emanates you know all the whatever Bhagavan all the various like the things we like to put into italics you know generosity yeah kindness discipline but the ego is this all consuming all devouring life destroying kind of black hole that needs to be somehow eradicated and this produces a kind of living contradiction that i think makes people like harm themselves i agree i agree i i think that that i personally speaking believe that division is just man made it's just artifice it's just something that we've we've we've written down

you know albeit in various traditions which is why it deserves attention but you know we kind of write down this paradigm determine that this paradigm is is absolutely true that it's a topographical uh uh yeah diagram that cannot be changed challenged and doesn't require re-verification and and and so we wind up with this sense of of divide you know so there's right there's the ego who grasps who gobbles up things there's the soul that's loving and giving i don't know that any of this is true i mean all i mean when i say spiritual is extra physical you know what do we do we as individuals have an extra physical existence and i believe that the answer to that is is absolutely and self-evidently yes i base that on many factors one of them being

esp research for example academic esp research has statistically demonstrated the anomalous transfer of information in laboratory settings one can one can embrace it one can dam it one can use different terms but in as much as statistics are useful for determining reality we have seen in repeatable experiments the critics always say you know none of this has been repeated and it's like i know they believe that no matter how many you know uh citations i give them they will no more believe these experiments have been repeated than hardcore trump supporters will believe that you know an act a reasonably accurate vote has been certified right totally emotional can't be can't that chasm can't be crossed but in any case we have statistical evidence of anomalous transfer

of information in lab settings and have had this for decades so you know marry that to a whole variety of other things including neuroplasticity for example where thoughts alter brain matter and you have evidence of the extra physical where that evidence takes us this is a whole other questions does that mean when i die i'm going to cross the river sticks and you know do this that the other thing i have no idea but it certainly suggests that that you the individual have an extra physical existence which to me is what the spiritual is and given that i have an extra physical existence i don't necessarily know that that means you know i have what a 19th century writer might have called a soul uh i don't know that that means that i'm going to be reincarnated

i don't know that that means that that i pass through concentric circles of of life as as as we're taught in hermetic tradition but i also do believe that the people who who set these things down have profound insights they're they're on the path with us albeit as historical eminences in our distant past and it it requires exploration by the individual in the here and now but i wouldn't be strict i wouldn't be strict about assigning meaning to uh or assigning a kind of a slot or category to different facets of behavior the the me that wants to lend a hand to somebody taking out their garbage versus the me that wants to have some shiny new object is one better than the other i have no idea does one emanate from a different place i

have no idea uh all i'm certain of is that we have an extra physical existence and i i am certain based on my own experience and based on being in community with other people that we are here to be generative we are here to be productive that's not contradicted in any of our religious literature and in many cases it's it's affirmed and i do not believe that the 21st century person can truly be happy unless he or she is moving in the direction of some sense of attainment productivity generativity when those things are absent the individual withers and feels terrible desperation can you talk a little okay so i think something to that to consider when we are looking at this kind of holistic idea of the self which is like one thing i love

that you just said is like i you need to check it out yourself just because there's a topographical map created by someone who maybe was awakened showing a kind of landscape that has within it like an area called the soul an area called the ego or an superego if you want to go Freudian or whatever the model is you still need to investigate it but this brings to mind something that we were kind of talking about before i started recording which is that you were talking about how you know one of the things that people who are going to write do is the the cabin fantasy you go off into the cabin some sanctuary in the hopes that you will be more productive and when you were telling me about that i was thinking yeah also aside from the fact that that's probably not

going to work it's another way to procrastinate if i'm going to so if i'm heading to a cabin to write then now i've got to find the cabin get to the cabin get the time off to get there to the cabin make the arrangements and probably if i produce enough in between me and getting that cabin i'll never get to the cabin and will not be thrust against the problem of having to write but what is what do you think that force in the universe is that keeps us from procrastinating from being creative from being progenitive because if we're going to like sort of throw away the map where there's this distinction between the ego and the soul then that would obviously indicate that torpor slothfulness laziness fear cowardice all the stuff that keeps us from being progenitive

