Know Thyself - E131 - Rainn Wilson: Comedy, God & Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Famous for his role as Dwight Schrute on the Office, Rainn Wilson has brought light to the world through comedy and uplifting spiritual content. Reflecting on his time filming the iconic series, Wilson discusses how comedy has served as a healing force in his life, stemming from his childhood experiences. He opens up about his struggles with depression and the profound spiritual awakening that followed, emphasizing the importance of finding meaning and purpose in life.Wilson passionately argues for a necessary spiritual revolution, advocating for hope amidst the chaos of the modern world. He delves into the true meaning of spirituality, exploring themes of connection to something greater and the release of dogma in favor of genuine spiritual truth. Throughout the conversation, he contemplates profound questions about life, death, and the purpose of pain and suffering, ultimately reflecting on his life and the spiritual practices that guide him.BonCharge Red light therapy:Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro 1:38 The Office: Looking Back at that Pivotal Time4:10 Comedy as a Healing Force9:19 How His Childhood Led Him to Coping with Comedy 15:25 From Depression to Spiritual Awakening19:51 Finding Meaning & Purpose in Life27:39 The True Meaning of Spirituality35:09 Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution40:37 Hope to Find Hope in a Chaotic World43:51 Ad: Boncharge Redlight Therapy - Save 15%46:09 Bahá'í Faith: Releasing Dogma & Yearning for Spiritual Truth54:13 Defining Spirituality & Our Connection to Something Greater1:00:08 What Lives on When We Die1:04:50 Power of Contemplating Death 1:15:47 Purpose of Pain & Suffering on Our Path1:21:57 Polarity on Our Planet1:27:00 Reflecting on His Life Thus Far1:32:53 His Spiritual Practices1:38:33 Conclusion___________Rainn Wilson is a three-time Emmy Award nominated actor, best known for the role of Dwight Schrute in NBC's The Office. He's acted in dozens of other films and TV shows such as (in no particular order): Six Feet Under, The Meg, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Super, The Rocker, Star Trek Discovery, Utopia, Jerry and Marge Go Large, Almost Famous, Backstrom, Galaxy Quest, Blackbird as well as the upcoming CODE 3. He is the host of the new Peacock docu-series "Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss" in which he travels the world in search of happiness. Rainn is the co-founder of the digital media company SoulPancake which created thousands of pieces of content and over a billion video views, including viral hits like Kid President, My Last Days, and The Idiots Guide to Climate Change. His newest book is entitled Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoulBoomInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/rainnwilson/New Book "Soul Boom": https://linktr.ee/soulboom?lt_utm_source=lt_share_link#309753270___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

Comedy, it's healing because you cannot laugh and cry at the same time. Some of my most unhappy times in my life was while I was shooting the office. Comparison and envy and ambition. What do you do when you're desperately unhappy, off track, questioning everything, that's what forced me to turn toward a spiritual path. The greatest issue facing humanity right now is this. kind of almost universal belief that things can't get

better. There is a way out. We need a spiritual revolution because the ways that human beings have done things for eons are not sustainable. So how can we distinguish the dogma from the beautiful truth of what these spiritual

teachers brought? As a Baha'i, all of these are incorporated into one spiritual canon of truth, of beauty, and of wisdom. Dude, I told my sister that you were coming on the podcast. She first off had a complete panic attack. And then second, broke out into tears because...

And then she's showing up, right? For a selfie? I'm having a voice message in tears. That's nuts. I love it. That's nuts. Does that feeling of having brought joy to so many people's lives? Does that, like, stay with you?

Do you have, like, a healthy amount of pride with that? Do you think back about that time much? You know, it's interesting how time works, isn't it? and memory because I shared a lot about this when I was promoting the book Soul Boom about a year ago or so. There was some of my most unhappy times in my life was while I was shooting the office, which is crazy. Maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration,

but I went through some rough times, some ups and downs. A lot of what I would call like chronic, anxious dissatisfaction while on the TV show because, you know, we're wired as human beings to just want more. And it's kind of like, hey, I'm now a TV star

after struggling for, you know, 15 years as an actor. Why can't I be a movie star? And why can I make more money? And why can I get this kind of? He got that kind of deal. Why can't I get that kind of deal in comparison and envy and ambition

it's never enough. And it's so funny now sitting 10 years after the office has ended and looking back on it and like, rain, it was enough. It was everything you could have ever wanted. It was your dream come true. I mean, to spend nine years, 200 episodes playing a really memorable comic character. You've kind of trained and groomed your entire life to play memorable comic characters

and from theater school and from being a nerdy teenager and onwards. And, you know, getting paid well, you can pay off your student loans, even buy a house, travel, meeting new people, getting new work opportunities. Like, this is it.

That's it, you know? And so it's interesting being in it, in it and being dissatisfied and being past it and looking back on it and being so grateful for the experience because that's all I feel right now is like we're really tight the whole office family we text all the time joke around all the time and you know when I hear about how much that show has meant to people it's it really moves my heart yeah it's interesting how at that time you were struggling so much and yet while so many other people were struggling, that character, that show was like really solace.

It was like a healing balm for so many people. And I know levity and comedy really does just give us some reprise and just like break from our own solipsism often, you know. And so what do you think about comedy as a healing force? Well, it's interesting. I created a company a long time ago called Soul Pancake. It was an early YouTube company. And we had over 3 million subscribers,

and we did a lot of positive, inspiring content. One of the things we did, we did a long-form documentary called Laughing Matters, and it was about the intersection between comedy and mental health. And the reason I'm going into it in that way is I realize now, after a lot of therapy and a lot of soul searching, that comedy, for me,

did come out of a way, a certain measure of pain and trauma. It was a coping mechanism that got me through a difficult childhood and also was a way for me to connect with the outside world in a way where I always felt alienated and cut off and like I never fit in and comedy was my way in. Like I was never gonna be popular, I was never gonna be good looking, I was never gonna be a jock, I was never gonna be a jock,

It was never going to be, you know, smooth and charming, but I could do weird impersonations and I could do funny Pratt falls and I could tell jokes. And that allowed me to fit in. And it's funny. The professor and author, Arthur Brooks, talks about that in terms of comedy,

that you can't, two things can't exist in the brain at the same time, which is like, you can't live in comedy and laughter and you can't live in depression at the same time. They're like pistons working like this. Like gratitude and fear almost. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or love and fear can't occupy the same brain space at the same time. You can literally try and feel love and fear at the same time.

You can't do it. They're an antidote for each other. And laughter and sadness are the same way. It's like the drama masks, you know. It's the smiling and the chronic. drama masks and from ancient Greece. And, you know, out of a really difficult childhood that was incredibly challenging in its own way, we've all had very challenging childhoods, I'm sure.

There are ones far worse than mine. Mine kind of was centered around a loveless marriage and a lot of like suburban unwee. You know, I wasn't like beat, you know. No, there wasn't like, you know, grotesque things happening to me, like happened to a lot of people in the world, so I want to couch it in that. But again, comedy was my way out.

Comedy was my way of soul-searching. So all of a sudden, I signed up for an acting class, I found I was pretty good at it, I made people laugh, I played characters, I did funny walks, I did funny voices, I told jokes, I did improvisation, I got a love accolades for that. these tools that I had learned in this kind of pressure cooker of a really kind of disconnected, loveless child space, all of a sudden came in very handy. And then I went to acting school, and then all of a sudden I was working as a professional actor. But then I got onto some TV shows, and here I was on, you know,

one of kind of the all-time great comedies. But again, while I was on the show, very little awareness of the healing properties of comedy. And I think it's something really worth exploring and digging into because, you know, the way the world is right now, it's very interesting. There's not many good comedies on television anymore, and they're hard to find. You have to sift through a lot to kind of find them,

and we need them more than ever. And one of the reasons I heard that a lot of like the streaming services and TV networks are not picking up new comedies is because people keep turning back to the old ones. They're watching Seinfeld and friends and the office and Parks and Rec and some of those old great comedies, 30 Rock, for their comedy fix. But it is, it's healing because you cannot, you cannot laugh and cry at the same time. and even if you get your fix of half an hour here or there, like it can take you through a day. What happens when you take that insight, look at it through the lens of that for your childhood,

because I remember Robin Williams mentioning how comedy was kind of like a behavioral adaptation for making his mother who was sick feel better. And I'm curious about your thoughts between that link of the genuine, I guess, whatever you want to call it, gift, pull, Dharma, towards comedy. And then also, like, the trauma as a child that leads to a behavioral compensation of making everybody laugh as a way to cope. I'm curious how you think about that.

