Know Thyself - E5 - Jim George: Stillness Master Shares His Life Wisdom

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Have you ever wondered how to actually meditate and find stillness within? Stillness coach, Jim George, shares wisdom for discovering a deeper layer of presence. He tells his experience of living on a mountain for 5 years, and how he's learned to bring that same peace into his life in the city. He prompts the question of: Who are you, really? Reminding us that this internal journey is one of releasing the identity that holds us back from true bliss, and stepping into the eternity of the present moment.     ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:42 What is Stillness 13:36 Who are you? 25:05 Dopamine vs serotonin 28:10 Finding Stillness within Chaos  38:48 Subconscious Values 30:55 Who ‘Jim’ is 43:12 Jim’s Time On the Mountain  58:39 Attaching meaning to Circumstances  1:10:33 Guided Meditation  1:25:58 Conclusion ___________ Jim George:   Jim George is a mindfulness and stillness coach, who helps others find a sense of inner peace within. His company, Still Life, seeks to unlock uncharted territories of human potential through the application of Stillness Meditation https://still.life/ ___________   Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg   Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927   André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/   Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you allow some quiet moments in there, something much bigger than what you thought starts to enter that picture. Who am I? Starts to become what is it of who are we? Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to the Know They Self podcast where every single week we have the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with somebody who can help you and me live a more liberated human experience.

Now, today's episode is very interesting. I feel like I say that every time because, in my opinion, they all are very interesting. But today is very unique individual. Jim George is my guest today. And he is somebody that I actually got introduced through a mutual friend, Matt, through a guest series. Some of you guys may know. And he was sort of described to me initially as this mystic from the Venice Canal,

as this mysterious creature who helps you tap into the truth of who you are, into the truth of this moment, and to find stillness. And if I had to describe him in my own words, I would say that he's an expert. in meditation and stillness. And he's somebody that has devoted his life to help you cut through what is standing in the way between you and what you deserve, which is a life well lived. Beautiful. Jim, welcome.

Thank you. This is a pleasure. Such an honor to have you. Oh, I love what you are doing. I really do. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

Normally I'm in the hot seat. Now we're going to switch turns. Sure, sure. Yeah. This is still very cool. It is very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so just to give a little bit of context, I've done a couple sessions with you where I'll just come over to your house. And for an hour and a half, two hours, we'll just drop in and talk about life.

But that is the probably most shallow description of what I could say that we do. We really drop into deep stillness, deep presence and reflect on the true nature of ourselves, which is so rare to be able to find somebody that can do that with and have conversations to that depth. And so it's been something that I've really cherished in our conversations and time that we've been able to spend together. It's been amazing. So thank you. Oh, me too. Thank you. It doesn't work one way. Whoever you're doing that with is bringing remarkable things. And you did both times. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's carry it on, shall we? Sure, sure. Amazing. So we come together. We practice stillness. You've many times said the kind of you really devoted your life to this practice of time. coming into stillness quickly. Yes. Now, for people that live very busy lives and hear the word stillness, can you describe a

little bit in your words what you feel stillness is and why we should become still in life? This is a great question. And it's a great context because most of us are living very hectic, busy lives. and I'd like to suggest that those lives are lives of noise and distraction and that when we're in this world of noise and distraction, there's the obvious external noise, the physical noise, the environmental noise, but there's also this less obvious,

this internal noise, the mental noise, the thoughts and words in our own heads, and the emotions and feelings here inside, worries and concerns about past and future events, and this tension, this anxiety, this stress that's a product of that. The stories going on in our own minds can be even louder and more distracting than the external stuff. But here's the thing. We've gotten used to this internal noise and distraction. It's become normal. So normal we don't even realize that it's there.

And I'd like to suggest that it's a bit like walking around in a fog, like a thick, dense fog of internal noise and distraction that we're not even aware of. but that fog is kind of standing between us and what's happening right there in front of it, all around us. It's standing between us and the world. That thick, dense fog of internal noise and distractions standing between us and living our lives, it would be really nice to be able to stop that noise.

It would be nice to be able to stop those distractions if we only knew that. they were there. Right. So stillness is a state of awareness. Kind of like sticking your head up out of that thick, dense fog. Maybe for the first time, just to look around, just to see what's there when that fog lifts. Stillness is a state of awareness with no perception of past, not even a split second to go and no perception of future. Okay, so far. No big deal, right? Well, here, and I do mean right here, right now, is where things get interesting. Because I'd like to suggest that since all of our negative emotions, all of them, are rooted in our perceptions of past and our perceptions of future, whenever you or I or anyone else is in that state of stillness,

it's neurologically impossible to even have a negative emotion. So if you begin with that as a definition, which is nice, it's kind of an abstraction, then you explore it, you drop into that state, and then realize that embodied cognition is more real. deal and this stuff out here, the luckiest guy on earth. I do this all day. Come on. I hope that helped.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it's so fascinating to me to just take a macro view and see that how such a large majority of mass of the human population is living in this day-to-day fog, moving through this persona identity in which they see life through a color-tinted classes and they miss the most magical thing about being human, which is the realization that we have every single thing that we could possibly want within us here in this moment. Yeah. And we're just oblivious to it. Yeah. Yeah. And what a shame. It is. Yeah. It is. But let me ask a question. Why do you think anyone does anything? I think people do what they do because they value it.

They prioritize it. Yeah. Yeah. But even at a deeper level, I mean, prior to even having the cognitive capacity to value something, why do you think anybody has ever done anything or will ever do anything? Anything. It's such a broad question, but it helps us get into this space. I would say generally in the pursuit of a pleasant experience. Good for you. Or in the aversion of something unpleasant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To try to feel better than they do right now. So I've been doing this for 40 years. I've never heard anyone find an exception to that because the operative word is try, to try, to feel better. So doing a nice tie-off of China-wide heroin, you know, in the end it's not a good idea, but I'm trying to feel better than I do right now.

