Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Meditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Welcome to the third installment of Meditation Party, an experiment we’re running with a chattier format – more of a morning zoo vibe, but way deeper, of course. Dan’s co-hosts in this episode are his two close friends: the great meditation teachers Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. Sebene 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.Related Episodes:#489. Can You Really Conquer Hatred Through Love? | Father Gregory Boyle#519. The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Together | Shinzen Young and James Gross Best of the Archives: Making it RAIN | Tara BrachFor more info on the Meditation Party Retreat: Meditation Party Workshop at Omega InstituteTo watch this interview online, go to: https://www.youtube.com/@TenPercentHappierIf you want to be part of the show, please call in with a question or comment. The number is 508-656-0540. Or you can email us with a voice memo at [e-mail] with a voice memo. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/meditation-party-3See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice? Well in the words of highway billboards across America, if you're looking for a sign, this is it. To help you get started, we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd. Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription.

It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm your host, your guy, Dan Harris. All right, party. People were back with another episode of Meditation Party. And before we start, let me say this, the more you get into meditation or spirituality or personal development, whatever you want to call it, the more likely you are to encounter concepts that are mysterious, magical, far out, weird, things like superpowers or other realms of existence or reincarnation. And this could be very tricky psychologically for people like me who are constitutionally unable to believe in anything they cannot prove. I will say that over time, I have switched from just straight up dismissiveness to a kind of

respectful skepticism or agnosticism. By contrast, my meditation party, Compadres, Sebinais Alassi, and Jeff Warren are way less skeptical, and today they're going to just let loose on these subjects. We in this episode have a whole big conversation about magic and mystery and also intuition and tattoos. And then we move on to some other subjects. We're going to take your voice mails and talk about self hatred when my favorite subjects. And also about how to engage in any kind of creative work without being overly attached to the results.

And finally, we do a little recommendation segment where we talk about the stuff we're crazy about right now. Sebin Jeff recommend high-minded books and podcasts. I, true to form, recommend it, profanity, latent TV show. Before we dive in, just a little bit about the Seben Jeff, Seben A. Celacid describes herself as a writer, teacher, and immigrant weirdo.

She teaches meditation on the 10% happier app and is the author of a great book called You Belong. She's based in Brooklyn. Jeff Warren is also a writer and meditation teacher. He and I co-wrote a book called Meditation for Figuity Skeptics. He also hosts the Consciousness Explorer's podcast. He is based in Toronto, is my favorite Canadian. Also do not forget to sign up for our Meditation Party retreat coming up in October at Omega,

which is outside of New York City. There are, I'm told, only a handful of tickets left for the in-person event, but a bunch of tickets, I think probably limitless tickets for the online version, there's a link in the show notes. Just a heads up, this party is intended for mature audiences only a few F-bombs in here, so I apologize in advance for people with sensitive ears

or children around. All right, party people. Welcome to a meditation party episode. What is this three? Yes, it is number three. Number three. All right. The magic number. That's what we do. Here's one of you. You said that. Yeah. The Anna's right up. Salazzy. How are we doing this morning? I'm doing well. It's really, it's so great to do these in person and be able to sit with

you and look you straight in the eyes. So, it's really nice to be here. I'm having a really wonderful summer. It's been a little tumultuous in terms of medical info and it's been really liberating to be with that with some measure of freedom. And I'm doing really well, health wise for those who might have interest in knowing that. And it's been really incredible to not know how I was doing and feel free and now know that I'm doing well and feel free.

And yeah, it's just like this stuff works, people. I'm just having a moment of pause because that's a big topic, your health and your attitude about your health. Well, one thing that I've been sort of playing with is being really in tune with how I feel versus being dragged by fear or control, which are two mechanisms that operate in my life in tandem. And that's a huge conversation and a huge process have been dealing with cancer for 18 years. So this is not overnight changes. And we've talked about it before on this podcast. And it's quite moving even to me. How far have come more to come on this? I suspect. Yeah, I think the conversation goes for Jeff. How you doing?

It's morning. I'm really good. I'm very happy to be here. Both of you. Seven days warm eyes make me feel so happy in yours to Dan. I might put my hand on your shoulder to smile. I'll lean into that, yeah, like that. Looking at your new tattoo. Yes, my new tattoo. We both have new tattoos.

How are you new and two? Yes. Oh wow. Trust, life. We're all in the verbal school of tattoo. Yes, so, Seb, she has two. Which one's new, which one are they both new? Both new, yes.

One says the, they're on her forearm, one says trust with the star next to it, and the other says life with a heart next to it, which I feel like you're stealing from my brand tone there. And mine is a acronym FTBOAB, which stands for the benefit of all beings. So I am now fully savvy. He is official bodhisattva for N's listening.

No, that makes me feel safe about going into the subject matter of today, mystery and magic. What's your tattoo? Oh, I have a bunch. They're all meditation instructions. I have relaxed awareness. Relaxed is on one wrist and awareness is on the other. I have let go, which I got like 20 years ago, and this served me well as a piece of advice.

I was thinking of getting hold on on the other side just more balanced than I have got another one about sensory experience on my back that's from when I was in my 20s. So yeah, meditation instructions. How do you remember, you know, put it on your skin? I should say I have this sun and the moon from my teens and 20s, which is very on brand for me. Oh yeah, so on brand. I'm doing great.

