Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Handle Toxic Thoughts Sebene Selassie And Jeff Warren

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

What to do when the voice in your head is an asshole.   Sebene Selassie is an author and meditation teacher. She writes the popular newsletter remind me to love and her first book is called, You Belong.    Jeff Warren is an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular newsletter Home Base and is the coauthor, along with Dan, of a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And he is the co-host of the mind/bod adventure pod. Aaron Schultz aka DJ DRM has crisscrossed the globe for decades playing his own unique brand of dance music. Aaron is also a longtime meditator and Dharma practitioner in the Dharma Drum lineage of Chan Buddhism, and is a passionate devotee of GuanYin Bodhisattva.   In this episode we talk about: How to relate to sticky stories and emotions  How to face unpleasant feelings  The 5 hindrances (that's a Buddhist list of the main problems that arise in meditation) and how sneaky they can be  The potential pitfalls of a "good sit" The role of right effort in meditation  How expectations make us suffer Neurodivergence Working with shame (and how it differs from wise remorse)  The connection between dancing and the Dharma (and why Dan is too self-conscious to dance) Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here!    Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025. To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Sponsors:  Liquid IV: Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid I.V. Tear. Pour. Live More. Go to LiquidIV.com and get 20% off your first order with code HAPPIER at checkout.  AT&T: Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we do it? Today, we're going to talk about how to handle it with a voice in your head is an asshole. The ego can be a hatchery of all sorts of nasty beasts, self-criticism, self-aggrandizement, shame, desire, distraction, rage. I could go on. But the real question is, what do you do about it? My guests today are meditation teachers, also close friends personally, Seminace Salasi and Jeff Warren. Seb is the author of a book called You Belong. Jeff and I co-authored a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Jeff is also the co-host of a podcast called the Mind Bod Adventure Pod.

In this conversation, we talk about how to handle the voice in your head, how to relate to sticky stories and emotions, how to face unpleasant feelings. We talk about a Buddhist list called the five hindrances. Those are the five main problems that tend to arise in meditation and how to deal with them. We talk about the potential pitfalls of a good sit, the role of what's called right effort in meditation. How hard should you try? How expectations make us suffer. Neurodivergence working with shame and how shame differs from wise remorse. And the connection between dancing and the Dharma.

and why I am often too self-conscious to dance. This conversation was recorded live at the annual meditation party retreat that Jeff Zeb and I co-host. We've got another one coming up at the end of October, October 24th through 26th, at the Omega Institute in Upstate New York. You can sign up at e-omega.org. I will put a link in the show notes. Two other things to say before we jump in. As you may know, paying subscribers over at Dan Harris get guided meditations that come along with every episode.

Today's companion meditation is all about the value of spiritual friendship, having friends who also meditate how powerful it is to do this stuff in the HOV lane. It comes from our teacher of the month, the wonderful Kyra Jewel Lingo. If you sign up, you will get it in your inbox. Second thing to say, starting next week on September 2nd, all of our paid subscribers will be able to meditate live on video with me and or with the teacher. of the month on Tuesday afternoons at 4 Eastern. We've been doing live guided meditations for a while, but now we're going to do them weekly and at a set time Tuesday afternoon at 4 Eastern. That's the plan indefinitely. Our teacher of the month in September is going to be Vinnie Ferraro, who's amazing. The September 2nd event, which again is at 4 o'clock Eastern, will be both me and Vinnie.

As you can see, a big theme that's emerging from all of the words coming out of my facehold during this introduction is community and the power of doing things together. It can sound like an empty cliche, but there's a ton of science to show that when you do something like meditation as a group, either meditate together or just have friends who are also doing this stuff and take this shit seriously, it's incredibly powerful. So that's the theme running through today's episode, running through these live guided meditations that we're now do weekly. So join the party. We'd love to have you part of this thing, Dan Harris.com. Okay, we'll get started with Seven A and Jeff right after this. So thoughts and emotions, my friends, where are your thoughts and emotions at right now?

I was thinking about, you know, I know some people can be really plagued by thoughts and have a lot of pernicious thoughts. And I've been there. But thoughts are such like a subtle layer that they're sneaky. Very sneaky. Very sneaky. Like pernicious little like gnats or something that I find it much easier to work with emotions because they're just so much more pronounced for me. and I can feel them in my body and have a relationship to them in a way.

Thoughts feel much more ephemeral. Slippery little fuckers. Yeah, they are. There's a nice little practice that Joseph Goldstein talks about when you notice in meditation thinking is happening, just kind of go, usually for me, at least I catch it after the fact. Go looking for the thought. Just look, see, where is it now?

And that, for me, it helps me kind of get my arms around what these things are and are not. And to use his little phrase, they're little more than nothing. And there are these quantum bursts of energy in the mind and they pass through. And then if you go looking for it, it actually a little bit liberating to look and realize that I had this thought. It was a very compelling thought about murdering somebody. And now it's not here anymore, you know, and I'm not re-uping it. And I can see the insubstantiality of it. and that is really free.

Yeah, and the power of thoughts that you don't do that with, that keep coming back and that, you know, some people take those murderous thoughts to extremes. I was filming a session recently with Joseph and our mutual friend, Sam Harris, for Sam's app. And Sam said this thing, I thought it was perfect. I'm going to mangle it a little bit, but it was like unexamined thoughts are, Everything. Everything.

Examined their little more than nothing. And that is just such a powerful teacher. Yeah, that is it. Yeah. No, I mean, this is constantly. So this is my way into actually thinking about working with this is, you know, the term from neuroscience, affective realism. Anyone know?

It's like affective realism is it's the phenomenon of when you're in a particular emotional state and you see everything through the prism of that state, that that is the, you're in like a kind of mood tunnel. This is how the world is. Anyone relate to that? Like, you're in a slightly bad mood, for example, and then it's like everyone just seems a little bit aggressive. They're a little bit not on your side.

You know, things are a little bit crappy in every way up and down the line. Shit colored glasses. Yeah, it's the famous saying goes the shit wearing, yeah. Shakespeare, yeah. Shakespeare. From the old Saxon. Shit. So for me, I'm constantly in my life.

