The One You Feed - Jay Michaelson on Enlightenment by Trial and Error

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Jay Michaelson is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. Jay is also a teacher and an editor at Ten-Percent Happier, a leading meditation platform. He has written several books on contemplative practice.In this episode, Eric and Jay discuss his book, Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical HeresiesBut 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!In This Interview, Jay Michaelson and I Discuss Enlightenment by Trial and Error and …His book, Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical HeresiesThe goal of becoming 10% happier by meditatingThe myth that meditation is about finding your ZenRealization and responsibility in the Jewish mystical pathHis review of Leonard Cohen’s song “The Goal”His short story “The Beard” How letting go allows for more openingLiving aspects of the middle wayHow his LGBT activist work and meditation work enriched each otherThe commonality between his Buddhist and Jewish spiritual practicesRemembering to remember – how the mind eventually learns to remember with practiceJay Michaelson Links:Jay’s websiteTwitterFacebookInstagramPeloton: Of course the bike is an incredible workout, but did you know that on the Peloton app, you can also take yoga, strength training, stretching classes, and so much more? Learn all about it at www.onepeloton.comID Tech is the world’s number one STEM program for kids and teens ages 7-17. Visit www.idtech.com/wolf and enter promo code WOLF to get $100 off ID Tech’s virtual tech camp.If you enjoyed this conversation with Jay Michaelson on Enlightenment by Trial and Error, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Dan HarrisEli Jaxon-Bear on Your True SelfSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The mindfulness cliché exists because there's some truth to it. There is a way in which spiritual practice can be narcissistic, where I just think about my own well-being, or I don't want to let in any bad vibes, so I'm not going to get involved in any of the contentious political issues. 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. Thank you. will 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. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional

relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jay Michelson. He's a columnist for the Daily Beast and a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR.

Jay is also a teacher and an editor at 10% Happier, a leading meditation platform, as well as the author of six books on the contemplative practice, including the one we discuss here, Enlightenment by Trial and Error, 10 Years on the Slippery Sl the one we discuss here, Enlightenment by Trial and Error, Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies.

Hi, Jay. Welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. I am excited to have you on. We're going to talk about all sorts of things, one of which is your latest book, which is called Enlightenment by Trial and Error, 10 Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies. But before we get into all that, let's start like we always do. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter,

and he says, 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 granddaughter stops, and she thinks about it for a second, and she looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather 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. So you and I share an affection for this parable. I've actually thought from it many times.

I love it. And it really conveys some of the essence of what I consider to be spiritual practice, which is not having some illusion that the big bad wolf, let's say, will disappear or should disappear. You know, so if I only meditate enough, then I'll only think happy thoughts and kind thoughts. It just doesn't work that way. But instead that there's some agency involved. You know, we all have the better angels of our nature and the ones that maybe served some evolutionary purpose or evolutionary function or were important, but maybe don't serve us now. You know, we may or may not have so much control over the presence or absence of those wolves or angels or what have

you. But we do have some agency over which we nourish. And that's been very true for me in my life. You know, I have an unusual professional life in that I spend a lot of time as a journalist and a lot of time as a meditation teacher. So in one of my jobs, I make people more stressed out. And in the other, I maybe help them calm down a little bit. And so I see that on a day to day basis myself. Journalism for me is a form of activism. So it's very important to me. It's kind of a central piece of my work in the world. But I do also know how my mind and heart feel and body after doing a lot of that work, especially over the last few years and through the pandemic as well. And so you can feel on a day-to-day basis

what it's like to feed one of the wolves. And certainly over the long term, that's been my experience as well. So it's that letting go of a certain delusion of enlightenment or awakening that I don't think ever really happens. And a bunch of pretty enlightened people, but they stay human beings and we do they stay human beings, and we do experience the range of emotions, and we do have the range of desires that we have. But they make wiser, more compassionate choices around which ones to feed. I think that's a great jumping off point. And I want to use it to go into one of my sort of fundamental questions that I wanted to cover in this. And you describe in the book some really

powerful, exalted states that you have realizing the oneness of everything, all of that, right? And I say all that to frame up this question. I heard you talking with Dan Harris not too long ago. And you said that you thought his title of his book, 10% Happier was one of the most genius things he ever did to frame up what meditation practice can give us, which, 10% Happier, was one of the most genius things he ever did to frame up what meditation practice can give us, which is 10% happier. I want to ask you, though, about that view of 10% happier, and then the view, on the other hand, of enlightenment, where we really realize that we are not these separate beings and that we are connected to everything. And that's a whole lot

more than 10% happier. And so I'm kind of curious how you hold those two things. Is it we meet in the middle? When you said that, it sort of made me sit up and go, I want to ask him about that. Yeah, 55-45, we'll call it. Yeah, I love that question. One of the things I love about Dan, actually, is that, you is that he and I operate in the world of meeting people where they are and maybe taking them a step along the path. But he secretly would love to write the next book called 100% Happier and just meeting, you know, sort of interviews with people who are really realized beings. That's probably not his next book, I should say. But he's talked about it with me a lot. It just is something that attracts him in a way. And I've had the good fortune to spend more time doing long retreats and things like that than Dan has. He's had the good fortune to write a number one New York Times bestseller. So we've both had some good fortune in our lives.