And I'd like to suggest that the implicit part of that, the right now part, that most people's right now isn't right now. It's actually being lost in their mind, thinking of other things, worries and fears about past and future events. It's creating anxiety. It's creating discomfort. It's creating. a kind of unsatisfactoriness, and it's relentless, it's endless, and it appears to be the human condition. But if you can just get farther and farther into this present moment,

like lose more and more past and future, you drop into this dimensionless point, which is actually now, this present moment, anything you do after that will feel better anything anything you do will be better so it's an interesting thing to explore I would encourage everybody to just explore it on your own don't wait for guru shmuru or Baba Ramalama Ding Dong

to come along and tell you what to do it's your birthright just quiet down and notice what happens you won't be still right away, but you'll begin to notice, wow, I had no idea what was in there, what a mess. And then it settles and it settles and it settles and it's settled until finally it's quite lovely. And I want to stress, I'm not suggesting that you stay there all the time. A lot of people hear this and say, well, how can I work when I'm doing it? Don't worry.

It's when you come back out of this, that fog of internal noise and distractions lifted. You're better than you were before you got still. Then come on back in. It's just a different place. And then when you feel the need to, get quiet again. I think so many people put it off into the future as if, you know, peace and happiness and joy something that they will get one day when, one day when X, Y, Z, one day if this happens. And to flip it on its head in the way that you're speaking to, which is actually, this isn't something that you have

to go anywhere for. This isn't somewhere in the future in the past. This is something that if you're able to unlearn, it's not even necessarily a cultivation. It's just a realization of what is present within your moment. Everything you do from your life there on forward is going to be more impactful because you're going to have more of you available. That's exactly right. That's beautifully said. I would suggest that at the most fundamental level, all of us are already still, all of us are quite deeply connected. But we have learning that occur throughout our lives that kind of pull us away from that. And I don't think that you have to discount those learning. You just have to contextualize them. Those are important at this kind of monkey level

of surviving. And each of us has our own unique, complex constellation of these experiences. So your life and the way you see the world cannot be my life and the way I see the world or anyone else's. But we can drop down into a more and more. fundamental state and really sense the other person. And ultimately, and I hope this doesn't get too much for anybody, the podcast seems to favor that kind of thing, but I don't know, to actually realize that we are literally the same stuff. I believe we can sense that if we get quiet enough. it doesn't come in the form of a story, a narrative, which is a human sort of construct.

But if you're willing to just keep getting more and more quiet, there's a knowing of this. They even have a fancy name for it. They call it a noetic sense. And it's quite powerful. You know, you hear people who do psychedelics or who have mystical experiences, They just say, I just know.

And it's not like I just think I know. So I think that's intrinsic to who each and every one of us. If we want to pursue it, if it's not your path to pursue it, then please keep on your path. Anything I can do to help on that path, let me know. Amazing. And so let's just keep diving deeper because as you get quieter and quieter within yourself, then deeper questions start to arise.

And some of the most important ones that you've said as well, like the two most importance, you can ask yourself, who am I and what do I want? Yes. Who am I and what I want? These are not light questions. These are questions that take someone to mature on their journey

and naturally arise. And then they can be used as a vehicle to go inwards and have a deeper knowing of yourself to know that self. Yeah. And so where does one begin? when starting to ask these questions to actually get some answers. So if we begin with values, because you alluded to that earlier, what someone value.

So I would suggest that values are simply anything that anyone finds important enough to spend their time, their energy, their resources, their money, their lives to have abstract. acted in the mind into an idea or a concept that can be worked with. And these values, we actually do a whole module on values. They're that important. Values come in all kinds of types.

They're different kinds of values, but for our purposes now, intrinsic values, values that come from within, actually help you to answer that question, who am I? And what do I want? What do I love? What draws me to it as a process of living a life well-lived? Extrinsic values, that is values that are imposed from outside sources, groups, organizations, anything from parents to family to extended family, neighbor,

community, village, tribe, gender, political ideology, religious affiliation. I mean, those are all extrinsic groups with extrinsic values. They will help you answer the question, who should I be? What should I want? And I would suggest that unless you're living the life of a hermit, that life well lived is determining the balance between those two. because we are social animal, and that need to belong to a greater group

is an intrinsic part of who we are. So the idea of who am I, I hope, never fully answers itself. There should be an ellipsis after every one of these additional revelations till finally, you know, 30 seconds before you boot the, farm, you know, you go, oh, there's more. Right. So if that makes any sense.

Yeah. So the exploration of Who Am I begins at this very surface level. You watch a little infant, right? Little crouton can barely hold its head up. And it's exploring because I isn't separated from everything else. That neurology is not fully baked. So this infant is literally tripping. In the present moment, if it's young enough, there are no prior experiences.

So everything is new. And they're like putting their feet in their mouths and, you know, like tasting the wall and, you know, who am I? And it's at a physical level. then as you keep going you start dropping, well, who am I relative to my friends? You know, because now I've had this weird thing in the back of my head. I'm about five, six years old, and I'm feeling quite independent now from my parents. There was a point where I didn't know that they weren't me. So now I'm exploring, well, who am I relative to my friends, my community?

Well, who am I relative to this? Oh, my God, special person. Isn't that a lovely special person? Then I start exploring. Then you start getting into what they call citizenship, how you operate in the society that you're in. Then you start going through these sort of psychosocial stages of development. Now I'm thinking, well, how do I leave my mark on this?

Well, now, how do I make the world a better place? It's not about me so much, it's about we. And those are in semi-seven-year cycles. So the older we get, the more our values change, hopefully. And the exploration of who am I expands because your sense of self expands. And I would suggest, especially with you. Now, you and I really don't know one another that well. We've met twice.

This is our third time. And yet, I don't know about you, but I have a strong sense that I know you well. I don't know if you feel the same way about me. Well, why is that? Because we just cut to the chase. We dropped into our essence and realized, well, I don't know much about your story, your narrative. it seemed kind of irrelevant at the time and still kind of does because this is what matters. So who am I, this ongoing inquiry, the deeper you go.

And it's interesting, you don't just have to get still, the deeper you to go into anything. If you become an athlete, the deeper you get into athletics, it's holographic. the more you will know who you are, the deeper you get into Japanese brush drawing, the more you will know if you're seeking it. Now, sometimes people are trying to evade who they are. It's uncomfortable in here. That creates a whole different kind of behavior, what I call away from values,

trying to get away from something rather than trying to try and approach it if that makes it makes a whole lot of sense to me good yeah and it seems like as that progression then as you get older and you mature on your journey the question who am i again becomes vehicle for you to go deeper and deeper within and then it dissolves the more you get into the truth of it you know like you don't find oh i've got it you found a whole lot of oh that's not it yes it's exactly right it's like a little kinetic doll banging into all the walls until finally oh there's the door. Yeah.

