Soul Boom - Yung Pueblo and the Revolution Within

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Yung Pueblo (Diego Perez) explore how inner transformation creates outer change. He and Rainn discuss impermanence, self-love, meditation, and why cultivating inner peace is essential to addressing today’s mental health crisis and global challenges. Yung Pueblo also shares his journey through silent meditation retreats, his new book How to Love Better, and the radical idea that healing ourselves is the first step to healing humanity. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Green Chef (50% OFF + Free Shipping + 20% OFF next 2 boxes!) 👉 https://www.greenchef.com/50soulboom Grow Therapy (Flexible therapy that’s easy to book!) 👉 https://www.GrowTherapy.com/SOULBOOM Uncommon Goods (15% OFF!) 👉 https://www.uncommongoods.com/soulboom OneSkin (Get 15% off OneSkin with the code SOULBOOM) 👉 https://www.oneskin.co  #oneskinpod Fetzer 👉 https://www.fetzer.org SOUL BOOM WORKBOOK (pre-order now!) 👉 https://bit.ly/soulboomworkbook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a little bit of a problem with the phrase self-love. I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, it's something I struggle with so much. Self-love is not giving yourself everything you want. Self-love is doing what you need to do to heal and free yourself. When you start really developing your self-love, you start recognizing that the same way that you struggle, other people struggle. What happens if more and more young people,

are creating peace inside of themselves. Global change. Wow, really? Yeah, absolutely. A change in one is a change in millions. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution.

Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Diego, a.k.a. Young Pueblo, welcome to Soul Boom. Thank you, Ray. I'm so happy to be here. In our initial list of like, here's people we really need to have on the show. You were like, it was like a year and a half ago. It was like you were top. That's an honor, man. Yeah. You know, we need to get this guy. What an incredible story and brave, beautiful work. And it's still in alignment with our mission. Your name is,

Diego Perez, but then on the inner webs, young Pueblo. You develop this kind of like persona. Yeah. A people's poet combining poetry with spiritual truth and psychological well-being meditations. How did that happen? Why didn't you post as Diego Perez?

How did you create this persona? Yeah. And what are the differences between Young Pueblo and Diego Perez? I think it's just an effect of being a millennial. Because I think you see that. You know, we all have been accustomed to screen names. And like, you know, what's the screen name? It's not necessarily going to be your first name or emails that aren't necessarily

your name. And when I opened up the, you know, when I fired up the old Instagram, I was like, what's my name? And I thought, okay, young and Pueblo. Pueblo, because it reminds me a home. Like in Guayaquil, the word Pueblo is like used all the time and it just means the masses of impoverished people. And young, it just reminded me of, I was like, okay, I don't like the O, drop the O, but it's like bringing together my Ecuadorianness and my Americanness. And then over time, as I started meditating, I was like, oh my gosh, I am woefully immature.

I have so much growing up to do. But then I've always studied history and I started looking at the world and I'm like, I'm like, oh, humanity is very. very young. Like, we're so young. We don't know how to do the basics. We don't know how to do the things that we try to teach, you know, little kids that are three, four, five years old where we want them to learn how to clean up after themselves. We want them to learn how to share. We want them to learn how to tell the truth to, you know, clean up after themselves, to not hit each other, to just generally be kind to each other. And humanity as a whole has not mastered any of these fundamental traits that we try to teach kids.

Yeah. So to me, when I said, what was that book about like, how do we learn the things we learned in kindergarten or something like that? Like the stuff you learn in kindergarten, you're exactly right. Humanity is not able to put into place.

Especially at scale. We have not, like, of course, individuals have learned these things to some degree, but in our systems, like we have not mastered the fundamentals. So to me, it was like, I'm immature, but humanity is also immature.

Like, we have a lot of growing up to do. And I kept the name as Young Pueblo because I wanted that to be a reminder to me. It was like, you know, let me not focus on, like, I was really intentional with my writing where, you know, if you look at my writing, I don't use the word soul, don't use the word God. I don't talk about left and right. I don't like, you know, try to avoid certain, like, spiritual or political words that kind of just shut people down. Like they hear a word and they're like, don't want to think about it anymore. So I was like, let me just focus on writing in the most practical human aspects of like what it is to grow into peace, what it is to like grow in your own self-awareness and how that connects with gentler actions in the world. That felt much more important to me.

And how is young Pueblo different than Diego Perez? Me, I like to hang out. I like to chill. I like sometimes when I meet people who really love my writing, they expect like eternal depth, you know, like I'm just like always stowing wisdom. And like I get a lot of nurturing from I meditate two hours a day. So to me it's like, okay, that's enough being serious. Like the rest of the time I'm trying to hang out. I'm trying to chill. I love being around people who are like, you know, who have quick wit. We can like make

each other laugh. And I love real connection, but I'm not always trying to like, you know, read Vedic texts or read Soutis. And, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a, much more balance and young pueblo is is almost like the keeper of like all these reflections. In the Baha'i faith, there's this idea that humanity right now in its stage of development is in its quote, turbulent adolescence. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's exactly. I was like, humanity feels like a 13 year old. Yeah. Yeah. I would say humanity feels like maybe a 15 year old that needs to kind of be grabbed by the scruff of its neck and thrown into rehab. Yeah. Like maybe those one of those really tough rehabs.

