Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 553: Meditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassie & Jeff Warren

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Today’s episode is the first in an experimental new series called Meditation Party. Dan takes listener calls with fellow meditators Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren and get candid about their practices and dealing with lifeSebene Selassie is based in Brooklyn and describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called, You Belong. Jeff Warren is based in Toronto and is also a writer and meditation teacher who co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics with Dan Harris. Jeff also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast.Call [phone] to have your question answered during the Meditation Party!Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sebene-selassie-jef-warren-553See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, we're running a few experiments on this show today. First, you may have noticed we're trying out some new theme music. For many, many years, many of you have been complaining justifiably about how terrible our theme music has been, and I have wanted to fix this for a long, long time, but somehow I never got around to it. Anyway, I finally reached out to Nick Thorburn, who's the frontman of one of my favorite bands, Island. Nick also did the theme music for cereal, the mega hit podcast, and now he has whipped

up a little something for us. I hope you like it. Send me some feedback on Twitter if you've got it. The other major experiment we're running today is what I hope will be the first edition of a recurring feature right here on this show. By way of background as some of you may know, I retired from my job as a morning news anchor back in 2021. And ever since then, my wife Bianca has been gently pointing out that I might want to find a new outlet for on air banter, which was really one of my favorite parts of my old job. I really do miss

messing around with my friends on the air and was intrigued by the notion of finding a new outlet for this kind of camaraderie. So I reached out to two very good friends, Seb and a Celassie and Jeff Warren, who both happened to be meditation teachers and frequent flyers on this show. And I asked them if they'd be game to try out a new format.

We are calling it meditation party. Why? Because meditation is too often sold to us as a solo death march. But we, meaning, Seb, Jeff and I, think that is the wrong way to view it. And we happen to have history on our side. For several thousand years, the Buddhists have talked about the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha represents the possibility of training your mind, perhaps towards enlightenment, if you believe in that kind of thing. The Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha, and the Sangha is the community of meditators.

In other words, the Buddhists have long known that there is an HOV lane effect to meditating with other people, and or simply having a community of fellow meditators to normalize this sometimes very strange practice. So that's what we're hoping to model for you today and in future episodes. The power of having friends who are also interested in exploring, training, and changing their minds. If you don't happen to have friends who meditate, we're hoping you can at least get a contact high by hanging out with us.

Meditation friends can, in my experience, be super friends. People you can take risks with and talk about some very real shit. And doing so can turn that shit into fertilizer for future growth. In fact, you're gonna hear Sevena get very candid about some stuff she's been dealing with recently, including cancer and divorce. Just to be clear, you're going to hear us talk about some heavy stuff, but we also do plenty of lighter stuff, and we take some questions from

you listeners. Many of you know 7 Jeff, but for those who don't, Seben A. Salassi describes herself as a writer, teacher, and immigrant weirdo. Those are her words. She teaches meditation over on the 10% happier app and is the author of a great book called You Belong. She is based in Brooklyn. Jeff Warren is a writer and meditation teacher. He and I co-wrote a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He's also a co-host of the Consciousness Explorers podcast. He is based in Toronto. He is my favorite Canadian ahead of even Neil Young and Neil Perk. Again, this is an experiment, this episode. It's a work in progress. We're trying some things out. We would really love your feedback. Perhaps on Twitter or via the 10% happier website, stick around for the very end of the show where I will publicly share some of the second guessing

that Seb Jeff and I have been doing since recording this episode. Also one other quick note before we dive in here, Seb Jeff and I have been having so much fun together that we've also decided to put on our own meditation retreat. It'll be a weekend thing at the Omega Institute, which is just a few hours outside of New York City, in Rhinebeck, it's coming up in October, so you've got plenty of time to plan if you wanna come. If you're interested in learning more, we've put a link in the show notes.

Just adds up before we get started here, this party is intended for mature audiences only, in other words, we're gonna be dropping some F-bombs, so put some earmuffs on your kids. Okay, we'll get started with meditation party right after this. 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. It's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my 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 did 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. Seven days to last see Jeff Warren. Welcome to the party. Thanks, Dan. Good to be here. Good to be here, Dan. Nice to see you. Yeah, I brought on two of the weirdest people I know and we'll see how this goes.

So normally given chivalry and all that, I would start with said, but I've some reason I feel like this first question makes sense to go to Jeff with, why are we calling this a party? Because it makes meditation more fun. I actually think it's a more realistic description of the true span of what meditation brings to your life, both in appreciation of the incredible highs, the strange lows, and how to bring that into relationship with your friends, how to bring that into conversation with other practitioners who can see the reality of how meditation impacts you is so much bigger than the kind of the catchphrases you're given or the kind of simple instruction you're given. And how can we bring that into a place where we can talk about it in a fun way. And there's a lot of levity in that.

Levity and the strange ways we get confused by our practice, by the ways in which it creates new, unusual opportunities, by the new kinds of connections it makes possible for people. We used to do way back before I had kids, and I actually went to parties before COVID too. We would do these big house parties at my place in Toronto, and we would actually sometimes start with a 30-minute meditation practice where, you know, 100 people gather in the living room, and we do these meditations.

A fun one with music, bring the music in, and then the party would start, and they'd end up being a few hundred people there, but everyone would talk about what it did to the party. Like, it just created this quality of warps and openness and juiciness that was so unusual. And that's always stayed with me. How actually the practice creates a kind of quality of human warped and congeniality that is really central to friendship. But I'd be curious what Seven Eight would have to say and you of course to Dan Well, first of all, I want to go to your party's Jeff