is also part of ourselves and that's what to finish this question uh which is what is that is that part of ourselves is that a sacred part of ourselves what i love about the way you teach and what you teach is anytime i get into your writing i feel confronted i feel like you've ripped away all of the great tricks i use to keep me from manifesting the kind of life that i want in somewhere in there there's this sense of vertigo or like holy shit i can't jump Mitch you want me to jump off this crazy diving board i can't do it man and so maybe you could can you talk a little bit about you know i'm talking about that molasses quality of the psyche that slows us down that makes us not create that thing that where we can't get out of the comfort

zone into the place where we do you know but you know start really working magic if magic is the you know whatever you want to call co-creation of the universe of the divine or the co-creation of the universe with yourself well i think there's a wish for safety and a lot of times safety comes in the form of a kind of physical equilibrium where we're well fed uh we are intoxicated to help with relaxation you know that means booze or weed or drugs or whatever um which i participate into uh zoning out in front of the the screen or whatever it may be zoning out in front of social media all of these things create a kind of physical equilibrium and safety and that has its place and and i practice it as well i practice avoidance of certain things

because it gives me a feeling of safety and that's not always a bad thing you know i mean sometimes we avoid things that are really dangerous and problematic and other times we get so sucked into this need for physical equilibrium that we eat ourselves to death or you know we drink ourselves to death or whatever it may be but i think that within every person who has invested him or herself totally in this sense of equilibrium there's something that they yearn to do that they have left behind and that something is almost always going to mean giving up the potato chips at giving up whatever it is that you're binge watching at a given moment and and doing something and so it's funny in a certain way i've gotten so conditioned and i've gotten so wired

to work that i actually have i have the opposite problem i mean i i seriously have difficulty relaxing and i need to zone out sometimes yeah it's like you know i'll i i i mean and i have to i have to trick myself in order to do it you know it might mean for example i've been watching orson welles movies and i really dig or welles he was a fucking maniac and just so brilliant and wonderful and so if i'm watching him i kind of get into him you know and i can kind of zone out a little bit or i'll like blast music that i really love um so you know we all get into groups and we all get into habits but i do think that when people are in a habit of seeking safety and equilibrium there's usually something there's usually a sorrow in my experience in there where

they're not building the thing or or writing the thing or or going somewhere or seeing someone or doing something or making that phone call that they really may want want to do um but we get we get so conditioned by sameness that we do tend to seek it out okay that's cool it's just a so basically it's just it's another habituation it's it's uh it's not like it's not you know sometimes when i'm right now i'm not thank god in that place but anytime i've gotten really blocked uh you know and it's just more laziness i'll start thinking like well it's maybe it's a demon or spiritual curse or a force keeping me from it you know and but usually what it is is it's just i'm not putting my ass in the seat and typing you know it's nothing complex it's like yeah

sometimes just assuming the act is all that's necessary you know william james made that observation uh you know he said look we always assume that our moods determine our our actions but he said you know what if the reverse is is actually true and it's funny i i know this professor clinical professor of psychiatry named norm rosenthal at georgetown and norm and a colleague of his several years ago did a a study based on botox and mood and they they they found that botox treatments seem to be uh lifting depression and they were able to institute you know various controls so that it was obvious that just the appearance changed alone if it was desirable wasn't the factor there was some other x factor coming on and norm hypothesized that and this is

going to sound just ridiculous but it's it's actually amazing norm hypothesized that um one of the things that botox does is it actually freezes and effectively disables the muscles that you use to frown and he related that back to william james's observation and he wondered if the actual physical disabling of certain mood expressions might in and of itself have contributed to a lifting of depression that that was just a a hypothesis that he drew upon from the study but it does comport with what james wrote about and it's interesting um i don't have any final conclusions about it and nor does he but i i do think that one should take seriously that performing the task uh can actually bring with it courage for example instead of saying gee i have

