The One You Feed - The Path to Presence and Mindful Living with Prince EA

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Prince EA is a modern-day sage who inspires millions with wisdom gleaned from various spiritual traditions and practices. He uses his experiences and challenges with depression to inform and empower his audience. His unique expressions of vulnerability and honesty continue to connect with people worldwide, inspiring them to live a more mindful life. His explorations in spirituality have not only provided him with much-needed solace and also ignited a journey to help others in their quest for peace of mind. In this episode, you’ll be able to: Learn the intricate role of conscious living and making deliberate choices in shaping your life Attain practical tools for nurturing mindfulness, guiding you to stay present in each moment Learn strategies for managing depression and fostering better mental health Explore the intersection of spirituality, meditation, and mindful living, and why it’s a valuable approach in today’s fast-paced world Discover how welcoming uncertainty and developing a beginner’s mind can lead to new forms of personal growth To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So many of us don't live life, life lives us, and I think it's up to us to really live consciously. This is why mindfulness is so important. 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 really know really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign 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 Richard Williams, better known by the stage name Prince EA. He's an American spoken word artist, poet, rapper, filmmaker, and speaker. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Missouri, St. Louis with a full scholarship and degree in anthropology, he started and popularized the Make Smart Cool movement to promote values like intelligence, free thought,

unity, and creativity in hip-hop music and culture. In 2014, Prince EA shifted his focus from music to creating motivational and inspirational spoken word films and content, and his YouTube videos have received over 3 billion views. And he discovers a wide range of topics such as environmentalism, race, work-life balance, and spirituality. Prince EA's work is widely recognized, including Oprah's Super Soul 100 and Forbes' 30 Under 30. Hi, Prince. Welcome to the show. Eric, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, I am really excited to talk with you. You talk about a lot of the same things that we talk about on this show in your videos, in your courses, and so I think we're going to have a lot in common here. But before we get to all that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second, and they look up at their grandparent.

They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Wow, thank you for sharing that. Funny, I wanted to film a video on that a long time ago, and I still might, because it's such a powerful, potent story. It's a parable, right? It's hundreds of years old. So it's time-tested. And what does it mean to me? It means that we have a choice. I have a choice. And I think it comes down to the two wolves, which for me, it's either

fear or it's love. I think these are the two forces that play in our dimension in which we inhabit on this planet. And I think at every moment we have that choice to choose either fear, And I think at every moment we have that choice to choose either fear, limitation, anger, this very negative vibration, I would call it. Or we could choose love, which is more open, which is more compassionate. And I think the more that you feed one of them, the more that will grow. Right. And it was Thich Nhat Hanh who says nothing can grow without food, not the anger, not the hatred, and also not the joy, not the happiness. So that's what it means to me. And it's a very powerful, powerful metaphor for life. And it really comes down to each moment. Which are we feeding in each moment, each decision? Because that's what our lives are, right? It's an accumulation of the small moments.

There's a movie I love. It's Vanilla Sky. I don't know if you remember that film with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. It's a beautiful film. One of my favorites. Haven't seen it in years, but I always remember this quote in the movie. He says, oh, the little things, there's nothing bigger. So it's the little choices. Are we going to choose fear? Are we going to choose love? Yeah. And I think what's interesting about what you just said about little choices is that it's the little choices and it seems like the choices are inconsequential. They're so little, right? And there's so many little moments of them and they feel like, well, there's not really a good or bad here. There's not a love or fear here. This is just, I'm making my coffee. I mean, I'm going to do the next thing. But it really is, as you're

saying, the more intentionality we can bring to our choices. I was reading something, I always forget where I get what I get from my guests, but it was something you had said about some scientists believe we make 35,000 choices a day. And you said, I don't believe that to be true because so many of those choices are happening automatically, right? We're not conscious of the choice. We're not conscious of which wolf might be getting fed. You know, it's just the default autopilot. And again, some of that's a human advantage, right? I can't make every choice. I can't be deliberately moving my hand right now, right? It's just kind of, it's doing its thing. But the more of them that are deliberative, you know.