Happy to be here with you guys. Slightly hung over, Jeff and I were hanging out last night. I didn't drink any alcohol, but we ate a late dinner, which I never do. And some reason that messed up my sleep. So I'm a little tired this morning, but otherwise, I psyched to be spending time with you guys. Yes, brother. All right, so subject to your... I think on episode one, you guys talked a little bit about how you felt a little nervous letting your

respective freak flags fly, talking about how you have some interest in what might be called mysticism or mystery or magic. So we're going to go for it today. We're going to really dive into that stuff. But why were why are you nervous about it? My first book was a lot about neuroscience. I love science. I have a teacher, Shenzhen Young, who is very scientifically literate, and he has a very scientific presentation of meditation, who is very rigorous, which I really connected to. And so for the first many years of my way I taught meditation, it was then that same style, only ever trying to describe what's happening

in direct sensory experience, not making any truth claims about the larger world and being kind of agnostic about some of the more mystical pieces. And because of that, there's always been people who are in that kind of more rational camp who've been attracted to my teachings. And yet, the longer I've practiced, the longer I've taught, the longer I've been in this world,

the more my previous certainties about how the world is have started to soften in a road and then certain experiential things have come online that are in line with the more mystical, magical, how we want to describe it. I've just been not sure how to talk about that because I don't want to put off people who might think it's too namby, pamby, weird, like soft thinking. And also, I literally do not know what to think about it because it's not rational. I've had to develop new models and framings for how to make sense of it for me and I don't totally understand it. So how do you talk about

something you don't understand without making people feel like this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about, which is true. So that would be my, so that hence my reservation. You know, there's some stuff I'm happy to talk about, but other pieces I just, I feel like also, they're just still coming into some kind of structure. I'm still learning, I'm still in the process of discovering and figuring out what I think is true. Yeah, so that's me, but how about you, Sam?

I think that for me, you're describing sort of the culture we all swim in in a way, and I know that there has been a fair amount of assimilation in my life. Because I think I do come from a family and a community where there is more openness to the mystical and mysterious spiritual experience, even within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which is what my mother was a part of. There is just more speaking to God or to Mary or praying and trusting in the power of prayer and miracles and things like that, but just growing up in this culture and having the very important part of science drilled into

us, but that becoming the dominant worldview and leaving no room for mystery, I was very much assimilated into that. So even studying religious studies at our alma mater, McGill, you know, it's really kind of an anthropological, sociological, somewhat scientific, even if it's social science approach. It's not a direct experience. And for many years, just religious studies in general really frowned upon. You weren't supposed to be practicing the thing that you taught, especially for compared religious studies. And so I was, you know was looking at Hinduism and Buddhism,

and I had actually an advisor who was a practicing Buddhist. And he wouldn't have been able to teach at certain universities at that time. Yeah, that's so interesting. So things are changing in that, but there's still a tendency. And I know we all know this. We know many meditation teachers, probably all the meditation teachers, we know who consult psychics and you know have energy healers and have had very powerful mystical

experiences. And there's something that is censoring all of us to not speak about that publicly, right? Yes. Yeah. And those rational defenses that we've all built up because of the culture that we live in that looks at this stuff askew and with question and sometimes with a lot of dismissiveness and really demeaning kind of attitudes. So we've all learned to not talk about it so that people don't take us not seriously. And so all of that plays into it. But if we look at sort of the history of science, and we can't go into a whole analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions here, but we think science is this progressing narrative.

When actually there's been lots of question and debate and a lot of great scientists, including Einstein and physics, tends to lean towards mystery, have argued for not throwing out intuition. Recognizing how much we don't know and really allowing for things, And Carl Jung and Albert Einstein had a correspondence for years about astrology and archetypes. And all of these things that I think the greatest minds who do open to the mystery of the cosmos and the universe realize that there's more going on here

than we can just explain through rational, scientific, logical. Clearly. And that would be a very scientific attitude, actually. Right. explain through rational scientific logical. Clearly. And that would be a very scientific attitude, actually. In a sense that science is about staying with the open question. There's this consolidated knowledge of science

is like the yellow egg yolk, but there's this big spread white area that parts of that will be the future science. And parts of it will be discarded as being cognitive bias and confusion and dead ends and so or expansion or abuse. Because I do think that some of the skepticism comes from having been burnt or seeing other people be burnt by the misuse of interesting ideas that are actually being used to enrich or in some way gratify the proponents of those ideas. And the challenge is that the same thing could be said of science, which people who study science, who really study the history and philosophy of science know, but unless you're a philosopher in

that vein or a weirdo like me or Jeff, and might look into that, you wouldn't necessarily know that. That's not the narrative that we hear in the larger culture. If you will, but you don't have to look much further than Tuskegee. Right. To find examples of science being misused. Or any.

Or read a lax or yes. Yes, yes, right. Let me just say one last thing of in terms of throat clearing here, because I do want to get into the actual magic. I want to own that. I think I'm part of the problem here, historically, because I have this propensity to be dismissive.

And so I think reflexively write off things as bullshit in part because of a closed-mindedness, in part, I think because of a simulation into a scientific materialistic worldview. And I think also in part of, as a result of it, I've been a journalist and watching people take these ideas and exploit other people with these ideas. So it's, I think, a cocktail. I think over time, my attitude has shifted to a respectful agnosticism or a Joseph Goldstein. My meditation teacher is always talking about

the collarage line of the willing suspension of disbelief. And so it's more like, I don't know, you know, I don't know. That's genuinely where I'm at now. So having put that out there, said, I'll pick on you first, what's the weird shit that you believe in? I just want to say that, you know, I really appreciate what you're saying. And there's this line between dismissiveness and skepticism. Yes. Yes. We don't want to throw out doubt. Yes. That's a very useful, just like we don't throw out fear, even if we want to work with our fear in a wise way. So. Yeah, there's a middle path. You know, like the epigram in my first book was a quote

from my one of my favorite Andy Rock bands of the 80s that the meet puppets and it and the line was open up your mind and in pause the trash. And so like that is true. But it's also true that if you open up your mind in pours like a bunch of diamonds. And so it's figuring out when do you bring in the doubt or skepticism and when do you take a leap? Yeah, yeah, so for me the direct knowing of things. It's not really about belief, right? Because some people could say, oh, you'd be believing these things but as one of my favorite quotes from French philosopher Bruno Latour said a modernist someone who believes that others believe.