to screw up my courage so i can do something the actual task itself uh can at least be observed to engender the emotion well you know this this uh yeah to me it makes perfect it makes perfect sense i mean any it's just even if it's a really small act uh it's doing an experiment like that just holding your bar you know not slouching smiling simple things like that are kind of a declaration of autonomy over whatever those uh habits or forces are that keep us in a just frozen in a specific uh a dejected state i mean i i feel like that happens to people it certainly has happened to me where you get your heart broken you have some massive disappointment and you stay frozen like ambarized in that disappointment so you hold your body the way

you're when your body slouched down and as you are crushed by life you just keep your body like that and simply lifting up and smiling it can have a powerful effect now i want to jump in to your awesome 30 day mental challenge and you know it's it is for me it's literally challenging in the sense that and again it's what i love about you man there's like things and it feels like you've been looking in my window as my wife and i are like making love to shawn hannity we had sex to shawn hannity the other night mitch do you know how fucked up that is like i had sex which is pregnant mental future will never leave me a pregnant third trimester sex in front of shawn hannity and i'm looking it's horrible i mean i really do think we might have like

damaged the universe from that like we did some kind of horrific ritual that in the world maybe it'll never be the same but you go ahead what you're gonna say will never leave me or your listeners this is it sorry everyone but i'm sorry all they it's it was really a dark it was a dark moment but i'm looking here at your 30 day mental challenge and one of the um and and i don't know if this is part of it or if this is just part of your blog but one of the things you have here is reject comfort media is that part of the challenge or yes okay uh and i'm just gonna read a little bit of what you wrote uh we derive a visceral thrill and probably a dopamine rush from reading things that affirm what we already believe

this is especially true of emotional subjects like religion and politics opinion porn if i may delivers the same kind of repetitive thrill as binge eating it provides the head nodding joe of seeing your imagined adversary's taken down and your team score another touchdown we don't agree with shawn hannity at all it's more the opposite hearing someone say things we don't agree with but it's the same pathetic kind of high and so you're saying yeah in this 30 day mental challenge that we've got to stop like turn it off quit doing that why why is that gonna help me like i know i got no obvious reasons like oh you'll feel better or it'll challenge you but tell me what how metaphysically this has some connection to me like jumping into

the part of the multiverse where i'm a bit more actualized or connected yeah well it's yeah this it's a super simple program method that anybody can jump into at any time um it's linked up on my social media i have an article at medium on the 30 day mental challenge uh you just have to write down a vow to focus on on what is is forwarding and advancing and all ambitions that are reasonably within reach and and and attempt this for 30 days and there are various facets to it and i i i've been doing it with people and providing some commentary day to day but the basis of it is this i believe first of all i believe in very simple exercises i really believe that profundity is experienced only in application so if i say to somebody you know we shouldn't lie

you know head start nodding yeah of course we shouldn't lie i know that well we all know that but we only experience the the depth of that statement when we actually attempt to do it and fail and then we're thrown in front of all kinds of other questions or maybe we succeed and then you know that exists on to all kinds of other questions but in any case the world is filled with literature about how to live well none of us follow it if they if we follow literature of how to live well you know all you need to do is just read marcus aurelius or read the beatitudes or read the dowdy ching or read the guida take your pick uh and and and we've been reading these things for centuries upon centuries and they haven't changed the world they haven't changed the world

because we don't we don't test them we don't apply them we think we do and maybe we do for 15 minutes and then we get up out of the chair and we go up out into the traffic of human life and all of our intentions are immediately taken away yes the malady of human nature is the certainty that because we nod our heads and agree with something it somehow is applicable to my life so i believe in very very very simple exercises so simple that we're up to write them off we're up not to test them we're up not to even make an effort for a limited period of time to attempt to apply them the profundity is found only in the experience only in the application which may include failure but my contention is that if we assert a sense of self-determination if we assert a sense of

