The One You Feed - A Soul Boom Discussion on Mental Health, Spirituality, and Connection with Rainn Wilson

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

In this episode, Rainn Wilson delves into the conversation tackling many topics including mental health, spirituality across traditions, and the importance of connection. He also explores the universal struggle between our lower and higher selves, shedding light on the battle within. You’ll also hear Rainn’s interesting personal anecdotes and spiritual insights that emphasize the significance of practices like meditation and connecting with nature. Every Tuesday starting April 9th, Rainn Wilson is releasing the Soul Boom podcast! Tune in each week to a series of intimate conversations that tickle the mind, heart and soul. Never too precious, yet unafraid to touch on the profound, Soul Boom digs into the core of the human experience: creativity, spirituality and psychology. Bringing to the conversation some of the most brilliant and heart-felt artists, thinkers and doers, Soul Boom guides the listener toward transformation on both a personal and societal level. Also, laughs.  In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the benefits of meditation for enhancing mental well-being Explore the sacred in everyday life for a deeper sense of fulfillment Embrace the transformative impact of nature on wellness and spirituality Discover how spirituality and connection can lead to improved mental health Understand the role of spirituality in overcoming addiction for lasting recovery To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and devotion does not have to be to an entity with a will and a beard, but connection to the greatest possible love and unity that binds us all and gives us our common humanity. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is a guest that has been on two previous times. He's closing in on the record of most appearances on the one you feed. It is Rainn Wilson, an American actor, comedian, podcaster, producer, writer, director, and the list goes on and on. You guys probably know him best as Dwight from the TV show The Office, but his accomplishments are so many I can't even begin to list them all. But most importantly for this episode is to mention his new book called Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. Hi, Rainn. Welcome to the show. Eric, thanks for having me back. Third's a charm. Yeah, I'm really glad you're here, Rainn. It's a pleasure to talk to you every time we get to do

it. And today we're going to be discussing your latest book, which is called Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. But before we get into that, we will start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Eric, as you know, I'm a huge fan of your podcast, and you are OG old school. You've been doing this for a long time. You've been in the kind of recovery, mental health, wellness space since the talkies were

invented, right? Wasn't it? And I love how you frame the conversation around that really exquisite story. And to me, it reminds me of a story from my faith, which is the Baha'i faith. And that is the son of the founder of the Baha'i faith, who went by the title Abdul Baha, which means servant of glory. He came to the United States a little over 100 years ago, and he was interviewed when he landed at the docks in New York City.

And there was a journalist there, and they said, do Baha'is, do members of the Baha'i faith believe in Satan? And Abdu'l-Baha said, yes, Baha'is believe in Satan. And the guy seemed a little surprised and he said, oh, to a Baha'i, what is Satan? And Abdu'l-Baha said, Satan is the insistent self. Oh, I love that. Oh, I love that. And I love that idea of the insistent self because Satan not being some creature with a tail and red skin and who lives in an evil place, but Satan is inside all of us. It is the insistent self side of all of us.

And we all have that insistent self, that ego that is a veil between us and God, to quote Rumi, the ego is a veil between us and envy, aggression, fear, and lust. And so to me, the parable that you put at the centerpiece of your show is the number one most important spiritual path, spiritual battle that any and every human being walks. It's in every spiritual tradition. And it's the battle between us and our lower selves and our higher selves. And battle is a tough word. I almost feel bad about using the word battle because conflict is so inherent and baked into that word, but a balance between these two sides of ourselves. And the spiritual path for anyone, and no matter what your background, if you're spiritual, not religious, and you struggle with God, if you're Christian, if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Baha'i, is always how do we keep the insistent self at bay, recognize it as an important part of the human experience. We wouldn't be here as human beings if we didn't have greed, lust, avarice, aggression, right?

100,000 years ago, we probably needed those qualities to keep our tribes alive in our caves. They don't serve us as much anymore. The stakes are much higher and much more insidious. So the spiritual path and all of these different faith traditions is feeding the wolf that isn't the insistent self. I love that answer. There's a few things in there to touch on. The insistent self is a great phrase. And I know you, like me, did some recovery work in 12-step programs. And I remember reading, it was the AA big book. I wasn't sober very long. I was 25 years old and had been a homeless heroin addict. And I remember reading, there's a section in there that talks about, and it says it

a little bit bluntly maybe for today's world, but it says, selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem. I really got it. And like in a moment, I remember that moment of like, instead of that being something that made me defend myself, I just suddenly went like, oh yeah. Like all I do is think about myself. All I do is think about like how I feel and how I'm going to modify how I feel by whatever chemical I can get my hands on, but it is an entirely self centered pursuit. And so, right, that phrase, the insistent self I love, because I do think that, you know, we all know we need some degree of self and desire and will to function in the world. But that phrase insistent talks to me about

that being out of the other word you use there, which is balance, right? I don't love the word battle either. You know, I think these things are a balance, but the insistent self gives me a very clear, like, oh, it's the self that just keeps carrying on beyond when it's useful and beyond when it's helpful. And so thanks for sharing that phrase. I love that one. Thanks. Thanks, Eric.