Yeah. And sometimes that door turns out to be part of the wall. It was just painted on there. So, yeah, it's funny, but if you allow some quiet moments in there, something much bigger than what you thought you were starts to enter that picture. Who am I? And sorry, if this gets woo-woo, you rain me in. Let's go for all the woo. So who am I starts to become, what is it?

Who are we? Your sense of self begins to expand to include other people and other thing. If you get quiet enough, your sense of self, your scope of context expands to include everything that ever was. is now or will ever be or could ever be in any conceivable universe. You cease to be separated. And that awareness is a completely different thing than this sort of dualistic subject, object, which is a piece of that.

I'm not denying its validity. but from that perspective, your sense of self expands like that, I'd like to suggest that you're going to be accused of altruism by being as selfish as you can possibly be because your sense of self includes everyone. I mean, right now, I can't conceive in any realistic circumstances, knowingly harming you in any way. that would be like hitting myself in the head with a fist.

I mean, that would just be insane. It isn't an ethical imposition. It's just self-evident. It's obvious. So that's the thing about this inquiry. You just keep diving in deeper and deeper. And you've made a real practice of that. You can be very proud of where you are,

especially at your age, because this culture we're living in as a whole is not conducive to that. It's not good or bad or right or wrong, but this culture we're living in calls itself a consumer culture. So if a culture calls itself a consumer culture, what does it value? Consuming. Consuming, yeah, right? And you feel bad, buy something.

You feel good, buy something. You know, goods or services. If you don't know how you feel, go buy something. But that's also what we'll call an intermediary culture. There's always something between you and what you actually want. And if what you want even appears to be outside of this whole complete self, then you are on a dopamine-driven-driven rat wheel by definition. You'll never get it.

And so that's another reason to think about going to the source of that whole thing. In a culture like this, you have to be very special, very driven, to override all this distraction and shiny news, you know, emoji-driven kind of world and get into this deep satisfaction that comes from being at home here, now and then interacting with somebody else and just realizing, God, I'm in love. I'm in love all that time. I'm not searching for it out there. It's in here. Wow, what a bargain. Will you make that distinction again between dopamine and serotonin? Sure. First, let me assure everyone. I'm in no way on neuroscientism.

Dopamine is a neurochemical that is simplistically put all about what you don't have. It is associated with seeking crucial for a species like Homo sapiens or we'd all be back on the savannah someplace, probably eaten by larger and faster, or more powerful predators.

We probably wouldn't be sitting here without dopamine. The question is, what happens when dopamine goes too far? When it becomes dopaminergic behavior, that is behavior and environments that generate more of it. And the answer to the question, how much is enough, is more. Then there's this other chemical serotonin, which works with completely different receptors on a different system, neurologically speaking, which is about what you have in a sense of appreciation for what you do have.

And again, isn't it interesting? We're talking about balance, not one or the other, but a good balance between those two. Like, I'd like to pursue this. It keeps you moving in a direction, but wow, am I glad? Like I've got a big old, you know, carafe of serotonin right now just sitting here with you. This is quite lovely. And I really don't know what's going on out there right now. I don't care.

But that's a choice. And you can develop these systems by working with it, by practicing, like anything else. You practice, you get better. But please remember, number one, I'm a geyser. I've been at this a long time. And also, if you practice anything, you're going to get better at it. And if you keep practicing, you're going to get good at it. And then if you keep practicing, you're probably going to master it.

And if you keep practicing, you'll become it. You'll achieve what they call unconscious competent. So please understand. with the amount of time I've been throwing my head at this, I'm living proof any idiot can do this. So always take hard in that. And it's from now on. We're going to practice now.

I'm just going to get a little quiet now. Well, great. It's so much more than happened before. Yeah. We're on the right track. Yeah. And I think every generation is set up against, its own challenges unique to that generation in time for us having this infinity box that we have

in our pocket where we have access to literally just about everything. And, you know, that's a double-edged sword. It's an amazing tool that can be used for amazing connections and learning. And it's beautiful, right? But most people are at the stage where they're unconsciously competent at compulsively picking it up and getting their dopamine fix on Instagram or social media or whatever the things, I'm not completely free of this myself. I miss something that I'm bringing more and more awareness into my life because I realize the draining effect that it has without realizing that it's draining. You know, you go down that rabbit hole consuming content or whatever it might be and it feels good while you're doing it. What sometimes feels good in the moment usually feels bad

right after. And same with the flip size. Something that is maybe a little bit difficult to put the things down and sit with yourself is a little uncomfortable at first, but then it's better after. But notice what you've done. You just, I hope not unwittingly created this beautiful idea at first. It seems like a good idea to punch my rectangle here for a while, and then it just doesn't seem like as good an idea. At first, it seems really difficult to sit quietly. But then longer and longer as the state changes, state of mind and body, because states have momentum, if you're distracted and you're trying to get still, it's like you're turning a battle here. It doesn't seem like it's having any effect. It is, but it has so much momentum

to stay distracted, to stay angry, stay frustrated, stay worried or concerned or angry. As you build this momentum of a still state, quiet state, it builds momentum. And there actually comes a time where it's hard to come back into this apparently too tight a wetsuit that we're walking around in most of the time. This contracted, you've got to have, got to, and you can feel it. And I just want to make sure I'm being very clear. The skill here is to learn to navigate, not to pick a state and then stay there. We're not trying to be nirvana junkies.

Hooked on, you know, I'm not living my life. I'm outside of my life. And I'm on a mountain in Tibet someplace. That's kind of missing the point. Right. We want to live the best that we can. And as you said, in our time, in our generation, in our context. Yeah.