You have to open its eyes, like, take a look. In the mountains of Utah, where you have to, like, climb mountain peaks and cry around a campfire or something like that. But you're absolutely right. How do you see this turbulent adolescents playing out? And could you see yourself as being part of a spiritual revolution? Because that's what I talk about in Soul Boom.

And that how all of these spiritual tools, the internal ones, the external ones, everything that you're describing, self-love, self-acceptance, you know, self-compassion can and should be harnessed toward internal change, but also societal change. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think we're all part of it. You know, when I was thinking of Young Pueblo, it felt like I want to, I know I'm not fully liberated, I know I'm not fully healed, and I have a long way to go. I have much to learn, but let me reflect openly because I could see that so many people were trying to help the world, you know, in their own way, even like with So Boom. It's like we're working together to try

to like uplift our thought so that it inspires our practice and then our practice will change our actions. And we're all doing it together. That's a central Buddhist. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all, and it really comes down to practice. And I feel like when we look at these, these archetypes of you know, these saints and seers of the past who were so inspiring to people and that some, you know, some religions were built around them. Why aren't we really embracing their actions, like the way that they were, like the compassion. And when you think about Jesus and the Buddha and like the way that they looked upon the world and saw no one as an enemy, dude, that is the goal. Because not only does that give you full access to peace in your mind,

a real eagolessness, but then there is this like open friendliness that just invites peace. It invites peace into your life. Skipping ahead a little bit here, but I want to go right to the heart of the matter. Yeah. You now consider yourself a Buddhist? No, I'm a man of no religion. Okay. Yeah, I. But you practice Vipasana meditation. I practice Vapasana meditation and I take the Buddhist teaching very seriously. But it seems pretty clear to me that he was never trying to like start Buddhism. So I, you know, I really respect the Buddhist teaching. I follow it. It's helped me learn tremendously. But I don't think I need to take on that title of Buddhist. I agree. I, I have taken on the title of Baha'i. Yeah. Sorry. But I find so much centering and joy.

and meaning and purpose and perspective in the Buddha's writing, almost more than any other holy teachers, right? Like when I'm lost, when I'm confused, I go back to the Buddha and I get re-centered almost immediately. That's so powerful. And I think what was really attractive to me was the focus on personal transformation. And I think that was, you know, as I looked around and read different texts, you know, looked at the Koran, read the Bible, like, you know, have just looked all over,

looked into Vedic texts. And when I started practicing the Buddhist teaching, I was like, okay, I'm like, I can, I went into it because I could feel how heavy my mind was, even though I was changing my habits externally, even though I had stopped doing drugs, even though I was really trying to reformat my life, I'm like, I can still feel the weight of the past in my mind. So how can I relieve myself of that? And when I started meditating on the cushion, closing my eyes, observing the truth of impermanence, slowly that heaviness started melting away.

And now I understand because in the act of observing impermanence, feeling impermanence, literally embracing impermanence, what you're doing is training the mind to finally let go. Because when you're embracing impermanence, you're doing the direct opposite of attachment. And I've been attached so long in my life. I've been just sort of clinging towards wanting pleasure, wanting the good things to just always be there, wanting happiness to be long lasting. But really, life is constant ups and downs.

And when you fight impermanence, your mind hurts. That's beautiful. There's a spiritual teacher that Pete Holmes, the comedian, you know, meditator and philosopher and all around great guy. He studies with this guy, Rupert Spira. Yep. Do you know his work?

Yeah. He's just turned me on to Rupert Spira and he's blowing my mind. Yeah, yeah. Just loving what this guy is saying. I feel like he's like Eckart Tolle 2.0, like kind of next level, like it's graduate level at Cartoli,

non-dualistic, Vedic, focused. But I was listening to a meditation that he, he doesn't do a lot of like guided meditation, but there's this one that I found that he did that was so interesting because he frames things in a very different way. You often hear a guided meditation and it's a similar kind of thing like take a deep breath

and let go of your thoughts or notice your thoughts and don't judge them. And those are all really valuable tools. And there's a reason why people come back to those kind of tropes of meditation because they help us get grounded and centered and detach from our thoughts. But he was talking about like,

Witness the world exactly as it is. Witness your mind exactly as it is. Witness your emotions exactly as they are. Witness your body and the needs and responses of your body exactly as it is. And to be in what he calls, and he always comes back to this phrase that helps me so much called aware presence. Come back to aware presence where you're in this. awareness and this presence just noticing all this stuff and just having this deep acceptance of

things are, things just are exactly the way they are. Totally. And when I go into that state, it's exactly what you're describing where I realize how in my life, I always just want things to be different. Yep. So it's like, I want that car in front of me to just be driving a little bit faster. Right. I want that person to call me back when they're not calling me back, you know? I want this trip to work out just perfectly, and I don't want to spend too much money. Yeah. I want things to be different in my career here. I want the benefits of, you know, the work without having to do the work.

Yeah. You know, I want creativity to come by inspiration and not through perspiration, let's say. And I want my wife to just stop talking about this one specific topic for Christ's sake, you know. So there's just this constant. Yeah. Kind of struggle. It's like those resistance bands you work out with like at the gym.

