Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 182: Imposter Syndrome, Politics and Sensuality, Dr. Jay Michaelson

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

Our guest this week, Jay Michaelson, wears many hats. He is the author of six books and over three hundred articles on religion, sexuality, law, and contemplative practice. He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and is a frequent commentator on NPR and MSNBC. In his 'other' career, Jay is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, teaches meditation in Jewish and Theravadan Buddhist lineages, and holds nondenominational rabbinic ordination. And for a decade, he was a professional LGBT activist. Michaelson also holds the special title of Chief Editor in Wisdom Content on the 10% Happier app. Our conversation touches many topics from the overlap of politics and spirituality, to the usefulness of meditation as the parent of a toddler. ***Please vote for your favorite Health & Wellness podcast in the 23rd Annual Webby Awards. Vote Here: http://bit.ly/10webby The Plug Zone Website: https://www.jaymichaelson.net/ Books: https://www.jaymichaelson.net/books/ Twitter: @jaymichaelson See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. Hey y'all is your's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad,

where the memes come from. And where's Tom from, MySpace? Listen to Baby, This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, before we get started, I want to ask a favor. We have been nominated for a webby, which apparently is a big deal. And I'd love for you to go vote for us. It actually takes 30 seconds. It's super easy. We've put a link in the show notes so you can just go click there or go to 10% happier.com and right on the top of the page, you can click a link that will take you right to

the site where you can register and vote. I would be super appreciative. Would be awesome to win a webby. I don't know why, but I think it would be awesome. I'll let you know after we win it. Hopefully we will win. Anyway, thank you for voting for us. And if you don't want to vote, that's cool too. Now to the show. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Sure sign that I'm getting old. It feels like yesterday that the book 10% happier came out, but actually it was five years

ago, five years ago. And to celebrate my aging and the aging of all of us, we've got a fifth anniversary of 10% happier that's about to come out. Very, very soon actually on April 16th, but if you want to pre-order it, you can go to hc.com slash happier, HarperCollins, hc.com slash happier. There's a bunch of new guided meditations in the back of the book from people like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg, and if you buy the book, you can get audio versions of those meditations for free on the 10% happier app. Of course, if you're a subscriber to the app,

you'll get those meditations anyway. And I've written a new preface that will, of course, go at the front of this new book. So go check it out if you want. On the show this week, one of my colleagues at the 10% happier app company, J. Michaelson, Dr. J. Michaelson, who is just signed on as the editor of Wisdom Content.

What does that mean? Well, he is overseeing a new product that we're really excited about within the app, which is Talks. We used to, on the app, primarily do little videos and added audio meditations. That is the bulk of our content, but we're also now moving into non-meditation content. And that's what these talks are. They're a little five to ten minute zaps of wisdom that you can consume while you're brushing your teeth, walking to work, whatever.

And I love this idea, I wish I could say it was mine, it wasn't. I love the idea of being able to use the app for something other than just meditation, obviously, I love meditation too. But it is so easy when you're a meditator to kind of lose track of why you're doing this thing. You can feel stupid after a while in these talks, which will be on all sorts of issues, and from all sorts of teachers, some of the meditation teachers, some of them scientists, some of them not having to do in meditation at all, as we grow this library, we'll be talking about all sorts of things.

So, Jason charged with that, and he writes our weekly newsletter, which is excellent, and the reason it's excellent is because he writes it. And if you want to sign up for it, it called it's called meditation weekly by the way if you want to sign up for it You can go to 10% happier.com slash blog 10% happier.com slash blog. That's free Jay is one of the One of those fascinating human beings I know and his resume is a dazzlingly Dizzyingly diverse.

He has a PhD in Jewish thought from Hebrew University, a JD from Yale Law School, and MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and a BA from Columbia. He has held visiting positions at Brown University, Yale Harvard Divinity School, Boston University Law School. He's a rabbi. He's an author of six books. He writes for the daily beast and has been a commentator on NPR, MSNBC and lots of other spots. Yeah, just a fascinating guy. If you want to hear his personal story from the start, you know, of how he got into

meditation and what that did to his life, go back and listen to episode four because he was one of the first guests on this podcast. But on this show, we're going to talk about a series of issues that Jay is uniquely positioned to discuss. And they include, what's it like to be a meditation teacher who's got a new baby at home and is trying to keep up his mindfulness practice. Also, Jay's meditative imposter syndrome, which is totally fascinating. The overlap between politics and spirituality, I should have mentioned also that within Jay's work history, he's also been an LGBT activist. Before that, he was an entrepreneur.

He's disguised on everything. So he talks about the overlap between politics and spirituality and how the two can affect one another. He talks about meditation and sensuality. And he talks about his view of how meditation can have an impact on the long term viability of our species. So a lot here with Jay, a fascinating mind. So here we go, my friend, Jay, Michaelson. Last time I saw you, you did not, last time you were on this podcast, you did not have a baby. That is true.

What's it like to be a meditation teacher with a baby? Well, it's funnier to handle it better than the rest of us. No, of course not. I think so, I actually think so. I actually have no idea how people become parents without some kind of self-care practice or some kind of mindfulness practice, whatever it is. Just because I think there's so many opportunities to get angry at your partner in a parenting

journey. Not at the kid? No, I mean, well, my kid's 15 months. So she's still, you know, you can't blame someone who's still developing the physical capacity for moral responsibility. No, I never get angry at her, but there's every meal, every timing of everything. It's an opportunity for disagreement.

And it's stressful. I think it's really, somebody was talking to me about that metaphor of seeing people like little hurricanes. And meaning, what is a hurricane really? It's not really a thing, right? It's created by the conditions that are there. There's the high pressure here and the low pressure there. But no, I don't know anything about hurricanes.

But a storm is just the product of all these circumstances that are rising. And we're all like that. And when there's anger or rising, that's because the conditions for anger are there. And when there's this and that. And so that's been really helpful for myself and for my partner Paul and lessso for the baby. But you know, they're just seeing that. Where all these hurricanes and just getting out of the way has been really helpful. And. But I think I have nothing really creative to say.

It's just like every parent says the most amazing thing the most tiring thing You know and the most sort of draining in any way, but just the power of All of that oxytocin and love hormone has just been overpowering and it's actually made me really I Did a article for the daily beast about this. It's made me really Angry at the exploitation of parental love and fear for some political gain. And that happens on all sides, you know, because it just, we're so barely rational as it is as human beings.

Here I feel the least rational. Just watching my mind go off into worry things, you know, imagining the worst possible accidents, health problems, whatever, you know. You hear a thump and you're like, that's it, the babies falling off of the table and we're going to the hospital now. And that's all hardwired in, that's evolutionary stuff. And to see that kind of fear cynically exploited, even just by capitalism, it's annoying, but to see it exploited by politicians. even just by capitalism, it's annoying, but to see it exploited by politicians. But definitely feeling that, definitely experiencing the roller coaster of addiction and addiction to the love hormone and addiction to the delight

being with her and the fear also. Two things to react to. First, what you were talking about before that you've nothing to say that's original. I remember, so Mike, child's four, so I'm a little, we're a little past years, this, your stage at 15 months. I remember thinking early on, especially as a writer and we're both writers, the one annoying thing about being a parent is there is literally nothing original to say. All of the cliches are true. Every single one of them, even the contradictory ones, they're all true. It's a very helpless feeling because you're stuck in a hallmark

card. I find it liberating though because there's very little temptation to turn my daughter into material. I mean, I guess that's what I'm doing right now in this moment. But, yeah, I feel like a burden has been, you know, sometimes, I mean, when I went on, went off to Nepal and sat on long meditation treats where I, you know, went to Burning Man before people used to go to Burning Man and have experiences that not everybody has, there was just so much desire to write about it and share it and talk about it and, and ego also, but also just, just enthusiasm. Here Here there's none. I have no enthusiasm to

write about parenting. I have a few thoughts about being a gay parent and an older parent, but I feel certain that those have also been blogged to death. Like I'm sure that's out there too. I just haven't bothered to read it. And so it's actually been really kind of pure in that way. It's been free from Artifice in a way that's really delightful. And just being present, you know, this, you know, the total presence of just a little kid learning to open and close a door or looking at a piece of paper or something is just remarkable. So you're a better man than me because I'm exploding the crap out of my son and writing all about him in my next book.