And of course, it's the relationship between the thought and the feeling, right? Like you have a feeling and the feeling of just like, I don't know, being trapped in your life. And then you have these thoughts that go with that feeling of being trapped. And then those thoughts reinforce that feeling of being, of being trapped. And it's like, and all of a sudden, this is the sort of cycle in which you're going through your days, your weeks, your months, and you never, how things can happen in your life, but you never really totally come out of the tunnel. And so for me, the practice is being able to actually get be patient enough to begin to see what is the thing,

the thing that I'm in. And I find that very, very, very hard, like, because it's not, often it's not obvious. It's like a whale that comes up from underneath and, like, you think you're swimming on the open ocean and then all of a sudden this whale comes up and then swallows you up and you're swimming and you're inside the belly of the whale. And you think you're in the present, but the whale's swimming off this way to, like, you know, Panama or something. And you're gone that way and, like, what takes you away? I mean, I've heard you use that whale analogy and it comes up in my own practice a lot. I think about this whale analogy. the way where I do a lot of walking meditation and, you know, I'll be reasonably mindful of what

I'm seeing and the sensations in the body and sounds in the environment. And then a thought, I get on some train of thought. And then I wake up from it. I realize, yes, for the last five minutes, the whale swallowed reality. You know, I was just, I'm not here anymore. And it's, that's never going to stop. Like, you're always going to get carried away. So it's taken me 10 or so years to not get upset about carrying away and to instead get interested like wow it's so interesting that that thoughts the whale can come along and hijack you so thoroughly so you are no longer here yeah yeah i would say in a lot of ways the more intense moments of my life have provided kind of that focus in that makes practice easier and it's the more mundane just being carried carried away in the

busyness of life. That's my my challenge, actually. I've sort of honed the skill to work with the challenges more or the intensity more. And I get caught up in the busyness of my life and, you know, friends and community and family. And that's its own whale. It is its own whale. It is its well. The compulsive busyness, the urgency to do, do, do. So it's not as distressing in some ways. It's not the distress of the emotional challenges, but it has a pernicious quality to it, because it's almost like thoughts that just kind of take you away into the nothingness. Let's do a little open mic, and this includes folks joining us online and in the room. Yeah, we'd love to know what you shared. What's up for you now? We'll open up, open up the floor.

Okay. Well, yeah, we've got somebody online. Let's do it. Hey, what's your name? Hi, Amy. Hey, Amy. So it's amazing the stories we tell ourselves. And when you've had these stories, thoughts, feelings for a long time, they took uproot, and they can be pretty sticky. And so it's just wondering if there's any bad in some direction for working with those bigger trauma pieces, which I know you pendulate. I know you go in, you go out. there is guidance around that a little more guidance yeah it's a great question a really good question

working with the uh particularly sticky stories that feel like they're they're just like these core narratives in your life often connected to core wounds and challenges and how do you get away from those stories how do you get space around those stories yeah you know um thank you for that question and i'm sure all of us can relate to some degree and it's hard to to know exactly what each of us are talking about when we're saying kind of stories and trauma. But to me, that points to the fact that meditation is not the only tool. Yeah. And this is where we bring in therapy, community, other healing modalities and practices to understand

what's going on for us because we all hold stories and trauma and challenges differently. And for some of us, they show up as panic attacks. For some of us, they show up as retramatizing energies or events. For some of us, they're just kind of patterns that aren't necessarily really acute in our lives, but keep sort of these waves that take us off course or the whale that kind of is constantly turning us. And so depending on what's showing up, we have to kind of understand which tool. So we're not going to use a hammer on a screw. and we're not going to, you know, try and cut grass, a field of grass with scissors.

Like, we really need to understand what's needed in that moment. I'm curious if you're working with really strong feelings or if you were working with stories that were more like thoughts that keep coming up and going away. Yeah, it's more thoughts. It's like the patterning of these thoughts that just keep coming up. Oh, you know, also I'll say to myself, okay, so don't go so close. you know, because it almost feels like this wall just comes up. And I am working, you know, with a therapist and have them for a while, which is helpful.

And I know that it needs to be done slowly. And so, you know, leaning into yourself and providing that, that friend that you would like to be for yourself is something that really resonates. And at the same time, it's really hard to do that. Yeah. Do you find that there are certain practices or techniques that have helped with that? Like some people use IFS, which uses parts work, internal family systems. Some people do journaling, dialogic journaling with themselves or talk therapy versus somatic therapy. What have you tried?

Yeah, talk therapy. That's been when I've gone to. I feel like it would be helpful to be in a group where there are people that. that are sharing similar stories. That's not something I've done before. And do you feel like there's a group in terms of like similar experiences or a meditation group that you... Yeah, I think a meditation group.

Because I'm curious, you know. I'm at that point where I can say, yes, I'm ready to dip more than just a little baby toe, you know. Yeah, that's great. I'll put a little more in there. I mean, I definitely find that the skills of meditation really, really help with this. You know, and they help in different kinds of ways.

They help, like, the compassion part of meditation is just such a, you know, when I'm in a story that I, that's an old, old story, like, to be able to have to draw on that tool, which I didn't have for a long time, is incredible. Like, it can really settle me and stop me from the story from going deeper. It's like, I haven't gotten rid of some stories, but I can see when they're, when they, I can prevent them from kind of going off the rails just through the act of noticing it's happening and bringing in some compassion and not needing to change it and realizing that everyone's got stories. I've got stories. Of course, they're there. So that framing. And then I feel like the

trickling down, you know, of just the equanimity of just the constant accepting yourself, accepting what's here, can soften and loosen that sometimes too. So I have really benefited from specific targeted therapy around certain things. But other times I've just noticed that certain stories, like stories about alienation around my family of origin, for example, it's just kind of, I never did any specific therapy around it, just through practice, just through accepting, just through compassionate, it just got less authoritative. And that just happened organically through the long, you know, active and practicing for 20 years and meditation. So I really think that that it is very supportive for that too. But it's about being patient for that process.

I think for the type A personalities, you've done that, anything on your own? and you're, you know, that patient's piece is. It's hard. Yeah. But you said it too, like chatting, having people to talk about it with, like, community, that's one of these I find so great about, oh my gosh, you realize everyone's got their story, everyone's got their thing. And it's like I get so isolated as a parent imagining that my kids are problems. No one's ever had the problem of challenging toddlers before.

Like, I'm like, really, I'm a pioneer in this problem. And then I get my, I like, look around and talk to. some parent friends and I'm like, oh, oh, you're really, you're a much worse parent than me. Thank God. Yeah, but it may just the human connection of like, oh, man, okay, we can do this together. And that, that is healing too. Yeah. Yeah, thank you.

No, thank you. That's a great. Who can relate to that question? The story is a good. I mean, everybody. Thank you. Do we have a question in the room? Okay.