And it's fine even if the intention isn't as pure off the start. Like if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you. So even if you are coming at meditation with this consumerist mindset of saying, okay, I can be more successful. I can make more money. I'll try this meditation thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever gets you to sit on the mat or sit down and.

find stillness. Yeah. Well, the other thing that's fun is that I'm so frustrating to some of these wonderful people. But I say the mat is great. The mat doesn't matter. I mean, get still while you're going down the sheer icy face of a mountain on your snowboard. I work with people who have found stillness in the most amazing array of, circumstances. I worked with a client who could only get still when he got into bar fights

the strangers. He didn't know that's what he was doing, but he was literally addicted to getting into bar fights, to being just obnoxious enough in a bar that some stranger would. And what was interesting was once he realized that in that situation, if his mind didn't get completely still. He was going to be very seriously hurt because he had no idea who this other person was. And he was in such a state that he was preternaturally picking up information about this person.

And then afterwards, ironically, at least half the time, they were, you know, bros going to go get a drink afterwards. And I thought, wow, that's a hard way to find stillness. But, you know, everybody's got their path. When he discovered what stillness is, because this was all happening unconsciously, and then he discovered that he could quiet his mind any time, any place, well, that behavior stopped,

and he saved a lot on dental work. You know, it's an interesting thing. I know people that only get still when they're doing 120th through Topanga on their Dukadi. They don't realize that's what they're doing, but a still-focused mind is a marvelous state. Yeah, and it's interesting that you brought that up. I feel like most people would perceive stillness as this inert, boring kind of sit down, nothing's happening.

You know, and stillness, I feel like can really, it can be the most dynamic state. That's right. Even if you're not, you know, going to 120 on a Ducati, but you can be sitting down and have a whole lot more going on than somebody that's busy physically. Yes. And I'd like to suggest that you can even take it farther in that.

I like to give people options with what I call long form stillness, stillness that you can be in there for many as two hours at a time. And short form stillness where, for instance, you and I have done some work already. I want you to notice, and I'll ask your audience to forgive me, but notice that we're already starting to drop in right now because there's an energy there. And notice that we can take all the work that we did, which was quite long form,

and we can literally concentrate into this. And I would say even your concern about the well-being of your audience is out here somewhere now. Your audience is fine because they're just observing your face. And they can see that you're not distracted. You can see that you're right here, right now.

And we didn't have to do much of anything and we can come right back into normal awareness and continue our small mouth noises here. But something just happened. What did that feel like? It was like every time we drop in intentionally taking our attention

into the present moment in a deep way. It's a expanded sense of awareness. You know, the boundaries of sensation kind of expand into the room, into connecting with the people in the room. Yes. It is an incredibly energy-filled state. Isn't it? Even though if you were to observe from externally,

it looks like someone's just sitting there staring. Yeah, except what's interesting is if you get quiet, on the outside and look, you'll feel something is different. The energy in this room is different. We've conditioned space. And as you lose this, let's call it typical human need for status, standing in the group, which is crucial, I'm not knocking it. It's like, okay, they may or may not get that,

but I strangely don't care because if they don't get it, they're closing themselves off from it, I'm not dropping in this phenomenon we call entrainment. I'm not getting pulled into that. I'm holding this space that then makes it easier for people to drop into this space. Because as you can feel right now, I'm not going anywhere. I'm grounded to bedrock. This place could catch fire. I'm not going anywhere.

And that begs the question. Well, then who am I? Because my body is probably going to flip out and, you know, it's on fire. It's going to flop around on the ground. But who I am is going to stay right here, right now. And so, wow, okay, well, who am I? Do I have to then go consult a book? Do I have to consult, you know, the first church of the gooey death in order to understand that?

Or do I just get quiet and explore this? That's what stillness affords. And in an odd, Socratic kind of way, I really do believe that since we're all at this fundamental level, the same, all you have to do is get quiet enough. You'll know everything you need to know. Because you already do. So that gets a little, as they say, solipsistic after a while.

So we'll just back off of that one until maybe another date. one. We've had more time. Beautiful. It's such powerful work. It's, to me, it's the most important work one can do. Oh, yeah, me too. Me too. It's why we're lucky. Isn't that interesting how you can feel really lucky to stumble into something like that? Yeah. And when you feel lucky and overflowing with bliss, joy, superans, it pours into other people that are in your life. It pours into what you're doing. you become a creator of circumstance, not a creature of circumstance. You become somebody that fills up the world by your presence alone, which is something we need more of from the leadership, just everyday humans, the more that we could find stillness in our

life, the more that we will operate better as a whole because we are all part of the whole. Yeah, yeah. But that gets us into this question of values again, because values are largely unconscious. Most people have no idea what their values. They think they do, but they don't. And that means unless we elicit those values, we pull them out of our subconscious mind, they're continuing to just kind of drive us at an unconscious level. And there's a good reason why that has to operate unconsciously.

Most of what we do is unconscious. It has to be. Our conscious mind is the slowest part of our mind. We couldn't get out the front door if everything. was in our conscious mind. But then you start getting into, okay, why are people doing what they're doing? And they're doing it because that's what they value at an unconscious level. So if someone values status, then it's unlikely that they're going to sit quietly and go inside if the value of status is higher on the hierarchy of values than say their desire to be at peace.

But I would suggest, again, at a more fundamental level, if they desire status, you just ask them, what will status give you? And eventually you're going to work your way up to peace. I won't feel this nagging sense of not being enough. Oh, my God. Well, once I know that's what's driving somebody, I'm not mad at him for for behaving like an idiot in a political office.

I just, how can we help them see? And not tell them what to do, but just see it's self-evident. So this is why I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. You're making this stuff available. Thank you. And it's an honor to be able to sit down with individuals like yourself that get to have this frame around and get to hear your voice because it is so healing and nourishing. Oh, bless you heart. Yeah.

Well, then we can get into this idea of who I am. Yeah. Because I'm trusting you now that your audience can handle Wu-woo. Yeah. This isn't me talking. If I'm really part of the entire universe, then this boundary that seems to be separating this, a hairy bag of water from the rest of homeless, the rest of the universe, is an illusion.