So I admire your restraint. There was another thing you said earlier that I wanted to react to, but before I react to it, I had a question that came up in my mind in the midst of the last paragraph you uttered, which is, I just wonder, does it make you, I'm not sure this is true for me, so I don't know why I'm asking it, but having a kid in its utter unoriginality make you feel connected to the larger human pageant in any way. That's interesting. I think the answer is yes, in a way.

I think there is, I've joked to friends that my daughter is a FOMO baby. She's born out of my fear of missing out. You know, everybody says, oh, this is the most love you'll ever experience. It's the most amazing thing. And I want to take that ride. So here I am. And there's some truth to that, actually. But I think you're right.

I think there is a sort of connector that's there. But I'm also, I'm so grateful. There's challenges in being an older parent, I'm 47 now, but I'm really grateful to have lived a lot. I don't have a lot of FOMO or what I'm missing out on now. Like I don't care that I spend Friday and Saturday night at home, I don't care that I even don't care that I can't really go on meditation or treat,

although it would be delightful to do so. There's nowhere I need to travel right now, so all of those things, plus just being a little wiser and more compassionate. I guess it would be good advertising to describe that to meditation, but it might just be getting older and being less invested in stuff. And it's, yeah, all that simple stuff, just like Warren Zeevon said on David Letterman, right? Enjoy every sandwich. This is one of his diagonals with a terminal illness. You know, being a little bit older and having friends and peers, certainly parents die.

Just really recenters. Like I've never, I don't know if never, that's a taller order, but I've almost never had a moment with the baby where we're doing something utterly mundane, playing with a simple toy or rereading a book for the 20th time. I've never had the moment where I've said, oh, what a waste of time. It definitely doesn't feel that way. And I think I was worried about that a little bit, because I'm still pretty focused on some

aspects of career and on having a lot of experiences, but actually it just feels like the best possible use of time. And it is one of the great cliches, which now better than I do, is does go by so quickly. I guess I didn't realize that babyhood is like a one-year proposition.

And then they're toddlers and that's different. And I don't miss babyhood that year You know, it's fun to be where Lila's actually 15 months right now, but I You know, I'd realize it now and it really is true that cliche that things go by so quickly and I friends with teenagers and they say the same thing Yeah, and I I was struck when I when we had our son, how many people told me either in person or in social media, enjoy every moment or cherish every moment. I thought, okay, this is just a sort of platitude that people just vomit up because that's the thing you say in this kind of moment,

or is it maybe represent a some sort of collective represent a some sort of collective remorse over having rushed through their children's childhood or is it like a really good advice? It turns out I mean maybe a good advice. Definitely good advice. That's a good advice and I'm just so grateful that we're financially and and just otherwise able to be there as much as we are My partner is a full-time dad and I'm able, because of my work to work at home, a couple of days a week and that's great. And being there is just such a treat. And then we're able, again, financially and just in our lifestyles to be around on the weekends and to spend those days and to not. I'm just really,

I feel like she's lucky and I'm grateful. And it is, you know, maybe I'll break my rule about not writing about her because there are now several good books on being a mindful parent and also not teaching mindfulness and a formal practice to kids, but just teaching them to be aware and awake and mindful and present moment focused and aware of their emotions as they come up and things like that. So there's a lot of really good wisdom out there. Just from an almost poetic or literary perspective, I'm interested in that and the way in which I don't know a former crazy meditator with a long beard is happy being a dad.

It feels actually very connected for me. You used to have a long beard. Only yeah, yeah, it's some great pictures of me online. I think I put them online when I was on retreat. You know, it's funny because you know in the Buddhist world, the real hardcore people shave their heads, right? And they're like, oh bald. But I felt like that was the only time I was going to spend six months basically off the grid and didn't matter what I looked like and I looked pretty weird. The other thing you said that I wanted to react to and this is a sort of a combination of meditation and parenthood is on the fear of the thing. One of my favorite words from the Buddha's language of poly or the ancient Indian language

is and I write about it a lot is proponshot which is these little movies we make Something happens like some sort of data point in the present moment and then we just make these phantasmagoric movies about some awful thing It's gonna happen as a as a result of whatever little actual thing happened So but I find as a parent Even now four years in Constantly I'm in the bathroom my son. I'm just constantly seeing him slipping and slam his head against the concrete corner of the wall. We're in the, playing in the ocean,

he gets sucked out and eaten by a shark. It's just, these movies are happening all the time and I don't, I can't figure out whether the meditative, the self-awareness has that's come about as a consequence of a decade of a little bit of meditation is good in that I'm not maybe it's not acting on me in a subterranean way or it's bad because I'm in more pain because I'm seeing this stuff. Well, surely it's good. We're talking right now on the upper west side of Manhattan. I live in Park Slope. These are two of the epicenters of helicopter

parenting and neurotic over programming of kids. And I think I can't help but think just being aware of it. You know, a lot of people who are over helicoptering and over worrying and over this and over that, it's not that they really want to. It's that they're not conscious of how how that's happening, how those processes are happening. Yeah, I think, I think if you're neurotic about it and aware of your own neurosis, it may be less pleasant for you, but it's better for your kid, right? Because it's not going out on them. I've noticed a lot of those things. I you know, I bike around New York City a

lot and now I start thinking that's a really bad idea and I imagine myself getting hit by trucks on every bike ride, which then contributes to more fear while you're riding, which doesn't make you a better bike rider generally. So it's not that it's always helpful, but I can't imagine that just being aware of any moment if there's anger that comes up, and suddenly the stakes are so much higher. And I grew up in a pretty angry household.

I was very fortunate, very privileged. My material needs were taking care of both my parents, both my parents loved me, Typical kind of middle class, to upper middle class, American upbringing. But culturally and psychologically, there was a lot of anger and yelling back and forth and at me. And I just don't, who knows, you know, it's easy with a toddler who doesn't speak yet to talk about when you get angry and when you don't, but I just, I feel really fortunate that anytime something like that's coming up, I know to take some time out.

People yell at toddlers. People yell at babies. When babies scream, when I remember when my baby would scream, I felt homicidal, you know, like, I mean, I wasn't gonna act on it, but I was a... You're a terrible person, but I never thought that. I never thought that. It's actually true that I didn't think that. You're not really a terrible person. It was something that's thinking it. It was the visceral feeling of it.

Like, he's screaming, he won't stop screaming. I don't know why he's screaming. I'm alone. There's nothing I can do. And the noise is going into the reptile part of my brain that is just sending out like Ripples of of Incalculable rage and like it's a horrible feeling and so I don't know if you're calm at 15 months That auger as well for the rest of this situation. My baby is also more awesome. They're okay Yeah

It's a low bark because my head was tough. It is tough. I've just was listening to you on another podcast episode calling him the least meditative dude on the planet. I understand. I hope that's not the title of his memoir. Growing up, the son of Mr. Meditation Guru. Yeah, that could be the title.

