Good Life Project - Pete Holmes | On Comedy, God, Power, and Life.

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Pete Holmes is a comedian, writer, cartoonist, spiritual seeker, and the host of the You Made It Weird (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/you-made-it-weird-with-pete-holmes/id475878118) podcast. He was the creator-star of the hit HBO show Crashing. From standup comedy to screens, large and small, Pete is constantly examining and commenting on life. You can see this in his performances on stage on screens of all sizes, as well as his latest memoir. Part autobiography, part philosophical inquiry, and part spiritual quest, Pete's book, Comedy Sex God (https://amzn.to/2QXVtPZ) is a sweeping, raw, funny and illuminating exploration of the deeper meanings of life, love, and comedy.We dive into the deep end of the pool today, with a no-holds-barred exploration of family, faith, atheism, mysticism, comedy, parenting, love and how they all tie together and inform each other. This conversation was taped during our LA Sessions in Pete's studio, aka, the garage behind his house.You can find Pete Holmes at: Website: https://www.peteholmes.com/ | YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/peteholmes/videos-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is acclaimed comedian, writer, actor, podcaster, and producer, Pete Holmes. So I don't know if you've noticed, but long-term listeners have probably keyed in on this. I have been sitting down with a number of people in the world of comedy, stand-up lately. I think because stand-up tends to be this world where people choose to live in a space of constantly examining, commenting on, and pushing the envelope of not only their own existence and life and the little and the big things in it, but also around the broader experience of the human condition. And that fascinates me. They've kind of become the philosophers of sort of like the modern world. And I want to know what's underneath that.

That is a lot of what Pete explores in his recent memoir as well. It's called Comedy Sex God. And by the way, that is not sort of like comedy sex God as in two adjectives and a person, but three different topics that are deeply meaningful to him. And also in his

long running podcast, You Made It Weird, we dive into the deep end of the pool today really quickly with a no holds barred exploration of family and faith, atheism, mysticism, comedy, parenting, love, and how they all tie together and inform each other. Fun context fact here also, this conversation is part of our LA sessions where we spent a few weeks recording in Southern California. On this day in particular, we taped in Pete's garage behind his house on a semi-reclined old couch, just kind of past the elliptical trainer

that we would step around to get to it. Pete had a cozy blanket pulled chest high over his pajamas as we both kind of laid back and sat there with our microphones. Loved every part of this experience, and I hope you will too. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?'re gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk but katie will tell you that i'm a definitely a suggestible person if you told me that those had like you just gave me these almonds if you you were like, these almonds will elevate your mood 30%, it's been proven. I don't mind that. I just have a very suggestible mind. I like to think that it's tied to like a manifesting quality that I have, meaning if I'm cooking like a mac and cheese or something heavy

and kind of make substantial, I was going to say gross, meaning something that makes you feel a different way you know mac and cheese makes you feel like you ate mac and cheese yeah when i'm cooking it i'll start feeling how i'm going to feel it's a weird it's like my consciousness is a little bit ahead of myself not so weird actually um a lot of the research on sort of like gratification satisfaction and like points pretty clearly to the fact that we actually get a bigger hit from the anticipation than from the thing itself. I mean, Katie knows this.

Val always says it's the ordering the pizza and waiting for the pizza and looking forward to the pizza. It's not the pizza. The first bite of pizza is great. And then every other bite is literally just chasing the dragon. I don't know if this is relevant to your podcast but that is one of the most valuable things i've ever

learned it's also just like you want that hit of self-love where you go like yes you can have because you're parenting yourself you go it's okay you can have it last night i just worked this weekend doing stand-up so we did five shows and then I got home late last night and I was very tempted to order food, even though I knew I wasn't hungry. And it's taken me a lot of time. It's taken me, I'm 40 years old now. And I just go, this is a malfunctioning of the lower part of my brain that thinks that like, I need to eat constantly to live. And I have to go like, that's not me. I have to go, it's not me. And I have to tell like that's not me i have to go it's not me and i have to tell something that's not me no that's what's made a huge difference is i used to have to tell pete

no and now the the way that i avoid binging that would basically just be a binge if you're not hungry and you're eating just a binge i just go that's not you i'm talking to the animal part of my brain you can't have fat and sugar right now i know you want it but you're you're malfunctioning you're firing off and you shouldn't be yeah and yet we do that all day every day it's like yeah it's not i mean but it's interesting because you're like okay so that's not me then who is it well i mean it's sort of like it's the primal part of us that just is completely autonomous and reactive you mean it deserves some love too yeah and mean, it's sort of like, it's the primal part of us that just is completely autonomous and reactive. You mean it deserves some love too?

Yeah. And you know, it's, I think so. I don't think it has our best interest in mind. Well, I think sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn't. It didn't get the update. Right. It's like must download patch now.

Yeah. I wish we could. I mean, like it is why ice cream is so good. It's not not giving us something. I didn't mean to interrupt you. You're just saying it, it deserves, it is why ice cream is so good. It's not not giving us something. I didn't mean to interrupt you. You're just saying it is part of us. No, because, I mean, if you think about where it came from, right? So who knows?

Because it's been there forever. But all bets are on the fact that, you know, it was a survival mechanism that, you know, we might not be eating for three weeks. So we eat whenever we can. But then there's sort of like these, you you know two different thinking systems that we have this sort of like kahneman and torsky made famous the intuitive fast like primal one where you think you're making a really good decision and there's sort of like a logical reason slower one where you you know your your brain is like analyzing the data points and most people think that that you know their intuitive thing is always right like that primal voice is like well yeah you, that's my intuition.

Your gut, yeah. But it's not. But it's also not useless. You know, it's sort of like the two systems inform each other depending on the type of decision that you're making. That's really interesting. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of intuition.

I don't know if it comes from the brain at all, though. I sometimes think it comes from putting the brain aside. I mean, Einstein was a big fan of not using the rational brain it comes from putting the brain aside i mean einstein was a big fan of not using the rational brain or any or either part of the brain i think he was using silence oh so many great ideas come from it's this line in mad men i love the show mad men and don draper which is matt weiner speaking through don draper says the way to come up with an idea is to think about it really hard and then stop thinking about it and then it'll just come to you.

And I was like, that's exactly what it is. It's like you can't think your way to a great solution all the time. Sometimes you think and then you have to just put it aside. And I think that's one way around. It's like the third side of the brain. So agree with that,

which is kind of interesting too because that pause is going away these days. It is. It's like, I mean, you have a device in your hand that lets you feel every second. So I often wonder what happens to innovation, what happens to creativity when that pause goes away. I couldn't agree more. We're right in my sweet spot of what I love to rant about is because I've said before, it's like ideas are like fish, but the water has to be still to see them. And we're just constantly and I do it to myself even. I'm grateful that I'm 40. And I

figured out how to be creative. And I figured out, I've made it my, my livelihood and stuff. So it's a priority. And it's easy to make it a priority. But if I was a young person, like where I came up with, like, so many ideas, and so many visions for my life and what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do came from being in the backseat of my parents' car, really, really bored. And they didn't give a shit. And I mean, it wasn't not, it was not abnormal to not give a shit that your kids were bored. You were like, yeah, childhood is boring. Right. It's like, figure something out, figure something out. I was so bored. I played with action figures until I was 18.

And I only stopped when I was 18 because of peer pressure. I used to be so embarrassed of that. But now I'm like, what a fucking genius. I was like making movies. I was basically making movies. When I write a script, I'm playing with action figures. It's the same exact thing. This guy comes in and says this.