You have to go back in time. I think we're thinking this as long as you have a job that doesn't drug test you your five It's more of no diaper side now the parties. Yeah I think we're thinking of meditation and party in the most expansive senses of both those words. People might hear party and feel this pressure. I'm an introvert or I don't like parties or are you going to make me play games or is Jeff going to make me meditate with 80 other people in the living room. It's really party for me is symbolizing just this gathering of two or more people

in a place of friendship and sharing and meditation in the same way. We think we have to sit in full lotus and dimly lit candle lit room with certain music or atmospheric tones playing, but really it's this possibility of coming back to ourselves, getting grounded, getting centered, and both those things can include so many versions of ourselves, of others, of what's happening and how it's happening. So both meditation and party are inviting people into just expanding their sense of what both those things mean. And I think that fun is a really important part of it because it can feel so grim, meditation

can sound so serious. At the same time, we're not excluding the difficult things. So we're really changing the nature of party that we're celebrating life in all its fullness, both the ups and the downs and what that means to really include it all. Yeah, what I love about parties is real parties, real life parties that you can have crazy shit going on, but you can also have deep conversation with somebody and it might be a deep conversation with somebody about something incredibly painful. But that happens at parties and actually in the fullest sense of the word,

it's fun or enjoyable because it's meaningful. Yeah, I'm thinking of times when I had parties with my nephew and he was really little, and it was just the two of us, me holding him dancing, singing to Sharday. So it can be so many things, it can be sitting on the sofa, bawling your eyes out and sharing with one person

or it can be being with 100 people in a dance floor. And that's really fun too. The group feeling when you're at a party and it's going well and there's just a sense of something clicking and all of a sudden, you know, it happens to the music. All of a sudden, you're all inside the same rhythm in some way and there's that sense of feeling connected

in the larger the group energy, the group mind. I always like that about parties, but that might be the drugs. So it's not just the drugs. I mean, but one of the most powerful aspects of the human experience is what I believe the philosopher, psychologist, a meal, Durkheim calls collective effervescence. That is what we're built for. We are right in our marrow built for that because that's, as I often say, how the species

has survived. And I think, and I know you guys agree with this, that meditation is often, especially in this era of individual achievement and solitary pursuits, it's often done alone. Back to the progenitor of this whole thing, the Buddha. He talked about the three jewels of the practice. The Buddha, just as a, that was one of the jewels. The Buddha is just an example of what is possible once you train your mind to the deepest possible extent.

The dharma, which is just sort of the teaching of the Buddha, and then the Sangha, which is the community of meditators, the meditation party. And I think the third part of that practice is often really neglected in an era where all of the currents are pushing us towards disconnection to keep our noses in our phones, et cetera, et cetera. And hopefully the idea here, I think, at least from my motivation for convening this particular party, is to give people a bit of a contact tie from watching the three of us do life together. Yeah, the community piece is so huge because meditation brings down those boundaries of self, the rigidities that often can prevent real intimacy and connection. And it's one of the things that you notice when you go to longer sits as as that stuff

starts to come down, there's just more sense of naturalness and ease and around other people. And then your full humanist starts to come out more. And what a relief because it turns out everyone else is walking around the full humanist thing too. And that there was this narrow way bandwidth in which you thought you had to be as a human being. But now it starts to come down and you're able to start to own those things on either

side and below and above the full spectrum of who you are, other people are doing it too, and it makes you, it affirms your experience, it validates it, it makes you feel less alone. And so that whole side of it, if you become more human in relationship with other humans. I think that can be true. I really appreciate that.

And it needs to be fostered, because there's a lot of ways that people show up in meditation and in community that actually leads them to more shutting down, that can lead them running away. And one of the things I appreciate about both of you really is the way that you share that's really authentic and honest. And that, I think, is what actually nurtures that kind of being more human, being more real with each other. And that's something that takes a level of courage as a teacher or a public figure that not everyone has, just to shout both of you out in that way.

Jeff and I actually have never met in person. But I just have such a fondness for you, just the past couple of years through emails and attending each other's teachings and conversations over Zoom to really see that there's this affinity for being really honest and open-hearted and tender. And the ways you share your challenges as a teacher is really

inspiring. And we know Dan is out there naming himself an asshole in my life. But really just being really honest about his foibles and his challenges and inspiring a lot of folks along the way. I think if you can model for people that it is okay to be okay with your ugliness, with the whole catastrophe of your personality, that's a huge service. And it's particularly useful when it comes from meditation teachers, which I'm not one, but you two are. And for people to see, yeah, yeah, these two have trained their minds for many years on meditation, retreat, et cetera, et cetera. But the life still happens. Again, as you will hear, life very much still happens. And we're not always in full lotus for all of it. So I think there's a real service aspect to

showing that it's okay to be fucked up. Yes, I feel like that's the only way I can show up as a teacher, anything else would be pretend because I would be posturing in some way and not really being authentic in terms of what I have to share because everything that's of value, I think that I have to share because of lessons learned through my own life.

Yeah, you give people permission to be themselves and there's something that happens when someone is just being honest or real. We call vulnerability about their real situation. It's a place of awareness because by attempting to be aware enough to articulate the particular dilemma or challenge that you're living inside, you help others see the particular one that they're living inside and vice versa. And so we all level up that as a group in terms of your awareness. It's pretty magical that it works that way. Yeah, because again, it has to be fostered or nurtured or there has to be led by example.

And I'm thinking of, I don't know when it was this last year sometime in 2022, Jeff, you posted something that was just so real of what you were struggling with having a newborn and oh, it just broke me open how honest you were and how powerful that was. Is there such a thing as overshare? There's this radical pastor, Nadia Boltzwepper, and she talks about, yeah, she talks about teaching or preaching from scars, not wounds. And I always think of it, like, if you're sharing from a wound, it's like getting other people bloody and messy and pussy.

But if it's scarred, even if it's a new scar, I think that it's easier to share and have a little bit more perspective because you're not in that overly protective and tender role moment. And yet when you have an open wound though, it's often important. Now I'm talking about regular people, not just teachers. It's often important to get help. So you do kind of want to have people you trust. Maybe you don't want to bring it to a party or not. I mean, maybe you do. I don't know. But when you have an open wound, you do want to be able to turn to others for help with that. Oh, sure. I think she was talking more about so in terms of

oversharing as a teacher or the front of the room or even maybe as a writer, but it's hard. It's hard to know. I don't know if it's just like clear cut. Yes or no, you share. Don't share. I have to feel it out. I think that's such a brilliant way to put it. It scars versus wounds. And even in life, if you think about it, there may be your core that you can share. You're really the stuff that's really right now happening. But if you just share too much about your challenges too overtly, to too many people and to broadcast it too much out there. People don't know how to manage it. It has a whole social hygiene thing that is so that you gotta kind of navigate.