Like everything is the resistance band. And I just love that phrasing of just noticing and just total acceptance of all of these different things are exactly, not even how they should be, but they just are exactly as they are. Yeah, I love that because when I started, you know, it all started

with one 10-day retreat, but then I've done many 10-day retreats in the same tradition since then, and longer ones 20, 30, 45 days long. You've done 45-day non-speaking meditation retreats? No speaking. You have not talked for 45 days at a stretch. Twice. Holy moly. What the hell was that like?

It's kind of like sitting at the very edge of the universe and looking at how everything is composed. when you're there for that long, the mind becomes really powerful. You know, when you talk about that present moment awareness, the mind sort of just... Powerful in a good way or a bad way?

Does it mind just like doing jumping jacks and like, hey, baby. No, no, the mind's, it's almost like... Or it starts to just quiet. It just becomes so much more tranquil. And it's, it becomes like a canon. Like it's just so,

like a microscope that is so heavily tuned into like almost the quantum mechanical level of reality where you can just feel how everything is changing so rapidly. Like if you were to turn your attention to your arm or any part of your body, you know when you pour like a fresh Coca-Cola and you can literally see the fizzy bubbles at the top,

that's how the body feels like. And if you were to ask yourself, okay, like which one of those little bubbles is me? Well, the one that you were pointing your attention to already popped. It's already gone and there's just more of them, you know, arising and passing away incredibly rapidly. But what that's taught me is that

this whole universe is one where everything is just flowing forward. It's just a constant stream of impermanence. And if I fight that, life is going to be pretty hard. And it's good to have goals. It's good to be able to sort of try to design your life. But how are you going to do that? Are you going to do that with tension? Are you going to do that with peace?

And you just have so many options. But one of the main things is just you have to be able to embrace impermanence. and that's taught me to relax my sense of self, right? Like this idea of Diego and like who Diego was when I was younger and what I like. It's like, okay, there is a story. There's an emotional history there, but it's not static. It's dynamic. So I can, my preferences can change.

What I'm learning changes. Habits can melt away. New habits can be built. But this like deepened experience of impermanence has really helped me just let go of my sense of self in a way where I can flow. I love the fall, the season, not the fall of civilization. You know, the air gets crisp, the leaves do their big costume change, and my sweaters do their best to hide my past choices.

But that's okay because I can hit Reset with Green Chef, the number one meal kit for clean eating. Their new, Heat and Eat Meals are ready in minutes. With over 80 Dietitian-approved. each week, you'll find something you love. Pick from Mediterranean, my personal fave, gluten-free, plant-based, protein-heavy, even gut and brain health and calorie-smart choices too, all flexible and week-to-week. Make your fall the healthiest yet with Green Chef. Head to Greenchef.com slash 50 Soul Boom. Use the code 50-Soul Boom, to get 50% off your

first month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50 soul boom at greenchef.com slash 50 soul boom. Green Chef. I once spent an entire afternoon scrolling through therapist profiles searching for the one like it was some kind of rom-com. But 37 tabs later, it was just like me reconsidering all of my life's choices. That's why I'm glad Grow Therapy exists. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed professionals

across the United States, but you can search by what matters. insurance, specialty, identity, availability, and you can book in as little as two days. Therapy has been one of the most valuable parts of my adult life. It has helped me face anxiety, self-doubt, addiction, grief. So whatever challenges you're facing, grow therapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and for some, you'll pay as little as $0, depending on the plan. So visit growtherapy.com slash soul boom today to get started.

That's growtherapy.com slash soul boom. Growtherapy.com slash soul boom, availability and coverage varies state by state and by insurance plan. Grow therapy. What if I told you I had been working out? No, not like that. Working out my soul because I've written a workbook for the soul, written by you. yours truly and some nameless friend of mine. Hey, Shabnam.

The Soul Boom Workbook. Spiritual Tools for Modern Living is out November 4th and available for pre-sale now. If you love the Soul Boom book, you like spiritual revolutions and you enjoy this podcast. Go order yourself one today. It's interactive, it's fun, it's creative. It'll light you up inside and out. You can get all spiritually curious and artistic and weirdly profound in these delicious, colorful pages. I promise this isn't self-help. This is soul help. Order your copy today.

Click on the link below to buy. I hear from a lot of people and they talk about meditation and a lot of people struggle with it. Yeah, it's hard. And I know for me like I don't follow any specific meditative practice specifically. But I've just done enough of them and enough guided meditations that I know how to focus on my breath, let's say, or quiet the mind and notice my thoughts and, you know, and release and to find a kind of a piece and it's kind of what Arthur Brooks would call a metacognition from a psychological standpoint where you're, you're observing yourself, you know, and what is that self that you're observing?

You're observing your thoughts. And again, that's that aware presence. That is just lovingly, non-judgmentally, in total acceptance of your thoughts, your feelings, your body, and all of the changes and impermanence that those things are bubbling. Bumbling up. Are bubbling up.