100%. It's habits, you know? I think we all know James Clear, Atomic Habits, right? One of the most powerful books written in the last freaking decade. It's all about cultivating those habits because, you know, they say the first part of our lives, we make our habits. And the last freaking decade. It's all about cultivating those habits because, you know, they say the first part of our lives, we make our habits and the last part, our habits make us. I think that's so true. And it's so important for us to get in front of these habits while we still got a chance because we really don't want to be a victim of life. So many of us don't live life. Life lives us. And I think it's up to us to really live consciously. This is why mindfulness is so important, to be mindful as

you're pouring the coffee and you're not just thinking about, okay, what do I have to do at work? I'll tell you a parable, which you may have already heard, but there was a story of the Buddha. He met a very, very impatient disciple. And the disciple, he said, Buddha, Buddha, can you enlighten me right now? And the Buddha says, I can't enlighten you right now. It takes time. You have to cultivate these practices. He says, please, please, just enlighten me. I got a plane to catch. I got to get out of here. Please, please. And the Buddha, he said, okay, here's what you do. please. And the Buddha, he said, okay, here's what you do. When you eat, eat. When you walk, walk. And it really is just that simple to do what you're doing, right? To really be in it,

right? You're not thinking about what's going to happen two years from now or two minutes. You're really in the moment. And this is what all the sages, all the gurus talk about, the power of the now. Yeah. It's funny, you and I were talking beforehand about my newly discovered love of surfing. And that's really it, right? Is that when I am surfing, there is nothing else. That's it. It is that moment entirely, all my attention, all my focus, That's it. It is that moment entirely. All my attention, all my focus, it's just all right there. And that's probably the key to it is it does that better for me, easier, right? That state is easier for me to achieve on a surfboard for some reason than it is other times, but it's always worth striving for. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about flow. We're talking about being in the zone. We're talking about being in the now. I think it's the Japanese, they call it motion. The Taoists, they call it the Tao, right? That eternal nowness is what we're all looking

for. And the funny thing is you're never not in it. It's just the mind that tries to go to the future or go back to the past and rehash that and this. The breath is a good doorway to the moment, to the now. The breath is always there. And if we can just come back to the breath, that will bring us to that place of beauty, what we're all searching for. They say the true tragedy in life is not how much we suffer. The true tragedy is how much we miss, how much of the beauty that we just walk past or run past, not even aware of what's happening. So to cultivate mindfulness, I think it's the number one most important thing to really live a happy, fulfilled life. fulfilled life. I've heard you say that you don't love that phrase, because who wants a full mind? Yeah. And it is a phrase that has gotten way overused, but it doesn't change the simple fact that being aware of what's going on in our mind and around us is kind of the whole game. Yeah. That's the cheat code. Yeah. Yeah. That's the cheat code to beat the game. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I don't like that.

Buddy, I like you. You did your homework. Yeah, mindfulness is an interesting... You know, language is power. It depends on how I'm feeling, I guess, you know. But mindfulness, sometimes I use awareness or mindful awareness, presence awareness. All of these words, they really point to the same thing, which is just coming back to the witness. Just witness.

Don't get involved in the thoughts. Just witness. Just watch. There was a guy, Anthony DeMello. He said, don't try to change your life. Just watch it. And then it'll change. Then it'll change.

He is a great seer. And his writing is very confrontational, too. It is no BS. He's not soft footing around any of it. It caught me off guard first reading it. I was a little bit like, whoa, hang on, buddy, take it down a notch. But he's speaking the truth. He's speaking the truth. I think the truth sometimes has to be told in a way that shakes you up. Yeah, for sure. Because we don't change when we're comfortable. That's a message for me. I

think that's definitely part and parcel of my success. And it's something that I have to also remember that it really is about the package. It's about the package. It's not just about the message, but it's about the packaging, right? It's like if you go to a restaurant, It's a five-star Michelin restaurant. And the waiter brings out the food, and they bring it out on a paper plate and give you some plastic utensils. The packaging isn't right. So it's really, it's the same thing. The one you feed, how you serve the food has to be packaged in a way that I think really does justice to it. And I think what you're saying is Anthony DeMello, he was very, very forthcoming, very

to the point, very poignant in the way that he communicated. And I love it. And I think the most powerful people, Martin Luther King, I mean, man, that guy, he was cutting. He was cutting. He cut through. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind me, there's a statue of a Bodhisattva called Manjushri. And one of the reasons I love Manjushri is he's got one hand on like a lotus, right? But the other one is holding a flaming sword. And that flaming sword's job is to cut through ignorance. And that's kind of what we're saying here is sometimes that's the cutting that needs to occur. That's beautiful. You got to send me a picture of that after we finish. I love that. I've never heard of him. Yeah, he's a Bodhisattva in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. So changing gears, I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about you and your challenges of depression. You made a video with, I don't

know what the group was. It's a group that supports mental illness recovery. Is it called Impact maybe? Yeah. It's quite a video of you've got depression as a person sitting in a crime room, right? I was really moved by it. But talk to me about, you know, when you had depression and what was it like? Yeah. Well, you know, I grew up on the north side of St. Louis and, you know, my family, we're very like, I don't know, traditional in the sense of most people where I'm from, we don't really go to therapists. So I say that to say I was never clinically diagnosed. I never got on medication or anything like that. I didn't go to church or I know a lot of people are like, you know, just pray it away or, you know, Jesus will take the wheel and make it go away. I think there's an element of spirituality that can indeed