It's the economy. Yeah, it was a coping mechanism for me. I love the classic American sitcoms of the 70s and early 80s. I grew up, I watched every episode of MASH. I watched Cheers. Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Morrow reruns, you know, Bewitched and Dick Van Dyke and F. Troop. And the list just goes on and on. I just devoured anything having to do with half-hour comedy.

Then I discovered Saturday Night Live when it first came out in the late 70s and Money Python around the same time, which they would run on PBS all the time. You couldn't like just go to YouTube and watch clips. You had to really search for great comedy out there. and Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine, and these got me through my childhood. I just was drawn like a moth to a flame, and I think because of this kind of alienated emotional desert

that I lived in in suburban Seattle, that was a healing balm for me. Then, you know, I remember talking about, I don't know if it was in Soul Boom, I also wrote a book called The Bassoon King that was kind of my comedic memoir. And I was such an odd child. I remember watching other kids in school

to be like, how do normal people behave? You know, I'm going to watch people in the lunchroom. I'm going to see how they behave, and then I'm going to copy them. And my parents are very odd, very odd people. So I knew I was not going to, like, behave like my parents. So what do you do?

So I'd go in the lunchroom and then I'd see Mike Wenzell go up to John Valadez and say, hey, buddy, how was your weekend? Give me a bite of that. And then like take his French fry or something like that. And be like, oh, okay, great. And I would literally, maybe not literally, but I would almost exactly copy that kind of behavior. But of course, when you're trying, it's like an alien trying to fit into, you know, a human guise. You know, when you try and go up to someone then and say, hey, buddy, how's it going?

How is your weekend? Clap on the back. Take the French fry. It just, it rings hollow. And it was out of that and out of that oddness that, again, that coping mechanism of comedy came out. So that I found that when I would be the cut up and the goofies. off, it worked for me. I found when I took an improv class or took an acting class that I could make people laugh. And there was a kind of a, it's the cliche of the sad clown. There's a lot of

cliche in and around what we're talking about. We're talking about comedy and tragedy. We're talking about the sad clown. You're talking about, you know, crying and laughing at the same time. But there's truth in that. That's one of the reasons that, that, uh, that's, that's, that, they are cliches. What do you think about your childhood led you to feeling like you need to manufacture, like, you know, interactions and not being as natural in that aspect? I'm curious. I wanted to fit in, you know, more than anything else. I didn't even want to be popular. I just so didn't fit in. I really felt like I was an alien plopped down in human

form trying to understand kind of normal human interaction. And it took me a long time to get out of that. But I remember my very first acting class, I was a junior in high school. And I had just moved to this new high school. And we did this exercise. And I made everybody laugh. I was kind of the new kid at the school. And then I sat down afterwards and all of these young, attractive high school girls that I hadn't met before came over and like patted me on the shoulder and punched me. Like, that was so funny. Oh, my gosh. You're new here. Like, come sit at our lunch table. And, oh, my God, you made me laugh. So, oh, he's funny. And, and, you know, when you're 16, I just, I felt this glow. And I was like, that's it.

is what I'm doing. I had been a colossal nerd before that point. I had chess team and played the bassoon. Yeah, you can tell you were on the chess team. You saw the chess board walking in. All right, we're going to have to get it after this. Okay, all right. We'll get into it. But I was never very good on the chess team. And that was a long time ago. But yep, chess, model United Nations, computer club, ceramics club, you name it, every nerdy pursuit you could do. But once I got that kind of validation for making people laugh, I was like, that's it. I'm, I'm gone. I'm, you know, I'm a drama nerd now.

You know, come hell or high water. And my path was set at that point. So that's how it works. So around 25, you're getting into these. And if you had to kind of pinpoint down, like the spiritual awakening, I know that originally, early on, you had ties with the Baha'i faith and kind of turned away from that and went rebellious and to explore your own hedonistic impulses and push that to the side. What was the moment you realized you needed some sort of spiritual life out of necessity? Yeah.

I speak about this a little bit in Soul Boom and also in the Bassoon King. When I got out of acting school, I was 23, 24, 25 years old. trying to make it as an actor, you know, really broke, barely getting by. And I became very unmoored in a lot of ways. There were certainly a lot of hedonistic pursuits going on. I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith, like you mentioned, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And I learned and was kind of educated in so many beautiful, true, wise,

teachings that I think foundationally stayed with me and ultimately really helped me. But I needed to rebel. I needed to leave that world of my parents behind and go to New York City and make my own way. I wanted to be an artist in New York City, and I didn't want anything to impede that. So what I encountered, when I look back at it now, was a real severe mental health crisis. and I was in my early mid-20s. And in the 90s, people were not talking about mental health crisis. There were no books on mental health crises.

There was, the word anxiety was not in the lexicon other than, you know, it was something you felt if, you know, you were afraid you were going to be late for a movie. You know, there wasn't an idea kind of entrenched that, you know, there's an epidemic of loneliness and anxiety and depression and addiction. So I started facing those demons without any help, without any money. There was no therapy available. You know, therapy was outrageously expensive. No one I knew was in therapy or had ever been in therapy. And so what do you do when you're desperately unhappy, unmoored, off track, having anxiety attacks, feeling depressed sometimes for weeks on end, questioning everything, like, why am I alive, why am I here?

Dealing with addiction issues, drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, whatever, you name it, whatever's there. And, you know, what do you do? So the only thing that I knew to do was to start exploring spirituality and a spiritual path. And Julia Cameron in the artist's way, not in the artist's way, but in an interview said, I come to spirituality, not out of virtue, but out of necessity. And that's what forced me to turn toward a spiritual path, was seeking a bomb for the amount of anguish that I was in as a young man. And I won't say that I was lost and now I can see. I won't say that I was like immediately saved. It wasn't immediately, it didn't bring immediate

clarity and peace or serenity or anything like that for me. It has been a long process, a long unfolding process, but it has been the richest, most rewarding process I've ever experienced. And I'm now, again, like the office, looking back on it, I'm so grateful. And isn't that interesting how oftentimes the times in our lives we go through the greatest anguish, you get out a few years, especially five, 10, 15, 20 years, look back on it and go, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful, I went through that. I'm so grateful. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have found kind of the rich, rewarding path of spiritual discovery. Do you think that through time you're able to

take that hindsight in a way that your future self will be looking in your current struggles, like as if they have purpose? Does that alleviate current pain and struggle? Well, yeah, that's an interesting question. You know, I'm much more balanced right now, but it's a different set of challenges at 58. You know, it's kind of like, what should I be doing?

What is my life really about? Am I on the best possible path for myself? Like, you get a bit more existential? It's a little more existential. You have a little bit more of a sense of the end zone is up here. You know, it's only 20 or 30 yards away. It's not way down there. And every year, every clump of years, certainly every decade really counts when you're hitting your late 50s and headed toward, dear God, by 60s.

So it's a different kind of spiritual crisis. So maybe when I'm 87, I'll look back and be like, oh, remember when you went through that, what you went. through in your late 50s and how rewarding that was. I'm sure there will be some of that. I'm sure there will. What are you currently struggling with to find some resolve there? Like, if you look back at the past couple of decades, what do you feel like you're really needing to get clarity on,

like in terms of meaning and purpose? Well, I still have a codependent relationship with show business, which is frustrating. Show business is just a giant popularity contest. I've gotten to play amazing roles since the office. I've gotten to be in some incredible films and TV shows. And I did this travel show on happiness called Raine Wilson in The Geography of Bliss that came out last year.