No, I think when those moments happen for me, it's funny how people react differently to the same stress. I definitely get a stream of reptilian brain emotion, but it's much more like sadness. Can I do this? Oh my God, fear, pain. Like it's never, I don't think it's once been anger, but it's definitely been, oh my God, get me out of here. This is way too much for me. And I've never left the scene in that moment, but It hasn't been yeah, you know, poop happens quite literally Okay, in emailing back and forth with you about possible things to discuss in this podcast You said something that I don't fully understand, but seemed really interesting to me, so I want to ask you about it, which is that you have

some sort of meditative imposter syndrome. Did that relate in any way to the things that the foregoing or is that a completely different subject? No, it definitely relates. That's why you did such a skillful segue. It's funny that I've always thought of myself as not having imposter syndrome. In Sidebar, now we're working together at 10% happier, the company, and I'm producing some content for the company, one of the things that we're working on is a piece about imposter syndrome. And in its classic form, imposter syndrome is about,

mostly it's about career. Like you've gotten to a certain point, and you feel like you've been faking it your whole time. And if you, once you get exposed as a fraud, actually you have no idea how to be a journalist, you've just been making it up. You're surrounded by real journalists, but you are not one of them. And it's funny, as we were developing that content for 10% happier, and really talking to folks who really, it's really part of their lives, I realized how it's not part of my life. I have the opposite. I have a sense of entitlement,

like I think I can do things that I really cannot do. And that's gotten me in a lot of trouble many, many times. So maybe that's a gender thing or maybe it's just me, I don't know, but it's, but where I do have it, though, and I haven't really thought about imposter syndrome a lot until these last few months, because it's not part of my every day, where I do have it is just in general, I feel as though it's too parallel and complimentary in posture syndromes. So one of them is I'm sure very familiar to you, which is here we are talking about meditation, but we both get upset by stuff.

Are we full of poop? Are we just deluding ourselves? And we're really at a very, very beginning level and we have no business giving anyone advice or, you know, I think it's funny that you can say that you continue to say that you're not a meditation teacher, which that's not true. But certainly for me, it's true that I am a meditation teacher, I lead retreats and I teach it on the app and elsewhere. So there's that. In a moment of anger or pain or sadness or self doubt, now there's this extra layer of imposter syndrome

on top of it. What am I doing teaching this stuff? I still have to, I'm still at square one myself. I never stay in that space for too long because I know a few things. I know I've come from one place on a spectrum to somewhere else and I'm way healthier and happier than I was. I also know that being still on the path is of value to my students that I don't put myself out there as fully

enlightened. I've met some pretty enlightened people. I've also met some teachers who claim to be fully enlightened who aren't. I'm very glad that there's no doubt in my mind that that is not me. I don't have to wonder, am I fully enlightened? I don't have to, that doesn't come up a lot. So I know that that's true. Also, I actually personally gravitate more to those kinds of teachers myself

when I'm looking for someone to teach me. So I don't stay in that spot of feeling like a fraud, but it comes up once in a while. But I also have this complimentary impostor syndrome where I sort of feel like a fraud, a fake normal person. In a lot of ways, the me that's the most authentic seeming, and I don't think it really is authentic because I don't think there's a me to be authentic. But what has the most valence of authenticity are some of my weirdest parts, whether it's the long meditation retreats or whether it's like my interesting life with entheogens or psychedelics or whether it's, you know, past interesting lives in the realm

of not past lives. I know you have Buddhists on this show. Yeah, I didn't mean to pass lives. Right. I just met past careers, past parts of phases of my life. I feel like I've lived several lives already just in these 47 years. I don't know, maybe, maybe past lives too, but that's not what I meant. Yeah, just past phases of my life where I feel really at home, even though that's not where I'm living anymore. So whether it's teaching energetic practices at Burning Man that are very intense and probably a little too much to handle even for a podcast conversation, I feel really at home there, more than I feel at home being in a normal land.

And so I sometimes feel like that kind of imposter. Last little piece for my graduate work, I have a PhD in religion. I studied a kind of a false Messiah who also had this very strange multi-staged career. I mean, he was a Messianic cult leader in the 18th century, mid-18th century, was then imprisoned for a while. And then after getting out of prison, sort of passed himself off as a charlatan, as a fake baron living under an assumed name and a castle, and pretending to be normal outwardly. And I don't think that's why I was drawn to study this person, but it definitely is something I resonate with.

I just want to unpack that a little bit more. What is it? So you're right now sitting here in a button down shirt. You have a black button down shirt. Black to be okay. So spiritual you you would fit in at a Smith at the Smith's concert or whatever. But I was trying to fit in at the monastery. So you you you know, you look pretty conventional.

You have some conventional jobs. One of them being at 10% happier. You you write at the daily beast. Yeah, that's where I feel in posture syndrome when we're all of that. All of that. Yeah, it all feels sort of fake to me. And what would feel real or? Flashing back to big opening moments in practice where the mind settled out of this continuum

of experience and into the uncondition. Put that in English. That's as good as I can say it. There's a profound letting go that happens at various points in practice, also happens not in practice, also happens with the right kinds of medicines, psychedelics and others. And there are just different ways to be. And some of those feel deeply real for me. But those peak experiences, are they scalable? Can you live your whole life in that space?

You can learn to flash back faster and faster and faster. So what for you would have truly authentic, and I don't really love that word, but like, what would a truly authentic life look like? I think it looks like the one I'm leading. I think I don't feel I don't it's not inauthentic to be writing angry daily beast articles about the latest judicial nominee from this administration. That's just the dance that's part of that's part of how I unfold. It just feels sort of funny because I feel like I feel a little bit like a clockwork orange, you know, in the clockwork orange in the book in the movie, that metaphor is meant

to be, so it's an orange on the outside, it looks like an orange, but inside are all these gears. And so the state has learned to kind of get inside the brain using, you know, the techniques in a clockwork orange to kind of have a simulation of a normal human being, even though it's not actually a normal human being. So he's still Alex inside. He's still a would-be criminal. But because he's been conditioned by all the mind control, he looks totally normal from the outside.

He could even be putting on a black shirt and a button down shirt with a normal haircut. So in some ways, it's imposter syndrome, but it's authentic imposter syndrome. Yeah, I guess that's right. I feel like I'm pretending to be an imposter. But I've wondered about it a lot. I mean, I think we know when I was more intensive or impracticed before I was in my current relationship, which is coming up on 10 years, certainly before the baby was born, also, you know, I was just a lot more lonely and also a lot more open to maybe the spiritual path is what I want to do.

And I know some people who went more in that direction, it's funny that I don't think, I can't think of anyone who really went off the deep end and stayed there, you know, stayed in a monastic life. But I certainly know people who don't live in New York City and don't have two jobs and, you know, aren't living the kind of life that I'm living. And I've wondered what the pull is in that direction.

On bad days, I feel like it's just conditioning for my childhood and my mother wanted me to go to law school. And so I did. On better days, it doesn't feel that way. On better days, it feels like I just love both and. If I ever do write my memoir, that's the proposed title of it. I just love both having both. And you clearly do too. Otherwise, you would the proposed title of it. I just love having both. And you clearly do too, otherwise you would have quit your day job and just done 10% happier all the time yourself. So that's why one of the reasons I love talking with you

is there's this pull in these different directions. And we've both gotten far enough along in our worldly careers where it's exciting. And there's freshness there, and there's a sense of connectedness. When I was feeling bad about my journalism career a few months ago, it was because I felt like I was preaching to the choir, the left-wing choir,

because we're so segmented now in terms of what media we consume in America that I'm not even reaching the people in the middle who are open to think about stuff. I'm only reaching the diehards who want to click on my articles. But then the choir really sang in the midterm election, you know, and there's actually value to enlarging the choir and in preaching to the choir and in rallying the choir, because I'm an opinion writer. I'm not a real journalist, I write opinion. So I get to have views and I get paid for what I would talk, you know, say, or normally, which is here is what I think about stuff.

