The Rich Roll Podcast - Finding Peace; A Meditation Masterclass

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

We all want to find peace. We all want to experience contentment. And most of all, we all want to be happy. So why are these states so elusive? From reducing stress and anxiety to improving immune function and sleep quality, meditation has been shown to positively impact our brain and body. But in this fast-paced, hyper-connected world, most people often struggle to find the time or the motivation to meditate. But, the reality is that meditation need not be a burden, but rather a way of life that can be seamlessly integrated into our daily routine. From learning how to cultivate a daily practice to exploring the neuroscience behind the benefits of meditation, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice guaranteed to inform and enlighten the novice and the seasoned meditator. My hope is that you use this compilation episode as an inspiration and jumping-off point for further inquiry and, an ever-deepening practice. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: InsideTracker:  insidetracker.com/RichRoll Athletic Greens: https://www.athleticgreens.com/richroll Whoop: WHOOP.com  Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Calm: calm.com/richroll Peace + Plants, Rich

I don't think I could have survived these last few years without the meditation. A meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there. I think we just underestimate the power of the mind. The body and mind aren't separate. We let go. We put down our baggage from the past. We let go of our expectations for the future. And in that moment, we're free. Greetings, friends, and welcome to the Rich Roll podcast. Today, I'm delighted to share with you a very special compilation episode dedicated to the wondrous world of meditation. Meditation is an ancient practice that has been around for millennia

with roots in a wide diversity of traditions from all around the globe. And while the benefits of meditation are vast and varied, the most fundamental is its ability to better understand the nature of mind, the nature of consciousness, and cultivate within us a sense of peace, clarity, and focus. All of the various forms of meditation from breath awareness and body scanning

to mindfulness, loving-kindness, vipassana, transcendental, and many other guided and unguided variations, are all engineered to help us achieve a release and a reprieve from the complexities of our mind and our world. In the fast-paced, hyper-connected world that we live in, people often struggle to find the time or the motivation to meditate. And it does require investment. Meditation is not a quick fix or a magic pill, but meditation also should not be a burden. It can be a way of life that seamlessly integrates into our daily routine. In a world where we are inundated with ceaseless distractions and an endless flow of information,

meditation serves as a powerful antidote, a tool to reconnect with our true selves and unlock our greatest potential. That's why I'm excited to bring you this compilation featuring some of the most inspiring and enlightening discussions we've had with experts in the field of meditation. From learning how to cultivate a daily practice to exploring the neuroscience behind the benefits of meditation, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of

care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location,

treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place

and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs.

They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage,

location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com.

So, whether you're an experienced meditator or someone who has never even considered the practice before i think you'll find something of value in the discussions to come starting with a clip from my conversation with Yuval Noah Harari Yuval is a prodigious intellect truly one of the great thinkers of our time, and the author of the landmark book, Sapiens, which is the utterly fascinating narrative of humanity's origins and evolution. It is an absolute must read. In addition, Yuval is a professor, a coveted speaker, a lecturer, and the author of two other seminal works, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. In this clip, Yuval explains how meditation

has been crucial to his work, how it has helped him cultivate a deep understanding of the human mind and behavior, and how to one degree or another, we are slaves to our mind and the narratives that often loop incessantly. Our external and internal worlds often collide in ways that distort reality. Our perception is often ping-ponging between fantasy and actuality.

We are not as in control of our hyperactive mind as we think we are. And in my far-ranging conversation with Yuval in episode 392, one in which I encourage all of you to hear the entirety of, Yuval presents meditation as not only a way of recognizing that truth, but also as the best tool for correcting it. So sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and join us on this journey of self-discovery and inner exploration as we begin this Masterclass on Meditation with Yuval Noah Harari. I don't think I could have survived these last few years without the meditation. You know, all the publication of the book and all the attention and traveling around the world, without the peace of mind that the meditation brings,

I could not have done it. I couldn't have written the book in the first place without the meditation, because as you say, it brings a kind of clarity and focus, especially if you try to condense the entire history of the world into like 450 pages. Very ambitious.

Yes, you need. It gives you, it gave you this incredible objectivity though to see everything from 10,000 feet. Yeah, but you need to be able to focus because there are so many details that can take you here and there and then you end up writing 4,000 pages and not 400 pages.

But really for me, the most important contribution of meditation is to really be able to see reality as it is and to tell the difference between what is really happening and what is just stories generated by the mind. But you could pull your smartphone out and the algorithm would tell you. This is the one thing that so far algorithms are not getting even close to telling you.

That the human mind is a factory for generating fictional stories about myself, about my family, about my country, about the world. And it's so difficult to tell the difference between the stories we invent and objective reality. And when I came to my first meditation retreat, Vipassana retreat, it was 18 years ago.

I was doing a PhD in Oxford, and I thought I was a very smart person and that I know myself very well and I'm in control of my life. And the teacher gave us the first few days. The practice is very, very simple in a way. Just observe your breath. Just observe when the breath is coming in. Be aware. When it's coming in, you know it's coming in.

When it's going out, you just know it's going out. You don't need to do anything, not a breathing exercise, you don't need to control the breath, you just know now it's coming in. It sounds like the simplest thing in the world. And I was absolutely shocked that I couldn't do it for more than 10 seconds. Like I would try to just know, oh, is it coming in or out? And within like five seconds, the mind would run away to some memory, some fantasy. Oh, I forgot I needed to do this. So I needed to do that and whatever.

And I realize I know almost nothing about my mind. I have absolutely no control over it. We need to start from zero. I mean, and this was, I think it was the most important thing absolutely no control over it. We need to start from zero. And this was, I think it was the most important thing anybody ever told me in my life. And it was the most shocking realization of my life. And also- And transformative.

Yeah, very, very transformative. And from then on, both in my private life and also in my work, I try to just stick with this very simple exercise, just try to see what is really happening right now. One of the fundamental truths that meditation forces us to grapple with is that we are literally of two minds, a thinking mind and an observing or witnessing mind. So imagine a literal split between one part of ourselves that is constantly thinking and acting in a certain way and another part of the mind in which we are simply observing ourselves thinking and acting. And it's this very act of observation that when engaged allows us to benefit from a non-judgmental aspect of our own mind, rewarding us with clarity over condemnation, objectivity over obfuscation, and witnessing over withholding. But we live in the thinking mind more often than not.

We are neurologically set by default to a constant stream of automatic reactions based on prior experiences. This thinking mind is constantly analyzing things, trying to make sense of the world around us, and to some extent it needs to do that for our survival. But when it overrides the witnessing mind, it can cause us to drift into completely fabricated versions of what is happening within us or to us, propelling us into anxiety, stress, and even depression. All of this is brought to light in our next clip by Charlie Knowles, a visionary Vedic meditation master and highly regarded teacher of meditation.

Charlie has developed a unique expertise in distilling seemingly elusive and arcane Vedic traditions down to their essence, expressing some of the deepest concepts from spirituality and science in simple, practical steps that are effective aids in finding inner peace and happiness. This excerpt of my conversation with Charlie is from a very early recording in the history of this podcast, episode 43. And my wife, Julie, makes an appearance. You'll hear her share her perspective occasionally. Julie was then and is today a much more advanced practitioner of meditation than I am. And the conversation is all the better for having her experience. Enjoy. There's an interesting thing that, you know, when I teach people to meditate, you know, there's stages people go through. Usually, for most people, they don't get it

the first time, you know time. It takes a few days for them to really kind of sink into the experience and find the joy in it. But once they do, it's revelatory to them. They have this moment where they begin to go beyond the more surface level of their mind to the quieter levels of consciousness. They find that thoughts begin to get quiet and disappear and they experience a more expansive aspect of their own consciousness. And almost every time that happens, people will say, you know what, I have experienced this before. You know, I've had this when I was a little kid.

It's always when they're a little kid. So it's like when I was 10 or when I was 12, I just had this when I was a little kid. It's always when they're a little kid. So it's like when I was 10 or when I was 12, I just had this spontaneously happen to me where I felt like I was really connected to nature and my mind was really open. I felt this waves of bliss and joy coursing through my body. And I didn't really know what was happening. I just kind of went with it and felt really like my mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And it just happened by itself.