Brunei Brown is brilliant on this stuff. But before I wrap up this segment and we dive into the shit, just so people get a sense of our relationship said, can you map it out like how we all know each other? I don't know how you met, but Dan and I met 10 years ago, yeah, wow, through New York Insight Meditation Center, where I was the executive director at the time. And we started connecting pretty soon after that, just having lunch occasionally, and then you slowly inviting me into 10% happier,

becoming a teacher there, to new-ing our friendship, and just really getting along and digging each other and just a really sweet, tender friendship, Dan, you are a very supportive friend. I've been really important the past couple of years for me, love spending time with you and your family. And then Jeff, I know through 10% happier. Again, we've never met in person, but just have such a fondness for you. And so excited to come to Toronto and meet you soon.

Me too. One of the most charming things about Seven, I really started falling in love with her is that her love language is, she'll send you articles and books And so right after I met so she just started Heading me with bunch of articles and books and I love that type of a nerd meditation nerd at the very least and so I Just remember that as a very charming early impression my earliest impression of Jeff Was reading an article he wrote in the New York Times about a strange month long meditation

retreat he did. And I thought, I thought, the article is just so well written that I reached out to you. I mean, I knew most meditation teachers, at least who they were at that time, but I had never heard of Jeff. And so I reached out to him and basically begged him to be my friend and then he came to New York and he was, this was pre-kids. So I met him. I think he might have slept an hour.

I went to brunch with him and he might have, he was at some big party that I before and maybe slept an hour or something like that. Anyway, we had brunch and then took a walk in Central Park and I've basically been man crushing on him ever since. Jeff, you want to jump in here? Well, man, I'll be buddy. Yeah. Right back at you. I remember that was also 10 years.

That was like 2011 or 2012. Just this affable American dude coming at me through emails so just sincerely into meditating. This is before 10% happier. You even wrote that book. So you're your ABC thing, but you were so into it. And you were into all the things I was into, all the big questions, you you know when you first approach practice and you for and the literature practice and the

conversation around practice meditation, it's pretty mind blowing because the possibilities of human health and connection that are articulated there are way beyond what's talked about in the mainstream and you don't know what's real and what's not real. It's arriving on a different planet. And so I think there was the sense of for you and I, we are still in that very early, really excitable stage of mapping the planet. What is this place?

What part of this is baloney? What part of this is like really real, is real beyond real? The possibilities here and there was a sense of being mutual explorers in that. And I think that was, I felt like with you, I could be that part came out for me. And then there was just all the things that Seven A. Said too, just about being a really supportive and awesome friend. I mean, truth is, I was kind of in my own little small zone there,

and Dan really introduced me to the world in a way, and then how to talk to the world. I would just go into my weird, crazy consciousness stuff and you Dan would always come back, how can this be directly relevant to someone living their life right now? It's, oh yeah, someone needs to remind me of that. So I always appreciated that grounding quality that Dan has. And then of course, just being a professional communicator,

it's know how to do that. It's amazing. I guarantee you, I've gotten more out of my friendship with both of you than you've gotten out of your friendship with me. It's just to be around people who take the practice this seriously and then bring it into all of the looks and crannies of their lives. That's just incredibly valuable for me, given that I was living a very conventional modern life in New York City, not surrounded at all by people who were interested in this stuff, just been massively impactful for me. And really, it's why I wanted to put this type of episode together. It's a total experiment,

but I really want to see if we can give people the contact high of what it's like to be around other people who take this stuff seriously, try to apply it in their lives. And most importantly, take the practice seriously, but don't take themselves too seriously. And how beneficial the practice can be in and of itself, and then the HOV lane effect of doing it with other people. Having said all of that, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about some shit.

We'll be right back with more meditation party right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking.

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You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay, welcome back everybody. As promised, we're gonna keep it real. So, we don't have names for these segments yet. Well, hopefully at some point when we get our shit together, we'll have like real fun names for the segments we've played with calling this gripe session, although that makes it superficial because we're going to talk about stuff from our own lives that goes way beyond near gripes. I like the idea of maybe calling this the shit, but anyway, in this segment, one or more of us will talk about some way in which life is kicking our ass right now. Sab, I think you have probably the most acute issue. So take the floor if you don't mind.

Oh, it's only one issue. Matthew, you hear that? Yeah, man. Those of you who've heard me on here before, talk about cancer and various challenges in my life know that I've had many difficult years, but I have never been so happy to say goodbye to a year than to 2022. 2021 wasn't so hot either. I received my fourth diagnosis of cancer this time,

really extensive, Dan saw me just very soon after I got the diagnosis, and I was really sick. I was had a lot going on. And it was really challenging. The hardest time I've ever had in my life. And I don't tend towards depression. I'm more of like an anxious type, but I reached points of just despair that were just really rough. And I cannot say enough about the importance of a practice

in moments like that to really have the capacity to stay grounded in reality, to have perspective, to not get swallowed up by that despair and fear and just the papancha, that like the mind that just flows with thought after thought of the worst possibilities. So that was a really rough year. I was disabled for the end of 2021 and into 2022 because most of the cancer was in my

hip and bones and so I couldn't walk. And I would literally like look out the window and just watch people walking on the street and marvel at that capacity and just wish people to always cherish that, that ability just to move and that experience I realized came from the privilege of being able to walk and now be able to walk again, but not having that capacity for so long was just really humbling. Plus the amount of pain I was experiencing, which is a whole other conversation about practice and really changed my relationship to how to teach about pain and to really like load up the compassion and the self-compassion and the spaciousness around it, and it teach pain meditation in a very different way now, you know, really allowing people space

for doing whatever they need to do to have some ease because I could not sit still in that pain. It was just so much. And so I found ways to flow and move and even rock my body at certain times. And that was my practice. That was meditation because it was just too painful, even with pain meds, which I didn't take too much of because I knew I was in it for the long haul and I didn't want to create any,

I didn't take any heavy ones, but even just with Advil and things, I didn't want to create dependencies. Okay, so that was the cancer. Then it was recovering from radiation, from surgeries, from different treatments. And I broke my femur bone on vacation in Costa Rica, but I didn't know I'd broken my femur bone.