Like, we all believe things, but what do we know? And so from just over the years, even from when I was very young, and we've talked about psychedelics on this show, my experiences with psychedelics, which is often a way that a lot of people open up to other ways of knowing. And it's hard to talk about them because they're not rational. You know, they're hard to put into words. The intuitive is often wordless and experiential.

But I've had direct experience of this reality not being as solid as we experience it to be on a day-to-day level. And knowing that my five ordinary senses might not be giving me the full picture of what's happening here. So there's that in terms of the material reality, shifting and changing through these deep experiences, including meditation. I also have had numerous experiences over many years, and decades ago, I dismissed them or just kind of filed them away that someone would call psychic. I've heard the saying that everyone is psychic, not everyone is necessarily a medium, not everyone can sort of communicate with other realms, but everyone has the power of intuition.

And even if you think of it just scientifically, as Einstein said, time is just a persistent illusion that we're sort of existing in ways that we only experience as moving in the linear way, but there's actually a lot of knowing that can happen across time and space because we have these intuitive capacity. So I have had dreams that then things have happened later. I've had knowing of things that then happened after the fact. I've sort of known things about people before they've communicated them to me. I know all your dark and dirty scenes about the video. I feel naked. No, and I am naked actually. I'm not even mentioning about the waste here. I'm just like a little breeze. With these, you know, these are, I can't explain these experiences and I am trying to open up to them more.

So I'm actually working with a friend of mine who has had psychic experiences her whole life. She comes from a family where this is common. And I sit with her and she talks to me about it and helps me understand what's going on for me and start to explore this more, start to try and energetically open up these channels by just opening to my intuition, you know, pretty much every morning, just sort of being there in my meditation practice now includes this just deep listening to what might be wanting to be known that my rational defenses have closed off to in the past and not having a fixation on where that's coming from or if it's coming from a particular

ancestor or being but being open to that channel. The whole first piece of what you said around intuition and beginning to trust this way of knowing that's coming up through you and I had a question about that, you know as someone who tries to pay attention to my intuitions about things, I find it hard to know what is a genuine intuition versus an aspiration that I want or like, how do you separate the signal from the noise in there? Cause I don't have confidence in that for myself. I don't have confidence yet either.

And it's really a lot like meditation practice. It's something that I just keep returning to. And I have to remind myself to return to it and create pathways in the same way that we discover what types of meditation practices or postures or what time of day works for us. I try and find the openings and channels for those that intuitive knowing. So we were before we started recording talking about ritual. So I have certain things that I use or do, including oracle cards and not because these objects are somehow

imbued with magic, but they're like in every culture, whether it's tea leaves or coffee grounds or things that allow us to start to witness patterns and synchronicities and opening up those intuitive vibrations that are otherwise not known to us on a rational material way. You make me think of this really important point is something that I think about a lot, which is that, and this is, I think, true in meditation.

You know, maybe how you know a practice is working isn't necessarily an effect you're having that's happening in the moment. It has to do with how your life is. You know, are you happier, more fulfilled, more connected? Do you feel like there's more meaning? And maybe when it comes to certain kinds of ritual practice or intuition, it's similar.

You may never know if this effect is what's true, but in believing it to be so, in treating it as meaningful, then the effect that has on your life is this very positive effect, and therefore that's all the validation you need. But I want to hear from you, Dan, like Jeff and I have just said a lot of words, and it might be a word salad. And what, what, yeah, what are your thoughts? Well, you, you can talk about intuition in a way that might strike people as mystical and

Unobtainable and maybe I'm dumbing it down too far, but I kind of think about it as Like listening to the intelligence that exists below the neck So listening to your body which in itself is a can be an annoying cliche But as I often say cliches become cliche for a reason because they're true. And I ever told you the story about what happened to me in college with my then girlfriend. Sophomoreer in college, I attended a liberal arts college in Maine, Colby College, but I didn't quite fit in there

speaking of belonging. And so I took a lot of semesters away. And so second half of sophomore year, I did a semester in Washington DC. It was my first experience actually in television news. And my girlfriend at the time was still at Colby. And she called me one night and said, I wanna break up.

And I freaked out and asked my boss for a day off. On a Thursday night, I drove through the night to get to Maine first thing in the morning to plead my case and somewhere I Think along the New Hampshire main border. I started to feel really sick and I just felt off something with off and I Didn't really listen to it,

showed up at her dorm first thing in the morning, knocked on the door, and she opened the door and like all the blood drained from her face, and she kind of pushed me out into the hallway, and whatever, we had a chat, and then ultimately I got it into the room, and I saw on the floor a pair of LL being shoes that were way too big for her.

And I opened the closet and crouching on the floor was one of my fraternity brothers. Oh no dude. Really bad. Really bad. And it was like a huge formative moment for me. And I think of it now in many ways, but one of them was that my body was trying to

tell me something. I knew something was off. I mean, obviously I knew it from her telling me she wanted to break up, but there was something else I knew. And so to me, I think of intuition within a pretty simple down to earth framework of, yeah, the body's sending us signals all the time, but because we have this racing, egoic mind that's like keeping the world out often so that we can get shit off of our to-do list, we fail to see those signals. And sometimes we fail so successfully that the body just goes into total revolt. Anyway, so now I'm yammering, but that's my view of it. I would also add, you know, I was trained as a coach with certain influences, and one is the enneagram, which talks about three centers, some pointing at my head, the thinking center, my heart, the feeling center, and my belly is the sensing center.