I saw that. Yeah, and it was really rewarding, one of the most rewarding things that I've done. But it's hard making it in Hollywood. And it's hard, you know, getting a new projects and exciting projects and and having people see you differently than Dwight Shrewd has always been a challenge. So I still have that kind of iron in the fire. And, you know, there's part of me that kind of wants to just give a big fuck you to Hollywood and

just move out into the woods and write books and play chess. And I may still do that. So that's one challenge. and sometimes I feel a little bit stuck. Sometimes I feel like I've taken a lot of really positive steps. Like I'm in recovery. I've taken really positive great steps in recovery. That's been a really rewarding journey for me.

Writing Soul Boom, doing the Soul Boom podcast, having these kind of elevated spiritual conversations has been exciting and uplifting for me. but you know can i go deeper what does that look like you know what does you know the great spirit the great mystery the you know the cosmic force want from me in the next you know uh steps along the path before before mortality you know rears its uh it's ugly interesting head One thing I'm very excited about is with my old business partner from Soul Pancake, Shabnam McGarabi. That's a great name.

You were about to say thanks as if it was your name? Almost. We're going to do a documentary on God called The Notorious GOD based on the chapter from Soul Boom, an exploration of what God might look like in the modern world. I'd love to interview you for it. Are you open? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, great. And, you know, projects like that to me are really exciting.

I pitched it as a TV show all around town, and it got turned down everywhere. In fact, when I went into Netflix with it, they said it was too controversial, which is hysterical to me that you can have, like, dating shows where everyone hooks up with everyone. No problem. But if you want to do a documentary on God, it's too controversial. So that's the kind of the world that we live in right now. So those are my main struggles. And to find, you know, what's the best way for me to leverage what I've learned, what I know, and the stories I want to tell, to help a very wounded world right now.

There's parts of me that gets very angry and very engaged in the immediate stuff. You know, Trump, as we speak, Trump has just won this election. I see that there's a lot of injustice going on in the world, and I want to scream about it. right but i also want to have a larger view of where we're headed as a species on this planet and address that beyond the partisan ups and downs um of legislation and headlines and doom scrolling and you know outrage clicks on the internet so in fact there's a um there's a story from the Baha'i faith, this woman named Rojia Khunum, had this dream about this great spiritual teacher from the Baha'i faith named Abdul Baha. And there was a big, a dam had broken, and there was a big

flood, and the water was washing everyone's homes away, and everyone was down trying to rescue people and pull them out of the water. And Abdul Baha was up on top of this hill doing something up there. She couldn't quite see what it was. And she was like, what's Abdul Wahad doing up on top of that hill? You know, we need him down here, helping everyone out of the flood. And then someone said to her in the dream, someone said, oh, he's building a machine to stop the flooding in the future. So there's nothing wrong with, in fact,

it's lauded to be pulling people out of the flood. But there's also nothing wrong with, doing something to build a machine or a system or a way of thinking that is going to prevent dam breaks in the future and has kind of a looking at things from a 20,000-foot view, you know, a different perspective. Yeah, I think when it comes to the personal level, I'm curious to get your perspective on this.

I feel like embarking on a spiritual journey is a fundamental reorientation of your life, your focus, your energy towards what matters most. And when it comes to service and fulfillment and meaning and how we contribute towards others in this life, in similar way to that story, it's like questioning, asking the questions of what's going to matter most and can I focus on what are the root issues of so many societal issues? Not that cleaning up rivers isn't needed. It absolutely is. And also cleaning up the minds of the people that pollute the rivers, for example, is very important also. I don't know what to say equally or more or whatever, but they're both needed. And I love that in your podcast book, so much of your work, you're really attempting to shed light on how it's important to align ourselves with what matters most because that's going to correlate to the most fulfillment in life.

And so take it where you will, but, you know, in terms of what matters most to you currently right now or what you think is important to reflect on for most people to realize that matters most. what comes up for you? Well, great question, and it goes to the thesis of my book, and it's something I'm madly passionate about. We sit here across from each other in Topanga Canyon. Is that okay for me? No way, Topanga Canyon. Sorry.

A secret hideout in Topanga Canyon, California. Which I would say in a lot of ways is the epicenter of so much. incredible healing modalities, spiritual ways of thinking, perspective shifts. But there is a certain kind of contemporary Southern California limitation to spirituality, where spirituality is used as a expedient tool to fight one's current anxiety or depression. For instance, I'm crazy busy with my life, whether I have a job, whether I work at home, I'm raising kids, what have you. Oh my God, I feel so flustered. I feel so overwhelmed. I know I'll listen to a spirituality podcast.

I'll go to a yoga class. I'll burn incense. I'll get this app. I'll read this incredibly wise person. And it'll re-center and recalibrate my... my thinking, my being, my breath, my heart energy, and this will make my life better. There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I wish everyone would do that. I wish the world would do that. If we had, instead of hundreds of thousands or millions of people doing that every day, if we had billions of people centering around their heart every day, taking deep breaths, being in the moment, undergoing a spiritual practice,

the world would be a much better place. But that journey can become very solipsistic and it can become very navel-gazy and it can become very consumerist where I'm going to pay X amount for this podcast and X amount for this app and X amount for this audio book and the X amount for this yoga class or this, you know, healing practitioner. And in return, I want X amount of anxiety reduction so that I can go about my crazy, busy flustered, overwhelmed life more effectively. Then essentially you're just trading dollars for a result. And that ultimately is not a shift in a kind of a greater awareness, right?

So there's another aspect of spirituality which really comes from the Baha'i tradition that isn't talked about as much in the spirituality world. and that has to do with collectively where are we going as a species on this planet and how can we harness and use spiritual tools to make our collective life better? When you really start unpacking Buddhism, for instance, and especially if you read the Dalai Lama, especially if you read Ticknod Han, but go to the source, the Buddha himself, the main awareness that one is cultivating is compassion.

Why? So that you can relieve the suffering of others. If we only pay X amount of money and get a certain app and a certain book and a certain podcast and certain animal cards or what have you to relieve our own anxiety and have compassion for ourselves, that's a great place to start. But it can't end there. We have to increase the compassion for other people. And then what do we do? How do we put that into action collectively to reduce suffering en masse? And this may sound airy-fairy or pie in the sky or may say, well, that's not really the purview of spirituality. To a lot of people feel like, well, if I'm just better, if I'm kinder when I go into a Trader Joe's parking lot, then I'll spread that kindness and I'll be nice to someone else and they'll be nice to someone else and it'll have a ripple effect.

And that is true, but we also have to harness those tools and those ideas collectively to try and reduce suffering and make the world better. And there are real and tangible ways to do that. And a lot of us and a lot of folks do it in their jobs, you know, they work in education, they work in health care, they work in the nonprofit sector, they work in climate and environment. And that's all wonderful. And that is part of the solution. but why I say soul boom, why we need a spiritual revolution, is that this is a yin and a yang. We cultivate our internal spiritual progress,

our serenity, our awareness, you know, our love, our radiance, our wisdom, our connection to the divine source, so that we can use it to help others. the more we help others, the more fulfilled we are. And then we can harness that energy and help even more people. And in so doing, it becomes a cyclical thing. So part of the issue I have with contemporary Western ideas around spirituality is that

often begins and ends with tools to reduce anxiety and doesn't move out into the world and find a kind of a collective harnessing of proactive action to reduce injustice and to limit suffering on a grander scale. So well said. And it's important to examine also where internally we have this, right? It's easy to point the fingers at other people. And I've definitely had this come up for myself where there's this sort of new age narcissism in a way, you know?

and there can be the spiritual... You just lost 8,000 subscribers. Take it easy, folks. But yeah, the spiritual materialism where it ends in the confines of what benefits you personally, physically, right? And so there is, of course, the yin and the yang, the inhale, the exhale,

the Baha'i understanding of the integration and disintegration. And I've heard you speak to this as well, how in many ways, liberating ourselves is supporting the world. and supporting the world looks like physically doing things and supporting other people in so many ways.