But there's a lot of people who struggle. So can you talk about, A, some of your struggles and B, some just, really meat and potatoes beginning things that can help someone who wants to start a meditation practice or has tried it a few times and just as has, feel like I have ADHD and I can't really like focus. And personally, you know, the journey you went through to be able to find some real peace through the practice. I think one thing that's important to understand is that there are a lot of different meditation traditions. So there's so many different styles of meditating within the

Buddhist teaching, outside of the Buddhist teaching in the Vedic world, and you can go on and on. So one is finding a practice that just kind of just connects with your intuition. You're like, okay, I want to put my time into this and test it out and see how it goes. How do you find a different practice? I mean, you go online or YouTube? Just search. Yeah, search. There's like so much out there. Like, what are you struggling with and, you know, what type of meditation can help? But you have to understand that when you start meditating, like, yeah, you're going to be bad at it. And like, there are times where people who are really experienced meditators who've been meditating for decades, like you're still going to have sits where the mind can focus, where a lot of emotions come up.

And instead of thinking about meditation being like something that you're good at or bad at, think about it as taking yourself to the mental gym. Like the practical aspect of meditating is that you have these skills of awareness, of non-reaction, of compassion. These are things that are built into the, the mind, but they're not necessarily strong. So when you go and you take yourself to a meditation retreat or you sit down and start meditating with a nap, whatever it is, what you're doing is intentionally building these muscles, like building the muscle of awareness, building the muscle of non-reaction. And sometimes that makes, you know, tough emotions come up, but then you're

able to observe them as opposed to suppressing them, as opposed to expressing them, as opposed to expressing them, you just observe them, which gives this space so that these emotions don't bind up and become deeper patterns, but they actually evaporate because you can be with them and then they sort of melt away. And I think that's what I've found that has kept me going back over the years, is that, like, I still feel all the same emotions as everybody else. But when tough things come up, I'm not making them worse for myself because I realize I am, I cause myself so much trouble. So when sadness comes up, when anxiety comes up, when a challenge comes up that causes a big reaction, I observe it. I feel it.

I stay in tune with my body and I feel what it literally feels like on the sensation level. And in the act of not running away from it, I'm letting it be what it is without it just becoming some new dominant pattern. That's beautiful. And I do think there is kind of an unrealistic expectation sometimes of people like, well, I tried it three times and it didn't work. Oh, it's wild. It's like, it's almost like saying like, oh, I want to learn Spanish and I'm going to use Duolingo once. And then I'm going to know it. No, it's going to take a year or two years, like really putting effort into it. Same thing with running a marathon. You don't just run a marathon. You train. And it's the same thing with meditating. Or even the basics of working out at a gym. Like, yeah, you can go do some universal machines and do what you see other people doing. But when you start to really learn like how the body works and how it strengthens and how it elongates and how it rest. And there's so much there. Like peace doesn't just happen. It's not something where you're like, you know,

reorienting the external aspects of your life, like changing your location and your jobs and your friends. It's much deeper than that. To be able to really have peace, it takes cultivation. That requires effort. And that requires a lot of repetition of being able to sort of have these skills of not immediately reacting and just observing yourself.

So you can take a moment to respond and not just repeat what you've done. in the past. It reminds me. I literally was talking to my wife about Rupert Spira and I was like, this guy, and he's amazing what he's saying. And he's phrased it in ways I had never thought before. And I was on the phone in my car. Yeah. And then I was just like, motherfucker, learn how to drive. Will you come on? And like, my wife was like, well, he's obviously, I think you need to do a little more, a little more deeper dive with this guy. That's really funny. And I tell you a quick story. it keeps coming up when I'm, as we're talking,

because we're talking about his, you know, Rupert's work and how the value of just observing, right? So there's a story that I read a while ago during the Buddhist time where there was a very old woman who wanted to go to one of his reigns retreats, right? So these reins retreats were three months long and this woman needs to get carried there because she's, her body so frail.

And at the same time, at the same retreat, there are these four philosophers who go, because they're so sort of inspired by the Buddhist teaching, at the end of the reins retreats, she becomes fully liberated. And the four philosophers didn't really attain much. So they're like, did he give her some special technique? Like, what happened? They go and they ask her.

They're like, what did he tell you to meditate? And she was like, oh, he told me to just observe, to do nothing, to just observe, just close my eyes and just observe. But they're, that intellectualizing our healing, right? So like intellectualizing wisdom almost can become a roadblock that you have to overcome. So it's like one, it's really valuable to read books. It's really valuable to try to digest things on the intellectual level. But there's a big difference when you just experience it directly with your eyes close.

You have such a great quote that I underlined. When chaos is all around you, the wisest choice is to create peace with. within you. And I felt like that quote was so powerful for the mental health crisis that so many people are undergoing. And they're doing more and more studies and they're realizing that this mental health crisis is really much more worldwide than they thought. First, they thought it was just at U.S. and then it was like U.S. and Europe. And then it was like Western cultures and stuff. but it's becoming far more pervasive. Obviously, we can talk about social media and screens and stuff like that.

But this idea that when chaos is all around you, the wisest choices to create peace within you, because chaos is all around us. Yeah. Much more than it was in, say, oh, I don't know, the 80s. There was plenty of chaos then, and there was fear of nuclear war. Right.

But the way that it works right now, it feels like the beehive of contemporary culture has just gotten angrier and angrier and angrier and the buzzing is louder and louder. And this is such a clarion call for young folks in the midst of this mental health crisis to be focusing on nurturing that piece inside. Can you talk more about that? Yeah. It's extremely, extremely valuable to take your power back into your own hands and ask yourself, how am I causing myself trouble in my mind? What can I do to change my habits? Like, am I using the phone too much?