And what's the difference between feeling and sensing? So feeling more like emotions, sensing more, the sensations of the body. And I feel, I feel, I'm a very heart-centered person from, you know, we could explain. Not over my favorite terms. We could explain that astrologically, because I have a lot of water in my chart.

We could explain it. Girl. What's that? Send me two girls. Yeah. And that means he's referring to his prostate issue. Yeah, I didn't think we were going to talk about that in a sound, but let's go there.

You two. So I wonder too if it's these emotional resonances because that's also been shown to have correspondence, right, between how people's heart beats sync, even in a theater full of strangers, of course, with the people that we know and love, but that we have these different ways of knowing and practicing our intuition is actually practicing those other ways of knowing. And even if we are more sensory-based for people who actually pick up on something in our gut feeling, we talk about, right?

Or if we're more emotionally centered, everybody in this culture is trained to go up into their head. So not to dismiss thinking, but we're all pretty well practiced at thinking. And part of opening up to intuition is starting to connect with our heart or emotions, feelings, and with our sensory experiences with what sensations are we having? Intuition, though, seems like something you can tap into without laughing into magic or mystery.

But what is intuition? I mean, dancing could be that the gut knows something. How does the gut know? Because it's connected by a network of neurons to the brain and it's part of the... Across the New Hampshire main border. Because there's invisible neurons going from Dan's stomach to that dude in the, you know, who's not in the closet

at that point, sorry Dan. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe right. I don't know. Oh, this is so interesting. So you're, so when I think about the mystery,

I think of kind of two levels. I level one is the first unbelievable mystery that you can awaken in this life. That you can, by awakening. You can begin to experience self-in-world, not from a position of separation or isolation, but from a position of true integration. And that is real and that you can function just fine in the world without necessarily this ego agenda, even a sense of your own boundaries, a sense of your self and time and space. And this is not me, but as you talk to,

you know, certainly more advanced teachers and practitioners that I've known in my life, talk about experiencing reality in that way. And that's already fascinating. And I think you can make a case from a point of view straight up neurobiology. I mean, this is all, you know, you're doing something, it's affecting the brain, you know,

you're able to come into different kind of state of consciousness, and there's no reason that can't be understood within the existing paradigm of science. But that's level one. Level two is basically the God level. Level two is that not only are you in an interactive, that that, you are in an interactive relationship with reality, that you're not an actor over here and the world's over there and there's only causal things happening, that moment to moment things are organized in a profoundly meaningful way, and the intentions you have have effects on the world or appear to have effects on the world, and the things the world do, I mean, it's all part of one mysterious tableau

that in any one moment, reality is organizing itself in this perfect, meaningful way that you're part of. And that's where astrology comes in, that's where the e-ching comes in, that's where intuition comes in, that's where all the contemplative insights about living vertically in the moment. That's where that comes into me, that's a whole other order of reality that's reflective and synchronous as opposed to causal and linear. And I think we live in both those kinds of realities. And getting a chance to experience that other one is, it's been the most meaningful times in my life. And that's, and I want other people to be able to share in that. And I don't think you have to let go of that other mode of reality.

It's also equally true. It's paradoxical. It's like the absolute and the relative. They're both simultaneously true. And it's part of the paradox is it's bigger than your mind can get its head around. So just surrender and then see what happens. And that's the other thing. See what happens.

Do the, you know, don't take my word for it. Do the practices begin to act in a more interactive way with the world. See how that makes you feel. I mean, have some feedback from community because it can lead you down into delusion and weird biases. And there's no doubt. I mean, that famous line, the mystic swims in the same waters in which the psychotic drowns. There's a way to be in that kind of magical thinking world that is deeply unhealthy, obviously. But there's also a way to be in it that is deeply, deeply healthy and loving and life giving. You used a couple phrases that people might not know absolute and relative.

Okay. You want to try absolute and relative? I'm happy to talk about that. Yeah, well, you know, this is this is what I talk about in the book. Exactly. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it.

That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why I was reading it. That's why longing, it's about fitting in or about just race and culture. But the premise of the book is that paradox is the portal. There are paradoxes people get used to it. And this central paradox of life is the absolute and the relative. The absolute being that there is this mystery. There's this fundamental interconnection, inextricable bound together quality that all the great mystics and indigenous cultures, as well as these modern scientific understandings are telling us that is true.

It's also true that we're individual separate beings with identities and realities and experiences, and both are true. The one and the many is another way of talking about it. Both are true. Yes, both are true. There's one reality that we all participate in. That's unquestionable.

That's by definition what one reality is. And it's experienced in all of these manifold different ways. Yes. And this is a central teaching and Buddhism as well. The paradox of the two truths. So that paradox is a paradox. Like, it's, you know, we're not going to find

this rational explanation about why both are true. And going into this conversation with an understanding of paradoxes is imperative. We're not going crazy. What's the eaching? So the eaching is the, some people call it the world's oldest computer. It's an ancient Chinese divination system that was old when Lao Tzu was walking China.

So it's one of the bases of Taoism. And it was traditionally done with I think sticks or bones. You threw them and then it became coins. And now you can do it on an app on many apps, which I do all the time. And what you're doing is in the app example, since that's probably the one most contemporaries would use, you pose a question, not a yes or no question. You just sort of, what I use is I state a situation.

So I might have a conversation coming up with 7a and I might just say 7a. And the idea is that I'm doing it to try to get a little bit more context or sense or understanding how to approach this conversation. I'm going to have a 7a. So I just maybe put her name down and then I would tap the screen six times. This is in the app.

