Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 619: Raghu Markus

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

Raghu Markus, he introduced Duncan to Ram Dass and is one of the coolest people Duncan knows, re-joins the DTFH! Duncan and Raghu collaborated on an audiobook! You can listen to The Movie of Me to the Movie of We on Audible right now! Raghu also hosts the podcasts Mindrolling and Ram Dass Here and Now, available everywhere you like to listen. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg and Duncan Trussell. This episode is brought to you by: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/duncan and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening or watching the DTFH. For all of my listeners, God bless you. Those of you who have been with me for so many years, those of you who have stuck it out through the good times, the bad times, the weird times, the shitty times, and to my new watchers. Thank you. I'm reading the comments now and I love them. Are there some poison tipped arrows that have pierced my very soul? Yeah, a lot of you guys are really good at raking your dark demonic claws across my poor sweet heart. But most of you seem to really like this new video version of the DTFH and that has given me the energy to keep doing it because holy shit full respect to all of you vloggers out there

all of you people who are doing video this is no joke i don't understand it i go through you should smell me right now the stink that is wafting off of my body some combination of just being in a stinky studio mixed in with pure cortisol, the panic, stress, confusion as I try to figure out how do I like this shit? Why does my camera keep turning off? Why can't I get the fucking thing to focus? Why doesn't the expensive camera I bought work at all? Why am I back to using the $600 camera I got at Best Buy? Why is that picture so much better than the video I'm getting with my super

hyper complex 4k camera? These things make a man stink and I do smell really bad but I stink for you. Thank you for making me stink because it's a stink born from love. Okay, now in a solo episode a while back, we cut a clip out and put it on TikTok. It's a clip of me talking about a review I saw an adult created in a review of a hotel at Disney World. I believe it's Disney World, maybe Disneyland. I don't know which. But this reviewer, I didn't say their name because I wanted to respect their privacy and the algorithm served it up to me. So I'm just sort of flipping through, I was probably shitting, like probably on the toilet, just flipping through mindlessly, letting the fucking hip-note rectangle milk some dopamine out of the fucking neuro receptors

and synapses of my brain. This poor old withered thing. And you know, the algorithm's like, hey, you want to watch somebody who's upset about a hotel at Disney World, an adult who's upset about Disney World? And I thought, yeah, I definitely want to see that. But I didn't watch the whole thing. And I guess that when especially in that clip I conveyed a sense that I watched the entire movie which I think was like two hours long maybe three?

I'm not sure someone told me it was two to three hours long I didn't go back and look. Which by the way is longer than the original Star Wars movie. I think the review itself was longer than the Star Wars movie but I didn't watch the whole thing. And I think that I know that I conveyed that the entire time they were talking about how they were upset about lore, problems with lore, specifically they didn't understand why they were doing a Jedi lightsaber training for people on a starship because Jedi's its secret knowledge. And I implied that the whole thing was that sort of like fandom fans complaining. Apparently not. Apparently somewhere in this two to three hour video they're also complaining about every problem with this hotel. Now, I've known obviously that you can put stuff out on the internet that

will be poorly received, but I was really shocked when I went in the TikTok comments and saw how there were there was a lot of there was an anomalous amount of dudes pissed off about my bad take on the review that I saw. Now, let me emphasize something here. I had no idea who was doing this review. Now, that doesn't speak to this person's popularity. As it turns out, they're more famous than I am. They have billions of followers and they're cute. And so oh what happened? At least I'm thinking what happened there with the anomalous dude. There's a lot of you guys saw me talking about this review and you realized I think this is like a chance for me to jump in and defend this reviewer. Again I'm not gonna say their

name I'm not trying to start some war with a YouTube super famous YouTube though that would be funny, but someone I dearly love contacted me and said, that is my queen that you are attacking. And so I believe that the best way to put it is that this reviewer is a heartthrob basically for a specific sort of dude. And these guys, they were butter. And it was wild to go through the comments. I would maybe expect like some people to correct me, but there was also a sort of like male aggro quality to some of these complaints.

And it was a startling amount of complaints. Now, first, you must understand, this thing was taken out of context. When I was talking shit about grownups who stand in line to get ice cream and grownups who go to Disney World and how crazy that seems to me, I don't wanna judge people who do that, but I do.

I was encapsulating it within the notion of something called a aclacia, an obscuration is what that is. And it's in Buddhism, it's something that is covering up your perfect qualities. It's something covering up your enlightened mind. So I was admitting this is an old man take. Doesn't mean anything. Just because I am saying that if you are a grown-up and you are excited about going to Disney World and you're going there a lot or you're writing reviews about a hotel at Disney World, which by the way is hilarious

to me. I mean, have you ever been to any hotel at Disney World? They all suck. I don't know why there would be an expectation that any of them are good. And I'm not going to go on and on with all the things I said regarding like what I've heard about, like people who work at Disney World sleeping in their cars and not getting paid enough and how the fuck can you expect anything there to be good if you have an adult mind and adult consciousness

and you're going into Disney World from an adult POV, then you're setting the expectations too high. You should be, that hotel is so expensive. Go to Hawaii. There's so many cool things you could do. Costa Rica, you can go to Costa Rica, get blasted on mushrooms, and probably actually see a spaceship.

Maybe even get taken on board a legitimate starliner where you will encounter hyperdimensional beings that will convey to you the importance of humanity In the big picture and why you're a being made of love at the atomic level Why are you gonna blow your money on don't go to Disney World as an adult? I have done that by the way. I have done it. I've been the adult at Disney World with a group of adults. I've done the thing. Get high and go to Disney World, have a panic attack, realize like holy fucking shit what have I done? Why am I here? You see other high people slumped

over weeping. So I've been the adult at Disney World, which is another reason I feel like it's okay for me to critique. I've been the adult in the ice cream line, humiliating myself in front of the world, standing there, a grown ass man with a beard salivating because I'm excited to get that cone. I've done it, okay? I've done it. So I'm allowed to critique it and you're allowed to get mad at my critique of that video. You as an adult male who has fallen in love with a vlogger are allowed to do that. You as a grown ass man who has fallen in love with a vlogger who I don't know if the quality is Manic Pixie Dream Girl or something like that but who is like scratching that itch, that part of you that dreams that out there in the world somewhere, there is a beautiful lady who loves video games and Legos who, who will, will, will cosplay and, and, and like it, you can like go to Disney World with her she will

cosplay and like just fuck your brains out in the Star Wars Hotel and you could pretend that you're a Jedi getting banged down by your soulmate and so you know I could see how you would imagine like my, just maybe if I stick up for this person in the comment section of an obscure podcasters TikTok thread, they will notice me. And if they notice me, maybe just somehow like they'd DM or something like, hey, I just want to thank you so much for defending me in that TikTok clip that got exponentially fewer views than even the most like empty short and boring video I've ever put out. That means a lot to me. Do you want to meet up? Let's meet up at Universal Studios or Disney World. I'm going to dress as Princess Leia and

it's going to be the best day of your fucking life. So take the shot. I'm not mad at all about that because you know why? I have simped too. I've simped many a time and I know what it is to simp it down. I know how it feels like to simp. It doesn't feel good, but it's exciting. You know, have you read Way of the Peaceful Simp? It's the prequel to Way of the Peaceful Warrior. I don't know if you've heard of that book. It's kind of an old book, but Way of the Peaceful Simp, a simp working, I believe, at a GameStop is approached by an old or more powerful simp who teaches him the art of pure and powerful simping.