One of the things that you talk a lot about in the book is the importance of finding a spiritual path that resonates with us individually. This is a big piece of your work in general, I would say. And I would be curious if somebody is coming to this and wants to develop a spiritual life of some sort, but they've either come out of a tradition that no longer makes sense to them, or they don't really know what they believe in or feel like. How do you think about people getting started on this path? That's a great question. I wish I had an easy answer and I wish I had kind of had more time to formulate this. It feels like that could be a book just on itself, just answering that. It probably could. It probably could. Yeah. That question.

I think the 12 steps do it very well by first kind of defining what a higher power looks like. And that can be tricky for a lot of people in recovery and a lot of people on a spiritual path. One of the things we explore on the new Soul Boom podcast is the concept that for a lot of people, their religion or faith journey is the most inspiring, uplifting thing they'll ever encounter and the most meaningful thing they'll ever encounter. And for a lot of people, their faith and spirituality journey is the most traumatic thing that has scarred them the most.

So we have to be very conscious of that. There can be a great deal of religious trauma, but that's one way. I think meditation is super important to my recovery, my mental health journey. And that's a pretty easy thing to undertake that doesn't require a lot of belief and a lot of knowledge. And you can just sit quietly, preferably maybe outside, maybe under a tree or something like that. And even just take five or 10 minutes to just quiet the mind and breathe and be in the moment. You don't have to do anything fancy around that. And then I have a chapter in the book about sacred pilgrimages, the sacred pilgrims, I call it. And

the idea of finding what is sacred in daily life, in our modern world with our phones buzzing and emails that need returning and Costco parking lots? And how do you find the sacred in that world? The main thing for me is to consider the idea. The quote I often go to is from Father Teilhard de Chardin, who says, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And that's where I begin every day. Like, yes, I have this insistent self. I have Rainn Wilson. I've got this big middle-aged fleshy body from suburban Seattle. My body has certain needs. It likes to overeat, you know, and I have an ego, you know, and I'm in Hollywood and I'm like, oh, why did so-and-so get that part and I didn't? And why didn't I get considered for this role? And why am I not getting paid that? And, you know, it's really, really difficult to sidestep that in show business and release that. But when I remember that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, that can inform the choices that I make and the path that I walk, wherever that takes you. That can take you to indigenous Native American spiritual beliefs. It can take you to transcendental meditation. It can take you to mystical Catholicism, the Vedas and Upanishads,

the Buddha. But it is a universal in all religious traditions that we have a spiritual higher component, a spirit, a soul, whatever you want to call it. And how then do we step by step, clear space in our lives to feed, nourish, contemplate, and embrace the spiritual side of ourselves? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener, while you were listening to that, what resonated with you? What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind? If the thing that came to your mind was more time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you really haven't liked it, then I want to give you a quick tip that might make it better for you. And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're going to sit down and meditate and

they're going to stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that means they're doing it well. But no one does that. And so we end up feeling like we're failing all of the time. Every three seconds, failed again, failed again, we develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at goodwolf.me slash calm. In it, I walk you through my process to engage with meditation in a new way. And a lot of people have found it really helpful. That's goodwolf.me slash calm. life must be just fine. It must be great because it has these things in it that I want, right? And you're a person that, you know, the vast majority of the actors on the planet would look

up at, right? There's a lot of actors on the planet and go, God, if I could have a career like that, right? If I could just, I love those examples because I think it shows that for all of us as humans, regardless of where we're situated in different places, that there are ways to be unhappy where we are, and there are ways to be happier where we are, like right where we sit. And this is not to say, you know, like that if somebody is living on $3 a day, that like they should just be able to be as happy as everybody else. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I'm saying that speaking to that general sense we all have of, I would just be happy if I got X, right? I know when I look at my own life, I'm like, I got a lot of X that I wanted and I am happier, but I don't think it's because of that, right? I think it's because I've, I've continued

to try and develop along as you would say, spiritual lines. A hundred percent%. So all of contemporary society in Western civilization, wires us and motivates us to seek happiness outside of ourselves. So we just keep reaching for more, we want to make more money, we want to have a better relationship, we want to live longer, we want to look more youthful, we want to own more stuff. And, you know, going back to our cavemen ancestors, it makes total sense. You know, if you had a lot of deer jerky and a lot of, you know, beaver pelts, you know, and berries in your cave, and you had a lot of like eligible mates, you know, in your cave, you would thrive. So the acquiring of stuff and the need for stuff is hardwired into our brain stems, but it doesn't help us so much in the modern world. I was really lucky to do this television show. It was on the Peacock Network last year called Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss. And it was traveling around the world, looking at happiness in other cultures and what brings people joy and bliss and what we can learn