Now we're in a diner on the moon. It's writing a script. It's playing with action figures. It's the same exact thing. This guy comes in and says this. Now we're in a diner on the moon. It's writing a script. It's playing with action figures. And I did that because I wasn't, basically, I didn't have the internet. But then I see so many young people, like Jaboukie Youngwhite comes to mind, who's somebody I did Crashing with. I don't know how old he is. I think he's like, I don't know, 20 or something. He's very young. And he's super creative and super talented. And it's like nature always finds a way,

meaning like it's normal that I'm going to look at the young people and go like, how are they going to do it? And like maybe the brain finds ways to enter resting states even when you're scrolling. I don't know what it is. Maybe. I mean, I think the generation that's coming up, definitely their brains are getting wired differently than ours were. I think that's just a fact.

And maybe it's just creating sort of its own way to find that, you know, like maybe it's piecing together microbursts of space to try and give the brain what it needs to actually get that same cumulative effect. Yeah, it's like growing gills. They'll grow gills. Nah. And we grew gills. I mean, I was drinking so much soda.

I'm sure, I don't know if my dad was like, I didn't drink that much soda, but like we were doing that. We were eating chemicals and weird things and watching way more TV and video games and stuff that they didn't understand. So if we're looking at young people and going like, I don't know about these kids,

I just feel like that's the more things change sort of thing. I completely agree. So, I mean, it's interesting also, because you, so you grew up in a, like a strongly evangelical household and mom was also Lithuanian. Was she first generation? So she came first generation. I say this with love, like meeting a jolly Lithuanian is always really fun for me we can have like a heaviness to us i actually love it i think it's what makes me sort of interesting as a person well lauren lapkus who was played my wife on crashing she's lithuanian and she's a very happy person just in my family my dad always because he's he's irish and british and right like kind of more of a jolly person would always joke that if anyone smiled in my mom's side of the family their face would crack they were just very but they were like literally world war ii refugees you know what i mean like

they were like a serious people and my dad was just in america just being like how much for the hot dog you know it was different you know kind of energies so i mean did you ever wonder what drew them to each other had being like different lenses. Maybe it's complimentary. I think about this all the time. Sometimes freewheeling, successful, happy men, like my father, and women. I'm just speaking. I know a bunch of men like that who sometimes are drawn to what they're missing, which is a little bit of a frank... don't want to say there wasn't like too

much nastiness but she was very like critical and it almost like keeps them from soaring so high that it's unpleasant i know that sounds like code that my mom is just terrible that's not what i'm saying i'm just saying i know a lot of people like everything's going right in their life and then they tend to marry somebody that's not just like my wife you met her val is like higher and higher let's be happier and sillier but a lot of people with lives like mine that are just sort of charmed and nice and your dreams come true sometimes they do marry somebody that's like you ain't shit and they like that and i think that goes back to however their mothers were or whatever their psychology is and I think my my father's psychology probably needed somebody to be like Jay put down that paint you know what I mean and and that felt comfortable to him yeah like Freud

was right about everything he's and my mother loved me too much and my wife loves me too much like I mean we're just doing we're looking for what we learned we are repeating the cycles of our parents yeah that's right. I mean, they put in the tracks and my mom was like, love is holding you and telling you you're great and feeding you and all these things. And my wife does, I know people don't like talking about this because it's creepy, I guess, like to think that your wife is sort of a version of love,

of what you learned, but like, deal with it. We're fucking baboons. I mean, it's interesting that you say that, right? Because I remember hearing from, I must've been a therapist or a workshop or lecture or something like that, where basically the proclamation was, we all tend to find and date the person

who is the parent that wounded us most and try and change in them the thing about our parent that was causing the hurt and which is like a brutal thing to try and do to sort of like try and start a creative relationship with rather than just sort of like find that person and somehow use them as a proxy to just get comfortable and find acceptance of the way things are. Yeah, that's interesting. I'd love to talk to that therapist. I'm all about admitting wounds and stuff. I don't think that's what's going on with Val and I.

And I'm the first to get in line of the like, this is how I'm fucked up. So I hope you don't see this as a lack of vulnerability. I may have been doing that with my first marriage. But the second time around, I was very much like i was post therapy i i knew a lot more than my first i didn't know what i was doing i got married when i was 22 so i literally i drew a new yorker cartoon i drew cartoons for the new yorker at the time and if you look at the rejected ones they're like journals and one was a guy saying to his mom mom this is uh jennifer she'll take it from here like that was the joke and that that's what i was doing with i i i like

tarzan swung from my mom to my first wife so no wonder i i'm not saying this falsely no wonder she left like that was a brave and appropriate thing for her to do. I sort of wish she had done it in a more gentle way, like not cheated on me, but she did the right thing. She needed to blow up the bridge and it was always gonna be somewhat hurtful, but she did what she had to do. And I respect that. And it was because I hadn't yet gone in my,

the deep cave of my subconscious and been like, oh, look what's happened in here. Like it's pretty fucking weird in here. I hadn't yet gone in my, the deep cave of my subconscious and been like, Oh, look what's happened in here. Like it's, it's pretty fucking weird in here. And then Val came around precisely because I had cleaned up the frequency that my tuning fork was emitting. And then I was able to attract somebody that was just,

that wasn't just another version of my shadow. Yeah. I, man, I hope. So much evolution we all go through. I mean, you've written, you've talked about, you've done so much around sort of the dynamic in your household when you were a kid, both in terms of your parents, you also being a peacekeeper and in this deeply faith-based family culture, which seemed when you were younger to kind of like provide a lot of foundation and structure that was really helpful, but at a certain point wasn't. And it also sounds like what you just described, you know, like when your wife left you, that was this moment where it wasn't just about the relationship. It was like,

oh, this is making me question everything that I've been taught up until this moment in my life. And it was actually a little bit different. My parents were religious. I just, out of respect for people who were raised like actually evangelical, I just want to make the note that it was like, sort of, I went harder at it than they did. They introduced me to it. But then at a certain point, my mom actually was like, I'm sorry. Like, she actually apologized to me. She was like, I didn't know that you were being told that, like, sex is evil or that you were being told that being gay is wrong or that you're being told this, this, or this, or this, or whatever it was. So she actually owned up to that. But I was looking for structure that I wasn't necessarily getting in my family i was getting a lot of good things in my family but i i wouldn't say like like a regular dose of stable structure what

comedian is like boy that was stable or person i don't know it's like i got nothing to talk about yeah is that right no it's like i'm just imagining like a comedian he's like on stage who has oh i have nothing exactly i got nothing yeah a comedian learns how to control difficult situations so that i think that's where i learned how to control like so this club i was working this week and they were like kicking people out because it was late and they were rowdy and something i say to myself backstage i go this is nothing compared to like an awkward dinner with my family. Like, you know what I mean? Like, what are you going to yell, eat shit at me? Like, fuck off. Like, I don't care. Like, this is nothing. Like, that's where you learn those chops of a late Friday show. You learn them with weird parents. So anyway, I ended up going to church, especially my father was a great dad in so many ways. But I was also looking for like the emotional father figure. And that's where I found like, I was so impressed that there was a pastor, we had a male pastor that was like talking

about feelings and asking questions about the universe. And I had a male youth pastor that was like also available emotionally and was sort of like gentle. I don't mean that like he was he was like a I guess you'd say a man's man. I don't know what that means, meaning he could do carpentry or whatever. But like he was available. He was vulnerable. And I was really sort of like, what is this? And it was also in show business. These are both people speaking on stage. So, of course, I loved it. It was like people asking the big questions. I was always one of those people. I still am. That's like, it's crazy that I'm seeing anything that anything is seeing anything. I didn't have those words for it, but as a kid, I was just like, what is going on here?