with some of those folks. And it is profound, but I think to another excellent all-star book title, Jack Kornfield's After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, part of what I was trying to do in the Enlightenment book was my own version of that, that there are these amazing states and there are realizations and that stick. But to do another metaphor, like the two wolves, the mind is like tofu. It takes the flavor of what it's marinated in. That's from one of my teachers, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, who I later found out took it from Ramakrishna, by the way. You know, we swim in the world that we swim in, and it affects us. And that itself is an insight into kind of the conditioned nature of ourselves and the non-essential, non-self nature of who we are. So now I work for a 10% Happier company, and it is meeting people where they are. And I love my kind of so-called more advanced teaching,

where I'll teach sort of advanced kinds of meditation in Buddhist contexts. It's very nourishing for me and hopefully for my students as well. But there's something really profound about the number of people that we reach at 10% Happier. So I edit the weekly newsletter that goes out just over a million subscribers to that newsletter, which, you know, for something meditation or spirituality oriented is a lot bigger than most of the platforms that are available. And that's really exciting. And I think to sort of demystify the goal to say, no, well, don't worry about 100%. What if you would be 10%

happier? I'm just being a ventriloquist for Dan at this point. But what if I told you, if you spend an hour a day or even 20 minutes a day, you might get 10% happier or 10% more compassionate or kinder or more available in a relationship. Would you do it? I really do think that's profound because, you know, a lot of these practices and techniques and goals were monastic when they were meant for people to really devote their entire lives to. And the hundred percent kind of work really takes a certain kind of dedication and effort that's not necessarily compatible with how the vast majority of people on the planet live our lives. And so that for me is how I do that dance. I've had some times where I really felt like, okay, liberation is the goal. And how

can I get there? And here's what I want to do. And I'm going to set that intention and just see what unfolds. And then, you know, the time I'm in now, you know, raising a small child and being in a family, that's not the aspiration for this part of my life. Excellent. Yeah, I think that's a great answer. And I love that idea too of 10% happier or at the very least, I think it goes back to the wolf parable a little bit, right? And what I like about the parable is it sort of says, hey, we all have these two things inside of us. And you know what? They're not going away. And so all this work that we do does move us down a path to being kinder, more compassionate, happier people. And we still have, as you said, all the range of human emotions and experiences. meditation or whatever, experiences that, you know, on a daily basis. But I can say again, from being a 10% happier, there is this very pervasive myth, right? That meditation is just

about finding your Zen and no bad thoughts should arise, or you should never feel angry. Not only is that not realistic, it's not even something we want. You know, of course we want to have our hearts broken by the suffering in the world. Of course we want to be outraged, right? We just want to be able to relate by the suffering in the world. Of course, we want to be outraged, right? We just want to be able to relate to those parts of ourselves that will in a more skillful way. So sometimes it's appropriate to give voice to that outrage. Sometimes it's not so helpful. So that skillful relating is where the action is.

But there's a lot of people out there selling a kind of mindfulness cure-all. Some people have called it mindfulness that, you know, just do this and you'll feel great. And don't worry about your life or anything like that. And those things will take care of themselves. And that's just not my experience anyway. Right. I mean, at the heart of all these spiritual traditions, yes, there's realization, but there's also responsibility.

I took those two words from you, realization and responsibility, because you're describing the Jewish mystical path. You say it's running and returning like the angels in Ezekiel's vision, profound experiences of the divine ethical obligations to one another, realization and responsibility. You phrased that so much better than I do in the book. So thank you for that. Yeah, no, I think those are the poles in which we live. And, you know, some of us, certainly I did when I was much younger, I had a choice. And I considered the monastic life in a Buddhist context.

And I have many friends who did do that for some period of time, maybe before coming back. And I did do some long retreats. But, you know, just the karma of where I am in this world is one in which that running and returning model has been really helpful. That it's not even just after the ecstasy, the laundry, because I think there is implicit in that, and this isn't Jack Kornfield's view, but implicit in just those words could be a sort of denigrating of the laundry, right? It's like, oh, so my goal is to just have more ecstasy and less laundry. Now, again, that's not what Jack says in the book, but I could see someone reading it that way.