from other cultures and bring back home to America. And the thing that I found is really quite simple. And it was so revelatory. And it's connection. We really thrive in connection and we really waste away in isolation. And this is also how we're wired. So, you know, what wolf are we feeding? We're putting away the, you know, the materialist pursuits of seeking happiness outside of ourselves and finding connection. And that is certainly human connection and finding tribes and communities and like-minded people or different-minded people, but it's also connection with nature. It's connection with a higher power. We long to be connected. That would be the only, other than turning inward and seeking, you know, peace from the kind of agitated, unquiet that we walk the world, it's connection. And I got to experience that in Iceland and Thailand and in Ghana, West Africa, and it's helped me bring it home to my life here in Los Angeles. I agree. I mean, to me, the word spiritual, you and I have slightly different definitions and maybe we can go into that in a second, right? For me, spiritual is

all about, to me, it just means connecting with the things that really matter. That's kind of it for me. I'd love to ask you what it means to you in a second, but I don't want to miss this discussion of your TV show. It sounds delightful. I'm going to need to figure out how I can get National Geographic to watch it. Oh, Peacock, Peacock. Peacock. Okay. Oh, that's easier to figure out. Yeah. Just get the free month on the Peacock, sign up and just watch it. And then forget to cancel, forget to cancel. No, I'm just kidding. You've done a lot of studying of different cultures, particularly in the spiritual dimension for a long time now, right? You're really well read in the spiritual literature.

I'm curious though, as you went out and traveled, it sounds like there was this overarching thing that you sort of got, which was connection. But were there any other things in that that surprised you or that was like a new angle on something you were like, wow, I never thought of it that way before. I'm just kind of curious for another takeaway out of that experience. Yeah, boy. I mean, there's so much. One of the big disconnects we have in the modern world is our connection with nature. I was reading recently, and it's an easy thing to Google, like how much time people spend

outdoors is astonishingly low, you know, usually less than an hour a day. astonishingly low, usually less than an hour a day. And that's amazing when we used to spend 24 hours a day outdoors or at least 12 hours a day outdoors. Take the people of Iceland, for instance. A lot of times they're forced inside during the very cold winters, but their relationship, their connection to nature is incredibly profound. Their love, the Icelandic love of the glaciers and the volcanoes and the hot springs and the waterfalls and the geysers that populate their island, they really worship that aspect of being Icelandic. An intensely burning love for nature and for their island. I found the same thing to be in Ghana and in Thailand as well. And it's something that I realized was very much missing in my life. I mean, I try and take a big camping trip every summer and, you know, I like to take

dog walks and, you know, go down to the beach sometimes, but to really prioritize nature time is a big part of a spiritual path, a mental health path, a wellness path. And it sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. More trees, more nature. It sounds good. But you know, what would it take to really prioritize, like to measure, like how much time do you spend outside? How do you increase that? Can you take being vaguely outside to being committedly outside? And can you get out two or three times in the year into the wilderness and where there's not a phone and there's just trees? And how does that feed your soul? It's very common sense, but I think it has had a profound effect on the mental health crisis

that we've been undergoing over the last 20 or 30 years. Yeah, it's really hard. Like I prioritize being in nature and I bet I'm under an hour a day average. And that's with me even trying, you know, just given, you know, the nature of a lot of the way my life is structured. And yet I know for me, it is a really valuable thing. There's something about it. I think it's helpful on many levels. For me, one of the levels is like, I can just walk outside and it's beautiful. And I can be like, you know what, this costs absolutely nothing. And this is always available. It's like this resource is here. It's how I feel about libraries too.

I walk into a library, I just feel happy, you know, just like, this is amazing. Like, you know, look at this repository of hope and possibility that like I can just walk into. Nature has that similar, obviously it's working on different mechanisms, but there's a correlation to me about something about this resource that's always there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Another aspect around bliss is very simply doing things for other people, being of service. And they've done countless studies in the field of positive psychology around this that, again, contemporary Western society says, you know, me, me, me, you know, it's me time to take care of yourself, get stuff for yourself, acquire stuff, putting yourself first and foremost. But in actuality, when we're of service to others, when we prioritize others and sacrificing of our time, of our attention, of our status, of our resources for others, it gives us a great deep sense of fulfillment. I'll never forget meeting this woman in Thailand, and this is a common practice in Thailand, that

every year for her birthday, she goes and hands out food and is of service to the monks that live in a very impoverished state in the monasteries, and hands out food to the poor. So her birthday is a service day to others. And I thought that is really beautiful. And 180 opposite of America, where it's all about celebrating ourselves and getting cake and presents for ourselves. Yeah, that's a great story. So I mentioned what spirituality means to me about just being connected to the things that matter most. What is a working definition for you? Well, the Oxford Dictionary talks about spirituality as being concerned with the non-material aspects of life. So that goes hand

in hand with what you're saying. In my faith tradition, there is a metaphor that I love to look at that helps elucidate this idea. And that is the baby in the womb. I believe, and Baha'is believe, and many other faith traditions believe, that there is a divine, eternal aspect to myself. That is, my consciousness is not just a random assortment of molecules and neurons firing in a brain that has given me a personality and perspective. And I'm not just an elevated ape or monkey, but that my consciousness is partially connected to my corporeal existence, and it's part juices and electricity and gray matter, and it is also my consciousness, the part of me that weeps at a poem, the part of me that longs for a connection, that beams when I hold a baby, that sighs when I see a sunset, that this part of myself is of this world and yet not of this world.