What I'm doing is I'm throwing the coins six times. And each time I throw it, I get either a straight line, a broken line or something called a changing line, two forms of that. And regardless, I won't go into the technical. You get a hexagram. There are 64 hexagrams in the Eaching. Each hexagram has the sort of pithy, wise saying of framing around it.

And the Eaching was created for governors of China. It's very practical as well as how to make decisions in a military way or in different contexts, but you get a kind of reading. And the reading might say, it might be shock. It's like, some massive surprise is about to happen and it kind of gives you a, depending on the translation, a kind of description of shock.

And then there are some extra stuff there. You can read at the bottom. Or it might say, increase. Whatever's happening, there's more of it's coming. And then it's building up and it gives you specifics around that. Or another one might say, nearing completion. The situation at hand is about to shift into another situation.

So you do one hexagram. There's almost always a second hexagram that tells you how the energies in the situation are changing, what it's moving into. Some people say the second hexagram is more the implicit read and the first one's more the explicit surface read. Regardless, what it amounts to for me. First of all, it's never not helpful

that in almost any situation that I'll consult the eaching. And the framing I get almost always helps me unblock whatever it was I was unsure about or it gives me more helpful context and I'm able to approach the situation in a way that is just, I get better outcomes. You know, and I've been using e each, I hate to use the word, but religiously, for at least three years,

and it's been this incredible tool in my life. It's just been so helpful. And I have complete confidence in it. And I don't understand how it works. I know it's a random number generator. I mean, I do, I have a model for how it works, and I just tried to articulate it earlier. It's not causal. There's no Chinese sage trying to give me good advice, like floating it down from heaven or from the heavens. And so in any one moment, I have an intention to,

my inner world is interested in something. And then, and I throw the E. Ching and then the outer world has this random response that is nevertheless meaningful and is super mystical and magical. I mean, I can't even believe that I'm doing this. The 10 year old version of me would have been like, this is the most absurd magical thinking. And I would have made the obvious protest that you're gonna find the evidence

that you need for that moment. I could have gotten any hexagram and I could find something that's true in that. And I can't argue with that, but I can say, you know, you're taking it as a legitimate source of meaning and insight in my life has created enormous value. This is a huge topic, but we're not gonna tackle it all today. But just to bring it back to something we talked about at the beginning of the show said,

you talked about some pretty, my word, not yours, miraculous stuff that's been going on vis-a-vis your own health. You've been dealing with cancer for 18 years. You had some signs a few months ago that things were not looking good, and then all of a sudden you got a pet scan, and it looked like actually things are going really well. Do you attribute any of this, or maybe even just maintain some openness to there being a mysterious magical element to it? That's not the first time. I mean, those who have known my cancer journey that I've

had many, including in 2021, when you saw me very, very sick. And the improvements I had were so fast. And one thing I'd like about my current oncologist is she's very smart and she's very rational and she's also very open to not understanding what's happening. And she's the one that made the connection at that time. I was not eligible for chemo or radiation at that point. The few things I was doing could not account for what was happening so quickly, including my lung reinflating on its own

and these incredible events. And I don't know, I can't say it's causal. And I don't know. And that's where I really open up to the mystery because I'm also hesitant to say that if you just have less fear or don't give into the fear as much or don't try and control things, it's suddenly everything will be okay.

That's not true. It's not true for most of us. It hasn't been true for me in the past, but I am willing to open to whatever possibilities, including prayer and meditation and receiving the well wishes and healing energies of people around me. It's, I'm not saying those are the causes of it, but I stay open to that mystery and to the possibilities that being open to that mystery brings.

And what you were describing, Jeff, you Jeff, every culture in the planet has these divination, quote unquote, techniques, including just straight up meditation. But all those are really opening to those channels of intuition. It's like opening to the main New Hampshire border, which is what we're forever going to call mystery. Come on.

I appreciate both of you. This is a huge subject, and we're going to come back to it. The future parties undoubtedly. I would just to tie a ribbon around it for now. Just echo what Seb said about this word openness. I just think that this is another example of the importance of intellectual humility and cognitive flexibility and having an open mind. The Buddha is said to have said something to the effect of people who cling to opinions

wander the world, annoying other people. I have been that person annoying other people. So it feels better to be open. And so let's close it for now on that. Can I, sir, great before we close it. Can I just loop it around to the listeners? I have found, like, with so many people and with myself, the more you meditate, the more these things become pertinent things in your life. There's something that opens through this process and certain subtleties that you may have been happening under the radar start to become more apparent.

And there's a reason why so many people who meditate start to get ever more open to these kinds of experiences and ways of thinking and knowing. So, and there is a big connection there. Yes. And we're all headed there if you're meditating. Maybe. Well, all of a sudden, on the guy with a, for the benefit of all being tattooed.

Next step, sunglasses with a third eye from my third eye. When we come back, we're going to take some questions from listeners, and we've got some good ones, some juicy ones, so we'll be right back. All right, we're back with segment two, which we call what's your problem where you get to leave us a voicemail. We'll tell you how to do that soon. If you want to do it in the future, you leave us a voicemail. We solve all of your problems and you're good. So today, we've got two people who've called in that we've selected their message.