And that's not quite right either. It's like after the ecstasy, the ethical responsibility to make a better world or to pass on some world to our children and grandchildren. That puts them more on an even keel. And certainly the Jewish mystical tradition is really almost unique in that there was hardly any monastic tradition within the history of Jewish mysticism. That's unusual. And so not only is monasticism not put on the highest level, it barely existed. It's only just a few exceptions. And so these practitioners always had to navigate the pull of worldly life, which for them had

to be sanctified with holiness and with obligation, on the one hand, with the attraction of the mystical on the other. Yeah, that's interesting. I never understood that, that there had not been a monastic tradition, really, in Jewish mysticism. Let's transition for a minute to an article you wrote, I think, for the Daily Beast, and it's a review of Leonard Cohen's latest record. And I used to say this on the show all the time. I don't think I say it much anymore. Earlier listeners of the show will have heard this, which was that Leonard Cohen was the one guest I most wanted to have on the show. And of course, he's passed, and that didn't work out.

But you're reviewing sort of his final record. It was put out after his death. His son put it together with some of the stuff that Leonard had already done and married some things to it. And you talk about a song on it called The Goal. And I was wondering if you could sort of share what struck you so much about that song. So it's another thing you and I have in common. I just have a passionate love for Leonard Cohen's work and life and am inspired by him. Maybe I'll just read a couple of these lines that I quoted in that review, just so people can hear them. There's a little twist that he does with, I think, what our expectations might be

about a song about the meaning of life. And he kind of inverts those expectations. So he speaks or sings the following, settling at last accounts of the soul, this for the trash, that paid in full, this for the trash, that paid in full, no one to follow, nothing to teach, except that the goal falls short of the reach. So this is clearly a work of a poet late in life, right? Nothing left to follow, nothing to teach, except those last two lines are maybe an inversion of the usual. We know that if we reach for a goal, we might fall short. And so we're used to that kind of dichotomy, that the reach falls short of the goal. But he says that the goal falls short of the reach. And for me, I think, first of all, there's just something wonderfully enigmatic about that. What my reading or interpretation or response to it is something about the fact that

there may not be that brass ring that we're reaching for. There may not be a grand meaning of life or the grand answer that will make all of the problems go away, but there's the nobility in the reaching and that there's something really profound about that human expression. So is there an essential truth of the soul and of love and of the meaning of life? Maybe, maybe not. But there's that yearning, that reaching that still is beautiful. And that for me, I think is again, for someone late in life, there's not a cynicism there. It could be heard that way, especially with his gravelly voice, right? No one to follow and nothing to teach. But I don't think there's a cynicism there. I think there's a profound

contentment that at the end of a very long and multi-layered life, which also included time as a monk, but which also included a lot of time as a sensualist and a lover, poet, and musician, there's a kind of completion, even though there's no more of an answer now than there was at the beginning. Yeah, I'm going to read a little of what you wrote there, because I think it also ties back to what we were talking about before, about this idea that meditation just is going to make us happy. You use the term mindfulness, right? And I think what you write here speaks to this a little bit. And you said, in the 20th and 21st centuries, that challenging, even bleak dharmic teaching, which is what Leonard Cohen was just giving us, has been transmogrified into the more reassuring cliche of mindfulness that we should live in the present moment, which is true enough. But the more complete picture, which Cohen here provides as the only thing he has left to teach, is that we live in the moment because that is all there is. Reaching beyond ourselves is Hevel. You go ahead and say ecclesiastises.

I was close. I butcher that one all the time, as said vanity, emptiness, and illusion. And I just love that. And again, I don't find it bleak. I find it comforting and grounding. Yeah, I've always been mystified by the readings of Ecclesiastes, this bizarre philosophical book of the Bible, as cynical or negative, you know, that all the rivers run to the sea, but the sea is never full. And that, you know, our lives are kind of like building castles in the sand that get washed away. That to me just feels like reality. And then the question is, well, what do we make of that reality? And how do we live in it? How do we live in accord with that truth? For me, that naturally brings to questions of suffering and alleviating suffering. And how do we live a life that creates value for ourselves and others in the absence of some objective truth? Like, oh, well, if you just do this particular thing, you fulfilled what the deity has required of you, you're good. You've done it. I mean, Ecclesiastes is kind of radical in the context of a monotheistic anthology of texts like the Bible that it does say that. There's sort of a line tacked on at the end, which is, you know, just do the right thing,