And what that's convinced me is that a meditative state of consciousness is a natural state, but we just forget how to get there. And that's the key for me, kind of the role that I play, is reminding people, you know what, there actually is a technique or a set of techniques that you can use to just turn that switch in your brain and make that thing happen, that thing that should be spontaneous, that perhaps once was spontaneous for you to experience. You know, one of the things that I've talked about before on the podcast that I'd love

to hear you kind of expound on a little bit more is this idea that, you know, we all walk around thinking that, you know, we are our mind and we are our thoughts and not really kind of understanding or really embracing this idea that our thinking mind and our higher state of consciousness are two different things. You know, a perfect example is, and I'm sure everybody has had this, where you observe yourself doing something or thinking a certain thing and you have kind of an outsider's perspective on it. Like, why am I, you know, saying this to this person and feeling this right now? Well, there's, so there's this, there's like this divide, right? This dichotomy between, you know, one part of you that is acting and thinking a certain way and another part of you that is observing that or placing a judgment on that or entertaining a different way of handling something.

Yeah, and a lot of meditation traditions, it's referred to as the silent witness or witnessing experience where you can sort of stand back and observe your life going on and not feel as overwhelmed by all of the conditions that normally suck you into it. The unfortunate thing is that they're going to learn, oh, that's not who you are actually. That deeper level of you is not who you are. You're actually, now you're going to go to a school and you're a person who went to this school and then you're going to get a job and you're going to be a person who does this job.

And you identify yourself over time more and more with, if you ask someone, who are you? Oh, I came from Pensacola and I'm a plumber and I went to this university and, you know, that this is who I'm married to and so on. And, uh, there's a deeper level of yourself. All that stuff's fine, but it's not like any of that's bad. It's just that there's a deeper level of you that people are, they don't really know how to explore that or really know what that deeper aspect of themselves is beyond all of those surface levels of identity. And that's really what meditation is.

It's learning to discover this sort of more boundless aspect of your consciousness and your identity where you can just feel. And rather than saying, you know, I am, you know, this job and this place and this school and so on. Just, I am, you know, I'm here. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm present. And it's, it's a perfect, it's perfect stillness and perfect dynamism at the same time. The lovely experience is difficult to put into words actually, because it's one of those things that kind of goes beyond language a little bit, but everyone who's had it can, you know, they can all say, oh yeah, I am. Yeah. Yeah. That, that thing, you know, that completely much easier to teach someone how to actually do it than to explain it right the that's also another one of the big myths about meditation is that when you do it you're going to become this

you know sort of uh you're going to lose yourself but i've never seen that people who meditate all the time they become more of who they are you know you lose that layer of anxiety and stress people identify with their stress, you know, especially in New York, speaking of New York, people get people all the time will say, you know, there's like, I'm an anxious New Yorker. And it's like, God, that's just, that's a strange self-identity to have. You know, people get, people identify like, I'm an angry person, you know, I'm, I'm an anxious person. I can't sleep at night. And they have all these ideas about who they are. Once you lose all of that, you find out who you really are, you know, and it's, um, it's a lot more liberating

to have, uh, have, have your sense of self based on inner happiness and bliss. And, you know, when I speak about these kinds of more far out experiences, they'll happen every now and then, you know, it's not something that like happens every time I meditate or anytime someone meditates, but every now and again they'll happen. And that should be normal as well. We should be able to talk about that and be able to say, you know, there's a way that you can understand these things. If there's one sort of consistent theme with this podcast, it's really about bringing a diversity of people to the listener to empower them, to create greater self-empowerment over your life, right? And there really isn't anything more powerful than developing a mastery over your conscious self.

If you can master that or at least take steps towards that mastery, then the kingdom is yours. Absolutely. I mean, really. And if you're stuck in life, if you don't like your job, if you, if you're not sure, you know, who you are, how you want to express yourself, if you, you know, are feeling aimless or misguided or, you know, unanchored, honestly, like, you know, the greatest gift you could give to yourself is to begin some form of meditation practice

with a technique that resonates with you. And you will develop a greater connection with who you are, who you're meant to be. At a very minimum, you'll be more expressive in your creativity. You'll feel more grounded in who you are, more comfortable in yourself, more self-assured. I mean, there's really no limit. Yeah, that's absolutely true. There's a lot of books and starting to self-help books that'll tell you things like that, like get beyond your story. Like read about it. Yeah, yeah. It's not lot of books and self-help books that will tell you things like that, like get beyond your story.

Like read about it. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to work. Okay. How? You know? And, you know, or, you know, they'll say things like, you know, experience yourself as being universal. It's like, well, I'm here in a room.

I'm going to be eating a sandwich. So how, you know? And that's really what the meditative process is is is direct experience rather than philosophy like i don't i've spent very little time when i'm teaching trying to convince people that oh yeah this is what you're going to have in fact i prefer to give them this technique and not say too much about it let them come back to me and say wow i just kind of had this moment where i went beyond everything like yep's like, yep, that's an expected result, you know, and, and, and have them be the one that tells me about it and then confirm because it's, uh, it's, it's really cool to see that

spontaneously happen in every kind of person too. Like when people come with all these different things and say, you know, I, every single person who comes when they come to like an introductory talk or something, they'll come up to me and like, I can't do this. There's no way that I, I single person who comes when they come to like an introductory talk or something, they'll come up to me like, I can't do this. There's no way that I, I'm unique. I'm the one person who's too stressed, who's too type A, who's too, you know, too, too, my mind is too busy. I won't be able to do it.

Everyone else can. In recovery, they call that terminally, uh, terminally exceptional. Right. I love that. That's a good term. Um, and you know, it's just like every single, and then the next person comes and says the exact same story, you know, and it's, it's like, no, you're just, you're just, you're terminally exceptional. Right, right. I love that. That's a good term. And, you know, it's just like every single – and then the next person comes and says the exact same story. You know, and it's like –

No, you're just a human being. Yeah, you're a human being. Your plumbing is pretty much the same as everybody else here. Yeah, we've all got the same stuff inside our heads, you know. And we're all raised in a similar culture too. You know, we all have the same background assumptions. And so it's really fun to see these techniques that just work. The lineage of meditation teachings is ancient. This is wisdom that

has been passed down over generations from teacher to student. The lineage of meditation masters is long, it's illustrious, and the ancient wisdom of the practice finds relevance in today's world as much as it did in times of distant past. That relevance is broken down in our next clip with Andy Pudicombe, a former Buddhist monk and co-founder of the wildly successful meditation app, Headspace. app, Headspace. And one of the objectives that Andy and his co-founder, Rich Pearson, set out to achieve with Headspace was how to make meditation more accessible to the general public. In our culture, meditation has a reputation for being mystical and esoteric, but what if modern presenters could shift the narrative away from the mystical and toward the practical? What if there is an unequivocal neurological benefit achieved with meditation that has been extensively studied and vastly reported on over the past several decades?

And what if those benefits weren't for the few, but for the masses? What meditation does for the brain is better understood today than it ever was and those benefits are numerous they're real they're significant specifically the science of neuro plasticity which has exploded over the last two decades this idea that we can literally rewire new synaptic connections create expanded pathways and grow our brains has emerged as a scientific and cultural focal point. And meditation in particular has been definitively shown to be a highly effective tool

in reshaping the brain. We now have significant evidence of the efficacy of meditation as both treatment and preventative care across a broad spectrum of maladies. For more on this, here is the uniquely authoritative Andy Puttcombe. The first thing I'd say is authenticity. I'm a big believer in lineage and tradition. Doesn't matter whether it's meditation or if it's in learning to play the piano or surfing, whatever it is. If something gets passed down in a very personal way over never mind decades but if we start talking about hundreds of years or even millennia like something really is like a refinement and development that takes place which is really powerful i think so i learned from my teacher who learned from their teacher and that goes back a

long long way and and i think a big part of this is a very kind of gradual approach. When you come to the app, you learn a day, and you come back the next day, and you're building on the day before. So it's this step-by-step learning kind of process. I think there's something very valuable in that. In the past, back in the 80s, you'd buy a meditation CD or something, and you'd just sit there and listen to the same thing every day. So there's no real kind of development of the practice.