self-selection if we assert a kind of positive fortitude in the face of circumstances that can be sorrowful depleting we will learn something we will discover something and we may discover extraordinary change in our lives because we so rarely test things we so rarely apply any of these ideas that we like to talk about and ideas grow more and more complex our language and our vocabulary grows more and more complex our range of cultural options expands and expands as as and yet what would that accomplish you know what would that accomplish it's like flying up in an airplane and looking down at the ground and saying wow what extraordinary perspective but then we get back down to the ground and everything is exactly the same so i like simple things because

i feel that they at least go the individual towards applications that's what the 30 day mental challenge is about i suppose that's why i'm attached to all this literature from new thought you know all these kind of like supposedly simple books about the power of using your mind because they render into popular language steps that so few of us ever take ever attempt ever really try in terms of using our psyches in in different ways and they're completely uncharted territory and yet also you know completely available this episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by the sweet darling chefs over at hello fresh i love hello fresh if you haven't tried it yet you really should it makes me feel like i'm on the cooking channel because like you

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food insecurity with just a couple of clips in the app go to hello fresh dot com forward slash dunkin 90 and use code dunkin 90 to get 90 off including free shipping that's hello fresh dot com forward slash dunkin 90 and use code dunkin 90 to get 90 off including free shipping thank you hello fresh what you're saying about these like very simple acts i've i've i saw this trainer talking about how look if i if yeah you can run you know whatever eight miles you know start once a week or whatever that you think you can do you're gonna be sore you're not gonna want to exercise or run half a mile and you can do that every day and you're in the end is gonna be so much better than you doing this thing which i am guilty of

which is like you know finally i get i whip whatever the donkey of my soul enough so that it i'm extra you know it does whatever it is i'm wanting and then i overexert you know it's like i'll now it's like i'm gonna train for a fucking marathon or now i can't just run you know it's got to be like now it's gonna be uphill for as long as i can until i feel like i'm gonna die and then i don't do it anymore so i do love this very subtle simple um day to day uh activities that you're that you're laying out for us and um i wonder if you could talk a little bit about and i'm sorry this is kind of jumping back in time uh earlier you're mentioning hermetic conceptualization of human existence as concentric circles yes can you talk about that for a second

sure hermetic literature which which grew out of the late stages of ancient egypt the generations immediately following christ it was kind of an amalgam of greek and egyptian thought written down in greek that's where the expression as above so below is derived from and one of the ideals in hermetic literature is that we occupy these concentric circles of existence and the absolute center of these concentric circles is what the greeks called news or mind this great higher mind or intelligence emerson called in an over soul uh and and and everything emanates from this ultimate sense of of of intellect and and emanates through these concentric circles and we beings that occupy these various circles of varying distances from news from the center

are in our own sphere able to create in the way that that that this higher mind creates although we are also restricted by the physical limitations that we experience and i really love hermeticism because it helps me to it helps me to cope with some of the contradictions that i experience when i'm using the philosophy of of a neville goddard or of new thought this idea that mind is the ultimate creator because of course we experience physical decline we experience mortality yes never been an exception to that and so we do live within these material confines that will not prove permeable to mind in the here and now and when i mean the here and now i mean i mean i'm talking you know tuesday afternoon at two p.m you know i don't want to hear about an experience

that somebody had when they were on vacation so to speak like you know we've all had higher moments of sensitivity and awareness but i'm talking about that which rules our lives in the here and now and and right now and hermeticism would say you know this is not a failure to grasp something this is just the nature of things you are able to create and your mind is able to generate it is however you do exist uh at some distance away from the center we don't know what but what distance but but these concentric circles that you dwell within all have their own laws and forces and you're gonna have to experience them over time you may through cycles of life through cycles of recurrence uh uh uh progress through these concentric circles but every one of them