If you get quiet enough, then something else happens, which is remarkable. You open your mouth and stuff comes out that you want to take notes because I don't know that. Right. How did that happen? What I call inspiration. And inspiration is interesting because inspiration, in Latin literally means breathe in. So every time we just very slowly let that breath out again,

a little bit of this falls away. Now there are neurophysiological events happening, but it's so much more than that. It's so much more than that than a number of cultures literally at one time called energy breath. Prana, Prana yam, right? Chi, now they've sort of redefined it post-talk and said, well, energy rides on the breath. Who cares?

I mean, those are just artificial distinction. You breathe. It's one of the most potent, powerful, and life-changing things. And beings do, but most of us here in the West, at least, just don't do it. all that well. It's why we do a whole thing in our little still life place on breath. We do breath work as part of getting still. It's that powerful. Yeah. I would love for you to touch on a little bit of your history on the mountain because although you sit in front of me and you are a nobody, right? You are everything and nothing. You've been in this meat suit for some time on earth.

Yeah, way too long. Looking forward to going home. But doing amazing things, and one of which was your time on this mountain that you bought and you essentially stayed on for a prolonged period of your life. Tell me about, tell us about that time because it's very fascinating to me. So let's put it in sort of this passive voice so it's not so much a narrative about a guy, but it's an experience. So something was so moving that whatever was awake at that time had to get into what I call deep nature.

Deep nature. Because all of this stuff that was so distracting and so ultimately unrewarding and unfulfilling and was starting to create anxiety. I mean, it was just, oh, can't function like this. I felt like a rat on a week. This was how long ago, roughly? Oh, my God, no. Some years ago.

Okay, well, yeah, yeah. It's weird. I know contextually that sounds like, you know, the Pleistocene era, but to me it's like, oh, yeah, a day before yesterday. Yeah. So long story short, I started exploring a previously impossible thing. in my mind, to actually own a big chunk of mountain. And I had loved the mountains of Sierra Nevada, that whole area,

and went exploring and was looking in six, seven different Western states, was trying to buy. And I had earnest money down on all kinds of places, and it just didn't work out. The reason it didn't work out, I think, is that I had not met my wife at the time. Had I met her, it probably would have just dropped right in, but I didn't know her then. And so I was frustrated because I couldn't make this happen. Long story short, I wind up buying this place,

and I asked my then, you know, significant other, being very careful. because we knew there was something special. So we were taking it slow. And I thought because the way I look at relationships, you have to take them one little step at a time. You have to actually know the person. So it reached a point where I said to her, so I have this place.

It's up in the Sequoia National Forest. It's nowhere near anything. It's 27 miles from the nearest crossing of two dirt roads. I mean, it's a parcel map. There's no address. Would you like to spend some time up there to see if you like that? Well, as is always the case, this magic comes back. It's like, oh, my God, that's been my fantasy my whole life.

Instead of, are you kidding? Where's the mall? you know, I can't. So long story short, we both disengaged from what we were working on, professional, for a month, the month of July, I believe it was. And we moved up to this little place, a little tiny shack of a place to keep the weather off. And it raced by. And the only thing that was bad was at the end of that month, we had to come back.

and we both got sort of car sick because it felt like I was tearing an arm off, right? Because that life up there, it is so deep in balance and nature. You look around you, you just see God everywhere. We came back and we were just feeling terrible. And we said we just got to live up there. And everything fell into place, but our intention was. so coherent and so strong. So within two months, we were living up there.

I was able to earn a living. We'd set all this stuff up. And we're living in conditions that anyone would say were third world, no indoor plumbing, no running water, you know, no electricity, happy as we can possibly be. And in that, stillness is just a, natural co-phenomenon. I mean, I used to just sit for hours up there, and you're looking down on 11 different mountain ranges. You're up in the high. This is 7,200 feet, right? You're up there,

and it frequently were snowed in, and it's like, great, nobody can get to us, right? And it's so peaceful and quiet. And this mountain, you can feel it. It's coming up, in you. It's literally helping. Because as everyone who had half a brain told us, you're going to die up there. You're going to freeze. Aren't you afraid? There's bears up there. There's mountain lions. Yeah, there are, but I'm not afraid at all. And this really set the stage and why I recommend to this day that people find deep nature, not some park someplace, deep nature, get into to it and then notice because this sense of all, the sense of something much bigger than you, and the boundaries around you start to soften, you realize you're part of nature.

That's what nature, it's so big, it's so powerful. And I'm not talking about the mountains, in desert, the ocean, it doesn't matter. But we lived up there for five years. and the only time we came down was to get supplies and then just scurry back up. And I won't go into it, but miracle after miracle after miracle occurred. But it cemented our relationship.

It cemented our understanding of stillness, quiet. And when I say cemented, I mean, it made it so it wasn't some weird practice I do from 6 to 630 and then I'm a jackass for. for the rest of the day. It was fully integrated so that it's happening all the time, on, off, on off, in, out, in out. And it's kept us together.

And she's just off the chart. She's like the best. But we still have a lot to talk about, but we get into these places where we're not talking as much as we are just. Yeah. Yeah. And then the impetus to leave was

I love to how you said one day. You could hear yourself, like the blood moving in your own ear. That was the first month I was up there. I thought there was some kind of weird plane, like some weird drone or something flying right. I thought, what the hell is that? And it took me like a day to realize it was the blood pumping in my own ears. It was that quiet.

We could hear people coming up three, four miles away. way. We knew people were coming up before, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, it, that's an extreme way to find this, but I'm telling you, you can find stillness anywhere. And when that mountain literally said, okay, Kev, any idiot can be wholly up here, get down there and do some work, it literally pushed us off amount. Well, yeah. And, you know, the environment that you're in is going to have some sort of energetic resonance to where you're at. So where this podcast said, it's conducive to have a, you know, conversation in depth for a couple hours. If you're in a mountain, it's going to be conducive for you finding stillness. I found that here in Venice, I've actually had, it was like,

I don't know, a couple weeks ago, I was just in my backyard doing some work in my laptop. And the next door neighbor, their generator just turned off. And I, I, observed that as like I could feel the tension in my body immediately went yeah it was tension that I didn't even realize was there and it's like it's so fascinating to me how we don't realize how much our environment is affecting us yeah but then you maybe an extreme example is develop certain diseases or just a disease state of mind where it's very noisy and we don't realize that living these skyscrapers that so many of us do so disconnected from earth and from soil and from real nature is disconnecting us from our nature.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how important it is if we're not able to go jump into a mountain for five years to take at least a week out of your year and completely disconnect. Yeah. And go into deep nature. I love that. It's been pivotal for me and my growth. Good. And yeah. Good. Well, I would suggest that I still have the entire mountain right here. I don't have to go back. For sure. I feel it. Right. But you. I would say to a degree you almost needed that reference point. It's like without that, you don't know how good it gets. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there's something else that happens that you brought up, which is brilliant. You know how when the power goes out is like, damn, you know? Oh, Gary. I love it when the power goes out because that constant 60 cycle just goes. Yeah. And that brings up why so much of what we're doing in life is okay. Because if you take our neurology and boil it down in a pot to a little nugget, what our neurology does is it compares.