It's quite kind of static in a way. So I think that's one thing. I think what Rich, the co-founder, and my very good friend has brought to this project is a degree of creativity, which has never really existed. If you look back at meditation, it's fine for people who are interested in that kind of thing and don't mind images of lotus leaves and people sitting cross-legged under a waterfall with a sunset in the background. But for most people, that's not really kind of their thing, you know, and it's another barrier. And Rich has this ability to create a whole kind of world, a visual world, which is immediately engaging, which is non-threatening, and which is very approachable. So I think those things, authenticity,

creativity, and I'm going to add in a third one, which is science, have all helped bridge that gap. So if you look at the science in the last 20 years around meditation and mindfulness, Look at the science in the last 20 years around meditation and mindfulness. It's astonishing, you know. In the past, simply there was no way of knowing what was happening to the brain. So now we're not only talking about what happens to the mind, but we're talking about the physiological impact on the brain itself. And seeing the parts of the brain actually change,

not only in the amount of blood flow they get, but they change in shape and size and strength, depending on our meditation. That's an amazing thing. And it's a really compelling, again, invitation to practice, I think. Right. I mean, it's really having a moment right now. There is a zeitgeist moment happening. I mean, you've devoted your life to this. This is a long time coming, but it's really a convergence of popular culture with your interest and your expertise and your authenticity to get to this place where now science is interested and we're looking at neuroplasticity. And I think I read or heard you say – mention that there's maybe 3,000 to 5,000 peer-reviewed studies on the impact of meditation. I mean, that's crazy. It that's crazy it's huge that many studies out there it's and it's happened so quickly like i mean the early studies kind of go back maybe 35 years but really sort of the ones involving fmri machines where they can actually

see what's going on in the brain during meditation it's only in the last like 12 to 15 years. So it's really kind of recent. And, but I do think that that's sped up kind of this acceptance of it. Yeah. Well, it makes it palatable. Like, oh, well, if that guy says so, or, you know, or, you know, and even in the corporate partnerships that you guys are, you know, have done with Virgin Atlantic, it sort of gives it this imprimatur of acceptability with the mainstream that allows people to, to, you know, sort of gives it this imprimatur of acceptability with the mainstream that allows people to sort of embrace it a little more readily, I think. I think it just gives you that stamp of approval and people trust big brands like Virgin and

they get on the plane and, man, Virgin are saying it's okay. I'll give it a go. Right, right, right. Well, let's talk about the science and the benefits, right? Let's talk about neuroplasticity. Let's talk about focus, all of these things. I mean, let's talk about the science and the benefits, right? Let's talk about neuroplasticity. Let's talk about focus, all of these things. I mean, let's assume that I'm a listener, I'm listening to this, and this is my first introduction to meditation. I mean, of course, I've heard of meditation, but I'm not convinced that this is something that I really need to spend any time on. Yeah. So, number one, I would say i never tell anyone they should meditate i would just say from a scientific point of view look there are these research studies that have been done and

in these research studies there have been many many benefits that have been discovered i would i would recommend that you have a look at those. If you're inspired to try, give it a go. Like base it on, don't do it because someone else tells you to do it. Do it because you feel motivated to do it and then continue to do it because you recognize the benefit yourself. In terms of the medicine internally, they're not obviously with us in the recording studio today. I would always defer. We have a chief medical officer, Dr. David Cox, and we also have a neuroscientist, Claudia.

And both of them are far more adept in talking about this stuff. But as you mentioned earlier, there are over 5,000 papers, peer-reviewed, published studies, showing that meditation and mindfulness can help us with everything from reducing anxiety, reducing depression and the relapse of depression, decreasing the incidence of insomnia, improving heart health, decreasing our cholesterol levels, all the way through to suffering chronic pain, there's increasing levels of empathy.

And sometimes you look at the spread of this and it's like you know how is this even possible how can one thing like have this impact on so many different things and i think we just underestimate the the power of the mind the body and mind aren't separate we know when we get stressed in the mind that we feel it we experience it in the body we know when we're really relaxed and happy we get stressed in the mind that we feel it. We experience it in the body. We know when we're really relaxed and happy. We feel that in the body. So it's maybe not such a surprise that we see these kind of benefits arising. Well, when we look at the amount of time, energy, and money spent on sort of taking care of other things that are less important, whether it's like, you know, shampoo for your hair or brushing your teeth. Speak for yourself. Yeah. Right. Right. You know, what do we do to

tend to our mental health? Well, we, oh, I guess, you know, when we get home, we pour ourselves a cocktail and we watch Dancing with the Stars. And that's our, that's our way of relaxing or watch a football game or something like that. And that's not tending to, you know, that's not doing sort of mental push-ups. Not at all. And there's, you know, there's different ways. Some people, it's interesting when I look at, you know, we work with professional sports people and sports teams and corporations. And for them, it's more about focus, productivity.

And for them, it is about, it's like training the mind that you say it's almost mental push-ups for a very specific purpose exactly right um and then i think for i actually believe for a bigger demographic it's more like you know how can i sleep better at night how can i feel a little less stressed how can i have better relationships with those around me and those things they're huge make even a small shift in one of those areas in life. And that is a life that transformed right away. I would love to see a shift. I'd love to see a shift in terms of prevention. So I think far too often in our society, we wait until something happens until trying to kind of fix it. And that's what the medication kind of thing is, you know.

There's already a problem. If we can get into a pattern in society, whether it's ourselves, the next generation, preferably both, where we're taking preventative care of the mind, where we're actually carving out, prioritizing, whether it's 10, 15 minutes in a day, whatever it might be, to look after, to clean the mind each day, we don't even need to get to the point where we have to decide whether to medicate or not. That's, I think, the potential. That's beautifully put. And to me, that's the future of medicine, you know, functional medicine, preventive medicine, you know, in the physical realm as well. And it's no coincidence. You know, we have 54 research studies on the table right now,

34 are in motion, and these are all reverse engineered. So these are hospitals, clinics, universities coming to us and saying, we believe that mindfulness and meditation can be a meaningful intervention with these types of symptoms? Can we test it? And we're seeing time and time again, it makes a difference. And the more the medical community embrace that, the more I think we'll see it move from right now is being seen more of a treatment, not management treatment, But I think over time, it will move from treatment to management to prevention. You know, so often words like freedom and liberation are used around meditation.

Sometimes it can sound a bit kind of mushed, sort of liberation, but there is. It's a sense of being liberated. We let go. We put down our baggage from the past. We let go of our expectations for the future and in that moment we're free there is freedom and when we're not free like it's

so it's almost self-imposed but we don't realize what it is we're doing that that is causing this sense of being constrained and then when we discover that sense of freedom i just think yeah life is life is changed. There is an opportunity for transformation right there because there is nobody who cannot meditate. And what excites me about it is that person hasn't yet found or hasn't yet been shown the way to approach it in such a way that they get to experience what they think it might be. in such a way that they get to experience what they think it might be. And so it's helping them find that approach. Because thoughts are thoughts.

That underlying sense of stillness and calm is always with us. It's not unique to one individual. Some people find it easier to let go of thoughts and experience that calm. But everybody has the potential to do it. Some people experience it the moment they first sit down. For others, it can take a number of days. For others, it can take a number of weeks. But helping people understand that it's not about switching off thoughts.

It's not about clearing the mind. If that's the way you approach meditation, then of course you're going to feel terrible about it because it is the nature of the mind to think. So if we can kind of flip down its head and say, okay, instead meditation is actually about how can we learn to step back out of the traffic, out of the stream of thought and simply be present, then it doesn't matter, actually. If we can really feel confident and comfortable in that, it doesn't matter if the mind is busy, whether it's quiet. So you can have the busiest mind in the world, and you're okay with it.