And it is an art. And I'm just like, this is my critique of your critique of my critique of a critique. That's not good simping, folks. That's low level simping. You really want to simp. You really want to simp? That's not how you do it. You have to be a little more subtle in your simping.

You can't fucking alert someone to your simping strategy. That's simp rule number one. You have to seem like, like a non-simp. You gotta go chat, but you're a simp. This is the chameleon move, which is covered in way of the peaceful simp. So bottom line, I don't care for the dudes out there who are simping, and I don't care if you're an adult

who enjoys going to Disney World. Who the fuck am I to say? I play Hearthstone. I'm addicted to Elden fucking Ring. You think that feels good? You think it feels good being a 50 year old dad losing at Hearthstone and you still play? I can't figure out a good battlegrounds fucking strategy. You think that feels good strategy thing. That feels good. You think it feels good riding around on a goat through Elden Ring when you're 50? You got work to do? No, but I do that just so you know. Like, I'm one of you.

I have simped. I don't want to go to Disney World as an adult, but I have. I don't want to stand in line for ice cream, and if I was standing there these days, I would feel embarrassed. But that's just because of the public side of it. You know, if there was like private ice cream lines, if like there was somewhere I could go and, I don't know, turn invisible or something, or like there was some way of like cloaking myself, I sure as fuck would stand in line for ice cream.

Probably. And I'd be excited about it. I mean, I can't have diabetes now, but if I didn't have diabetes, if the Chinese cure for diabetes turns out to be true, then you might see me in an ice cream line, and you might see me in Disney World one day, because maybe I'll shake off all this crud, all the clashes, the obscurations, all the karmic negativity that that has attached itself to me in what seems to be an incredibly logical way. You know that's the problem is like I do feel like my view on adults who go to Disney World is waterproof. I

do feel like I'm like right. I don't think you should go there as an adult. And I think if you do go there as an adult and are upset about the service or a hotel there or something like that, then what has happened is you have deluded yourself. You have created the perfect recipe for suffering, which is you imagined somehow that you would go to a hotel at Disney World. Disney World! Festering with disease. Disney World! Just swollen with predators, human trafficking, tunnels under the fucking park and a whole horrific dark network of communication

that you will never see. I mean, I'm not just talking about like when somebody falls into like space mountain and gets like ground up. I'm talking about just like diarrhea. You know, like they're like a trapdoor spider. You ever see those trapdoor spiders? They're so scary. Some poor ant is walking along and boom a spider pops out, eats that ant. This is all over Disney World except it's diarrhea. Like inevitably somebody ate too many fucking of those shitty turkey legs.

You ever get those? Those are horrible. This will probably piss people off. Those turkey legs are nasty. They're tasteless, nasty, horrible fucking things. But you're so hungry, you're like fine, I'll pay $20 for some giant shitty fucking turkey leg. And you take one bite, it's dry, it's tasteless, and then somebody, you know, eats a bad turkey leg because of course the thing's got listeria or something. It's been sitting at Disney World where everyone's coughing and spraying disease everywhere they go. The flatulence of disappointed toddlers is there realizing it's not the Magic Kingdom. You have to wait in line for four fucking hours before you go on any of these rides. You're gonna do three Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids?

Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids?

Is there a problem with the kids? Is there a problem with the kids? flies, wafts onto the turkey leg, then some hungry dude who already has a bad stomach. They've got fucking ulcers because maybe they are alone an adult at Disney World and they had some crazy fantasy that they would go to Disney World and reconnect with their perfect self that they experienced at childhood and accidentally paired with Disney World. They thought Disney World is why I was happy. They don't realize the reason you're happy is because your fundamental nature is bliss. We talk about this in the podcast.

And so they take a bite of that fucking turkey leg, they're hungry, they know right away they shouldn't eat this, but they're not listening to their instincts. They stopped doing that a long time ago and that's why they're at Disney World, because they stopped listening to their heart. And so they eat and eat the turkey leg and who knows maybe they get another one and then

they realize I'm going to shit my pants but they also know these are like the only pair of pants I brought on the trip and because I just spent $2,500 on a Mickey Mouse hat and two meals. I'm not gonna be able to afford pants right now. And so they just pull their pants down and blast a huge stinky spray of yellowy diarrhea. It just fountains out of their ass. In front of Mickey, hugging somebody, in front of a horrified group of people, probably in front of families fist fighting because someone cut in line in front of a horrified group of people, probably in front of families

fist fighting because someone cut in line in front of the other one, just as though to underline the absurdity and horror of Disney World, a gout, a spray, a blast, an eruption of vile, ulcer, ulcer, poison, diarrhea, sprays through the air, lands on the ground. And there is all over Disney World, just people like who watch for diarrhea and they just spring up out of secret holes in the ground and they have to, they wipe it up.

And then they go back down and they just wait and they do it again. Do they get to take showers in between cleanups? I don't know, I doubt it. My guess would be they don't. My guess is that by the end of the day, they're just, their hands and arms and legs are crusted with turkey leg stress diarrhea.

So yeah, I mean, I would say as an adult, you should know that if you go there and complain, it's a little bit like going to hell and bitching about how hot it is. But again, I'm an old man. I'm just an old man with soft hands. An old man with soft hands who's done his fair share of Simpan, who's done his fair share ice cream lines and who most certainly has been disappointed by a Disney world experience as an adult. So I've been there and I have a deep understanding for all angles of this situation. And I just wanted to play this song for you before we jump into the podcast.

Believe it or not, this song really means a lot to me. Do I like Disney World as an adult? No. But the fantasy of Disney World, I like the possibility that somewhere there really is a place, a magic kingdom full of joy and light and love. Yeah, yeah, that touches my heart. And so I got permission from Chandra Grimes to uh, to play this for you. And so here it is. It's called... The Call of the Mouse. I used to think that I should have babies Believe it when they said I shouldn't live just for me

But now I see my friends with kids are wrong Their babies cry so loud they can't hear Mickey's song Put on my mouse ears so that I can hear I can hear the mouse call Listen to him with my favorite doll Tomorrow is my 33rd with me I can't hear them, I I can't hear the mouse sing I can't hear the mouse sing They warned me that soon I would hit the wall

That's when I realized that they could not hear the mouse call They act happy, but I know they all sad Gave up the magic kingdom to become ones And that's, took off their mouse ears Now they cannot hear They can't hear the mouse call They chose babies to wave their dolls Tomorrow is my 33rd birthday But they're too busy to come celebrate They can't hear the mousing, can't hear him sing happy birthday to me

They can't hear the mousy They can't hear the mousy But I can hear the mouse sing Can't hear him sing happy birthday to me They can't hear the mousing Can't hear him calling out through everything They can't hear the mousing They can't hear the mousing But I can hear hear the mouse sing, but I can hear the mouse sing.