So I actually felt reconnected to that. And so we can see on the worldly side that there's a lot of like noble goals and polls in that direction. And of course there's ego and money and fame and all that stuff too not that those are necessarily bad things, but in addition to all those, there's really an excitement in being in the world and it feels really for me There's a toxicity to it, but it feels like there's also a responsibility because I have my various left-wing views like it doesn't feel like now's the time to unplug

It feels like now's the time to get serious about ethical responsibility Which leads me to another thing it gets me it puts me in in In mind of something else that was on our list of things to talk about I should say it's really your list, but we mutually agreed upon it. The Royal we the Royal we The overlap between politics and spirituality. What do you mean by that? So I think for me, there's always this, there are these two, there are these polls. And I think on the left, in particular, there's a sort of critique of spirituality that it's narcissistic, capitalistic, feel good stuff. And it's helping the privileged

feel even more happy. And it's similar to religion as the opiate of the masses, except it's not quite the masses. It's the people who should, you shouldn't be so happy. I've not believed that that critique for a long time, probably about 15 years, just because I've seen that it's not true. I've seen that the interface for people who are doing a lot of activist work or even and just living their lives but are plugged in and being responsible, that there's an aspect of recharge that's necessary, self-care and maintenance, that also waking up to more empathy, leads to political consequences.

And I don't mean that in a partisan sense. I mean, there's a certain, there are certain views you can disagree or agree or disagree about various policy issues. But it's harder and harder to turn a blind eye to oppression when you're trying to open your eyes more. Do you think, are you such a diehard lefty that you think you can't be truly empathetic, compassionate, spiritually awakened on any level and hold conservative views? No, I don't think that. But I think it's harder.

Because we have to check and see so often, you know, there's that phrase that people say, like, check your privilege, like, check your privilege. Like, we have to check and see so often when my, if my interests are in line with an upper bracket tax cut, it is conceivable. Actually, that's a pretty good example because there's actually really no sound economics that says that that trickle down economics really works, that getting, cutting taxes on the top 0.5% actually helps the economy. But not that's a good example. Not every conservative would say that. So that% actually helps the economy. But not every conservative.

Not every conservative would say. So that's why you can still be a good ethical conservative. But that's a good example for me of where our blindness around my interests, my desire to have my own interests fulfilled, makes it harder to have that view. So suppose I really were a compassionate conservative, which do exist, obviously. I would need to like double check so many of these points of view. were a compassionate conservative, which do exist, obviously. I would need to double check so many of these points of view.

Is it really true that any kind of gun regulation is an abrogation of either the Second Amendment or human dignity? I don't think that really holds up. If you look at the suffering that's caused first, by far, the most gun violence in America are suicides and accidents. So that and then also shootings and mass shootings. I think you kind of go down the laundry list of conservative positions and they get harder and harder to hold. But sure, you know, maybe it's more compassionate to have a somewhat more strict immigration policy, I guess. And we can come up with reasons why that's true. But it's hard for me to think in any world of ethical awareness why it's

okay to separate children from their parents at the border and put them in cages. So some or some views survive and some don't. And then I think you're left, you know, the folks who I know who are more compassionate conservative are the ones who are who feel that they don't have a party right now because their their party of choice has been hijacked by a faction that's neither compassionate nor conservative. And so, you know, these are the sort of David Berks' and Bill Christel's of the world and Matt Lewis, people like that, who are caring and kind people and who have a set of ideas about policies. And that set of policies aligns more with the Republican Party, but they can't stomach

being in a party where the leader is a demagogue and has these rallies of hate and is manifestly rage driven and uneducated and corrupt. And so at this moment, I think it's really hard for those folks. I'm glad I'm not one of them. I mean, anybody who's, I don't, I haven't pulled our audience on this score, but if there are people in the audience who either like Trump or like him better than whatever, they believe the alternative could be. And I think there's a large group of people who fall into the latter category. They may at this point not want to hear anything from you on this subject, but let me ask it anyway,

which is what kind of advice do you have about in this era, which is so angry, and where we can't even sort of agree on stipulate to a common set of facts upon which to debate. What, as you're putting your meditation teacher hat back on, what advice would you have for navigating this, sanely? Well, I'll speak from where I am. I mean, I see the same phenomenon on the left. I mean, there's sort of a, I'll take an example of a lot of friends of mine who are, you know, looking at the various democratic

primary folks. So two of the candidates, Kamal Harris and Amy Klobuchar used to be prosecutors. And it's hard to be a liberal prosecutor, you know, you're part of a system, a criminal justice system that's shot through with structural inequality and racism. And these are two people who, I I think did a decent job of that. And yet there's a sort of rage machine on the left that cancels people for any perceived sin, even if it's and isn't looking at the nuance of what would it look like to be Kamala Harris is trying to call herself a progressive prosecutor. I don't know if that's true or not, but what

would that look like? What would it be possible to sort of see that there are different ways to advance justice in the world other than the one that, you know, that the most left-wing person likes? So I think that's true on the right as well. I think it's a really challenging moment for thoughtful conservatives, and I get it, and I don't. And again, I'm not, I have plenty of Republican friends and, well, a couple of friends and relatives.

And it's a challenging moment. Again, I can't imagine what it's like to have a sense that there's no one who speaks for you, you know, maybe Michael Bloomberg or something, but, but that there's no one on the, on the national stage who speaks that way. But I think it has to be that to me calls for conversations with folks who are to your right. If there's someone who's a compassionate conservative and a thoughtful conservative and they have ardent Trump supporters, then maybe it's in their, in their close circle, maybe it's correcting the record. Maybe it's pointing out that the rate of immigrant crime is lower than the rate of crime by citizens. Maybe it's just when some nasty meme about Alexander or Kasiorekates goes around just noting it and not being okay with it. But is it, you know, I did some work with this really interesting group, better angels.

And I'm still hoping to get there, one of their folks on the podcast because I think their approach is really interesting, which is don't try to change minds. Actually, because that just won't work. Try to achieve what they call accurate disagreement. I think that's a very interesting approach, but you seem to be advocating something different. No, I'm totally up for that. I see that the most on Israel Palestine, because I've worked

professionally in the Jewish community for over 10 years. Right now, it's live. Right now is a particularly stressful moment, but right now in particular, it's live. Exactly. Right now is a particular, it's always a particularly stressful moment, but right now, in particular, because it's become partisanized, the Israel issue, and accurate disagreement would be great. If we just are accurate about what's happening, facts on the ground, I can't go to an Israel hawk and say with any degree of certainty that I'm right and they're wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm right and they're wrong, but I can't, you know, maybe they're set of assumptions about the quote unquote other side is correct. Maybe their ideas about how to need for a strong Israel are correct. But I can be, I can demand for both of us accuracy about the number of people being affected, what the policies actually

are, what are the costs of those policies, what are the benefits of those policies, what a settlement actually look like, what a road look like, all those kinds of things. But it's funny that even to me, accurate disagreement is too much on the rational level. Another of my past lives was spending several years as a professional LGBT activist. And the data that the movement got over and over again was that facts didn't matter at all. They didn't matter for religious people.

If you quote the Bible, they didn't matter for secular people. If you talked about rights and equal rights, what only mattered was just showing up and being a human being. And the only effective factor that moved people on LGBT issues was just knowing someone, LGBT, and if they couldn't know someone directly, then at least through media, like literally watching Will and Grace or Ellen or whatever. It was coming to know people's humanity that actually shifted them. And it

definitely is true that on both sides right now there's an aggressive dehumanization campaign. I just don't think that and maybe I'm just blind here, but I just don't think that there's quite as much money in it as there is on the left as there is on the right. They're even on MSNBC. You don't see conservatives pilloried the way you see liberals talked about on Tucker Carlson or or on. Really? I mean, because I listened to Morning Joe in the morning and or some of the vox programming and maybe less about vox, but you know, it's all bemoaning. But is it really going after what the people or is going after the leaders? It's one thing for sure.