My teacher kind of used to sum it up like this. He used to say, there is no such thing as good or bad meditation. There is only awareness or non-awareness. And that's it. You can't fail. I love that. As we've discussed, the surface of the mind is a chaotic rhapsody of ceaseless thoughts. The surface of the mind is a chaotic rhapsody of ceaseless thoughts. Its perpetual nature has us often looping, unhelpful, or even hurtful thinking that distracts us from the present and creates an alternate reality for us to engage in. But beneath the turbulent surface is a transcendent stillness of the mind

that is a wellspring of peacefulness, and once accessed, it recalibrates us to a more effulgent center of our being. This is the foundation for the practice of TM or Transcendental Meditation, which recognizes a vertical dimension to our mind and looks to give us access to the more deeply felt and understood nature within us that is beyond thinking or focus. TM's original teacher was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and his core modality is the chanting of a mantra, the repetition of a single word or simple phrase. Maharishi was originally a physicist who, while still young,

shifted his professional focus from science to that of serving his spiritual masters. After years of dedicated study, Maharishi perfected his meditation methodology and announced to the world that he would teach and help popularize a type of meditation that could benefit everyone. Over the preceding decades, TM has become a globally popular style of meditation. And in my next excerpt, you will hear me speak with one of TM's most popular Western teachers, Bob Roth. Roth is the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation and a director for the Center of Leadership Performance. Over the past 50 years, Roth has been dedicated to teaching a wide spectrum of students from disadvantaged inner city kids

to military veterans to trauma victims. A transcendental meditation practice consisting of two 20-minute sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, orientates us toward an inward direction without the application of effort. It is essentially an intervention oriented around the implementation of self-care. To expound further, here is Bob Roth. So perhaps this would be a good moment to just define transcendental meditation in the context of that

and what it is about that practice that allows you to enter that self-transcendent state. So I like to use an example of an ocean where you're stuck, you're on a little boat and you're stuck on the middle of the Pacific ocean and you get these humongous waves, 30, 40 foot high waves, and you could think the whole ocean is in upheaval. But if you could do a cross section of the ocean out there, you'd realize you got these little itty bitty 30 foot waves, but the ocean in reality is over a mile deep. And while the surface of the ocean may be turbulent,

the depth of the ocean is by its nature silent. And that's analogous to the mind. So the surface of the mind is this active thinking mind, got a, got a, got a monkey mind, all that. And every human being thinks that sometimes I'd like to have some inner calm, some inner quiet, some inner ease, some inner silence, some inner focus.

And the operative word there is inner. And the question is, is there such a thing as an inner? And if so, how do you get there? So when we talk about transcendental meditation, as I said a moment ago, we hypothesize because there's no belief, there's no philosophy here. The deep within you and your wife and every other person you know, and everyone in the world, right now, there's a level of the mind deep within a transcendent level of the mind that is already calm, quiet, peaceful, and yet the source of our creativity,

intelligence, happiness. And transcendental meditation gives effortless access to that. How? Should I answer that? Yeah, how? Because I'm thinking when you're describing the other methodology of kind of noticing your thoughts

and being the dispassionate, neutral observer of the meanderings of the mind. That probably best describes my experience. So what are we doing? So in that, it's a cognitive process. It's attending and adjusting to, you could say the waves. So focused attention is stop the waves. The idea is that thoughts-

But you're on the surface. You're on the surface. And the same with this, when you're stepping back and observing the thoughts or But you're on the surface. You're on the surface. And the same with this, when you're stepping back and observing the thoughts or you're still on the surface. In transcendental meditation, we recognize or we identify that there's a vertical dimension to the mind,

that we feel things deeply. You love your wife deeply. You don't wanna do something profoundly. There's that feeling of a sign, an athlete, you're an athlete. There's that feeling of silence. An athlete, you're an athlete. There must be moments of the zone that goes way beyond what's up here. And there's just this pervasive silence. And so that quiet calm that we access in during meditation,

transcendental meditation. And I'll tell you how we do that effortlessly. Yeah, please do. So other approaches to meditation, see thoughts or the wandering mind as not the enemy, but sort of the obstacle to a calm mind. So if you could control the mind, it's a monkey mind, it just wanders and you've got to rein it in or you've got to give more space between thoughts. And Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was a physicist who became a great meditation teacher, his insight was the mind is not wandering aimlessly.

Your mind is not just a monkey mind. Your mind is in search of something more satisfying. You sit in a room and you listen to some wretched music and some beautiful music comes on in the other room. Your attention is drawn to that music. You bring two books on vacation and one book is terrible and you can't read it. Another book is great, absorbed in it for hours.

It is not, people say, well, it's an acquired skill to meditate, to do this mindfulness. It's not an acquired skill to listen to the most beautiful music you've heard in your life. It's not an acquired skill to listen to the most beautiful music you've heard in your life. It's not an acquired skill to see the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen in your life. You're drawn to that. And the idea or the hypothesis, again, I use that term, is that inside of everyone in that transcendent level of the mind is a field of satisfaction, quiet, bliss, peace, happiness.

All the people have talked about it forever. In transcendental meditation, you learn how to give the attention. I know this is abstract, but you learn how to give the attention of the mind in inward direction. Like you want to teach a child how to dive. You say, honey, stand like this, bend over like that. Rest is automatic. There's no forcing, gravity takes over. So when you learn TM from a teacher,

you learn how to just allow the attention of your mind to be drawn inward and without any effort. As a matter of fact, any effort stops the process. Without any effort, your mind is just gently settles down. And when that happens, then you have alpha one brainwaves completely different than mindfulness. And I wanna talk a little bit more of that, some of the other brain research.

Your body gains a steep state of rest, cortisol levels are reduced and you feel rejuvenated. Do I think there's a role for other, do I think TM is the only way? Of course not. You know, as somebody whose life has been transformed by the 12 steps of which meditation is one, my perspective as a member of that community

is that that step, which involves meditation, kind of gets the, it kind of doesn't get the attention that it deserves. It's part of it, but the meditation, there isn't really any kind of focus. People don't know what to do. They can't do it. So they do it for 60 seconds

and no one tells them how to do it. And so it doesn't really stick. And so it doesn't really become an integral practice in that recovery equation for most people. You wouldn't just, if you had a physical ailment, you wouldn't say, well, I'll just go online and see what they tell me to do. You go to an expert, you go't say, well, I'll just go online and see what they tell me to do. You know, you go to an expert.

You go to a person who's a proper diagnostician who could prescribe something that's proven. And I think the same way is with mind. We shouldn't be so casual. We should do research. You know, meditation, there's a lot of hippy-dippy stuff. There's some cheap stuff, but there's also some substantive stuff. And learn from a teacher who knows what she or he is doing.

You know, you have a certified teacher. One of the big problems, and I have a lot of friends in the mindfulness field, and Sharon Salzberg was telling me that she said, problem with mindfulness now is they've lost their brand.

Anybody can say they're doing whatever. And so science doesn't know what it is. If you do a mindfulness program at a school in Spokane, what are you doing in St. There's no control. Yeah, there's no control. Whereas with TM, it's specific. It's absolutely precise. And the training program is high level of certification.

Right. And it involves doing 20 minutes of this practice twice a day, essentially. Once in the morning for 20 minutes, you get up 20 minutes earlier. People say, I'm not going to give up my time, my sleep. And you say, no, no, it's better than sleep. It's deeper than sleep. And then sometime in the afternoon or early evening before dinner. So the morning is like rejuvenating and you have a high level of energy that takes you sustained.

So you don't need multiple cups of coffee and that sort of thing and makes you more resilient. And then you do it at the end of the day to sort of wash off the stresses of the day, whatever you've picked up and be more present with your partner, with what you're doing in the evening and sleep much better at night. So traditionally for thousands of years, it used to be done at dawn and dusk, but it was first thing morning and afternoon. Do you ever miss?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, I try not to. I don't want to. So you're human. Most people say, I don't have time or I don't know how I'm gonna make the time, but like myself, like a good alcoholic, I'm like, well, more must be better, right? When I was talking to Dan Harris,

he told me that he's experimenting right now with meditating two hours a day. Cause he wants to just see, he wants to like push that envelope. He wants me to teach him TM. Yeah, I would imagine that he would, just to see like what would happen if he does that. He must be interesting for his wife.