do what God tells you, and that's what you should do. But even then, it doesn't provide a kind of reassuring answer. It's not like you do that and you'll go to heaven and live, you know, an eternal life and bliss. It's just, this is the world in which we live, in which things are impermanent and things are changing. And how do we live in accord with that? I also find that optimistic rather than pessimistic. It could have been yesterday. It could have been when I was 20. I'll leave that up to interpretation. However, after it was over, I found myself running to that book because for whatever reason, it just kept coming to me all through it. That sort of summarized the experience for me. I don't know what it was. I'm not normally driven to find a book out of the Bible, but that was the one. That's an amazing story, I think. You know, and picking up on something we said earlier, those kinds of medicines can really open a certain door. But then when the door is open, now there's the question of where do you go? Do you go through the door? And the

door doesn't mean do more psychedelics necessarily, right? So like Alan Watts said, once you get the message, you can hang up the phone. It's kind of how Ram Dass, I think, became Ram Dass, right? So having profound opening experiences and insights, and then kind of, well, okay, well, how do I get to this as more of a part of my life, as opposed to just when I have this experience? He says at one point, when he was doing large amounts of LSD with Timothy Leary, that he'd have these amazing experiences. And then at the end, he felt like he was putting on these clothes again of this body and this form and constriction. And it was really painful for him coming down from those amazing places. And that's

what kind of spurred him to think there must be a different way here. There must be a way to have an integration of those experiences with the rest of life. 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?

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really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. That leads me to another area I wanted to go, which is talking about the spiritual experiences that we have. I've had some of them. You've had some of them, these moments of oneness, these moments of sort of ecstasy and seeing everything. And then generally, we don't stay there. And you talk about that these states can be great, except when they lead us to continuing to chase them and expecting that that's the way things should be. Right. And that it sucks if you're not having as many of those as possible. Right. That could really become a trap. And it's funny when I talk about this subject because on the one hand, I want everyone to have those experiences, however they access it. experiences, however they access it, whether it's through spiritual practice, whether it's with psychedelics or other medicines, or whether it's in, you know, any kind of deep interpersonal

practice and relational practice. So wherever it is, I want people to have peak experiences. And so I don't want to like jump over that to the negative side. But there is that at a certain point, it's just another experience, right? And if there's an old teaching story from kind of pre-Hindu religion in India, that a great yogi went into this concentrated mind state, samadhi, which is kind of an amazing unit of mind state. And he said as sort of a feat to show his students how accomplished he was, he was going to go in, I forget the number, let's say for 10 years or something like that. It's an extraordinary period of time. And just before he enters the state, he says to one of the students, Oh, I'm feeling really thirsty. That's all right. I'll just go into Samadhi. And he goes into the state. Sure enough,

10 years later on the dot, he wakes up, the students are all waiting because they're amazed and you know what the teacher is going to say. And the first thing he says is I'm feeling thirsty, which is to say that, you know, you go out, no matter how profound the experience, you're going to return to this human body and to our conditions and we'll feel thirsty or tired or despairing or joyful or lusty or whatever we're going to feel. And it doesn't make that go away. And I haven't done a Samadhi state for 10 years, but I think applying that to my own lesser states, there's a profound teaching in that. And again, to me, it brings me back to the work that I'm doing now, which is less focused on 10 years in an ecstatic mind state and more focused on, you know, people emerging from a pandemic and trying to live with a little less fear or dealing with some of the trauma that we've amassed over the last period of time and haven't had an opportunity to process because we've been too in it.

And that feels very continuous for me. It's very different in a way from kind of going on these deeper stages of the path, but it feels very harmonious. Yeah, it makes me think of a few things. One is the spiritual teacher Adyashanti, who's been really important to me, once said something to me that I thought was really helpful because I was sort of describing this like, okay, we had these experiences and now I'm not really. And he had a beautiful phrase and he said, well, you know, whatever bit of it remains,

let's say you got 5% of it, devote yourself to that. And I loved that word devote, you know, devote yourself to what you saw that was true in that state. And I thought that was a really beautiful way of sort of reframing because it's not then about getting back there. It's about what did I see that was true? What did it tell me about the nature of life? And how do I live my life that way?