has its own laws and forces and you're gonna have to deal with that so to me that that was helpful in terms of my approach to to new thought this yeah this that i love models like that that produce a kind of map uh because yeah and yeah for me with new thought the part where my rational mind gets thwarted is the part where it's like well yeah but i don't understand how in a world where there appears to be limited resources you know you take it to the maximum everybody adopts this way of thinking and not only adopts this way of thinking but fully like adopts it like you know when you read Goddard you this isn't the secret man this it's like it's his it's the most psychedelic invitation to start remembering from the future basically and yes that's wild because it

you know that i think that's the place where i don't know how many people can walk with him into that place because he's saying you know you're going to just this you really are gonna have to give up a lot to achieve this state of consciousness and if you do you essentially you do transcend you do get past the limitations there is no limitation other than you imposing it so for me yeah these kinds of maps the circle when i have not heard but these kinds of maps work really well because they point to a multiverse instead of a single universe they point to the possibility of leaping parallel timelines using your mind that the mind becomes the navigation unit through which we move through the multiverse do you know of anything that looks at the world in that way

like i the hermetic conceptualization sounds like it but maybe i'm misunderstanding you when you talk about it the idea but essentially being and we've seen the pictures of the alchemist like lifting up the curtain of the universe you know and just walking out right you know yes how literally are we to take these ideas i mean they really do point to the possibility of like if you wanted to you could just pull the curtain up and say adios to this particular whatever you want to call it circle or sphere or whatever it may be uh how literally are we to take these ideas well it's interesting you know i think that neville and hermeticism for me those philosophies form the greatest mystical analog to quantum theory to the the

illusion of of time and space and i speak that's why i speak in terms of selecting versus manifesting which is not a term that i use because in terms of selecting if perspective and i'm really sort of encapsulating this into a very tight little marble and there's so many other directions that can go in but if if through the measurement of the senses i'm experiencing something it would necessarily bring with it a past present future so that i don't have a sense of something changing i have a sense of it always being this way but i have selected it also in this and so it's not as if i experienced my selection as a before and after i experienced that as a complete naturalness including what i call the past including what i call the present including what i call my

expectation of the future in the same way that if you make a determination to measure the locality of a particle in a lab based on the time of day you've taken that measurement based on the decision to measure or not measure you have effectively created a whole past present and future that would have been entirely different if you've taken a breath and and done it just a moment later which raises the question of serial universes and everything playing out at once and so it it totally tears us under this whole idea of a linearity to life but i want to touch on something you said i want to ask you a question because you use a beautiful beautiful phrase where we're remembering from the future you know if we're selecting an outcome we're remembering from the

future one of the things i wrestle with in in terms of that approach and i think that's a beautiful way of encapsulating nevel um one of the questions that i run up against is this you know i was saying earlier i was quoting blake opposition is true friendship you know it's talking about experiences i've had that have been fractious that have been difficult but have brought me to new places have produced helped me to produce things that i never otherwise would have produced sometimes i'm not i'm not so sure i want to erase opposition as frustrating and as anger-inducing as it might be right now you know if i go into my if i try to enter into some hypnagogic feeling state in which i turn bitter into sweet let's say is that really what i'm after you know because if i eliminate

bitter i've eliminated the very thing that may be refining me i've eliminated my ability to relate to another person who's also suffering you know so i i i feel temperamentally sometimes i'm not really sure that i want to i i know i want victory but i'm not sure i want to eliminate bitter oh i love that well i mean yeah i well i think from the way that you talk about challenges you it's not like you're it's just the way that you've conceptualized challenges odd it doesn't it doesn't make them unbitter but it produces a space within a life where these things aren't necessarily an indication that you're doing something wrong and anymore what comes to mind is like someone like complaining to an an attendant at a gym