help depressive states. But I also think there's a science and I think we need to kind of look to the science. I love the Dalai Lama. I know he's in some hot water these days. He always says, hey, if science disagrees with Buddhism, we might have to rethink Buddhist teachings. And I love that. I say that to say I was never clinically depressed, but I looked at all the symptoms and I definitely experienced depression throughout my adolescence. definitely experienced depression throughout my adolescence. And also I do feel as though just my own awareness that my brain that I have could be biochemically. I believe that it may lean naturally towards that state because I know that if I don't ingest certain minerals,

supplements, do certain things, it just kind of goes that way. It can still be here, but I've also trained it through different therapies. CBT, REBT, Buddhist tradition is also a good fortification of the mind and to not believe in the thinking mind. Stoicism, I can kind of rally off all the names of the things that I've studied to help me. But it all started, I think, like I said, my adolescence definitely experienced some suicidal thoughts. They weren't like every day, but there were some points where I woke up and I just didn't want to be here. Didn't care about my appearance, didn't care about friends, just didn't want to go outside. Right. These are kind of classic depressive symptoms. And then I just started looking into

it. I just started trying to understand it and came across a book from David Burns called Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy. Came across books like the Tao Te Ching, came across traditions like Advaita Vedanta, say that you are not these thoughts. You are not the thinking mind. Thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky. Watch your thoughts like you're crossing the street and you watch traffic. So these different things, what they did was they gave me distance. They gave me distance from the thoughts. I wasn't the thought itself. I wasn't tied up in it. I could actually observe it.

I could watch it. I could be mindful of it. And just that awareness was a huge relief, a huge relief. But I think the depression was also a bit of a gift because it allowed me to look within and find out what was going on under the hood. What kind of nutrient therapies, amino acids could I play with to change the hormonal balance in my brain? So I always tell people that think that they are depressed.

I say, you are not depressed. You are experiencing depression. Who you are is not depressed. Who you are can observe that depression. And it's difficult to understand that when you're in it. Learned helplessness is a huge thing. But I love the work of, he was a scientist and he created something called learned optimism. And I think we can retrain our brains, as we were talking about earlier, to see the good, to see the positive, to just shift our perceptions. There are so many

tools that I always tell people, it's not hopeless. It's not a hopeless situation that you're in. In fact, you should be very hopeful because there are so many tools out there in our modern world today that you just have to find it. You have to find the right one that works for you. So, you know, going back to my story, I think depression played a role. It forced me to try to understand it. And I think at one level, it also allowed me to bring out the creativity inside of me, to bring out the vulnerability inside of me. You know, I started out as a musician.

And, you know, a musician is like a poet, is a very vulnerable art form. And so I was very vulnerable and very vocal about what I was going through. And, you know, when I would create music, I would find my audience, they would say, oh, I feel the exact same way. Thank you for putting that out there. And then that's how you build community. That's how you build friendships. That's how you build connection. Connection came from the expression, which some say is the opposite of depression. Depression, while, you know, I think it is a virus, I think that it can also be an opportunity, an opportunity, a signal, an alarm that something's off. You may not be living the life that you're meant to live. Yeah. I'm very similar to you. I

think I have a brain that orients towards that direction when I let it off its leash, you know, and I, like you, have found that there's a lot of different things that contribute to managing it. There's a lot of different tools. And I've had to, over the years, kind of put together my little depression recovery kit, you know, mine's going to look different than other people's, but, but knowing what's in that kit becomes very important. And as you were talking about the thoughts, I was thinking a little bit about, you know, part of the problem with depression is that when I'm in it, when I'm experiencing it, I like your phrase when I'm experiencing it, right? I can know that my thoughts are not correct. I can be like, look, you know, your brain's not working real well today. And, you know, ignore those thoughts. And underneath it, there's still this like, ugh, feeling, you know? And I've

talked on this show many times about sometimes I treat it a little bit like the, I call it the emotional flu, you know? Which is that when it comes, I treat it a little bit like I would the flu, meaning I don't make a big fuss out of it. I don't take myself to the emergency room. I make sure, am I doing everything I can to support myself? I know that while I'm sick, the world's going to look kind of crappy. You know, I let it kind of this low mood that feels like it's a companion of mine that doesn't seem like it's going to completely go away. So how do I work with it as skillfully as I can? And to your point, you know, what opportunities does it present? You know, I wouldn't be doing the work I do like you, if I hadn't had it, you know, I wouldn't be doing the work I do if I hadn't been a heroin addict. I mean, all these things contribute to our lives being meaningful.