Right? So you're looking at me, but you're also looking at not me. and comparing the two. So you know where this apparent boundary is, right? You're working at a perceived and stored model of what Jim looks like. And you're checking constantly to make sure that isn't shifting and turning into somebody else. There's a distance between my eyes. And if that distance were to shift the tiniest amount, you'd spot it right away.

That's why the AI people in the animation world has such a tough time doing really believable, realistic characters, because this neurology is that good. When you're hearing me, you're comparing this sound, which is a frequency of nothing to something, to nothing to something, you know, so many times a second. how do we know anything? We're comparing all the time. So how do you know you're in a blissful state? You have to have this reference frame of, I'm freezing or I'm miserable or my leg really hurts or whatever it is.

And not that is this bliss state. So if you, again, get cold. quiet enough to get comfortable with its constant comparison. Well, I mean, even Freud said pleasure is tension reduction. It's one of the most elegant definitions I've ever. It's a two-word definition. Tension reduction. Well, so what is intrinsically necessary for pleasure?

You got to have tension. Well, but I don't want to have me. well, then you don't know what pleasure is. And the more precipitous that reduction of tension can be, the more pleasurable it is, which sort of gets into this weird territory of, would you or anyone else in their right mind want some incredible discomfort or suffering? The relief of which would be bliss,

when you think about it, how perfect is this system? It's our perception, our limited, contracted scope of context that makes for the suffering. So the more you expand, the more you realize, oh, let's just play with it. I would suggest that if you had all the time in eternity to construct the perfect life, you would wind up sitting right here, doing what we're doing right now. But you'd have to have all the time, all the view, all the context.

And when we do that, then you go, oh, okay. So the less I thrash around in the past and the future, the more I get here now, the only thing that's real, well that's living yeah if that even makes any sense at all it does it absolutely does this guy every once in it just comes out man what were you when you were touching on pleasure as tension reduction yeah one of the last guys we had on the podcast peter crone a good friend of mine he gave this funny story of like walking out on a friend who's just banging his head up against the wall he's like yeah why are you doing that and he's like because it feels good when i stop yeah yeah yeah sure sure

And it does. Yeah, it does. It does. I know people that unwittingly are doing that all the time, not banging their heads, but metaphorically. So interesting. And we don't need to be banging our head against the wall to still feel pleasant and pleasurable. But that is a state a lot of people are in metaphorically. Yes.

Amazing. I would like to touch on real quick. Or not real quick. We have some time. How we attach meaning to our external circumstances. I love this. Brilliant concept. Because so another story, quick story time. This was a few days ago. I wake up in the morning. I have my morning practice. And then I throw on my noise cancelling headphones and I go for a walk. I'm usually listening to some sort of teaching, some sort of audio book. But it's just really great to get that morning light, whatever, 7, 8 a.m.

And so I'm kind of on my way back to my house. And I'm about to cross the street. And I see somebody who for a lack of a better term seems to be out of their mind. You know, and in Venice, you experience the full spectrum of humans. They call it Venice because Venus was already taken. Yeah, exactly. So I'm here walking on my morning walk and I can tell something interesting is going to happen. So I kind of take off the noise canceling feature off my headphones. So I could be witness to whatever is going to unfold.

I'm just walking. And then she kind of locks eyes on me and just starts spewing the most hateful words. What do you think you are? You're ugly. What do you think this is? Like just all these other hateful comments towards me. It was interesting because I was just in a very equanimous state on my morning walk. And I'm observing this.

And I can tell. She's in a very diseased state of mine. This isn't somebody who is living a joyful human experience. And much of it is an unconscious habitual state. Yes. And there was no part of me that got offended. There's no part of me that was like taken back. Oh, that's brilliant.

know, but the realization here is like not just that, it's that her reaction and her circumstance is a complete reflection of her inner state. She was in a disease state of mind, right? I saw that. I was witness to it and I had compassion in the moment for her experience. And it also gave me insight into my day-to-day life or like comments online if I were to meet somebody that's maybe on a more subtle level, whether it's these feelings of envy or jealousy or whatever it is. It's a, it's a reflection of their own inner state, how they're attaching meaning to the external circumstance. And then they're projecting that onto. Yeah. So it's a very easy thing for it to see somebody that's, you know, more so out of their mind and is clearly in that, you know, that gross, very dense state.

But these more subtle ones for some reason, we take them as projections as to who we actually are. Good for you. And so I would love to just touch on how we create meaning in our external circumstance, in our relationships, in the business that we are involved in, in the work that we do, and how much that really dictates the quality of our life. It's a brilliant idea. I do a whole shtick on meaning because events of and by themselves are irrelevant. They only become relevant when we attach meaning to them. And I would suggest that that is happening.