Sure, that's fine. That's, that's, no, I don't mean that. I mean, like the people. I mean, when Fox is talking about a feet New York intellectuals and coastal elites, and I don't think I don't hear them going after Trump voters. I mean, on the contrary, it feels like there's been this, after 2016, there's been this introspection of where did we go wrong and how did we possible? Doesn't have a kind of condescending here to it.

I think it's the opposite. I have a lot of friends who are people of color who are pretty offended that we're like bending over backwards trying to understand their white working class. When in fact, you know, expressed attitudes of racism or the best predictor of whether the folks were or supporting Trump or not. I know I actually see it as the opposite. It's like I actually think there's a tremendous amount of attempt to sort of understand not maybe the duck dynasty crowd, but folks who like you said saw two alternatives and picked the lesser of two evils. And I certainly understand the profound of two evils. And I certainly understand the profound, I think I hope I understand the profound dislocations that are wrought by globalization, by technology. Also the challenges of multiculturalism, I grew up in a very white environment where there was not a lot of Spanish spoken, even though I grew

up in Tampa, Florida, which had a huge Latino population. And I grew up with casual racism, and I grew up in Tampa, Florida, which had a huge Latino population. And I grew up with casual racism. And I grew up with all of my pop star idols, except for maybe Michael Jackson, who's now fallen from grace, you know, being white faces and stuff like. So I get that there's a change and I get that that's difficult. And I really do. And I get that I have as a certain kind of an outsider less attachment to a kind of American identity that's really rich and juicy. So I don't know, I don't see a similar

empathy effort on the right. I see a lot of, and again, not with people, I mean leaders, I mean, I mean, the media on the right and political leaders on the right to really understand that coastal elites want the same things that we do. We want a compassion of America wherever and has a fair shake. I don't see that rhetoric coming from the media on the right. Given the toxicity that's out there and right now, is it naive to think meditation could help in some measurable way? No, but what way is it help in? You know, so for me, so when I was doing activist work, I've told the story a bunch in books of mine.

There is one time I wrote a book called God vs. Gay, the religious case for equality. And the argument of that book was that the majority of Jewish and Christian, mostly Christian religious values, supported full inclusion and equality for LGBT people. So the opposite of what, you know, often is depicted certainly in the news. So at one speaking event, I was talking about, talking about the book and someone interrupted me, shouted from the back, basically a Heckler, and said, what about beastieality? So what that meant was, well, if we allow two men or two women to get married or have a relationship, you know, what's next? So that's a profoundly offensive question, to say the least. It assumes that I can't tell the difference between the love I

have for my partner and the lust that someone might have for a sheep or a goat. Or to even put them on a spectrum. Right, that's right. And so it's a profoundly ignorant and offensive question. So in that moment, I was in front of about 100 people at the time. I was actually flushed. I was pretty angry. That had even been asked. But there was a moment of mindfulness in there. I mean, I hate to sound cliche about it, but there really was. There was a little spaciousness in the mind in that interaction. And it was clear what I needed to do. Technically, I knew what I needed to do. I just needed to be the more reasonable and compassionate person in the room. That's how I was going to win. Because I'm not going to argue, I'm not going to try to win the heckler,

who cares about him, right? I care about, you know, the movable middle in those other hundred people. So probably half of them are on my side already, but some are not because of that particular audience. And so I just paused. And I thought tactically about what's the right, what's the most effective thing to say here?

And I said it and so forth. But that moment happens it and so forth. But that moment happens over and over again at everyone's Thanksgiving table, right? Even when we know we want to be tactical or compassionate or empathetic or even if we just want to win the freaking argument, like we don't even do what we know will win the argument, right, half the time, because we're too upset. So I think actually if we're looking at lowering the toxicity level, yeah, I think it actually really does help. But early in this conversation, you admitted to Finland, the first aspect of your Janice-faced imposter syndrome was that your meditation teacher loses his

school sometimes. So how could I'm playing devil's advocate here? How could meditation help given the level of anger and the fact that most people are never going to practice as much as you? Yeah well Dan you've had a lot of good ideas over your career but the title of 10% happier is in my opinion by far the best one right and because that implicit in that title is not 100% and you're still going to mess up a lot of the time. I definitely mess up less than I used to.

That story about the God versus Gate Tour is an example where I didn't mess up. I nailed it in that moment. And got a bunch of applause. And it was great. It was actually a really good moment as I engaged. There's definitely, in my experience, at least 10% of those more, just being able to sit with anger and not respond.

For many years, my family had a, we would have Passover with another family that had hardcore pre-Trump, Trump people, they were tea partyers back then. And a couple of them would try to beat me and they would say things that were pretty insulting. That if I said to them, you know, I don't, I don't think they'd go over very well. And you know, I'm not superhuman, but 10% less engagement in an unskillful way. Sure. And I see that again and again. But that's that piece. There's also the building resilience piece. I know a lot of activists who burn out and I definitely will think we should all regulate our exposure to the news. No offense. You know, but you know, so knowing how to do

that, knowing when not to click, knowing how to stay healthy and stay sane, not to plug our ears and cover our eyes and just go to my happy place, but maybe do that a little bit of the time, allows us to show up for the folks who don't have that luxury, who don't have that opportunity. You know, if I have the opportunity to quit an unplug, that's a privilege. That's not available if I'm undocumented. That's not available if I'm trans and trying to just go to the freaking bathroom. Right? So I'm fortunate in a position that I'm in that I have the luxury to be able to turn

off the metaphorical TV set, you know, to unplug Facebook for a moment. So if I have that luxury, to me, I have a responsibility to do the kinds of self-care that enable me to show up for the people who don't have that luxury. Because however crappy I may be feeling about the toxicity of some environment, I can guarantee it's less crappy than my transfer friends are feeling when they get heckled on the subway, which happens all the time. There's like a blank check that the bigots and am I allowed to say on the podcast? We're going to believe it, but there you go. They feel like they have carte blanche to be all the time, whether it's people of

color on the subway or people who are gendered on conforming. I'm just thinking using the subway as an example because that you know it happens so often and it doesn't rise to the level of violence, right? Or you know there's carte blanche that people on their far right feel like now they can spray swastika's on college campuses and And in synagogues, the synagogue where my wedding was celebrated was defaced with a swastika. Like we're living in a time of true toxicity that again, I don't in this case, I don't think is reciprocal. I think it's almost all on one side. Well, let me push you on that because there is there is toxicity on the left. Yeah,

I mean, there is. I was at what's the leftist swastika that got painted on a temple? Oh, I don't know if it's a swastika, but let me give you an example. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna compare it to a swastika. You're comparing something to the Holocaust. Yeah, if you believe me. Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Harris just compared something to the Holocaust. Let's talk about what's the rule on the internet? Godwin's law. Godwin's law.

Immediately lose the conversation, the argument when you compare something to Hitler or the Holocaust. Okay. So, I was doing a story on Ben Shapiro, who is, I think, a very interesting young conservative as you as well, keep a wearing conservative commentator. It says a lot of things that are, let's just say controversial, but he says also things that are thought provoking. And whatever you think of what he says, he certainly has a right to say it.