And so taking now a 30,000-foot view, maybe go out to the blue marble photo and examine this human species where we currently find ourselves at the developmental process. In many ways we could be seen as like a pre-bubescente, right? We're struggling in many ways, but we're also growing in so many ways

at rapid pace, the subtitle of your book is why we need a spiritual revolution, right? So why do we need a spiritual revolution, right? Well, I applaud you. You've actually read my book, and I love it. You've thrown in lots of little, juicy little references there. Thank you so much. Yes, sir.

It means so much. I really appreciate it. We need a spiritual revolution because we literally are seeing right now the grinding down decay. and collapse of old ways of doing things. The ways that human beings have done things for eons are not sustainable. They're based on the worst impulses of humanity. They're based on greed and one-upsmanship

and every man for himself and self-interest and a dog-eat-dog world and all of these wonderful energies that allowed us to get to this place and time, where we're sitting in this beautiful studio in Topanga, having this amazing conversation, and there's lights, and there's technology, and we've got education.

Like, humans, you know, struggled and overcame and had, you know, ambition and war and conflict to get to where we are as a species right now on the planet. Two things. Number one, That wasn't all we were, and that's a very limiting kind of way of thinking about humanity. Humanity is also really good at cooperation and really good at collectivism and kindness and working together. And some of the most successful societies are the ones that cooperated the best and were the best at trade and were the best at communication.

not the most warlike ones, you know, that conquered the most land. So that's number one, but number two, continuing to move in that direction when essentially the resources of planet Earth have been sucked up and used, it's not sustainable. And we're seeing it. We're seeing all the different ways that it's breaking down right now. I go into a list of pandemics and soul boom, of beyond the pandemic we just came out of materialism and racism and sexism and in the mental health epidemic we talked about a little bit. And nationalism and militarism, these are all pandemics that are eating away at the soul of humanity in a large way.

So we have to find a new way of doing things collectively. I try and bring some answers in there. I don't have any exact answers. I feel like the Baha'i faith has some really beautiful ideas about how to move things forward at the grassroots, which is a very important part of this. If there's a spiritual revolution to be had, I don't know that it's going to be immediately global. I think it's going to start in a neighborhood.

It's going to start in a cul-de-sac or at a school or at a church, you know, or at a community center, and it's going to involve children and kids and youth working together, believing that they can change the world. Recently, I heard a phrase, and it really rocked my world, and that was that the greatest issue facing humanity right now, the greatest disease, disease that we are facing, is this kind of almost universal belief that things can't get better, that we are incapable of change,

and that there's no way that we're going to fix the current state of affairs. This is a cancer that is affecting, infecting, countless young people in the world today. It's at the heart of the moment. mental health epidemic, this belief, the world is not going to get better. I don't count. I can't help make the world get better. We collectively, we're too fucked up. We will never collectively be able to make the world better. This misguided, cancerous, wrong belief is the biggest issue

that people are facing. And this is one thing that you, your listeners, your viewers, this incredible community that you've built, the people that you interview every single last one of them are an antidote, antidote four and two, because the people that you interview and you talk to believe there is a way out. And bringing hope, bringing the possibility of collective change toward justice, towards peace is possible, is kind of the most important work that we can be doing toward a spiritual revolution. Yeah, it's so easy when you're really so tuned in to social media and the news and what's going on out there to have to develop that cynicism, that nihilism, that's just,

you know, it can get very scary. But there is a deeper intelligence that resides in our heart that knows there is a more beautiful world possible, as a good friend Charles Eisenstein wrote about. I love that book. It's why I quoted in there. It's one of my favorites. Yeah. Very inspiring.

What do you think it is that really allows people to arrive back at the realization? that not only can things get better, but they must. If this world that we love, we want to see continue, you know, to flourish, I'm reminded of that story at 25 when another folk, I think he played Andre, dinner with Andre, told you about, or just reminded you about the power of hope and not to give into cynicism, right? Because it can be so alluring. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was studying with Andre Gregory, and he's a famous director, an acting teacher, author, and he was the star of my dinner with Andre, and I was doing this acting workshop with him, and he would meet with his students, and we sat kind of like we are right now at his apartment, had some tea, and he was like, so, rain, tell me what's going on,

How are you feeling what's going on with you? And I was like, oh, Andre, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I just feel like the world is a pile of shit and, you know, or mankind's driving into a ditch and things are bad out there. And he cut me off and stopped me. He did not tolerate that conversation. I mean, he literally, like, grabbed my arm. He looked into my eyes and he was like, don't.

Don't do it. You can't be cynical. You cannot be peasant. pessimistic. The world wants you pessimistic and cynical. That's what the world wants, because then you'll sit there on your couch, on your ass, and you won't do anything. We have to believe that hope is possible. We've got to believe that change is possible. You cannot give in to that despair and cynicism. So he's like, now get out there and, you know, and do something about it, you know, and he, like, kicked me out of his apartment. And it was a seminal point in my life. I'll never forget that conversation. I'll

never forget what the sun looked like kind of dappling the cobblestones in the West Village outside of his apartment as I came out of his apartment and words never rang truer than what I heard that afternoon. I was maybe 29, 30 years old and I knew that there's not room in this universe for me to give into cynicism and pessimism and nihilism. Of course, it sits on us sometimes like a blanket and you have to kind of wrestle with it and figure out a way out. And I knew at that point I needed to be part of the solution

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Bons charge products are all H-S-A-F-A eligible, giving you tax-free savings of up to 40%. I hope you dig it. Back to the episode. An area which is a big theme in your book and your work is this rising group of, quote, spiritual but not religious folk who, you know, largely societally, as you've spoken to, we've thrown out the spiritual baby with the

religious bathwater. And yet, we all yearn for coming into wholeness and to realize our spiritual nature, whether you put, you know, esoteric beliefs on that, or you attribute it to more of a feeling of compassion and love, which we all have the capacity for, we still yearn for that. And yet, there aren't as many systems or capacity for us in the newer generations to bring along those old, the old baggage of dogmatic belief systems. And so what do you see as a juxtaposition there between our deep need and yearning for spiritual truth and the falling away of outdated systems and religions?

Well, I'll share what is a uniquely Baha'i faith perspective on this. Which could you give for people that don't know what the Baha'i faith is, quick little? So the Baha'i faith was founded in, the mid-1800s in Iran, Persia, the prophet founder of the Baha'i faith was given the title Baha'u'llah, which means the glory of God. Baha'is believe that Baha'u'llah holds a station similar to those of the great prophet teachers of the ages. Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Lord Krishna, the Buddha, Zoroaster, all of the of these great spiritual teachers come from the same source,

the one source, what we in the Baha'i faith called the unknowable essence, God, for lack of a better word. This unknowable essence is so vast and so unknowable and beyond human understanding. I compare it sometimes like, we're like dogs trying to figure out the internet. You know, a dog on a keyboard can't figure out chat GPT and how it works.

It's a comprehension on a whole other level. That's like us trying to understand the divine. So we need these interpreters. We need these teachers to show us the path. So there's about 6 million Baha'is all around the globe. It's fairly small as religion goes. It's pretty young, too, 150, 180 years old. But it is very widespread.