again, if we just go to the neurological stuff, our limbic system, which is that part of our nervous system, tasked with keeping us safe, keeping us alive, first of all, and then keeping us safe, has developed along with this neurology that we talked about earlier that is so, I can't stress this enough. it is unique, each and every one of it. So we have learned that certain circumstances, certain things, certain people are a threat to our survival. And the sort of scale of that threat runs from, oh, my God, shoot them before they shoot me,

all the way down to a mild, just, sort of side-long glance and then, okay, they're not coming at me, so you just keep going. Each and every one of us has our own unique constellation of these memories of experiences and things. So we're having a vast hallucinatory experience. And when you can recognize that in someone else, then it's that marvelous thing of the finger coming back and you say, wow, what am I doing? When you steal your mind, and I mean really still, not still-ish, but really deck that thing, that process stops. Your limbic system, talk about a pleasurable experience for the first time maybe in its entire existence,

gets a profound neurochemical, never mind ideological, neurochemical signal, everything is fine. This is part of why breathwork is so interesting. Because you can do some very powerful breath work, which allows you to then take in a breath after about 20, 40 minutes of doing it. And you can just exhale for four minutes, five minutes. And I call it just drifting right by your own death. because one of the prime movers of your limbic system is this carbon dioxide oxygen balance,

these nerves in your brainstem called central chemoreceptors that are monitoring that all the time because your survival depends on it. When you don't need that anymore, your limbic system just kicks its feet up and just goes, dude, look at this. I've never even noticed this. I've been too busy and too scared to really oh so all that meaning shifts so if you can start with the idea that our limbic system is the fundamental driver of that meaning meaning and the question oddly enough is this and is this a threat to my survival is this an opportunity to address to my survival is this an opportunity to advance my survival. Is this potential food source?

Is this a potential mate? Is this a potential ally? Because we are a social animal. Or is this irrelevant? And so those are the kind of baseline structures for what we're calling meaning. And it elaborates from that as you go. But you begin to realize, wow, I've been carrying. this habitual meaning that X kinds of people are Y.

And it's like it has no bearing on my life, but it's just a habitual thing until I update it. So again, all of this kind of behavior is so unconscious. We have to bring it up into conscious. I suggest there's no way you're going to do that while you're distracted, while you're stressed, while your limbic system, is getting false signals from your own mind that you're literally under attack.

You will literally hallucinate someone else. There's a clinical name for this when it's in a pathological extreme. It's called paratactic distortion. Like you and I are talking and all of a sudden you say something that Uncle Phil told me when I was a kid, and it's like, you're Uncle Phil.

I'm literally hallucinating Uncle Phil. It's like it's a strange thing to have someone looking at you like your friend and you were crossing the street. I'm not, she's not talking to me. She has no idea I'm here. There is a representation of something that will hold her hallucination, and she'll keep doing that. Now, one of the things is interesting, I've been living here a long time too.

I've noticed that if you actually get close enough to engage, there's still enough going on in the sort of, let's just call it, reasonable capacity to relate to the real world, where it'll break the hallucination, they'll kind of quiet down and go their way. It's funny because it seems terrifying when someone's hallucinating. And I'm not suggesting anyone do this, but it's been my experience that when the hallucination breaks,

they're not mad anymore. They may be mad because you're in the way or you distracted them from more important things like hallucinating this evil person. But I really think that that's what's driving meaning. And then we get into this idea of away from goals and what I call toward goal. goals that are designed to take us away from things that we're averse to,

we're trying not to have. And then there are toward or approach goals. Like this is something I want more of. Away from motivation is very, very powerful. It will motivate you right away. One of the best ways to motivate yourself is, to have someone set your butt on fire, and you'll get away from that as fast as you can. It's just not sustainable in a fulfilling way.

So sooner or later, we want to convert to toward goals. Like, what do I want more of in my life? And that starts to impact me. This means I'm going to get closer to my goal might turn a very uncomfortable situation, like spending the next three years studying neuroscience into one of the most pleasurable things I can think of because when I'm finished with that, I'll have X. What's fun is when you realize that it doesn't have to wait until then,

the journey starts becoming interesting. So a series of present moments now means it's great. It's great, it's great, it's great, it's not only not threatening, but wow, I'm on my personal. path. And that is one of those things that really stimulates both dopamine and serotonin. When you can realize that even though this is tough going, I'm making progress. And these amazing chemicals cut loose. This is how people do crazy things. Like special forces guys, I mean, they're legendary for this. One step at a time.

Now, one step, this is my entire world. I'm focused. This. Now I'm focused on that. They're not thinking about this. And this goes all the way back to, to, God, I can't remember if it's Seneca, Epectatus. I don't remember.

But these old Stoics have this down. You put one foot in front of the other and focus on that. you'll have a fulfilling life. So meaning changes with scope of context as well. Powerful, powerful. So beautiful. I would like to, if you're open to, guiding the viewers through an experience that is a little bit more tangible.

I think we've been having a lot of beautiful insight, full conversations. Sure. And yeah, if you'd be open to guiding a quick five-minute meditation, five, six, seven-minute, just into this moment and guiding us into still. Of course, if you're operating heavy machinery. Yeah, please. Please come back to this when you're not doing that. Turn the thing down if you're on the 405.

And yeah, sure. Well, for most people, it is easier to close your eyes. I'm saying for most people, because for some people, their visual cortex is so lit up. So the activity is happening there so intensely that when they close their eyes, what they're creating is actually more distracting than what is coming in from the outside.

But because we are so overweighted toward visual information in terms of all our senses, it helps sometimes to just close your eyes. And when you close your eyes and you just sense this, reduction in distraction. Let that be part of what's pleasant about this. You close your eyes. You'll notice that when people are really concentrating on something, they'll close their eyes. You're just cutting out a lot of distraction. So as you close your eyes,

and remember that there is a powerful signal that your body sends and receives, that says everything is going to be just fine. because it already is just fine. And that signal is very, very slow, very deep, full-bodied breath. And when we take this breath, we want to start that breath with the belly. You push your belly out as you're breathing in through the nose, and it draws the air down low where the magic is. Feel your body through the nose, hold that. breath and then just very slowly let that breath fall away. As you do, feel your belly coming back in,

retracting again. So that's our throwaway breath. And take a second even slower, deeper, full-bodied breath, belly first, all the way in, expand just a little bit more and a little bit more slowly. Release that breath. Slower. Slower. There you go. And then another, slower still, through the nose, belly first breath slowly. This one comes up through the body, then expand the chest, hold that breath. Very slowly now, let that breath fall away. Like a feather drifting down to the ground. Let that breath just settle.

And as you continue to just breathe now with a different kind of breath, like you're breathing now instead of that sort of strange guppy at the top of the aquarium gulping that is our normal breath. We just let these breaths continue. And as you do, the space, the space between thoughts begins to open. And we move into that space effortlessly easily right now. And we do that by taking anything. that remains on your mind.