That was the call of the mouse, everybody. If you wanna find that, you can find it by going to Chandra Grimes, RIP. Sadly, she passed away a couple of months ago. I'm lucky that she gave me permission two months and two and she's dead. That's the point. Okay, I didn't have permission. All right.

I'm sorry she died. It's sad. I disagree with her politics though. And if you look her up and realize like some of the stuff if you read your manifesto Like I don't agree with any of it. I don't agree with anything. She says about Anything i'm not even gonna get into it. You can't even talk about it on youtube, but she was a She was uh, she was a complex person with weird views. I'm just gonna leave it at that You want to read the ch Grimes manifesto? Go ahead. But I wouldn't advise it. It is a poison that will seep into your consciousness and completely obscure your chakra systems. We have a

wonderful podcast today. Raghu Marcus is here with us and this is the person who introduced me to Ram Dass. This is because of Raghu. When Aaron and I got married, Ram Dass married us. And this is the person who introduced me to my meditation teacher. And he is truly one of the coolest people that I know on the planet and the sweetest people I know. And we wrote a book together.

Well, it's an audio book. It's kind of like a long form podcast. And he doesn't like it when I say stuff like this. But I do think that there's been a tradition on this planet for a very long time where people who have had profound spiritual experiences, people like Raghu, met people like Neem Kurali Baba, convey their experiences and their understanding to people like me, neurotic, grumpy old people who are mad at folks who are just trying to live their life. And though it might not seem like it based on the ramble you just heard, those teachings have like really made me a

better person. And so the movie of me to the movie of we is really just like a chance to listen to something I think that has been going on for a very long time, which is a kind of like transmission, sort of long form transmission of a really wonderful, many wonderful spiritual lineages that were, that became the beautiful amalgam that is the Ram Dass community. So check it out, it's on Audible, the movie of me to the movie of we.

But before you do that, why not listen to us talk now? Everybody, welcome to the DTFH Raghu Marcus. ["Welcome to the DTFH Raghu Marcus"] Welcome, welcome all of you, that you are with us. Shake hands, you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you.

Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you.

Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you.

Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Welcome to you. Hi. Hi. Okay, so I'm listening to my favorite. It's not a book. It's an audible. It's called Experiments and Truth is my favorite of anything that I know of that exists. Ram Dass related series of lectures. It's like a tuning fork. When I start getting wobbly, I start listening to it. And I don't just mean wobbly like wobbly on the side of hedonism, disorganization, ignorance, all that stuff. I mean wobbly on the side where I get too analytical, too Buddhist, too mind shit, too like, just too much in that sort of analytical zone.

It's like it balances those two sides so well. I'm listening to him talk about Sat-Chit Ananda. Now can you define that? Not shit, shit. Sat- Yes, Sat is truth, Chit is consciousness, and Ananda is bliss. Bliss. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz. when they experience that with the thing itself. So his example is, you know, maybe you're a scuba diver and you're scuba diving and you go,

oh, here it is again, or you're having sex. Oh, this is it, or whatever it may be. I'm sure everyone listening has had some moment. Called the ineffable moment. The ineffable moment. Can't describe it, it just takes you beyond. Right, and because part of being human The ineffable moment. The ineffable moment. Can't describe it. It just takes you beyond. Right. And because part of being human is

we pair one thing with the other, whatever it was we were doing in that moment becomes as important as the experience itself. And it can seem like that experience can only be reached via some particular vehicle. And this is the beginning of addiction. This is the beginning of chasing the dragon. This is the beginning of codependent love. This is the beginning of all of the things that actually are beautiful in that they're an attempt to achieve that state

again, but tragic in the sense that it creates the illusion that this is the only access point. And he is saying this is not the only access point, but in fact, this is the primordial state of the universe, which we all are. So I wondered, have you ever experienced that? And what are your thoughts on that state of consciousness that he's pointing towards? Satchitananda? Yeah. Oh, come on. I mean, look, the reality is there's a reason why very very few human types human beings have existed on

this planet in that state beyond duality beyond polarization inner there's no more us and them nothing right and Right. And you're not even here anymore for any reason except to serve people. Right. You don't need to go through anymore. There's no more karma and all of that. But us little guys, we, the beauty of the game is that we, as Ram Dass said, a little surfing trip and suddenly you have broken through into that state for a month. A psychedelic trip, sex, all of it. There's a chant, a meditation.

And as you're saying, it's just the beginning of chasing the dragon because once you get there, then you're like okay I gotta have this thing and you might be a meditator that okay I'm going off and I'm gonna be in a retreat you know until you know the cows come home right right so that is true in that sense though one must say if you're gonna pick your poison maybe you're better off with chasing meditation than you are, you know, a heroin high. I don't know. I don't know about that. Like, I know this is, you will not agree with this. Well, you're harming your body. Okay, start there. Okay. Again, I'm not, obviously don't do heroin. This is weirdly the second time I've had to say this in the podcast.

Like, I'm gonna start sounding pro-hair. I was just kidding. It's a stupid heroin. Don't do heroin, but- Psychedelics, how about psychedelics? Heroin is a dumb analogy. How about hedonism? How about that?

Okay. Especially in our culture, we are incredibly judgmental of people who prioritize bliss. And we look at them as like imbalanced, selfish losers. And a lot of them, that's what you become. But the initial inclination is the same inclination that sends someone to a monastery. It's just that the difference is one's a lot more fun at first. And so but what I'm saying is this points to what Ram Dass was saying, which is somehow even in the muddled sort of,

you know, in the muddled sort of normal karmic state of any given human being, there's some underlying sense that there is a search, there is a quest, there is a journey to be undertaken. And that journey is the search for this thing that Ram Dass is talking about. Like it's in us. We have this sense of like wanting to come home. But the home, the home, what we think of as home varies from person to person. For some people it's needle in the arm laying in a blanket. For some people it's... But what is the commonality between those two is it's people wanting to go home, a feeling of homesickness, but not the normal kind of homesickness, something a little more achy than that, in the sense that sometimes you are home and you feel homesick. I just think that the beauty as I was saying before is that the universe as humans we have the ability to go beyond our little tiny cells. I mean that's beautiful. It's crazy. You know? And that these experiences happen for almost anyone. I guess if you were brought up in a very compromised household, violence, addiction, and so on

and so forth, maybe that would get covered up and that's really tough karma. Yeah. It really is. But on a whole, most people have an experience like they might be young and then they dismiss it, this is just BS, or even dismiss a psychedelic, oh yeah we used to do that, but that you know that's not grown up. I mean you know that's just juvenile experimentation, however people speak to it. It's the reality though is the possibility is extraordinary.

Extraordinary. And you- I mean, it's extraordinary, right? And- Yes. But I have to say at the same time, we're all on a journey. So we're gonna have moments moments of both the 10,000 beautiful visions and the 10,000 horrible ones. Yes.

Right? And that's our legacy as humans. And what drives us to be a human that is, I mean, such-chit-a-nanda, okay? That'll pop in once in a while, but as something, you know, the brass ring, why not? You know, why not? But the reality is, how do we do all of that but turn ourselves from schmuckiness to menschiness, which is, you know, Yiddish kind of stuff. But you know what I mean?