That's somebody right there. It's not really a question. I was just going to share. I did something a little different. I'm Kelly. Hi, Kelly. After the morning session, I pretty much spent the entire break, like, bawling my head off in my room.

And I was like, hmm, I think I don't know what's going on. Who knew coming to a weekend meditation party? There'd be so much meditation. Wait, is this you guys telling us to change our programming? I mean, I thought I was doing pretty well over the past few years, but like, wow, this is a lot of meditation. This time, I decided to try doing it without closing my eyes. And I looked at the little sliver of trees out there and kept my eyes open the whole time, which I always thought, oh, that's not the real way or that's not correct or whatever. But I found I could stay instead of having to titrate back out.

So often, by doing that, and I thought that was odd, I actually counted the breath, which I never do. But I tried the one to ten and then again. And I found I could stay longer just with the concentration point without wanting to crawl out of my skin like I do a lot of times. So I don't know if that's helpful. That's not a question. But anyway. That is helpful. It's good because actually having eyes open is a great way to work with thinking.

that's why a lot of Tibetan practices is gaze open, soft gaze, just sense of space, and like the visual world crowds out, as opposed to your eyes closed, it's so much easier to go off into your thinking. So for that exact reason, that's a way in which a lot of people practice, and it's super legit to understand that that worked for you. Yeah, also just to say, Kelly, you could have had the emotions in your room and then bailed, but you stayed. So.

I just want to say, that's also why walking practice and standing practice can be helpful too. You know, just to, we have this idea that practice has to be full lotus, eyes closed, you know, perfectly still. And that's really just, that's a made-up idea. And it's not the truth. So, so please try all these practices and see how they work for you. Just to build on that, I know I talk about Joseph Goldstein a lot.

In doing annual retreats with him, you know, he has really increased. focused on the walking meditation and not even necessarily the super slow walking just kind of like a slow-ish walking and as Jeff said that is actually a really great place as your body is moving through space for at least for me to to see the to catch thinking in the act so yeah please play with all this stuff and and keep coming back I know we have a we have a gentleman with a mic right there yeah what's your hi my name is Greg hey Greg I have a question about home base and then looking at traumatic things, unpleasant things, and coming back. And, you know, sometimes I wonder if I'm not just trying to push the things away, if I'm trying to stuff unpleasant feelings.

And I wanted to just ask how is a good way to know the difference or experience the difference in how to work with that. Do you mean by coming back that you're trying to push them away? Yeah, maybe by coming back I'm trying to push them away. Like I'm trying to shrug off stuff that it may be worth looking at more. So I offer the going back for when it gets challenging. You know, if it, if there's a lot of motion coming up and it's like, oh gosh, I don't, I need to like, then it's like that's the time. It's like, okay, maybe I'll just move over to here.

And that might be, you're not trying to wash it down. It's more like you're just shifting the real estate of your attention over to this other thing, trying to let yourself sink into that a little bit. And then when you're feeling a little bit more resource coming back, if it's coming up, but if it's manageable, then you're right. How do you know the movement of what it feels like? I mean, I always say welcome. It's like, welcome to the party.

Welcoming it, like, welcome. Like, as if, like, Lily has a great saying with her when she gets bummed out and depressed. She's like, welcome, queen. My queen, come. Can I make you a space here in this lounge? Lay down. Make yourself at home like this really like really inviting. Like really and inviting by being curious. Like what are you? Where is it? Where is the sensation? Like where is it? How is it changing?

Like really kind of investigating and the act of investigating is a kind of allowing of it. So there's a quality of kind of turning towards and often it will expand. It can be like a thing where it expands and then kind of goes down again. But I'm aware of your point, like, you know, there is a subtlety there. And sometimes, like, sometimes we think, oh, I'm opening to this thing that I really hate. You're like, oh, here I am. Irritation. I'm so open to you.

I love you irritation, you crappy little irritation thing. I really love you, Payne. Like, I really want to welcome you into this pain, which you've been plaguing me for months. Come on, Payne. I love you plaguing me for months pain. So we're like, in other words, we're a little bit resisting what's here and we're not really letting it. We're not really welcoming.

And then we can get into this whole fight with it. So that's a good, I mean, that's kind of the practice is like noticing, like, being curious about exactly that line. Like, where is that line for me and am I doing this? And this might be a good opportunity to hand it over to Sabine, who have something else to say. Well, it's. It points to what we wanted to talk about now, which was the hindrances. So they're considered to be five hindrances, right?

Craving, aversion, restlessness, sloth, sleepiness, and doubt. And so we can have like a multiple hindrance attack and use all of them to try and manage and control our situation. So, yeah, we could have what Jeff was describing sort of like, I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you. or we could be thinking that we're being sneaky. Like, I'll love you so you'll go away. You know, I'll be with this back pain so it'll stop. And so it's about understanding our own system and seeing what kind of tension or reactivity is there

and softening that. So it's not about managing it or controlling it or bringing any more tightness to it, but really softening and seeing how much we can let things be and really allow. And so slowing down helps a lot. You know, this idea of like, oh, something's up. I'm not with it.

Let's go back to the breath. Let's go back to home base. If there's any sort of reactivity quickness happening, if I can just slow things down and be, as Jeff was saying earlier, get a little closer to what's happening, become even a little more intimate with it. You know, if it's not excruciatingly painful physically or emotionally, can I just be with this? Can I be with it a little long? Can I allow this? So bringing that kindness. I sometimes use two phrases, what's happening right now? And can I allow this? What's happening right now? Oh, okay, there's fear. Can I allow it? Can I have a little bit more space? So that ease, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, peace is not the destination. Peace is the way. So bringing that peacefulness, that allowing attitude to exactly what we're looking at is the practice. I was I don't know if I said this, and I said it to you, Jeff, that many, many years ago, I noticed that creative and reactive are the same word, the sea just moves.

And I was like, oh, what's the C? And there's so many C words, you know, connection, calm, consciousness, clarity, compassion. We're kind of employing all of those, courage. But I never noticed until the ride up here that the R moves. You know, I hadn't thought of it that way. And the R, it's not like, rar reactivity at the front. It's really relaxed and receptive. So that's really the move we're making.

Instead of this reactive, like, let me fix it, let me do something. It's this relaxing, sitting back and allowing what's happening. And then making the choice to bring our attention back to home base or stay with whatever is difficult from that place that's less speedy and sort of amplification. up, you know, with vigilance. Just to say embedded in your question is a lot of mindfulness, that you're even aware that you may be threading aversion into your alleged mindfulness. That is a lot of interest, the opposite of delusion.