Do I need to build new skills? Who am I when I'm alone? Like, how do I deal with myself when I'm alone? Can I handle being alone and understanding where you are? And that's alone, truly alone, not alone with your phone. Yeah, not alone with your phone. Like, alone with your phone off. Going for a walk or like sitting there and looking like Judo Christian-Mirte talks about,

you know, looking at a true. Can you really look at a tree? Can you really observe it as it is as opposed to just projecting on top of it? So sort of doing that accepting self-analysis without being negative about where you're at, but just realizing what you're good at and what you're not good at and what you can put time into like really cultivating. Now, it's hard. We live in this moment where like social media almost feels like a like a knife, right? Like a knife can be really useful and it can also be really, really hurtful. So everything is hyper amplified. And I don't really know if these algorithms are really helping.

But we have to ask ourselves, like, what can we still do? And I think there's still so much power. Like the power of the mind is so untapped. And it doesn't mean that everybody has to go to a 45-day retreat or anything like that. It just means you have to figure out, like, where is your gratitude? Like, are you embracing change? Even at the intellectual level, like, are you fighting every change that's happening? Or are you letting change inspire you?

Like one thing that changed my life, you know, outside of the meditation retreats, was reflecting on the fact that I normally have a combative relationship with change, but change is the thing that allow this whole universe to exist. The reason that you and I are having this conversation is because of change. If the universe were static, we would not be here. But this flow of impermanence has allowed all of the things that I love to exist. they're not going to exist forever. So to me, it's like when I have time with my parents,

when I have time with my wife or dear friends, it almost has inspired me to bring in a new level of presence because it's not going to last forever. But what's in front of me is really beautiful. So let me be there. What happens if more and more young people are creating peace inside of themselves, despite of what's happening in the outside world?

Global change. Wow, really? Global. Yeah, absolutely. Have you read, um, Christian, one of his quotes is a change in one is a change in millions. And I totally believe that. It's, to talk more about that. Yeah. So, Christiana Merti you're, you're referring to. I don't, I don't know. Oh, you love his work. Jada Christian Mardi, he's a weapon. He's this guy's like, he, um, he's one of those sort of like, similar to Eckartoli, like a spontaneous enlighten in person. You know, I'm not enlightened or anything like that, but the path that I'm on is more about like, graphic. gradual development. And Krishna-Murti talks about how that inner transformation can create outer change. And a lot of that is because he says that the inner creates the outer, but the outer molds the inner. So there's this relationship there where we are creating the world and the world is creating us. When you start really developing your self-love, like if it's true, true self-love, you're not only

being more accepting towards yourself, but you're getting a sense of your emotional history. You get a good look at how you struggle inside of yourself. And you start recognizing that the same way that you struggle, other people struggle. And to me, the barometer of true self-love is that it starts slowly opening the door to unconditional love to all beings. It's not perfect unconditional love, but you start understanding that it's good to have compassion. It makes sense to have compassion.

And to me, if more and more people actually work on like, you know, when you think about healing, when you think about wellness, it all seems like a practice of self-love is like, are you doing what you need to do to be the best version of yourself, to be a lighter version of yourself? And if you're doing that work and compassion starts flowing for yourself and for others, that means it's going to change your actions. It's going to change the way you create your businesses, the way you treat the people you're around. It may even change the way you vote. Like compassion is quite powerful, but I think it's going to change the way you.

it requires us to also come back to these like human basics of the language of emotions. Peace, compassion, caring, you know, well-being. These things are really vital. It's something I struggle with so much. And, you know, I've been in therapy for like 20-some years and I've been, you know, reading a lot of spiritual texts and I meditate and stuff. And like you, I do not in any way, shape or form claim to be any wiser than any other human being on the planet. I am not a guru at all. Just the guy. I'm a wayfarer on the path of enlightenment and search. And I love having conversations in this world. But I was working with this guy as part of a men's group that I'm in. And he was really like, why do you not say personal effort?

and he really wanted me to say personal affirmations. Now, if you research personal affirmations, you can just Google them, look them up online. Yeah. It makes me cringe. Yeah. The idea of like getting up in the morning and like looking in the mirror or saying out loud because it's important to kind of say it out loud.

Like, rain, you are a worthy human being. Yeah. Rain, you are enough. Rain, you are a loving husband and father. And, Rain, you're not the sum of your worst actions. You're capable of change. You know, whatever it is, you can Google them. You can put them on.

I even put it through chat GPT to help me come up with ones to say. And I've been saying them every morning, but it is so hard for me to affirm myself. But yet, Diego, I have a 20-year-old kid. It's so easy for me to affirm him. Yeah. You know, Walter, you're such a wise person. You have so much kindness.

Your heart is so radiant. You know, Walter, you're just a loving being. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, I can so generously give that to someone else, to my wife, to my son, to my friends. But it's so hard to give to myself. It's really interesting because we have these complexes where, especially when you're, you know,

if you're in proximity to someone, you're in relationship with them, right? whether it's an intimate relationship or not. But you'll find that some of us are good at giving and some of us are good at receiving. But to be in a very nurturing relationship, you have to be good at both. And I remember when I first got together with my wife,

like pretty quickly, I realized I was like, damn, I'm really bad at receiving. Like, I'm really, and receiving is also, like, that negativity towards myself. Like, do I even deserve this? Like, I should just be focusing on others, focusing on other people and, like, putting the spotlight on other people.