So the ball of the femur, and I thought I had just pinched a nerve or something. So I was experiencing insane pain, but I didn't have a context for it, and that's really an interesting practice point too, because when you don't know what's happening, you can really experience pain, just just pain, which is what I did for the latter half of my vacation, and spend another week in Costa Rica with a broken femur of all, which I know sounds nuts, but it really does again speak to the power of the practice and I don't

recommend this, but it is quite incredible to see how practice can ground us and even in something as severe as a broken bone. So I had a hip replacement. Started to recover from that. So I'll Dan pretty soon after that spinner was lovely weekend at his home with my then partner who at the end of the summer, we then decided to split up. So after all of that, I ended a 14-year marriage to round out 2022 as the worst year of my life. And I can laugh about it now. I have some perspective. It is definitely a scar at this point, not a wound, but there was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering and heartache and tenderness involved in that. That was just again, so humbling to recognize how much hope and just dreams I had put into this relationship that was just not going to work in the ways that I had wanted it to work. We're remaining friends

and it's not acrimonious, but it's still a dissolving of a particular idea and ideal to be partnered with someone. So I'm now discovering what it means to live alone, which I haven't done in... well, I haven't done most of my adult life, actually, which I am actually enjoying a lot, having my own space and reveling in that. But it's so humbling to be a 15-year-old black woman who has a pretty funky body from scars and treatments and doesn't want to dye her gray hair and out there wondering what it means to date and maybe possibly find love in the world at this time in my life. So yeah, there's a lot of shit. And I'm also realizing, you know, shit is fertilizer. So there's so many lessons from that time,

but I have to say I'd mentioned this before we started recording that gratitude has been the biggest practice for me, and it is such a game changer. It's been so powerful to just recognize all the things I'm grateful for in my life, including my health as tenuous it has been at times, and my body is scarred up and banged up as it is. My relationships, including my ex and all the ways I'm resourced and loved and supported in this life. So that's my shit. Some courageous shit, both in how you handled it and I was there for some of it.

So I can speak from experience and how you're relating it now. Just to say, I'm trying to get said on the apps, because way she's not playing up sufficiently how hot she is. So we should get her on the apps and do it to be on the lookout for Seven A. Celessi on the dating apps once I can cajole her onto them. Orgals, I'm open to all genders. Nice. Nice. All right. I'm speechless.

Just how you're able to navigate that. You're a perspective on it. I find when things get really bad, it's just hard to keep that center anyway. I just admire you. I've had a lot of practice. I was really interested in what you were saying about how it's changed how you approach teaching people working with pain, because the classic way of working with pain of course

is to open to the sensations or go to the edges of the sensations or see it as just sensation. And yeah, you, so you're given the thumbs down. So can you say a little more about how you think of it now? Yeah. You know, there is course, there's merit to that. And it's not that I don't encourage working with that as well. But there's a way in which a chronic pain, especially, so pain that you're experiencing for extended length of time,

whether that's days or weeks or years. There's a way in which continually coming back to just the sensations is, there's a way in which continually coming back to just the sensations is it's almost like repeating thoughts. It's that dead end that Dan mentioned before. Actually it creates its own relation patterns. So some sense goes. Exactly. It is. It's enforcing those patterns. It's exactly what it is. And so really bringing some sense of agency to it that is in the form of self-love, self-care, soothing, touch, and I really have been working with movement and how movement can be part of that practice as well.

There's such a fetishization of the silence and the stillness that happens in the practice and it's not to throw away that. It's very powerful. But when we hold on to that as a panacea or the only way to do things, it can really limit us. And it can be harmful, really. Can you say more about the gratitude practice because it's counterintuitive

to try to muster gratitude when everything sucks in the way in which I imagine it might have felt at various points in 2021 and 2022. Yes, and I think it relates back to what Jeff was saying about the patterns. We can get into these patterns of thinking and being that perpetuate something we don't necessarily want to have around, we don't want perpetuated. So gratitude is like this exodus, like this knife, this very powerful tool that can come in and just change the narrative, change the feeling, change the thought patterns,

and it can be really hard. You know, it's like with forgiveness, sometimes people are like, oh, I can't forgive that. And so that's kind of the point. Like it's easy to forgive the things that are easy to forgive, but the hard practice of forgiveness is forgiving what we think is unforgivable.

And so gratitude to me is the same way. Yes, we can be grateful for things when everything feels sunny and feel grateful for a sunny day. But can we be grateful for the great days? Can we be grateful for the challenges? Can we be grateful? And like with a lot of things, you have to start small or start easy and be grateful for what is easy to be grateful for, but that pro move is to start to be grateful for whatever it shows up. And what does that look like for you? Is it just you're walking around doing your life and you just wake up and remember, oh,

yeah, let's, let me send some beams of gratitude out for whatever it is that's coming to mind or do you sit down and doing some formal way? I have actually multiple gratitude practices that I've had for years. I have two friends, shout out to Shelley Nicole, my neighbor down the hall, and Lynn, I text them almost every day, a gratitude list. We text each other, and it's lovely.

Sometimes we do pictures, sometimes we do things that are difficult to be grateful for. We often are expressing, they're two different lists. So I send to Shelley Nicole, and I send to Lynn throughout the day. And then I have journaling practice of writing lists of things I'm grateful for periodically. I don't do it every day, but I've been really leaning into that the end of 2022 a lot. So that I, even though I talk trash about 2022 because it was garbage, I also want to recognize that it gave me a lot,

you know, and I want to be grateful for my experiences too. And then you can talk me about it, as we're doing now, I think, as a practice. Sometimes I wake up and I can see my mind pattern going to something negative and I will turn it towards gratitude. So I'll just, in my my mind go through a list of things I'm grateful for, but I don't necessarily bring it into like a formal sitting practice as much,

maybe because I have all these other modes that I bring it in. That's super helpful. I love keeping things on a practical tip for people who might want to try it at home. Anything else to add? typical tip for people who might want to try it at home. Anything else to add? Maybe just to bring it back to the Meditation Party theme that I did not do that alone, although amazing things that I've been through and how much I've had perspective and strength and it was because of the support of many, many people, many beings, including the land, the earth, and nature, and that's really important for people to hear because there's can be such an individualistic turn towards how do I get through this, and it really, even if it's one person who can support you,