That was a really beautiful teaching. I love that. I think for me, it brings back to the wolves a little bit that both of the wolves have very coherent stories about what the world is and how to live in it. And when I've been marinating in one wolf land, I tend to believe those stories. The use of the word devote is a really interesting one that maybe it's just a memory at times of what it was like to be in the other wolf consciousness. And like, oh yeah, that's right. That wolf led me to a lot more love. That'd be interesting. What would that then translate into into the life that I'm in now? And it might look pretty mundane compared to growing a long beard and going to Nepal for

a period of time. It might look almost indistinguishable from just trying to be a better person in life on a day-to-day basis. It doesn't have to be special with bells and whistles. But there's still that devotion. That's a lovely turn of phrase. You just mentioned a beard there. And I almost did not make this interview on time because I wandered at the last minute into an article you wrote. I don't think it's an article. It's a story called The Beard. And I was utterly captivated. I was like, I've got to stop reading this. But it was really well done. It's really good. Oh, thank you so much. I'm kind of a frustrated fiction writer in certain ways. I've written now

eight books of nonfiction, but I really am proud of my short stories. And that one was just put out in a new magazine called Ayn, A-Y-I-N, that's online. And that's for me trying to illuminate the shadow in a certain way. And partly it was my own shadow when I wrote that story. But the way we can cut ourselves off from that source of nourishment and devotion, which is kind of the tragedy of that character in that story. But thank you. I'm so glad someone read it. You never know with short stories if you get a reader or not. I read it and I kept thinking this is just going to be like a very short thing. And I would scroll and be like, well, there's a long way yet to go. And yet I was like, I got to keep reading. I identified with the character without giving too much of it away. The main character is a woman

and her husband has a long beard and she doesn't like it. It bothers her in a lot of ways. And she wrestles with this. And I was kind of hoping that the resolution I would get to at the end would teach me to deal with the petty irritations I have in life. Like I get irritated by something that I'm like, there's no reason to care about this. It shouldn't bother me. And yet inside, it's like somebody's tightening down a wrench, you know? And I was kind of looking for a resolution. That's not what the story does. It's still an absolutely wonderful and amazing story, though. Yeah, I don't want to give away the ending, but I don't really write happy endings in my fiction. I save that for the spiritual books.

There's something about making the darkness visible, I think. It's part of a collection. There's 10 stories. If there's any literary agents or publishers listening right now, that's part of a collection. And it is partly about that. I think what's tragic is that in a different context or mindset, what the character uncovers doesn't have to be dark. I mean, she's uncovering truths about Eros and about her own desire, but she can't escape that frame in which it's dark Eros in which it is shadow. Yeah. Because she can't see it as part of light. Right. I'm going to jump back to where we were, which is that we were talking about these states

when they pass. And I just want to read something you wrote about this, because I think it also shares the wisdom that the woman in this story, I think needed, which is you just can't relive these peak experiences after a while. I've tried. I've tried really hard. It just leads to suffering. The only thing you can do over and over again is let go. Let go of everything. Every desire, every identification, every place your ego is hiding out and saying, I'm this. Let go, let go, let go, and keep on falling. I love that. We've got to let go of spiritual achievement. over about a five or six year period where that was kind of like, oh, if I could only just, okay, let's remember I was sitting like this. I was feeling this. I was doing that, trying again and again to recreate and not in a matter of devotion, as Adyashanti said, but kind of like, let me get back in there. Let me get back in there. And that's the opposite,

right? That's the holding and not the releasing. There is a certain faith, I think, that arises that the next moment will also be now, in a way. There's a fear that saturates that holding on to the past experience. Like, well, this next moment's not going to be as great or available, or I can't be as present for it, or the next moment won't be now. So let me hold on to this old now from before, which was now. And that way I won't have to be without my special feeling that I had back at that past time. There's maybe a little hesitancy in those moments to just trust the next moment could also open up. And it does maybe in a somewhat different way, but the more of the

letting go for me that takes place, the more opening. And so it's this great paradox that kind of the way to re-experience that peak experience is to just let it go and be as open as possible to this moment that's unfolding right now. Yeah, it's a total paradox because those moments for me have always come as a result of me somehow, I have no idea how to do it, or I would just do it, totally letting go, like totally letting go. And that's for me when I have sort of completely taken my hands off the wheel that things open up. And yet, you know, it sounds easy, let go, but it's about the simplest thing to say and about the hardest thing to do. Yeah, I love that you use that metaphor. And on my very first meditation retreat,

I think it was the first or second night on silent meditation retreats. A lot of people have very vivid dreams and I certainly do. And this one was, I was in some car trying to drive and it was really hard and it was a dream and it was hard to see. And there was this, and I kind of looked over and my teacher from that retreat was sitting in what I had thought was the passenger seat, but actually was the driver's seat. And he said, why don't you just let me drive? And then I let go. And then in the dream, it unfolded into this beautiful kind of sci-fi landscape with gorgeous colors in the sky, you know, this whole revelation in dream language. And that's been really helpful.