And I went to cover a speech he gave at the University of Utah, and there were group of protesters out there with the avowed goal of shutting him down. And I said to one of them, what about the first amendment? And he said, I don't think that's a relevant document. All right, here's the story. So yeah, that protestors in idiot, but I've been invited to speak on dozens of college campuses over my long and illustrious career. That is not an open forum. It is a forum of promotion. It is a forum of the campus or the group saying,

this is somebody worth hearing. Now, Ben Shapiro may or may not be one of those people, but it's certainly reasonable to take the view that he is not worth hearing because he says hate speech. So one could take the view, the reasonable view, that first amendment notwithstanding, and that comment, again, is stupid comment, that this is somebody who does not deserve to be promoted by my campus and given that place of honor little on the honorarium but even the place of honor that's what those protests are about he has a larger platform than I have and he had and he has a plenty of plenty of opportunities to speak his views and the question there is whether the university of Utah should lend its auspicious whatever honor to him. And I think there's a good argument that they shouldn't. There might be a good argument that they should. There was a riot at Berkeley when this

kid spoke, you know, I mean like there so riots an interesting word, you know, I think when you're trying to shut down let's let's say you're of the view that this is somebody who's spouting hate speech Which is not your view, but let's say that is your view So now we're trying to shut down hate speech So now it's just a question of tactics and I think reasonable people can disagree as to what the right tactics are to shut that I don't know if it's my view that he's not that what he's saying is not hate speech. I'm open to the debate I fact I got into the debate with him on the air I have real questions about the things he's saying. I hate speech. I'm open to the debate. I fact I got into the debate with him on the air.

I have real questions about the things he's saying. I just think there is the First Amendment. I don't think there's the First Amendment when we're talking about an institution lending an honor to someone. The First Amendment. No, that's a fair argument. That's fair.

Go out to a street corner and say your thing. Yeah. That's the First Amendment. Second, there is not a symmetry between fascists and antifa symmetry between fascists and antifascists, between fascists and antifascists. I'm not calling Ben Shapiro fascist. He's not one. But there's not a symmetry between one person saying hateful stuff and another person trying

to shut down the person saying hateful stuff. It kind of goes back to a meditative issue for me, which is bias, right? One of the, there are these isms out there that are the biggest problems in our culture, in my view, sexism, racism, tribalism. And so I've found it very interesting as somebody who's used meditation to wake up to some of his biases, that, oh yeah, maybe it's actually interesting to go listen to different points of view. To me, it's actually to come out of a space of curiosity and trying to actually challenge some of the ideas that were injected into my head by my left of Trotsky parents and the people's Republic of Massachusetts.

Well, that's my conditioning. There's the insight that we needed. All right, now I can be your psychoanalyst. Right now, I understand why you have this fetishization of centrist that you have because you're still traumatized by your like Eugene V. Debs childhood. You probably had to read about Eugene Debs in a cardboard what are those things called the board book. It's not being traumatized at all. It's actually just... No, I'm teasing a little bit. I'm not teasing completely, but I'm teasing a little. No, I totally agree.

I see this in myself all the time. I think one of the really interesting insights from neuroscience around bias and tribalism is that our brains were not evolved for any of what we're doing today, or all of the sort of neural infrastructure has been co-opted from its intended purpose. And according to what I've read, not a scientist, the parts of our brain that register, moral disgust are actually the same parts that register physical disgust.

So when somebody says something to you that you find morally repellent, you actually have a disgust response. And neurologically, it's identical to the disgust response, like if you saw a rotten meat or something, something disgusting and I had that I just see that in myself all the time

There's some stuff so Jews right now are arguing over a representative Ilhan Omar Whether she's anti-Semitic or not and what's anti-Semitic and then meanwhile the prime minister of Israel is saying stuff Which is pretty shocking for any prime minister to say And so Jews are fighting a lot on social media. And a friend of mine put out a point of view that I found really objectionable. And I had that desire that I think a lot of us have to like, you know, de-friend or block or like I somehow couldn't even stand to see what he was saying.

And I didn't even have to see it. I could just scroll by it. But there's the temptation that something is going to be really offensive. So like a car accident, I stop and look at it. And I felt like it would be easier to end our friendship, right? Which goes back about 10 years at this point, rather than just man up and scroll past, or even read what he has to say, not comment and just accept that

people have views that are stupid and racist. So it was just interesting to see that it was just really interesting to see that in myself, to see that disgust response and to see that it's alive and well. And this was not someone, he's one of my Republican friends, but he is one of the compassionate conservative friends. He's a reasonable guy and he has, you know, he's just misguided, but he has, you know, he's a good guy in many ways. And it was just interesting to see that.

More 10% happier after this. So Liberty feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity

feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship,

Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. Let's end those in the glider. I don't know if it's lighter, but it's on your list and it seems like it might be lighter,

but you'll unpack it for me and we'll see. Meditation and sensuality. So meditation sensuality was at the title of an essay I wrote in 2002 or 2003, which was for me at the very beginning of my meditation journey. And it's kind of you to mention it since now it's a chapter in my new book, Jewish Enlightenment, which is coming out in September. I will say to our listeners that when Dan heard that my next book was called Jewish Enlightenment,

he burst out laughing and mocked it for the fact that it was a tiny ventiogram overlap of two already small circles So did I actually laugh you did and that was your comment so coming from the author of a number one best seller It's certainly humbling Not that I need to be humbled even more by Dan, but there I was. It's really amazing. It's really amazing to be presented with evidence of what a horrible person is. No, it wasn't horrible. You're right. I mean, I'm going to sell if I sell 10,000 copies, it'll be a miracle.

So no, no one's going to read it, but that's fine. I actually, my last three books have been small books. My most recent book I wrote under a pseudonym because I actually didn't want to be necessary. Like I wanted only a few people to buy it and I got what I wanted. But these last few books of mine have been really personal and it's been really... It's been great. I'm ready the next one. I'd like to make a little bit bigger. But it's almost... I didn't intend it certainly as a trilogy, the Gate of Tears, the first one, and then is my book of poetry. And now Jewish Enlightenment, they're all at this sort of Jewish Buddhist spiritual intersection.

They're all three very personal, Gate of Tears is very memoiristic, is this sort of devotional poetry to the divine, as I understand it. And now Jewish Enlight magazine, which was called ZEEK, ZEEK in 2002. And just coincidentally, I started that magazine with some friends, and that's also when I got into meditation, which started in the Jewish world. And there was a freshness to those pieces while I was still figuring stuff out. Now I'm like old and hardened in my opinions. But at the time, you know, it's like 30 and just finding my way in and so I didn't realize that didn't really talk about what meditation sexuality is, but that essay is part of this book and

looking back on it, it was thinking is is there a book here? And I think my intuition was right. There's a certain kind of, I was really writing essays that no one else, I still don't know someone else who wrote those kinds of pieces. Starting out on the path, questioning assumptions, there's a tenderness that's there that I really love in myself and it wasn't an easy time in my life. There's a lot of loneliness at that time, but there was something so it's like there's something so magical about seeing again those essays and sharing them with people. You know, it's an online magazine that is no longer publishing, it's hard to access that material. So I reordered them and did a little bit of editing

here and there, but mostly left them as they were. And that's what that title refers to, but that's not the subject that you were asking about. Well, no, I meant more like what is... Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is sensuality in the meditative sense? I was surprised when I wrote that piece, that essay in 2002, 2003, I was surprised at how richer my sensual life had become as a result of meditation.

Because I thought meditation was like spiritual stuff, but everything. So sensuality sounds like sex. I mean, it is large part, large part about that. Sort of being more awake and aware and mindful and having better sex, but also just better relationships, better connections, more intimacy, but not just that. More delight in music. I'm a music head and, you paradise. And more amazing experiences with art, being able to show up and be present and be moved.

It doesn't even have to be quote unquote spiritual art, but just art. Even things like food and just, you know, I'm sure you've had folks talk about eating meditation here on the podcast, and certainly it's in the app. But that's really true. Backed, yeah, I mean, that warren's event quote is probably, I mean, that's a great, I wonder if they did put it on his tombstone, but, you know, enjoy every sandwich. You know, that's a taller order, especially when we eat in a rushed way, but to have one bite of a meal that really is fully mindful. And I think I had thought that meditation was in the head, and I was shocked at how it was in the body as well. Our colleagues will kill me if I don't ask you about your current role at 10%. What are you doing? What are you doing at the company?