even if it's your team of doctors or the wonderful feelings you get from your relationship with your pets or your kids, that that support is really important. Well said, and we can't hear this enough. Can't hear it enough because the whole culture is pushing us toward individual achievement and tech-induced isolation and consumerism. And I'm not saying any of that is in and of itself horrible, but if that's all you've got, that's an impoverished life because of how we were designed by nature. You know, our nervous systems are designed to interact with other nervous systems. So you're

not checking that box. You got a problem. But it was hard to check that box in 2022. Yes, 2021, during the COVID pandemic, or it was just all these normal support structures were so much harder to draw on. And that was the main one of the main things that here again, again, is the isolation that people felt in that definitely I felt too. Yeah. It's just useful to hear from a meditation teacher dealing with real challenges in both of you guys or modeling that here. I want to say I'm not exempting myself from the shit. I have plenty of my own shit. We are however going to make this meditation party

episode style a regular feature on this show. So I promise on the next episode of meditation party, I'll talk about some stuff that's been going on for me recently. I've had some work conflicts that have been quite literally keeping me up at night for a year. So I'll talk about that next time. But I do want to move us on to our next segment, which we're workshopping the name for these segments. But we're thinking about the name, what's your problem where people can call us up and tell us what they're dealing with and then we can respond to it.

So we'll take a quick break and come back with some other center voice mails and we'll bomb you with wisdom. What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem?

What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem? party. This is a segment that we are temporarily, maybe we'll permanently call it this, but temporarily we're calling it, what's your problem? And I put out the call for voice

mails on Twitter for people to call us and ask us questions. And we've got a bunch of them. We're not going to have time for all of them, but we're going to do two good ones. Here is the first. Check it out. Hi, this is Rosemary from Indianapolis. and my burning question for you is, on Manifestation, several years ago I heard Deepak Chopra say, look into the gap, have the desire, release the outcome, and let the universe handle the details. And that was to manifest something that you were desiring or needing or wanting. And I'd like your take on that or what is your take on using meditation to manifest something

in your life. Thank you very much. Bye. Jeff and Seb want me to answer this one. Largely because they know that manifesting is a trigger word for me. I generally think manifesting is, I think the scientific term for this is bullshit, like total fucking bullshit. And largely when I say that, I'm pointing to the power of positive thinking or the secret, these canonical turds that teach people that you can get whatever you want by just envisioning it and making a vision board and thinking positive all the time. And you can get a diamond necklace or cure your cancer. And this is demonstrably untrue and a damaging thing to tell people. Just do a thought experiment here. If think about the earthquake in Haiti, which I covered back in 2012, I believe, horrifying event.

So what's going on there was everybody in Port-April Prince thinking incorrectly and they brought that earthquake upon themselves? No, that's ridiculous. And so to not only does this idea of the power of positive thinking and manifesting as it's often used, not only is it a victim blaming ideology, but it also is just a dangerous thing to tell people because if you're sick, you should go to a doctor. That doesn't mean you can't do other things. That doesn't mean you can't have positivity in your life. But to put so much pressure on yourself that you have to have this spotless mind, and if you don't have it spotlessly positive, your cancer will recur or you won't be able to cure it, it's just ridiculous. And many people have made millions and millions of dollars

pedaling this kind of reckless hope and I stand firm against it. That being said, the quote from Deepak there, who I should have on the show sometime, Deepak Chopra, I made fun of him a little bit in my first book. But I would say that Deepak is on the benign end of the self-help spectrum. And as I read that quote, I'll recite it to you, slip into the gap, have the desire, release the outcome, and let the universe handle the details. That actually,

I can defend that one, which is, as the Buddhists often talk about, and I deep-pucks more in the Hindu school, but the Buddhists often talk about non-attachment to results that you can have a goal, a kind of healthy desire. By the way, desire is often maligned in the Buddhist tradition and then seen as the root of all of our suffering, but it's actually, if you want to get nerdy about it,

it's, they use the word Tanha, which is thirst, but there's actually, if you want to get nerdy about it, it's, they use the word tonhau, which is thirst. But there's actually a healthy kind of desire. I think it's called chanda, which is the desire we might have for enlightenment or to be useful or to do something beautiful or whatever. So that's different from greed. And so there, you can have a healthy desire to succeed in your life in some way, to find love, to be of service. What you have to recognize, though, is that we live in a world of ceaseless impermanence and entropy, where we cannot really control the outcome. And you can have the healthy desire, but and you can have the healthy desire, but you're going to drive yourself crazy if you don't succeed in having some measure of non-attachment to the results. And in that version of manifestation, which is a much humbler reality-based endeavor, then that I can support and give you some pleasure to say something kind about Deepak Chopra because I read that quote

It just seems like yeah do your best and then recognize that you can't control the results and oh you can control You can I heard a great Buddhist teacher say recently we can control causes not effects And I think that's a reasonably good way to to operate in. Okay, Jeff and Seb, where did I go wrong? Do you want to go or do I need to go? No, I don't feel like I disagree with anything you said, Dan, you made it sound like we would. I think that it's a spectrum. We're using this word manifestation,

but what does it really mean? As you were speaking, I was wondering, like, is this a word that we're using to describe many different things? And in my life, I do bring intention to what I aspire for. And like you were saying, with goals, aspirations, our hopes, there is some visioning going on. And I've been known to make a vision border too or more. And so for me, the practice is so much about being with the present moment and really experiencing what's here and sometimes what's here are my thoughts about the future, what I want to bring into this world. And so there's, I don't know, there's just like for me, a tender quality to

manifestation that's really about honoring those hopes, those aspirations for me have a lot to do these past couple of years with good health. And so that doesn't replace me going to memorial Sloan Kettering, which I did think to Biaga, your wife, who recommended me to go to a wonderful oncologist there. And it doesn't mean that I don't take my medication or do other things, but there are also these kind of heartfelt, very present moment, hopes I have for my well-being

that are about the future, that are about manifesting something different, fully healed body, or to be completely cancer-free, which I'm not at the moment. And so, what is that? What is that process? And if we're talking about causes, is it a cause of my well-being? I think it is related. The less stress I have, the more positivity I have, that is good for my immune system, and it is good for how I will move through the world today and tomorrow. And so is that also a part of what we talk about when we say manifestation? And what you were describing the far end of the spectrum of basically wishful thinking and

snake oil pedaling in some cases. And then there's the really true practice of, as the Buddha's say, that everything rests on the tip of intention. And so how do we find that balance for ourselves? That was beautifully said. I absolutely agree with every word. That was my, I think, getting clear about what exactly we mean when we're talking about manifestation is important because it's a huge spectrum. But I do know for me, and this is often,