We actually got a lot of messages. We've selected two of them. If you're watching us on YouTube, you notice that we've got our headphones on. That's because we want to be able to hear it when we play the voicemail. And the first one has to do with what we're calling non-efforting, which is a typically unmolefluous Buddhist term. So here's the voicemail. typically on Mollifluis Buddhist term. So here's the voice now. Hi, this is Christa from Chicago. May you live with ease? Is one of my all-time favorite invocations in meta-practice? And yet living with ease or non-efforting, as I've heard it described, seems it adds with doing anything that's inherently challenging. As a painter, I go through plenty of mental gymnastics

just to get myself in the studio, and then during the work itself, the normal struggles of not knowing how to do something or not turning out the way I want it to the uncertainty of it all, all while trying to stay wholly unattached to the outcome. So I would love to hear you all talk about your creative work and how you manage the

seeming contradiction between struggle or frustration and non-effort and ease. So, thank you so much. I really appreciate the work you're all doing and sharing. Thank you, Chris. That's a great, great question. Two, just definitional things here. Well, one definitional and one sort of contextual. The definitional thing is if you're listening to this or watching this and you haven't heard

the term meta before, M-E-T-T-A, that's a Buddhist term. It's often translated as loving kindness, or I like this one better, friendliness. It's just this innate trainable capacity we all have to give a shit about other people or have some well-wishes. And in meta-formal meditation practice, one of the phrases you send to your meta targets is, may live with ease. The context I want to set before we talk about this is that creativity can be broadly understood. It doesn't just mean doing something artistic or the three of us have written books. It can mean, you know, planning how you're going to handle some conversation you need to have or a job change or how you're going to drive to your next location. Creativity, I think, should be

broadly understood. So everybody should feel like they belong in this discussion. Anyway, okay. So, for me, I like everybody else at the stable write books and I spend a lot of time suffering while I'm writing books. And I often try to bulldoze my way to the answer because writing is basically just, for me, in my experience, going through a long series of problems from a sentence structure to the structure of the whole book, to the structure of the chapter, you just constantly bumping up against these problems. I need to be solved.

And often they seem impossible to solve. And I have spent a lot of time making myself miserable in this situation. And I had a really good conversation with Joseph Goldstein, who I often invoke my longtime meditation teacher. And I was telling him, I'll stand on my computer and clenched up when I have this subconscious belief, even though I don't think it's correct, that this is the only way to figure anything out.

And he said, this idea that you need to clamp down in order to figure anything out, that's just you being stupid. And then he laughed to one of his mischievous laughs. And he said, here's a good little mantra for you. The good stuff doesn't come from the clench. And you should while you're working, just kind of gently listen to your body while you're working. And when you notice the clench coming up, that's just a signal to ease up a bit. And what I've noticed is to the extent that I can monitor my body while I'm writing,

I'm always clenching. And so I've really gotten good at just tossing a ball around in my office. I keep a tennis ball in there or hurling myself on the ground, playing with my son, playing with cats. I mean, I'm pretty consistent about coming back to the work, but when I notice myself getting overly coiled, that's my move. I said a lot there. Does any of that make any sense?

What I'm saying? It makes sense to me. And I just, you know, I want to honor that there is struggle in writing. Writing, you can get in these wonderful states of flow where it's just pouring out and it's great. And then you read it and you're like, that could use an editor. So there's a place for that second guessing, the struggle that going over it. I mean, I think you kind of need both.

But it's definitely true if you allow that struggle part to be part of the process, then it will be by definition less struggle. It's kind of like what you're doing. It's like you can create more ease inside the more challenging parts of the work. Yeah, and it's so related to our practice, our meditation practice. It's so similar to allow what's there to be there. And to me, in the question, I heard a lot of sort of just inner critic speaking harsh words and ideas about how things should be, you know, it should be smoother,

it should be easier, it should be going much better. And sometimes it's not as Jeff is saying, there is struggle involved too. And for me, I found that, especially with writing or creative output, I need to create a lot of spaciousness, not just internally, also structurally, have space for that jumping on a trampoline or lying down on the ground and just sort of crying. There's this meme of people who read and it's like these two people who look very put together and people who write and they just look like crazy, like crazy eyes. And, you know, that's part of the process. And so creating the spaciousness around that is both external and internal.

So living with ease doesn't mean there's no struggle. It just means can you have some equanimity around the struggle that is inherent in life? Yes. Thank you again, Christa. So our next caller has a really good question of something that I that really resonates with me about sometimes fearing you're a bad person. All right, let's listen to that. When I sit down to meditate, I am instantly bombarded by thoughts of all the truly bad things I have done in my life. Are these things that I should be trying to avoid focusing on or do I need

to work through them to get to the next level of my meditation? Feels weird throwing this to you, Seb, first, because you're one of the best people I know, but what you're rolling your eyes, I meant that sincerely. Do you think I'm joking? I just know it not to be true. Well, I'm not saying you're perfect. Yes. I can really relate to this and this hearts back to that inner critic.

I really have such high standards for myself about how I should be in relationship in my own life. And when that has come up, it's really been important for me to ground into the present moment because it's really taking me usually to the past, right, about how I should have done something. And to me, that's pointing to something that's happening in the present moment, that that

would come up. There's some feeling, and I mean that both in terms of emotions and sensation, there's something happening in my body. And to stay with that rather than getting lost in the story, and I'm talking about the meditation practice itself, to really track what it is. And for many years, it was a lot of tightness in my heart. Yeah. There's a lot of holding and tension in the heart space and just simply even opening up as many people know and I'm a big proponent of lying down meditation practice, exactly because it allows us to open up more freely and easily and have the ground or the floor, whatever's

underneath us support that. And just even that, like breathing into the belly and chest and relaxing helps some of that, the physical tension releasing, helps some of that mental and emotional tension releasing. Then there's the work of therapy and exploration around those stories I have about myself being a bad person that can happen. Sometimes as an investigative process during meditation, you might use rain. I know you've had episodes and conversations about rain, tar Brock teaches rain beautifully. It's an acronym for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. And using certain practices to then work with those thoughts or emotions that are rising might happen. But a lot of times the actual work with those thoughts or emotions that are rising might happen.