And I think a lot of that stems from the way I grew up because there wasn't much to receive. You know, there was very little. And there were, you know, there would be Christmases where we have gifts and other Christmases where there was nothing. And in that act, I think part of the wall that I built up was like, let me just try to be there for other people and not want anything. And then when my wife would try to give me gifts, I'd get so awkward, like, so weird. And I just like couldn't like, you know, like, I'm like, how do I accept this?

you know, whether it's praise or a gift or whatever. And it's had to become something that I'm intentionally trying to break as a pattern. Because to be in a nurturing relationship, you have to be able to give, obviously, but also receive the love that's coming your way. Okay, folks, I'm going to be honest. I'm a terrible gift giver. For my wife's birthday last year, I gave her a copy of my own book in paperback. But this holiday season, I am saved by uncommon goods.

They've got handmade, one-of-a-kind gifts that are so uncommonly good. you'll wish someone had bought them for you instead. Like they've got these sassy storage containers I found little containers for your kitchen that have a little kick, a little attitude, a little sass. They've got more personality than half the guests on this show. True story. And yes, I kind of want to keep up for myself.

That's the danger here. You're going to want to shop for you instead of for your loved ones. So shop early, have fun, and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to Uncommonogoods.com slash soul boom. That's uncommon goods.com slash soul boom for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. And by the way, I'm going to keep those

sassy little storage containers. My skin, well, it has seen better decades. Dry patches, random creases. My skin has officially entered the luxuriously worn leather armchair phase of life. So I started using One Skin. Now I've been using their OS1 face and OS1 body, and now my skin feels less like an old baseball glove and more like a highly functioning human organ again. One Skin isn't about masking problems, it's about working at the cellular level.

They've got this patented OS1 peptide that targets the root cause of aging. Stuff like wrinkles, loss of elasticity. This season, don't just moisturize, support your skin at the cellular level with one. OneSkin. For a limited time, you can try OneSkin off using code Soul Boom at OneSkin.co. That's 15% OneSkin.co with code SoulBomb. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show. Tell them everything you love about Soul Boom. Tell them Soul Boom sent you. Try OneSkin today. Hey, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our spiritual partners at the Fetzer Institute.

They have just launched a brand new shiny website over at Fetzer.org. That's Fet-Z-E-R.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at Soul Boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual at the root, and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions. So I urge you to go poke around their new website, check out fetzer.org. Thank you, Fetzer Institute for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. Fetzer.org. That's feteezer.org.

At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer.

The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. I have a little bit of a problem with the phrase self-love. For me, when I hear you talk about self-love, I translate it in my head to self-compassion.

Nice. Which I think for me is a big issue with both myself and my friends and young people I meet in the world, a deep self-compassion. Because for me, and the problem, and I know you don't mean this, But there is, you're welcome to Los Angeles because you're in the center of this industry

in Los Angeles of like self-care and self-love. And what does that mean? That means spa days, right? And it means spending a lot of money at Goop. And it means like having a $27 smoothie at Airworn. And it's so focusing on oneself, it's a navel-gazy, solipsistic, shoe-gazing kind of. I couldn't agree with you more.

Yeah. When I give talks, right? It's one of the first things I start with. I'm like, self-love is not giving yourself everything you want. Self-love is doing what you need to do to heal and free yourself. Now, sometimes that does mean treating yourself nicely, but that's just, that's a very sort of outer layer. It's really getting to know your emotional history.

Like how has my, what I've gone through shaped my behaviors. and how I show up in the present day. Yeah. And can I shift things around a little bit so that I can make it easier for my mind and also more nurturing for the environments that I'm a part of? I'm always asking myself, like, am I bringing harmony to the environments I'm in?

And not always, but I try to do my best. There's a part of the Soul Boom book that is based on a Baha'i philosophy, which is that we have a two-fold moral path. Yeah. We have the path that we've been discussing that has to do with self-compassion and healing, acceptance, acceptance of impermanence, finding increased wisdom and growing our internal virtues. Like you said, what was it? You just said, like, I want to be additive to whatever.

Yeah, I want to bring harmony into the environments that are a part of. You want to bring harmony to the environments that you're a part of. And this is a lot of it, we're talking about this internal work, right? Yeah. just like your quote, you know, when chaos is all around you, the wisest choice is to create peace within you. How do you create peace within yourself? And this is part of this two full moral path is this internal transformation. And then the other part is how do we take that and put it to work in the world? Yeah. How do we harness that self-compassion and that peace and the harmony? And we

want to actively bring harmony to the world. And the compassion that we are able to develop, like you said, for ourselves, we are then able to take that compassion for others. I compare it to two television shows in the book, Kung Fu from the 70s, which is all about this guy, Kwai Chankain, who is a Shaolin monk, and from the Darmic tradition. And he comes to the Old West that's filled with like violent racists. And he's kind of teaching internal transformation, wisdom, peace to the crazy cowboys he's encountering. And the other TV show I liken it to from the 70s is Star Trek, where humanity is

on a mission to spread peace, harmony, union, and utopia throughout the galaxy because we've figured out our problems on planet Earth. but it's a, it's an outward orientation. And I love the dance between those two, the yin-yang quality of those two things that we get to focus on. Like sometimes we are focused too, you see this in a lot of social activists.

