The One You Feed - Cory Allen on Mindfulness and Understanding Identity

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Cory Allen is a writer, musician, and the creator of the podcast, The Astral Hustle.  He focuses on how to live better with leading experts in mindfulness, neuroscience, and philosophy.  In Cory’s first appearance on the show, he discussed his book Now is the Way.   Today, Cory and Eric discuss mindfulness, identity, and much more! In this episode, Eric and Cory Allen discuss Get Text Messages from Eric that will remind and encourage you to help stay on track with what you’re learning from the week’s episodes released on Tuesdays and Fridays.  To sign up for these FREE text message reminders, go to oneyoufeed.net/text. But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Cory Allen and I Discuss Mindfulness, Understanding Identity, and… How we are always reacting to our situations Mistaking our reactions for who we are Understanding our identity and where it comes from What we’re really looking for when we seek material wealth The pull of not feeling satisfied and constantly seeking satisfaction Differentiating our identity and our wanting Overwhelm is what leads to difficulty overwriting our impulses The value of meditation and mindfulness to calm the body The importance of exercise and nourishing the body How exercise and meditation complement each other The power of assertiveness when facing the challenge of change Self discipline is about giving yourself freedom from being controlled His work creating binaural beats and the effects of the vibrational sounds Cory Allen links: Cory’s Website Twitter Instagram Facebook When you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed.  Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Cory Allen, you might also enjoy these other episodes: Cultivating Mindfulness with Cory Allen (2020) Transformative Mindfulness with Shauna ShapiroSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Exercising self-control is not keeping yourself from giving you what you deserve, but it's removing the power of the want of those things and the feeling of entitlement to those things so that you're free from being controlled by external objects and ultimately the delusion that something outside of you is what you need to complete you. 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 Corey Allen, a writer, musician, and the creator of the podcast, The Astral Hustle. He focuses on how to live better with leading experts in mindfulness neuroscience and philosophy Eric and Corey have spoken before about his book now is the way but on this episode they just freely talk about whatever they want hi Corey welcome to the show hi Eric thanks so much for having me it's great to be on again yeah it is wonderful to have you on every time you and I talk I just love it And I always find we could

just talk forever. So I thought, let's just have another time where we get together and talk. And I actually, in comparison to the normal amount of prep I do for an interview, I did way, way less this time. So we're going to see how that goes. Yeah, no, it's going to go well. Yeah, I actually think it will. There is a lot to be said for just kind of coming in and seeing where things lead us, although I do have some key talking points. But we always start with the parable, and you're going to have to answer it again. So in the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild, says in life, there's 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 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 grandparents and says, well, which one wins? 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. Yeah, so I look at that as a direct translation to the power of mindfulness because one of the most useful elements of understanding the inner landscape and putting a spaciousness in your life through meditation and just slowing down in general allows you to be more aware of not only the thoughts that are arising in your mind, but also the impulses. That's a huge part of

self-development, is recognizing those either conditioned or unexamined arising impulses, and then in the moment, having half of your attention trained on your experience, And then in the moment, having half of your attention trained on your experience and half of your attention trained on your inner dialogue and realizing that those arising thoughts, ideas, impulses, those are all just information. It's all just like sense information that's flowing through the mind. And those impulses aren't things you have to do, right? They're just kind of suggestions based off of your reactions or how you're feeling at the moment or your past experiences or so forth.

And so I think about these two wolves as two polarities of the potential arising impulses from the mind. And using the discipline and the practice of meditation and mindfulness allows you to actually get out from in front of those two wolves. Because if you think about it in terms of this analogy, it's as if we are human and these wolves are behind us. And it almost has this sense of urgency or fear or something like that, that we have to deal with. Okay, I have some meat. Maybe I'm the meat. Which one am I going to feed to this wolf? And how much of me am I going to feed to it? But instead, through looking at it in terms of a more floodlight point of view, as opposed to a

flashlight point of view, you raise up and now you're behind the wolves and the wolves are in front of you. And you realize these wolves are just arising suggestions, just impulses. And I am not my thoughts. I'm not even these wolves. I'm none of that stuff. What I am is which of these impulses and these thoughts that are coming to mind that I choose to turn into action. And so that's how I think about it. It's like once you liberate yourself out of the fear and the anxiety of being face-to-face with two

wolves through, of course, calming the body, calming the mind, through meditation, giving your mind enough time to de-noise and to sort of reset so that you're not trapped in the ecosystem of your thoughts. Rather, you become an observer of your thoughts, and there's that spaciousness, then you realize, oh, now it's simply a matter of taste. Now it's simply a matter of decision-making of which one of these impulses do I want to choose in the moment to turn into action. And that can be big decisions, that can be things you say in passing conversations, that can be simply listening in moments, you know, whatever it might be, because that in truth is really what creates action in

reality, in the objective world, and what makes who you are. That's awesome. I often think that the thing meditation has most done for me, when people are like, what is the biggest benefit meditation has given you? I've just brought up the old Viktor Frankl line, you know, there's a space between stimulus and response. And I feel like meditation has increased the size of that space for me, right? It's just given me more space between stimulus and response in which I can sort of do everything you just so eloquently said, which is kind of look around and go, oh yeah, here's the thoughts, here's the emotions, here's the bodily sensations, here's the impulses or urges that are arising out of that. I can deconstruct that a little bit and then go, okay, what's the wise response here? Yeah, totally. And I mean, it's one of those things where you also don't even really recognize

that that's happening and that you're caught in the momentum of ultimately like just the causality of your life until we recognize this we're all just reacting right so we're just we're kind of panicked because we are in the state of dealing with the chaos of reality and just the logistics of being like a weird organism on a weird planet and so there's so many intersections it's such a moving target in every direction that we're trying to deal with all this. And so we're caught up in this momentum of just sort of reacting to the situation, reacting to the situation, getting blindsided by an emotion, having that overtake us, mistaking our emotion or our thought for who we are, you know, being like,

oh God, you know, I had this negative thought and I was like rude to this person. Now I'm terrible. I'm this rude, you know, we get all negative thought and I was like rude to this person. Now I'm terrible. I'm this rude. You know, we get all hung up in this and it takes being able to recognize that and take a step back and to get out of that causal momentum of reaction and start to see that, hold on a second, I actually can choose who and how I want to be in the present as opposed to literally just like, I think about like almost like catching a flu in this way. in the present, as opposed to literally just like, I think about like almost like catching a flu in this way. It's like if you were 12 and someone or something happened to you, you know, from your parents or in social situation or whatever, and it had this really negative imprint that created

this defensiveness or this, you know, vulnerability or whatever, and you go through the rest of your life reacting to that situation defensively, either through aggression or whatever it is to kind of keep people back or protect yourself, you caught like an illness, right? And it's like, by recognizing that you're sick, you can then heal yourself and then you don't have that illness anymore. I think it very much works like that. So given that, I'm going to try and ask a question that I don't even fully know how to articulate. I know what I'm trying to ask, but asking it is a little bit more challenging. We are, in essence, just a soup of causes and conditions, right? That's what it is to be a human being, right? Every experience