Again, it's back to the wolves. I mean, which one do we hand the microphone to? Which one do we allow to drive in a particular moment? Sometimes we do need the more protective wolf. We do need those faculties of, oh, actually, I need to draw some boundaries here. And you've got to do my taxes. Luckily, we got an extension this year. I don't have to do the Missouri. You know, I don't do my taxes with the mind of the expanded mystic. I don't think they'd come out too well. I'd probably get audited. So there's times when that's necessary. And then there's times where if we can let these other faculties drive a little bit. One of the things I've seen show up in your work a lot of different ways is some variation on, and I think we're talking about it here, the middle way. This finding a place, maybe not even between two opposites.

Sometimes the middle way, I think, is you hold two opposites and it equals the middle way. It's not always a sort of a splitting the difference. But you use a metaphor in the book. You say that one thing that always stuck with you is a description of a certain kind of fish that can only survive in brackish water at the juncture of the freshwater of the river and the saltwater of the sea. Too much salt or too little, and the fish would die. You're describing yourself. And you're describing your desire to sort of live in these different worlds. But I think it also applies to so much of what we're talking about. That comes from Andre Gide's novel, The Counterfeiters, which I read when I was 19 in college. And in the context of The Counterfeiters, it was a lot about kind of how

far away from the comforts of mainstream society. It's kind of a coming of age novel with several characters, and they all go on different journeys of coming of age journeys. And some kind of swim out too far and get lost and fall into crime or abuse or things like that. And others stay too close to home and seem not to ever kind of blossom. And so it's this exploration of how far to leave home in a certain way. There's a whole sort of sexual and gender element to it. André Gide was one of the first writers in the West to talk about gay life in a way that was sort of representative of reality in that very early 20th century. But there's also this spiritual element. And I think that's been a piece for me all along. And I think that's right about

the middle way, that it's not necessarily splitting the difference, but sometimes it's running and returning. So it's having aspects of both in one's life. And I'm an Enneagram 7, the enthusiast. I want to have every possible experience. So if I ever write my memoir, which I probably won't do, the working title is Couldn't Decide, Did It All Anyway. couldn't decide, did it all anyway. And that's certainly been true. It's kind of amassed a lot of graduate degrees and three or four different careers. And I don't necessarily recommend that version of the middle way to others. But constitutionally, I've come to see it as part of me. And that's been really nourishing in a way. And again, lately, for the last 10 or so years, it's been a lot about how do I integrate those pieces? So what's the way to be involved in the world as an activist, but also drawing on the spiritual and contemplative traditions and work that I've been lucky enough to encounter. That feels really good. And as you know, family life is a great venue to

You know, as you know, family life is a great venue to explore one's own spiritual practices. And so a lot of it has kind of come in a way kind of full circle, you know, just being present with difficult emotions, not necessarily handing them the microphone, but not rejecting them either, not trying to make something go away, not necessarily giving it voice and giving it expression. I don't know if that's as interesting a book necessarily as going off to Nepal, but they probably would sell more copies, actually, because I think it's more real for more people, and how people are actually living their lives. Yeah. And I think I've certainly had a fair amount of that too. Lots of interest, wanting to do lots of different things. I teach a program called Spiritual Habits,

and The Middle way is one of those. And you mentioned sort of activism and contemplative practice. And I think that's a middle way, right, is that you practice both those things. And I think the activist... 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.

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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. We most admire, if we talk about historically, at least the big ones that we talk about, all had some element of contemplative practice to them, whether we're talking historically, at least the big ones that we talk about, all had some element of contemplative practice to them, whether we're talking about Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or

Martin Luther King. I mean, they were activists, but they were deeply committed to the inner life at the same time. And it seems that when you have both those things, you are better able to function. I think both contemplative practice and activism are strengthened and enhanced by each other. That's been my experience. And it is true that many people have different experiences of that. The mindfulness cliche exists because there's some truth to it. There is a way in which spiritual practice can be narcissistic, where I just think about my own well-being, or I don't want to let in any bad vibes, so I'm not going to get involved in any of the contentious political issues of the day or take sides. You know, we've seen that a lot in the last year or so where a lot of folks have just not been able to plug in in a way that is responsible, I think. For me, though, it's what you just said. It's always

been that the two have enriched each other. For 10 years, I worked as a professional LGBT activist. That was my job. And at that time, I was also doing a lot of meditation and my own work and stuff. And those two really enriched each other. I had a lot more mental spaciousness to be effective as an advocate and an activist, knowing again when to respond and when maybe not to respond and how to respond and having that ability. Dan Harris, again, calls it kind of a superpower where you can actually decide how you want to respond to a moment, which seems maybe pretty basic, but it's pretty valuable, you know, in doing that kind of work.