I don't understand. So many people were more interested in their pants or their next great meal or a movie. And I'm just like, what is it that is happening? And God is sort of an oversimplified story, I suppose, but at least it was a story. It was like, well, there's a God and there's seven days and this is going on. I was like, okay, great. So I loved it. But then I did, like a lot of people, misinterpret that as God being like your protection system, that this God is like not in favor of suffering. And if you are good, he will protect you. It's basically Santa Claus. And I don't say that with any disrespect intended to people who maybe still believe that way. But the God that so many Christians that I

knew, and I'll just speak for myself, that I believed in, had so much more to do with Santa Claus, Zeus, and Plato, basically. That's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with like the body is bad. And this is the separation of spirit and body didn't come from Jesus. Jesus is like all about the body. He's like, eat my body and like receive the body. And I am your body. And we are one body. He's like, eat my body and like receive the body and I am your body and we are one body. All that body shame comes from a misinterpretation of Paul, which we don't have to go into now. But Plato was the one that was like,

spirit and body are at odds. And it's like me talking about the ice cream and these things are fighting each other and we need to be pure and we need it. So, and then Santa Claus watching and rewarding, huge part of our culture subconscious, and that became our God. And then Zeus, old man in the sky with a beard, who's going to punish you if you're bad, but then of course he's going to protect you if you're good.

So that was my God. You can't really find that God in the Bible, but that was him. And then graciously, he was blown up when my wife, as you mentioned, thank you for at least reading a synopsis of my book. If you didn't read my book, I really, I mean that I'm so touched. It's not often that I talk to somebody that seems to know what they're talking about. My wife leaves. And then I went, well, what's going on here? I thought, I didn't say fuck. I said, Freck, I didn't have sex. I waited till I was married, more or less. We had sex a little bit before we got married. I didn't do drugs. I didn't really drink.

I thought everybody you told me to think was going to hell was going to hell. I prayed. And it still blew up. And then that made me lose my faith, which ended up being a really great thing. Because I talked about it in the book as being like, I took all the furniture out of the room, the faith furniture, and then I could redesign it in a way that felt right.

Going back to intuition that felt right to my heart, not just like what I had been, what I had inherited. Yeah. And I mean, you're also at a moment in your life where I think a lot of us are sort of like stepping out from under the umbrella, the safety,

the, the provocations and proclamations of our parents and like starting kind of like that on your own and then your next level out on your own. It was totally appropriate. You're absolutely right. It's the right moment. It's maybe not the way you want it to go down.

Even if you weren't getting divorced though, you were probably doing something similar. A lot of similar questioning, yeah. And everybody needs it. I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt doing something similar. And everybody needs it. I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just get so excited about this. So Richard Rohr says that God or ultimate mystery or ultimate truth or ultimate reality doesn't come to us through structures or books or religions necessarily. It's available and free to everybody. And it comes through great love or great suffering. Suffering means things not going your way. It doesn't mean necessarily

like being stretched on the rack. It just means things not going how you expected. And that happens to everybody. And great love usually comes to everybody in some way or another. So those are the two great teachers. I thought, because I'm a Westerner, I'm an American capitalist, basically, I'm thinking like, God is the winner. He wants us to feel good things. He wants us to win. We should be eating good meals and saying, thank you, God. It's basically a clanistic, it's a rightness worship. And like, God, thank you for this bounty. And we eat it, and we know that our God is right and their God is wrong. You can find that in the Bible. It's in the Old Testament. It's all the priests of Baal, and we wipe them out, and we know that our God is right and their God is wrong. You can find that in the Bible. It's in the Old Testament.

It's all the priests of Baal, and we wipe them out, and we're victorious. That's low-level religion. It's identity-making religion. And that's what I had. And when it blew up, I was in New York City. I was 28, and I was on my own for the first time. And that's basically what Crashing is about. But the true story is a little bit different, you know, in subtle ways. And I had all this time to go like, oh, I'm free to be an atheist if I want. crashing is about but the true story is a little bit different you know in subtle ways and i had

all this time to go like oh i'm free to be an atheist if i want and i dabbled with that it didn't feel right because i mean we can get into that if you want but like i for the first time allowed myself to entertain any possibility which is actually way closer to liberation and enlightenment than i was when i was religious when i was religious i was taking what i had inherited and protecting it holding it like a hot potato whereas an atheist is actually way more liberated meaning they can think if you're open to atheism and open to theism and open to infinite possibilities like pendulet is by the way he's like i'm not saying there's not a god he's a famous atheist he's saying i'm saying i don't see the evidence for a god i'm open to anything that is a very

liberated person a very free person as opposed to what i was doing which was i was like you know i can only look in this corner with this flashlight. Don't turn around. Don't look at any may be for you, because it tells you what to do when you open your eyes in the morning. And depending how deep you go into orthodoxy, it really tells you what to do. So when you strip that away, so it gives you a certain amount of certainty in your life. It gives you the rules.

Like if this happens, if X happens, Y is the appropriate response. So yeah, it definitely limiting on the freedom side of things, but also gives you a certain amount of grounding that makes us kind of like be able to breathe. And what's interesting is you describe when you kind of pull that away

and you're like wiping the slate clean, not that you're not gonna ever accept or rebuild it in a way that makes sense to you, but in that moment, there's a huge amount of freedom. Also for so many people, I feel like that is the moment of just stunning anxiety. Well, Kierkegaard said, anxiety is a dissonance of freedom.

That this is a moment where a lot of people, rather than sort of like just being in that space, it's so scary that there's this really strong urge to just run to anything else that provides the rules and the structure so you can kind of breathe again, even if it's not, you know, at the end of the day, constructive to the way you want to live. That's what I used to say. What a cliche.

My wife left me and I lost my faith. And a dear friend of mine was like, it would have also been a cliche if you doubled down and became extremely religious. And I actually know more people because I got married young. I know other people that got married young and a good number of them are divorced. And a lot of them just married another Christian person. No judgment. I actually maybe think you are hearing some judgment there. So I'll just say I think Pete, my true self is okay with that. Pete is sort of judgmental of that. Pete is saying like, oh, look at that.

That might have been a more scared move. But guess what? I'm scared sometimes too, and I get it. And I get what you're saying. That like this world is, we are floating in space. And no one's talking about it. That is, I mean, and I found Val. And Val and I are on the couch last night. And we just take, we don't do it to be interesting people. We do it because I'm constantly looking for someone that's like, we're in space, attached to nothing, flying in a weird pattern of planets and it's fucking insane and no one's talking about it and the reason we're not talking about it is because we give ourselves so many other things

to talk and think about similarly death happens divorce happens there's all this uncertainty so we can add all of this liturgy we can can add all of these ceremonies and rituals to sort of avoid the big questions. And for so many people, that's what religion is. And again, that I'm trying to say without judgment, is that you take religion as a set of answers. Pete Enns has this great book called, I haven't read the book, but I envied the title. It's called The Sin of Certainty. And I was like, that's perfect. And that's maybe the biggest passion of my life is what Richard Rohr would say is drawing people from dogma or just inherited faith to experiential faith, meaning something happened to you. Something happened to

you where you figured out not just your smallness that you're floating in space, but your interconnectedness with everything. It's not like space starts out there. This is space. You know what I mean? I know we call that outer space, but it's all just this one thing and it's mysterious and it's insane. And you don't need to know what's going on. I was just hearing about, I forget who it was, but it was some great saint. And they were like, who are you? And you'd think you ask a guy like me, who are you? I would be like, well, that's an interesting question. I have the construct of my ego, but really I am the awareness that's observing that ego, right? But a saint is not, I'm not a saint. And a saint would

be like, I don't know. You know what I mean? That is, faith is not no doubt. Faith is knowing that you are accepted and at home here, even though you might not know the answers. That's what Richard says. It's accepting that you are accepted. So even when you're afraid that you're gonna die, or even that you're not sure about good and evil and the bend of the universe,

you're still like, it's okay. This isn't a flaw in the system. Yeah. I mean, which is not too indifferent from another of your teachers and somebody who I studied, you know, the words of for years, Ram Dass who recently passed, you know, and it really, it seems like it's interesting. Like you felt this drive, this compulsion to reconstruct some sort of belief system about you and your relationship with the world it's like you didn't entirely abandon jesus and at the same time you kind of open yourself up to like like just let me just step into and explore and learn from anyone and see how i figure like the pieces of my particular puzzle are coming together. It feels like from the outside looking in that you've landed in this place, which is kind of on the level of being really drawn to the mystical expressions of so many different traditions,

where I think that tends to be the place where you see so much more harmony among different faith paths. You lose your interest in being right is what happens. So Richard Rohr and Ram Dass, but Richard Rohr I plug so much because if people are Western in the way that I was, meaning they were raised, obviously there's every faith in America. But if you were raised in sort of that Norman Rockwell Christian way, I point people to Richard Rohr because he'll take you to the same place Ram Dass does while letting you hold Jesus's hand.

Right. It's like you can work within that ecosystem. It makes you feel less scared. And that's what I like about it, to be honest. I'm like, I like that this guy has a cross and look at him with the incense. Even though I wasn't Catholic, I still think this guy must know what he means. And I can hear Richard laughing. I think he would think that's funny.

And I think that's why he stays inside of it. He knows the power of symbols and images that transform people. And I think I've said that to him. And he's like, that's exactly why I'm here. Mystical just means experiential. And going back to Ram Dass, what happened when I was an atheist, briefly, sort of like a closeted Jesus-leaning person. I write about in the book that I saw the movie, The Book of Eli.

It's so embarrassing. It's supposed to be an embarrassing story that I went with my girlfriend who, I don't, she didn't have strong religious beliefs. We went and saw The Book of Eli, which is about Denzel Washington walking the Bible across a post-apocalyptic he's he has the last bible and he's like killing motorcycle gangs protecting it it's such a stupid i i actually don't i i'm just saying that because i loved it and i sometimes still do watch it uh it's been years but i i like it and that embarrasses me because i don't think it's a great movie but it it moved me. I was like, Oh, no, I let the bikers take my Bible. I felt so that's like the point of the movie is like, don't lose your faith. It's so simple. It's an action movie. So I would have all these inexplicable experiences where I was like, I it's like the hound of heaven. I felt like God was like

chasing me. But I couldn't differentiate from my psyche and my guilt and my upbringing and what was actually like an earnest desire to know the mystery. And it could have been both, let's be honest. It was probably mostly my psychology. And then there was also this beautiful earnestness and true thing happening. So I was keeping those things to myself. And then I took mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, psilocybin. And that, I was the same age as Ram Dass was. I was 31. And I remember I wrote in the book that it was Amy Schumer and Reggie Watts and Kurt Braunohler, Braunohler, that told me to take them.

And they were all like, it's like stronger weed or whatever. And like, for anyone listening, it's not. It's not stronger weed. Like, what are you saying? As much as I turn people on to psychedelics, I'd also like to take a moment to give some caution and be like, it's a serious thing. Like it's, there's every time I've taken psychedelics, as soon as it's in your body. And I wrote this in the book, there's this feeling that you get when something is irrevocably

in your system. Like you, I was watching succession last night and Greg does cocaine. I've never done cocaine. I'll never do cocaine, but he does cocaine. And he's like, should I vomit? And he goes, not if you can't vomit your whole blood system. And I was like, yeah, that's the feeling it's in you and you have to go and surrender to it and just do it. But nobody told me that they were just like, it's fun. And I'm kind of glad. The first time the Beatles did LSD, they were dosed. Somebody put it in their iced tea or whatever. Friends at a like beautiful ranch in Germany. So they were happy about it. But they were like, there's so much stigma. We don't want you to freak out. We just put it in your drink and you're gonna have

a nice time. That was kind of like what happened to me because I just ate it thinking it was like funny or like fun pills. It was in a chocolate. And I didn't know that it was a religious experience until later. And I can summarize it. It's not that I saw Christ or anything. There was no like overt imagery. I saw a tree breathing, like undulating, moving with my breath. And I felt my oneness with a tree and the tree is rooted in the earth and the tree is with the earth and it's breathing the air and it's making more air and it's drinking the rain and I'm with the tree. So I'm with everything. And I didn't really put language to that until later, but I had had an experience that i couldn't explain without a metaphor and that's when i really started to think oh maybe that's what religion

is it's trying to explain things that you can't explain without a metaphor which might not be literally true but like god is like an old man in the sky in a cloud whereas Whereas I used to be like, no, he is a man in the sky. No, that's the metaphor. You say he is a man in the sky. But it's really more of an analogy. He's like a man in the sky. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I mean, it's interesting also, because around the same time you're exploring all of this stuff, you're building a career in comedy, started on the Christian circuit,

then you end up in New York. Things are really starting to happen. I do want to point out, I didn't start in the Christian circuit. That was exaggerated in crashing. The only reason I want to do that is when I'm nasty or mean or something. People are like, and this from the Christian comic.

I always want to say, find one thing that says Pete Holmes Christian comic. You won't find it. It never exists. I performed at my college, which was a Christian college. And I performed at maybe, I can't even remember specifics, but like other. So a couple of gigs. A couple of gigs, literally. A couple of gigs.

But not enough to ever say I was billed as a christian right but you're starting to get traction you know while all this question is going on all this change going on this thing and and part of my curiosity was you know in the early days what drew you to this but also as you're moving through this major window of questioning changing kind of annihilating your world and trying to figure out how to rebuild it like yes you know like comedy plays a role in expressing certain parts of you but also changing, kind of annihilating your world and trying to figure out how to rebuild it. Like, yes, you know, like, comedy plays a role in expressing certain parts of you. But also, what's the bigger job of comedy in your life during that window of time? Like, what was it? I'm curious whether you were sort of like leaning on it as a tool to go deeper into your exploration? I think what's wonderful about comedy is it's always running.

So like, it seems sort of beside the point, but like, if you want to do interesting comedy, like have an interesting life. So you don't have to like overtly try to make your comedy deeper or more interesting or richer. I think it's something that I've actually experienced on mushrooms is you're like, the things you read are in there. I know that seems like so obvious, like so many revelations that you have on drugs, but like it re like, I really had a sense. I was like, Oh, there's Richard Rohr. Like that stuff is in me. And here's the music I listened to. And here's the movies that I watch. And here's the movies that I watch. And here's the documentaries. Or here are the conversations I have.

So that stuff matters. So like my spiritual seeking ended up informing my comedy. But I never intended to write bits about mindfulness or the mystery of life and death or necessary suffering or whatever it might be. If you, if I watch my standup sometimes after the fact, I go like, oh, that bit is about, uh, being present or whatever, or that bit is about the need for, or how joy is always sort of available if you step outside of your circumstances, like your circumstances might be not joyful, but there might be a part of you that's still joyful, even though you're going through intense suffering. And there might be jokes about that, but they come out so stupid and silly. I don't know.

Is that answering your question? Yeah. I mean, kind of. Part of it is, so for some reason we've been actually sitting down with a number of comics. Ophira Eisenberg, just in Denver with Adam, Kate and Holland. Oh, he's great. And a couple of other, like, what occurred to me as early tomorrow. I don't know Ophira very well.

I wasn't like omitting. She's super cool. Yeah. But I said, oh, Adam's great. It's like I have beef with Ophira. No, I just don't know her as well. No blood scripts thing happening with Ophira. No, no no no it would pop into my head and the more i sort of like learned about you and i

looked at your work and your writing is that there's this sense that comedy is playing an analytical role in the lives of all this but but it's not just a personal thing i feel like the sort of modern day comic, maybe like the alt comedy comedian is almost playing the equivalent role of you brought up Plato, right? Of the philosophers of a different generation, because it's like your job is not to, it seemed like a lot of it was self-examination in the early days, but it sounds like, I feel like a lot of comedy was self-examination in the early days but it sounds like i feel like a lot of comedy now also is serves a purpose of self-examination but also commenting on society in a way that is sometimes brutal but ultimately designed yes to get a laugh but really to get closer to the truth absolutely is become like that there's a really interesting role that maybe just my observation

it feels like it's evolving there's nothing funny about agreeing with you which is why so many comedians would be like nah like i can hear bill burr being like get the fuck out of here it's just jokes and they don't want to call it art and you know what it is they're just afraid that if they hold the butterfly too tight in their hand they're gonna kill it that's all it is but i'm say, yes, of course it's art. And of course, philosophy used to be popular. That's what you did for fun. You're in ancient Greece and there's orgies and there's fucking, they're killing people over here for fun. And still the philosophers are drawing a crowd.

Like, it's like modern day. Like we have all these things and still we just want to hear people working it out and thinking about things harder than maybe people that don't have the luxury of that time can go and enjoy that. I think about like Bill Burr and Louis. I understand Louis' controversy. I always want to tip my hat to that. So I'm not just whatever. They both had really interesting bits about abortion and i was like this is that's philosophy and they're able to do it in a way that uh i'm thinking more of louie's louie had this bit where he was like i'm not uh for it and i'm not against it and he

and he plays both sides similarly Similarly, Chappelle does that. Like he'll, he'll just show both sides and, and we're laughing and, and Bill Burr will do that thing where we don't agree with what he's saying. And, and we're laughing and it's just sort of like this mind expansion. You don't have to leave changed, but like in church, they couldn't say like, you know, we're pro-life here, but here, but this is when you would be pro-choice for sure. You can't do it. There's no freedom.

We're back to the freedom issue. So the comedian is the free person. That's why I think it's funny when we get in trouble for being free. I was like, don't you see we're just playing the role? We're the guy in the tribe that puts on the mask of the rascal. It's not who we really are. Everybody's got a rascal, but we become the rascal. And that's a necessary thing.

We've always had it. We need it. But then I go, but then the press gets mad. And that's them playing their role. You want to get outraged. That's okay, too. It's all show business. It's fine.

I digress. I think it is absolutely where we go, especially in this culture where we have less navel gazing time because we're constantly stimulating ourselves. We need the people that are finding ways to be bored and still think about things very deeply and then share them in entertaining ways. Yeah. And I think provoke us to question question like where does the capital truth lie or at least our capital truth lies or like in the way things are unfolding which is and like you found the confluence and you know like john stewart and daily show where you know a certain generation got all of their news from that show yeah Yeah. You know, sort of like, and everyone understood that there was comedy driving the whole thing,

but like they viewed him as the most honest person. That's right. And you should. I mean, I think John had his leanings, but he was honest about them. And I think that's what made it a little bit different. When Fox News calls itself fair and balanced, it's just sort of like, what? Why don't you just call yourself conservative news? Like,

why is that so bad? And I think The Daily Show was like, no, we're liberal show business news. But I mean, like, college kids tend to really like that sort of stuff. So here it is. And if they want to call bullshit on the Democrats i i didn't watch a lot of daily show but i'm assuming they did yeah what they did whatever they wanted i know you've also described comedy as sort of the modern day preacher so not just philosopher but also it's like crossing back into like more into your roots but but that's show business too right and i guess because you described that also like you're getting up in front of a congregation, like there's a certain amount of it's showtime. Those were my first show people.

But you've also broken it down and gone beyond preaching and said it's the ministering side that actually is kind of like more interesting to you. Well, it is. If we're saying like a nurse ministers health, you know what I mean? Like she brings or he brings you medicine and care. That is ministry, right? So that is how I'm kind of using that term. You hear ministry, you think I'm spreading like a certain gospel, a certain set of beliefs that I want you to carry around in your head. So we both have them, right? I think you can agree or disagree with me or Bill Burr or whoever. And if you're laughing and you're experiencing the playfulness and the elasticity,

elastification of your brain, that is, you're ministering to the audience and you're being ministered to. Everybody's sort of, it's a mutually beneficial situation. I was doing my show last night, two days? What day is it? Oh, it's Monday. Yeah, I did a show last night. So there was somebody laughing. And I was like, I think you're gonna live eight more years because you just laughed that laugh. Like it felt like it unlodged something like a block. And that is really up my own ass. But I'm not pete is this healing thing i'm saying laughing is a healing thing and of course it is why would you come out to a club where the laughs are so much better by the way if you could if it was just about hearing my material you're coming

there to gather in a mass of mammals and and I love the word undulating, somebody pointed that out recently, and undulate in a rhythm. It's a drum circle. It's the end of Avatar where they're holding arms. It's primal. And I think it's healing. I think it's actually very good medicine. But it's also good medicine for your brain. That that's good preaching is I'm allowed to say, I don't know what's going on up here. I'm working on a bit. I can't get it to work where I go, why is everyone scared to die? Everyone dies. My grandma died. You can't do what my grandma did. She didn't even speak English. I think that's so funny. Crowds aren't quite ready for it, but, or it's not funny enough. They can can hear it but it's not quite funny enough even in church they're not going up necessarily and saying we die maybe like

kobe bryant just passed these weeks we're gonna hear some sermons about death but i mean like i have a year-round pass to be like this shit's temporary we have a whole ecclesiastes shout out to the ot there's a whole book going like we're fucked this is fucked we're all just fucked have you looked around and that's so lost we're just it just got turned into ethics and polity and afterlife guarantees it's so fucking boring jesus did not do that he didn't go around going like don't worry you guys are in you guys are in in fact he kept pointing like everybody was in especially the people that didn't feel in the poor and the outcast the sick the untouchable and he was pointing at the kings and the idiots going like these guys I'm not so sure that's exciting and that's what a comedian can do I bet Jesus was

funny you know I I'm we don't even know what is historically true. I happen to believe it. That takes some faith because of the way that records are kept. But I'm like, I bet that guy was funny. Somewhere there's like a missing joke book. Yes. Knock, knock. Who's there? It's me, baby. Someone's going to find it. It's a revelation. I stand at the door and knock. If you're religious, you're laughing. It's really interesting also that you mentioned sort of like what happens when people in a room together because part of it i think is yes you have somebody like you who's a master of the craft and we can talk about that a little bit too because i'm curious i'm very touched on you

on stage bringing people along for this journey where everyone using your the word you love is sort of undulating through ripples of emotion and laughter together. Yeah. And the fence, you know what I mean? Like that's part of it too. Like it's risky. Right. Somebody said stand up is like going to the zoo and seeing the animals. Yeah. I'm a weird bonobo and I'm a friendly bonobo. I'm not going to shit in my hand. Like you can bring, you can bring the teenage kids, maybe not the baby kids, but like it's, there should be a little bit of a risk there is risk going to the zoo the chimpanzees might start fucking you know what i mean and that's there's

something kind of fun about that element yeah and i think being in a room with a whole bunch of other people where you're sharing it and also sort of looking around you're kind of like you know is it is this okay for me to laugh because i think it's really funny and then nobody everybody's along with you at a certain point. There's a sense of belonging that I think happens in a room that we so yearn for because we feel it so little these days that I totally agree. I don't think being in a room or a theater or an audience

with a lot of people in person, not with a screen between you, is ever going to go away because we just need it. We have to have it. No, I completely agree. Somebody made me feel good. It was Dan Natterman. He was talking about job security.

He was like, we provide a service, people seem to need it. It's been around for a very long time. And even though, I mean, they're always trying to be like, oh, Google VR stand up. And I'm like, yeah, sure. And there's porn too, but sex remains popular. You know what I mean? Like I get it. I'm not worried. And maybe that maybe this is the sound of a dinosaur who doesn't know a meteorite is coming, but I don't, I don't see that happening. And you're right on

the money. Like, so I worked this weekend and I could take you through first show Friday and the, and the psyche of them Saturday. And then on Sunday, you can feel that some of them went to church. And you can tell that some of them like, you just, you have these different touchstones. And sometimes I'll tell them, I have this joke that's like a little bit dirty. It's a little bit cheeky, I guess. I wouldn't even say it's dirty. It's just cheeky. And sometimes they don't laugh. And in the middle of the joke, I'll go, guys, I've heard this hour before. This is one of the funniest parts for you. I mean it not for me, for you laugh it up. I can feel you looking around and seeing if it's okay to laugh that that makes it sound like it's racist or something. That's not what I mean.

It's just about sex. But I'm like, you guys are sitting out one of the best jokes of the hour. I've heard it before. This is your opportunity. Give it up. But I can see that maybe the town is too small. They don't want to laugh in front of their postman. I don't know what it is. They're censoring themselves. You can feel it. That's why the perfect situation for for comedy it's never a birthday group it's never a corporate group you don't want the audience to know each other you want to be in a group of strangers that become synced up for a time and then never see each other again and that's that's where you want to be you want to see other people laughing that's the whole idea

of doing things in the round and stuff you want to the audience is part of the show that's that's why it's always a nightmare if there's like a huge bachelor party or batch it's not just because they're drunk it's because they know each other you know what i mean so maybe they're doing a bit about like i don't know you ever hit on a girl and some guy starts laughing and your friends are like you don't have a girl you've been married since you were 21 you fucking dummy it's like you want to be free yeah well maybe he has dreams that he or maybe he has a memory of that like shut up let him laugh yeah or you're a pastor you know what i mean the best thing a pastor can do if he wants to have a good time is go to a comedy club outside of his town wear a ball cap and just forget that he's a pastor for a night and just enjoy it not all comedy some comedy most comedy is pretty bad if you ask me like a lot of it's

pretty bad but like if you go and see chapelle and just forget your role for a second that's what that's what comedy is inviting you to it's like how about for this don't even be a man or a woman don't even be a cop don't be a veteran don't be a politician don't be a pastor't even be a man or a woman. Don't even be a cop. Don't be a veteran. Don't be a politician. Don't be a pastor. Don't be a conservative. Don't be a liberal. Don't be offendable. Don't be offended. Don't do anything. Just come and just merge. Merge with me and merge with the audience. And you forget yourself just like a good music show. Like when I go and see music show, when I go and see a concert, I'm not like, well, those are the notes that are okay for me as an Irish Protestant.

I just go, there's all the notes and I let them all in. And I understand that comedy is ideas, so it can be sort of riskier to let, because some comedy, a lot of comedy, I think has some hate speech kind of laced in there because you're dealing with people's psychologies. Of course, there's going to be nastiness in there. So I'm not saying go and open arms, but there can be a good feeling to the surrender of it. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting, right? If you frame it as an invitation to lose your sense of self in the room, which comes zooming back to the early part of our conversation, which is fundamentally, isn't that about what it's all about? That is what it's all about. And that's exactly my point is I'm just trying to kill.

And then when you're killing, and I'm trying to be myself and be creative and all those things. And when you're killing, you actually are achieving something that I would consider deeply spiritual or mystical, meaning it's an experience of oneness. I've said this a million times, forgive me, Katie, but it's like you go in as Jonathan, but then you become an audience and then the performer and the audience merge into something called a show. So that's a bunch of things becoming one thing. And when you're laughing, this is George Carlin, when you're laughing, you're not thinking about what your beliefs are. You're not remembering your zip code, basically. You're gone. You just are arness. You just are being. And that's a beautiful, that's why it feels so good.

The same thing happens, that's why I think a lot of people are getting drunk and fucked up or what in all these different ways. It's because when you're messed up, you're not going, these are the things I care about and things are there. This is who I am. And this is where I come from. You're just kind of like, and, but when you're laughing, you can do it in a, in a healthier, less destructive way, or do both at the same time. A lot of people seem to. The Apple watch series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference

between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him them y'all need a pilot flight risk do you ever wonder whether people ever sort of get a for lack of a better word of oneness hangover after something like this so you go to an experience it's it's mystical that wasn't why you were going it wasn't your expectation but their sense of merging of losing yourself of just like for this one moment in time for this hour two hours then where's this concert whatever it is like everything is okay yeah you know and and i lose this sense of

extraordinary self-consciousness and judgment and stuff like that And then you step back out of that. And to a certain extent, I wonder if maybe some of us are just wired that way and whether the moment is amazing, it reminds you of what's possible. And when you return to your everyday regular life, I wonder if sometimes people have this hangover that's kind of like wow it almost makes them look at their current day-to-day reality as worse than before they had an experience like this whereas some people i think would then leave that and be like you know what and now i've seen what's possible yeah this my day-to-day isn't it kind of isn't what i want it to be so i'm gonna i'm gonna it motivates action to try and change trying yeah well i think

what you you're asking a very great question i think is because you're talking about our desire to not be enlightened basically yeah which is a huge thing right because we don't and largely because we don't want to endure change and uncertainty right like yeah this goes back to the kirkagard thing there's a book called awake i didn't read the whole book i'd like to i should go back right oh i'm sorry it's not called awake because that is sam harris it's called something it's synonymous with the way but the first line is um the first step to waking up is realizing you don't want to wake up and i was like oh right so why when we have these experiences whether they might be you, the reason I write about three ways in the book is I've had three ways. Those were very transcendent experiences. I know it just sounds like I'm a comedian and you just want to tell schools else in the world. So you actually felt very equanimous. You felt content. And then the next day, you kind of come back into the slog of reality. So you can have it

through sex. You can have it through art. You can have it through conversation. You can have it through a great meal. You can have it through comedy. There are all these things, skydiving. You can get a glimpse of being outside of yourself and you're free. Then we always come back. So that tells me that we want to not suffer, but we want to exist. And when you're in an audience, you sort of stop existing. And then you come back to reality and there are your problems. And your ego loves your problems because when you're dealing with a problem, you are real. You exist. And when you're suffering, you are real. You exist. It's very scary to say, I am awareness and I am here. Fame, pain, gain, shame is all the same. That's what Ram Dass says. That place is very frightening. There's nowhere to stand because you're saying I am vapor

or I am love is another way to say it. But like you're saying Jonathan isn't real or Jonathan ain't shit or Jonathan is just a shadow puppet on the wall. That's a great mind experiment. And if you want to do it for 30 minutes and feel some relief, chances are at the end of that 30 minutes, you're going to want to get back into some serious Jonathan shit. You're going to want to use the energy that gave you to solve some of Jonathan's problems, right? It's very scary to really own and embody oneness. One of the things that I've, that helps me do it more often than I used to, and that's all I can ever say is I'm just trying to do it more than I used to, It's saying that you can play the game. That's a big Ram Dass thing.

It's like, I don't have to be attached to unattachment. I can play the game of Pete. That's what I mean when I'm saying, when I'm doing this, I'm just being a comedian. But you're just not attached to it. You also can't fully let go of your fears or your pains. You can just stop identifying with them. But it's all there. I'm still going to have my issues with my family. I'm still going to have my preferences. Oh,

I was on a flight recently. I was like, what kind of first class doesn't have a TV? Like, yeah, look at Pete being a piece of shit. It's okay. That's why you get those group awakenings. And what is the message? What is the cliche message when somebody goes to that place from with drugs or however else is you're like, it's okay, we're okay, we're okay. So guess what else is okay? Forgetting is okay. In fact, that's, that's what we're here to do. We're here to forget. If we all knew nothing would be happening. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it does. I mean, the way you describe also awareness, I know you've also shared that, you know, you're sort of at

this moment where when you think about God, effectively, like, the translation is, it's kind of like awareness. And like you said, you can translate as love, but there's this bigger sense. My curiosity always with the idea of awareness also is, because it also implies, you know, like you said, you know, like, oh, I realized this is just Pete being like this or this or this or this. I'm so fascinated with the question of like, who's doing the realizing?

Yeah. Yeah. Who's watching Pete? Yeah. Well, that's the beginning of, I'm going to say it's low level because i have it i'm so it's not enlightenment it's like a low level beginning is is is the first step is to say who's noticing the changing pete because there was a pete that was a republican there was a pete that was pro uh or i like to say anti-choice of course i'm pro-life. I love life. I love babies and stuff. But I'm also for people's liberty, whatever it might be. But there was a Pete that used to believe the opposite of everything.

But what was constant? What didn't change between the two Petes or baby Pete or old Pete? Maybe I'll change again. But what was the same? The same thing was the awareness. And I can't shout this from the rooftops enough. It's in the Old Testament. Everybody knows the story of the burning bush. Moses asked God, the character of God, what is your name? And God says, I am that I am. I am M-ness. It was the first metaphor for existence, for awareness itself. So it's the same thing science is looking for. Consciousness. What is it that's seeing anything?

I can't talk about this enough. And again, Val and I don't just talk about being in space. Like it's insane or it's incredible that anything is seeing anything. So the deeper you get into mysticism, the less concerned you are with what you're seeing. You're just concerned that there is seeing. So it's one of my favorite things. It's in the Upanishads.

It says, not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see. Know that to be Brahman the eternal and not what men hear adore. And they do that for everything. Not what the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear it's it's talking about where these are fucking old texts that are just going what is seeing and that's what mushrooms showed me it wasn't because people take mushrooms i've made this point before and they're like i don't understand i just saw like clowns clowns were just slapping me. How is that religious? I was like, it's not what you see.

It should give you a sense. It should help you see with what you're seeing. Alan Watts says that will always be a mystery because a knife can never cut itself. A fire can never burn itself. And an eye can never see itself. Like the fundamental eye of you, you have a very hard

time looking at that. You can't turn the flashlight around and shine it on itself. So all we can do is stop thinking, stop trying to file it away and experience it. And that's why the definition I like of God is awareness itself. And that solves every problem I ever had as a kid. I used to be like, if there's life in other galaxies, does that mean Jesus came to those planets and died for their sins? It's like, no, anywhere there is isness, isness is, and God is isness. That's it. But it's not pantheism. It's what Richard would call panentheism. It's what anyone would call panentheism. I mean mean God is the animating principle behind and within and throughout all things. But that doesn't mean that I'm God. It means that the

awareness principle inside me is God, but I'm not going around going, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God. I'm just saying I'm a drop of the ocean and the ocean is God. Yeah. And you also have to be much more sort of comfortable with a much broader more open conceptual notion that's right of everything really yes if we're talking about us and you know like the good bad news is we're falling you know like um nothing to grab onto nothing to stop us like the good news is there was no ground i love that you know and it's it's truer than true. And it's sort of like you have to, I feel like so much of like the part of our work is getting comfortable with that notion and not grasping to like, I have to have rules. I have to know like there has to be black and white. There has to be

like clear, like I need a certain amount of that. And I think we do need some of it in our lives. So much stuff. I've heard it. I've heard so many people say, well, you know, like one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism is that life is suffering. And I've also heard

that the language has actually been largely mistranslated. It's not so much suffering. It's unsatisfactory. And a lot of that has to do with us trying to wake up in the morning and make life certain. Yeah. Secure, you know, and if that is the one thing, you know, you can never a hundred percent control, then yeah, that is life as suffering. Right. It's, it's very Taoist in that way too. I listened to this Ram Dass record when I'm feeding my baby in the morning. And the first thing he says is the great way.

It's the third patriarch of Zen. So it's Buddhism, actually. But it's also similar to Taoism. He said, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. So what we're talking about is surrender. And that you can see it and be it if you stop thinking about it and talking about it. But I do want to say for anybody listening that's curious about this and wants a compassionate approach to it, we're talking about low levels of religion. It stinks that we have to say low and high because we're being

dualistic and we're being, you know, we're prioritizing. But I like it. Let's have some judgment. Let's have some good judgment. Low levels of religion, and you need it. Build structure, build ethics, give you rules, give you identity, right? This is who I am. I'm Pete. I'm from Boston. I'm a Protestant. I don't like gambling, whatever it might be like i really was raised that like gambling is like a real i still when i go to vegas i'm like who are these degenerates like i just i just got that like stay in my room i i just thought it was trashy like i like i i don't think it's trashy anymore like whatever if i'm being honest i still don't think it's awesome like i've never been like although my dad bet on sports games, so they were full of shit.

Like they would be like, that's sad to like play blackjack, but then hit bet on the fucking Celtics. So everybody's full of shit, including me. So don't take anything I say too seriously. But I learned all these ethics, right? And then, so Richard Rohr writes in his book, Falling Upward, that's where I first heard the phrase low levels of religion and like the first half of life and the second half of life. But you need them. We can't just be over here and go, like, I'm not just going to teach my daughter,

you're one with everything. You know what I mean? Like, all of those are just fingers pointing at the moon. I'm going to tell her some stories. I'm not going to give her the dogma and the fear and the ostracization that I got that I didn't like. I'm not going to tell her sex is evil. I'm not going to give her the dogma and the fear and the ostracization that I got that I didn't like. I'm not going to tell her sex is evil. I'm not going to tell her her Jewish friends and her Muslim friends and her Buddhist friends are going to hell because they don't have the love of C-H-R-A-S-T and their H-E-A-R-T. I'm not going to do that. you know, some morsels. And then later she can deconstruct and then later she can reconstruct. But that's, that's all in the game. There's definitely probably, I can't say definitely, but there's probably going to be a time when she's like, this is all bullshit. And I'll be like, Oh, what a mitzvah. Welcome. And you know what? I still have that part of me too. Let's dance it out. Let's talk about it. Maybe it is all bullshit. Who am I?

I don't know. What's going on here? I don't know. Is it all a dance? Is it all a game? Is it all a joke? Is it all meaningless? I don't know.

And let's play that for a while because it's important. These are, you know, Richard says we don't understand the metaphor of hell because we don't understand the purification element of fire. Like anybody in the forestry or farming or whatever it might be knows that there's a time when there's a necessary fire. That's what a necessary fire is, the doubt and letting that in. Instead of just, you're on the plane and there's the gremlin on the wing and you're acting like nothing's happening.

Like that's not the way to enlightenment. Let it all in. That's what Jesus did in the desert. It's in the story. He goes in the desert and he hangs out with Satan. Satan tempts him with power. And all the three major things, I can't even remember the three things,

but it's like, you're God, you're powerful. You can be famous. Basically tempts him with everything worldly. That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to like have that time. Jesus did it 40 days. So I'll give Lila 40 days. I'm just kidding.

Like tell her early and it's like, you can choose when they start. Oh, this is day one. Let me know. Dad, I don't know about this. Day one. Right. It's like, no, it's like a diet.

No, we'll start on Monday. You better, if you're coming at me with hard doubt, just know you have 39 days after this. The notion of craft with what you're doing, because clearly it's something that matters to you. And I've also heard you write and say that it's not so much like you could, it's not, yes, there's the writing side.