I've had in the past has altered me in some way. My genetics, what I ate today, the air I'm breathing, right? It's all this incalculable recipe, right? So we have a tendency to look back and go, all right, here was this bad experience that formed me. And that's not me. I want to slough that off. Right. And here's another bad values are. Here's what's important to me. But that value and importance has also been shaped by countless uncalculable back things. So my question to you is, how do you think about what to keep and what to discard from the past? And how do you know what's actually quote unquote you? I love that question. It invites a deep answer, you know, and really what you're getting at is the impermanence of self, you know, and if you do go deep enough into meditation or whatever

practice that you can zoom out enough from your identity and being ultimately attached to the notion of your identity, you can see, I guess I should explain that a little bit, is like all of that stuff, the concepts that we place on all of the information that's coming through our nervous system our entire life are just concepts. And so even like, for example, you know, you feel something through your hands, you smell something, you see something, the information that's moving through your nervous system arising to the stage of consciousness is just raw data. But then based on our cultural heritage and etc, etc, etc, at the time we're born, all this stuff, we place these concepts on those sensations that are really only relative to us in a lot of ways. And that generates an aspect of our subjective perception. But what it gets really

deep is whenever you back up a little bit and you realize like, oh, wait a second, my entire identity is that. Like everything that I think who I am and all this stuff and who I should be and the entire narrative of our self-aware consciousness, it's just one big wave of data that we've applied all these symbols and all this meaning and all these signs to that truly have come out of pretty much nowhere. It's just happenstance of our experience. And so whenever you can sit back and really begin to see the structure of your identity, it becomes really hilarious to me anyway, you know, getting hung up into something like even any of the three poisons or something like desiring something or thinking you have to go do this and it's very important or some way in life that you're being

or something you're hung up on. You're like, who is the one that's hung up? Like, who is this person that's hung up on that thing? I'm watching this kind of tapestry of identity that's been constructed at me over time, and I mistook it for who I am. But really, I'm the one behind that, just observing that character and the actor that's playing the role of this identity through time, right? And so, whenever you see that and begin to really accept that, your question of like, well, you know, what are these things, even the good values that have come to me? Well, those are also just as conditioned and separate from you as the bad things. So the move is, I think,

to have that insight. You also traditionally kind of must have an increase in awareness and self-awareness through that process because they're just sort of two parts of the same mechanism. And in that, you can begin to realize that your perception is not, of course, some vantage point through which the true nature of reality can be seen. And so you take this into account while following, you know, your intuition, your instinct about what feels right. What is wholesome? How can I be kind and how can I be patient and understanding and be compassionate? This is like a sidebar to applying symbols to things. People mistake compassion for an identity. You see so many people in the mindfulness meditation community think, I'm a compassionate

person. It's like, no, no, compassion isn't a trait compassion is a point of view it's a way through which you see the world and look for opportunities to be compassionate not something that you call yourself oh i am compassionate you know it doesn't do anything when you just call yourself compassionate but what does do something is actually acting that way in life and so i kind of look at it like that. So it's like once you recognize the game is of the self is just this impermanent, ever-changing, non-stable, really confused collection of data and symbols, then you can go, all right, well, I'm going to just be as present as possible and I'm going to truly listen to what feels good, what feels right, and then try and use the spaciousness of mind and the

groundedness and the calmness that comes from exploring the inner landscape to then do the best I can in this world. And that's the other thing is that like our intuition, our instinct, whatever you want to call it, that's all we have at the end of the day. But it's not right all the time, but we have to just go with it. And by understanding it's not always right and just doing our best, I think that we can get a bit further down the road. I've been working with how to think about and talk about this. And I do think at the ultimate

edge of reality, right? What we call self is completely non-personal. There's no trace of Eric in it. That's just my personal belief, right? So that is one view. But then as you move back into the relative world, right, as you move back into, all right, I am a person who's been influenced by all sorts of different things. Now I start to take on sort of, you know, for lack of a better word, a psychological or a personal self. And that personal self can be more or less, I like the word you used, wholesome or healthy, you know. And so there's that sort of dual development. Layer one is sort of getting rid of that furthest out from me stuff.

The surface perceptions that people put on me, comparing myself to others, trying to live in a culture that I may not agree with the values. I move back a step. And now what's the most psychologically, and I use that word sort of loosely, psychologically or personal self, what's the best version of that that I can create based out of everything that's happened to me and what I think? And then ultimately, there's one step sort of back from that, which is that witness perspective or that true sort of dissolving into, you know, I like to call it the unitive self. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. That sounds kind of contradictory, what you're saying and what I'm saying and how we're agreeing on that.

And it is in some ways. But that's because all things in nature are not black and white. Everything is a multitude of polarities overlapping in ways that are often inconvenient and ways that people have a hard time squaring and accepting because we look for an answer. But what's funny about humans is that we look for an answer and then we'll look for another answer. Like, okay, now I feel comfortable because I have my two answers, even when those two answers are contradictory, but it goes unexamined because that doesn't serve the narrative of mine. Whenever I was talking to Dan Pink on my podcast, he had one of the best bits of, I might've shared this with you, one of the best

like antidotes that I just love that's burned in my brain. He mentioned he was talking to this group of like 4,500 people and they all had the ability to kind of vote or something. It was like at a keynote speech or something. And so we asked the audience, who here believes in free will? And you know, 89% of the audience raised their hand or whatever. And they said, okay, now who here thinks everything happens for a reason? And, you know, 79% of the people raised their hand. That's like, do we see a problem here? But it's like, that's just such a human thing is that we allow ourselves these two, quote

unquote, truths to facilitate the issue and the problem that we're talking about right now is that there's a contradiction in that but it's because as a creature humans have a strange thing we have to deal with because we have an ability to get so spectrally meta in this way and see ourselves from this huge distant point of view if you put in the practice to do that. But at the same time, no matter how much you do that, no matter how far you go, you're still trapped in an animal body. Yeah, exactly.