because all these exercise machines are making them sore you know get rid of them you know the point is they're there for you to to develop yourself to to grow yes uh yes and i so it makes me think of chogyeom trump orenpoche in his description of imagine a child licking a razor blade with honey on it that you know with the child in the in the full awareness of a child simultaneously feels the pain tastes the blood but also the honey they're all there together and you don't you know and so yeah i i i wouldn't want i know what you mean i i especially when it comes to friendships where i disagree with my friends i love that i have friends i vehemently disagree i have friends who call me like a blue-bellied commie you know like q and on friends who like

you know what i mean they they i know they think i must be part of some like global conspiracy or something you know what i mean and i i i love it because i feel like my very existence ruins their conspiracy because i'm not you know i i just we just believe differently and i'm so happy what a sad what a sad universe it would be where there was no opposition where we get rid of that the joy of overcoming it's so great yes but yes you know simultaneously uh you do don't you kind of run you run into a problem which is you have to like make sure you're not getting addicted to the adversity you know what i mean for me it's like yeah yeah because my upbringing i was taught that pain means success you know what i mean that if you're not

suffering to some degree then you can't really be successful and this produces like a workaholic attitude in me where i'll get up at four five a.m and start working not necessarily because i want to but because it will definitely produce a certain level of pain you know what i mean and i'm familiar with that uh so i don't know man i yeah i think goddard points in the direction of all the great mistakes and i think it's a little terrifying what he's pointing towards it is terrifying and you know the i mean what i love about neville is he issues such a radical thesis to us and he means it so literally you know he taught your mind is god and i don't mean that in some metaphorical way and i don't mean that in some symbolic way i mean that quite literally that you absolutely shape

your circumstances everything you experience is your own emotionalized thought pattern out pictured and i sometimes challenge people and i think i read about this in miracle habits what if you don't believe that and what if it's not important that you believe that but what if you just use that as an ethical exercise how would it change your life how would it change your day if you really believed in neville's challenge as though as though without necessarily signing on to all the metaphysical assumptions that go around it or trying to rationalize it out how would it how would it change your day how would it how would it change the way you treat other people and would you be able to do it you know would you be able to do it that's the thing

people want to opine about the experience absence the experience and so yeah i would say if it's intriguing to you try it for 45 minutes and and see what happens well don't you think the problem is it's it's like god it it's the strangest thing it's like if if mysticism or some kind of vessel it's the vessel where you have all these people lined up to get on carrying all these big backs and when they get to the wherever you enter it whoever's in charge of that gate is like oh no it's too much weight you can't bring that in this is going to take you to a place that you've always dreamed about but you can't bring your playstation or whatever the fucking is you're bringing and people like no i won't i don't want to let go of these things

and i understand that i think it's somehow wrapped up in the in the fear of death you know it's like because free and maybe you have had this experience sometimes people like you i wonder if you're careful about talking about some of the things that you have experienced because you you don't want to confuse people but you know i think for some of us if we did adopt the methodologies of some of these people and i don't you know i don't think like the modern person reads the hermetic stuff or reads some of the magical literature reads neville goddard and thinks well he didn't really mean that he meant something more mundane they didn't you know what i mean i i know that sounds like he's saying we could instantaneously travel to essentially another dimension where

we're essentially another person unencumbered by all the ridiculous foibles and bad habits and debt and karma that we currently are encumbered by but he didn't really mean that because if he really meant that he would be insane what he meant is that maybe in six months from now if i set up a nice savings routine i'll have an extra eight hundred dollars in the bank account you know because right because don't you think that that really the the reality of it is that we're kind of as much as we like to bitch and complain we're kind of happy in our little pod we're kind of happy in our little little gooey section of the multiverse where we're not quite happy but you know we're okay and and we don't want to rip open time and space we don't want to