Here's what I, my answer to that is the first step requires a ridiculous kind of courage. Because the, so the story of growing up So the story of growing up is for a lot of people, a series of disappointments, a feeling of being hoodwinked, a sense of being told some bullshit. And then it's like, no, actually, you've got to get the fuck out of the house

and go get a fucking job. And yet that's the real world kid. Your sweet like your sweet childhood and all the sweetness of that. That was when you were a kid. Now you're growing up. Guess what? There's no Santa Claus.

Face reality. Yeah, face reality. Wake up, there's no God. There's no, there's love is a biochemical reaction in the brain. And you, so you're essentially like this openhearted, pure state of consciousness that kids have where they are falling in love with everything.

They are like purely believing, they're true believers. This gets completely derailed. And so they start becoming skeptics, cynics. completely derailed and so they start becoming skeptics, cynics, and those qualifiers go into the cabinet of being an intellectual. I'm skeptical, I'm cynical, I'm going to investigate that, I'm not going to believe, I feel like I'm going to get hoodwinked. And all of those are very good. There's good reasons that people feel like that because people are getting hoodwinked

and ripped off and tricked, but mostly they're getting their hearts broken over and over and over again. And so the courage part starts with like imagining that that thing that you felt when you were a kid. And it's, and this is what I love about what Ram Dass says when he's talking about that thing, consciousness, universal consciousness. He said it has a personality to it. There's a personality to universal consciousness. There's some quality to it. That's not just some blank, nothing, but rather uniqueness, maybe, yeah, loving quality. And so, so,, to me, the first crazy undertaking would be to give yourself a second to imagine,

actually, that's still there, just waiting for you. And that, for a lot of people, I think, takes a lot of courage, because any other time when they try it with humans, they're falling in love with a human and suddenly they're getting ghosted. They're, they're, they're falling in love with like somewhere that they live and suddenly they can't afford it anymore. They're falling in love with this or that. But it goes bye bye. And so to imagine that actually all of those secondary things were just a vehicle to something that's always there, I think for people who have spent a lot of time callousing up, that's a big ask.

Yeah, it is. It's a big ask. We've talked about it. We've talked about our own experience growing up and how we developed all of the crazy neurotic shit that we deal with in ourselves all the time, our habitual patterns. I mean, I don't think we're any different than anybody else. I mean, we had fairly traumatized growing up. We were both fairly traumatized growing up. Most people have that because as soon as you realize

you're a separate entity and you need to defend yourself, unless you've particularly, this is what His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, by the way, You have a compassionate, loving mother. You are going to be able to develop in a way that you will have less of that tide of negativity that most of us deal with almost all the time growing up. So we talked about that. And we also talked about, we both had sparks.

This, a spark is what we're talking about. And then we started to believe in that, wow, this spark is real. This is not bullshit. Maybe there is a way to be happy, never mind spirituality, anything. Just that's what I remember. Remember when we talked and I talked about... Yes, this spark that you're talking, I think of them as like bread crumbs. And when we are working on our book, and sort of like going into this possibility that you're talking about, that Ram Dass is talking about,

that any great teacher is good at talking about. I began to realize in the process of just having the conversation with you about it, that what we're talking about here is as powerful as the DMT breakthrough experience that everybody talks about. You smoke enough DMT, suddenly you're in an alternate dimension, seeing incredible architecture, aliens, entities, whatever it may be, goddesses, gods, all the, and it's astounding, it's astounding. Terrence MacKinnon said, the experience is so powerful you think you might die from astonishment that this is even possible.

But this thing that we're, that Ram Dass was talking about, this, that built into being human is this imminent possibility of suddenly going from a me, suddenly going from just a me to everything that you can do that you can pop out of what did what did Ram Dass call it? He called it localized subjective consciousness that you can pop out of localized consciousness and a non-localized consciousness that suddenly, like he says, it's like taking off a shoe that's too tight. But in this case, you don't have to die to do it. But because you are a product of non-localized consciousness from

these perspectives, it's your birthright. If you want to, you can walk out of the prison of identity. But you don't, you just, you don't have to expect this grand transformation, you know, that, okay, that's the state that I am going to be in now, and so I'm going to do everything I can to get into that state so that it won't go away. I don't want it to go away. No. I want it to be there.

Listen, when we met that being in India, Ram his guru named Karoly Bal our guru, of course That was like hold on for dear fucking life Because if you held on to the thing in physical time like now time Then you would like okay. I'm okay. You'd feel like, wow, I am so okay. And then you let go of the thing and then you weren't so okay. So it's just a matter of, and everyone can get that okay. Everyone does get that okay moment, you know, through all of the different means that we've just talked about. But the thing is, you don't have to expect that okay moment to be with us now on a 24 seven basis. But you know what encourages you're

talking about courage, right? Yeah, encouraging courage, right, is the fact that you actually, the people around you start to interrelate with you in a different way. Yeah. And that is a reflection. So it's about the reflection of what happens once we start to put less emphasis on what it as Ram Dass said, when is it you know okay when is it enough about you know what I'm getting you know when is it okay what I need never enough enough when is it enough? Okay so this is a perfect lead- into, and I feel dumb saying this because, and I have no place to

talk about it because I certainly have contributed to the genre of people rambling spiritual advice out into the universe that shows up on Instagram. So fully aware of the hypocrisy, what I'm about to say. Because most of the stuff that pops up that the algorithm feeds me, I just, like it just makes my, it makes my asshole clench up. It's so cringy and I can't, I hate it. I wanna puke. And again, I'm contributing to this rancid shawna.

We are all part of it. We're being human. Every once in a while, you stumble upon something that's good. And this thing that I stumbled upon, I can't remember his name. He's in India somewhere, and he's in this very concise way, breaking down a lot of stuff about bhakti yoga in a way that the bhaktis are so good at doing.

And one of the things he's saying is, you can look at the emotions, and I'll try to find who said this so I can give him credit, but I don't think he'll care. But look at the emotions as a rainbow, emanating from a pure light source, all experience. He says all emotion, all experience has as it's as what it's composed

of love. But the reason you can't experience this thing that we're talking about all the time is because you can't embrace the totality of your own experience. You're only taking in a certain spectrum of color. And all the other colors, you're like, that those are bad colors, that that's in me. The suffering, the anxiety, the fear, the jealousy, the worry, all of that stuff

you consider a kind of profane state to be rejected, ignored, anesthetized in some way. And he is saying, until you can sort of open up to the totality of the human experience, which is, which consists of those not desirable states, then you can't feel it. That the dropping into that state, and it makes sense because if we're talking about unit of consciousness or whatever, how could you expect to have unit of consciousness, some sense of the totality of the universe

when you are too, when you're afraid to have an experience of the totality of your own spectrum of experience. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by BetterHelp. My friends, I don't know if you've heard this insane theory that the reason it feels like time is speeding up when you get older is because it's actually speeding up and the universe is being sucked into an impending singularity. Probably something better out doesn't necessarily want me to say in this ad, but the older you get, and I'm 5-0 friends, time does go by so fast. And that can be a little unnerving. Now, I'm going to add something that I heard Sharon Salzberg, the

great Buddhist teacher say, which is that at the end of the day, sadly, you will only remember the rotten things that you did, the things you forgot to do, the mistakes you made, all those moments of grace, those good things that you did, or your attempt to do good things, you let someone into traffic, you held the door for somebody. You don't remember that at all. You just remember the shitty things that you did. And that's no way to live a day, much less an entire year. So if you find yourself at the end of any given year,