The metaphor is the babies in the womb. So a baby in a womb, we were all in a womb, and when we were in that womb, we had no idea, you and I, Eric, that we would be on Riverside.fm looking at each other, having a profound conversation about health and wellness and love and God and spirit over microphones and the internet and podcasting, et cetera. We had no idea that that existed. We were just floating in amniotic fluid, growing our arms and legs and toes and elbows and eyelashes that we were going to need in the physical world. And, you know, if you were to ask a baby, hey, why are you growing these elbows and eyelashes and fingers? The baby would be like, I don't know, leave me alone. I'm just,

I'm fine right here floating around. It has no idea of the miraculous infinity that lies outside of the womb. It has no idea about Radiohead and Miles Davis and the poetry of E.E. Cummings and what the Grand Canyon looks like. And in the same regard, that's what we're doing in this physical realm. In this physical realm, we are growing our spiritual arms and legs, our spiritual toes, our spiritual eyelashes and elbows that we will need once this material body falls aside in nirvana, in the happy hunting grounds, in heaven, the next plane of existence. And what are we taking with us? Maybe not so much our personalities, but those qualities that we've grown in this world, or qualities of kindness and humility and compassion and love and honesty. Those are our spiritual arms and legs and elbows and toes that we are taking with us on our infinite journey into the beyond.

So it's really beyond heaven and hell. There's not like that kind of concept in my faith tradition of like, oh, believers are going here and non-believers are going here. We're all on this journey. You know, 8 billion of us are on this journey and the journey begins in the womb and it comes here to the physical realm and continues. So what is spirituality? It's being concerned with that journey, you know, with the accruing of those spiritual

virtues of seeking like sunflowers turning to the sun, seeking to turn toward the divine impulse and understanding that our lives are infinite and miraculous and incredibly, incredibly short and precious while we're in our bodies. I'm dealing right now, I lost two friends to cancer in the last couple of years. I've got like four friends with cancer right now. And this happens when you're in your 50s. The comedian Neil Brennan talks about Sniper's Alley. It's like when you're in your 50s and the comedian neil brennan talks about sniper's alley it's like when you get to a certain age it's called sniper's alley because all of a sudden the people around you start getting picked off and it's true and it's sad and it's heartbreaking and it's reality and it's part of the journey I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk

gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all

hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm sorry to hear about all of your friends. Thank you. Every year getting older, I'm in my 50s also, is this fragility of life becomes ever more clear, which can be a positive and is also deeply unsettling. Yeah, thank you. Indeed.

So I'd like to turn our attention for a minute and talk about mental health, although it's going to lead us right back into soul boom here in a second. You talk about in the book about you've dealt with many mental health issues, you know, depression, anxiety, addiction. And I did an interview recently with a woman named Dr. Lisa Miller. I don't know if you're familiar with her work. I love Lisa Miller. She's amazing. And we just had her as one of the first people on our Soul Boom podcast that's coming out in a few weeks. So perfect. Yes, she's wonderful.

The thing in her book that really blew me away was, you know, when she began studying spirituality and she found the protective effect that it has against depression was a higher protective effect than they had seen in nearly anything else. Now, it's slightly more nuanced because what she over time sort of found out was that people who suffered depression often have turned to spirituality because it's a path out. But there does seem to be a correlation between mental health and spirituality. And I would love to hear your thoughts on what things do you find most helpful, you know, for your mental health overall. So if you want to talk to how spirituality informs that, and then anything else that feels alive for you right now in that area? Thanks.

It's really one of my very favorite topics. The Buddha, as we know, has a principle teaching. He says, I teach one thing and one thing only, suffering and the elimination of suffering. Life is suffering, or there is suffering, or the world has suffering, however you translate it. And the word suffering that was used at the time in the Sanskrit or Pali was dukkha. And from what I've read and understand, dukkha is most expertly translated as anxious discontent. And I think any addict understands anxious discontent. And I wake up with it most every day. And I'm just like, I got a little headache or my back hurts or why didn't this work out? And I'm resentful at this

person and I wish I had that. And why didn't this come? And even if it's not specific, it's just that feeling. It's that vibration of things aren't right. So I have to adjust myself away from anxious discontent toward radiant acquiescence, toward acceptance, towards gratitude. And I use tools from both the 12 steps and psychology and spiritual practice to help realign myself. And that's a different wolf that I feed, right? I don't feed the anxious discontent. You know, I feed gratitude and connection, or I attempt to. Some days I'm better at it, some I'm not. Frankly, a lot of the time I just fail totally and get too busy to meditate. And all of a sudden it's four o'clock and I'm a dick to my

wife and I think my life is shit. And I don't look around and go, wow, I've actually got it really good. So the spiritual life has helped me a great deal with understanding anxious discontent. And meditation certainly grounds me, but prayer is an important part of this for me because I believe that there is a power that's greater than myself and that surrender to that power, asking for help. Anne Lamott has that great book, Help, Thanks, Wow, the three forms of prayer. And I can connect with this creative presence, this force, this force of beauty and light and warmth and knowledge. And that helps me. I think that on my mental health journey, something that I've always really responded to,