And that also, to me, grounded my spiritual practice. In the Buddhist tradition, this is one of the commonalities between my two, my Buddhism and Judaism. There's the notion that we do practice for the benefit of all beings, that it doesn't end here. That's not how it's supposed to go, that it's supposed to flow through us and change our actions in the world. And I think that's really helpful. If the arbiter of how well I'm doing in my various virtual work is how happy I am subjectively myself and impact or take into account anyone else. That seems off base. That doesn't seem to be any of what these guys were teaching over these thousands of years. And yet, I do know from firsthand experience that for some

folks, that's kind of the cul-de-sac they find themselves in. That sounded pretty judgmental, but I'm actually holding back how I really think. Well, it's interesting. I've talked before about there's a popular phrase in yoga that every time I hear it, it grates on me. I think I understand what is meant by it, but it's let go of anything that's not serving you. And that phrase always grates on me because I always think, wait a second, shouldn't I be asking like, who am I serving? What am I serving? Right? Not what's serving me. That's not life's job. You know, again, I get it. You're letting go of things, we could say the bad wolf

traits that aren't helpful. I mean, I get what's meant by it, but it does reflect a certain tendency towards saying, hey, all about me. Yeah, that's so right. And again, I do value what we think is the correct reading of that, which is just as you've said, I have these habits, which I developed, and maybe they helped protect me as a child, but it's not serving me anymore, that would be good to let go of. I'm totally 100,000% on board with that. But right, the idea that everything in the world is my servant, and it's in the service of my personal happiness and well being. Yeah, I'm holding my tongue because I don't want to say what I really think about that. All right. I know we're screeching up on three-year-old daughter coming home time here.

Which, you know, that could go well, though. And if that happens, it happens. Let her come on in. Yeah, she can make a cameo. We hit on Leonard Cohen, but I want to talk about music real quickly. Obviously, you wrote an article about Leonard Cohen. He's been important to you. You mentioned you used to be in a garage rock band that played at CBGB's.

You listed that as a life accomplishment. I consider it the same. Congratulations. Do you still play music? Barely. Okay. Yeah, I do a lot of music with my daughter. It's just been about time. Yeah, it's really, it's a loss for me. Yeah. My partner actually does remixes of Fleetwood Max songs into dance tracks. So he's making a lot more music than I am these days. That's cool. Well, I can tell you that the age that your daughter is in the years immediately after that were low points for me musically. And then as my son got older,

and I had a little bit more time, it sort of came back a little bit. And I certainly play by myself very regularly. And, you know, we compose all the music that makes up all the breaks in the show. And so we have a little fun with it. Part of what I'm doing at 10% Happier is developing a new podcast, and we need new music for the top. So maybe we could hire you for a gig to do some music for us too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I miss it. I was just thinking about it. I'm about to reach my 50th birthday. And so that's causing, you know, a little bit of reflection and stuff. And it feels really good. Actually, I'm totally ready to be 50. It feels great. But this was is one of the things that, you know, I used to spend a good chunk of every day making music. And now it's really rare,

and I do miss it. So hopefully when, you know, things in the world quiet down a little bit, and in my house quiet down a little bit, there'll be more space for that. Yeah, to quote Ecclesiastes, again, there's a season. There's a time for everything, right? And the season of life may not be the music-making season for you. Besides Leonard Cohen, are there other musicians that you turn to regularly that are sources of comfort or peak experience or however you want to say it? You know, over the last year where I've spent a lot of time at home, like a lot of other people,

I've been listening to more and more kind of electronic music that takes you on all kinds of journeys. There's an artist from San Francisco named Christopher Willits, W-I-L-L-I-T-S, who I love. He's friends with another San Francisco musician named Tycho, who's much more famous and well-known,

who I also love. A lot of kind of Brian Eno influenced ambient. One of Brian Eno's former collaborators, a musician named Laraji, who's also a spiritual teacher. And his work over the last 10, 20 years has just been incredible. He often plays a zither, which goes through electronic processing and really takes you on a journey. And for my 50th birthday, we're going to actually have a live in-person concert with a musician named Ancient Ocean, who does, again, sort of wonderful ambient music. So that's where I've headed in the last year. Obviously, you know, it's the usual canon

of Dylan and Lou Reed and, you know, people like that who are sort of still in the pantheon. Yeah, for me. What about you? Let's see. I know there's a songwriter, Josh Ritter, I really love. I think he just writes amazing songs. I've really been into, I think he's a San Francisco musician, Chuck Proffitt. Kind of just good old rock and roll stuff. But something about him, there's a depth to his work that I've really been enjoying lately. So those are two that come to mind. I haven't followed up with Chuck Proffitt in a while. So now I'll put that on my mental to-do list. Yeah. Yeah. His latest record, I think, is really good. All right. So my last question here

is, I'm just going to read again something from the book. You say, remember, remember, remember, all the Jewish religion does is remember. All the Buddhist path does is remember. And so remembering, I think I've heard that that's one definition of mindfulness is to remember. And I think remembering is one of the hardest things to do to go from, okay, let's say I get to the point where I do a daily meditation practice. Great, really good work. But I've got all the rest of the hours in my day. And how do I remember some of these spiritual principles, these things that matter to me? How do I bring them into the rest of my life? And I'm just curious for yourself, how you do that or any advice you have for other people?