So I think you deserve more credit than you might be giving yourself. We have somebody over here. Yeah. Gillian. Hi. I guess I would just like you to comment on what I'm going to share that I was very curious about I was sharing with Jeff at the break that this morning I had a lot of, and yesterday, a lot of the message of I'm not good enough and tears and a lot of crap.

And then this afternoon, I had a, what, somebody talked about labeling and I had a beautiful meditation. I didn't have any of that. In fact, I had memories of two beloved people, one in 1995 and 2015 both died in my arms. I had no pain. I had no tears. And I wasn't avoiding it either. I was with it. I was.

And so what I'm curious about is the juxtaposition between this morning and this afternoon. One of my people outside wondered if it was because we had meditated a long time this morning. But like, how can I conjure that up? Because I would rather have this afternoon. The first hindrance is craving, right? So the fucked up thing about meditation is you, it's like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. So you have to be in this open receptive mode. And so, yeah, you can be in bliss.

And then you could be, as my friend Sam says, on the top of Mount Shame within an afternoon. And I think the only sane way to view it is they're all just passing mind states. You know, it's meteorology. It's not something you want to strive for or cling to. I sometimes say to myself on meditation retreats, if I'm suffering, there's something I'm not mindful of. And if you can be mindful of even the shitty morning sit, and all the stories, there's actually not much pain in it. I don't know.

Where did I go wrong in that? No, no, it was awesome. I was just thinking that, you know, progress in meditation is, it's very mysterious. It's kind of nonlinear. It's like two steps four, one step back, three steps to the side, and then this weird detour over here, and then suddenly, you know, it's like watching the northern lights, you know, the way they move. But having said that, there is a tendency over time.

for more healing. And I feel like you're touching on that experience is something that is a core, very important part of why we practice, which there's different words for it. And sometimes in the contembo scene, they talk about purification. It always sounds kind of creepy and religious to me.

Like, it involves like chains or something. But it's real. It's the more, and it has to do with the equanimity. My teacher is to talk about having a complete experience. If you can have a complete experience with something, So an experience of deep sadness, an experience of your breath, but you're fully, you're present, you're settled, you're concentrated, you're clear, and you're fully equanimous with it. Then it's like there's, it's like the neurons fire, but they don't wire.

Like there's no buildup. There's, in fact, the opposite. Like, not only do you not create a new reactivity around it, you start to like metabolize old patterns. And there's a sense of things clearing out. And all of a sudden, there's this real sense of kind of. peace or sacredness or this big open intimate space that allows us to be with more and more and that is the direction that practice takes us that's very real so that's a very and it's just that you can't it can't be bottled on and you know chugged on command you don't get a choice in when it's

going to when those experiences are happening or when but practice makes you it's like the old adage like uh and awakening is always an accident and meditation makes you accident prone, you know. The more you practice, the more of those things are part, I mean, I have those experiences quite often. I mean, can I just say, again, it's our relationship to what's happening. So the emotions can be arising. Yeah.

The grief, grief is not bad. Grief is a sign that we've loved, you know? Yeah, definitely. And so the, you can go to a wake or Sitshiva or in Hamaric, we call it Luxo, and have these amazing experiences of deep, deep, sad. and then deep joy because everybody's telling jokes about the dead person. And it's amazing to have that kind of like extremes and not even an afternoon in the space of 10 minutes. And it's the breadth of human experience and all of it is human.

But our relationship to it is we can make it problematic. And the hindrances, I love what you said, Dan, like if you're suffering, then you're not mindful. Because the hindrances are unconscious reactivity. to our life. Yes. But it's not that, so craving is basically like a reactive grabbing at. It's not like we don't choose in our life. We choose things.

We choose them consciously and creatively without reactivity. Aversion is an unconscious, like turning away from something. But we can turn away from things in our lives, like consciously and creatively. So all of the hindrances, you know, have their intelligence to them, doubt, has skepticism. We can be discerning without just like dismissing everything that we don't understand or don't like. And restlessness, you know, we can be excited about things, but not in a way that is not conscious and just agitated all the time.

And, you know, we can get rest. But we don't need to numb out because we don't want to pay attention or something that we don't want to see. So there's sort of a conscious way we can relate to our life. and then there's an unconscious, reactive way that we just sort of have habituated. I can't remember if I told this story last time, but apropos of the Gillian's enjoyment of pleasant sit in the afternoon that I was on a retreat with just a couple of friends a couple of years ago, maybe four years ago, me and two friends, and we had a teacher with us. It was during the pandemic, so the retreat centers weren't open.

And one of my friends is very experienced meditator. and he's this tall German guy with a booming Darth Vader kind of voice. And the other is a little bit newer to meditation. And we had a teacher with us, and at some point we're all talking about our practice. And the newer meditator, Josh, was rhapsodizing about it had this incredible sit in the morning. And the German guy out of nowhere just didn't even lift his head. It just said, you will never experience that again. But you might.

It's a verbal version of slamming somebody with a stick. We have a question online. Let's go there. Hey. Hi, guys. I'm Ben. I'm from New York City. I really appreciate the time this weekend.

And especially this container has felt very potent. I appreciate the invitation to welcome such gripping and sneaky and elusive. objects of meditation like emotions and thoughts. I think for a long time I would use meditation as a way to bypass as has been said quite a bit. I would bypass negative feelings. And I wanted to ask you guys about thoughts because emotions feel far more accessible, right? You can welcome irritability. The energetic wash of irritability and you can feel, you can neutralize it. It can turn to pleasure. When you stop labeling it as negative, the resistance. When that's something, sides. You kind of can dive into an ocean of a different color of experience, which I find

very hopeful, I guess. But with thoughts, the mechanics don't make sense to me, because I oftentimes get lost in them. I don't know how to explore a thought without the whale swallowing me. I don't know how to explore a thought without just another thought. And then you're in that that fun house. And I was just curious how I can certainly bypass my thoughts with the practice, but I was curious how you use it to actually explore them. We were talking about this, Jeff and I, and, you know, I, as I mentioned before, I find it hard to work with thoughts in a way, exactly as you described Ben,

and that was really eloquent the way you laid that out. And so I often just kind of label them and drop them, if it's possible, if they're not pernicious, kind of returning things, but then they're usually attached to an emotion or something that's bubbling up. And so I just ask, you know, is this useful? Like, I'm here again. And it is, sometimes it's just a seesaw in the most gentle way I can without, like, rejecting them. You know, just kind of drop the thought.