Any country you go to, go to Barbados or Mongolia or Serbia. there's going to be Baha'is there, gathering, serving, working in the neighborhoods, hopefully. And Baha'u'llah's main mission was to bring about the unity of humanity. The teachings are all about unity. It's all about where all one human family, prejudice and racism needs to go, sexism needs to go. Men and women are two wings on the same bird, that we need the masculine and feminine to move forward as a speech. There's no inequality there, essential inequality there. That science and religion are also in harmony,

that work together. There are two ways of understanding the same ultimate reality. You can look at reality through a scientific lens. You can look at it through a spiritual lens. They both support and help one another. So all the teachings that Baha'u'llah brought are about building community, working in service, the highest form of worship, is service to others from a Baha'i perspective.

And so going back to your question earlier, you talked a lot about, you know, old dogmas that don't work anymore. This is what happens. You know, a great divine teacher comes. You look at, let's take Jesus Christ. Let's look at the message and life of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more beautiful on the planet. You know the red letter Bible. You know they have the Bibles and the red letter is what Jesus actually is purported to have said. You can read through a red letter Bible and be so profoundly moved at his humility, kindness, sweetness, putting himself outside of what society deemed as okay to serve the servants, right, to wash the feats.

the feet, or to wash the feet of prostitutes and to be with lepers and to be with people of tribes that were not of his tribe. And his teachings are so inspiring and his words and his sermons, his prayers. And then what happens? You know, not to point any fingers or anything like that, but, you know, 300 years later, there's, you know, certain books of the Bible are thrown out. Other ones are, you know, included, this idea of like, you know, essential sin is included and hell becomes very central or hell is kind of very obviously metaphorically, you know, related to in the Bible, but it becomes central. And then there's wars between Protestants and Catholics that kill millions of people. I mean, huge percentages of the population of Europe were killed in wars between of followers of Jesus.

I mean, it's astonishing. And you look at the dogmas that have grown up and the mistaken beliefs that have grown up. And now in contemporary America, so much of Christianity is about making lots of money and being very militarized. And there doesn't seem to be any disconnect between guns and Jesus.

And if you read the Bible, there's a huge disconnect between guns and what Jesus was saying, right? This isn't to point any fingers, but this is why these essentially pure spiritual ideas need refreshing every few hundred years. They need refreshing every few hundred, every few thousand years. So this is why new faiths come. Is there essentially the same message?

The message is added to and moved on. So as a Baha'i, we get to read the teachings of Baha'i. we get to read the teachings of Baha'u'llah, right? His eldest son, Abdul Baha, also a great spiritual teacher. We get to learn from them. We also read the Quran. We also read the Bible. We also read the Bhagavad Gita, the Damaphas of the Buddha.

All of these are incorporated into one spiritual canon of truth, of beauty, and of wisdom. So how can we distinguish the dogma from the beautiful truth that lies at the center of what these spiritual teachers brought. You know, Muhammad

exhorted his followers not to convert by the sword. You know, that was conversion by the sword was not allowed, actually. And very soon after his death, that became kind of the centerpiece of what it was to be a Muslim. So humanity

takes, warps, changes these essentially pure teachings and we have to go back to the source and all of those holy books I mentioned and countless more are there for us that we have

thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater we have said oh gosh I hate what Christianity is doing today and we throw it out and we miss not only the teachings of Jesus but so many other great mystic teachers and Thomas Aquinas and mystics and other folks, Thomas

Merton, that you can draw so much energy and strength from. So I think part of the struggle for young people that are spiritual but not religious is to say, hey, are we sure we haven't tossed everything out? Like, let's go back to the source and really get connected from these incredible beautiful teachers. There is that resurgence, again, a lot of people that listen to my podcast, your podcast are finding this new home

of spiritual truth and search and yearning for that essential true, pure wisdom to like how to live and how to give and those old systems like we're speaking to because of who has contorted the systems throughout time don't resonate with so many. when you use the word spiritual and that like we are spiritual beings,

I'm just curious how you define that and what you mean by that because it can mean many things to many people. How do you think of it? Yeah, that is such a key question, and it's very important to set our terms. What do you mean when you say a spiritual revolution? What do you mean when you say spirituality? Because it does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

And even working in this space, as you know, you know, I'm doing a spirituality podcast and people want to come on my show that channel you know, angels. There's nothing wrong with channeling angels at all. I believe that one can channel angels. I believe that we can speak to the people

that have passed from this tiny, kind of pathetic material realm that we live on, you know, into the realms beyond 100%. That's not exactly what I think of when I think of spirituality, however. So, you know, who am I at my core? Know thyself. If I'm knowing myself, what do I know about myself?

Well, I just pointed at my body. I felt a sensation in my chest with my finger. I have a rapidly decaying 58-year-old, still pretty fucking amazing body that does all kinds of weird things. you know, my right knee creaks, right? My sinuses are a little stuffed up right now. My neck has a little tweak in it

from how I slept on my pillow last night. I certainly have an awareness of my body, my breath, my blood. And frankly, you know, this body is going to serve me for, what, 20, 30, 40 more years, you know? And then what is spirituality? whatever is left that is going to continue the journey is spirituality. So it's like science and faith,

science and spirituality being two sides of the same coin of reality. I remember when a friend of mine told me once and he was kind of refuting spirituality. He was like, aha, they found in a brain scan, the exact place in a human brain where you have spiritual experiences. And he was saying it like, Like, aha, that disproves.

You know, it's all an illusion. It just happens in the cerebral cortex or whatever. And I was like, yeah, exactly, because it's one. It's all one. The physical realm and the spiritual realm are the same. They're in complete harmony. My consciousness is kind of the best way for a kind of spirituality 101 to understand what spirituality is, because what is consciousness?

Like, here I am having this conversation with you. I'm taking in your radiant face, you know, and I'm breathing, and we're communicating, yes, with words, but we're communicating deeper than that, too. We're communicating with our bodies, with our energies. Memories are coming up for me. I'm feeling things. I'm feeling joy. I'm feeling self-doubt.

I'm having memories from my past. This is all part of consciousness. And this consciousness doesn't go out like a light bulb when this rapidly failing body ends. So it's the divine spark that's within all of us. I don't even say within, without all of us, around all of us, inhabits all of us that can be cultivated,

that can be cultivated in meditation and in prayer, and in service, and in elevating and centering those qualities of the divine that we all have. In Islam, there's 99 names for God, right? The compassionate, the kind, the loving, the, you know, the strong, the, you know, the list goes on and on. These qualities of God are qualities that we have to know thyself. to know God is to know thyself, it says also in the Quran.

I think it was, maybe it was the Imam Ali as a hadith, I'm not sure, but to know God is to know thyself. What does that mean? Because God is in each and every one of us. When I am in compassion to someone who is hurting, that is, I'm flexing a divine muscle. When I experience real humility, not fake humility, that's a divine muscle.

When I'm honest with someone in a way that's uncomfortable and difficult, that is flexing a divine muscle. I even hate using that analogy. That is opening a divine window. But these can be cultivated. Honesty, compassion, humility, can be and should be cultivated.

So that's what the spiritual path is for me. So I don't want to say it's dualistic. You know, there's, you know, body and spirit, body and spirit are commingled, just like that brain scan. They work in tandem. They work in harmony. And it's a glorious journey that we're all on. Yeah. Believe me. Oh, absolutely. How do you Russell with beliefs really often act as a pacifier for our insecurity of not knowing

and when it comes to the idea of a soul or something that leaves beyond this body, what has led you to your certainty conviction? How do you delineate between what is hopeful wishing because ceasing to exist is quite frightening for somebody

that is currently existing with the existential reality that we you know, unless we have the direct experience of a soul outside of her mind and body, then it's tough to know with quite exactitude, the reality of that. Well, Carl Jung, when asked if he believed in God, said, I don't believe in God. I know that there's God. So it's one of the most important conversations that one can have with being alive. It doesn't end. You know, it's cyclical. Faith isn't something like you find, and then it stays like this incredibly powerful,

dominant force in your life that's unshakable and unwavering until death. That's not how it works. Faith is fickle. I will say that I, I've, never wavered in knowing that I am a spiritual being, having a human experience. I just know this to be true. I know it in my prayer and in my meditation practice. I knew this especially when my father passed away about five years ago, and I prepared his body for burial in the traditional Baha'i way, which was to wash it and to wrap it in silk and say prayers over the body. And it's an incredibly beautiful experience. I think there's many other faith traditions that prepare the body in a similar way.