Part of that mainframe has like, okay, I have to deal with, like you can have the coolest, most amazing computer program on your computer, but you still have to have, you know, an operating system. You know, we have to have OSX or else none of the other cool stuff works. And the operating system is, as you mentioned, like our psychological profile. And we need that because we have to have an ego to continue on. Because at the end of the day, we're really just this hotel for our DNA and we need the ego to believe that we have enough value to continue going

so that we'll, you know, repropagate or whatever. Yeah, yep. I want to change directions here because as you were saying, I jumped into the deep end of the pool there, but I couldn't resist. I want to talk about something that I just saw it on your social media recently, but I loved this line. You said, dreaming of material wealth is a dream of being free from desires. And you go on to sort of say like, no, that's not going to work. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. That's one of my favorite things that clicked on me is like, because our culture is

so deeply based on commerce and marketing and capitalism and consumerism. Like, what are we? Like, we're consumers that are just marketed to from birth, like before birth, really before birth. There's all this stuff for baby while you're still in the womb. It's like the second you step out of your mom into, you know, meat space, all the marketers are ready to hit you with all the stuff that, you know, they got dialed in algorithmically to serve you and leverage you. And really what happens is that we're told, particularly in America and in the Western world, but especially America, because one of the great superpowers of our country is making things famous, you know, that feeds into it. And so there's like a celebrity culture and a marketing capitalist culture where it's like, if you don't have this, then you aren't successful, right? If you don't have this thing,

this trait, this quality, this material object, whatever it is, then you aren't successful. And look at this famous person and look how happy they are and look that they're driving that car or they're holding this stupid cologne or whatever it is. So we grow up in that ecosystem and like women who are marketed to so intensely with, I mean, God, like the body stuff and the makeup in that whole world, that whole industry is so brutal. And it's like, I can't imagine growing up having to deal with being told like, hey, you're not pretty enough. And so you need to have all these things to look better. I mean, it's really treacherous. So we grow up feeling really empty, like we're missing something. And so we get focused on this idea that, hey, I can not only have that feeling go away, but I can

crush it and be respected by everyone and whatever by having a giant house or like a lot of cars or owning an island or whatever it is. But that's kind of where people stop thinking about it in most time. And it's because obtaining those things is practically impossible. Like the people who have a mansion or 10 cars or whatever, like just crazy luxury wealth. It's so few that like, you know, people don't ever achieve that. So it creates a lot of suffering and people don't have the space or the realization to actually get there and realize like, wait a second, this isn't the answer to how I'm feeling. And so if we unzip that whole process and pull some stuff out of the bag

and dial down into it, what is it that we're really looking for? Because, you know, at the end of the day, if you have a bunch of luxurious items or whatever it is, like that doesn't make you happy. Like it's not really the thing you're going for. And so what we're looking for is that to have that feeling, the pulling, the tearing and the suffering of not feeling whole be gone. And so that's really what the material pull is cloaked in. And so it's great if you can recognize the fact that, hold on a second, like, it's not that I want all this stuff. I just don't want to be wanting all this stuff.

Like another one of my Instagram posts was the thing you want is to want nothing. That's really the end of the story. It's like, because then you're tapping back into, instead of an intrinsic type of value, you're looking inward and you're saying like, okay, an intrinsic type of value, you're looking inward and you're saying like, okay, what is my life like? Just you have to reframe a little bit. So first off, you're awake. You pulled off the greatest magic trick of all time. You don't owe the world or anyone anything. You came into existence. Take a moment to realize how insane that is. It's preposterous. Like you were nothing and now you're a conscious being. You did it. Congratulations. You don't need to do anything else. That's an amazing trick, right? The fact that you exist

is enough. You're whole by the fact that you were here. And if you can sit with that a little bit and start to just appreciate the fact that you get to be here, you get to have these experiences and have friends and, you know, eat food and just enjoy the crazy like sensuality of being just like sitting and feeling air on your skin is like, you know, it's intoxicating if you're present enough with it. And so recognizing that space and that idea helps you get free of that suffering and tune into the gratitude and really just the bizarre abundance of magic that it is to purely exist at all. Yeah, so much of that rings really true that what we want is to not want. I think there's a couple reasons why this is so hard. One is that if things like a new car or a new house or a hit of heroin never worked at all, it would be an easy illusion to see through.

You'd be like, it doesn't work, right? Like, okay, I tried it, no good, right? But that stuff usually temporarily works to go, oh, okay, scratch that itch. Problem is the itch comes right back. What's interesting, I just thought of this yesterday. Maybe I sort of subconsciously had these things connected in my mind, but I tied them up in my mind just yesterday, which was, if we listen to evolutionary psychology, they say you're wired to be unsatisfied because a satisfied creature doesn't survive. It doesn't seek partners. It doesn't seek food.

It just is like, hey, I'm laying in the field. Everything's cool. So we're not capable on some level of satisfaction in the animal sense. And it occurred to me, like, that's sort of essentially part of what, you know, Buddha's first noble truth to me, to some degree, first and second, right? Like, which is dissatisfaction is imminent for you, you know? And so, I think it's interesting to think about that through, in some ways, the Buddha's diagnosing the human condition, which is that we are designed to continue to want. Yeah, and it's a brutal one, too, because we get hit from both sides, because we're designed to never feel satisfied, as you said, but at the same time, we're also designed to seek the path

of least resistance because we're an animal that's trying to conserve energy all the time. And so it's like, well, what are you supposed to do with that? So how do you deal with that pull of that feeling of not feeling satisfied and just that general animal hunger of feeling like you have to keep moving, you have to keep doing this stuff. How do you stay grounded? Well, it's interesting

because I'm in the midst of it right now. We are planning a trip and I'm gonna go to Europe for a month in June. I've never been, I've never even contemplated taking anything like a month off work. Don't worry, listeners, there'll be two podcast episodes a week. I'm working hard now. I've never contemplated taking that much

time off. So now we're looking at where we're going to go. And we're booking hotels. And I feel it. I feel the I want I want I want. And I also see right through the other end of it. And I'm like, and then I'm going to come home. Right? It's gonna end. So I think for me, it seems like the best I can do is to at least try as often as I can to see through the illusion and go, yeah, of course, I want to stay in that nice hotel in that beautiful town in Europe. Like I want that. And you know what, if I got that, like if somebody was like, Eric, not only do you get to stay in this hotel tonight, but we have just gifted you this hotel. You are the lucky winner,

right? I'd be over the moon for a week, two weeks, a month. I don't know how long, but eventually that hotel would just become my normal. And I would be back to wanting the next thing, which is what you're getting at in your post about material wealth, right? Nothing stops the wanting process. And so as long as we think that we can permanently satiate it, for me, I put way too much stock in the thing, you know, used to be a relationship, if I could just get that relationship, you know, and now I sort of see through it, at least it's not that I don't fall into the spell a little bit. It's not that I don't feel, to use your point earlier, these impulses that come up in various directions.