And I don't know how else to say it, except the classical teachings use the language of, is this wholesome or unwholesome? you're basically just categorizing your thoughts over and over again. That language doesn't really work for me wholesome and unwholesome. It feels antiquated and sort of religiously judgmental, but useful and not useful is helpful for me. And that categorization, I'm not a big noter, labeler, but with thoughts that just keep coming,

that seems like the best way besides just watching them pass. You know, if the same thought is coming up, then I'm like, this is not useful. Like, let me change the channel. Let me go to my breath. How to do that without the reactivity we were just describing is just this subtle practice of knowing your own system. But I'd love to hear what Jeff and John have to say. I mean, I love all of that. And I find it's very hard working with thoughts.

And it's easier when you're more settled. Your things are just a little more still, more subtle, then you're more likely to see it. But for me, what's made the difference is my teacher Shinsen has a way to work with thoughts were see and feel and hear in. It's very specific and very targeted. And then you literally start by, and often I teach this, start by, you know, closing your eyes and like visualizing a teddy bear. Like, where do you see? You can try this all right now. Let's close our eyes for a moment and like visualize a teddy bear.

Like, where do you, quote, see the teddy bear? Is there a teddy bear more on the right side of your visual space, more on the left? the center. Is it very clear or is it super washed out? Is it more the idea of a teddy bear? Is it not even spatial? Is it that you're, you know, so that's like you can begin to kind of get clear about image space, like how images appear to you, which is one form of thinking. And so there's a practice around getting clear with that. And then the next thing is the same with inner talk. You say to yourself in your head, you say, teddy bear, you can try it right now. This sounds ridiculous. You close your eyes. You say, don't just.

just say it, yell teddy bear inside your own head. There. Wherever you heard teddy bear is at least one place. Try it again. Where you hear a thought. And so often in that exact space, there is talking. Talking, you don't even realize it's there until you tune into the frequency. It's not just there other places too. But you can actually, and then feel as just sort of like emotional body sensation. And so those three are constantly pinging off each other. They're in relationship, going around and the responding, the reactive, responding to sounds and things happening in the world. So you can close your eyes and you could track, image, talk, feel,

and just track that. I've developed so much clarity around my thinking process through that. So that's a specific way in. It's not a traditional kind of, it's a more good example of a more contemporary technique from a really ingenious Buddhist teacher. So that would be another suggestion. I feel like working with thoughts.

Yeah. Thank you. And Dan, you said something earlier about how to, Yeah, there's a trio of things that came to mind from Joseph. I'll continue to steal from him. One is, just as I said earlier, just had this move of just investigating, what is a thought? You had the thought. You're now awake.

And so you have this decision, which of course is a little bit thought-based. So it's sticky, but to look for that last thought. And there's nothing to find. And that, it's again another case of in the not finding is the finding. Two other little Josephisms that are helpful for me, at least. And you should just play with it and see what works for you. One is, especially with repetitive intrusive thoughts, dead end. And it doesn't, you really want to make sure it's not coming from a hostile place.

But just like, it's a version of, is this useful? Dead end. And then another is up and out, up and out. You know, just I don't need to get entangled with this. It's up and out. So, yeah, our job is to make a menu for you. and then you can pick what you want to order. Oh, that's very helpful.

Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Coming up, Seb and Jeff talk about how to be with your thoughts as opposed to bypassing them. We talk about some of my favorite Josephisms, expressions I got from Joseph Goldstein. We introduce a new teacher into the mix, a guy who's super, super interesting, Aaron Schultz,

and we talk about dancing as a practice, and we drill down into why dancing is so uncomfortable for me. So we should shift gears now. We have a special guest for a good. to introduce. Yes, we want to bring up Aaron Schultz. Hey, Aaron. Welcome. Hey, buddy. This is for you. So I don't know how many of you saw that Aaron got added to this party. He's a long-time friend of mine. I've known him for about 12, 12 years. Yeah. And a deep Dharma practitioner, that's how I met him. When I met him, he was doing deep.

Jana studies, concentration practice. He's been a devoted student of devotional practices. He's a devotee of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, has done multiple pilgrimages to Taiwan, China, Nepal, India. So just a really, really deep practitioner. But in his day life, in his day job, he is one of the most popular. and active DJs in Brooklyn and also the co-owner of two record labels, legendary record labels, Bastard Jazz and Wonderwheel,

and plays a really incredible, eclectic variety of music, funk, jazz, acid, jazz, house, soul, R&B, world music. He's the producer of one of my favorite bands I'll saw her in the New Boutones, which he took me to go see live. And yeah, we're just really, really honored,

and delighted to have him here. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you. He's also for this party and the last party lent us some of his music. So the music that you hear in between sessions is all from Aaron's two record labels.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here with you, Seb, and Dan and Jeff. Yeah, thank you. It's a great pleasure. And as a DJ for over 25 years? Yeah, maybe more. Wow. DJing around the world.

world. Every time I ask Aaron, you know, hey, how's, how's it going? Oh, I'm in Japan. I'm in Ibiza. I'm in, he's DJed in some amazing places. And you've witnessed a lot of people dancing or not dancing. Yeah. So we wanted to bring him up for this conversation around, you know, what does it mean to dance as a practice and dance as part of life and why so many of us are uncomfortable with it? Why brings up a lot of the hindrances, you know, aversion, doubt, immediate sloth and torpor, or restlessness, like, to get out of here and get away. Totally. Yeah.

Well, you know, I'll start just by saying this was a conversation you and I had said recently that it was just kind of like when we talked about this, I was like, whoa, all of our ancestors, no matter who we are, where we come from. I'm somehow half Saudi and half Polish, which I don't know, like. I might be the only one. But both sides of my background use dance. Everybody in this room, your ancestors used dance to connect to freedom. And not even that long ago, like in the 50s, everybody danced.

Yeah. You know, it's pretty recent that people have become so uncomfortable with dance. Have you noticed that, you guys? Well, I noticed that people are uncomfortable with dance. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I always, this is what a thing we want to kind of get at. I find it to be such a fertile ground for tracking and noticing self-consciousness, you know, about feeling safe in groups and the norms that we put on ourselves.

And because I was like that, you know, when I first started going out to dance parties and things, I was very self-conscious, you know, and I would just, you know, I'd afford to kind of more be in the background and see what was going on. And if I had to put my finger on what it was, I guess I just felt like I would be judged or like I wasn't good at it and I was going to be, because I wasn't good at it, I was going to be judged. And it was also in a self-conscious space. It wasn't like a space of like, it was all young people. It was a particular there was a kind of energy of like, you know, being cool or something like that. And those were the things I was carrying with me.