Eric, is transcendence. And I think that humans have a longing for transcendence. We long to transcend out of our bodies. We don't want to just sit in our bodies, jack off, eat a sandwich, watch some Netflix, pop a zit, take a poop, and just be in our bodies. That's an important part of being a human being. But we also long for what? For love, for understanding, for beauty. We have that transcendent impulse for something to reach out beyond the mere material. And I know that I've always had that. Maybe I'm just wired that way, but I feel like most everyone has that to a certain degree. And that's what spirituality is all about. It's all about like

life is precious. Life is short. The experience continues. Embrace the transcendent. And in the doing, we find kind of meaning and purpose. We can give the transcendent to others. It's a gift. Again, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. The list goes on and on. And there's so many things I could talk about, the positive benefits of spirituality, and especially for young people

in the mental health epidemic that's going on right now. I know I'm rambling a little bit, but I'll just say another one that's really important is suffering. So the Buddha teaches about suffering, but the idea of suffering comes up in every faith tradition as well. And one of the things that psychologists all kind of universally agree is that the younger generation does not have much resilience. There's a setback and it causes a big breakdown. There's a difficulty and they don't know what to do. There's a fear of an obstacle and so that shuts them down.

It's a big generality for those under 28 or 30 right now, but this is a big tendency. And I think that spirituality provides a context for suffering, like what is suffering? What is the purpose of suffering? Suffering exists. There's ways to detach from suffering. There's ways to overcome suffering. There's ways to develop determination to pierce through suffering. But suffering is a necessary part of the spiritual struggle. And we feel pain so that we can feel joy and we have something to compare it with. And it is through suffering that we grow our resilience. You know, when you go to

the gym, you're lifting weights. What are you doing? You're breaking down the muscle fibers. You're literally tearing them so that they grow back stronger. And this is part of what it is to be a spiritual being in having a human experience. The list goes on and on for me. I love where you started with, you know, Buddha teaching suffering and the end of suffering, and you kind of came all the way back to it at the end. And, you know, I know what drew me to spirituality. I was probably 17, 18 years old, and I'd been around the Christian faith, but it just never really resonated with me. It never made sense to me. I'd been pointed into Zen Buddhism by my teacher I had in high school, and that sort of led me to the Tao Te Ching. But

I know what it was about those two works that resonated with me and sort of set me on this journey. And it was that idea that there was a way to be okay in the world, even as difficult as the world is. I was an over serious 17 year old, but it was pretty clear to me even by then that the world could be a really difficult place and that there was an enormous amount of suffering in the world. And the thought that there was a way to not have to solve that problem by making it all go away, but instead there was a way to be okay in the midst of it. That to me was like, that was the beacon. That was the thing that sort of really drew me in and that did not stop me from descending into addiction. And I often think of my addiction as, as you were talking about, is a search for

transcendence, right? That's what it, that's a lot of what that energy was, right? I think by the end of my addiction, there was probably a fair amount of hiding from pain, but in the beginning, it was about connecting to joy and beauty and the insistent self being quiet long enough that I could appreciate the world and its beauty. I just want to piggyback on what you're saying. Like whether for me it was drugs, whether it was alcohol, whether it was porn, whether it was kind of like love addiction and romance, codependence, you know, it was a search for several of the things we've been talking about, connection and transcendence and meaning and seeking joy, seeking a way out of the insistent self to try and kind of obliterate that

anxious discontent. And, you know, like they say, it works until it doesn't work anymore. And then you find yourself even, you know, further down in a hole. But that is that same impulse. It is that essential human transcendent spiritual seeking impulse. And I'll also say that some people have a hard time, and mostly because of how they've been raised with a certain idea of God, they have a hard time like worshiping something greater than themselves. And I think that humans always worship something greater than themselves. Everyone worships something. It's just true. There might be a couple of people listening right now. That's bullshit. I don't know. But I believe it's true. It might be your career. It might be money. It might even be making your family or your spouse your higher power. It can be your political party.

your higher power. It can be, you know, your political party. It can be status at work. It can be workaholism. Workaholism is, in contemporary America, is given a free pass. You know, if you work 60, 70 hours a week and have a couple divorces because of it, like, God bless you. You're a job creator, entrepreneur, and, you know, just trying to provide for their family. And I would rather substitute something more like love or beauty than that. All right, now let's pause for a quick good wolf reminder. And this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating, your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that as a moment of failure,

like, oh, my mind wandered again. But let's flip that and instead treat that as a moment of failure, like, oh, my mind wandered again. But let's flip that and instead treat that as a moment of celebration, because in that moment, your mind actually woke up and you were mindful of the fact that your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we can flip that right on its head and say, oh, good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that A, our brain is going to do it more often because we're training it, and B, that we're going to enjoy it more likely that A, our brain is going to do it more often because we're training it, and B, that we're going to enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.