I think how it's described the act of getting very clear about something that's important for me, like a situation, like how I want my family to live or where visioning, where, what that home could look like or things like that, that is a practice. And I come back to it and I visualize it and I and part of that practice is I basically

I it's is I pretend it's already happened. It's like I let it sink in so deeply into me through equanimity that I feel like it's fit that completely It's already in process in some way and that is what the deep act quote is about. It's about not having a list of resolves, but you drop it in and you, it's something that you want to have happen in your life and you practice knowing that it's already here. And that's just another way of not pushing or pulling on it, not being in a sense, not being attached to it. It's like, you're like, okay, it's already happened. And then what happens? In all of these ways, you act in as though it were already true

and that therefore makes it a little more likely that it'll come about, just in the common sense ways of how you prioritize things and what you're communicating to other people and the kinds of opportunities you notice when you're scanning out there. Because you've done this practice of getting clear about something that you're hoping for

through all the ways of being human and living in life, then there's a better chance that might come about, and that to me is not mystical, it's common sense. I will, however, also, and on one last mystical note, which is that we don't really understand the relationship between inside and the outside, and awareness is a huge mystery.

And there are, when you go to these multidisciplinary science of consciousness conferences where there are neuroscientists and philosophers of mind and philosophers and contemplatives all sharing perspectives, there is very humble feeling in the room of people recognize this is a massive mystery. And so if there were some kind of connection between the end and the out, between what we know on the inside and what can happen on the outside, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be so reckless enough to try to chart that terrain. I'm just saying, coming from a position of real humility, but the nature of awareness and reality, who knows? So that's how I'm just saying coming from a position of real humility, but the nature of awareness and reality, who knows?

So that's how I would finish it. Yeah, thank you for adding that, Jeff. No, I actually, you may surprise you to hear that. I agree with that. In the Buddhist scriptures, I believe this is true in the Hindu scriptures, too. There's all this talk about people who have attained deep levels of concentration and then can manipulate the elements. They have essentially superpowers that can walk through walls, they can multiply their

bodies. I've seen no evidence for this personally, but there are a lot of meditation teachers I know who say, well, what this teacher is not with us anymore, Munindra, and he used to say you don't have to believe it, but it's true. That's all very intriguing and confusing for me. However, my basic point is that manifestation as it's commonly used in the self-help world by multi-millionaire authors and conference organizers is the power of positive thinking, which is a book and it spawned a whole bunch of other books and it's like the law of attraction is another buzz phrase. And it usually means that

this thing that is pretty much not true, which is that you can, if you ever watch the movie, don't recommend you watch it, but if you ever watch the movie, the secret, there's literally a woman looking in a jewelry store window and she gets the diamond necklace off of the mannequin onto herself. And this shit is not going to happen. And so I think it's an incredibly dangerous message. And I say this is a reporter who spent a lot of time attending these conferences and seeing the damage it does to people. However, you know, if you take it to the butine and to the spectrum of having healthy intentions

and doing your best to see those results come into the world, absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know, I know I can get a little dysregulated about this, but I just, I've seen the damage it does to people's lives when this message is warped and monetized, weaponized really. Are you going to tell us how you really feel Dan? Seven, I manifested this, I really, I was thinking ahead of time, I wanted the real Dan to come through here, planted the message about manifestation and now, just happened.

I think it's because of realities on the inside and the outside and cosmic soup. I'm moving things along here. The next voicemail is a really good one. It's from an anonymous listener. It's on the subject of revenge. Here we go. Hi, Dan. One of the topics I'd like to hear you touch on is the topic of revenge or the desire to get revenge after someone has wronged you. Coming out of a failed 17-year marriage, I have a lot of rage and pain. While I find the various methods discussed in your program useful for distracting myself or choosing not to ruminate, I feel like it's just avoiding the problem.

For example, I can start to drift off thinking about how they've moved on and are living a new life and I can catch myself realizing that I'm thinking and I can bring myself back to neutral, but it's not really dealing with the underlying issue. I'm more or less just running away from the anger. How do I put this in a perspective that's more healing than just running away? What am I missing that deals with the loss? Is it just time? Love your show, by the way. Thanks. Bye. Thank you, anonymous listener. Great question. Seb, I'm tempted to go to you first if you're up for it.

I have so many questions. I wish I could talk to this person. One of the things that I would like to know is why they say failed marriage ending after 17 years is not necessarily a failure. This idea that every relationship has to be told deaf to us part, otherwise it's a failure is I think pretty antiquated at this point. Most people have multiple relationships in their adult lives and a lot of folks do not stay married to one person for their entire experience of romantic partnership. And so that idea of failures,

the first thing that I would wanna question because I think there can be a lot of feelings and energy around that that lead to those feelings of revenge or unhappiness or, and you know, he mentions loss at the end. There is loss, but loss doesn't have to be only tinged with that sense of despair. There can be a real tenderness and gratitude in loss. And part of my 2022 end of year gratitude reflections have been really being consciously grateful for everything that I experienced

in my relationship. And so if we only focus on the end of the relationship, as if the relationship is a failure because it ended and therefore it colors the entire 17 or for me 14 years as negative, then yes, there's going to be those negative emotions, including revenge or ruminating on them having moved on. But if we can really extend the awareness to the good things about a relationship

that probably existed, if only for even the first few years that I think it really changes the tenor there. And it's hard when someone has moved on. My partner has moved on to be with someone else and that has been part of the most painful part about our separation. And it's again choosing the pro moves of doing the hard thing, but having actually happiness

for him has been really powerful for me. And choosing to really remember that I want happiness for him because I always wanted happiness for him. I love him and he loves me and wants me to be happy too. And to really lean into that, even when it's hard, to lean into the gratitude, to lean into the Buddhist words, it's modita that joy for the joy of others is really powerful. And I'm not saying any of this is easy to do, and tracking that rumination and those repeating thoughts and those patterns is really an important first step

that he's already been doing, because you can see and he doesn't want to perpetuate it, but sometimes just tracking that in that sort of mindfulness way again, we've been having this theme of, there needs to be kind of a hard stop to the patterns to if we just keep watching them and we don't use these other kind of sharp tools like gratitude, like Mojita, those thoughts can keep going.