They're part of our story. That's it. I love the analogy of the puzzle pieces. And everybody has their own puzzle that they have to put together, right? I think social support for just the human species, it works, right? So that's a big one.

The thing about depression is like, when you're right? So that's a big one. The thing about depression is like when you're in it, that's the last thing you want is to be around people. The very thing that can allow you to come out of it is the thing that you're like pushing away, which is another trick. Totally. Even things like movement, right? Like we know movement helps, but the last thing you want to do is move when you're feeling depressed. Exactly. It is challenging in that way.

Yep. How do you work through that? Well, you know, I haven't had the need to work through it lately. Yeah. But in the past, well, just that book, right? So that book by David Burns is so powerful, right? You know the book, right? I do.

Yep. Yep. So this book actually created a practice of its own called bibliotherapy. People got better just by reading the book. It's got so many tools in it. I think if you read the book or if you study CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy, or as I like to call it, crushing bad thoughts, you will find a list of 10 cognitive distortions. Print this list out, put it on your refrigerator, put it anywhere that you can see it. Because I feel like whenever we suffer, 99% of the times, it is because of one of these 10 cognitive distortions, period. But when you see

it, you can see, oh, there it is. My brain's just trying to trick me again. Right? So you observe it. Yes. Depression is something you really can't think your way out of it. You can't intellectualize your way out of it. This is why I think behavioral activation is one of the more successful treatments for depression. Yeah. Moving. Like you say, you don't want to move.

So this is why having that good social support, that network is so, so important. That's the biggest thing. I mean, this is the reason why I like to study cultures. I got my degree in anthropology and I love Dan Buettner's work on the blue zones where you have people, right? People who are centenarians. They live well past 100 years old and they're healthy, they're happy, they're vibrant, they're still having sex, they're still watering their gardens, they're still playing with their great-great-grandkids, they're still riding the bike. And this has baffled a lot of scientists for years. And they really finally figured out why they live so long. And it's because of their friendships.

It's because of the love that they have around, right? A lot of them have the same friends that they had when they were kids. When they were 10 now and they're 110, they have the same people around them. So the human animal, I think we do need each other. And when we get in these low mood states, we have to trust the people around us. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really true and really important. And those other people can be the things that do help us do some of the things that we need to do, you know, that are good for us. But one of my favorite quotes is depression hates a moving target, right? So for me, that's kind of it. It's like, just get off the couch. It doesn't even

matter what, just be moving, you know. And how much I'm able to do may vary. I may be like, well, you know, today I'm not going to get on the Peloton bike and do a crushing hour ride, but I might walk, you know, around the block. Yeah. Here's something else. You don't even have to move, but it simulates moving. But a sauna, a sauna or an ice bath, both of those things, I mean, you can just sit there, right? And you are making physiological changes in your body. You are helping your nervous system. You are fighting depression when you just sit there. So you can sweat it out and you can shiver it out too.

Or you can do both. That's my favorite, back and forth. Back and forth, okay. Yeah, but you brought up sauna. So you've got a fairly new podcast that you do in a sauna. You basically have people come join you in the sauna. Why'd you choose to do a podcast in the sauna? I just like doing stuff that's never been done. I'm one who takes the road less traveled or not even paved, I should say. So I wanted to do something different. And also I've had a lot of good conversations inside of saunas, you know, at the gym, at the club, you know. So it's like, what about having conversations with celebrities, scientists, cool people just inside of a sauna as we sweat out the toxins and the BS?

What can happen? So we landed on a sauna as we sweat out the toxins and the BS, what can happen? Yeah. So we landed on a sauna. We tried to figure out how to get the equipment inside the sauna without melting. We figured it out. And it sounds really good. I was like, I can't believe how good this sounds for being in a sauna. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. That's my producer, Dustin. He works magic, but we got it. It's an infrared sauna. It's not a dry sauna, so it doesn't get that hot. But so we do 20 minutes in the sauna and then we do another 20 minutes outside the sauna for like what we call a hydration session where we sit, we get like a foot bath with Epsom salt, we drink coconut water and we continue the conversation in our bathrobes. Sounds like a good podcast gig. I haven't had any complaints. All the guests, they love it. Come by. We can get in.