But I try my best to keep reminding myself, like, lasting happiness isn't there. There's some enjoyment, there's some pleasure. But lasting happiness is not coming via that route. There's this other route that I've been nurturing that I need to continue to nurture. Yeah, there's a fun test that listeners can do on this is that if you think back to 10 years ago and something that you like really wanted, that was just like you were burning inside, you know, and it changed the way that you triangulated your reality. You were talking to this person because it could get you to talk to this person and somehow that was going to lead to hopefully you getting this reality. You were talking to this person because it could get you to talk to this person.

And somehow that was gonna lead to hopefully you getting this thing. You chose to make this action because you knew like, if I can do this and this and this, I can sequence this and I'll be able to achieve this thing I'm desiring. And you get really tense and wrapped up in it

and it becomes a thing. And then whether you got it or not, you can look at it now and think like, oh, well, that was silly. Like I didn't really do anything for me. It just made me maybe even like manipulate people or say something or like change my behavior in a negative way. And I was tense and suffering the whole time and like kind of feverish with hunger for this thing. It wasn't really pretty.

And it's so goofy to think back that I was so worked up over getting, you know, like limited edition sneakers or whatever it was, or a new car or the job. Yeah, yeah. And then now you can think, oh, that was funny. Like, I've grown so much. And now do that with whatever you're wanting right now. Yep. And you can see just as how silly it is and how illusory it is. Because it really is, at the end of the day, just a passing illusion.

It's this thing that the mind tees up for a while until it gets exhausted. It's really kind of like chewing gum for the ego in some ways, just to keep you busy. But I think that to me, if you step back a few steps, I mean, what I do anyway is I step back a few steps and everything that comes through, whether it's good things, bad things, whatever, I am really just not detached, but I don't get involved with the things. So of course I like staying in a nice hotel. Sure. But I don't go thinking like, all right, I'm a guy that gets to stay in a nice hotel. I just think, oh, I'm a guy. There's a nice hotel. I'm going to go into it. And then let's enjoy it as much as possible while we're here and really enjoy it. But at no point is there a self-identification

through that process. And it's sort of like a Zen thing of like, you know, good things in life happen, bad things in life happen. It's like, no, no, no, no. Things are just happening. The perspective through which you engage with those things is what dictates your reality and your experience and ultimately your levels of attachment. so even yeah these beautiful things that we can't experience and there's nothing wrong i mean that's one of the other hang-ups i think people who are trying to go inward in this way often struggle with is they think like i'm terrible for wanting a nice car it's like no you're not there's nothing wrong with that a nice car is a beautiful achievement of engineering like it's a great you know it's a great thing but if it changes your behavior and whenever you're in it if it makes you feel you know arrogant or like better than everyone else then you have a

problem but if you're driving that nice car just like it was a toyota or whatever then you're all good because you're not mistaking and applying the concept of the thing to your identity. You're just a identity engaging with an experience. And that's how I anyway stay free from that stuff. 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. Bryan 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. It feels almost like we're talking about two levels of suffering that we can have around these things. One is the one you just hit on, which is very much identity-based, right? It's, if I had enough money, then I would be good enough. If I had that car, then I would be respected. I would be the kind of person who owns that car. So there's an identity element that's wrapped up in that. I think that's very real, at least for me personally, you know, I always don't want to overstate things. But for me personally, I think a combination of age and several somewhat shattering spiritual experiences have dropped a fair amount of that identity game, right? Like that, I feel less tied to. For me, it seems to remain more around the basic mechanism,

the wanting process, you know? Just the wanting to be comfortable, the wanting to be happy, the wanting to feel differently than I do, not because of who I am, or maybe they're connected in a deeper way. But it seems like those two different ways, sometimes for me that I have to approach things, can I shake off the identity part, and then there's the other part, which is sort of like a creature that's optimizing for pleasure. Right. Yeah.

And that aspect of it that you're talking about, I think that stepping back and observing the arising bodily impulse is not only a great way to deal with it, but it becomes hilarious to me because it just becomes absurd. You can use all plethora of things to test this and play with this with yourself, but hunger is a great one. What we're getting down to is like the mammalian brain, you know, signature, the vapor rising off the mammalian brain that's affecting, you know, the higher intelligence. If you kind of realign that higher intelligence to observe the vapor rising from the mammalian animal brain, then it becomes sort of strange and funny.

And you see how that constant urging of want is just another impulse and just another signal, which you can choose to just really like let go of. And I think to me, like curiosity is a really helpful way to like play those games. So I think maybe one year ago, two years ago in Austin, there was a period where what they were calling the snowpocalypse. You know, Texas is not set up for snow and it snowed an insane amount during COVID lockdown and everyone lost their power and water for like a week. People were freezing and they didn't have no food. It was brutal.

We had a little bit of food, but not any water. And so we were sitting around and didn't know how long this was going to go. And I just thought, hmm, I'm going to just like, instead of, you know, worrying about this too much, there's really not much I can do at this point. And there's no reason to panic. Instead, this will be a fun test to see what hunger really is about. Like what is that animal creature impulse to want to eat? And I'm not'm not of course belittling anyone who's starving or trying to denigrate that in any way but i mean just as something that arose in my own

life where i was like huh let's see like what hunger is and i just started like watching the feeling of hunger in that way and observing it and then just observing how it was changing my perception how it's changing like the way that I was reacting and my levels of patience, my energy levels and all that. But after a while, it became really funny and just sort of a silly thing. It lost its teeth to me and it was a good way to deal with it. And so, I kind of used that little experience moving forward for some of those similar things where it's like, it feels like it has more power of you because it's coming from a deeper, older part of the mind. But really, it's just the same as the identity issue. It's just coming from the bottom instead of the top.