Check out my free meditation guide at goodwolf.me.com. So you've multiple times used the word divine, you've used the word God, which, again, for many people is a real turnoff. And a little game that I love to play is, what are other ways of saying that concept that are more welcoming and open to people who have a problem with them? people who have a problem with them. And you've got a couple great ones in the book. So I thought I would read a couple that you reference, and then you can feel free to add anything else you want to add to it. One is you reference, I'm not sure how to say this person's name, but Nicholas of Cusa, a 15th century philosopher who said, divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity. He spoke of a God who's, this is the part I love, whose center, so to speak, is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. That is such a great line. And, you know, you then also go on to talk about the idea of the Tao. And I just got done doing a really deep dive teaching for this AI type program that's going to be created around the Tao.

And, you know, the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao, but this idea that whatever we're trying to describe when we use the word God or divine, our words are always going to fall short. Yeah. Amen. This is such a tricky one. You know, in the book Soul Boom, I have a chapter called the Notorious G-O-D, which is all an examination of what God is and what God isn't. And I would say the conversation needs to begin with like, well, what is God not? Judgmental, male, patriarchal, damning, contemptuous. Those are a couple of the humanoid, you know, on a cloud, you know, just start with a list of what God is not, you

know, and, and really, we missed beard, bearded, you know, I have a beard and I know, okay, God like certainly, but don't let that confuse your listeners. But, you know, start with what God isn't. Oftentimes when people say, I don't believe in God, I'll say, you know, I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in. So I went on this search. It was kind of before I was even in recovery, I was just in abject misery of mental health with anxiety and depression. faith and I had jettisoned the religion and spirituality to just essentially like go crazy and party in my twenties in New York and be an actor. And so I started tiptoeing back towards spiritual ideas and religious ideas. And, but the God thing was a big hangup. I had spent a while as an atheist and tried to have that make sense. It didn't really make sense to me. And then I was reading about Native American spirituality. And in the Lakota Sioux tradition, the idea of God is known as Wakantanka, the great mystery. And so you're asking for names of God that could allow people into a path of

seeking the divine. There's one right there, the great mystery. I knew at the time, and I was in my late 20s, maybe 28, I don't believe in God and I don't believe in some guy patriarchal. In my book, I call him Sky Daddy. I don't believe in Sky Daddy, but I can get behind the great mystery. And that was very exciting to me. And the more I kind of read about this Lakota idea, the great mystery, there's no personification whatsoever. This is not a guy. It's not a dude.

It's not a being. It's not a demigod. It's not a demiurge. It's simply a radiant force contained in nature. And it's beyond time and space. It's in the wind. It's in the beauty of the trees. It's in the sunlight and the flowers. It's known through the majesty of mountains. It's known through all of the metaphorical beauty and power contained in nature. And it also courses through our ancestors and our consciousness. And as an artist, I could get

behind the great mystery. So that's where I started my kind of God journey was like, and I remember saying to friends of mine, like, I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Wakan Tonka. I believe in the great mystery. And so I've tried to stay there. And I talk in the book, Soul Boom, and also on the podcast that's coming up a lot about God as being more akin to love or art or beauty than any kind of conscious being. And when I am able to sit in that reality, I feel much closer to God. When I worship a God that is love and beauty and art and music and transcendence incarnate, then I feel most heart connected to that source rather than any kind of like someone or something that has opinions and thoughts and has superpowers. Yeah. I think St. Augustine said, if you understand God,

what you understand isn't God. You've got another line in there where you call it the essence of essences. I love that one also. The great mystery has been sort of my fallback for a long, long time is because I'm just like, well, ultimately all this is a mystery. And so that is something that I can towards and that I can both want to figure out and also be okay not figuring out, you know, doing both those things. The God of the Christian church, by and large, is often far too similar to Zeus. And people get really hung up on that and they get angry. I don't believe in God. And what they're really saying is I don't believe in Zeus, you know, and the theologian Paul Tillich and philosopher kind of redefined

God as the ground of all being. And again, trying to get God out of the sky and more into the ground and like being itself, interconnectedness and life itself. You know, I think there's a lot of different ways to look at this, but I think what's important is to understand that we are wired to worship, we're wired for transcendence. Prayer and devotion does not have to be to an entity with a will and a beard, to an entity with a will and a beard, but connection to the greatest possible love and unity that binds us all and gives us our common humanity. And then what's even more important than that, more than any kind of belief is like what you do.

Who cares ultimately what you believe? Some of the best people I've ever known have been diehard atheists serving their fellow humans, sacrificing of their time and energy and status and attention and bank accounts for others. And it really is, it's in what you do. It's not so much what you believe, but hopefully what you believe can guide you to be worshiped, it's really about this way of being and way of engaging in the world. Yeah. James in the Bible says faith without works is dead and God is in what you do. And we see God revealed in what people do and how they are and how they travel through the world.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's been something that's happened to me for years, but I haven't really known how to think about it before. It tends to happen when I'm watching TV or a movie. It sometimes will happen in reading, and it happens in life. If I see it, it doesn't occur with the regularity, but if I'm watching something and someone just sort of does something, it's not like a huge thing, but it's a moment of just real kindness. I always tear up.