And for a very good reason, I'm there with the corpse of my father. And I see his little eyebrow hair sticking out and his little mole that he has here. you know, the scar he had on his neck from a surgery and, you know, his thinning, you know, gray hair. He was 79 at the time. And it became so clear to me, just like a gong ringing, just gong. This body is not my father. his light, his spirit, his experience, his consciousness, his beingness, his personality, his laugh, his beauty has moved on. And this was the vessel that contained it for 79 years. And, you know, I love that vessel. I have an experience with that vessel.

I've hugged that vessel. hundreds of times, but that's not the reality of my father. And anyone who has that experience of seeing someone that's passed, this can really help you to help one to see the continuity of existence. And everything I read, everything I think, everything, every time I connect with nature, I see a constant. continuity of existence. And so I just have a profound fundamental sureness about that. It's in every faith tradition. You can read about near-death experiences. And in every culture of the world,

near-death experiences have the same kind of essential tenets, right? And this idea that our ancestors, our family members, greet us and move us on. is in every culture on the planet, you know, from pygmies to Andean Indians to Inuit peoples, to you name it. Vikings, it's in the mythology of being a human being. Earlier we referenced when talking about death and your young and spry, 58-year-old body, that whatever 20, 30, 40 more years that you have, I think a lot of us think in the way we're like, you know, we're kind of guaranteed to like maybe 80, 90,

at least we hope, right? And of course, the tough pill, the reality is to swallow as we don't know when actually, how much longer we have. And I think facing off with our own mortality through loved ones that are passing away through a near encounter or near death experience ourselves, or just simply sitting and contemplating what that moment will be like. It brings many things up to examine right now in your immediate reality.

There's like a presence that death brings, an amount of like liveliness in life that the presence of death brings. They're kind of, you know, in many ways, like two sides of the same coin. And so I know that you love to talk about death and you've experienced it, obviously, with many people and your father. What do you think the power of contemplating our own mortality has? When I had this YouTube channel Soul Pancake, we commissioned a show from a young filmmaker, Justin Baldoni, also a member of the Baha'i Faith.

Good friends with his sister. Oh, really? Yeah, and their family. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. We commissioned Justin Baldoni to do a show about death that was his idea called My Last Days. it was a viral hit.

These shows had hundreds of millions of views. And they were all about lessons about life from people at the end of their life. Who better to learn from than someone who's facing their own mortality. And every episode is just gorgeous and touching and heart-wrenching and uplifting. And we had people writing in saying, I watch an episode of this every single day because it reminds me how precious life is. So I think facing death and mortality is crucial.

It's not something we do very often in Western society. Death is something you don't really talk about. We live in a denial around death, a great deal. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there's several meditation. on death that are you can Google them trust me look them up they're they're incredible forget the name of the meditation but it goes from like meditating about being in pain meditating about taking your last breath meditating about people around you grieving

meditating about passing on meditating about your body meditating about your body going into the ground meditating about your body body dissolving into the earth. And it just goes from step to step to step, that you do a deep meditation on all of the pieces of mortality. And it's incredibly powerful. I've tried it before. Have you ever tried one like that?

I have tried a death meditation, yeah. Yeah. Powerful. It is, when you go into the nitty gritty of like, what is that going to be like if your family was around you at a hospital bed when you. past like what would it be like for you what it be like for them like what would happen to your body then like then the ivies are unplugged and your arms are folded and the blanket goes over and then step by step by step it's incredibly powerful and revitalizing and guess

what life is short it's precious it's beautiful and this is again why we need a spiritual revolution because the hours the hours are short my dear friend and we have much to do with them. We have much to do with them. Yeah, there's that, again, that immediacy of what it brings to the forefront of, like, imagining we're on our deathbed, you know, and just envisioning that,

what does that bring up in us in terms of what we felt like we haven't resolved in our life or what becomes most important in that moment of death, right? And again, like we were speaking to earlier, can we align our life in such a way that when we arrive at that moment, we can embrace the other side joyfully, you know, and like kind of with a sense of abandonment and completion with this life, you know? Yeah. Do you feel like you've gotten closer to being able to be at that place? I have, I think, you know, one of the aspects of this, of death meditation and looking at,

one's mortality is, you know, are you good with God? You know, have you cleaned up your messes? That's a great thing that 12-step program gives you, you know, this idea that when you're wrong, you promptly admit it. And you, you know, you clean up, you make amends for people that you have hurt. You practice forgiveness, you know, are there people we have yet to forgive? Forgiveness is a tough one, right? you know are there are there amends that we owe people is there wrongs that we need to write before we die

but also the famous quote of like no one goes to their deathbed wishing they had worked more you know are we connected enough could we be connected more what about that family member that if you were going to your deathbed you wish you could have given one final hug to or connected with um those kind of regrets and remorces we don't want to be saddled with. You know, we want to go joyfully. And so I feel good right now. You know, I've made some big mistakes in my life. I've done some messed up stuff. I've hopefully cleaned it up. Hopefully I'm good with folks pretty much. And I feel, I feel incredibly grateful for the life that I've had. I mean, I have been blessed.

I don't know why. I don't exactly know why. I have gotten to work at my dream job. That dorky, weird kid in the high school, you know, skit, you know, getting those accolades from pretty young women and deciding to become an actor, you know, getting to be on one of the great TV shows,

living my dream, and then getting to share and have conversations with on soul boom about spiritual conversations that help make the world a better place. I mean, I'm so blessed. You know, it's just, it's up to me to not fuck it up and to just kind of continue to try and spread the light.

It feels like an amazing amount of self-acceptance and acknowledgement. And I know there's, of course, many moments in both and probably both of our lives, and many people that are listening that completely forget that and to acknowledge how far we've come and the impact that we've made and the good that we've done. But I think it's an important reminder to see where am I on on God's balance sheet. You know, where do I need to make some more deposits?

Where do I need to make amends? Where have I not forgiven so I can be ready for death should it come in this moment, you know? That's powerful. Yeah. I'm reading the new book by Father Gregory Boyle, who's one of my favorite human beings on the planet. Have you had him on your show? No, I'm the founder of Homeboy Industries.

He's taken thousands, tens of thousands of people off the streets from gang activities and out of prisons and put them into the working world. And his books are one of his most famous ones called Tattoos on the Heart. And his new one is called Cherished Belonging. And he's getting up there in years. you know, and you can kind of tell in his writing, and he is one of the most radiant, beautiful human beings on the planet, Jesuit priest, founder of Homeboy Industries.

And he's taken tens of thousands of gang members, you know, out of prison and off the streets into, for lack of a better word, rehabilitation, but that's a gross word. In cherished belonging, he just talks about God and just really rethinking God. And he said, God is there when you're kind. God is there when you're tender. God doesn't have time to be judging you.

God is too busy adoring you. God is spending all of his, her, it's time in wonder and adoration every single last one of us. There's no time on, you know, in God's calendar to be judgmental are disapproving or, you know, moralistic or anything like that. We're unrepeatable miracles of the universe, and God looks at us with the adoration that we look at if you have a child of a toddler, you know, taking us first steps.

That's how God is with us all the time. And he hits this point over and over again, and sometimes you roll your eyes, and then sometimes it's just like, oh, it just gets you. And it's been so beautiful for me to just read this and be reminded of that idea of the divine, that there's not a disapproving sky daddy, patriarchal, bearded, mean guy in the sky. He's like Santa Claus checking off who's naughty and nice. But there is just this force that loves us beyond all measure and is there for us at any second in time.