Yeah, that's a great way to say it. It is coming from the bottom instead of the top. And it's so interesting, though, because when you think about what we are, I use the analogy of soup earlier or incalculable recipe, right? A big part of that soup and incalculable recipe are hormones and neurotransmitters and all these things that really control, to a certain extent, our experience. And I often like to think about how free will, you brought that up earlier, do we have free will, right? Without going into the deep philosophical sense of it, does it exist? Let's just assume it does exist to some degree. Do all humans have the same degree of it? You know, so for example, free will when it comes to not eating that piece of chocolate cake over there, you could take me and five other people, and depending on the biological makeup of

those five people, depending on hormone levels, but depending on a variety of different things, depending on blood sugar levels, a whole bunch of different things, it may be relatively easy for me to look at that piece of chocolate cake and be like, no, no big deal. Whereas it might be like a Jesus on the cross moment for someone else to walk away from that piece of chocolate cake, right? And so I find it really interesting to think about our ability to work with impulses that are often mediated by things that feel beyond our control. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, it's something I've thought about a lot. And the idea of determinism is very tasty, you know keep with the food analogy it's very tasty like it

seems it seems so plausible and and i think it is it does seem to be and just to sort of give a super shortcut to determinism for anyone that's not familiar and basically saying that we have no free will because everything in the universe is causally created so like essentially there was the big bang and then that created planets and then over time it created some speaking of soup there's a little you know protein soup of bacteria in the oceans and then some little fish and so forth and it goes up until sapiens being created and then all of the chance inheritance of action from your parents and everything that you know pushes you then dictates the options that you can

have and that you can make because you're just this motion of all of the things that happened before you and you're not really able to make any other choice because everything has been kind of determined by what's happened before you. It's simple causality. And I do think that's one element of it because just on a physics level, that checks out, right? Does it, though? My question about that is, doesn't quantum physics sort of throw that whole thing off by saying, hey, what's going to happen here is a probability, not a made decision? Yeah, sure. And what I was about to say was that I'm not the person to say, no, it definitely, physics is definitely working on that. But a person who's an expert in nothing and has no certification whatsoever and didn't go to college, no expertise.

But it seems as though that linear train of thought resolves, you know, and makes sense. However, again, back to what we were talking about previously, is that that's a very human thing to be like, okay, this one answer and this one way of going, that's it's like, well, no, it's, it's a couple of things that are all happening at once. And you have to kind of step out and peel back your perception a little bit to hold those two things at the same time. And I love your example of people have different or varying degrees of free will. Cause it fits right into like this thing that I've thought about for a long time is it's kind of like compatibilism in a sense, but it's more of like we don't have free will per se. However, inside the

ecosystem of our own mind, because of our subjectivity, we're able to choose our choices. So on the palette of your own perceptual identity and awareness and nervous system, own perceptual identity and awareness and nervous system, plus the inheritance of your past, you then have the freedom and the will to choose the very small switch bank of choices that you're able to think of or able to muster at that moment. But it doesn't mean that in other areas, you are acting without realizing it, because we certainly all are doing that constantly. But at the same time, we have a little bit of elbow room, a little bit of wiggliness, where it seems as though we're able to choose a variety of options in certain situations. Yeah, I think to say that our choices are certainly limited by so many factors. I mean,

if somebody's listening to this in, you know, Mumbai, they have different set of choices about what they're going to do with their afternoon than I do in Columbus. Like, it's just the way it is, whether they're better or worse. I couldn't say, right? They're just different. But I do think this question of the ability to make choices, and I think our amount of free will is different on different things. It's so interesting for me because I know at one point, like, to choose not to take a drink for me.

Ultimately, yes, it was my choice. I was the one who picked up a drink and either did or didn't. At the end of the day, that's where it ends. And it felt so hard then. So hard. And now it's so easy. Yeah. Right? Same person, same thing. But the level to me, like now it feels like an easy choice. Then it felt like a being torn apart inside choice. What do you think is a way that people move from those impulses that come up that feel so strong that we almost, despite our best intentions, give in to them? And we could be talking about hardcore addiction or even not, right, on a spectrum, but where the impulses are really strong and I find it hard to just let them go versus the other hand, what you're describing is a much different thing where

I'm like, I'm observing what could be a pretty strong impulse like hunger. I've got a lot of space around it. What's the path, do you think, from one end of that to the other? I think the hugest thing is not being overwhelmed. So the person who is out of control of their decision-making is overwhelmed. They have no spaciousness of mind. The tension and the stress and often the emotional stress that they're feeling because of generally something traumatic that happened to them is so heavy and they feel so limited in their options that it's like they're in gridlock traffic times 20. It's too much. And so whenever the impulse arises, it's like, hey, this thing, I'm going to accept it because one, I don't have the space or the emotional energy to really be thoughtful about it. But two, I'm so compacted and I'm so overwhelmed that anything is worth having a break from that.

I just want to have a break from this feeling. And that's why drugs or alcohol or sex or whatever, pick your pleasure or careerism, whatever. There's so many different forms of it. or careerism, whatever. There's so many different forms of it. Social media, definitely one. But it's something that we feel overwhelmed with negative emotion and with often intellectual energy. And we are stuck between a rock and a hard place

because we, for whatever reason, aren't ready or don't have the toolkit to look at where our sufferings come from and to begin to integrate and work with that, you know, psychological pain. And we feel like we can't move forward because everything is too tense and too dense. So what we want to do is basically just numb out and just get out of that somehow and be distracted from what we're feeling. But of course, you can only stay

distracted for so long and whenever you come back to it well hey nothing has changed you're still there it's one of the things that people experience with something like painkillers or anti-anxiety meds where of course you know in low doses at reasonable times those can be useful for people with you know certain chemical imbalances but if you depend on them and you're using them every day recreationally that river of emotion doesn't just go into the ether. You're just putting up a dam, you know, and that's why, you know, whenever you stop taking them, all that floods back out and you go, God, this is terrible. I'm going to take them again. And it creates a real issue, you know? The way to having that spaciousness is of course, you know, a therapeutic

approach of having some, you know, some type of talk therapy to begin to open those doors and let out some of that emotional pressure. And also, of course, I would recommend meditation or a mindfulness practice to begin to calm the body down because most people, especially in this, the era of information, we're scared. We're like, we're in a constant state of anxiety because there's so many things to deal with and there's so much information. And now there's so many things to deal with and there's so much information.