Because I think, like you said, remembering is the heart of the challenge. Yeah, I think the main thing I want to say about that is an encouraging word for folks for whom that remembering can feel like a burden. You know, it's like it's like always there. You always have to do it. It's like kind of this annoying. Yeah, this burden that you kind of carry. The good news from cognitive and contemplative neuroscience is that eventually the brain

automatically learns to remember. And, you know, I don't spend a lot of time translating neuroscience into meditation, but I think that's a really important data point. In a pre-scientific language, we would just say it becomes intuitive. And one definition of enlightenment in a Buddhist tradition is the intuitive knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. So, you know, the Four Noble Truths, there's suffering, there's, you know, clinging causes suffering, there's a way to end it. Here it is. That was pretty easy, pretty fast. Now you know the Noble Truth. But to have an intuitive knowledge means that the brain or the mind has kind of rewired itself in a certain way. And it remembers almost on autopilot. You know, you remember that

this moment is unfolding in radiant, pure awareness. Or if you don't remember it on a conscious level, it takes just a quick second to bring it back. That for me feels like the most encouraging thing. For me, that was the most encouraging thing, the knowledge that or hope that eventually these changes become intuitive. And you don't have to remember to remember because it's actually the remembering isn't so hard. It's the remembering to remember that's so hard. Oh, I forgot to remember. I sound very Jewish right now. Oi, I forgot to remember again. Now I have to say I'm sorry that I forgot to remember anyway. And that is the case.

But the mind does really shift, right? The mind does change over time with any sustained practice. And again, meditation is what I'm familiar with. And the mind remembers to remember on its own. And that's really a change when this shift becomes intuitive and it doesn't have to be constantly kind of attended to. But I'm also reminded, you know, in the meantime, one Tibetan Buddhist teaching that it's all about small moments many times. You might meditate a thousand times a day for three seconds each. And that would

be a fantastic practice. Also, again, as a parent of a three-year-old, that's the only kind of practice that you get. And that shift of mind, just sort of letting go, or Sharon Salzberg, meditation teacher, says sort of settling back. You just settle back just a little bit. I probably do settle back, yeah, maybe a hundred times a day, because it's natural, going back to what we talked about at the very beginning, as you immerse yourself in the world and, you know, sound recording technology and the to-do list and the things that have to happen. And that's dualistic thinking. And that's what makes life happen. We couldn't possibly.

There's a wonderful Jewish Talmudic saying that without the they use the language of the evil inclination, But the selfish inclination, the part that wants more and divides the world into what I like and what I don't like, without the evil inclination, no one would ever build a house. There would be no world. We wouldn't have life. And that seems profoundly correct to me. And it's natural that when we enter that consciousness, that constricted consciousness or dualistic consciousness, yeah, we'll have to remember that there's also the other side of the coin. But that can happen again in just a matter of moments. And I think for me, somewhere around 10 years or so into my meditation practice, that kind of became the aspiration, not to be in some steady state of bliss,

because that doesn't happen, but to be able to reduce the amount of time necessary to remember and for it to become gradually, because you can't make it happen consciously, but gradually for it to become intuitive. Yeah, it makes me think of a couple things. I don't know that he came up with this phrase, but I think Rick Hansen, at least to me, popularized the phrase of talking about going from states to traits. This is kind of what we were talking about earlier. If you do this, it becomes sort of habitual. I love that Tibetan idea of lots of little moments. The spiritual habits course I teach, sort of the basic, the heart of it is that little by little,

a little becomes a lot. And we just add up these little bits and it translates into something. And we know that from other habits, right? Eating right or exercise or whatever, you know, that we do have this capacity, fortunately, as human beings, we're creatures of habit, but we can also gradually over time change those habits. And it just takes a little while to do that. You know, you can't just do it by thinking yourself into a healthier body. You actually have to do some work. Yeah. Well, Jay, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. This has been a really fun and enjoyable conversation for me. Likewise.

Really a delight. And thank you for spending time with my written work. I'm honored that you gave it such a deep read. So I appreciate that. Oh, yeah. It was an absolute pleasure, too. You're a wonderful writer. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

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