All right. I will take you up on that. Awesome. We've given our Instagram account a new look and we're sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else. Encour encouraging positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your good wolf, as well as some behind the scenes video of the show and some of Ginny and I's day-to-day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody would be interested in. It's also a great place for you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If you're on Instagram, follow us at at one underscore you underscore feed,

and those words are all spelled out, one underscore you underscore feed, to add some nourishing content to your daily scrolling. See you there. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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 tonight. How are you, too? 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. So I want to talk a little bit about meditation. It's a big thing in your life, a practice you're really into. And I wanted to just sort of start and ask you a little bit about what is the type of meditation you're doing these days? How has that changed over time? How does it vary week to week, month to month? I'm just kind of curious how you approach that big topic. First of all, I want to say I love your questions. I love your vibe. I'm so excited to talk about these questions because they're super important. I don't think there's anything more important than the topic of meditation. I do believe that meditation is the antivirus software that can

cure a world of all of its ills. Meditation is not something you do. It's actually a state of being. I think there are portals into that state, but I think the portals have gotten a bit confused. But the portals of meditation, they vary, right? I'm a big tantra guy. And I know people listening to this they might say oh tantra oh you must have crazy wild sex huh i'm like no no no no no no see this is what the commercialization of spirituality has done so tantra is a science and one of my favorite books the vinyana-Bhaharava Tantra, it speaks of 112 tantric practices to reach the point of what they call Bhaharava oneness, Krishna consciousness, Christ consciousness, whatever name, nirvana. Only two of them have to do with sex. One that has to do with sex really doesn't even have to

do with sex. What it is, is they say at the point of orgasm, you put your mind fully on God. So I love the practices of Tantra because they take meditation, I'm using air quotes, they take meditation off the mat. They take it out of Lotus and bring it in the world. One of my favorite is space, spatial awareness. So I don't know if people are driving, if you're driving, don't do this, but if you're sitting in a room or maybe when you pull over or you sit in your office, I want you to just look around and ask yourself, what do you see? And when I ask people this question, they say, oh, well, I see chairs. I see a desk. I see a window. I see people.

And I say, okay, yeah, but you miss that which was most abundant, the space, which allows all that to inhabit. Space is what we are. Space. I feel like if there's any religion or any God that should be worshiped, it should be space because space is the most abundant thing in the universe. Matter is very, very, very tiny. Any physicist will tell you this, but this is just one to really focus on the space. You can focus on the space in between my words. So when you're speaking to somebody, you put your mind attention on the space. And what happens is your mind starts to take the form of the space.

So this is something that people can do anywhere, anywhere. It really brings you to this non-dual awareness, this peace, this feeling of home. One of my favorite gurus, Nisargadatta Maharaj, he's got a quote that I have on my wall. He says, having never left the house, you have been searching for the way home. Having never left the house, you have been searching for the way home. We search and search and search in life for joy and happiness and fulfillment. And what he's saying is it's already here. It's you.

It's not something you even have to do. It's your very nature. It's here and now. I love this practice, this tantric practice. One other meditation that people can do in their daily life that I like to do from time to time is a walking meditation that I got from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen monk, bestselling author. We mentioned Martin Luther King earlier. Martin Luther King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize. And what you do is when you're walking,

you can be in nature, you can be in your office. When you're walking, you want to focus on your breath and with each step, you want to breathe in and as you breathe in, you say to yourself, I'm here and you breathe out on the exhale, you say, I am home. So I am here on the inhale. I am home on the exhale. And you do this as you walk. And as you walk, you imagine your feet are kissing the earth with every step. So you say, I am here. I am home. And as you walk, you kiss the earth with every step. And what you're going to notice is your pace is going to slow down and you are going to be filled with so much joy and presence and aliveness with this meditation. So this is another one of my favorites. Let me give you three just to

finish the Trinity off. Let's see what else I got. So this is one that I got from a guy named Steven Walensky. I don't know if you I got from a guy named Stephen Walensky. I don't know if you're familiar with this guy, Stephen Walensky. I'm not. I've followed you on all the references so far, but you've got one here. I don't know. Okay. So Stephen Walensky is like, there's a few people that I want to meet in the world. I could probably count them with one hand and he's probably at the top of my list. He's an author. He's written so many beautiful books. He's done documentaries. I have no idea where he is now. He kind of just disappeared. He's probably in deep meditation somewhere. He was a disciple of the guy that I mentioned, the Sargadatta Maharaj.

And Stephen Walensky had a meditation where what you do is you, well, first you obviously, you bring yourself to this moment. You relax your face, your jaw, your eyes, your shoulders. Take a breath. And then you ask yourself, without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions, or memories. Am I an American? Am I Russian? Am I Ukrainian? Am I Canadian? Or neither? And then you do that again. You say, without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions or memories. Am I black? Am I white?

Am I Asian? Or neither. And then you go deeper. You say without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions or memories. Am I a man? Am I a man? Am I a woman? Or neither? And then you go deeper.

Without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions, or memories. Am I a human being? Am I even a spiritual being or neither? And what you do is you stay in this gentle, nonjudgmental awareness. This is our true nature. This is home. This is who we always were without a name, without a label. This is why the Hindus, if you look at the Sanskrit word nirvana, people think nirvana is this state of just ecstasy and amazing bliss. Actually, the word nirvana means extinction.