And now there's so many types of flavors of truth and reality coming at us that people are just freaked out. So they're just going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. And they really get stuck in this fight or flight mode. It's like the amygdala is just turned on because we're like, okay, now I have to do this and I have to do this and blah, blah, blah. And I feel worried. And now even if I'm sitting on the couch, I'm thinking about work or I'm thinking

about this other thing. And so why meditation is so valuable is that whenever you calm the body and you actually, it can be as simple as just sitting and breathing. That's all you got to do. Give yourself that space to sit and breathe just by taking regular relaxed breaths and just relaxing the muscles every time you exhale, it sends signals to the brain telling your brain that the body is safe. And that's the issue is that people feel that level of overwhelmedness because the body doesn't think they're safe because they're dealing with so many things. They're engaged with so many things and they're worried about so many external factors, right? And so their body is like, oh, well, we must be under a threat because we're on, like our high beams are on and we're like constantly doing so. Stay in fight or flight

mode. But by meditating and consistently using the compound growth of that, of sending these signals just through relaxed breathing to the mind, that, hey, the body is safe. You can actually relax now. The mind then changes all of the chemical nature of itself and goes into the parasympathetic nervous system mode of the rest and digest mode where it's like, okay, we can actually calm down a little bit. We can stop keeping us locked into fight or flight mode. And that relieves some of the pressure. It gives people an ability to calm down, to actually collect their thoughts, to blow off and release some of that stress and have a bit more spaciousness. And that's really step one in removing the pressure from the overwhelm that creates addiction and impulsive behavior. Thank you. 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 no really go to really about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. No, really. Go to really no really.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 read a tweet from somebody today that I love that echoes something I've said many times, and it ties to what you just said a little bit, which is it was basically an underappreciated victory and mindfulness is realizing you simply didn't make things worse. Which I've often said, you know, if you boil all the work that I do down, you might say like, well, you know, I just have basically taught you how to not make things worse. However, for some of us, our capacity to make things worse is so profound. Yeah. That that's a huge win.

Totally. Question for you. I was reading again something of yours recently, and you mentioned you do an hour of exercise every day and you do about 30 minutes of meditation. So you're actually doing, you know, basically double exercise to meditation. So speak to the role for you of exercise in creating some of the freedom we were just talking about. Oh yeah, it's so important. I mean, you know, my entire life I was just hyper intellectual and really shutting down, compartmentalizing all my emotions, everything like that, while intensely studying Buddhism and just general Eastern wisdom traditions and also Western philosophy and thinking I was really getting somewhere.

And I was to some degree until it hit me that I had a mentor or kind of a slight teacher way back like 20 years ago that said, make sure and open your heart before you open your mind. And I was like, whatever, you know, I got this. You know, of course, as like a 20 year old. of the computation of the detail of the existential landscape was so intense that it was kind of like almost like a nervous like intellectual breakdown or something i was so overwhelming then i could describe it but it would be exhausting for for listeners for me to go into the detail it's like a tiny snapshot would basically be like i got to this place of opening my eyes in the morning where i'm like well there's a bunch of blood vessels that just expanded because like rays of energy coming from

a like a nuclear furnace 98 million miles away just like flew through space and irradiated like bounced off the walls and those cells you know i mean i had a cellular change in my eyes now my blood and you know and all just this stuff and like walking outside and like oh all the microbes in the grass and the you know in the soil or there's all these microbes in every single blade of grass and all, you know, the blood vessels of the trees of the blood vessels of the earth. And so, you know, times a thousand just stuck in that zone. I sat down and I was actually like, okay, this is too much. And I was like in that space for a couple of years and they just get increasingly more intense. And that was in my late twenties. And I thought, okay, I got to fix this. What's the foundation? Like, what am I missing here? Because I'm clearly

missing something. I'm out of balance. I'm out of whack. What is it? And I thought, what's kind of like our birthright as a human being? And I thought, it's the mind, body, and soul, right? And soul, whatever, you call that whatever you want. I call it the non-self, you know, but it doesn't sound positive to people, but I mean it in a positive way. So I thought, well, okay, well, I've been working on the mind and the self intensely, compulsively for all this time. And I've never one time thought about my body. And so I thought, oh, well, no wonder I'm freaked out. No wonder I'm like, because I'm so ungrounded and I'm so trapped in my head that I need to get back in the ground, get back into like being an animal and actually, you know, get in tune with the physical nature of being as opposed to just the intellectual or the inner aspect of it. like running and doing yoga. And I started reading about nutrition, eating well. And all of a sudden

I was like, wow, I feel 50% better after two weeks. And so then it became a thing where I just started running five times a week for like 10 years. And I've recently have switched that up to something else, but getting up in the morning and having all of that intellectual energy, all of that animal energy, you know, because we, I think, you know, some statistic I read one time, like whenever sapiens were nomadic, we walked like eight miles a day or something like that. It's like it's built in us to need to move and to get that all that energy out. And so that's why it's so important to me is just like blasting out all the animal energy, really getting the body revved up. And it wakes me up and really like gets you alive. And I think that another aspect of it is breaking through barriers of resistance. It's a great practice because like we talked about

before, we're sort of wired to seek the path of least resistance. And so that of course feeds into life. Anytime that we're going through something like, well, I have some emails to do, but it sounds too overwhelming. Like I joke about a friend of mine, it's like something really important that you need to do. And it's like, well, that would have taken 20 minutes. I can't deal. That's way too overwhelming. No way could I pause and do that. But the exercise, it taps you into the power of like your animal creature power.

it taps you into the power of like your animal creature power. And so whenever you get in that mindset of like, okay, say you're running and you start feeling tired, you could just stop, you know, sure. But also humans are so much more powerful and our will and physical strength is so much more intense than we give it credit for, that if you just reframe that and change your mindset, you can keep running for an hour or

something like that. And so breaking through those little barriers, because it's basically just your mind throwing up a little thing that's like, hey, we're expending a lot of energy. You should stop in case the lion tries to attack you or whatever. And then it's like, no, you can override that. This sounds so weird, but whenever I was younger, I used to imagine whenever I would get tired when I was running, that I was like chasing like a hog through the undergrowth in the jungle. And that the only way that the tribe would eat is if I could catch this thing. And I would really just go there like Jordan, you know, and be like, I gotta, and, but it was just a good, like kind of nervous system reframe. But yeah, anyway, so that's so valuable because then whenever you're

in your daily life and it's time to have a tough conversation or to do that one extra task, it's not a thing like, well, I'll just give up. It's like, this is no big deal. I caught the hog earlier in the undergrowth. This is, you know, talking to this person, this is nothing, you know. So that's super, super valuable. I mean, it really is the foundation. And I think that stacking these habits in this way, to me anyway, it's all a routine that just facilitates the way I feel the best and, you know, the happiest, clearest, most energetic mind. And it's that, you know, the exercise, shaking off the energy, breaking through barriers, you know, waking up the nervous system and then going to the meditation of then calming it all down and focusing it and just continue that cultivated sense of awareness.