It's just there. It's absolutely there. So I think getting right with God is less about any kind of like accounting. You know, get right with yourself. Get right with your own heart. Get right with your own conscience, you know. Get right with your resentments and your remorse. Clean your side of the street.

But to get right with God is to just tune in that God is just, wants to just give everyone gigantic hugs all the time. it's not as hard not to view him as a guy in the sky with a nice beard skydadi giving you a hook if god is perfect understanding right we can't understand and judge something at the same time and yet so much suffering that's happening too god must encompass all of that as well you know i think of the purpose that pain and suffering play on the path of spiritual growth and what are your thoughts on the purpose that's that pain and suffering play on our own spiritual growth and evolution?

That's such an important question. I truly believe that's one of the top three most important questions that anyone working in this space can be asking. Because of the mental health epidemic, and especially with young people, there is a disconnect between pain and suffering and life and resilience. and when you have a deeper understanding the purpose of suffering and misfortune and tests and

difficulties, it can give you such a greater resilience to live a much more full, deep, vibrant life, especially for young people undergoing mental health issues. What is the purpose of our physical reality? Let's just suppose put all your skepticism out, the window. And let's just say that there is pure, beautiful, cosmic source understanding, light beyond time and space, infinite, and that will call it God. And this God wants what's absolutely best for us. Why does this God put 7, 8 billion of us, into this physical universe, into these flesh suits for 70, 80, 90, 100 years,

why does this happen? You know, in a certain way, this must be the perfect soul-growing laboratory. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been created. Again, we're taking the supposition that there is this all-encompassing, beautiful, loving light that, and this is just the beginning of a journey

of great continuation. So what is the purpose of our physical reality? It is to struggle and grow. We're here to struggle and grow. This is why oftentimes atheists say, well, I don't believe in God necessarily, but I can understand that we might be an avatar inside of a video game. This might have a meta, you know, construct element to it. And when we die, we wake up outside of this kind of three,

3D hologram reality because video games are kind of a great metaphor for being a human being on planet Earth. You struggle, you suffer, you have limited lives, you beat the beast monster, and you overcome, and you hop from ledge to ledge, and you drive your car here without crashing or whatever to move forward. And this is what it is to be a human being. And there are some terrible tests out there that I wouldn't wish on anyone. God, one can only guess at God's infinite wisdom.

It's one of the big kind of metaphysical and philosophical questions of all time. If there is an all-loving God, why is there so much suffering on the planet? But for the majority of us, again, our suffering and our tests and our difficulties are the things that we end up being the most grateful for. And that's because they've allowed us to mature and grow and grow wiser and grow closer to God and develop those spiritual qualities we talked about before, like kindness and generosity and joy and humility and honesty. That's what this 3D construct world is for.

We've got a short, you know, there's a metaphor in the Baha'i faith. There's some mystical writing that it's like, this physical world is like a banquet hall, and it's a sparrow flying through the banquet hall, and it flies through, and it bumps against the windows, and it eats some grapes and some pie, and it flies through, and it flies on out, and that's life is a sparrow flying through a banquet hall. I just love that image for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, That's what we're doing here.

That's the purpose of physical reality. And the Buddha said, life is suffering. It can also translate it as there is suffering. We are in suffering. And guess what? There's a way out of suffering from non-attachment. And we can be freed from so much of our own suffering. And I will say that if humanity we're able to put aside war and greed and materialism and

nationalism and one-upsmanship and kind of the most grotesque aspects of capitalism and consumerism. And we were able to come together in harmony and service on the planet and put all of that technology that's currently used to be building drones to be fighting cancers and diseases. We could absolutely feed everyone on the planet. We could be living a very healthy beautiful, amazing life. We're not there yet. You talked about humanity being in its turbulent adolescence, which is very true, and humanity is going to head to rehab. You know, we're going to have to fall down hard and split our head open, and there's going to be some suffering, and hopefully we come out on the other side, you know, having some wisdom, some serenity, and some focus.

well said i really like the understanding how suffering in many ways is like the price of admission for the illusion of separation you know that's so well said like separation is of course an essential like without separation we don't have the experience of otherness so it's like the infinite consciousness needs to descend into its many different differentiations to go on a data collection process and to experience itself to become itself in so many ways then part of that process is forgetting that is our true nature and the bashing of our heads against the wall and the pain and the suffering that is inevitable

on the path to realizing who we are in our true nature. When you have studied, through the Baha'i, through all these Native American religions and a lot of different beautiful spirituality, how do you view this realm? And I've heard you speak to, again, these two forces at play that can be viewed through many, the views of many different, you know, spiritual wisdom traditions and religions, that there are these

two forces at play constantly collectively and then also individually in our life. And I'm curious what you think about those two forces as it contributes to what makes up, you know, reality in many ways. Yeah, the forces that you're referring to and you mentioned before is, again, another idea I stole from some Baha'i... I borrowed from some Baha'i ways of thinking. But I just love the way this phrase sums up so much of what's happening in our contemporary life. There are forces of integration

bumping up against working alongside forces of disintegration. Both of these things are happening at the same time. Our political system is disintegrating. It's becoming more and more disuneration. unified and corrupt as it goes along. And at the same time, more and more people are searching, are questing, are looking for connection, are coming together, more and more social injustices

that were just a given a few decades ago are now questioned at the grassroots. And this is another thing that's hard for, young people dealing with a mental health crisis to see. They only see the disintegration, and they're not looking towards the integration, or they're confused that there are two forces going on at the same. We like things black and white.

Like, oh, the world is a mess, and it's all fucked up, and it's all falling apart, right? Yes, the world is all so beautiful. People are coming together. There are amazing things happening. There's incredible organizations and movements and communities that are. being built at the same time. So how do we hold in our awareness both of these things happening at the same

time? This is a, it's very much in the Hindu tradition. I wish I was more well versed, but I'm thinking about like Maya in a world of illusion. I'm thinking about like gods of chaos and gods of peace and, you know, all of these forces kind of swirling at the same time. And, you know, I'm our job is to align ourselves with the forces of integration. So where do you find that? You can find that in a youth group, in a therapy session, in a 12-step room, in a church basement. You know, you can find that at a synagogue.

You can find that in a, you know, a meetup.org hiking group on a Sunday morning. You can find that in a meditation group. You can find it in a nonprofit that's really trying to make a difference. You can find it in a group of people that are addressing injustices and imbalances in your neighborhood or community and are actually doing something about it. Align yourself, hang your hat on the forces of integration. Disintegration is going to take care of itself. You know, the doom scrolling, the headlines, the outrage headlines and outrage clicks. That's all happening.

We get to let that go. And in these brief, beautiful, sacred days that we have left, align ourselves with integration, with people coming together and building community. I love that, man. It's so important. And so many amazing reflections on the nature of who we are and the time that we face is I've really enjoyed in this whole conversation.

question that's just coming to me now. Like, let's say we go to Rain at 80, reflecting back at you right now. Okay. Much like you would probably, at your age currently, reflect back at, you know, your time at 25. What would he be saying to you? What advice would he be saying to you?

What do you think he would wish that you would give yourself some more credit for? You know, like, I'm curious what you think future you hindsight looks like. I guess. I don't know. I mean, that's such a great question. And that would be a great question of if you or someone who are conducting a workshop or something like that, there could be a written meditation. You know, I did one when I was in a therapy retreat where we had a conversation with our wise self. It wasn't necessarily an older self necessarily, but you put in an empty chair, you put your wise self. Yeah, spiritual gestalt. Yeah, yeah, it's spiritual gestalt. It is.