struggling with all the mistakes that you think that you made and forgetting all those wonderful things you did throughout the year. I mean, you managed to stay alive for a whole year. A lot of people didn't do that. And that's true for every year. But it's not just maintaining your own existence. I promise you, if you're a neurotic like me, then your radio is tuned to the scariest station that only gives you news reports on the bad things you've done or the horrible things that might happen to you. And this is why therapy is

incredible. I know, I know what you're thinking. If you're a dedicated, devoted neurotic like ol' D. Trussell here, nothing is going to help me. I will forever be contorted in a never-ending cycle of numbness, depression, some version of self-hate, and maybe I'll pendulum from that into some kind of like wild mania, but I'm never going to find some nice stable stable, steady in between and no one can help me unless you're friends with God. Better help can help you. Good therapy can help you. So if you have been kicking around the idea of starting therapy and you're a reclusive neurotic like me and you just don't want to get in your car and go to a doctor's office, I get it man. I get it. I understand. This is where technology comes

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I promise you, he did some wonderful things this year. And once you get into therapy, you're gonna remember the great things and probably do even more wonderful things next year. Bye. do even more wonderful things next year. Bye! How could you expect to have unit of consciousness, some sense of the totality of the universe when you are too, when you're afraid to have an experience of the totality of your own spectrum of experience. It divided itself, is what that's called. Right. And you know I was just thinking actually not to divert too much but

when I said this we talked about spark that spark keeps you going. Yeah. Because obviously you go in and out of so many states of consciousness until you don't. And of course that is a rare, rare thing. But I was thinking of the spark and I had a spark happen to me about six weeks ago. It'll be a little bit of a repeat to you. I think I even sent you a picture. I was in Arizona with a Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk, a Rinpoche who's obviously somebody who has gone beyond some of what we're speaking to now. So I had met him 20 years before because I drove him around. I got fortunate somebody asked me to drive him around from the retreat center to where he was staying over this retreat. Didn't speak

any English. His assistant or whatever you want to call him didn't speak any English. There was me. We were trying to communicate. Yeah. But it was during the time that I had this record company indie label in Los Angeles. One project that we became involved with doing the music for was a documentary film called Tibet cry of the snow line and

it was about the genocide basically that's going on that Chinese were inflicting on the Tibetans and so I met him and of course I found his his backstory just you know people close to him were telling me when he was in Tibet his name is Garchen Rinpoche sorry everybody forgot to mention it Garchen Rinpoche was in Tibet he was uh actually fighting against the Chinese as a monk. Many of the monks took up arms and so on. Yeah. He got caught and he got thrown in a Chinese prison for 20 years and you know we won't even go into what they do to those monks and so on, torture and all that. Yeah. But 20 years during that time he met another, he was not a Rinpoche then, he met a Rinpoche, a teacher, and who was his guru, and took him through so much

of wisdom and knowledge. In this prison. In the prison. So they were letting them like, well, they were, yeah. Well, I don't know that they were letting them practice, but somehow he transferred whatever was necessary. You know, I have no idea. I never got into a detailed conversation about that with him. Anyhow, he said, uh, I left, you know, when I don't know how they got out, maybe his term was up, it was 20 years, it was 20 years.

And then he escaped to bed and got into northern India. And he said, I have no animosity towards the Chinese, just like you hear the Dalai Lama speak to all the time. But it was real. It was sitting right in front of me. And then I said, listen, I want to show you this film that we were part of. And we showed him this film. I mean, it has immolations. I mean, it is really horrible. don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong. So I looked at his face and it was a complete mixture of terrible suffering, like that he only he could relate

in a way none of us could ever. Suffering and yet it was forgiveness. I mean, you could tell he wasn't throwing epithets at the screen or anything like that. He was totally, he had totally achieved whatever that is. I knew that. So I saw him six weeks ago with Krishna Das, who was singing there. And so he started, yeah, he gave some talks and in these talks, you know, he talked about the concept of me and he said, that concept of me that you and I have been talking about,

right? It leads to problems with others, with self and others. You know, and it's really hard, he said, to find a human body. And only in a human body, he said, can we move through duality? Only in a human body. And so you've got to pay attention to the mind and how to deal with it. So he started talking about basically,

he was talking about what we have been discussing for all these years about what to do about the grasping that we continuously are involved with, self-grasping. And so he then, he talked about the only thing that's real, the ultimate truth is all is one, which I've heard before from another being named Niniroh. There is only one. And cultivate love and self-grasping leaves and happiness enters. Cultivate an altruistic perspective. And then, well, someone said, well, what is true love?

They asked him the question. He said, feeling love for all sentient beings. Well, how do we purify all this stuff, the karma that you know what he said? What? All you need is love. I said, well, the Beatles already said that. We are. But you know what the simplistic things that come out of beings like this. That fact it's a truth that we can't repeat because we are talking

about when we talk about love, for instance, it's all transactional. Yep, everything that we're used to maybe your mom, when you were a baby wasn't transactional. Okay, so I've got the word for that. Do you know what the word for that is? I read it in that bell hooks book, cathexis. Oh yeah. So people, it's called cathexis.

So basically what people call love is a transactional reciprocity. This is where the term conditional and unconditional love come from. But the expectation for unconditional love or whatever it may be, wherever there's transactional love, then you have cathesis. Maybe I got it wrong. So yes. Her book is like, the whole book is about love, but she's sort of trying to get to the point that

for some reason people don't want to define it. And there's a real ambiguity, the way that men express it and women express it is completely different. Men receive love, women give love. So in what Ram Dass was actually saying in this chapter that I'm listening to is this is his famous, when he was talking about when I say, I'm in love with you. I mean, you and I are in love together, because that's what we're in. Not that you are

the source of love for me, the object of love. Yes. So yeah, in the simplicity, for some reason, and I don't think it's that mysterious, is offensive to the mind because the mind wants to project the idea, oh no, no, no, you don't understand. You are in a never-ending maze of increasing complexity and anything that isn't maze-like

is kind of boring. There's a sense of like, fuck that, that's too simple. That can't be that. Which when I met, last little point, when I met Ram Dass for the first time, I remember he pointed to his head, and I've said this a million times on the podcast, I'm sorry, he pointed to his head

and he pointed to his heart and he pointed to his head and said, you're here. And he pointed to his heart and says, you need to, you gotta go here. And he's like, we can help you. I'm like, it's hard, Ram Dass, that's so hard. And he smiled and he goes, no, it's not. That's the thing.

I don't think it's even that hard. I think it just seems like... We're hardwired to... You know, we don't want boredom. That's a big deal. And some of this stuff, these practices require one's courage to allow boredom to be part of the experience. Well, what is boredom? Dissatisfaction with the moment. Yeah. It's not enough.