And I think I just sort of realized there's actually a term for it. I think it's like moral elevation or something. It's something like that, but it also has something in common with me about kind of what you were just saying. It feels like something, if we were going to use the word worship, right? It's something that is worth worshiping, right? It does for me feel transcendent. That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. And there is a word in every faith tradition that essentially translates to loving kindness. It's different than kindness, and it's different than love. It's loving kindness, and it's how we serve one another. And I hear you in responding to that, and I feel the same way. And how and why are we so disconnected from acts of true loving kindness?

One of the things I get into in Soul Boom, one of the least popular parts of my book that a lot of people, I think, frankly, I just lose a lot of people, is talking about the latter half of the book, I start talking about systems and how broken contemporary modern systems are. An average listener is listening to you right now. Maybe they're a school teacher and they can tell you about how broken the education system is in the United States. Maybe they are a nurse and they can talk the same way about healthcare. Transportation, agriculture, it's completely broken. How we do agriculture from top to bottom is completely completely broken. How we do agriculture from top to bottom is completely skewed, you know,

with monolithic monofarming and greed and government subsidies for, you know, soybeans to feed cattle and contribute to climate change. The list goes on and on. And the most toxic of all of them, of course, is our political system. We're about to engage in probably the most toxic election known to man, and we've been through some doozies. And so I talk a lot about how do we take spiritual ideas like this one of loving kindness and put it into our systems? Because the problem is, is our systems are built on that old caveman way of doing things. It's one-upsmanship, it's backstabbing, it's every man for himself, it's accruing things, it's greed, it's envy, it's don't tread on me, it's live free or die. It's some of the worst impulses of being a human being

is the engine driving healthcare. Healthcare should not be based on greed and one-upsmanship and every man for himself and survival of the fittest. But it is. But we're not having that conversation as a culture to say, okay, put aside Christian versus Jew versus Muslim versus Buddhist. Put all that aside, the differences. What are the universalities? Because those universalities are at the core of human wisdom for tens of thousands of years. Can we recalibrate systems to be based on these ideas? Easier said than done. I don't know exactly how to do it. I have some glimpses. Sometimes we see some glimpses

of that. Profit sharing, super easy example of a more just capitalism where workers have a larger share in what they're creating. And so instead of CEOs getting paid millions and workers getting paid minimum wage, that there is a more active ownership. That is a spiritual idea. You might say, well, no, it's not. It's a communist idea, and it's a social justice idea. And it's like, well, God is just. We seek just. We seek fair mindedness and justice as part of our spiritual impulse. And we know that it is moral and right. And how do we seek that? How does that strike you, Eric? Because I know that it is moral and right. And how do we seek that? How does that strike you, Eric? Because I know that there's a lot of people that I'm not putting you with them, but there's

a lot of people that simply view spirituality as something that you do on a bench under a tree. And then it makes you slightly better, more serene, less anxious. And then if you're going to spread that love day by day, going about your work and your job, then that's how it works. And that's the extent. But do you think it's possible to kind of extend these concepts into how us humans do things? Yeah, I think I have a few different responses. I mean, one is, you know, certainly I agree, and you talk about

this in the book, that like our spirituality can't be just about our own interior, you know, well-being, right? To me, a spiritual life has to have an inflow and an outflow to it. And then what that outflow looks like, I think, is different. I think about this a lot because I tend to focus on this show more on the individual things that people can do in their lives versus systematic, because I feel like that's where my experience and strength lies. That said, I do think that these ideas can be applied more broadly. And I think they have been to some degree. Now, I know that there are natural ups and downs and everything, but I think we are a more humane species than we used to be, you know, in many ways. You know,

I think our circle of concern extends further than just our tribe. I'm not saying everybody is that way by any stretch of the imagination, but I think more and more people as we look globally are that way so yes but i don't know enough again like playing to my strengths about how we do that like if you mentioned this upcoming election like i feel a little flummoxed right now about the political situation because on one hand i absolutely believe that the path forward has to be some sort of mutual discussion where we can find what's in common and be able to talk to each other. And yet it's very hard to engage in that when it feels like, and I will say this for both sides of the aisle, I happen to live on one of them, but I see it in both sides. We don't tend to be listening to each other. We don't tend to have the attention span to process nuanced and complex ideas. So,

yes, I do think that our spiritual life can inform us politically. I think that's a dangerous idea taken too far, though, because I think we've got a problem where, you know, religion can get too far into government, right? And I know you're not talking about religion, right? So I think it's tricky. But yes, I feel like if we could be having more discussions about common values, that would be a place that we could then move on to strategy, right? We could move on to tactic, and we could move on to strategy if we could agree to some common things that we all believe that there are virtuous so i don't know if that was a cop-out answer and that's exactly right and i think that you know i i went to the fdr museum in new york

not long ago and it was so interesting what arose out of the great depression and out of the Great Depression and out of the social programs of the Great Depression. The idea of like a five-day work week and an eight-hour work day and no children working. And we collectively kind of said, hey, we don't want old people to be starving the way they used to in the old world. We'll create social security and everyone will put aside a little bit and it'll sit in a fund and it'll accrue interest. And then we'll just make sure that old people aren't starving the way they used to be in the 1890s. If there was an old person without anyone to take care of them, they would just sit on a street corner and starve to death. Right. So, you know, collectively we said, Hey, this is important. And we addressed it. I think what's interesting is I'm not sure how I think FDR was a deeply polarizing figure at the time. Like, I mean,