So I'm the wise guy, and the editor of wisdom content, which means I guess this is a nice time to say that 10% happier is doing stuff that's not just meditation on the app. So there'll be recorded talks, like short, sort of whether inspirational talks or kind of philosophical talks, we'll be putting out a bunch of stuff

as a sort of as a media company. So I'm working on that too. One of the delights, I mean about 10% happier, it's funny because most people at the company took this for granted, but I had a conversation today with someone who you've had on the podcast, Susan Piver, who's going to be writing for the weekly newsletter email that I edit right now called Meditation Weekly, probably change the name, which people can sign up for. 10% happier.com slash blog.

The pieces are up there fully available. You don't have to subscribe to the app. And when I told Susan that we have over 800,000 subscribers in an over 10% open rate, she was flabbergasted. And the numbers that you can reach with a platform like this are just astonishing compared to anything. I mean Susan herself has a pretty big, she's a meditation teacher. She has a community kind of centered around her. She teaches retreats. She's got a great gig going on and also largely online. But to get to those numbers is really an opportunity and that's That's part of what really attracted me to that work

It's it's you know, there's there's challenges in that what you say and don't say that's why we have to bleep out half of our Conversation in order for the powers that be a 10% happier to allow to go on the air, but Well, that no, no, that's ABC news did me Who actually own this part? I didn't mean literally ble believe it. I meant taking out all that political stuff. Okay, you were not referencing the A word earlier. You were talking about some of our discussions about what goes in the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Perfect. So, no, I mean, so those are the choices, right? To reach a broad audience is the challenge that's actually interesting is to find a way to do it with integrity. So it's very easy to dumb down mindfulness and create what's called mcminfulness, which is just kind of not transformative in any way. And look, if it helps people calm down, that's great. But

there's more on the table than that. And so the opportunity, there's just, there's an opportunity for something much deeper than just chilling out for a few minutes and then going back to life. There's an opportunity to transform life and and back to the sensuality piece to enrich our relationships and our emotional lives and our physical lives in ways that for me at least, again, I had thought meditation was fully intellectual and you know, you're sitting still there and you're in your head. And so to find a way to communicate some of those deeper benefits, if that's the right word, in a way that's still accessible to a wider audience is actually a real opportunity.

And it kind of goes back to the stuff we're talking about at the very beginning. How do we bring together those, how do we bring together a serious contemplative practice, which I hope I still have, with living in the world? It definitely doesn't look having a 15-month-old, it doesn't look like going on a lot of retreats or even sitting every day as I used to. But I've seen that the interplay for me is constantly new and evolving, and it hasn't settled into a kind of stasis that is boring.

And part of that is this newness of trying to convey what's changed my life in a way that it can change as many other lives as possible. And that means speaking in a way that communicates. Your view of I understand it correctly is before we're talking about, I asked, is it naive to think that meditation can help in our current political climate? And you said, no, it's not. I think it can help. But your view of I understand it correctly is that not only is that true, but it is also true that perhaps contemplative practice could have a salutary effect on the future of the species. Yeah, I really, yeah, I guess we didn't get to that one on the list. I think, because it doesn't count as ending on a good note. We don't have to end on a good, I just meant

not fighting with each other. Oh, yeah, I think just the last couple of years of our history, not just it's not about Trump, it's not about, he's the symptom, not the cause. You know, I wonder if we're not that advanced as a species and I really wonder now being a parent about the world that I'm leaving my child. And again, that's yet another of those cliches, right? But that you and I have found to be true. And I don't know. I really just don't know

if on a species level, we have what it takes to coexist with the technology that we've created. Like we're clearly smart enough to blow ourselves up and live on Earth. We haven't done it yet. But, you know, we still believe so much stuff that's just manifestly false and we jump to conclusions, and we're especially the males among us are very quick to fight, and there's so much anger that we all, and I'm not in any way, exempt from any of that. I don't know. I definitely feel as though contemplative practices of which meditation is one are some of the only tools we have right now to keep from killing ourselves. If that, it's hard, that kind of work is hard. I see it as a kind of

activism, but it's hard because it's so incremental and you know, what about right now? And so I still am a both-and-or, I'm still doing what about right now and my other work at the Daily Beast, but now focused primarily on this meditation work. It's hard, you just have to keep, but I just, just believe it. And I don't believe it on faith. I mean, I believe it because'm evidence that it does actually diminish some of the car root root root causes of uh you know greed hatred and delusion and sort of the ignorance and the fear that people feel and how that fear turns into anger especially again for men not only but especially and how we're so quick to tighten up around stuff. And so I don't know. I might be pessimistic that it's enough to say the world,

but I do feel good about choosing to put my daytime energies in that direction. I don't know who told me this. Somebody doing work around a contemplative practice of some variety, who was in an organization where the Dalai Lama came to speak to the team, and what he said was, you may not see the results of your work in your lifetime. Does that resonate for you?

Yeah, it resonates, but you know, as I confirmed, diehard liberal, I just don't know how many decades we have until the world looks very unrecognizable. And the planet's still going to be here, but if we have one billion climate refugees in 50 years, which is not inconceivable, certainly the civilization that we take for granted now won't be here. And it almost scares me as much what the reaction to that kind of refugee mass refugee crisis would be like almost more than the refugee crisis itself. So it resonates with me and I don't know, I hope we're all wrong.

It's definitely, oh, every generation has always felt that the world was about to end. Over 70% of US evangelicals say that they believe that the rapture is going to happen in their lifetime. So it's not a left-wing thing, just about climate change. It's also on the right about the second coming of Christ. So that's part of human human also. Unfortunately, the folks on the climate side have a lot of science to back up, their sense that the world is ending. Now, there's funny, there's a there's a Jewish teaching about that too where they see an old man planting a tree that takes decades to bear fruit and there's people are sort of mocking him like you think you're gonna ever get the fruit from that tree and he said no but hopefully my grandson will.

So it sounds to me like the shorter version of your answer there would be both and. The shorter answer, the shorter version of every answer I give is both and. Before we go, if people want to read your stuff, which I recommend they do, can you just remind everybody of the names of your, you've referenced some of your books, but not all of them, can you just list your books and also where we can find you in social media and all any other stuff. Sure, thanks for asking. So it's Jay Michelson, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S-O-N, list your books and also where we can find you in social media and all any other stuff. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, Sarah. So it's Jay Michelson, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S-O-N. And if you Google me, you get right to my site, jay Michelson.net.

For meditation and or Buddhist heads, the two books that I've mined that I'll name, I won't name all of them because there's a bunch of them. One is called Evolving Dharma, Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment. That's my favorite one. I think I know that's your favorite one. I feel like that's the one that got me this job. Thanks, Stanford, getting me a job. I didn't get you this job. I know you didn't get me the job, but if we weren't for you, there wouldn't be the company that I'd be working for. You're the founder of my feast. You're the Karl Marx. You don't have to be the Trotsky. And the other one, Gated Tears, Sadness in the Spiritual Path, which

like I said, is kind of a smaller book of mine, but I'm immensely proud of it. It was written in the year after my mother died, and that's in there not directly, but it's actually in large part about the sadness that we experience every day, if we're attuned to life and it's ups and downs and affirming that in a profound way. But what that really means, I think, certainly actually on 10% happier we talk about that a lot just being present with negative emotions, but something almost too clinical about that. So a lot of the book is almost attempting to be kind of lyrical in its embrace of what that really feels like and that feels very authentic for me. I'm

so glad that Lock or karma, which I don't really believe in either sent me into this world instead of the world of kind of Be happy all the time and create your own reality. And if you're happy enough, the world will be happy too. That makes me really sad. Me too, my friend.