Well said, and what comes to mind for me is just, I think of this quote, better to be free than to be right. And I know for myself and in the past, when I've had conflict with people, there can be this part of me that's just going over the, in over and over, the way they wronged me, the, and I know I'm right. And in the sense that I, it did happen, there was something unfair there, there was something, and I can only imagine after 17 years of a relationship that, how much that might be on that side or on both sides. And I can only imagine after 17 years of a relationship that how much that might be on that side or on both sides.

And I can just keep digging that hole or I can decide that I want, as he's deciding, that I want to actually be free around, and by free around it, I mean, not need to be the person who's right, not need to be the person who's aggrieved anymore, basically to go through a kind of process of forgiveness, which isn't about condoning the other person, but it's more about, in a sense, like, working

with the core emotions there so that they no longer have that hold over you. And the only way I know, and there are different tools we already talked about, but meditation can be a big support in that way of going into the actual core of that anger and what's or what's underneath it, lettingting yourself have wished to feel it, it's okay. And letting that begin to move some of those energies. And I've shifted a lot of things in my life from doing that. I've also gotten the point of my life where I needed to get support in doing that.

That it wasn't my own agency, wasn't enough. Like I needed someone to help me guide that process for some of it. Especially some of the deeper core core stuff. There's this huge thing of anger, but what's that anger about? And this, I know this sounds a bit psychotherapy, but there's, there is some core wound or some injury from being younger, like something in there that is why there's so much of that. And that when you, and you don't have to know, get an intellectual response, but when you start to come into contact with some of those more primordial energies through trauma work, through

Meditation through therapy, there's lots of tools, through even somatic work, then that can be really transformative. You start to see how they're running so many different patterns in your life. And this is how big changes get made in people's nervous systems. And it's for real. So I would just keep that in Korean curiosity going, but what's in there? What's underneath that? Yeah. I love that. Do you want to be right or do you want to be free?

That's where you should get t-shirts. It's like, I don't need this to have a hold on me. But I would you're so attached to your own convictions. It's the hardest thing to give to us. No, I've been wrong. It's this really this desire for fairness that actually doesn't work in your favor in some cases. But I'm right about manifesting just. I was on retreat years ago and we were doing meta practice, loving kindness practice,

which includes doing loving kindness directed towards yourself, towards benefactors, towards people that you love and care for, but then you end with all beings, but you go towards a difficult person. And for years, I had been, the difficult person was my ex, my previous relationship for this one. And I was already with my last partner,

and I was still doing meta meditation that included him. And I asked the teacher, it was James Barra's. And I said, look, I've been doing meta meditation for this difficult person for years. And I just have the same stories keep going that I think I'm right. And I just keeps going. And I keep going. And I think I'm right and I just keep going and I keep going. And I think I'm right. And he just turned to me and he just said, you are right. No, it's it. I was like, oh. And I never did that again. I love it.

That's crazy. You got a bow, you got your cake and eat it too. You were right and free. But guy was the shit in your shirtalyzer. The fertilizer in your shit. There's times where I guess to say that we have been wronged in some way and can we let it go. Yeah, I've dwelled on it enough or something.

It's like, okay, I've done it enough rounds with it. Yeah, it's great. Well said both of you. Let's move on to our final segment after the break. We're going to do a segment that again, these are just working titles playing with the title Coolade or the Coolade, we're going to do quick recommendations of things we're freaking out about recently that have produced some sort of evangelical zeal.

So a little light segment to wrap things up after the break. Welcome back. It's our final segment. We're calling this the Cool aid or the nerd out. I don't know what we're calling it, but we're just going to do some recommendation. Not every one of us will have something we're ridiculously excited about every week. So it's just going to be me and Jeff and this final segment and Seb can trash talk from the sidelines. Jeff, what's your thing right now?

I'm just at the point in parenting where I'm finally getting a little bit of time left in my evenings and thank God. So I'm back to reading and I my two big joyful things right now are reading sci-fi and fantasy books. There's just so much happening in that space right now. It's just exploded in terms of new voices. So I love doing that. There's a writer I really like, Sophia Seminar and another one, Nicola Griffiths.

And just I can't get enough of that. And that's, I can go on in massive nerd rant about why I think sci-fi and fantasy are so great as genres. Sci-fi is about the mind and about the future and about possibility. But it's of course always about the present. The things it deals with the themes.

I just reread Ursula against the Dispossessed, which is a brilliant book about different a utopian society and how it relates to a capital society in the future. And so it's a way of reflecting on your current time that is to me just a very exciting genre, I've always loved it. And then fantasy is more like the body, it's more history, it's more magic. It's more magic.

It's about where we came from the archetypes that we live inside. And so there's a writer there, Gene Wolf, who's this kind of classic 70s fantasy writer. I'm going through his old uv run. So that gives me a lot of pleasure. And then nerding out about, I'm reading a bunch of books on neuro diversity right now, which is really exciting to me. not just because of partly it's based on my own experience, but my son is probably neurodiverse in some way. It's seeming like to me the real issue, the really question of what practice that's so pressing is, how do we create practices for different people with different kinds of challenges with different kinds of brains? That there's, practice tends to be this one size fits all thing that is offered to us to sit down and follow the breath or do this.

And of course, we know that's not true. There are lots of different kinds of practices and they have different orientations, but there are also lots of different kinds of brains. And so to begin to think about what practice support folks with ADHD or with folks with AST, you know, more autism side or just the whole AST, you know, more autism side or just the whole spectrum of things that can happen. That really interests me. And there is a ton. You can see through just reading about the neurodiversity movement and some of the framings there. It already gives me ideas for practice. I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking there. And yeah, that's that would be my joy.