But a lot of times the actual work around those stories happens outside of meditation practice for me. Yeah, for me, when this comes up in meditation, I always think focus towards or focus away. There are many strategies if I want to focus towards it and open to it and do self-compassion and some of what you're describing that sometimes is the right move. But other times, I don't have the energy for this right now, or just, it is a feeling in which you don't feel like that's the time is right and you don't have to. You can focus away, you can focus on your breath or you can focus on the sense of being

of the ground, you can open your eyes. This is kind of a really important thing to know that you can choose to focus on something else. That's kind of the first freedom of meditation that you don't have to inevitably be inside the thing that's in the foreground. You can choose something more in the background. It can become the new foreground. And so that's okay too. If you don't feel like you are, we want to go there at any one time, you know, it's like, you don't like it, have to. Can you say one more thing? Yeah. I don't want to assume the gender of the person speaking, but there are also gender aspects to women always needing to be nice and really beating ourselves

up for moments where we've expressed anger or drawn boundaries or even leaned into our rage. And those are all natural experiences of all humans, and we're not always all going to be nice or quote unquote good. And so that training and those messages around being a good girl, we all have to work through them. And that's also true for guys. And I know, Dan, you should speak to this because I know you have some stories about yourself being an asshole, which are not true. Dan, I mean, there have been times where it's true, but I don't think it's holistically true. I've actually one of the things that has really popped up in my head many times when

I've been tempted to write myself off as an asshole or actually more recently other people is something that father Gregory Boyle said to me on the show once if people aren't unfamiliar with him. He's a priest who lives in LA where he works with current former gang members. And he has written a bunch of books, one of them is called Tattoos on the Heart. Anyway, I asked him once about this and he said, I don't believe in evil, I believe in bad behavior. So I found that to be very useful.

Yeah, I didn't say you don't act like an asshole. I said you are not. Holistically an asshole. Yes, yeah, no, I understand. Well, you once said to me, you're not an asshole, you're a knucklehead. That sounds like me. Okay, that's kind of sexy. Yeah, well, really isn't. Great questions, and I want to encourage you, everybody to hit us up with more questions, get life advice from three questionable characters. Here's our number one, 50865605405086560540 or you can send voice memos to us at podcast at 10% dot com TNP or CNT dot com.

We'll put that information in the show notes for you. All right, we'll be right back with our recommendation segment. We've been trying to figure out what to call that segment. I liked cool aid. Some people didn't like that because of its unfortunate historical antecedents, but whatever. It's my fucking show. What a dick. Nucka-le-head.

Nucka-le-head. All right, we's my fucking show. What a dick. Yeah, a knucklehead. A knucklehead. Actually, a knucklehead, knucklehead. All right, we'll be right back. I'll be back with our final segment where we recommend shit that we're really excited about right now. So we'll go around the horns starting with SEP. So I have been listening to a lot of, I think it's called BINORAL beats. Do you know this?

I've heard of that. Yeah, and I don't know the science around this. I know that there's some question to whether they're really effective or not. I first got tarned on to them years ago, actually actually by Jonathan Faust, who's an amazing meditation teacher. He also happens to be married to Tarbrock and he's a great guy and has lots of good recommendations for random things. So he turned me on to that, and I remember downloading an app this was years ago, and I used it a little bit, but now you can find these playlists. I have multiple Spotify playlists with these by-noral beats downloaded onto my phone. They're ones for concentration or flow states.

They're ones for sleep and relaxation. And they're all sorts of things. It's a rabbit hole. So you have to listen to them with headphones on. They don't sort of work just spatially. And they're working on the premise. To me, it sounds like sort of similar to how EMDR works, which is a form of therapy that has been shown to have huge effects for PTSD and for all sorts of trauma and been used

with veterans and other people. And I've used EMDR, I worked with an EMDR therapist after my mom died to deal with some traumatic images, memories that I was having of that experience and it was very effective. And that works on sort of a binaural, alternating pattern, whether it's sound, in the case of these binaural music playlists, I used actually sensory process, so I had these pulsating sensors in my hands working with the therapist as I reimagine certain situations and that sort of rewires the brain. It feels like magic, talking about magic.

But I use these when I'm writing, and so I'll put the flow state one playlist of Spotify or whatever it is. And I find that it really helps me focus. And I use them sometimes before I go to bed. I have fallen asleep with them in my ears. And sometimes when I've used the relaxation ones during the day, I'll fall asleep. They seem to be really effective. Very interesting. Yeah, I checked into those a little bit when I was writing head trip years ago, and there wasn't a lot of science papers at that time, but now there's apparently a lot more in the technology to really jumped up on that. Interesting.

Well, I'm going to give a couple of recommendations to loop back to our woo conversation, our conversation about magic. Sebiné turned me on to Carolyn Casey, who is an astrologer, who has an audio series called Visionary Activist Astrology, which I'm now in my second listening. I find it so incredibly brilliant. She's a semi-autician from Brown University, who she describes as being covert at Brown, secretly interested in studying archetypes

and different systems of thinking about the world in different ways, however you want to describe it. But this series is superb, especially if you jump over the first two or three tracks and get into her description of each planet, and each planet, it's a way into talking about a whole aspect of being human. So Saturn is like kind of about challenge

and having your conditioning come up and how you work with it and Jupiter is about expansion and ritual and ceremony and she's so smart She's so literate. She's so funny and quirky and it's these deep literate humanistic educated takes on This prism of human nature and what she's learned about working with people and I just find it so complementary to my meditation practice and it's very literary, you know, it's very humanistic literary so it doesn't, it appeals to that part of me too. So I highly recommend that. And then just because I mentioned it, it's a great podcast called Weird Studies. These two awesome guys,

one's an academic, one's a filmmaker in Ottawa. Very smart, funny guys. And the podcast, it's basically about the magical. It's smart, educated, irreverent takes on different aspects of the magical. And they have an episode on the E-ching that was what originally got me into the E-ching. So I recommend starting there, but it's episodes on David Lynch and Lost Highway or on UFOs trying to intelligently wrestle

with the reality of living in a more magical world and how to think about that. And there's, of course, are so many academic interesting rationalizations and genuine insights within that. And they're kind of swimming in those waters. So weird studies highly recommended. Those are my two happy places right now. Those are good. Mine is much more pop culture. And this is going to sound like a recommendation from May of this year. So therefore, pretty severely outdated. Because in May, they ran the series finale of succession. My wife, Bianca, friend to both of you.