Any thoughts, any distractions, even any fragments. Not asking how very firmly push all. Just sweep it out now in all directions, as if you're parting a cloud, obscuring your vision for way too long. Push it all the way out to the very edge, just a bit. The person you were doesn't need thoughts or words about. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. So good. So good. For those of you that part took in that

little journey and experience, please let us know what your experience was like. I would be curious to hear who actually part took in that. And sometimes it's easy to disconnect from the impact that we can have through this medium of social creation and whatnot. But for me in this moment, it's a very powerful reframe and just so good. You know, the expansive feeling of how perfect the moment is. Yeah. Is something that I'm continually on the journey of cultivating my life, not just in meditation, but in walking meditation throughout my day. Good for you. When it comes to a day-to-day life and interaction. And yeah, suddenly that space that we just tapped into becomes much more interesting than whatever the mind was preoccupied with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that a weird word? Pre-occupation? It's like, what chance do you have if you're preoccupied? Well, you're going to miss this present moment, and if life is a bunch of well-lived present moments and you're not there, God, what are you got? You're an empty sack at the end of your mind.

Thank you for being willing to do that, but also to suggest it. I mean, that it's just a greater testament to what you're doing. You are living this. I can't tell you how much I respect and admire that. Living it is so different than virtue signaling. There's a cost to living this. I don't think it's much of a cost,

but for most people who haven't had whatever got you here, it's a very expensive thing to do. A simple, quiet, still life drops you off the grid quickly. I mean, we lived it. Nobody knew if they'd ever see us again when we were up there on their mountain. But even now, if people knew

how simply my wife and I live over there on the canals, they call social services. It's like, oh my God, this is abused. We're as happy as we can be, but simplicity and taking it still, the experience is so rich. And so thank you for just letting people know that there's an alternative to more and more madness. Great job.

Thank you so much. I mean so much coming from you. Is there anything else on your heart that you feel like you want to share? Again, just that this is, this isn't something I'm, you know, it's not me. It is something that's so big and so available that all I am is some, you know, goofy vessel for something that's much bigger. and I'd like to suggest that this sense of self, this narrative, is quite literally the rate limiting variable on the flow of this thing.

Probably a terrible analogy, but it's like an electric hair dryer. You've got this current flowing through this thing when you turn it on. It's resisting the flow. And if you think of that egoically, if it could have an ego, it's saying this is me, this is mine, this energy is mine. So it resists it, and it gets very warm, and eventually it glows red, and the fan is blowing that resisted energy, this heat, okay? That's plugged into 110 volts.

If you then plug that thing into 220 volts, and it resists, it gets hot. its ego is saying this is me this is mine it resists it glows red it glows white and then it explodes because there's too much energy flowing through this thing's the rate limiting variable of that flow that connection that we have and i'm suggesting not to throw your ego away i'm suggesting every once in a while turn it off and watch what happens then come back into your ego because there's a reason for it. But notice that it's not quite the same. It's not limiting you.

It's not creating circumstances where you can't connect. The strange world we live in, we keep trying to connect by being separate and special. A little ironic, right? The more separate and special I am, the more you're going to, what, love me? it's like stop it just if you just stop that process long and if you realize this deep connection right here there's no ego left and it's not because aren't i a great guy i don't have an ego

it's like what a prison it's the most selfish thing i can do to try to mediate the effect of that and when people like you do what you do you create a space that makes that easy easier. You create opportunity for people to say, wait a minute, that could be useful. And you realize how powerful one person's voice, one person's career, one person's calling can actually be. So again, way to go. Thank you so much. And thank you for being such a powerful part of my journey as Bless your heart. Bless your heart. Well, if anybody wants to have any more of this stuff,

we've started this interesting, I hesitate to even call it a company. It's a local and non-local community called Still Life. And we have a facility up at 1041 Abbott-Kinney Boulevard where we have group things like this, but the important part here, I think, is there's also an app which allows people to have access to this anytime, any place. You just press, play.

Our jobs to make it as easy and as enjoyable as it can be. That meditation shouldn't be work. It should feel more like play. So press play and get one of these anytime you need. There's additional materials. There's some breathwork on. there, there are deepening techniques, even reflections on the kinds of things you and I have spoken of, and the people there, there's a team there, this incredible Spencer, Henry, Emily,

these are remarkable people who have devoted their much younger lives. So I really salute people like you guys who are doing this at a much younger age. Anybody can do it when you're geezer, but when you're really fighting much more uphill. And these people are there to help. So consider that place a kind of second home. Consider that app, a doorway in, but it's not the end. It's just a doorway to help you find your own stillness. And you will. And it's a very beautiful doorway. the meditations that you guys have recorded on there and the way that you guide, just as we briefly did today here on the podcast, if whoever's listening to this or watching this,

enjoy that at all, there is many more on the app still life to go check out. I've enjoyed some of them myself as well. Good. Yeah, I do it too. Whoever the guy is, it's very weird. It's me, but it's not me, you know. Guiding yourself in a meditation.

It's so solidistic. Wonderful. This has been such a pleasure. Bless your heart. If it weren't for these mics, I'd be all over you with a big old hug. We'll get an average. This is good. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And thank you for being here. I appreciate that. I mean it. Is there anywhere else people can find you online or is it mainly through the avenues? No, I'm doing my best to eradicate anything like that. No story. That's what happens when you're a neurological pyromaniac.

You just, the thing is, this is what matters. I am irrelevant. I really am. I totally hear you and your message is not. And so I would love to. We can discuss this after. Sure. I think it is important to, even if other people are completely managing it,

to be able to curate your content and your messages and things that you share online. And it's like, you're almost using it as, you know, a Trojan horse for real spiritual transformation. Which occurs in them, not from us. Yeah, totally. Good, good, good. But we, the world needs more gym is what I'm trying to say. Bless your heart. Beautiful. Thank you so much. And to everybody that's tuned in, I hope you found some valuable insights through this interview, this podcast, this conversation. It's just as nourishing for me as I hope it is for you. And if it has been, please let me know. We love to hear in the comments section and also leaving reviews on Apple and Spotify is is immensely helpful as well. Until next time, send you all love and light.