leap into that don't you think that that's the the reality of things isn't so much that people are being thwarted by reality but more that they have somehow connected this kind of transformation that you teach with death it's interesting i i think that sometimes being driven to your knees is the best thing that can happen to you because it it it breaks us out of or or or at least compels us on an experimental level to invite in some other possibility and these possibilities in my experience are very real and in as much as i talk about basic things simple things i do very much believe in applying the basic because i think we neglect it all the time we have no experience of it we only think we do however i also do believe that and i i would issue this to everybody

listening you know extraordinary things do happen in life and in as much as our behaviors can direct us towards catastrophes so can they direct us towards the extraordinary and if you're feeling desperate and if you're feeling needful and if there's some situation in your life that has you absolutely feeling stripped of all resources and and and of all ability to feel at ease and at home with yourself you're very realization and and admission of that your your willingness to do something to break yourself out of that whether it means just a 30 second visualization or it means a prayer to some deific energy that you seek a relationship to which i take very seriously something could happen something could happen and i implore people not to neglect that experiment

because there can be changes that occur all of a sudden you know i had some really weird wonderful experience years ago where i was seated in a spiritual group that was dedicated to esoteric study and i asked a question and a senior member of the group was responding to the question he misheard my question and he spoke to something other than what i was talking about but in the course of miss hearing my question he said there are no shortcuts there are no shortcuts and we all think we're supposed to nod our head in unison to statements like that and i thought to myself at that moment you're probably correct but i don't know that and you don't know that how do i know there are no shortcuts how do i know you know there can be all kinds of things and possibilities

that occur even if they're not necessarily repeatable that doesn't mean they didn't occur so i also want people to feel that extraordinary changes can occur and really may occur the miraculous by which i mean a a an unforeseen and fortuitous fortuitous departure from all expected circumstance that does occur or we wouldn't have the word within our within our language that does occur in as much as catastrophes occur and i i just want to say that when people are faced with circumstances that that that that have them feeling absolutely desperate i say without any sentimentality that could be the greatest moment in your life because the willingness to identify wish for pray for visualize affirm whatever you want to do whatever you want to

call it meditate upon chant for a change could bring that change i've experienced that and i can't fathom that my life is exceptional none of our lives are exceptional in the sense that they're disconnected from one another so i i just want to encourage people to believe in the possibility of the extraordinary in the plainest sense oh mitz you are the best thank you so much you always we i don't know how it always lie i really like if anything gives me the eerie swooning slightly schizophrenic sense that maybe there is an Illuminati it's you man you know because like always just when i'm needing data we end up podcasting together and it just lines up perfectly i think a lot of people feel that way about you so on behalf of them i say thank you so much and on

behalf of me thanks just for your time can you tell folks where they could connect with this 30 day challenge and uh and also maybe uh let them know that they don't have to like exactly be on the 30 days or just tell me where they can find you sure uh the best way to connect with it is on social media i'm on twitter at mitzvahro it's instagram at mitzvahro it's 23 in both bios there's a link which i'm just going to leave up there that goes directly to the 30 day challenge you can start it at any time don't sweat it i do issue commentary each day for this particular cycle but if you want to find the commentary i hashtag 30 day mental challenge that'll connect you to the commentary jump in anytime it's super super simple and you should be assured that there'll

be other people doing it with you so whether you are directly in contact with them or not you're not doing it alone okay awesome you know i'm gonna start a section in our discord server where we the d t f h folks do this because i want i'm gonna start today i think our conversation was the beginning of it mich thank you so much uh i hopefully when this not hopefully but when i finally shoot up with this delightful vaccine hopefully we can see each other in person yes for sure that would be that would be amazing i look forward to it man thank you my friend thank you that was mitch horror wits everybody make sure you go to mitchhorowitz.com and dive into the beautiful rabbit hole that is the Horowitz connection also much thanks to our sponsors

feels hello fresh and squarespace thank you for supporting our sponsors because by supporting them you support us i will see you next week with connor habib until then i love y'all and happy thanks given a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborne worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute and extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny we are family a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers

to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborne worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute man extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny