HealthyGamerGG - Ethan Evans Pt. 2 (@EthanEvansVP)

Episode Date: February 9, 2020

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So you are actually prime for spirituality now because now this is where Buddha's, so what people think is that spirituality can be done at any time. And you have all these like yoga studios where you have people who are not materialistic and feel like they devote themselves to spirituality and forget materialism. They're missing the point. They're also deeply unhappy most of these people. The time for spirituality is when you've won the material game, not because you're losing the material game. So welcome back, Ethan.

How are you doing, man? I'm great. I'm excited for today. I'm so wound up to follow up, actually. Okay. What would you like to help me understand what that means? Well, so I'm sure, by the way. Oh, thank you. Well, I thought this is a Twitch Hawaiian shirt. It actually, let's see if I can turn the right way here. It's always hard off screen. It's like there's a Twitch logo hiding on the back. It was built for some of the Twitch folks went to a conference in Hawaii. And so years ago, they made Hawaiian shirts, and I got like the last one off the shelf a few years ago. Cool.

It seemed more casual than the blue button up look from last week. So I went a little more Twitch. So you mentioned you're excited about sort of picking back up. So help me understand what your week has been like and what you're excited about. Absolutely. So I reflected a lot on what we talked about. And I also heard a lot of feedback from people who watched. it, they got a lot out of it. But then what I noticed, so I'm excited, though, to follow up

on how to take it further, how to take both our discussion further, but also specifically meditation further, because I feel a little bit like, I don't know if this was subjectively true from your end, but I feel like we talked and had such a great talk. And then you're like, oh, right, we should meditate. Boom, here, do this, bye, which maybe not your intent, but I didn't get enough content. That's how it happens. So I kind of, before we got back into sort of excavating my interior, I wanted to learn just a tiny bit more about the meditation practice you recommend. Okay. So yeah.

Yeah, go for it. So my first question is there's this joke, like half a dozen people have told me, which is if you can't find time, if you're too busy to meditate for 30 minutes, you need to meditate for an hour. Yep. And so my week went by with me, meaning like, oh, I'm going to get back to meditating and actually doing almost nothing. And so I wondered, this can't be unusual because you coach bankers. Twitch chat. He's one of us. So I know that you're, you also work with like Wall Street folks. And I'm sure you must have run in before to people who nod to you and are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll meditate.

and then like don't. What's your recommended way to break that cycle besides gut up and do it if there is anything else? Yeah. So gut up and do it, I think, is never my answer. Okay. So that's not like, that's not a real answer. Like, if people could gut up and do it, they would be doing it. Yep.

So there are other kinds of things that are getting in the way. Okay. So we can talk a little bit about behavioral change and how behavioral change happens. Okay. And we can also talk specifically about meditation, so let's start there. So the first thing is I think the process of learning how to bake meditation into your day is half of what you want from meditation to begin with. Because that involves you being reflective about who you are, how your mind works, how your day works,

and how all of these things fit together without you being able to do what you want to. Right. So that's fantastic. And I think a lot of the progress that I make with people is in the process of figuring out why they can't find time to meditate. So that in and of itself tells you like, you know, what are your priorities like? What do you focus on why can your mind not let go of something that you feel is so vital to do something that is, quote, quote, less vital, but more important. So even in that process, you're going to have to detach a little bit. you'll gain a lot of the benefits of meditation.

Awesome. That makes sense. So we'll talk about that. The other practical thing is that, I mean, so a lot of it is just a practical discussion. So sometimes it's just about sort of eliciting behavioral change. And this is kind of like psychology research or even like behavioral economics kind of stuff where it can be like I work with the different people, you know, the different

people I work with, we try to find like an easy way to fit it into their day, which is almost like problem solving. So I'll give you just one example. So there was a physician I was working with. and he was having trouble finding time to meditate. And he actually had an interesting experience happen where he was chanting, and he had an infant child, like a young child. And the child one day started laughing at him because he didn't understand, like, you know,

what was happening. Like he was just sitting there with his eyes closed and making these funny sounds, and the kids started laughing. And triggered actually a lot of shame for this person. Sure. And so he found it very difficult to meditate at home. so we sort of figured out, okay, like, so one thing that I recommend is that you find something that you're already doing within your day and you try to anchor in, so you already have a preexisting anchor and you just try to add meditation to it. So for this person, they would take a jog every morning that was a 30 minute jog.

And halfway through their jogging route, there was a park bench. And so what they decided to do is they're going to jog for 30, like, you know, they're going to do their normal 30 minute route. They're going to stop on the park bench for somewhere between five and 20 minutes. and it started with five minutes, which you can definitely bake it. Like, you can find an extra five minutes. Yep. And it was sort of that behavioral anchor that they would sit there every day on the park bench because they're going to be there anyway and kind of meditate for a few minutes

and then finish their run. For another person, it was kind of meditating on the subway. We sort of taught techniques that they can do like at their desk. So they would feel fine during the day. But when they go into work, they would start to feel really, really anxious because they were concerned about doing a good job and living up into expectations. They just sort of made a kind of a career transition. And it was a really great fit, and they really liked being there.

Their bosses really valued them, but they were just a little bit concerned because they had a different background for most of their coworkers. So for them, we actually taught them when they sit down at their desk, there's a silent meditation practice that they can do. That, you know, they could do at their desk for five minutes that kind of like reset those feelings and then sort of started the day off right. So my first thought, so my first thought, so my. I first thought is like there's two things that we can do. One is sort of a behavioral like problem solving. How can we find a time in your day that you can try? And when you try it, you're going to succeed or you're going to fail. And either one is fine. And as you fail, we explore what's the nature of your failure. Why do you fail? Did you just bite off more than you can chew? Are you

someone who just expects more of you than you're capable of? You know, do you just hold yourself to an unreasonably high standard? We dig into that. And then over time, people have eventually start meditating, and I'm not quite sure how or why. So that's one thing is we can kind of talk about behaviorally how to do things. The second thing we can talk about is, why is it that you can't find five minutes to meditate in terms of what is it that's so pressing, and we kind of can get a little bit about your attachments, because your attachments, I suspect, keep you from meditating. Yeah, and I think that might be more interesting. I think so. Great. So I can kind of jump to that. I did some reflecting on what you had said,

And I realized from our session a week ago, from our discussion a week ago, one of my issues we didn't get into that I think, I feel is driven from some of the childhood issues we talked about is now I have the opportunity to do many pleasurable things, right? I have friends. I can travel. I can play sports, all of which I enjoy. But I get into having a fear of missing out. In other words, it would not be too many negatives.

It's very like me to plan a weekend that has like nine activities in it. And I actually consider it bonus points if I can construct an activity that does like three things at once. So like, I'm going to go skiing and I'm going to meet my friends skiing and we're going to talk on the lifts and eat lunch together. And I'm like, I'm going to manage to pack in hanging out with friends with physical activity with with intellectual. discussion. And for me, like, I run a victory lap if I can cram in three or four value propositions to one block of time. Okay. And so obviously that, well, maybe not obviously, but I think that fear of missing out, like, oh, it's, I will overload my schedule. You probably know this thing, not having enough empathy for your future self.

I will create a schedule that's like, well, I have three dinner invitations. So I'll drop by the first one for appetizers, the second one for main course and catch the last people for after dinner drinks. My mind doesn't see the problem with that when I'm planning it. But then, of course, I experience the problem with that when I'm trying to excuse myself from the first dinner to get to the second dinner to get to the third dinner. Okay. I may go in a slightly bizarre direction. that has a high chance of just completely missing. Are you afraid of death?

Terrified. I've been working on that my whole life. Well, I talked about that last week. That started, yeah, yeah, I said, I'll refresh your memory really early. I said at five, I asked my father, what happens when you die. Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. You did say that. So, yeah, fear of death, I've recently come closer to being okay with it, but that has been my lifelong root terror.

Okay. So let's just understand. Do you have a sense of why I ask, you're saying that I have FOMO, and then I ask you, are you afraid of death? Yep, I get it. I believe I get it. So explain it to the rest of us. I'm trying to cram in as much life as possible in the time as a signal that I'm alive and the death, like if death is nothingness, then if I'm doing seven things at once, I'm very alive. Well done. Beautiful. Right. So I think I think this comes back to I mean you can talk about FOMO and you can talk about all that kind of stuff, but that I think is the essence of it. Okay. Is that you feel and I think if you if you want to stop doing this to yourself, so this comes from what do you think the emotion is or the feeling is that drives you to pack your weekends full of just high value proposition social activities? Fear.

The emotion is, I mean, the root emotion is being afraid of not, the root fear of being afraid of death I said last week was being afraid of life going on without me of things happening that I couldn't see or participate in. So I'm just transporting that to daily life because if there's a dinner of my friends and I'm not going to be there, I feel dead to that dinner. Right. It's not that conscious. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I mean, what I'm detecting from you is desperation. Sure. Right. There's like every weekend is packed with desperation. Wow, that's really sad. I'm not arguing with you, but it's sad. Yeah. So I think it's interesting because, Ethan, this is going to be challenging because you're so smart that you can do all this like Freudian kind of stuff in your head and you're going to arrive at conclusions for yourself, which are valid, the challenge is that when you do your analysis, you're like missing something.

And what I'm missing from you here is the like the desperation. Like you are desperate. So the way that you need to look at yourself is someone who is like desperate that life is going to end. Okay. And so you have kids or you mind if I ask? Yeah, I have kids. I have a blended family, 1716, 148. Okay. So when your 17-year-old was two or three and you like drop them off at daycare or whatever, do you remember what their reaction was? Or like, let's say you had to go to work in the morning. They have separate. Yeah, they cry. There you go, being intellectual. Yeah, yeah, I caught myself, though. I got two syllables there. They cry.

Yeah, but what does that mean? Like, what are they feeling? Abandoned. Absolutely, right? They're desperate for you. They're hungry for you. Yeah. And so this thing, like, it's not, I mean, sure, it's FOMO, but there's just hunger for you that there is not enough life to be lived. Yeah. And you've got to try to pack in as much life as you can into every moment, which sounds so positive to fill your life to the fullest, you know, and live every moment as if it was your last. And like, that sounds so positive. There's, in fact, shells full of advice books that tell you to do that. And that's what you're doing. and that's why you're torturing yourself. Okay.

Because you are listening, I mean, you're probably one of these self-help junkies. Totally. And so you want to pack life to the fullest. No, man, you got to just chill out, right? You got to understand that, like, there is no way that you are going to experience a fraction of what life has to offer. Just not going to happen. So that's very hard to hear.

Yeah. It's logically true, but sucks. Yeah. So what's hard to hear about it? Let's talk about that. That there's cool stuff in life, whatever we can redefine cool, but there's stuff I won't get to do. How does that make you feel? Sad.

Like, yeah. Okay, so we're going to, but what emotion are you missing there? You're missing one, I think. There's some anger or frustration. Very good. right so you're so good at detecting the sadness but you push that anger away so easily what are you angry about um i want the world to conform to what i want i want whatever it's a tantrum i want what i want yes beautiful it's a tantrum beautiful right because here's the thing even it's unfair it's unjust

isn't it i have trouble you like the the two-year-old in me feels that as an ill As an intellectual, I have trouble saying, well, it's unfair that you can't do everything. That seems like, well, duh. But yes, the two-year-old in me wants to throw my toys and be like, damn it, I get to do everything. Yes, very good. And now we come to another part of your problem, which is the adult Ethan, does what to the child, Ethan? Tells him to suck it up. There you go, right?

You were a big, big bully towards yourself. I've never heard it put that way. I might have been called a bully, but not towards myself. Well, I mean, if other people are calling you a bully, where do you think you learn that? Yeah, sure. Right? Maybe from your parents, but probably from yourself. And that's just how, I mean, so we are making so much progress that I just have to stop for a second and just like, just sit with this and let me know, like, what's sticking, what's not sticking?

Well, the first thing that super stuck was just the connection. that my wild desire to do everything is driven out of the root cause problem of fear of death. So solve the root cause, solve the rest. Yeah. And the second thing was, yeah, the tantrum part, like the damn it, I want it, you know. And the fact that I do suppress, I have all these behavioral layers over top of the child that says, you can feel that, but you can never show it because it's not mature. Yes.

And here's the thing. Who wins at the end of the day? The two-year-old or the adult? Always the two-year-old. Yes, very good, right? So the two-year-old's going to get us due. Yeah. It's the elephant and the writer, if you know that.

Yes, very good. Yeah. So why don't you explain that analogy to other people? So the elephant and the writer, I learned about in a book called Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, but the idea is your intellect is like the rider of an elephant and it can like pull on the elephant's reins and maybe guide it a tiny bit for a short time. But your emotions are the elephant. In this case, the child is the elephant. And it will wear the rider out and go where it wants. So the only way the rider can really get where it wants to go is to help the elephant

want to go that way, like make it emotionally appealing. Because that's where all your energy source comes from. Yeah. So I would say in your case, what you've got to do is align the two-year-old with the adult, right? You have to, instead of bullying the two-year-old, because then what happens is the two-year-old goes under the surface and then starts to exert his baleful influence on you and cloaks it in positivity, cloaks desperation in just pure positivity. Sure, because who can argue that dinner with your friends is a bad thing? Exactly, right? Like, who can argue that three or four, what? You called social interactions value propositions?

I don't think so, but I might have. You said you want to get as many value propositions as you can into one activity. Yeah, like as many sources of enjoyment, right? So I like to talk to people. I like to do a bunch of things. So I try and add them all into like one activity. Yeah. And so I think you've just got to be careful about that because, you know, that's just,

I mean that, you know, that that's not going to work, right? And the way to do that is not by willfully bullying yourself to not do that. So like, I think the answer that a lot of people are looking for is that you just need to learn how to not do that, right? Just stop it. Just do less. Just change your behavior, plan less, meditate more, but that's not going to work. Like, if you want to be free of this, you want to be free of it. If you want it to stop of its own volition, that's the goal is not control, not willpower, but sublimation. Okay. To remove the root, right?

And that comes to, first of all, like, you have to, let me just think about how we can do this. So one way to do it is to conquer your fear of death, which can be achieved through meditation. But, you know, the other thing is to think a little bit about like, so usually a fear, I mean, all human beings do certainly have a fear of death. But in your case, I would guess that the reason you have FOMO is because you actually missed out. So what did you miss out on? Yeah. So I was thinking some of, I was prompted by someone else to think a little bit about this. I grew up on a farm and my parents were older.

I was the last child, the youngest. My parents had spent a whole generation raising kids. My brother was 18 years older than I was and the other kids in the middle. So by the time they got around to me, they were kind of done with it. I was what we call a bonus baby. My mom famously said, I'm what? So between living in a rural area with no other kids around and my parents kind of being ready to move on, I mostly had to entertain myself.

Like I read tons of books and I got into, I played a lot of D&D and I played a lot of video games. but they were all solo activities. Because I didn't have siblings near my age and I didn't really have neighbors or neighborhood near my age. So in thinking about it, what I missed out on, and I also grew up overweight, so I wasn't like a big sporting outdoors person like I am now. So I pretty much sat at home and read books.

And I didn't, because you don't know any different, I didn't have a conscious feeling of missing out. But between the social and the physical isolation, I think I probably did miss out a lot. Okay. So if you, oddly enough, so that once again, we're going to have to try to like, how can I say this? We're going to have to try to dismantle that because I don't,

that sounds intellectually beautiful. Like that sounds like a something that we call like a psychoanalytic formulation, right? Where you've sat down and you've studied your life and you've come up with this beautiful, poetic. He grew up and his parents were not ready for another child and he spent time by himself. It's beautiful. And if this was therapy, I would be elated. But my sense is that that has no emotional teeth to it because it sounds like your actual experience, this is you as an adult looking. I was lonely. My actual emotional experience is loneliness. Is that how you felt?

Yeah. When? When I wanted. to do things with friends and that meant convincing my parents to drive somewhere and they weren't available or, you know. There we go. Now we're getting there. And how old were you? Do you remember a specific instance? No, I remember like every Friday night I had a couple of friends that I would call their houses like, can I come over? Can you come over? And I can't point to like a specific instance, but I know that if I got a bunch of nose, I was disappointed, like, oh, another day alone. And again, it wasn't that well formulated, but I know that, like, whether or not I got a yes and somebody was coming over was a huge deal to me.

Was there a day that you stopped calling? No. I don't think I ever gave up. But there was a limited set of people I felt close enough to call. Like, I didn't have a big circle of friends. And were there situations where people said yes and then your parents couldn't like drive you over? No, because I would have always checked that first. I see.

And let me just think for a second. Yep. Stumped him. That's one way of putting it. Do you feel when you were thinking about your day now on the weekends? Yep. There it comes. I gave him time to think and he's loaded up.

He's giggling and anticipation. You think I stumped you, but it's actually the exact opposite. Yeah, I know. I've stumped me. I see the chick in the armor and here we go. I got it, but it was funnier to pretend. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's funnier now and now, you know, I'll miss because that'll be the best entertainment.

But here's the thing that I'm trying to get a sense of. When you plan a day on the weekend and you have that feeling of missing out. Yep. Does that feel like you, the feeling that you had when you were growing up and you reached out to friends on a Friday night? Does it feel the same? Yeah. I, um, it feels even worse now. Like, um.

Tell me what it feels like now. Uh, you're planning your weekend. So like, yeah. It's Thursday, right? Yeah. It's Friday today. It's Friday, yeah. So have you already planned your weekend?

Abnormally, no, not completely. Okay. And that's because of weather conditions. Okay. So like when did you start planning your weekend? Early this week. Okay. Yeah.

So. Eager to get to it, huh? What? Yeah. I love my job, but I'm just a planner. I'm okay, revealing like I say without irony or any joke that I know what I think I'm going to be doing. I have a Google calendar that shows what I'll be doing every weekend now through November. Okay.

Not in varying detail, but like I keep a rolling plan of travel and gatherings. And when you're kind of putting together your weekend, what is it, what are you feeling? excitement about some of the stuff I'll do, but also like, what are the tradeoffs of stuff I can't do? So I feel disappointment or stressed about things I can't do. What do you mean by stressed? What does that mean? Well, I can just be super practical. I like to ski and I have two sets of friends who are going to ski at different ski resorts this weekend. and I can't be with both sets of friends in both places. And I want to.

And how does it make you feel to not be able to be with them? Like I'm missing something. I'm going for a deeper feeling. Hold on. I feel like a failure, actually. Like somehow I, that somehow if I were smarter or more clever, I could have made it all work. And what are you failing at?

Getting as much as I possibly can. filling the hole, like feeling like I have had it all. I've eaten the cake and I still have the cake and I get to talk about the cake. It's like an avarice for experience or life. Yeah. It's a hunger. The hunger isn't being met. Yeah. And when have you felt that hunger? When did that hunger start within you? I can't even remember. I don't. I don't. know, I can't put, I can't immediately put a like that started. It's grown all my life because my ability to do things is grown. And so you get, it, you have more consciousness of it. I don't know. I mean, I, I'd point again to that event I described last week of like the feeling the black

hole inside myself as a five year old of, oh, wow, when I die, I won't be able to do any of these things. Yeah. Because my fear of death was about not being able to do stuff with people. Okay. It was about not existing. It wasn't about like, oh, death will be painful or death is metaphysical. It would be lack of ability to interact. So I want to point something out to you, okay? So the first is that despite your ability to eat more and more and more, what happens to the hunger? Gets worse. So how does that work? Perverse. Well, yeah, but what, like, what does that mean? You adapt to it.

In other words, what satisfied before no longer satisfies, you, you ratchet up your desires because you become accustomed, you become accustomed to whatever you were doing. Okay. So I'll put it a slightly different way. So what happens? So it's almost like the more that you feed the hunger, the hunger is like an order. is like an organism within your mind that then does what with food? Eats it makes it commonplace.

Yeah, and then you shed it out. What happens to things that you feed? They grow. Absolutely. Right? So like it's strange because you'd think that if you have a black hole within you, if you have hunger or desperation for something and you satisfy that desire, that that desire should be satisfied.

But what you're actually, what you've been doing your entire life through the pursuit of positivity, and packing in value propositions and making every ounce of life, you're squeezing the juice out of every ounce of life. Right? Four kids, successful career, lots of friends, packed social calendar, more social events. Your life is just so full of everything.

But not full enough. It's never going to be full enough. Okay. Because the more you feed it, the more it what? Gross. Absolutely. I passed the quiz. You passed the quiz.

Because now we have to try to understand why you make jokes and what that means, right? Because you weren't making jokes last week. You're making jokes this week. Okay. So I'm not quite sure what that means. But usually it's a sign of some kind of defensiveness. Yeah. You feel defensive?

Do I feel defensive? No. If it's any kind of defensiveness, it's embarrassment. Yep. It's embarrassment, you know, to sit and say, oh, yeah, poor me. do all these great things and it's not enough and I have problems with wanting more. Yeah. Good.

I'm glad you're able to see it. Yeah. Right. So what are you doing to yourself there? That's me telling the two-year-old who feels embarrassed to put up with it or get over it. Yeah. I don't know if it's quite the two-year-old, but I definitely think there's someone within you who's doing some bullying.

Okay. Right? So I think you're bullying multiple children within yourself. Wow. By the way, my chat just totally glommed on to the bullying the two-year-old. They're like all about it. My channel, like newsflash, Amazon VP bullies two-year-old. Okay. Footage at 11. But anyway, it's okay. It's good. Yeah. But I think this is what we do to ourselves. So one thing is, do you feel, I see this a lot. So do you feel guilty for having so much and being so unsatisfied? Totally.

Yeah. Yes, I feel like I've been incredibly lucky in my life. And so I think a lot about the, I'm a Christian. So I think a lot about the Christian responsibility of that, right? To whom much has been given from him, much will be required. So it's another performance standard to hit. And I certainly think about it. What was the question I asked you? You ask me, I don't know. You ask me, do you feel guilty for having a lot? Yeah, do I feel guilty for having a lot? So there are a couple of things that I want to just point out. So the first is that I think a lot of people in our chat hope to one day be in your shoes in a lot of different ways. Right. I think they hope to be married. They hope to be professionally successful. They hope to go skiing with friends. They hope to have families. They hope to be. lose weight. They hope to, you know, they actually, it's bizarre. They long for that part of you that bullies yourself into success. They crave that. I feel like if I could give them one thing that they could sign up for, it's they wish they could beat the shit out of themselves to get

themselves out of their room and away from the computer and out of bed. They long to be like these people who are disciplined and who can wake up every day and work and go to work and drive themselves. They're looking for to be driven. Which I certainly am. And they long for that. So the first thing that I want everyone to pay attention to is that this guy, he has a lot of reasons to be happy in life. And I think there are parts of him that are very happy, but also deeply, deeply unsatisfied. True. Right. And so this goes back to this core idea that Buddha talked a lot about, which is that satisfaction and contentment don't come from the outside, they come from within. And that I know gets put up on calendars and stuff like that.

And everyone's like, oh, like, peace and contentment come from within, man. But, like, it's not like that. It's like scientific. We have a test case here of a guy who has gotten more and more and more in life, and it's never enough. It's never enough. Right? You can have two people who want to go skiing with you. There used to be a time where you.

you would call and no one would say, yes, I can hang out with you or I want to hang out with you. And you would think that that kid would be satisfied if he could get one person to say, yes, I want to hang out with you. And 30 or 40 years later, your challenge has become the completely different thing of what it was when you were a child. You didn't have enough attention from your parents. You didn't have enough attention from your friends. And you were playing, well, D&D is a group thing, but you were reading a lot of books and playing a lot of video games. Now you have a family that I presume loves you a lot. You were loved. You are respected. You are feared and people long for your company. And still it isn't enough. Wow. Harsh but fair.

Right. Yeah. And and that too. I'm just kind of, you know, thinking about what you were saying about the culture of Amazon. You're a great fit for Amazon. Because you can be good and great and exceptional and at Amazon. You're still not enough. Yep. Right? When they succeed, they ask high standards, relentlessly so. Yep. And so if you hit a home run, their next question is there's no victory lap, or maybe there's a victory lap. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. But their next question is when's the next one? Hitting a single? Good job. Next time hit a double. Hit a double. Good job. Next time hit a triple. Hit a triple. Good job. Next time it's a home run. Hit one home run. Next time you need another home run.

and then it's three home runs in a row and four home runs in a row. And that's what you do to yourself. Same thing. So I think you're a great fit. I think it's good in terms of performance, like because you've succeeded. Yes. And Amazon clearly is successful. I think it's, you know, it's gigantic and successful. So we can't dispute that. But they're suffering with it. And in your case, I think you've got to learn. So first thing to understand is that you can feed the beast as much as you want to, but the more you feet it, the more it grows and the hungrier it gets. That's incredibly valuable. Like, I will remember that and, yeah.

Second thing is I'm going to share with you sort of a core, like basically the same thing. But in Buddhist sort of metaphysics, there's like earth, there's something like heaven and there's something like hell. But they have this layer between earth and hell called the realm of hungry ghosts. I've heard of this. I don't know much about it. And it's not quite hell, but it's basically a realm where souls who are hungry go. And though they eat and they eat and they eat, they never feel full. And they don't quite call that hell, but it's kind of like hell-ish.

Right? Sounds pretty bad. Yeah. And so it's just kind of a never-ending hunger. And that's what we see in you. So I think that somewhere in here, when it comes to meditation. So now we're going to talk about meditation. So I think you need to, you need to learn to to be comfortable with death. Okay. And the way that you're going to learn to be comfortable with death is there some, so I think that's going to carry a lot of things, right? So the first is that you have the sense that time is running out and you haven't accomplished enough. You haven't gone

seeing enough times. You haven't done this enough. You haven't done this enough. Like, dude, if you do not get this in order, every year that goes by, you are going to get more and more desperate it and more and more screwed. Because his age starts to take its toll and the end of the movie is coming up, it's just going to get more and more terrifying. So now is your time to do this. And now you're ready. So this is the other thing about Buddha.

So, you know, Buddha started his spiritual journey out of desperation as well. Like, I don't know if you kind of know this, but I'll share the story with you. So like, you know, Buddha was a prince and he was powerful and he was respected and he was loved. he was married, he had a healthy young son. He had everything in the world. And then he woke up one day and he's like, it's not enough for I want more. He had desperation. And that's why he turned to spirituality. So I think this is a subtle challenge. But most of the people who are watching, I don't think are as successful as you are, to be blunt. And they place no value judgment on. They're also a lot younger. So we would expect them to be. But they have this idea that if they can have all of the things that you have, they'll one day be happy. The source for their happiness is because something is missing in their life. And they think that if I have a job or if I have a family or if I have this and if I have money and if I have this and if I have this, then I will be happy. Right. The same is when you were a kid and you said if I have someone to hang out with on the weekend, I will be happy. And I want everyone to understand this. It's not going to work.

Like it's just not going to work. And you guys can see it when you look at Ethan, that it's not working. Like sure, he has all those things. I think you should pursue all those things. I think you should strive to be successful. But it's not going to make you happy. So you are actually prime for spirituality now. Because now this is where Buddha... So what people think is that spirituality can be done at any time. And you have all these like yoga studios

where you have people who are not materialistic and feel like they devote themselves to spirituality and forget materialism. They're missing the point. They're also deeply unhappy most of these people. The time for spirituality is when you've won the material game, not because you're losing the material game. And because once you get to the point

where you're at, you're actually screwed because other people can chase after a material goal and they can believe that that material goal is going to bring them happiness. And that is enough to pull them in the right direction of growth. In your case, you've achieved that and now you've got nothing left to pull you. Right. And so you're screwed. And Buddha was screwed too because he achieved, right? He had everything. And then he wakes up one day and he's unhappy. And so you don't even have the illusion of happiness from a material thing to like, drop. you forward. And this is why you need spirituality. Spirituality is not born of positivity. It's born of abject desperation and terror. Okay. So you're ready for it, buddy. So now you're ready to meditate.

Because the only thing that is going to give you peace, the only thing that is going to satisfy that that hunger within you is going to be meditation. And that's hyperbole. There could be other things. Spirituality is maybe a better way to put it. So you can find your own path that doesn't have to be meditation. And in your case, what I think you need is shuny. meditations. So Shunya is the Sanskrit word for void and is also the concept of zero. Okay. So people sort of claim, I don't know what's true or isn't true, that the, you know, the concept, the numerical concept of zero was discovered in India. And, and that like, you know, it's my belief that the people who sort of discovered this mathematical concept, I'm sure,

and maybe it was discovered elsewhere, the, you know, the historian within me wonders about things like that. But basically, like, this sense of like nothingness and void and a complete absence of self. And I think for you to be able to be comfortable with death, you are afraid of nothingness, right? You are afraid of this thing that is incapable of experience because you believe that experience is what leads to happiness. Like doing something out there is what leads to contentment. It's when you call, you pick up the phone and you call someone to say, yes, I am coming over, that you feel happy. And so you're not wrong in. thinking that, that's just the way that your life has been.

Yep. So in your case, what we need to do is give you an experience of death, give you an experience of Shunya. And the more that you can experience that, I'm not asking you to, just to be very clear for medical legal reason. I'm not asking you to die. I'm clear. I'm clear. I will assert back, I'm clear on that. What I mean is that you need to have an experience of self that is not Ethan. Okay. You need to have an experience of like void and, blankness and a lack of existence of who you are. And I believe you will find that experience to be incredibly comforting because there is nothing as comforting is like wrapping yourself in the void. And I'm not asking people to commit suicide. Like, don't do that. So you don't have

to die to actually have that experience. I actually don't know what happens after death. But what I do know is from a psychological perspective, there is something called annihilation of the ego, which is where you have an experience of self that is outside of, of who you identify as. And those meditation practices are Shunya meditation. And unfortunately, there is going to be a series of things that I have to teach you before you do Shunya meditation. So the Shunya meditation practice that I'm going to tell you. And this, by the way, so I have to do a couple of medical legal things here too.

So there are cases of meditation-induced psychosis. So meditation is not a practice that is not without risks. And especially Shunya meditation practices are different. So there is a Shunya meditation practice that I'm willing to teach you, but I'm not going to teach you on stream because I don't want people at home to do it. Okay. Because it could be dangerous. It needs to be done under the guidance of someone who knows what it is.

And it could be kind of, it's funny. Someone asked at the beginning of the stream, I just saw a question in chat about, like sometimes when I feel, when I start to meditate, I feel like this vast emptiness and it terrifies me. And then like I get scared and I stop meditating. Absolutely. this person is doing it right. It just needs to be done with guidance. So the first part of meditation that I'm going to teach you is Thratica or fixed point gazing. And this you can do at home.

Okay, we'll kind of get to the, you know, once you learn how to do this. So fixed point gazing is simply that, that you gaze at a particular thing without blinking for an extended period of time. And I think a good thing to start with is a candle. So like candle gazing is a good practice. I've just not figured out how to how to teach this over the internet because oftentimes it requires a candle. I think looking at a real candle works. So instead what we're going to try to do

is just we're just going to try to do the fixed point gazing part. I'll explain what you guys should do at home with a candle. But the idea is to just gaze at a candle flame for an extended period of time without blinking. But I guess what we can try, is to soulfully gaze into each other's eyes without blinking. All right. So I'm going to just kind of, we're going to, so close your eyes for a second, Ethan.

Okay. And do you have, actually, do you have a source of soft light anywhere around you? Sure. I mean, I have my streaming light up here. That's going to be too bright. Too bright. Then, no. Okay.

So we're just going to try this. I don't know how this is going to work, but we'll try. So we can just look at, I want you to look at this point on my face. Okay. And I'm going to look at that point on your face. So close your eyes. Okay. And I want you to just first feel what your eyes feel like.

Sort of feel the wetness, feel the comfort of having your eyes closed. And now what I want you to do is slowly open your eyes to kind of like half-lited gaze. And what I'm going to do is turn off your streaming light, actually. Is it going to be completely dark in there without your streaming light? No, it should be completely dark. Okay, good. This is better. So now what I want you to do is to look.

So close your eyes and then slowly open them and go to half-litted gaze and stare at this point. And what we're going to do, you can open a little bit more. So what we're going to do, uh-oh, discord. Here we go, chat. Something just, did we? Okay, your internet connection is unsubed. stable. Are we still live? Broke the internet.

Internet doesn't want us to do it. That's all right. It came back. Okay. So just gaze over here. And then just try not to blink. So the first thing that you're going to feel, I'm going to walk you through some sensations, okay? The first thing that you're going to feel is some degree of itching or burning. And it can help to squint a little bit if you need to.

And then try to relax after the squint. into a squint and out of a squint. Okay. And then you're going to feel the tears start to come. So let the tears come. It's a sense of lack of lubrication in your eyes. So the tears are going to want to come and lubricate. Okay.

And what we're going to do is try to hold this for between 30 and 60 seconds without blinking. And now close your eyes. So feel the relief. Feel the slight burning. And now I want you to look at the screen of your mind. So you're going to see almost like a, that your visual receptors are still active. And do you see something within the blackness of your mind? Yeah, I do.

Okay, so I want you, so there should be something central that you see. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. So focus on the central thing. Tell me what you see. It's the after image of your face, mostly like the lower half of your face. Okay. So what does it look like to you?

Describe what you see, not what it is. It looks like two points in the middle of a black outline. Beautiful. So I want you to concentrate on those two points in the black outline and try to keep them as central as you can in the screen of your mind or your jid, the Akash. Just what it's called. And let me know if you lose it.

Okay. Is it trying to move? No, but it's blurring out over time. Focus on it. Concentrate. Look closer. Okay. Yeah, it's coming back some. Good. Still have it? Not really. It's just...

Okay. So it's just faded away. So open your eyes. Good. So that's what you need to practice. So take a candle. Okay. So tell me, how do you feel right now? Tired. Like a little rung out. Good. I mean, was that... You didn't feel that way before the practice, right? No, no. Yeah. So this... So this is what I mean.

So this practice is like intensive meditation, right? So a lot of times when people do, like when we do breath oriented techniques, those are invigorating, energizing. They increase your brine or your chi. This practice is going to take it out of you. It requires a lot of effort. And it's like not a common experience of meditation. Most people feel energized when we do meditation. This practice is going to drain you, which is what we want actually.

Okay. In your case, okay? Okay. So this practice is also called Drataka or Fix Point Gazing. T-R-A-T-A-K-A. I can send you some information about it. Yeah, I'm interested. And what I want you to do is do it with especially a long-stem candle,

not like a long, long stem, but I want to see the stem of the candle. Right. And what you want to do is over the course of 30 seconds, start at the base of the candle, and move your way up to the flame and then stare at the flame for maybe another 30 to 60 seconds without blinking and then close your eyes and then hang on to the after image and put your concentration on the after image. That's phase one. You guys do, did people at home do the practice? Do you guys want to try it again? Okay. So thoughts, questions?

Well, of course, right? Like you've promised secret knowledge that has to be, you know, given offline. Like, of course, I've immensely. curious, right? Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to do. No, no. Like it was an audit. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't mean to try to create a cult there. No, I know. It's just, I'm serious. So like, some of the stuff that you do in meditation, like literally there are case reports of meditation induced psychosis. And one of the biggest things that I've learned being both a medical doctor and someone who's been teaching meditation for 15 years is some of this stuff, it's not just a, it's not mindfulness. We're not doing mindfulness, right? Right. I'm sure you've done mindfulness.

I have. This does not feel quite like that. This is something different. This is taking something out of you. And if you give it too much, you're going to go nuts. Wow. All right. Right. And you know what I mean? Like when you do mindfulness, like how do you feel at the end of mindfulness? Rested and centered. Yeah, you feel. And how do you feel at the end of this? I said I felt wrung out. Yeah. Right. So this is different. Like this is this is like spiritual growth level stuff that we don't talk about anymore. Like somewhere along the way when mindfulness crossed the pond, like we left a bunch of stuff in it like India and China. We brought the McDonald's version. Absolutely. Okay.

So this isn't Mickey Dees. The happy meal. Yeah. But do you, other thoughts or questions? No. Not. I don't know. I feel like where I was at the end of last week where now you've taken me in a direction where I'm like, I don't know.

I need time to absorb that to figure out what questions I would have. Good. That's our goal, right? What? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, well, it's definitely the goal in terms of progress. Because you definitely left me with two or three things. And I'm like, oh, shit, he's completely right.

And why haven't I seen that? And, oh, my God, that's like a, you know, the, I'm feeding the hungry beast. and that makes it bigger. I've always known and agree with intellectually the way to have enough is to want less, not to get more. But then you've pointed out where I'm completely not living that. And I'm like, oh, shit. And then how do I unwind that?

Because in my case, I've built not only muscles at doing it, but, like, pride in the sense of, I'm capable of scheduling anything. I can make, I can actually ski in two places at once. I just need a helicopter. Like, that's how my mind works. And you're telling me, like, you've spent 20 or 30 years honing an ability that's actually bad.

Not that it doesn't have uses, but that in this aspect is maladaptive. Maladaptive. That's the word. Yeah. So that's okay. So you don't have to unravel it. What we're going to do is just unplug it. Okay.

Even better. Yeah. So let me ask you this. So it may be hard to recall, but like what were you trying to optimize or get out of the practice that we were doing while you were doing it? when you're trying to hold on to the after image, what are you trying to feed? The only thing I was trying to feed was being able to do it. Like, success, focus.

So I'm going to ask you in a different way. Were you actually trying to feed something? No. Right. So you're wondering, how do I stop feeding this thing? Well, you just practice not feeding things. And you just did it. You just took the first step.

Because for a moment, your mind is not trying to feed anything. There's no FOMO, there's no feeding, there's no hunger, there's just you. And what are you in that moment? You're not anything. There we go. That is Shunya. That is Shunya. You are not anything.

And the more that you become comfortable with that person, there's no need for FOMO. FOMO will go away on its own. You don't have to conquer it. You don't have to do anything. It's just going to go away. It'll be gone. You'll wake up one day. Done.

That'll be awesome. So the only other place I get close to this is really hard physical activity. Are the two related? Like when I play hockey, right, ice hockey is very demanding. I play with people half my age. So the art of keeping up with them leaves me no time to think or worry about anything else. Same thing achieved a different way. Absolutely, right?

Because what did you say you can't do when you're playing? Can't think or worry. So once we disable thinking and worrying, it's all the same place. Okay. Just two paths to the same door or. Yes. It's about a state, it's about eliciting a state of consciousness. Got it.

Right? Whether you fall asleep, whether you are knocked out or whether you are anesthetized. If you are unconscious, you are unconscious. So you can lead to consciousness, like states of consciousness in different ways. A lot of people on stream ask me about, you know, psychedelics and things like that. So like meditation, I'm not saying that they're exactly the same, but a state of consciousness is a state of consciousness.

So there are different roads to getting there. So intense physical exercise is a form of meditation because the goal of meditation is to attain a particular state where your mental function is actually turned off, but your consciousness or awareness remains. I really, this, I need this. so badly because, you know, the notes I had written before this, and I said up front, it's like I found I'm more and more grasping for things. And I'm no longer grasping for like economic stuff so much as experiential. But the hunger for more is a problem.

You were saying that you had asked, you had made notes or wanted to ask questions about grasping before we met today? Yeah, yeah. I mentioned it right when we started. That's where I said the FOMO was my, that's the place I picked it, but I've noticed it in, I've several,

fear of missing out was like the easiest way to summarize it. I did think about it. And let me just see. What I actually wrote in my notes was, I realized that wanting to feel loved, our topic from last time, has generally made me grasping for lots of pleasant things, activities travel, time with friends,

food, I'm pleasure seeking. And that was, I summarize that to you as FOMO because that was like the fastest way. Yeah. So, yeah, so that, you know, I, so first of all, Ethan, I think you've done a great job of kind of reflecting. I think, I think it's good that you're at a place where you're not quite sure. what to ask because that means we've moved past where your mental patterns have already figured everything out. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, of course. So we want to move you beyond what you

already understand, which is a lot. Yeah. And, and, you know, this is going to become harder as you, as you learn more. And then you're, you're going to explore more and things like that, but that's okay. So any, um, I'm going to just ask real quick. Any, so do you have any other questions or do people on your stream have questions? Let's see. No, looking at their questions, the only one which I know you've answered before is, what do you charge an hour, which I already know the answer to, so I can answer for them offline. Okay. You've said before, right? It's four and a quarter, right? That's your normal, like, billing rate or whatever. It went up in 2020. So I increase my rates every year.

There you go. I'm getting, yeah. So my only question is, man, you can't leave me hanging. I want to follow up on this Shunya meditation. Like, I'm super. So I'll follow up. So here's the thing. You have to practice Thratica.

Yeah, I got it. So interestingly, practicing like mindfulness meditation was only medium interesting to me. this one, I'm like, damn it, there's a candle in the house. I'm so on this because I, because I directly see the connection to something I want to work on. That's interesting, Ethan. It almost sounds as if the concern that you had at the beginning of the session, which is how do I meditate is no longer a concern. we'll see how I do this week but um it feels much more uh meditation last week felt a little bit like um and in in the past of my life felt a little bit like oh this is a good thing you should do like eat broccoli do sit-ups it's a good thing but why exactly am i eating broccoli why exactly am i doing sit-ups you know like oh more health this seems much more like you said i get to pull the

plug out of the anxiety to do everything and out of the fear of death, out of the wall, that's motivating because it's a specific goal. Good. That's our goal, right? So now we'll go back. So you can talk as much as you want to about behaviorally finding it, behaviorally how to do it. But I think this is how meditation happens. It's about karma.

It's about time and place and inspiration and what you were kind of saying, earlier that part of the Christian ideal that you try to live up to is that of whom much is given much is expected. Yes. And similarly, God will provide that what you need when you need it. So don't worry about it. Those words are, don't worry about it is very hard for me. Yeah. I'm an excellent warrior. Yeah. World class. Yeah. So you need a little bit more faith. Right? Absolutely. Okay. So thanks a lot, man.

Yeah, that was, thank you. Like, I am deeply grateful, actually, for today's. Last week, I was intrigued and, and, and, like, interested. This week, I'm like, honestly, I wanted to tell you, I'm blown away, right? The rate of your ability to get inside quickly and pull out something deep, impressive and valuable. So thank you. Well, it helps when you have a willing participant and also intelligent and dedicated and thoughtful. So thank you. Yeah, a lot of people followed up with me through the week and were like, holy shit, I could have never done that in public.

You'd be surprised for all of those people. You'd be surprised. That I've been surprised by how many people are willing to come on and talk and how well this is working. I think that's a big problem is that we, we hide the worst parts of ourselves and thereby we prevent them from being like helped or fixed or solved. And sunlight is an amazing disinfectant. Yeah. And that's that's what I told them as I said, well, for the benefit, you know, sure, I said earlier I felt embarrassed about stuff. Well, that's okay, right? If it if it helps me get better because you you had I don't know if you realize this, but you had a really good, terrifying line, which was, this is only going to get worse for you. You're 50 as each year ticks off if you're desperate to feed the beast and you're afraid of death.

It's only going to amplify. And that was so obviously true because what you don't know is that I've had conversations with my wife about like, well, I need to do this, this and this activity. over the next five years because I like to play hockey. I mentioned that, but it's not something you do in your 70s. And so I have like a mental clock of only so many hockey games left. And you hit right on it. Like if you have that thinking, it creates a desperation cycle that's self-reinforcing.

So, yeah. All right. Strong work, man. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Until next time.

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