It's the realm of the hungry ghost. Yeah. Many, and we've all gone through it. We know what it is. But you know what? You're talking about Ram Dass and what he said to you. You know, you've got to go from head to heart. Well, he had the direct experience where he said to Neem

Kurali Baba one day, okay, you know, he's seen all his Buddhist friends got all these fantastic complex teachings, meditations, visualizations, right, you know it. Yes. And he said, so how can I get enlightened or realized? Whatever it's, you know, how can, which a question that everybody can ask. And Neem Karoli Baba said, feed people. And Ram Dass thought, that is a dinky response. I've got friends who are really getting the highest teachings. This is BS. I mean, he got pissed because of the simplicity

and the reality of that. So he asked it again, how can I raise Kundalini? And he thought he'd get a little bit more direct with what the question was. And Neem Karoli Baba said, Love everyone. And in that moment, he realized, you know, the profound ignorance

that he was living in, in terms of of looking outside for a way to transport himself out of the pain, which is what we all do. All the way to every practice, you know, from psychedelics, which is easy to get addicted to that experience, probably more than anything I would say, in my own life, I recognize that. And, you know, all the way to meditation, which is, is the boringest thing you can possibly do, which engenders you to really think about, wait, what really is that? Maybe I got to sit there. I want to find out what is that? Right. So that's so the two big words, curiosity and courage. Yeah, curiosity and courage and simplicity.

I think you've got to, that's coming through too. And the, you know, this, I want to add to it, another great Instagram. I don't, I follow a lot of obviously Neem Koli Baba Instagram accounts and he tells stories about him and stuff. And you know, I don't remember this particular story, but the essence of the thing is he was saying, if you are experiencing grace, that's coming from God.

That's not you. You didn't make it happen. You didn't wrest the jewel from the dragon's lair. It wasn't your effort. It wasn't anything other than a gift. And, and now to connect to meditation, for me, that's the hardest, that's the hardest thing about it is I, I don't like that meditation seems to be a process that if I just sit and follow my breath and do this regularly. Something does happen, but that's not me. Like that's something naturally just kind of like falling asleep at the opposite, you know, you close your

eyes, you breathe a certain way and suddenly you start vividly hallucinating and then don't remember most of what happened through the night. It's really an incredible power humans have. But I don't, I think you'd be nuts to think that's the only sort of thing that you can experience. If we can like close our eyes and just breathe deeply and go into an alternate reality where we're like getting chased by tigers, what else is possible? And so with similarly, go ahead the next time you want to fall asleep, try to fall asleep. Like lay down and really work at falling asleep.

You know, like I'm gonna really sleep now. You can't, the only way to fall asleep is just to calm down. And then everything takes care of itself. So this thing we're talking about, that's the other frustrating part of it. It's kind of outside of your control in a lot of ways, other than just set the conditions. And then it happens.

It's grace. It's a gift. And so that infuriates the complex mind that wants to be in control. Yeah. But trust, I guess that's the other thing that I love to talk about. And going back to Garchen Rinpoche,

it was so powerful, and it continued through all of these years. It was so powerful, a spark, that it just reopened doors, so to speak, for me. Because to have somebody who, and his whole life was dedicated to people who ever came to him. You could see he had nothing going for himself.

He wasn't looking for anything. Do you have to go spend 20 years in a Chinese prison? I don't know, he did. He made it through and he didn't come out hating him. I mean, that's a spark that that allows one to dedicate a little bit more of one's time and energy and utilize courage and curiosity and trust. You know, I trust I totally trusted this being Garchen Rinpoche in terms of his experience and his caring for others.

It was obvious that what else is there to do? What else? And this is another issue with the mind, or at least my own mind, is that the mind paints a picture of this state. So the mind will tell you what the state is. The mind will be like, okay, I know what that state of consciousness that they're talking about is. And whatever picture the mind paints is wrong, because it's the mind and it can't do it. It's the heart that does this. So the mind can't fucking do it. It can do a shitty sketch. Like when you see wanted pictures of people, like a rough approximation of something. And, but that's not it. And the heart centered stuff is not boring at all. That's the main thing. But I think in between the mind and the heart, there is wall of boredom and that wall of boredom is actually suffering

I think that the the courage part is not just believing this is possibility having trust trusting that it could be But the courage part is you've got to go through this Stuff that you're not wanting to look at or feel really generally for me it's feel I don't want to feel that I don't want to feel the grief I don't want to feel how much I love my kids I don't want to feel how much I'm scared of dying I don't want to feel much angry I am that like my mom's dead I don't want to feel that and so somehow something about just feeling it,

just like have the guts, dive in, take the cold plunge, jump in and see what happens. And it doesn't destroy you. By the way, there's a great book, Feeding the Demons, that's how you do it. I mean, Duncan is proposing this is an issue and it and it's okay. Right? You're saying it's okay. I'm okay to feel all these things. I'm Yeah, I'm just saying there's like, there's no way to get to the clearing

without going through the forest. And there's, there's, there's just no way. And that that is the saddest thing of it all, is like, anytime I've done it, like really let myself feel it, it's not unbearable, it's bearable. And then to go back to what this Bhakti was saying, every emotion is made of love. It's like I heard a comic do a joke about Taco Bell, that Taco Bell is the same ingredients

rolled up into different shapes. And it's like, it was a long time ago, maybe not the best joke in the world, but to me it seemed funny then. So if you think of atoms, or quantum particles, if you think of atoms, you know, or quantum particles, but you know, atoms just being different configurations, these emotional states, when you begin to realize that the thing that you think of is bitterness, hate, anger, jealousy. This is just a configuration of love showing up that will dissolve upon awareness.

Or another way to put it, the dry, it dries way over samsara and nirvana are intertwined. Or you could say opposite stand back to back. You know, in other words, like, I have a light, I put my hand in front of the light, you see a shadow. That, you could say, would be anger, the shadow. Or the blockage is creating this shadow thing that you're afraid to confront.

That's all I'm saying. It's the conference. Jung was right. Who was? Carl Jung was right. Who was Carl? You? Yeah, it's right. All that shadow stuff. Yeah, all this stuff's got it.

It has to come into light. And I guess when I go back to the spark, which motivates one to even think about that, I mean, look, all of the people that we are hanging with right now, you know, all of the people would probably agree. I am, I don't really want to deal with despair. I don't want to deal with grief, fear, anger, all of it. And I think we are all in agreement. If this conversation has any value whatsoever, it's pointing to, hey, we are the same. There is nothing different. Yes, I'm older and I've been in India with this extraordinary being and I hung out with Ram Dass, you know, for a lot of years off and on. And I am still, as he said, well, I'm still dealing with the schmooze, but they're a little

bit, you know, they're smaller schmooze. The issues, so you get to the point where you're not reacting to your crazy thoughts the same way you used to. You're not going into a spin for as long as you used to as a result of whatever. So there is a natural progression once you really, you glue yourself to that spark and trust it in that you will absolutely have the motivation to deal with all of the issues that we all deal with all the time. And that's a big difference. And part of it is really, I go back to wanting to be,

feeling like, yeah, I want to do something of service and I don't mean going out and feeding homeless people. I mean just talking kindly to the person next to you. Right. Right? Kindness and a little bit more compassion. These are the small things that are the biggest things. I mean, what you're saying is just so,

cause it's the internet. He's not saying he doesn't want to feed the homeless. He's saying, don't give. I have to like, just to save you from like, what does he mean he doesn't want to feed them? No, what you're saying is there's, you don't have to start off by starting a fucking soup kitchen or a food bank.