And I didn't have an experience growing up of being with family dancing and having some tradition that made it okay, you know. So I don't know. I'm just curious for other people too. Like, why is it that, you know, eventually I got over it because I just started spending more and more time there. and I would do my, and eventually now I really love dancing. But, I mean, what about you? What's your experience? I'm self-conscious. Yeah.

And so you want to drill into that a little bit? Great. Like maybe, like, maybe fantastic to do a stand-up and just give us a dance performance. Yeah, slow dance. We'll be very, very quiet. We'll just be like. Every time I dance around my son, he's like, Daddy, stop, you're embarrassing. Which, I get it.

Yeah, I, I, it's a lot. lifelong thing. Like I envy people who have that can unlock and dance. I think it's awesome. What are you self-conscious about? I think exactly what you said. People are going to judge me. I'm judging myself. I'm doing it bad, doing it wrong. Exactly. I know, I think everyone has the capacity to dance, but it's really interesting with you, Dan, because you're a drummer. Yeah. I know. And you have an excellent sense of rhythm. And you're a good dancer. I've seen you dance. So it's not coming from like, you know, I'm not, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to find the beat, which can be a challenge, right? So it's something else that's happening for you.

Uh, is it you're afraid to unleash your raw masculinity on the world? Is it too powerful? Right. So masculine, I can't even take a pill. That's virility. Um, you know, maybe there's stuff. around really getting the role of the mask of Anchorman in my molecules in some way. That's 30 years of doing that. Eyes on you kind of. I think there's probably some of that. But I've played drums and around people and been totally comfortable.

I feel a mastery of that. Like, not that I'm that good, but like I've been doing it since I was 10. And so I really do feel like I know what I'm doing. Dancing, I don't do that often. Aaron, what have you noticed also culturally because you DJ in so many different cultures and spaces? Yeah. Probably not Saudi Arabia. No, although the Saudi Arabia thing is happening, but I'm not participating in it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I was just going to point out is, you know, so many of us have such inhibitions to dance. Like we're so self-conscious. We think the whole room is watching us. Yeah. You know, but we can actually pay attention when we're on the dance floor and we can use our practice to really be in that moment. And what are we paying attention to when we're on the dance floor?

Are we looking at everybody else and being like they're a bad dancer? No, we're thinking that everybody else is looking at us. You know, so if we can kind of, you know, my Dharma teacher, Guagu, he says this all the time. He says, your brain has never stepped one millimeter outside of your skull. So it's a great reminder that all of these inhibitions, all of these, all the self-consciousness that's going on, we're on the dance floor. that's just coming up because of causes and conditions inside our own minds. This is our minds that are creating this. This isn't how reality actually is.

So we can notice that. Yeah. I do the daily trip on common. One of my favorite ones is this one, slow dance. And I got this idea from years of doing parties like we'd merge meditation and dance parties. And what was happening very naturally is people were coming in, like myself, who were feeling very self-conscious around dance. And slow dance is an invitation based.

to try to notice your own self-consciousness and actually dance with it. And so I want to kind of unpack what I meant by that because it's something I think we might try to play around with tonight for those who are interested in exploring. When I say notice your self-consciousness, like you can kind of do this right now. You can imagine if you like, you can close your eyes for this for a second. And you can imagine that everyone is looking at you. Imagine, or maybe that's a little overwhelming. Just imagine like someone nearby is kind of looking at you.

And what do you notice about your experience when that happens? Imagine somebody's looking at you or you imagine yourself in a giving a public talk something and was looking at you. For me, there's a sudden sense of more fullness in my face. I feel my face more. I feel more sensation in my face like flushed. I often have a visual of myself. If I think I'm being looked at, I'm actually looking at myself imagining what I think,

they're seeing. You know, I have sensation in my body, maybe a feeling of a little bit of excitability or nervousness in my chest maybe. So you let that go for a second. I don't want to make people uncomfortable. But when I say dance with your own self-consciousness, what I mean is you can become aware of where in your experience, you're experiencing self-consciousness. Where is the, is it feeling around the face? Is it here? And you can actually begin to kind of like play with that because that's the locus of what's self-conscious, you can decide to kind of move around it and kind of play with it or notice it or that's what I mean by kind of dance with it. Because what we're doing in a meditation practice is we're continually backing out of whatever

tunnel or thing that we've collapsed into in order to find a bit more space. So there's a practice around moving with or dancing with the actual feeling of self-consciousness itself that is worth exploring. Do you see what I mean? Does that we're able to connect to any of that? Absolutely. And there are other ways to make it okay. So there's that way. But another way is just like, you just go up there and act like an idiot. And you do it so fearlessly. And so that everyone else around you suddenly feels like they have permission to do that yourself. So what's the name for that? It's like the Jeff Warren method. Yeah, that's the Warren. Basically, you create the bar so low that Absolutely everyone is able to limbo and just step right over it.

That's a service. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a public service. It does something. It's like there's something about that in this teaching here about there's

something about that that makes it okay, you know. Coming up, Seb, Jeff Aaron and I talk about the role of right effort in meditation. How hard should you try in meditation? We talk about the suffering that comes with expectations, neurodivergence, a helpful piece of feedback that we got from the audience for future meditation. parties and how to work with shame and the difference between shame and wise remorse. What, as a DJ, what have you noticed, like, helps that self-consciousness or? Um.

I mean, I'm sure you've, substances. Yeah. Okay. Besides substances. I got you right away. I just wanted you to know. All I had to say was, um. But from your end, like what are you doing exactly to?

Well, you know, I'm not a big talker when I DJ. It's not something I normally do. But I think kind of just getting people into a groove. Like, you know, it helps when the lights are low. It helps when there's a smoke machine. You know, it helps when like people, you know, have this kind of cloud around them. Yeah, I think that nobody else is watching them. And I think just getting into a groove with the music.

and, you know, people kind of dropping their inhibitions, you know, and then for me, dance is freedom. It's an expression of freedom, right? And just to connect it to the Dharma, in the lineage I practice, and we believe that... What lineage is that? I practice in Chan. Chan, yeah, which is the Chinese precursor to Zen.