They're focused way too much on the external and they become dissociated and overwhelmed, like frontline workers, and they're not taking care of themselves enough. And then you see other people that just put all their focus on, self-care and aren't really doing anything to engage with the world and to spread that piece that they've cultivated in themselves. I think one thing that gives me a lot of hope about this time that we live in, because to me it feels like historically, it's quite a unique moment where we not only have

massive global challenges and they just keep compounding. Like the challenges just get bigger and harder. But this is one of the times where we have tools available in mass and they're more accessible than ever before. So many different types of meditation, so many different types of therapy, ways that you can really transform yourself. And I would say, you know, I would imagine there's like millions of people meditating, millions of people doing therapy. And whether you're here or in Singapore, you can like look up online, you know, what can I do about my anxiety? and what can I do, you know, to like build my awareness and you can find something that's probably not too far away from you or even accessible through the internet. To me, that gives me great hope

because throughout history, there have always been groups of people that have tried to change the world. They've had some sort of values and they move forward and they're revolutionary moments. But then what happens often is that the people who had these good values, they gain power. and power will pull up the roughest parts of the ego, right? And if you have not dealt with yourself, if you have not healed yourself in some manner or build some degree of self-awareness, then it's going to be super easy for you to recreate the ills

that you were once fighting against. And that happens repeatedly. You know, people will have all these different sorts of campaigns and whatnot, and then they end up doing the exact opposite that they were, you know, that got them elected in the first place. Yeah. And you see that, I'm sorry, to say it, but you see that with a lot of leftist movements all over the world.

You see that all over left, right, everywhere, right? So to me, it's like the only way for us to, because we get stuck in this binary of left, right, left, right, how do we go up? How do we go up? So we have to take these humanistic ideals and combine it with personal transformation. Because then as I keep growing as an individual, I am not only not going to be interested in harming you. I'm going to make sure that I don't intentionally or unintentionally. right? Because it's in my interest to not cause any harm to you because I'm fully aware that if I cause you harm, that's going to create tension in my mind. And it's not good for you, not good for me. So I need to do my best. But I would even say it goes one step further than that. And if you look at the teachings of the Buddha, it's about reducing the suffering of others. That compassion for others are not just not doing them harm. I know that's not exactly what you're suggesting. Not just not doing them harm. It's actually making. their lives better. How do we reduce the suffering of, let's say, the billion people on planet Earth that are barely keeping food in their stomachs and barely keeping whatever lights they may have on? And I love that you point to this because there's not only fulfillment in service, but peace in service, right? And being able to like compassion and be like, how can I help? What can I do? And people have very different capacities, right? Like, this doesn't mean like, oh, everyone needs

to become like an ultra activist. Like some people, their victory is getting up out of bed and giving kindness to like their neighbor. Other people can like manage huge organizations and who are actively trying to like wipe out some disease or bring, you know, sort of end poverty in some manner. That's fantastic. But if we're all sort of pushing in this direction

of actively trying to decrease harm, increase compassion, we'll notice that like, yeah, you're going to feel better in your mind without it, you know, without taking it to like an extreme where, because that's what happens, what you just mentioned earlier, where you end up caring so much that you totally erase yourself and over time you become burned out and depleted. But it's really just, you know, walking this middle path, helping yourself, helping others. Your new book is How Do We Love Better? Yeah, How to Love Better, yeah.

And I'm really been enjoying it. And can you give us a, give us a spoiler alert, how to love better? how do we love better? How do we do it? Yeah. I think the initial inspiration of the book was, you know, I go away to this, the silent 10-day meditation retreats because I'm trying to save myself. Like, I'm trying to figure out how do I get rid of this mental pain, this tension in my mind?

And I go into it to help myself, but as soon as the course is done, it starts changing the way I show up in my relationship. So very quickly, I saw that there was a bridge. between personal growth and how you can make your relationships more nourishing. To me, I was like shocked by that because that's not what I went in there for. And it became pretty clear that, I mean, there's three. So you went in for yourself, but you found that it actually was benefiting your partner and your family and your other relationships when you came out.

I was receiving the benefit of my mind feeling lighter, but then there was also the benefit of like, okay, the relationship between me and my dad is pretty static. Like we've been in the same, almost like in the same play over and over. And I care about him so much. Why am I not telling him how much I care about him? Why am I not hugging him more often? Or with my wife, like, you know, like, how can I better support like a life that she would feel even great about? Or just making the changes that we need to make to make our relationship blossom more.

And all of that became so clear, but not only did become clear, but I had the like the courage and the energy and almost like a new capacity. because my mind got lighter, I was like, oh, I can, I have the energy to try new things. And it became clear. It's like, I need to bring more kindness into the relationship because we have been together for so long that it becomes easy to be vulnerable in the sense where you're only giving the heavy parts of yourself to a person and forgetting to bring that sweetness. The other element of compassion where it's like a very specific type of compassion. and this type of compassion solves all arguments, right?