I was actually, I know we can close, but I was actually talking to this businessman in New York who was with his 12-year-old son. And they were sent by, his wife was meditating. And I think the wife took this son aside and gave him some tips on what to say. So the husband was saying, you know, I'd like to learn how to do it. I don't think I can do it because my mind is so busy,

but I don't have the time. I just don't have the time. 20 minutes, do I sit down with the time? So the kid said, dad, there's 1,440 minutes in a day. You don't have 40 minutes. And then this is where the mom came in for self-care. So, and the fact is, it has to be a priority. The trajectory that we are all on as a society,

as a culture, as individuals is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. We're falling apart. And so this is an intervention. This is my own intervention. I'm going to take 20 minutes from my morning, find it, get up earlier. I'm going to take 20 minutes in the afternoon for myself, and then the rest of the world will adjust. And the nice thing about this is so many people who come say, I could never close my eyes for two minutes, much less 20. And because this meditation is so enjoyable, the experience is so satisfying. 20 minutes flies by, just flies by. And if people say, well, I do

mindfulness or I do Vipassana, I say, we have to stop siloing. Oh, I do this and therefore I don't do that. There's many tools in a toolbox and these three different approaches, focused attention, open monitoring, mindfulness and transcending. They have different outcomes. They have different purposes. You don't say, well, I eat protein

so I don't eat leafy greens. It's like, it's a balanced life. Liberation from the thoughts and feelings that perpetually infiltrate our mind requires us to deal with them directly. Failing to do so will most likely lead to anger, to anxiety, to frustration. And while we may not always be responsible for the feelings that well up within us, we can certainly hold ourselves accountable for how we deal with those negative emotions. To help illustrate the effectiveness

of that accountability, I turn to the New York Times bestselling author, Dan Harris. Dan is a former award-winning television journalist for ABC News, a Nightline host, and a former co-host of the weekend edition of Good Morning America. He is also the author of the book 10% Happier and host of the podcast of the same name. With over 20 years of experience in the field, Dan has reported on some of the most significant events of our time from wars and conflicts to presidential elections and natural disasters.

But despite his professional success, Dan has suffered from chronic anxiety and panic attacks, which led him to explore the world of meditation and mindfulness. He is now a dedicated practitioner and advocate for the mental and physical benefits of mindfulness, for the mental and physical benefits of mindfulness, including how it allows us to delve more deeply into the fundamental mystery of our own existence. In episodes 97 and 346, I sat with Dan to capture the essence of the beginner's mind, the simplicity of starting

and the cultivation of a practice that deflects all excuses. Dan disabuses us of the notion that meditation is an elitist skill and shares his insights into the relationship between meditation and happiness. These excerpts reinforce the concept that the ability to meditate is common and the rewards extremely valuable, making us healthier and happier, even if only by 10%. I've heard Sam Harris, your friend, talk about the kind of half-life of negative emotions. Sam is a valued friend of mine, and he has said many brilliant things that I steal. That is one of them. He talks about one of the benefits of meditation having to do with the half

life of anger that, you know, we still are going to experience difficult emotions unless you're enlightened. If you even believe in that. And I, I don't know if I believe in it. I don't know. You got to write this other book. I am going to write this other book. The Pursuit of Enlightenment. Yes. We are still going to experience negative emotions.

The mystery of consciousness is we don't know where our thoughts and feelings come from. They come out of a void. You can't, which is liberating to know because there's no point holding yourself responsible. We have a feeling, you know, impatience with our child, impatience with our spouse, whatever. And we tend to get into these knots of self-laceration around, I'm this kind of person as a consequence of having just had this feeling. We didn't invite the feeling. It just came out of a void. We don't know where it came from.

You can't hold yourself responsible for what you feel, but you can hold yourself responsible for how you deal with it. responsible for what you feel, but you can hold yourself responsible for how you deal with it. And so when anger ambushes you, for me, I deal with a lot of anger. If I can see it, if I have an inner meteorologist that can tell me when the storm is brewing and is about to hit landfall, make landfall, then I may either let it pass and not be taken over by it, or I may get a few miles down the road with it, you know, a couple minutes of doing something stupid, but then I catch myself. The amount of damage, as Sam says, that you can do in two minutes of anger as opposed to an hour of anger is incalculable.

And that is the fruit of meditation. To me, it's like interrogating the mystery a little bit. If you can do this little exercise, which is a Buddhist exercise, Tibetan exercise, you know, close your eyes and hear whatever sounds are there. You know, there's all sorts of sounds. My voice, maybe a little tape hiss, whatever. And then ask yourself, what is hearing this? And you won't find it.

But in the not finding, as the Buddhists say, there is this kind of liberation because you're seeing the mystery, the fundamental mystery of your own identity and of our existence. And that can disidentify, disentangle you from all of the suffering that we're creating of just being so entangled with our thoughts and our stories and all of that stuff. It's not magic and it's not permanent unless, again, you're enlightened. But it can in just moment after moment. There's this theory in meditation circles of short moments, many times that, uh, if you just kind of are touching this mystery over and over and over again,

it has the net effect of making you lighter, uh, and, and pushing you closer toward enlightenment, whether you believe that's a thing or not. As beautiful as that sentiment is the prospect the prospect of really confronting that in yourself is terrifying. Because we're sort of raised and taught to, you know, identify with these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are. I am this person. I am Dan. I am a journalist. I am rich.

I am whatever. Right? man, I am a journalist. I am rich. I am whatever. Right. And we, we craft these narratives around identity that we dilute ourselves are real. And so to kind of engage with what you were just talking about is to kind of dismantle that in a certain way. Yeah, that's right. But there are two ways there are two, the Buddhists talk about this in a way that actually is comforting, which is to there are kind of two levels to life, two levels to reality. On a day-to-day basis, even if rich doesn't exist on some deep level, you still have to put your pants on in the morning. And you still need your podcast equipment if you want to do a podcast. And that is just the truth on a sort of relative, on the level on which most of us operate most of the time. But there is a deeper truth, which they often call ultimate truth, which is kind of, it can be roughly analogized to quantum physics. So like this table that you and I are

doing an interview on is a table, but at the deepest level, it's a bunch of spinning atoms in empty space. And so the same is true with the self. And so you don't need to get, you don't need to get too wrapped up in this. It's just, it's to think of in so much as it can help you not get so wrapped up in your own stories. So what was it that, I mean, so you're reading Epstein, you're reading about the Buddhism and the Buddha, But what was that first experience of saying, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to try that, like walk me through like day one. Okay. So it was kind of a cumulative thing where I realized, okay, one, meditation does not require lighting incense, sitting in a funny position, chanting things in Sanskrit, or joining a group, of chanting things in Sanskrit or joining a group or paying fees, that it's actually very, you know, it's a simple thing to do. The mindfulness meditation, the kind of meditation that's really been studied the most in labs,

basically involves trying to watch the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. And every time your mind wanders, which it will a million times, you just forgive yourself and return your attention to your breath. So it's very, very simple. So when I learned that, that was one piece of the pie. When I learned that there was a science that showed that it can help with everything from blood pressure to your immune system to rewiring key parts of your brain that have to do with compassion and well-being and happiness and stress, that was another thing.

Well, let's just leave it there. When I learned those two things, over time, my resistance broke down. And I was on vacation in the summer of 2009, right after I got married, as a matter of fact. And I was reading a book by the pool at a house that we're renting with some friends. And I was like, fuck it, let's just do it. Can I say fuck? You say whatever you want. So I put the book down and I went to our room. I sneaked off to the room that I was sharing with my wife and locked the door and just did it for five minutes. And I set an alarm on my BlackBerry and did it for five minutes.