Oh, interesting. In the lineage I practice in, we believe that everybody is inherently free. There's nothing out there to get. You're already enlightened, you know, and we meditate to uncover that. We meditate to get in touch with that. And for me, dance. is an expression of that freedom that we all have inside of us. That dance is an expression of that Buddha nature, that freedom, that freedom, that

freedom. I totally agree. And then, you know, I've been thinking a lot about connecting dance and Dharma. So I'm, you know, yeah, that really kind of does it for me. It's totally fascinating to hear you talk about that connection. And I'm thinking a little bit about my wife. She had gone through a tough period in her life and was just starting to like, she was leaving her job as a doctor and was had to gone through some tough.

family stuff and was just trying to get into some version of self-care. I don't love that term. And I dragged her one day to SoulCycle, which is, you know, like you can say what you want about SoulCycle, but what they do really well is turn the lights down. And she was in the back. I remember I was in the second row and she was like, I'm going in the back row. Nobody can see me. And she had a big experience and started doing it every day, sometimes twice a day,

until she blew out her knees, you know, but that being in a dark space where you can't be judged, but you also have the freedom to move your body and to cry and with music. You're done it with you. Yeah. Yeah, so there's a lot here.

Yeah, I mean, we've all heard the old adage dance like no one's watching, right? But do we actually embody that when we're dancing? Do we actually kind of have that top of mind? You know, and that's so important. And there's a movement out in the world right now called ecstatic dance. And it's just, and you all know this.

Yeah. And it's just that. It's about being in a comfortable space and really dropping your inhibitions and allowing that freedom to flow through your movements. Totally. And that's a way to work with practice too. It's like that's the kind of the externalized, expressive cathartic side. Like the internal equivalent of welcoming your emotions and having equanimity and letting

it pass is expressing your emotions, you know, not acting them out on someone, but just letting it out, like screaming for glee. That's the kind of release that you. get. But, you know, I mean, just also to say, we're talking about dancing, but we're also not talking about our sense of limitations, the sense, the ideas of what we think we can do and what we can't do, and what it really, what the fruit of this practice really is, which is more freedom. It is more liberation, more sense of possibility and being able to move in more areas of our life and more kinds of contexts. So, I mean, I think that's the real story of what we're talking about here. And

And so I feel like dance is just one example or one place. Coming to pushing yourself to come to a meditation retreat is pushing your limits, you know, pushing yourself to be in a conversation in a pot of three when that's not necessarily your jam is like, you know, it's about exploring what it might be like to be in this new place and feel the edges of where that contraction is. And can I dance with that, you know, well said. And, you know, to also acknowledge that it's not for everyone, just like we also haven't touched in the power of music and sound. which doesn't play a lot into this form of meditation, but is happening a lot out in the world, a bigger understanding of the power of sound.

You know, sound healing, sound meditations, and there's more and more research, a lot of scientific research on the healing power, the vibratory power of sound. I mean, one of my favorite meditation practices is contemplation of sound. And this is where you sit and you just listen without naming things.

And that's entirely possible to do with music too, to not conceptualize what this music actually is to just be with what's happening just to listen, not name it, don't put a concept on it.

It's music. It's the universal connector. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any questions or comments? Anyone scared off? What's your name? Hey there.

I'm Caitlin. Hey, Caitlin. I'm curious about right. effort. It's a big one. It's been my question, like, for each meditation, actually, because I've found myself super disappointed in how I'm feeling in these meditations. I feel like I'm just starting to feel the positive impact of, like, three years of practice. And I just found forms of practice that are way more wiggly and adaptive to how fucking ADHD I am. And I now am, like, finding, like, I put down these practices where I have to be more still. and I came back and they're not where I put them. I'm like sitting in this space like, oh no, I'm too feral now. And I hear like friends of mine who are way further along in their practices, they're like teachers and awesome. And they're kind of in like the branches of their trees like doing all these weird or wiggly ways.

And I'm feeling really good out there, but I kind of feel like I don't have the trunk. and I can't tell if it's the voice of like you have to be less to be enough that's been so much part of my like ADHD experience that I can't really tell which voice I'm supposed to listen to when it comes to right effort because it's also in the military

so like all the fucking effort is the right effort and so like that experience of like when do you know when you're coming up to your edge and you're being intellectually honest with yourself about, here's where I can, like, pull back and preserve, or, like, here's my invitation to learn more. Because I feel like at my vibration, there's probably so much more growth in learning in the stillness

than there is in being the feral bitch I am. But there's, like, the actual learning of, like, the medicine and adapting. Anyway, so it's the same question. And then the same thing now with dancing is, like, How do you learn when you're being self-protective well where you're kind of like copping out a little bit? Yeah, it's like right effort and judgment of self, I guess, kind of like in one. Well, I'm going to defer a little bit to Jeff as our resident expert in ADHD, but the one thing I just hear right off the top, and I'm not in your heads. I'm just guessing, but I'm and I'm projecting, honestly, the one thing I hear is the,

potentially this suffering that can come from expectations, which are the worst thing you can bring to the meditation party. And it's not your fault. We all do it. It's very natural. But if you're expecting a certain flavor of sits or some sort of performance on the cushion, it's just fucked from the jump, right? Because you're wanting to control reality instead of being settled back and receiving whatever's happening. So the measure of a but quality sit is not the experience. It's, are you awake for whatever the experience is? So if you can just reframe it and believe me, I mean, I've not even, I haven't been meditating

that long, maybe 15 years, but 15 years in, I'm still messing this up all the time. I need to be reminded over and over again. So I think I'm hearing that in what you're saying. So I want to maybe offer you that reminder if it's useful. Yeah, that's useful. Yeah, actually, I think that's a really great point. And I think I can build on that a tiny bit just because of the 88, because I have ADHD and the trunk of practice is not sitting in stillness.

The trunk is whether you're being present. It's the accepting that this is what's happening, renunciating the thought and coming back to this chosen thing to be with. And in life, there's always going to be something that's going to overwhelm your capacity to stay still. You know, there's going to be physical pain, discomfort. In the case of ADHD, just this incredible buoyant. and amount of energy coming through.

And so there's a place to sit in that and accept that that's happening. And then there's a place to decide, okay, that's enough. Now I need to move. So often for ADHD folks, I suggest more of a movement practice anyway. You know, I do more. I spend more time doing a movement practice than I do doing practice in stillness, whether it's yoga, swimming, whether it's chigong, whether it's, you know, I love. And it's like the principles move at the speed of awareness, like tracking the,

and I'm being present with what's happening in my body. and I need to move and I like to move or I'm dancing. And I think that's perfectly fine because the skills, we're not building up a capacity to sit in stillness. We're building a capacity to be present with what's here. So you've got to work with how you're wired. So I say go hang out on the edges of the trees there, you know, and make some monkey sounds because that sounds pretty fun to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw a hand go up. What's your name? Maron. Hey, Maron. Hi. It's great to be here.