And after that, I mean, it's go time, you know, it feels so beautiful. Yeah, I'm with you. My exercise to meditation ratio might be close to two to one. And if I was forced, you know, if I was forced to be like, you can only have one wellness intervention in your life, Eric, it would be exercise. I would jettison it all. I'd be like, well, I'm sorry, never meditating again. Meds, okay, they were helpful, but goodbye. It would be, I'm going to exercise, which is tremendously boring thing to say, right? What's the best way to feed Eric's good wolf? Exercise. Okay, show over. We did not need 500 episodes. Like, we're done. Turns into a health podcast. Yeah, well, I interviewed a woman recently.

I don't know if you've seen the book, but I think you would like it. It was called Move by Carolyn Williams. And she does a lot of research on why exercise is so beneficial for us. I think you would actually really kind of nerd out on it a little bit. There was a lot of stuff that I had not seen before as to like more up and coming scientific theories about what's going on with movement and us. It was a good book. And she was actually a good interview, too. It'll be out by the time any listener hears this.

Okay. Listeners, you can find that episode in our back catalog. I know that. You know, the other thing about exercise that's interesting is I just had this conversation with Jenny the other day. And I think this speaks to some of what we've talked about a little bit before. And I've got a coaching client who's right in the midst of this, right? We've got him back on track and he's just crushing it exercise wise, right? And the first three weeks, it's like, yes, yes, right? Like he feels different. He feels

better. It's awesome. And somewhere around the three to five to six week mark, what happens is we adapt. That feeling better starts to become sort of the new normal. And you go, well, geez, am I really getting a lot out of this? Which is I think why we often stop things. And I was having this conversation with Ginny the other day. I was joking, but I was like, you know, as much as I exercise, I should feel like even better. And she was like, why don't you stop for a couple weeks and talk to me about how you feel? And that's the exact truth, right? Which is just the benefit of it sort of melds into the new normal. But the new normal is eight clicks higher than the old normal. I've often joked that if you could take the like 18 or 20 or 22 year old me and put him in my brain now, I think he would think he was enlightened. And I don't mean that because I'm enlightened. I mean that because the gap between what that poor little guy understood and felt and what I do is so dramatic. And that's often I times think enlightenment is often people talk about being

enlightened when they have an experience that is so dramatic. I think it would be a pretty dramatic experience for that 18 year old to inhabit my current level of consciousness. Yeah. And I hope I can say the same thing at 80. I can I hope by 80 I can be like a 50 year old me could drop into this brain. You know, like, I think that's a good sign that we're growing. Totally. Yeah, yeah. I totally feel you on that. If I took 18 year old me and put him in my brain now, he would probably think like, what?

You're so soft now. You're so weak. You're like being nice and like feeling things. Yeah. Creating space. Like, yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Is it dead in here? What's going on? nobody here yeah i think where's all the noise yeah where's all the delusions of grandeur come on that was really tasty yeah man that's inspiring you know it shows that like like what if we're talking

about earlier is like well who is the self? Who is your identity? What does that really mean? And that's just another example of the way that it's got sort of a mainframe to it. You know, you're still Eric, but what's blown through over the course of several decades, you're just a completely different person, you know? And the challenge of looking at something about ourselves that we might want to change feels like the stakes are really high and it feels immovable and it feels maybe impossible. But if you just remember anyone that's like, hey, you know, hold on a second. Well, actually, I have progressed. I have like broken through things in my life.

And this thing just seems huge because it's just the next one, you know? And so you can just move right through that one as well and realizing that like real change is possible. Yeah, yeah. I think that's such a good reminder is we've been through change before and recognizing that just because change feels difficult doesn't mean it's not doable. Yeah.

And change is a funky one because it makes us deal with fear and discomfort at the same time. And so that's a pretty big proposition for people because they're like, well, this is the unknown. So I'm scared of like what comes after this change. And it makes me uncomfortable about like who I am. So it's like your identity plus fear.

Yeah. And so a lot of people don't want to do it. But how many times do you have to finally make that change or have some sort of like, you know, external traumatic intervention or something that makes finally make that change or have some sort of like, you know, external traumatic intervention or something that makes you make a change? And then afterwards, like, oh my God, I feel so much better. Like, I wish I would have done that five years ago or whatever. It's like, how many times do you have to go through that before you just didn't realize, like, you know what, I should be more aggressive in my changes and just like attack. We talked

about this, I think on, on my podcast recently is the power of aggression on the path and how much it has a place of finding those moments about yourself where you feel that resistance or those areas where you should move into and actually using some of that animal energy, using some of that aggression or assertiveness to then break through those things. Because it's like we're all sitting around waiting for permission to make our lives better, but no one's going to ever give it to you. You know, you have to just recognize what your pain points are, what things you want to change. It's all possible. We discount our will and our ability to do things so much, you know, and just recognizing that and then using some of that assertiveness to go through it, you know, it's a really powerful skill. Yeah. The word I love that I think sums up sort of what you were describing when you're running and you push through or that you just sort of used with, you know, aggression or assertiveness is fierceness. You know, fierceness just feels like it's clean. And whenever I think of it,

I think of Manjushri, who is a Buddhist icon, a Bodhisattva, and he holds a flaming sword. The flaming sword is there to cut through delusion. There's a fierceness to him. He's a Bodhisattva dedicated to bringing all beings to enlightenment and great love. And he's also got a flaming sword. Yeah. And now it's been relegated to TikTok videos, the flaming sword thing. I love that. I really resonate with that a lot. Again, it's one of those weird things where, I don't know, I suppose it's not a disservice, but it's just a level of confusion. I think that people that look at the world of meditation or mindfulness or the undoing of the self, and they think the

point is turning into a puddle and being this sort of like passive, soft observer, sort of whatever that's very gentle and like, you know, all this stuff. Which, I mean, gentleness is great. But that is just almost sort of childlike in their delicateness. That's right. And that doesn't really have anything to do with the inner path, you know? Yeah. to do with the inner path, you know? Yeah.