You can though, that's cool. But what you're saying is feeding people, there's a lot of different ways people eat. You know, there's the people eat food. That's a great thing to do. But people also devour your attention. They just giving them a space to be themselves. My favorite thing, Simone Wilde said that

the most generous act that you can make as a human being is paying attention to somebody. Yes, that's right. Just that alone. Yeah. And good and also like sort of unconditional positive regard, that's the name for it. But it's like giving them a chance to just like, to be whatever it is they're going through. Dudes love trying to fix shit, man. And I love trying to fix things. And I'll tell you, nine times out of 10,

when I try to fix something, I make it way worse. Like anytime I'm working on the house, construction wise, like whatever I thought would work, it's going to amplify the problem. So this stuff works in reverse, and it's an interesting way, which is somehow just by not trying to fix it, just by allowing it to just do its own thing,

it fixes itself. This episode of the DTFH has been sponsored by Squarespace. You know, I don't know how old you are, but if you're a certain age you might have paired the idea of web design with misery. I certainly did. Anybody who went through the dark times before Squarespace knows what that was like. You wanted to build a website, you knew you should have a website. Maybe you're an artist, maybe you're somebody trying to start a business, who knows? Maybe

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your clients that don't look like you're about to scam them. You can use Squarespace to connect to your fans. And you can even create a paywall in Squarespace. Members only areas. And if you want to populate your website with your social media posts. Squarespace can do that. It is an incredibly powerful service and you should try it. If you're interested, you could try it for free. Head over to squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. Give it a try. See if it's the right thing for you. I'm sure it will be. And then when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you Squarespace Just by allowing it to just do its own thing, it fixes itself. It works out for the better. That's what I love about all of this stuff. It runs counter to the conditioning that most of us have been taught through our whole lives.

Try harder, work harder, be more productive, get to it. What are you, whereas this is pointing towards, you don't, it's, you're okay now with your schmooze. And I know you're trying to like convey, I think to people, don't get grandiose. Understand that like this is a slow boil for a lot of us at Ram Dass and all of us are still up to our necks in reactionary karma and proclivities

towards repeating past mistakes. So it's an honest kind of like, listen, this is a, for us has been a slow boil. But I must say, you have to balance that out by saying that moment you had on mushrooms, ayahuasca, acid, falling in love, watching someone die, watching someone be born that you thought was a singular event in your life is actually the fundamental quality of your identity

underneath everything. And you can actually have that right now. That's where my Vajrayana stuff comes in. You can do it right now. It's where my Vajrayana stuff comes in. You can do it right now. It's right here, completely there. And by the way, the mind's a good servant. It's just not a good master, is the big quote there. That's true. That's amazing.

And we definitely use it. And we can use it in ways that are supportive. And by the way, the others, I don't know why, I love the word spark. I'm sparked by this whole conversation for that particular word. Rob Das was another spark because right in front of us, he demonstrated the love everyone and tell the truth. Did he get all the way beyond? No, maybe not, you know, but that's

irrelevant. Here was a human who actually, he made it to a certain plateau, shall we say. No plateau. He told me no plateau. I'm sorry to cut you off. Do you remember the retreat? It was my favorite thing. He was such a great teacher. I said to him, it seems like you have jumped off the diving board. You did it. You went full in. You're all the way. Whereas I feel like I've camped out

on the edge of the diving board and I don't wanna jump. Is this a real thing? Did this happen? I said, it's recorded. We recorded it. I said, I'm camped out at the edge of the diving board. I don't wanna jump. And his response of the edge of the diving board. I don't want to jump.

And his response was, there's no diving board. There's no diving board. There's no plateau. I mean, that's what he kept getting us to realize is like, it's, it is omnipresent, not just imminent, but here right now now. Right now, there, it's right here. Just like to me, that's such a gleeful, gleeful, beautiful quality of being human in a world of fear.

Can I admit something other, a human thing to you? Yeah. You'll be my priest sitting next to me. I will take your confession. Yes, yes. Father? Yes, son? When I wrote to you, when I was with Garchin Rinpoche and said, you can't believe this teacher is just expressing what we

were doing with the movie of me to the movie of we, audiobook. And I feel so, I don't know if I said this to you, but I said some of what he was saying that was just, we replicated having no idea. And I had a lot, Father, of pride in the fact that we had created this book that we seemed to be on the right.

You know, it was a validation for the right wavelength. You're allowed to be proud. I mean, this is the thing, man. These damn... this is the problem. Because it's like, the... this is the problem. What? You think, most people think, that you're not allowed to have certain states of consciousness. There's a real superstition. It's real superstition. You think, oh, if I'm proud, that's gonna lead to some down some dark road. But I think that if we're going to create this hierarchy of

experience, then we have cut off the possibility of experiencing the thing that we're talking about. You should be proud. I mean, I think you should be proud. Not just for, I mean, it's wonderful, the book that we wrote together. I'm proud that I got to do it with you. I'm proud that we got to do this audio book together. I'm proud of that. But you should be proud of, like, all the other things you're doing. I mean, there's this reservoir of—there's—you and Love, Serve, Remember have just thrown God knows how many life rafts out into the Sark ocean that people like me teetering on the brink of suicide, so depressed, completely alone, stumble upon and we're like, oh, oh right, oh right, I remember, I remember something here, there's something here. And then your life gets better.

And not in a slow way, maybe, but not actually a quick way, because you forgot that underneath it all is love. It shouldn't be hard to forget. I think you should be proud. And I don't think you should think, oh my God, oh I've helped all these people, and oh I need awards and medals. You don't seem like that at, oh my god, oh, I've helped all these people, and oh, I need awards and medals.

You don't seem like that at all, but god, if like, why not? Why not feel good? I know, it's the looking into too deep, this is the mind motivations. This is a good lesson, actually. This is not mindfulness. This is judgmentalness. This is not mindfulness. This is judgmental-ness. This is not mindfulness. So we have to be aware. Mindfulness is a phenomenal thing and a wonderful way to really understand

ourselves way more better. But as Ram Dass said, that's why loving awareness thing that he did, you're coming from a place where it's not judgmental and that's so important. So, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Mindfulness is like mindfulness. It can like, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of problems with the term. But in my mind, no, but Bob Thurman at this retreat, one of my favorite things, he gets up there. I don't know if you remember this one. He's like, be here now. What does that even mean?

Does that even mean anything? Yeah, he's like, what does that mean? Does that mean anything? Does anyone here know what that even means? And then he goes, practice, practice, practice. Everybody's always practicing. He's like, I'd like to see some of you perform for once. He said that. Yeah, in front of the whole spiritual retreat. Practice, practice, practice. Everyone's practicing. where's the performance? Everyone's backstage, oh, yo, yo, yo, yo, oh, yo, yo, yo, yo, it's time to perform. And see, that's the thing. That's why I wanna balance out the part of the teaching,

which is like, you know, we're still human and we still have our schmooze, we still have the thing. It's like, okay, fine. But also, if you're not diving into the swimming pool that Ram Dass was talking about, even though there is no diving board and there is no pool or all floating in the pool or whatever thing you want to say, you're missing out. If you're missing out on the gleeful sparkle that was probably in that Rinpoche's eyes as he's like.