And you, you know, you talk about what's going on with you, and then you sit in the chair and you become your wise self, and then you speak to yourself from the wisest part of yourself. So I guess it's, you know, there's more work to do. I, I, when I'm, what's coming up for me right now, just on a, on a gut level, is ways that I limit. I'm not limit myself, and I think that we all limit ourselves. Part of my spiritual journey, my 12-step recovery journey,

my therapy journey, has been to let go of my limiting beliefs. And if you had asked that pimply awkward teenager who at age 13 was watching Mike Wensel slap John Valadez on the shoulder and ask him about his weekend, If you had said, hey, you know, 45 years from now, you'll be writing books, you'll be having fascinating conversations, you'll be a successful actor, you'll have a successful and beautiful long-term marriage, you know, you'll have a family, you'll be healthy, you'll have something to offer, you'll be working in philanthropy, like, that would be beyond my wildest dreams.

But what was it about me that limited myself in my 20s and 30s and held me back from believing that I could bring a great deal of light into the world? I'm not trying to put myself as some kind of guru or anything like that. I'm really not. I'm just, I'm an actor. I've suffered. I've read a lot. That's it. But can I continue to shed self-limiting beliefs that are holding me back from maximizing my divine possibility. So that would probably be the conversation. What does that look like? I don't know what that looks like. Could it be more books and bigger podcasts and larger conversations with more people? Maybe it looks like that.

Maybe it looks like getting smaller. You know, maybe it looks like letting that stuff. go and turning inward a little bit more and spending kind of more intense time in a deeper contemplation to try and get at something even more true and more deep and more internal. Maybe it's both. I'm not sure. What does your intuition say? What does the enlightened Gestalt reign point you in the direction of?

You really want to crack this nut, don't you? I don't want to crack it. Yeah. I think I have a lot to offer, especially young people that are suffering right now in the mental health epidemic, because I've suffered a lot in that way. You know, I've suffered in anxiety and depression. And I've thought a lot about these issues. And I think it's really important for me to excavate that stuff and share it as widely as I can, you know,

because hopefully it can help some people. And at the same time, pay the bills maybe by making people laugh a little bit on the side. So that's where my hunch is, is part of the reason I have struggled as much as I have is because I get to share my struggle with others and maybe help a few people. And that doesn't mean I have everything figured out. It just means I have some experience. I've gone through some shit. I have some wisdom resulting from those.

It's an important reflection and exercise for anybody that's listening. I think right now, you know, in yoga, they have, they explain the four levels of the mind, Chitah, which is like the deepest access that we have to the intelligence of life. And so in many ways, it's like we are accessing that deep intelligence when we go inwards. Maybe for our own intellect, it's nice to personify it as like a yourself in the future that you're talking to. But it is interesting when you go inwards, you can find answers to things that intellectually were hard just a minute ago. But there's like a deeper access that one can start to point into. And like even just in that exercise when I try to, you know, crack the nut a little bit more.

Like, yeah, there's a deeper acceptance of like, yeah, it can be yes. And I can, I feel called to serve and support and scale. And it's really helping people. And I can also sit in the woods and give that space for myself too. And so it's an interesting exercise for people to play with. That is in you. You worked it right here in your studio. Last little thing that I'm curious about is your practices,

what you've really found supportive for you on your own spiritual path and what that looks like in everyday embodiment and practice. This next book I'm working on is something to do with like the meaning of life. It's like the meaning of life according to Rain Wilson or something like that. I don't know what it is. And I just recently took a note. I'm not even kidding you, three days ago, I was like, practice versus belief. There's a lot of talk in spiritual realms, like, what do you believe?

You know, what do you believe? Do you believe we have a soul? Do you believe in reincarnation? Do you believe in a God? Do you believe in multiple gods? Do you believe that life after death? Do you believe we can talk to angels? Do you believe?

Like, that's all fine and good. But ultimately, who cares? What do you do? What do you do? my wife became a Baha'i not that long ago and she would always ask a question

what do Baha'is do? What do they do? You know, okay, you believe this, you believe that, like, but what are they doing? Like, what are they, what are you actually doing? And hopefully Baha'is are doing actual good shit out there. I think they are, for the most part.

So, I practice gratitude. I have a daily gratitude list and a group of guys that I send a gratitude list out to. It's a very small thing. It's an incredibly powerful shift. I'm sure you've talked about gratitude on this show dozens of times, but we will always live in a kind of mental place and spiritual place of deficit, of lack of, and of an unsettled anxiety. And when we turn toward, hey, what do we have and what's working,

it's a tiny little subtle shift that makes a huge difference. So I have a daily prayer and meditation practice. Meditation is very simple for me. It's like 15 minutes. It's just a quieting of the mind. And it's opening my wise self to the reality. to greater reality. Prayer is an important part of my practice.

I believe that there is an unknowable essence out there that is approachable by prayer. That is connectable, is that a word connectable with by prayer? Isn't it? And I believe that prayer and meditation are in a dance together. It's reaching out. It's beseeching. It's longing. It's connecting.

And it's being open and it's listening and it's being still. This is a very important. part of my practice. As a Baha'i, I say a daily obligatory prayer every day. That kind of grounds me and reminds me of my place in the universe. Baha'is have a period of fasting, so there's a 19-day period every spring that Baha'is do a deep fast. And I have, as part of my practice as well, I have daily, you know, 12-step things that I do, I call my sponsor and I go to meetings, I, you know, connect with people that are struggling, share my experience, strength, and hope. This goes hand in hand with my Baha'i practice and with my own personal practice.

And I seek every day in the highest form of prayer that exists in both the 12-step program of recovery and in the Baha'i faith, essentially the highest prayer boils down to this. Thy will not mind be done. if I can get my greedy, egoistic, selfish, petty, you know, thrashing little will out of the way and surrender to the divine will, to the divine force, to the divine light, to the unknowable essence,

thy will not mine be done. That's where the rubber meets the road. What do I try and do out of that? I try and foster conversations on soul boom, I work in philanthropy. I try and make the world a better place. And I try and make the world a better place when I'm driving down the street.

I try and make it a better place when I'm in a Trader Joe's parking lot. I try and make it a better place when I'm interacting with service workers that I encounter to make everyone feel human, loved, seen. I try and connect with people. That is a practice.

That's a daily practice. You know, one of the things about my father I most admired was when he passed away, I realized something about him that I didn't appreciate while he was alive, which is that he made every room he went into better. He made every room he went into more alive, filled with more light, with more humor, with more laughter, with more curiosity. He would always ask people questions. How are you? Where are you from? What are you doing? Tell a joke. share his opinion and laughter and listen and that's a practice what would that be like for the listeners the viewers every room i go into is an opportunity for me to practice making that room more

alive thank you man that's a great practice reminder all those things and um yeah it's it's a really cool thing to build a community of shared values where people seek out this information and connect with you on the many different planes in which they have from deep insight and comedy and figuring out systems of the new paradigm, you know, all of it is just, it's really cool. And I appreciate to the degree you have not limited yourself because you've let a lot of your light shine through in ways where people who identified with previous identities in a career or something maybe might have not let themselves go. So it's really beautiful to see all the different ways in which you show up.

Thanks. Yeah, dude. This has been amazing. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Me too. This is so much fun. This has been great. You know, we'll link everything down for your podcast, Soul Boom, which is an amazing book,

everything that you got going on. And yeah, man, do you have any last words before we start to close out? Well, I think that what you're doing on your podcast and in your work, I just want to just give a shout out to how important it is. Because when we can shift our awareness, like you said, it's kind of how we started our whole conversation. Spirituality is just shifting perspective a little bit. Like, oh, I'm not just an animal seeking to, you know,

eat and piss and fuck and sleep. You know, I'm a spiritual being having this human experience, experience and having these conversations, all these different ways into that world is so important. And I love what you're doing. And I just think it's really important. And I hope you will join me and we'll work together in sparking a spiritual revolution. Absolutely. Look at us doing it right now.

Right? How about no boom? No boom. Soul thyself. Yeah. Soul ourselves better. I think they both could use some work. Okay.

All right. We'll workshop that. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll get on that. We'll get back to you guys on that one. Dude, thank you so much, Ray. Everybody, appreciate you for coming on this journey. Thanks. Yeah, until next time, be well.

Take care.