I think collectively we can all look back and go, it's probably good not to let old people starve to death. But at the time, I think he was deeply, deeply divisive. Right. And it's interesting how some of these things that are deeply divisive at the time, we look back on and go, oh yeah, well, that really was a more enlightened policy. Yeah. Well, and I think social security was more from LBJ and I don't, I'm not a historian. I think it was more from that realm, but you're absolutely right. It was very divisive and it was like, this is communism, you know, and you know, Medicare and Medicaid came up around the same time. So super divisive, but ultimately embraced by our culture. And now you could never take it away, which is always a good sign. But one of the examples I bring up in my book is Baha'i elections.

So to underline the Baha'i faith has no clergy. There's no gurus, there's no priests, there's no mullahs or rabbis or pastors or anything like that. So every Baha'i community has nine people in it governing the affairs of that Baha'i community. And that can be from Akron, Ohio to Santa Barbara, California to, and then there's national spiritual assemblies, you know, the Baha'is of Ecuador or Brazil or Mongolia. And the elections are done completely different than elections in the Western world. And you meet and gather. There's no yard signs. There's no campaigning. There's no money that goes to elections. You prayerfully and on a silent ballot, on a secret ballot, put the nine names of the people you think have the most spiritual wisdom and maturity for the job.

And those nine people then govern the affairs of the community. Those nine people don't have any power over anyone else. So someone who's on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Ecuador, let's say, they can't go into a room of other Baha'is and say, hey, you do this and you do this. That's not how it works. When they're assembled and they come to an agreement together, they can pass agendas and whatnot. But this might sound too pie in the sky, like, oh, we could never do that. And a lot of people have that response. But I don't know that that's true. You know, what if there was a place? What if you're in, you know, Clearwood Springs, Ohio,

and people in Clearwood Springs, Ohio are sick of politics as usual, and corruption and campaign donations totaling millions of dollars. And they say, let's meet at the local football stadium and all 2000 people in the town. We're going to do a silent ballot, secret ballot vote for nine people or seven people or five people that are going to govern the town. There's not going to be a mayor. They only have power when they're together in collection, in collectiveness, and they consult on the issues at hand and people can meet with them collectively. And, you know, let's have some music and some hot dogs and some s'mores and meditate and write it down. And if someone, let's say, you know, the family doctor in town is too

busy, well, he's got to sacrifice some of his business. Because part of it is like contemporary politics, the people who want positions are power seekers, you know? And why are we always voting for the people who want power? Like, it makes more sense that to get someone that's, who's the guy, the Shark Tank guy who owns the Maverick, like Mark Cuban. Like, he said, I'm not going to run, I'm not going to run. But obviously, people are like, oh, you should run. We should elect Mark Cuban. Maybe he'd do a better job.

Precisely because he doesn't want it. Precisely for the reason because he doesn't want it. Yes. But couldn't we see where Clearwood Springs, Ohio might benefit from something like that? Clearwood Springs, Ohio might it be? Remember that little by little, a little becomes a lot. And a habit for me that has accrued in benefit over time is meditation. However, one of the things that gets in our way of building a steady meditation practice is that very striving, right? Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits.

But in the moment of actually meditating, we need to let striving go and focus on just being there and experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable because I'm trying to make something happen, some special moment. We want to let go of that. So if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable, check out my free meditation guide at goodwolf.me slash calm. I think I would recommend that you try that in Clearwood Springs, California. First, I think you're going to have a better reception than in some rural part of Ohio. I'm just guessing. That's all right. But no, I mean, I totally agree. I mean, I love that

idea of like, it's not even like you decide you're on the ballot. You just are sort of like everybody gathers and says like, these are the people. Yep. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up. Rain, you and I are going to talk more in the post-show conversation about some of your pillars for using these spiritual ideas to change our society. And so we'll talk about some of those in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, add free episodes. And the pleasure that comes from supporting something that matters to you, go to oneufeed.net slash join. And we'd love to have you as part of the community. Rain, thank you. Your new podcast, Soul Boom, is out and it's a great listen

and we'll have links in the show notes to that as well as your book and all other things, Rain Wilson. Thank you so much for coming on again. Always a pleasure, Eric. Thanks for having me back again. And if I come on a fourth time, will I have the record of the most appearances? I think you will tie the record. I think you will tie the record. You will tie it. So you'll need to come on two more times. Once upon a time, a two-time guest was like, wow, but having done this a decade, there's a bunch of those, right?

Three-time guests, you're a more rarefied company. I think four. All right, I want to be the record holder. Yeah, yeah. I want to be like Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live without the murder. Yes, yes, we don't. I'm not going to make jokes about Alec Baldwin.

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