There's no more you there. Yep. So that meditation alone, I think, is a shortcut to pretty much what every spiritual tradition points to, which is the oneness. Right. What's really interesting about that type of meditation, as you said, is getting to that place when you've suddenly said, I'm not any of those things, to go, well, what am I? And to really look at that. And if you're able to stay with it, my experience is what you will find is like, I don't know.

But as you were talking, I can never pronounce that spiritual teacher's name. Nisargadatta Maharaj. Yeah. He's got that idea of you abide with that sense of I am. Yeah, that's it. Nothing after it, I am. Because when you do that, you're like, well, clearly there's something here. But what is it? Where is it? What shape is it? You just suddenly start going like, well, I don't know. There's nothing here to find. And it's a mystifying, sometimes mildly disconcerting state, if you can get to it,

but also deeply freeing. Only for the mind. Only for the mind. That's fair. Yeah. Because the mind wants to figure it out. It wants to objectify that which cannot be objectified. The eye cannot see itself. The knife cannot cut itself. The mind cannot truly know itself, what's behind it. You can't get there with the mind.

It's not the right tool. I think the last step of the inquiry is when the questions themselves disappear. Yep. I was out today. I've been meditating in nature recently. I'm teaching a retreat this summer at Kripalu about nature and connecting with nature as a way. And so I've been really engaging in that practice. And I started reflecting on something I heard recently. It was some book about human development or evolutionary past. And that there was a time that we were human, but we didn't have language. thought experiment because most of our thoughts are words that we're saying to ourselves. But if you didn't have those words, what is the experience of being? And I found that as a really interesting thing to reflect on, you know, and I do that sometimes as like, to your point, if not using memories, you know, not using language even. Yeah. What is? Is a really powerful way for me to get closer to that state of being. Wow. Yeah, because the word is not the thing, right? Right. The Tao that can be named is

not the Tao, right? Yep, yep, yep. So that's how we get caught up. We get caught up in the words. So that's a fascinating thought experiment. Exactly. Well, but we must have been thinking. We must have been thinking, right? Yeah. Yeah. But we didn't have the words. And it's similar to me when I try and imagine what it might be like to be an octopus, for example. It's just a fun way of trying to say there are states of consciousness that are very different than the ones we inhabit and what are the different ways of kind of getting closer to those and being able to see with those eyes i'm a zen practitioner primarily and one of my teachers said to me once i thought this was so

wise we do a lot of koan practice in zen right and they're nonsense right at first glance they're nonsense, right? At first glance, they're nonsense. But the advice I was given is sometimes imagine what the state of mind would have to be for the person who said that and believes it to be true. Instead of going, that doesn't make any sense, that's nonsense, to say, what state of mind would I have to be in that that would be true? It's sort of a reverse engineering way of entering into the mind. And you can't do it exactly. These are all just tools, portals to use your word, right? That's another one is when a spiritual teacher says something that you're like, that sounds nuts. One way of approaching is go, well, what would their mind state have to be for that to be true? We're just kind of playing with ways of getting deeper. Powerful. I mean, you can't see, I got chill bumps here. I mean, that's it. That's empathy, right? Empathy, the Greek word to see through the eye of the other. I mean, that's it. I mean, there's another meditation that I love. It's called to install the guru. So what you do is

you visualize your guru or your teacher, your enlightened master, and from the feet to the head, you imagine that their body merges with yours. You have installed the guru into this self, which is very similar. Like what state of mind would that have to be in, to believe that? Powerful. Love that, Eric. So good. So good. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, 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. Do you have a spiritual teacher that you actually work with, or do you feel like your spiritual teachers are primarily the people that you read? I mean, I know you're a voracious reader, just as I am. Do you have teachers that you actually work with, or has it been more your sort of quote-unquote gurus are the people we've talked about that you're reading?

Yeah, yeah, the latter. I've definitely attended seminars, and like Byron Katie, and love her, Gangaji, and Eli Jackson Bear, who were disciples of a man named Papa G. And, you know, I'm being around some of these people, but never on like a one-to-one student disciple. I've never had that, but I've just been so touched by so many masters. You know, I think Ram Dass was one of my first on-ramps into spirituality. I think Ram Dass was one of my first on-ramps into spirituality. Him and Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson. I'm a big science guy, too.