You don't make me sad, though. Thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it. It's always awesome to talk to you. Thank you. Big thanks again to Jay. Time now, as we had toward the end of the show to do our voice mails.

We're going to do two as we do every week. Here's number one. Hi Dan. I love everything that you've done. I read all your books and have your app as well. My question is, have you ever felt really tired after all they've meditating and the last thing that you want to do is be mindful. You just kind of want to listen to music or watch Netflix or something. I just spent an entire day at the New York

Insight Meditation Center and I feel exhausted and the last thing that I want to do is be mindful. So just curious if you face that and how you've overcome a situation like that. Thank you. Thanks to the question, thanks for the kind of words. My answer is yes, of course. I'm definitely still human. I don't spend most of my days meditating. You sounds like you spent a day at a day-long retreat at the New York Insight Meditation Center, but it is not uncommon for me to be on a meditation retreat several days long and absolutely I feel cravings to do all sorts of things including

Binging TV. So I had no judgment here and this is true when I'm off retreat. Right now I'm recording this toward the end of a day and I'm definitely in my mind I can feel it turning toward wanting some entertainment. Two things to say about this. One is it's totally fine to watch Netflix just because you're a meditator doesn't mean you can't watch Netflix or hulu or whatever it is you want to watch or check social media. There's no law of which I'm aware that precludes that it's only fine. You may want one of the benefits of being a meditator is you can start to see perhaps when you've. You know spent eight hours on Twitter and you have a headache and have an eaten and you're angry at the world So you might be able to jar yourself out of an unconstructive cycle of you know

compulsive consumption of social media or whatever it is you're consuming but There's no reason just because you're meditating that that you shouldn't enjoy entertainment the other thing I'd say is, and this is kind of annoying, if in fact you, something is telling you that truly the right thing for you right now, is not to give yourself a little mental vacation by watching a little television. If for some reason you feel like that truly is not the right move for you, what's the answer? This is annoying, but mindfulness, to see clearly that this urge is arising, or fatigue is arising, or frustration, or doubt about the quality of your meditation practice,

and to investigate it. And then you will see that it will pass. It may come back, but everything passes. I mean, impermanence has a good side and a bad side. And the good side is that whatever you're dealing with right now, it will pass. Might not get better, but it will pass. And so, yeah, if you're in a situation where you really truly have considered it and you think right now is a time where you need more meditation or you want to have, you want to garden or have human interaction or something that you feel

is more wholesome than veging out for a minute, then I would suggest that the way to deal with that urge is to investigate it mindfully. But again, just to recapitulate here, I don't think the desire and the actual acting upon the desire to watch a little TV is any way shameful unnatural or anything like that. And then if you have decided that you don't want to do it right now, then I think my fullness annoyingly is the answer because it often is. All right, thank you for that question. Appreciate it.

Here's number two. Hi, Dan. This is David from Sunny San Diego. Big fan of your work. I'm wondering about specifically the Buddhist aspects of your meditation practice. Having read your first book and listening to the podcast for a couple months, it's clear you went from being pretty skeptical at the least about the whole spiritual side of things to now referring

to yourself and I guess being a Buddhist. I have two questions based on this. One, how do you see your Buddhism, your Buddhist faith now as affecting or interacting with your meditation? Has it changed any of the fundamental aspects or do you think being a Buddhist gives you a leg up on the meditation practice? It's interesting, those kinds of interaction. And then secondly, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for someone like myself.

It's just kind of a wasp generic American dude who doesn't necessarily buy into a lot of the church side, church-like side of spirituality, if you will. But it's kind of interesting interesting finding out more about Buddhism, having done meditation practice for about four months now. Are there any books or texts or people or processes or anything that you recommend as starting places? Yes, so that's my questions and thanks for all you do, bro, and thanks a lot. Appreciate it, thank you.

So first of all, just to be super clear here, I do not, while I definitely do call myself a Buddhist, I don't think of it as a faith or a religion. It absolutely can be and is practiced as a faith all over the world. But the thing that has been said about Buddhism that I've said before on this podcast that I'm very fond of is that it's not something

to believe in, it's something to do. So in that sense, I'm a Buddhist, just the same way I'm a journalist. Obviously, I think I would argue that, in my case, the Buddhism is more meaningful than the journalism, although the journalism is also very, very meaningful. So that's the first thing to know.

It is not, you know, and the Buddha himself was a guy skeptics could line up behind. He, you know, he did have, first of all, there's no God in Buddhism. He didn't have, to my understanding, and somebody, people can correct me on Twitter about this, some sort of creation myth about the, you know, the creation of the universe. And he did espouse some sort of metaphysical stuff, karma reincarnation enlightenment. But he very specifically said, you should not believe this just because I'm saying it, you should check it out for yourself. Well that jibes very well with my history, my personal, my personal inclinations, the

fact that I was raised by scientists, and also my history as a journalist, check it out for yourself. I have no evidence to support personally that any of the aforementioned are true. I don't know that if I do something right now, if I do something bad right now, I'm going to be reincarnated as a Gila monster or something like that. That doesn't preclude me from practicing Buddhism. I kind of just set that off to one to one side. Because Buddhism is a treasury of practical information about the way the mind works.

A friend of mine has, Dr. Mark Epstein has been on the show a couple times has referred to the Buddhists as kind of putting together the periodic table for the mind. They've just looked at it from every angle and come up with all these fascinating lists and in a very sort of OCD fashion and it's just I find it inexhaustibly interesting. But again, I don't view it as some sort of faith that I need to take some logical leaps or set aside my skepticism that I in order to practice it. So that's just that's just an important and important thing to say. Do I think it gives me a how does it change my meditation. Does it give me a leg up in some way only in that you know being open to to learning more about what the Buddhists have developed and have been saying for 2600 years is just incredibly interesting and can serve as a source of inspiration. It just keeps me engaged because sitting and meditating can sometimes feel very dumb, you know, just like noticing your breath coming in and out and noticing

that you're crazy because your distraction, you know, what your mind does when you are distracted is often insane and then starting over and over and over again. That can feel a little dumb after a while. And so being in touch with the intellectual infrastructure of the practice is just super interesting. So how would you learn more about it? Let me just recommend two books to start.

One is Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Bachelor. I've gotten to know a little bit over the years. He never come on this podcast. I would love to get him on this podcast. He's an unbelievably interesting guy, former Buddhist monk in two traditions, if I recall correctly, and but also a self-described atheist, which is also up I should say or as he says is a bit redundant because there is no God in Buddhism but anyway he's a pretty skeptical guy and very very smart and wrote the slim volume called Buddhism without beliefs which I think is a fantastic introduction to Buddhism. And then also why Buddhism is true by Robert Wright, who has been on the podcast, and he wrote an excellent book from the perspective of, again, very skeptical science journalist,

expert in evolutionary psychology, who got deep into Buddhism in the same spirit that I've embraced Buddhism, you know, really us, Western scientific standpoint, and exploring the mind and trying to hack the habit patterns and negative aspects of evolution that we've inherited this mind that is constantly projecting us forward into the future or ruminating about the past instead of focusing on what's happening right now. So I recommend both of those books heartily and I think there would be a great introduction. So I really appreciate your question. Sorry for the long answer.

I also want to thank on my way out here the folks who produce this show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns and Grace Livingston, and thank you for listening. If you want to do me a solid go and rate or review us through whatever podcast story you consume the podcast. Also, if you want to talk about it on social media, that's always a plus. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members.

You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1-3-dot-com slash survey. at Wondery.com slash Survey.