All you need is love. Yeah, because love is not tame. Love is not necessarily cordial. Love is not, doesn't have manners. You hang out with a baby for five minutes and you can see that. You get that, yeah. Yeah, so you know what I mean? I think remembering that part of it too I think maybe being around someone like Neem Kurali Baba

Who was not tame? Even though you guys are trying to domesticate him all the time by capturing him and like, you know Holding him into someplace. He wouldn't let anyone do that you know, I think it's important to remember that in defense of love because People really want to domesticate love don't't they? They want to put some real... Well, domesticate. Let's get down to it. They want to continue in its transactional nature. That's what we're used to. That's what we're being given. And that's how we want to continue on. And that's hard to break through. By the way, Spark, I have another one. Okay, let's hear it.

Somebody should, we should put together the first mind rolling that we did when we hardly knew each other, Duncan, when we first met, which is a lot of years ago, with this one. We should backbone them, put them as a set and should go out. We should do another audio where we put them out because everybody, if you haven't listened to that, and I'm sure many of you haven't, but you know, take it, you know, speaking to you, Duncan's audience, go back to be here now network.com. The first Duncan Trussell podcast that I did with

Duncan and my old partner David Silver and I will never forget it I will never forget it do you remember violent I believe, was what I was trying to bring up with you two guys. Yeah, well, yeah, yes, I do remember that. And I'm glad you brought that up because you guys should buy my other book, Raghu and I did the movie of me to the movie of we, it's on Audible. but now you should get my book ten steps to revolution through violence this is like a roadmap to an

American Revolution that will inaugurate Trump as president for the rest of American history because he deserves it he needs that much time and then transform American democracy into a monarchy, which was the normal and is still the normal form of government. And we're not going to get there. We're not going to get there with peace and love, baby. No, I know. I was a lot. I was much, oh, God, I don't even want to think about. I was really angry back then.

Yeah. Real pissed. Poor Yeah. Real pissed. Poor guy. Real pissed. You were. But yeah, no. You were a poster boy for if you want to talk about instantaneous enlightenment, then you listened to Duncan Trussell, which was, I don't know, six, seven, eight

years ago. I don't know when it was. And then listen to the talk that he just gave on this podcast. You would go, wow. Unbelievable. Ah, that's sweet of you to say. Well, I'm lucky, man.

You got me into this. You sucked me into these retreats. You got me hanging out with these people who were students of some of the most intense spiritual teachers in the West for a long time. And those people, it's been, I'm lucky. I mean, I'm lucky and my family's luckier because boy, what a dick.

I was so pissed. I still am sometimes, but thank you for saying that. And maybe we should just do another book and like, forget about talking about the one we just did. Just keep doing them. Just keep doing them. Yeah. Yeah, no, but I am aside from all the BS. I am actually really happy that we did this thing. Yes, Garcha and Rinpoche absolutely validated its worth because, and you know, we really let go about, you know, all of our who we were before, who we are now. We weren't holding anything back. So from that point of view, it's really gratifying to share

Which is my favorite thing in the whole world, but you know what at some point you got to let it go I'll go you know that who was it? I'm not letting it go. I know it's the way you gotta let go of it They you Alan Watts said to Ram Dass. You're you're attached to emptiness and That was his critique and and and what and not just in like our community, but in many spiritual communities, you notice that an attachment has emerged, not to the enlightened mind, or what many people would look at

as an egoic kind of bullshit thing, but rather an attachment to a constant reminder to others, you've got to understand how fucked up I am. And that is clinging, desperately holding on as tight as you can to the bad stuff. Because you don't want to feel like a hypocrite or a fraud. You don't want to mislead people. But it's like, yeah, you got to let that go too.

At some point you just got to let go of that identification. I'm bad. I got to prove that I'm bad. I'm a man, boy. You're not. You're fine. Oh, God. See, I'm the priest now.

You're fine. I'm going to give you five firm spanks, and then you're forgiven forever. They will be firm though. Oh God help us. Raghu. Thank you. Before we go, I know you you're headed somewhere, right? You got a trip to take today.

But before we go- I'm going to see a monkey today. Hunnamun. Hunnamun, yeah. In Taos, New Mexico. Someone got mad at me for calling him a monkey at some point. What? I don't know.

It's just someone online, who cares? They're like, he's not a monkey. Looks like a monkey to me. And he acts like a monkey too. He has fun. Yeah. He plays with us, it's great. So, let's get some business out of the way here.

And I know it hasn't gone online yet, but you've got LSR, Left Server members got a bunch of retreats coming up. You wanna just plug those real quick? Okay, yeah. We still have room in Boone, North Carolina, August 15th through 19th with Krishnadas, Duncan's teacher, David Nickturn will be

there, Spring Washem, David Block of Gone Gone Beyond, credible music, Nina Rao, we got a whole of- And Andrew Tate will be there. Who's he? Come on. Is that not true, Andrew Tate isn't coming? I don't even know Andrew Tate. I'll send you a video. Andrew Tate won't be there guys. That's an inside joke with me and them. Yeah. And then, and then come to Maui in December 5th through 8th, I believe, 9th, 5th through 9th, something like that. I believe, ninth, fifth through ninth, something like that. You go up on, go to romdoss.org and put your email in so you'll get announcements because on June 23rd they're gonna start registration.

And guess who's coming? For the first time, it's been a while, it is Duncan Trussell. Oh God, I can't wait. We're going kid free this time? Oh my God, I'm so excited, man. I just, I don't even wanna think about it. Oh god, I can't wait. We're going kid free this time. Oh my god. I'm so excited, man. It's I just I don't even want to think about it unless some some like even if by some it would be a real accident. Aaron got pregnant. We'd still be there like nothing. I don't want to say anything,

but I'm going to be there. You'll be and I And I am so excited. And then, you know, whoever else wants to come. And I haven't been to the Boone Retreats yet, but I hear they're great. Yeah, look up, as again, romdoss.org. Brave reviews. You'll find the June 23rd, 20, 23rd, something like that. But we'll send out a notice, so everybody, it's available and I'm happy to have Duncan back and we're going to play around. It'll be fun.

Christian Noss will be there. He's with the President. It's going to be a blast.. Christian Doss will be there. He's with the President. It's gonna be a blast. Jack Kornfield will be there. Trudy Goodman is going to be. Really? Kornfield? They're coming again?

Yeah, yeah. He loves coming. He's like, you know what it is? It's like when you talk about what Rondos potentially did for you when you visited him for the first time in terms of getting out of the head into the heart. He, Roshi Joan Halifax, another amazing great teacher, she would say, I'm going to visit Romdus to get a heart transplant.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Coming out of the Zen tradition, it made a lot of sense to me. Well, Yes. There you go, friends. Thank you, Roku. That's right. Yeah. I'm coming out of the Zen tradition. It made a lot of sense to me. Well, there you go, friends. Thank you, Raghu. That was awesome. That was my favorite one yet. Thank you, Duncan. Thank you.

That was Raghu Marcus. All the links you need to find the movie of me to the movie of we will be at dunkatrustle.com. I love you and I'll see you next week.