It's just a possible outcome of how someone deals and integrates those teachings, you know? Yeah. And the issue with that is that those personalities are often characterized as, oh, well, this is the goal. This is what you should look like. You know, this is someone who has done all this work. Look how soft and gentle and they're always smiling and all that, that they are. And how softly that they speak and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They cut their carrots with a knife and fork and they don't even hear the plate noise. You know, that's how soft and sweet they are. It's like, well, that's great for them. But that's not also what everyone is like. You know, that's not what everyone's personality is like. That's right and to me i try to be vocal about the fact that i am a very like calm person but i'm also very very like internally i'm very assertive and very sort of like i listen to like hardcore rap all the time you know like it's like that energy is like to me is just embodies the same way that you're talking

about is it's like for whatever reason that's just the way that feels right to me. Because it's the energy of like having a hunger for existence and a passion. And almost like it feels like a download thing. That's where the exercise helps too. But it's like, there's like a pressure of like energy or force of like vitality. And like, nah, it's so awesome. And like everything, this is just, it's so rich and complicated and beautiful that I just like to get in there. And that's a really valuable and

valid energy. And, you know, and so I dislike whenever people think like, oh, I have to like melt into something I'm not, or else I'm not making that same type of advancement. It's not true. It's not about who you are or how you rock the thing. It's about how you show up in it and how you live it. Yeah, absolutely. Another Zen thing that I've always loved is great determination. I just have always liked that. I've just been drawn to Zen to a certain degree

because there's not a lot of softness in it. Culturally, the word Zen, people think means peaceful and soft. But if you look at the Zen tradition, I mean, they hit people with sticks all the time. I mean, it is not a milk toast kind of spirituality, you know? I want to go back to what we were talking a minute ago about making change and doing better things for ourselves. And you said, self-discipline isn't depriving yourself of things. It's giving yourself freedom from being controlled by them. Wow, is that a great reframe.

Thanks. The feeling of being entitled to stuff is a real issue because in the same way that we feel like we want the material thing or whatever, the indulgence somehow has been sold to us as if it's something that we are owed or that we deserve. And so whenever people are trying to evolve in some self-mastery in some way, what typically throws them off the path is this egoic miswire of like, well, you know, I deserve to have whatever, like, you know, the chocolate cake all the time, or I deserve to have a couple of beers to the end of the day or whatever. Both of those beers and cake are both fine. I'm a big fan of both. But it's not about the fact that you deserve it. So when you reframe, it's like exercising self-control is not keeping

yourself from giving you what you deserve, but it's removing the power of the want of those things and the feeling of entitlement to those things so that you're free from being controlled by external objects and ultimately the delusion that something outside of you is what you need to complete you. And after you recognize that and make that reframe, then all the ornaments and the tasty snacks and the various things in our human world, they're all fine. But you control them instead of them controlling you yeah that inner freedom i mean we used to say in aa all the time people who got sober in jail they would say i felt more free in jail sober than i did out of jail with drugs because i was their prisoner like i was enslaved to drugs right there was no inner freedom i love idea. With whatever it is we're wrestling with, that self-discipline isn't depriving yourself of things, right? It's giving yourself freedom from being controlled. I think that's a beautiful idea. I know you've got to run in a minute. I want to wrap up with one thing. Do you got a minute?

Sure, sure is quick. I want to talk about binaural beats. You create a bunch of these. You obviously believe they help and do something or you wouldn't create them. So what is it that you think that they do? And then my follow-on question would be, is there much scientific evidence to their benefit or is it more anecdotal from your perspective? Like this helps me and so I do it. I really against my own will became like a world renowned binaural beat creator because my prior life I was, you know, in music production and also just composed music, but it was always an internal kind of practice. And just a thing that really tied into my spiritual or inner life practice over time was like,

I can create these sounds and ultimately it was just creating like ambient music, but 20 years ago before it was cool, you know? And I was like, I can create these sounds. And ultimately, it was just creating ambient music, but 20 years ago before it was cool. And I was like, how can I create these sounds? I noticed when I listened to this, for example, like I mentioned earlier, hip hop gives you a lot of energy. Listening to death metal gives you a lot of energy. But listening to something relaxing or whatever, a Sergio Gilberto is going to make you feel calm and mellow

or whatever. And then taking that another step lower, like ambient music, is like, wow, that's going to make you feel calm and like mellow or whatever. And then taking that another step lower, like ambient music is like, wow, that's going to make you feel really spacious and mellow. And so I would create sounds for my own meditation. And that's what I was doing forever. And then I just was always, you know, nerding out on various ways that sound could affect the mind and the body because it's just fascinating to me. So, you know, 20 years ago, I got into binaural

beats and was making them just for myself for meditation. And I was like, oh, these seem like I'm dropping into a different gear with these. It's sort of like almost a self-hypnosis type of thing from the vibrational quality of them. And then fast forward to maybe like seven years ago or something, a friend of mine who has a sizable platform asked me about them. Hey, can you make some for me? I was like, yeah, sure. So I made him some just for fun. And then he's like, these are so amazing.

Like, we should sell these. And I was like, all right. And so we sold them. And then people went crazy for them. I mean, and then I ended up making like more and more and more. And people just kept coming back. And then people all over the world started hitting me up for private commissions and all this stuff. And it became a whole thing.

So I never really like wanted it, but it just happened. And I was like, oh, people are enjoying it. So I'll keep doing it. And it's kind of fun to make. So that's how I kind of got into making them. And do I think that they work? They seem to work to me. And it's like I said, in the same way that different tones and kind of vibes and music will change how you feel.

I think that this is that. But with a specific intention on creating the described effects. Looking into the science of it, there have been a handful of research studies done on them, particularly one that I was a part of, actually, in the university in Australia, which they're putting people who have anxiety into fMRI machines

and then playing the tracks that I made and also a control track so it's just the music without the tones to see if it has any brainwave change and basically they were just discovering that it was creating you know neurological changes and reducing anxiety and stuff like that so you know i would never make any claim of like this is scientifically proven that you know fga approved but yeah yeah i try and be very clear and upfront about that it's like yeah you can try it like if it works for you great and if it doesn't then that's cool too but in the study they've done so far it looks like it's not just the music

it's the actual binaural underlying quality of what's happening there yeah exactly interesting i've listened to some i think yours primarily in past, but I had somebody ask me about them recently. And I was like, well, I'll ask Corey because he's against his will kind of a guy. Yeah, well, you think about like, think about how sound affects us in a kind of a deep way, even back to, you know, a few thousand years ago. People going into battle are beating drums. Why? Because the constant pulsation of that drum is increasing their energy and their fury a gong in a temple in a meditation hall

is an isochronic type of beat so it's basically what happens when someone hits a gong he goes so it's a instead of binaural which is two beats beats, it's one wave, one beat moving forward. And they have used that forever to calm and center people. And so basically, the binaural aspect is the same idea, but just taking it to the notion of like, well, what are our brainwave frequencies? You know, what are the ones that will help us relax or stay focused? And can we target those by creating, you know, the same type of effect with a bit of audio technology. And yeah, seems to work to me. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Corey, for coming on. It's always such a pleasure to talk with you. Yeah, likewise, man. Beautiful. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the really no 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.