The basis of solving all arguments where two people or two parties can really feel good is when you can step outside of your perspective to see the perspective of another person. Because when I can really see you and you can see me, the tension is going to very easily evaporate between the two of us. And then the last element is growth, right? Growth is so fundamental. Like as soon as I get into a relationship, it is such a clear mirror that I'm going to see clearly what I'm good at

and what I'm not good at. And if I want to do my part to make this into a nourishing home, then I got to grow. That's beautiful. How do we love humanity better? I think we love humanity better by being courageous enough to speak and live our values. I think that's something that's like, it's just hard to do because we're so geared towards being a part of the group, right? Especially with social media, right?

You have these moments where everyone starts posting. something. And then it's like, oh, shoot, like, I got a post too. I don't even know what's happening. But I don't want to be left out. I don't want my friends to think I'm a bad person. And I had this really, this really funny moment where I, during the first 45-day retreat that I did, the Ukraine war started. And I, you know, obviously didn't know. I had my phone, didn't have my laptop, was in total silence for the whole 45 days. I come out, I go on Twitter, and I was like, just got out of a 45-day retreat. What's, what's going on? You know, what's that? Like, how's, like, like, what did I miss? I can't, I can't imagine turning on your phone.

And then like, like, going to Twitter and bleep-blah-b-b-b-b-and-I- And I literally asked, what did I miss? And you would not, ran. You would not believe how fast the comments came in. They were like, turn off social media. It's going to, it's going to F up your piece. Like, you would not believe what's going on. Like, and then I open Instagram and I see all these like pro war stories, all these anti-war stories. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? And then people started asking me, like, what do you think about this? And I'm like, I don't know what to think about it. I just got out. Like, I have to go out and read about what's happening to even have a point of view. But I felt how quickly everyone was just like, you're in my group, right? Like,

you believe what I believe, right? And I'm like, I don't know. I have no idea what I believe. So in that moment, it taught me like, we're moving way too fast. We're moving so fast that we don't even have time to process. And if I'm trying to really live my values, I have to let it be okay to move slowly. Like I have to let myself move slowly. You've talked a lot about meditation and turning inward. Do you ever pray? Living closest thing to prayer, I practice meta a lot.

So the act of sharing merits feels so powerful to me. And it was- What is that? practice like for you. So it's a lot of like, you know, after you meditate, you sort of focus in on, you know, may I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I come out of, you know, may I come out of aversion, may I come out of selfishness. And then you share the merits that you've acquired and, you know, share them boundlessly throughout the world and the universe. Like may all beings be happy, may all things be peaceful. And to me, that felt very generative because I could like, I could feel the

how it radiates outward. And it feels like, um, um, I don't know, it feels like it's a little bit of help that you're putting out there into the world. How would you define your higher power? Our universe is very vast. There are a lot of beings in it and visible and invisible. And there's definitely the higher power of truth and wisdom and love. But then there's also nibana or nirvana, you know, whether you're talking about it in Polly or Sanskrit. And that is outside of the universe, outside of experience, unexplainable, unconditioned.

When I think about the human being, we can sort of elevate to this, you know, these deeper, eagoless levels that then allow that loving wisdom to just permeate more deeply that, that exists at the highest levels of our universe. But there's also something beyond that. So I haven't been there myself, but you can kind of feel when you've been meditating for, you know, 30, 45 days, you can feel that the thing that tethers together, the universe, that it's very permeable. And as you keep going deeper, you can almost, you can feel that at some point you're just going to poke through and really see what is. How would you define the word soul? I think of it as a compass. You know, I think of it as like all of the beautiful aspirations that you have that you like to grow into combined with your karmic flow and your sort of this like ever-changing sense of self. like all of this is like embedded and helps direct you to,

to where you should be going if you're brave enough to listen. Mm, compass. I love that. Yeah. What's next? Where do we go collectively and how do we move toward mature young adulthood? What needs to practically happen? Yeah. And how can people watching be a part of that?

Like practically, one of my big hopes for this lifetime is I would love to see material human basics become human rights. Like being able to eat, having access to clean water. You know, it's not just like human rights aren't just about like, you know, freedom of speech and whatnot. Like these things are really valuable, but it's also really important to eat. It's really important to be able to drink, to have access to health care. So these like fundamentals. Education.

Education, exactly, right? So these basic fundamentals of giving you a good start at being a human so that then you can, you know, become what you want to become. I think these are. But what do you say to that kind of essential human impulse that is often echoed in the American political discourse is like, well, that's great. I ain't paying for it. Yeah.

But the thing is like it is to all of our well-being and I think also the well-being of markets for people to, if you want people to be like their most, you know, productive selves, like, they shouldn't be dehydrated. That's a great young capitalist viewpoint of like the people of the Sudan are educated and fed and watered and are able to build a decent life for themselves and their family. Then it opens up a whole new market for the goods and services that you might be providing. And I think about it, rain too. It's like you've got to talk about it in practical manners.

Like some of us can understand the language of compassion and why this is good. others will need to see why it's in their incentive to do so. That's just the reality of the situation. I think you have to tell people like, yeah, this is for our collective good, but what that collective good is just going to look different for different people. Diego, thank you so much for coming on Soul Boom. We wanted to get you here from the get-go, and this was just a beautiful conversation.

And I'm so thrilled that you came all the way out here from Massachusetts to come visit us and can I enlist you to be a part of this spiritual revolution? I'm down. You're down? I'm 100% down. Me too. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's do this.

All right. Thank you, Rain. All right. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.