So people say, oh, science and spirituality, they don't go together. Why not? Well, science is the empirical pursuit of the truth, and spirituality is the experiential pursuit for the nature of what's real. Yeah, they should go together. They should. I mean, because you're seeking the truth in both cases. Exactly. Yeah. So I never had a direct teacher. I think that that's not to say I never will. I do believe that everything that we need is within us. Sometimes we are graced to be able to see that. And sometimes people need a master or a guru to

point to it and tell them that actually you're already that, you don't even need me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All these stories of people like Ram Dass, when they saw their guru and they instantly were like transformed, has made it difficult for me to work with Zen teachers, which I found to be beneficial working one-on-one with a teacher, because my mind is always like, well, is this a truly enlightened being? And it's kind of silly, right, in a way, because it's almost they're more like a spiritual friend than they are like a guru, right? But in the Zen tradition, there are, I don't like this word, but I don't have a better one. There are correct responses to koans that have been passed down for thousands of years. And your teacher is the one who's like, yep, good.

Let's go on to the next one. Or, you know, very politely, some are more polite than others. You know, you need to sit with that some more is what my teacher would always say, which was a polite way of saying, nope, you do not have it. Yeah, yeah. I love koans, by the way. And I'm so happy that you studied that. I've got books to stick on all love koans, by the way, and I'm so happy that you studied it. I've got books this thick

on all the koans. What I've gotten from it is actually you become the answer. That's exactly it. The answer is always that. It's a little of that game we talked about a minute ago, like what would it be like to be in the mind? You know, what would it be like to be the distant temple bell ringing? You know, that's one. How do you stop the sound of a distant temple bell ringing, right? Well, you can't get to it, right? You know, and so it's about you become that thing. Some of it to me has been an imaginative exercise, which turns out to be a powerful approach. Love that. Yeah, that's it.

That's it. Yeah, koans. What's my favorite koan? Yeah, the sound of one hand clapping. Classic. Probably the most famous one. Yeah, yeah. Does a dog have Buddha nature?

Moo. Moo, yeah, exactly. Classic moo. Yeah, it's so many beautiful ones.? Moo. Yeah, exactly. Classic moo. Yeah, there's so many beautiful ones. So many. They're great. I love them so much. There's a book that you might like if you haven't read it.

It's called Bring Me the Rhinoceros, maybe? That sounds very Koan-like. Yeah, yeah. Bring Me the Rhinoceros by a Zen teacher named John Tarrant. T-A-R-R-A-N-T. It's another one of those where, yeah, I mean, basically that's the end of the koan, Bring Me the Rhinoceros, which of course is just nonsensical. Yeah, so good. But that's a really great book about koans and about sort of a modern approach.

And he's a beautiful writer and teacher. He's really gifted. If you're into koans, that's definitely one to read. Okay. Bring me the rhinoceros. Write it down now. Bring me the rhino. Cool.

I'm on it. I'm on it. I loved what you said about meditation, about bringing them into more of the moments of our lives, taking them out of just a formal sitting practice. I've got a program called Spiritual Habits where we try and take the science of behavior change and apply it to spiritual principles. And that's really the key piece is like, it's great to believe in these things. It's great to think about these things, but you need them in the moments of your life. And so you're talking about doing that. Do you

have a formal practice that you do regularly? or is it kind of just depend at different phases of your life different things i don't have a formal practice it is very spontaneous i think throughout the day what i find happening is just a reflex to come back to the here and now but i don't do the you know the 30 minutes in the morning or theho, I think, he said, man, actually, I think it can be useful, but I think when meditation becomes regimented, very militarized, we can miss the beauty, the life of it,

the spontaneity of it. So of more interest than that, actually, is what you just said, which is you reflexively come back more to the present moment. How did you train yourself to do that? Because what I think is one of the biggest problems to what we're talking about, which is having these moments throughout our day where we connect back to the moment, our deeper nature, whatever you want to connect back to is that we forget. We get busy and we forget. And so to me, the Holy Grail is when you begin to

sort of, as you're saying, you've trained this into yourself a little bit. So it is a little bit more habitual to turn back towards the present moment or turn back towards your deeper nature. And so it sounds like you have done that to some degree. Are you able to think back to how you got there? Well, I think there's different paths for different people. I feel that it is good to have, in the beginning, to have structure pockets within your day that maybe you do nothing. Maybe you're just in a state of wonder or just give yourself that space, that openness, that awareness. But for me, it was really the practice of self-inquiry, asking myself repeatedly, who am I? To whom do these thoughts come to? To whom do these thoughts

come to? To whom do these thoughts come to? And recognizing that, number one, there's no verbal or intellectual answer to that. The question just dissolves. And it was at that deep recognition that I realized that a lot of the spirituality, just like a lot of the psychology is kind of just a game of the mind. And I think once you recognize your true nature, you're kind of out of the game. That glimpse, you just can't unsee it. You just can't go back to, I think, how it was. If you really saw the illusion for what it is, you can't really get, in my experience, in this one's experience, you can't really get caught up. So I think really recognizing it first and not just from an intellectual level, but really from a deep seeing. Because

there's so many teachers, even Adyashanti and so many teachers. One of my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. They speak about it just being an accident. They say meditation makes you more accident prone. Right. Yep. But it's just kind of graced. So for me, it was that practice of self-inquiry that Ramana Maharshi, the sage of Arunachala, his words of to whom do the thoughts come to? Where do they arise and where do they subside to? Yeah. Just that recognition. The more that you see it, the more that the pockets of awareness and the space is going to arise. Yep. Yep. When you were talking about the meditation on space and all that, it made me think of there used to be this meditation app on the phone.