Yes, I need to work out the actual lines. I need to like, whatever it is I'm going to say, it's going to come out of my mouth matters. And yet you've also been pretty clear that, that it seems like at least that is not the thing that matters most. So there's an element of craft. I think a lot of people look at when they look at a performer and, and, and especially a comic where it just seems like it's all about, oh my God, that was, the story was so perfectly told and the lines and the language were meticulous, not even realizing that the probably vastly larger part

of the craft which leads to the experience is nonverbal. I'm fascinated by that. I mean, I say that before I go on stage, I said it before I went on stage last night, I say it's not about the words. It's not. And Gerard, this is, this is some, this actually ties perfectly to what we were just saying. So if Lila wanted to be a standup comedian, I wouldn't start with, it's not about the words. I would start with, you got to write some great jokes. Let's write some great material. And that's

your first 10 years. That's what I'll call the lower level of stand-up it's the same thing then mystical stand-up or the second half of stand-up or higher levels of stand-up are when you start to realize that it's not about the words that it's about a shared experience of beingness and being humor that's what ramdas told me in he said be He's like, don't do comedy. Be humor. Like, be comedy. But that's hard to understand. So at the beginning, you're just trying to write perfect jokes. Like, I had an early joke where I go, what's the employee discount at the dollar store?

Right? That's just a good joke. It's a solid joke. You could tell it to my mom and she'd laugh. That's the early stages of stand-up. You're just like, how can I make a bulletproof act? The later stuff is how can I be vulnerable and still be in charge? You know what I mean? And how can I remember that it's about a transmission of who I am in my fullness on that night for those people that that is actually the show that my bad mood or my fogginess or whatever it might be is part of the show even if something's kind of going badly

that's the show so that's like so it's a little bit of a non-resistance thing but i learned this before i learned about non-resistance as is you go, whatever is happening is the show. That's non-resistance. Meaning if I fuck up the joke, that's what's here to entertain you. You're feeling like, ooh, you're welcome. It's like a movie where that was one of the feelings that you had during the movie. Like, this is the show.

So you start to like get into that. I would say that that's more of a mastery level where you just go like, this is what's happening. And then the best thing that you can do is realize that it's about transmitting your personality and your being and your thoughts and your heart in a funny way to the audience. If you can then weave that with perfectly written jokes, now you're really cooking.

Cause I did a joke last night and I, Laura bites is my opener and I got off and I was like, I got to watch the tape because I told this joke perfectly. And I've been telling this joke hundreds of times. And I was like, I dropped this part, and I ended with a part that I usually begin with, but I was shuffling it in real time to experiment. And it came out perfectly. And you know, because everybody applauded at the end. And you go, that's where the Seinfeld comes in.

Now, Seinfeld would be like, I love Seinfeld. He'd be like, of course, it's about the words. It's the perfect words. It's the perfect jokes. I'm like, well, Jerry, the reason why that works for you, I would say, is because that's who you are. You're that guy. To quote him, I'm thin and clean and neat.

He goes, I'm not gay, but I am thin thin and clean and neat he goes i'm not gay but i am thin clean and neat right uh but so jerry being very specific about the words is a transmission of who jerry is you don't want to see uh mitch hedberg do comedy the way that that i do you want everybody to do it in the style that they are supposed to be doing it tig does it differently than sarah silverman does it then whitney cummings does it then solomon giorgio does it like and the true extraction of who they are is what good stand-up is the the biggest letdown i feel when i see stand-up is when i see somebody and they're not being, they're not presenting themselves in their fullness. Comedy is, I mean, stand-up is, the way you describe it, the way that the whole conversation has been, stand-up is a spiritual practice.

Absolutely. Why else would people do it their whole lives? I mean, you have the money. It's like, I always envy people that play like golf or racquetball or some of those sports that you're like, it takes a lifetime to master. Like you would be lucky, would all be lucky to find something in your life, even if it's just making the perfect shot of espresso. Something that is like, this is going to take you your life to master. Because Rob Bell talks about that. It's the Japanese word ikigigai which means a reason to get

out of bed and stand-up is one of those reasons when you're starting stand-up you have to be like it's the reason it's all i care about and that's how i was for 10 years i've been doing it 20 years and i can tell you that my family there's's no separation. I can't be like comedy is less important or more important. It's not even a hierarchy. It's just like, it's just what's happening. Obviously my family is more important than love. It's more important than knowledge and waking up and all these different things. But comedy is a part of that.

It's not like over there. It's in the mix. Yeah. Well, it's like you described ram das like gave you the the guidance it yeah you make the transition from doing to just being and then there is no separation between like balancing this against this or it just is you're never more present or i'm never more present than when i'm doing stand-up so you get off and you're like the elation that you feel a young comedian thinks and maybe it is that you were affirmed like you're talented you're like the elation that you feel a young comedian thinks and maybe it is that you were

affirmed like you're talented you're special you're the golden boy and then later after you've sort of had too much ice cream like i don't need people to tell me i mean i still like it and i don't like when people are like you ain't shit or whatever but like you have too much ice cream and you're like okay enough ice cream why do you keep doing? You're doing it because like you are locked in. That's the other thing I hate when people are doing comedy at the audience, instead of realizing that you're supposed to be swimming with the audience, which makes you vulnerable to it being a bad show. If you're allowing them, as Brian Regan says, to be the instrument, and the comedian is a musician who plays the audience, that's Brian Regan's point. Sometimes the audience sucks, but you're like, that's what we're doing.

The guitar is out of tune. The guitar was drunk or the guitar was stupid. But that was the show that night. And the more vulnerable you are, the more it hurts when you bomb. If I was just going, what's the employee discount at the dollar store for an hour it doesn't hurt as bad as when i go up like my closer right now is is about the complexities that i felt as a man being straight and what i felt like was taught to me that being straight meant and when they don't like it you go like oh no it's like a bad theory it's like if you're personal if your therapist booed you like that's what it's like it's like we don't, like that's what it's like. It's like, we don't like that. It's like, all right.

She's picturing like a therapist holding up like a one to 10 card. You just wrote a New Yorker cartoon, a captionless one. That's hard. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle also. So sitting here in this container

of the Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. I think it's all about interconnectivity and connection. Like you could just say connection, but I think connection is leading us to interconnection. So seeing your place in the fullness of things.

There's that Mary Oliver poem called Wild Geese. And it's like finding your place in the in i'm fucking it out but read it i'm not even gonna try we read it all the time i'm embarrassed that i can't remember it it's about feeling at home in the world in the wild dangerous world alan watts says people say people come into this world you should really say you came out of the world so like the world like an apple on a tree the apple didn't come into this world. You should really say you came out of the world. So like the world, like an apple on a tree. The apple didn't come into the tree. It came out of the tree.

It's part of the tree. And the more things you can do, conversations, reading or laughing or creating or collaborating or just going to a... You don't have to be a social person and do this. You can just go to the park, sit quietly, just watch that people just like amoebas are doing what people do. They people, people, people, waves, wave, birds, bird. And you can feel that at homeness. So the more things you can do that make you realize that you're not a stranger here, that you're not

this like, it's not like a, you know, in cartoons, the background is a painting, and then the cartoon is a cell, like, but you can tell because the cell is like a different vibrancy. It's not that it's one thing, you're okay. You came in, okay. You're here to play, you're here to figure it out out and to feel that connection. But when you feel that inclusive connection that some people might call love, those are the breadcrumbs on the trail. And that's a good life, to feel that oneness, to see yourself in another. That, you know, Jesus was like, love your neighbor as yourself.

But it's like, see yourself in your neighbor. Realize that your neighbor is you, that there's no one in the other boat, as Ram Dass would say. That's a good life. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while

you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love.

If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. We'll be right back. Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.