And I were very sad when the series finale aired. So we started watching it again at episode one, season one. And we're almost done with this full rewatch. And I think it's one of the best pieces of television and maybe one of the most incredible pieces of art that's been produced in recent memory. It's, it's not easy because the characters are so obnoxious, but they do this brilliant thing where the characters are on one level, like incredibly mandatious and macchiavellian. But why you stay with it is because they also have these soft underbellies and they have this humanity and these moments of decency that are like followed up a scene later with, you know, a shiv into the kidney of some other character

unsuspecting at the moment. And there's also like some, I don't know if this is deliberate or not but there's some dharma woven throughout. The patriarch of the show is this guy named Logan Roy who has his own traumatic background and goes on to become a Rupert Murdoch like figure with a Fox News organization that's just pumping venom into the body politic.

And at one point, he's a ruthless businessman. Somebody talks to him about drawing a line somewhere and he says, nothing is a line. Everything everywhere is always moving. Darmal with him, malignant twist to it. And there's another moment where one of the Logan's kids who's got his head up his own ass and he's quoting spiritual texts and his little brother says, yeah, okay, Buddha, nice Tom Ford's. It's beautifully shot and incredibly acted. I mean, just to watch it again to see the subtleties and the performances and also the density of the

writing. My wife Bianca was saying the other day, we're not gonna do this, but I could start again. Wow, so anyway. And I think because it's created by a Brit, right, Jesse Armstrong, that's the name. It's a real commentary on America. Like that only an outsider could bring to that level

of scrutiny that is, yeah, it's fascinating. Even though it's satire, it feels real. It feels like, oh, this must be a little bit what it's like to be in these rooms, with these people are making these extraordinarily important and impactful decisions out of almost uncut vinyl. You know, it's like an ego, and I haven't been in those rooms, but it feels like it could be accurate in some If not exact way some larger way I'm gonna take back what I just said about only an outsider could say this although it is kind of an outsider insider review

Because I'm really obsessed with reservation dogs. Oh, yeah, it's great show. I love that it's an amazing show It's the first all native production in the US and That show is a huge commentary on this country and the crimes of its origin and Continuation and it is Leroy it's yes, it's so smart. It's so funny. It's so tender So if people haven't seen that check it out. It's on Hulu. It's an smart. It's so funny. It's so tender. So if people haven't seen that check it out it's on Hulu. I thought an FX I think. I love the ghost character. Oh, young warrior. Awesome. Best part from my money, the best part of that show. All right. It was such a pleasure to

be with you guys. You're the best. Always friends always. Love you guys. I mean, really, really grateful to you for doing this. I want remind everybody, if you want to call in and ask life advice from people you shouldn't be getting life advice from. Practice advice. Keep it in the realm of this. Call it magical advice. Hey, magical. If you want to get more magical, talk to 7a. You're really selling this guys. 508-656-050-508-656 0 5 4 0. You can send us voicemails or voice memos at podcast at 10% .com. Again, all that info is in the show notes. Don't forget, we've got our inaugural meditation party, IRL at Omega, which is a little bit outside of New York City.

It's coming up in October. We'll put a link to buy tickets. I think there are only like a dozen. Only 20 left last I heard Okay, yeah, but there's online too. Yeah, you can buy tickets to watch anyway. We have no idea what we're doing So we're gonna try to figure that out in the interim in the months that are what is it like a month and a half before we have to do this thing coming up Yeah, but if it goes well, we're gonna do lots more actually we've already it's we already sold so many tickets that they've already asked us to do another one the next year. But if it really goes well and we we're having fun,

I think we maybe we could start doing quite a bit more of these. So come join us virtually or IRL. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks again to Seven Jeff. Love those guys. Really love those guys. Thank you to you.

Love you as well. I mean, I couldn't do any of this without the listeners. If you wanna do me a solid, here I am asking for a favor after praising you, but if you wanna do me a solid, go give us a rating or a review on your favorite podcast player. It really does help with all the algos. And thanks most of all to everybody

who worked so hard on this show. 10% Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin and Davey Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson, DJ Kajmir is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our senior editor and she has been the brain behind this whole meditation party experiment. Thank you, Marissa.

And Kemi Regler is our executive producer. We get our scoring and mixing from Peter Bonaventure over at Ultraviolet Audio and our theme, music was written by Nick Thorburn of The Band Island. We'll see you back here on Monday. We're kicking off two weeks of episodes all about the Dharma of Work. We're calling the series, Sainly Ambitious.

And I'm going to interview a bunch of top experts about some fascinating things like balancing happiness and ambition boosting your calm quotient without losing your edge, finding work you love on your own terms, how to integrate mindfulness into your day at work and how to handle big emotions at the office. Our first guest is a guy named Simone Stahlsoff, author of a new book called The Good Enough Job.

So that's coming up on Monday. It's a great series. I think you're gonna like it. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.

at Wondery.com slash survey.