And it sucked. It was really hard. But I realized in that moment that it was kind of a baller-ass activity. It's really hard to wrestle your mind to the ground. And just like you find running triathlons to be a huge challenge that requires grit to be compelling because the challenge in and of itself is interesting uh and and it pushes you further than you beyond your your comfort zone and uh tests you and also has beneficial effects i realized this is the same thing this is the same thing and actually has potentially the effects are potentially even much more profound.

So I just decided, you know what? I'm going to do this. I'm going to go for it. And I'm going to do it five minutes a day in perpetuity, see what happens. And you weren't – other than the two principles that you related, there was no dogma around this or kind of super complicated strategy of how you're doing it. Because I think people get really caught up in, well, I don't know how to do it. It's like I don't understand how this works. And I think that that acts as a barrier or an impediment to just, you know, beginning. Yeah. So my whole game now is I'm trying to remove every single excuse you have. So the one excuse is that people say,

I don't know how to do it, which is actually the worst lamest excuse because you can Google how to meditate. And it's like, I can, I explained it once to the tech reporter from the New York times in fewer characters than it takes to send a tweet. So it's really simple. Like step one, sit down, close your eyes, keep your spine straight. So you don't fall asleep. Step two, try to feel where your breath is coming in. Usually it's your nose, your belly, and just feel the breath coming in and going out. And step number three is every time your mind gets lost, which I guarantee is going to happen a million times, a million times, you just catch your mind wandering and start again and start again. And don't get pissed at yourself because that's happening. Well, you may not be able to help it. You may actually get pissed

at yourself, but just notice I'm getting pissed at myself and then start again. And that's cool. And over time, what you learn is these waves of anger or self-judgment or an itch on your knee or pain in your back or whatever, that these are actually just passing phenomena that you can view non-judgmentally and dispassionately and objectively, kind of like journalists are supposed to view the news. And that is the aforementioned superpower, which is that in the rest of your life, quote unquote, off the cushion,

when you're not meditating and you're overtaken by anger or annoyance or impatience, some percentage of the time, you'll be able to resist. You'll be able to say, oh, I see what's going on here. I'm starting to get angry, but I don't need to take the bait. And the bait is when we do the things that we regret most in our life, when we eat when we're not hungry, when we lose our temper with our loved ones, when we ignore our kids when they're trying to talk to us because we're checking our BlackBerry.

and we ignore our kids when they're trying to talk to us because we're checking our BlackBerry. All the shit that we are most ashamed of is because we're getting yanked around by this voice in the head. This is the kryptonite. I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, go ahead. It's a massive pain in the ass. I'm not going to lie to you. So I'm not saying like you're going to – A, I'm not saying you're going to sit down and meditate and it's going to be super sweet and fun.

B, I'm not saying that it's going to turn your life into a nonstop parade of rainbows and unicorns. This is why I called the book 10% Happier. It's a hard thing to do, and it will have benefits in your life, but it's not going to solve all of your problems. An acknowledgment that existence includes an element of suffering is a well-renowned tenet of the teachings of the Buddha. And an outgrowth of those teachings is the Vipassana method of meditation, a practice of observing your thoughts and emotions as they are without judging or dwelling on them. This form of insight meditation aims to penetrate through the illusions that we have constructed around ourselves because behind those illusions is pure consciousness, light, brilliant, and true,

in unadulterated awareness that when achieved is a form of enlightenment. This next excerpt features Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg. Sharon is a world renowned meditation teacher and New York Times bestselling author who has played a crucial role in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to mainstream Western culture since 1974. Salzberg is the author of 11 books, including Loving Kindness, Real Change,

and Real Love, The Art of mindful connection, which was the focus of this conversation recorded in the spring of 2017. Sharon is also a regular columnist for On Being, a contributor to the Huffington Post, and the host of her own podcast, The Meta Hour. Salzberg has taught and mentored thousands of people worldwide and is revered for her expertise in loving-kindness meditation, a practice that cultivates compassion and empathy. Here, Salzberg unpacks the essence of loving-kindness meditation and how it can help us develop a deeper sense of connection with ourselves and with others. with ourselves and with others. She delves into the fundamentals of this practice, highlighting the importance of setting an intention and developing a mindset of warmth and openness. I'll let her explain from our talk from episode 298. The experience that a lot of people have when they begin, you know, kind of an intensive meditation practice for the first time, they think they're all good, you know, and then suddenly they're crying uncontrollably and they have all this rage or whatever.

And they're like, I thought this was supposed to make me, I thought I was happy. Yeah, really. Where's the peace? This is a jip, you know? Yeah. And you're saying, no, you're exactly where you need to be because you're actually confronting your suffering for the very first time. And that's part of this process of, you know, acknowledgement and ultimately working through it.

I mean, this is a little bit, my story is a little bit in this book. It's much more extensively in this book, Faith. And many, many people come up to me and say, I had a childhood just like yours, or I really understand. So It's hardly rare, actually. In the component on Buddhism, which was most of it, when I heard the Buddhists say there's suffering in life, that this is a natural part of life,

it was probably the most liberating thing I'd ever heard. To be born is to suffer. To be born is to suffer. It was finally the thought, it's not just me. Because I've been so different from everybody else all those years. Like, what do you say in French class when you're supposed to say what your father does for a living in French? It's like, I don't know how to say this.

And suddenly there was no sense of being excluded. It's like, we're all suffering. Not always. Life is horrible, but there's always suffering in someone's life somewhere along the line. And that's the truth. And I felt incredibly freed just by that statement. And then I heard about these practices called meditation, where you could actually do something about your mind and be happier.

And it was like, I looked around Buffalo, New York, and at that time, I didn't find it anywhere. I might have been there, but now it's probably everywhere. But I just didn't see it. So the school had an independent study program where if you created a project that they liked, you could go anywhere for a year, theoretically, and then come back. So I created a project. I want to go to India. Right.

So you have this initial meditation retreat and this is your introduction i mean that began as a vipassana retreat yeah it was and it kind of ended with you being introduced to to meta so so maybe describe the difference between those two traditions okay so vipassana is um a word in pali which is the language of the original Buddhist text. It just means insight meditation. So that one particular style of doing meditation has come to be associated with the word Vipassana. The teacher was S.N. Goenka. And it was just a kind of mostly mindfulness of the body and body sensations and experiencing everything like emotions and thoughts through those sensations.

And the retreat began with just a kind of awareness of the breath, which is a practice most people get familiar with first, just resting your attention on the feeling of the breath and bring your attention back when it wanders, which is continuous. And then this awareness of the body. So right at the end, Goenka led a metta, M-E-T-T-A, meditation. And that was almost like a ceremonial way of ending the retreat. Metta means loving kindness in Pali. So that was the moment I heard, oh, there's another style. There's another way of practicing. And that's kind of interesting.

It's all about love. It's about filling your being with the sense of love. That's how you start and extending it to all others. And I longed for that certainly. And I looked for that for. And that became your sweet spot. Yeah. Right. And did you, were you aware of that at that moment like this is going to be my thing no i'm because i was so naive i was so young and i didn't know how i mean i knew that there was a way of doing it intensively um with structure and stuff but i didn't know what it was and and just so we're clear like so the vipassana you're you're

it's really focused on the breath but the actual practice of Metta is repetition of a mantra, but not a mantra in the traditional sense. It's sort of like these sayings, right, where you're emitting loving kindness into the world. Yeah. We consider it like a practice of generosity. So it's offering. You know, instead of looking through you, I look at you and think maybe happy, maybe peaceful or whatever the particular thing is. And the process of really engaging that comes back again to honing your attention. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And you kind of lay it out in the book in this four-step process that you call RAIN, right? Can you walk me through that? Sure. RAIN is something that is often used, especially when a difficult emotion comes up, but you can use it many, many ways. So let's say anger comes up in your experience, rather than dismissing it or explaining it or hating yourself for it or plotting revenge, you want to just look at the feeling. And this is something that's rare with strong emotion. Usually we get so captivated by the object. Like if you really, really want something, you think about the thing, like I just bought a new car,

you know, so it's like what color and you know, what thing, what feature. We very rarely kind of pivot our attention to look at the feeling itself. Like, what does it feel like to want something so much? Or what does it feel like to be so angry or so frightened? So that's the first step. It's kind of pivoting. And then we apply this acronym RAIN. The first is recognize what's happening. Like, oh, it's anger.