Thanks for coming. Two things. Just building on the person who was speaking before, I was, when we were outside, I was saying this is the first time. I've been meditating for, I could tell you, like January 2nd, 2020. Like, I remember the day I started with your app. But I have never meditated sitting down. I lie down. I walk. I do the dishes. I'm very ADHD, so I really love Jeff. But I've never, you know, meditated just. sitting down and I was really nervous about that coming here. I do still have to stand up and it helps me. It doesn't, I feel like it helps me, you know, stay with it. But what I was really wanting to talk about is dance and a totally different, I have a totally different take on how people can be comfortable dancing and why people oftentimes don't feel comfortable. And I think it's the pressure of exactly what you guys are talking about. Like, you are expressing yourself. It's

freedom. It's like these are very lofty ideas, but I think when we talk about all of our ancestors danced, and I'm just making this up now, but like they weren't doing free expression. I think they were learning the steps and the moves of their traditions. So it was really about like collective movement, right? And so you're not out there on your own going like, ooh, I got to come up with something original, you know, like I really got to express my own uniqueness, you know? So I think for next time maybe, what you could do is hire someone who gets up there and says, we're going to do, put on Beyonce, and we're going to do like a line dance. We're all going to learn it.

Or like square dancing or two-step. Right? Brilliant, by the way. So anyway, that's my idea. That's brilliant. That's such a good point. That's brilliant. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. And we actually said exactly that, you know, that people learn their. folk dances. People are welcome to do a conga line tonight. Like, you are more than welcome to get a conga line going. Can you play the macarena? I don't have it, unfortunately, Dan. We have somebody online now. Hello. Hey, this is Melissa. Hey, Melissa. So I wanted to, this is something Dan, you referenced, and Jeff, you referenced earlier. I also have, I have three boys and the eldest who's 16 is neurodivergent. So all you think better than two boys is three boys.

And what you, Jeff, specifically hit on something and you went past it, which is shame. And so, you know, you were talking about, you know, you're dealing with the kids and you sort of feel something and you're sort of okay. And then, you know, you react essentially, right? And then obviously it eventually dies down. And to me, the shame is excruciating. And it's like, listen, these kids, they're like on to the next thing. You know, none of them are like, oh, my God, mom is horrible. She hates us.

She's a whatever, right? They're on to the next thing. And I am in the shame. Right? And you know it's coming and you see it. And it leaves scar tissue for me. And, you know, again, he's my eldest who's Nord virgin is 16, almost 17. Like, I've been at this for a long time. And man, I know lots of hacks and lots of tricks and this is what has brought me here. But man, that shame is real and I don't know how to deal with it. Yeah. My trauma. therapist says if there's shame, there's trauma. That the worst things I feel,

there's to harm myself or to harm somebody else, you know, are the most shameful things, I feel. The most violent impulses, you know, bring up the most shame. So, like, that's specifically what we work with in our trauma sessions. And in the moment, I, what I do is self-compassion. And so I don't, because I had the same tendency, like, I do something and, or I just act like an idiot. and I'm just so, there it comes, you know, and I just do, now I catch it earlier and earlier. It's like, okay, buddy, I try to treat myself exactly how I treat my boys. You know, I see that little guy in there who's just trying to do the best he can and had a lot of hardship when it was younger.

And it's like, you know, I do that again and again again. And the more I've done it, the faster that response happens. And I do that with this, the shit, they're sort of trying to understand the origins of the shame through the trauma work. And I don't know a better answer than that. that's where I'm at. But I'd be curious what other people say or what you would say, but I feel you. Yeah, it's really helpful. Thank you.

I think it's useful sometimes to think about, I mean, I definitely ladled lots of shame into my own neural pathways over the years. And I think it's maybe useful sometimes, or at least for me, to think about the difference between shame slash guilt and what the Buddhists call wise remorse. So shame or guilt is kind of making it about yourself. And again, I'd say that with no judgment because I do it. I've done plenty of that and I'm sure we'll continue. But wise remorse is like, all right, looking at what maybe you did wrong

and trying to make amends for it, trying to learn from it. But the shame is a kind of psychic constipation that just like nothing can happen. And, you know, playing with that, seeing if you can move from one say to the other, that's been, and I think self-compassion is a great way to do that, because self-compassion isn't like babying yourself and pretending you didn't make a mistake. It's recognizing you made a mistake, but you're not holistically horrible for having made that mistake. Yeah, they say like remorse is, I did something terrible, and shame is I am terrible.

Exactly. Shame is useless. Right, right. Thank you so much. Shame is not true. There is never a time. There's never a case ever in which you are bad. You're not allowed to be who you are, like that you don't, you don't, you don't deserve to exist.

Shame has nothing useful in it. I'm sorry. It's like, it's toxic. Like, it's not like guilt where I did something wrong and okay, I can make amends. I know that. Shame is I am someone wrong fundamentally just by existing, you know, so it's a great signal to work with because it's very persistent and it can be healed. Yeah. And the other piece of it, this is all really helpful, is modeling that self-compassion for my boys. Yes, huge time.

I mean, literally my son just walked through. He's like, you're doing a meditation retreat? What are you talking about for six hours? I was like, trust me. It is to your benefit that I'm doing this for six hours. Thank you all. Yeah, great question. That was awesome. Thank you. Thanks again to Jeff and Seb and also Aaron. Awesome time with those guys. Don't forget, we've got another meditation party coming up at the end of October. So you can come and have that experience for yourself. You can sign up at eomega.org or there's a link in the show notes.

If you want to click it and join us, I'd love to see you there. Also, don't forget, speaking of community and the power of the HOV lane for meditation practice, Starting on September 2nd, I will be doing, or we will be doing live guided meditations on video at 4 o'clock Eastern every Tuesday afternoon indefinitely. On September 2nd, in the kickoff of our now weekly sessions, I'll be with Vinnie Ferraro, who's an amazing meditation teacher and will be our teacher of the month for September, meaning he will be crafting guided meditations that go along with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. All of this only available to paying subscribers at Dan Harris. com. Great way to support me, great way to support our team, great way to support meditation teachers who we like to pay generously. So we'd appreciate your support. And if you can't afford it,

just send us a note. We'll give it to you for free. Finally, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.