This was a long time ago. And it has since, I don't know what it's called. It never got updated. You can't use it anymore. But it was this kind of amazing app where it would play a sound. I don't remember what it was, whether it was a little bit of music or what it was. But your job was to tap the button when the sound went away. And so what you were watching for was that disappearance.

You were watching for things that have come into existence to disappear from existence. And it was just a totally different way of doing it than what most of us are doing. And I loved that app. I wish it still existed because it was just a fun... And when I say fun, I mean like I enjoyed doing it. It was effortless to kind of sit and do it. You can do that with anything, right? We can go outside and do it, right? We can notice the sound when it comes, but we can also notice when it's gone and be like, well, where'd it go? That's it. I love that.

I love it. We might have to work on that and get that app back up and running or create our own. I'm down if you want to partner on that for sure. Great. Awesome. I want to ask you a question. I've heard you use this phrase before, and you've talked about the world being not insane, but unsane. I'm just curious. That's an interesting slight change of words there. Talk to me about what those two things mean to you.

Well, like all words, they're all useless. But for me, insanity is one thing. Actually, I believe I got this phrase from Alfred Korzybski, author of Science and Sanity. Beautiful book. Korzybski created a language called English Prime. And in this language, it's a very scientific language. You don't use the verb to be. You don't say this is a microphone. This is a mason jar.

You say this appears to be a mason jar. This appears to be a microphone. And his whole premise on doing that is because absolutism and certainty has created so much harm and violence in our world. And when we can get more skeptical about our language, like we said earlier, the word is not the thing. The map is not the territory. It humbles us. You don't say, oh, Bob is angry. You can say, oh, Bob appears to be angry right now. It softens us. It's more aligned with reality. So the unsane mindset is I think the mindset of certainty, of this is the way it is. But for me, I always prefer to, as the Taoists say, the I don't know mind, or the Buddhists say the beginner's mind,

right? The expert, what's the old saying? You probably know this one. In the beginner's mind, right? The expert. What's the old saying? You probably know this one. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. Many possibilities. In the experts, there's few or, yeah, something like that. Yeah. So I think the world, we're very definite. We don't have that level of doubt or uncertainty to say maybe I'm wrong.

It's just a beautiful state of being to be able to say I don't know. Because it's like in our world, you turn on the news, everybody knows. Everybody is so 100% certain about everything. Oh, so certain. I know. There's that great Bertrand Russell quote, which is, I won't get it right, but it's something like, the problem with the world is that the intelligent are uncertain about things and the idiots are so sure of themselves, right? Like, I butchered that. Someone I'm sure can create it. But it was this idea that so many people are so

certain of themselves and usually their certainty is problematic. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I call not insanity, but unsanity. That's a good word for it because insanity has a more specific framework versus unsanity. I like that. You've given me two different authors that I've never heard of, which happens so rarely on this show. I'm excited. Yeah. I feel like we're going to do that for each other. The Bodhisattva behind you, I don't have no idea. I hope we have a great friendship and I'd love to compare notes on all of these amazing things. But I think what we're doing here is really bringing people to a more sane way of living and viewing.

To know something means that that something is dead. You can never know your partner. You can never know them because they're always changing. They're a living organism. They're taking in new information. They have so many dimensions. But we think we do. It's that looking again, looking more closely.

And in Zen, we would say not knowing is most intimate. And I love that idea. Because when you don't know something, you give it your attention. And that's where intimacy arises. When you know something, you stop looking. Your intimacy fades. That's it. Love it.

Wow. Well, we are near the end of our time. Any sort of last thing you'd like to leave listeners with based on where your heart and mind is right now? I think from what we spoke about, if somebody listening, maybe just one person is kind of aligned or feels something about what we said to really go into a deep with your full heart. And we talked a lot about space. We talked a lot about silence and meditation. And one of my favorite quotes is from Rumi. He said, silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation. That's a beautiful place to leave it. Thank you so much. This has been deeply enjoyable. I'm so glad to have gotten to have you on. Yeah, so much fun.

Thank you so much for having me. Let's do it again. Yeah. In the sauna, maybe. Okay. 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

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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,

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