The second is acknowledge it or accept it. You know, don't add on to it the shame and the distress and the fear and all of that. Just be with it as it is. The third is eyes, investigate. Look into it, not why is it here and what am I going to do about it? But if we really look at a state of anger, we will likely see fear. We will see sadness. We may see grief. We'll likely see helplessness. And we have a much clearer sense of what is actually cooking below the surface. And we also see it's constantly changing. Look at that. It has just kind of this nature of arising and passing away. And then N, non-identification is, you know, you don't

have to fall into, I'm such an angry person, I will be forever. This itself is a passing state. And it's a very different way of being with those kinds of emotions. Do you have like a loving kindness practice that you could kind of share, somebody could walk away from this and start to do? Sure. I mean, the simplest one is probably choose like two or three phrases that are the gift you would like to give to yourself. Like, may I be peaceful?

May I calm down? But they need to be big enough so you can then use the same, pretty much the same phrases for others. So that's why people use things like may I be happy, may I be peaceful. And just sit quietly for a few moments and make that offering to yourself. And just keep repeating the phrases. Your mind will wander everywhere. Don't worry about that.

You can let go of the distractions one by one. It's okay. And just come back to the phrases. Don't count on some tremendous feeling coming up. Just do it a little bit. Then think of somebody you really care about. Usually someone who's helped you. Even if you've never met them, they've inspired you.

And offer the phrases to them. Even if the words don't seem perfect, they're like a conduit for that way of connecting. And then, just for fun, have that person or for the phrases back to you so that you're in the position of the recipient. Yeah. That's a weird feeling, right? That brings up all kinds of weird emotions. It does. You know, it's interesting when you do that. Yeah. So I just gave you a very provocative exercise rather than one that's simple. What about like, you know, sometimes like I'll develop a resentment against somebody else and it will like monopolize my thinking and it really

undermines the quality of my day or my week, right? So, you know, in recovery, they say like, you know, pray for that person, like wish them well. So there's a, I'm sure there's a loving kindness version of that where you're like wishing well on that person because you're the one who's suffering as a result of that resentment. Right. And the path to freedom is by, you know, decoupling yourself from that emotion. Exactly. And I wouldn't neglect in that case, loving kindness for yourself. I would intermingle it, either start with yourself and move to that person or do yourself together. May we be happy.

May we be peaceful. Because you're right. You know, of course, resentment is such a corrosive, relentless feeling. And it's so obsessive. It's like the amount of time any of us can spend going through the list of someone's faults. And then we go through it again and again and again and again. And, you know, it's very tiring. So what does your practice look like?

I practice every day. Different lengths. My goal is to try to do like 40 minutes a day, if not all at once, then in chunks, you know. I try to practice in informal times, like walking down the streets of, especially with loving kindness, walking down the streets of New York City or sitting on an airplane, silently repeating, may you be

happy or may all beings be happy, which is quite fun. It's a whole other way of being in New York. And I try to do retreats at least periodically. But I think it's the everydayness of it that really saves me. Right. So there's the formal part of the practice and then there's carrying that into your interactions in the world, which is a form of practice in and of itself, right? Yeah.

In any kind of practice, there are pitfalls that can derail the practitioner, and meditation is not immune from these types of stops and starts. One stumbling block can easily erase early enthusiasm for meditation before it can be helpful. That's why having a meditation teacher can be so vitally important. Just like in sports, there are fundamental mechanics to meditation that can be conveyed from a teacher to student to ensure a successful practice. To educate us further on this teacher-student relationship and to share his easy E-A-S-Y meditation technique is the very popular author and meditation teacher, Light Watkins. meditation teacher, Light Watkins. Light is the author of the books Bliss More and Knowing Where to Look, as well as a prolific public speaker and the founder of The Shine, a self-realization event series that was quite active prior to the pandemic. Here is Light Watkins.

And that kind of tracks back to, I mean, the root of that really is that these traditions, if you want to differentiate them, are really rooted in the importance of the teacher-student relationship, which I think really distinguishes this tradition or these traditions from other forms of meditation that are a little bit looser about that restriction or that requirement. It's like this reverence for how important that is. And in your own experience, clearly this was an important thing. Like you'd been exposed to meditation

for a number of years until you actually had formal instruction with a teacher. And that was really the defining thing that changed your life experience. Yeah, that's right. I think one of the ways that we talk about it And that was really the defining thing that changed your life experience. Yeah, that's right. I think one of the ways that we talk about it is that, you know, there are obviously going to be some obstacles and some pitfalls in anyone's meditation trajectory. And being a teacher and having been through that path, you kind of know where those pitfalls are going to be, what the phases are, what the cycles are. And you can help someone maintain a level of self-sufficiency in their own practice so that it can continue to be mobile and accessible no matter where someone is, no matter what's around them.

They can still sit down and drop into this meditative state as often as they choose to. state as often as they choose to. So having a teacher is really one of the more invaluable aspects of this particular approach to meditation. But like I said, it's just one approach. All the approaches of meditation are definitely taking the practitioner in the same direction, which is towards accessing their true self. And if you have a teacher, what I've experienced is that the road tends to be a little bit easier. But my colleagues would also argue that you can't learn how to meditate from a book. You can't get what you get from a teacher in a book. So it was an interesting opportunity for me in writing a book and presenting some of these mechanics and principles

in such a way that someone who doesn't necessarily have contact with a few teachers directly can still glean some insight and hopefully improve their experiences through what they read in that book, Bliss More. Well, there's no barrier to entry. Right. You know, it's like anybody- For teaching or practicing. I mean, you can't teach Vedic or TM without being certified in a very specific manner, but anybody can call themselves a meditation teacher and just get up and pontificate. So when somebody, when you overhear somebody saying, there's no wrong way to meditate.

Right. Like, what is your, you're probably like, actually there is. Well, it's like saying there's no wrong way to swim. Yeah. I mean, you know,, sure you can get in there and just kind of mess around, but if you wanna be able to go-

If you're not drowning, I guess you're swimming. If you wanna glide back and forth and do kick turns, they're practice, they're mechanics that everyone who's- And you use that analogy in the book, which I love, because as a swimmer myself, like I know very well the difference between somebody who really understands how to swim and somebody who to the untrained eye kind of looks like they're swimming.

But when I look at them, I'm like, you're fighting the water. The whole principle with swimming is trying to make the water work for you. It's a moving concert with the water. Yeah, exactly. It's like this beautiful symphony where all the movements that you're making with your body

are in concert to make you go forward. And you have to like leverage the principles of fluid dynamics to propel yourself forward. And you draw in that analogy to like, look, this is the same way it works with meditation. Rather than fighting the mind, it's about the opposite of that. Yeah. And it's, you know, and you're not just because you know that doesn't mean it is going to happen the first few times. It's like swimming, you know that doesn't mean it is going to happen the first few times. It's like swimming. You have to practice it and keep integrating those mechanics over and over.