And what's good about that too for me is it's just, it's what I'm living inside. In the sense that I don't even know what I think about it. I don't know what conclusions I'm coming to yet. I really enjoy that space of creativity when you know you're immersed in these things and that something's coming together, but you don't know quite what it is yet. And that's the feeling I have right now around the neurodiversity stuff. Like I'm just steeping in all this material and I can tell there's this big learning happening, but I don't know what's going to, it's what's going to merge from it or where it's going to go,

or even what the learning is yet. So that would be my cool aid. That sounds like a healthy version of manifesting. And you've already made somebody great contributions on this front, Jeff, and I, I can imagine more to come. My cool aid is embarrassingly obvious. Obviously, it's maybe not the right word, but maybe basic, I don't know what the right word is. Anyway, it is sports. I have lived at me. Maybe I cared about sports when I was seven or eight.

If you, I could tell you like the 1977 lineup of the Red Sox, but very quickly, I stopped caring about sports in high school and in college, well, other guys were like, really interested in sports. I was just super interested in Indie Rock. I could tell you like the bassist for super chunk and great band. What bands were on which labels and I just sort of knew each scene and each town and that was where I directed all of my nerdyness and I didn't care about sports at all. The fact that

one of the reasons my wife agreed to marry me because I wasn't going to drag her into watching golf on Sundays if that's even the day when they golf. However, we have an eight year old boy who is obsessed, and this just happened about six months ago. He was all Pikachu and Marvel until about six months ago when he became obsessed with sports and I am obsessed with him. And so I called the cable company and said, how do I watch sports?

And they just gave us this whole package. And now I watch the games with my son. I took him to a Jets game, but that's a New York team for those who don't know. And it was a freezing rain that I took him to this game and him and his best friend and the best friend's dad. And I enjoyed it. And I would I realize is that this is an incredible

sphere of human endeavor that I was sleeping on. And not only that, it's just a great way to bond with my son. It's what he wants to talk about. And I can actually carry a conversation with him about it. I can go to activities, whether he's playing in the sport or we're going to see pros compete, and it's a great way for the two of us to spend time.

And also, I can like talk to other people about sports. My wife was laughing at me, mocking me the other day because I watched a Vikings game where it was the biggest comeback in the history of the NFL. And everybody I saw for the next day, I talked about, did you see the game? And my old friends were like, they didn't know what to do with this.

And she said, welcome to humanity. This is what people talk about. And now I have this way of engaging with other people that was really off the table before. It's such a say that I really care that much about sports, but I can enjoy it. I never know who to root for because I always feel bad for the team that's losing. So I'm not like the best sports fan out there. And I couldn't tell you the difference between a quarterback and a tight end.

And yet I do see the beauty in this whole field. Yeah, so that's my cool aid. Okay, first, I saw SuperChunk. Jeff will get this at Fufun Electronic. Oh, no, what do you get? It was like the early 90s. I also saw Nirvana there and many other great bands. I wonder if we were to say, did you see Fishbone there? I did. Were we at that concert together?

We were at that concert. That's a lot of fun. I've seen Fishbone multiple times, but yes. That's so cool. That's funny. Yeah, I just said that Southern Flash, that would have been true, because that would have the same year we were at McGill. So for those who don't know, Jeff and I went to the same university at the same time, but we did not know each other, unfortunately.

In Montreal. Yeah. In Montreal. But Dan is so Alexander into a particular sport more than others or. He likes football, but he likes all the sports, but he really likes football. Unfortunately, I'm also unfortunately is really good at it. So we're he plays flag football, but next year starts tackle football, which his doctor mom and his type of contract father don't want him to play, but we're

trying to figure out how to handle that. Well, neither of you are very big people. So he might get weeded out of that pretty quickly just by genetics alone. The problem is Bianca's family consists of large people and Alexander's growth charts indicate that he is going to be a large person, which is really working for me because I want him to crush my enemies. And because there's never been a large Harris all the way back to this steadily.

So this is very exciting and yet scary because I don't want him to play football. But yeah. Let me just saying closing that I love you guys and I really am grateful to you for agreeing to do this weird little experiment and also for just being incredibly bold in the stuff you're sharing. So thanks for doing this. Thank you, thank you both. I love you both. And yeah, it feels like an exciting opportunity to just hang out in this way,

but nerd out and love out and just be really real about the practice. Absolutely. Next meditation party will meet around the beer fridge. The metaphorical beer fridge and watch ourselves get even more uninhibited. And then we take Dan to the day. Take me where? To the dance floor. We get super chumble, get a special guest, super chunk on some of those devastating guitar licks and watch him do is gyrating. He's been electrocuted. I'd love to see Dan in the day at a concert. I just can't imagine you on the dance floor, but maybe I'm wrong. What happened to

those concerts? It's gonna happen. I probably was the guy folding his hands in the back of the room, but I'm getting loosening up. My son, I do dance with my son. Nobody needs to see it, but yeah, I do dance. I'm getting, I'm trying to head in your direction, Jeff. You don't want to add my direction. You want to have seven a. You're driving. Yeah.

Pre-pandemic seven I had plans to go to Zumba together. She was going to try to get me to do Zumba with her. So dancing has been on my agenda for a while. Good to hang out friends. Very good to hang out guys. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Both.

Thanks again to Seb and Jeff. As I mentioned at the top of the show, this really is an experiment. We all really enjoyed it and hope to do more. But we'd love to get your feedback so we can do a better job. You can hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment over on 10%.com. After the episode, after we recorded it, Seb, Jeff and I had a big email chain about some things that we thought we could have done better. Seb was a little worried that perhaps she didn't provide enough practical advice when she talked about her experiences with cancer and divorce.

Jeff and I generally disagreed with that. I criticized myself for being a little overly strident about the whole manifestation thing. Seven A and Jeff both felt like they held back a little bit on making the case for mystery, even while acknowledging the dangers of magical thinking. And we all felt that we did not leave enough room for more unstructured, spontaneous back and forth. So we want to work on that for sure.

And we also want to up the fun quotient over time. Okay, so don't forget to hit us up with comments. If you have them, and don't forget to sign up for our retreat. If you're interested, again, it's at the Omega Institute which is in Rhineback, New York, and the link is in the show notes. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Suckerman,

DJ Cashmere, Justine Davy, and Lauren Smith our supervising producer is Merce Schneiderman and Kimmy Regler, is our managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultra Violet Audio. We'll see you all on Monday for a brand new episode with Amber Tamlet. We're talking about speaking of magic,

or at least some element of magic in mystery. We're going to talk about intuition. 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 Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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