And then you end up being able to do less and accomplish more, do least and accomplish most, and ultimately do nothing. Where it feels like I'm in complete flow right now. And you can swim for however long you swim. And it doesn't feel like this big effort where it's wearing you out and you're gonna drown. And so then someone like you can look at a pool or a lake or an ocean and you just see joy. Whereas someone like me, when I was in my early 30s

and I couldn't swim, I would look at the same body of water and just be completely terrified and wondering how deep is it and how cold is it and how rough is it. And, you know, cause I knew that once I got in, if I didn't have an exit strategy, then there was going to be problems. And that's how people feel about meditation. In the context of meditation, rather than like, I got to get my 20 minutes in twice a day, if you're doing it wrong, like, okay, let's step back and like, let me explain to you actually how to do this properly

so that you can leverage the most out of it for your experience. So this is something that you walk through in the course of this book. You have this easy technique that you talk about. So maybe we can kind of dive into that. Yeah, the easy technique. So there's this idea that in order

for meditation to be most effective, you have to sit up straight and you have to cross your legs. That hasn't been my experience. I was taught the first day I met my teacher, you should actually sit like you're watching television. And that frees up your mind to get lost in an experience. And the way you interact with your mind, you know, you focus on this, focus on that, visualize this. That wasn't my experience. I was taught you let your mind roam free. And that's getting back to the EASY approach. EASY is an acronym for how you handle your mental and sensational experiences. E stands for embrace, A stands for accept, S for surrender, Y and yield to. So what are you embracing, accepting, surrendering to and yielding to? All of your mental, emotional,

even physical experiences during the meditation. So if you have an itch, you scratch it. If you get uncomfortable, you switch your position so that you remain comfortable. If you have thoughts about work, that's amazing. It's not just, I'm just gonna accept it. No, no, no, you look at it, you celebrate it. This is amazing. I can't, it's the best thing that could be happening right now is me thinking about this work problem

or me thinking about how I don't like myself. Right, that goes back to that overcoming this urge or this idea that you have to combat the monkey mind. Right, you stop looking at it as a monkey mind, you start looking at it as a noble mind. The mind is, it's like taking, it's like if your radio station was tuned into a music you don't like,

you take the speaker and you throw it against the wall because you don't like, it's not the speaker. The speaker is just projecting what's coming out of the channel. And the mind is just projecting what's coming out of the body. It's not a bad mind. It's just showing you what's leaving the body.

So it requires a complete reframing of the experience, which over time is going to allow the practitioner to start to have a completely different relationship with their mind. And then that's going to create a little bit of space in the meditation, which allows you to sit there and enjoy it more and more. And then the irony of all of this is that when you are seeing your mind as an ally and not the enemy of the practice, that place you wanna go to,

the place where everybody wants to go to, the calmness, the quietness, the deepness, that's where you go. It's literally- How long is it gonna take? I've seen people get there- How can I get there quickly? I've seen people get there- How can I get there quickly? I've seen people get there in literally within an hour-

Really? Of practicing. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is, I want to make a disclaimer, this is working with me one-on-one and that's what I'm suggesting anyone needs to do, but I did the very best I could to put those principles in this book so that if you take it seriously enough and you follow the instructions as written, then you're gonna have that experience pretty quickly. Our human frailties are ever present. They tend to propel us in directions

that we know are counterproductive. And meditation is a way to constructively recognize them. When we sit in stillness with our demons and choose not to react to them, simple acknowledgement becomes a powerful antidote to harmful emotions and actions. But the act of cultivating a meditation practice can also help us create other helpful habits in our lives.

If we can start the habit of meditating, the mental and emotional benefits will show us that we are also capable of so much more. This is the perspective of my next guest, Leo Babauta. Bauda. Leo is a renowned author, speaker, and productivity expert who has made a name for himself by teaching individuals how to cultivate inner peace and increase focus. His expertise in the field of meditation is quite extensive, and he offers valuable insights into the art of mindfulness. Leo's work focuses on how meditation can be used as a tool to cultivate a sense of presence, to reduce stress, and increase productivity. A husband and father of six, Leo is the creator of Zen Habits, one of the largest single-author blogs in the world with a fanatic global fan base in the millions.

Named one of Time Magazine's top 10 blogs, Leo was indisputably one of the first prominent voices on the internet advocating the power and beauty of embracing simplicity and mindfulness to transcend the chaos of our daily existence. Through his writing, he has taught millions how to clear the mental, emotional, financial, and physical clutter so that we can focus on what's most important, create something amazing, and find contentment, purpose, and meaning in our lives. In this clip, Leo delves into his own personal meditation practice, discussing how he integrates mindfulness into his daily life. His words are a testament to the transformative power of meditation

and serve as a reminder of the benefit that can be gained from even the smallest moments of introspection. From episode 284, this is me and Leo Babauta. What do I do? My daily practice is I meditate. And it's nothing like amazing advanced meditation. I just meditate on the breath mostly.

Right, so there's no specific approach? Generally, I follow the Zen Buddhist style of Zazen and um the are like the just just sitting kind of thing but um lately i've been returning to the basic practice of just counting the breath which is something that i started with and then thought i was like moving on and beyond that and i realized that i've uh there's actually a lot of profundity in that. Um, and so I'm rediscovering just counting breath. Um, and that's like something that when you start out, um, you probably have had this experience like, okay, when do I move beyond counting breaths? I need to get, you know, behind the velvet rope into the next VIP room of meditation.

Yeah. So like, what's the next level? And so you're always looking for that. And that's actually really good to see that tendency in your mind to want to go beyond that, which is again, that greed coming into play. But so if you return to that, which is such a basic practice and it's like so boring, right? Or at least that's how our minds usually read it. But actually you're just, it's a practice of just fully being there, fully embodied with each breath and realizing that that is all there is. And it's like that breath is unique and not like the next breath and it's never going to come again. And that's exactly what we want to do is just in each experience, each moment to see that that's, that's unique. And

it will never have this moment back. This one that we're having between me and you right now, we're never going to have it again. And if we can just fully be here in this moment, as we are looking into each other's masculine eyes, we like, this is an amazing experience for me. And if I'm not fully here with it, I'm looking to the next thing. Okay. What's the next level thing that I can be doing? I'm going to be missing out on this amazing experience. And there's nothing more profound than anchoring yourself completely in the present moment. That's right. Right. So the idea, I think our minds are always looking for the advanced program or am I progressing, you know, with respect to meditation and ultimately it's so simple.

Yeah. So there's complexity within that simplicity, I suppose, but there's no, you could plumb the depths of it for the rest of your life. Yeah. I mean, and anyone who's practiced breath counting knows that it's a simple practice, like the instructions you can take in one minute, but actually doing it is, is pretty tough because of our minds, like, you know, wanting to get away from this moment. Like this is boring. Why am I counting my breath? So you want to like, and you start to think about what else you have to do for today. And that conversation that you had yesterday, that's still sticking with you and all of these, you know, ego driven things. But if we can just let go of that ego and just stay

with the breath and it's transformative, but like I said, it's pretty hard because of our mind's tendencies and it's fleeting. Yeah. Right. All right. So how long do you do that for? Um, it varies lately. It's like when I, I feel rushed, I should be doing it longer, but I actually do it shorter. I was like, okay, I don be doing it longer, but I actually do it shorter. I was like, okay, I don't have time. Cause I have so much to do. And so when I noticed myself just doing it for like 10 minutes a day, I realized like my mind is, is doing that, like wanting to like, just get through the meditation and

just check it off the list, which is not really fully being there with it. Um, so that lately it has been that, which is a public confession, really. Yeah, my mind is definitely rushing off to the next thing. And especially when I travel, it's like I have so much that I want to do. Again, it's that greed tendency. Like I want to do all of this stuff here in LA and meet all these amazing people.

I'm not doing that, but that's my mind's tendency. So it's like, okay, I only can do 10 minutes of meditation, but I, you know, ideally, and I don't really hold to the ideals, but you know, 20 to 30 minutes would be amazing. Okay. Yeah. So that's right. When you that's upon waking ideally. Yeah. I basically told everybody I knew that I'm quitting smoking. Cause before that I would just say, okay, I'm going to quit today to myself. Cause I didn't want people to know. And so you always have an out. Yep. And then later that, I would just say, okay, I'm going to quit today to myself because I didn't want people to know. And so you always have an out. Yep.

And then later that day, I took a puff and then was smoking by the end of the day. So it wasn't a big thing. It was like a minor commitment in my mind. So I had to make it. This is something I'm committing to. And I made it publicly. I asked for support. I found a support community, which was accountability. But also like when I'm when I need support, I'm going to reach out to you before I smoke and ask for your help. And these are people who are going through it with me. So that support and accountability and community was really important.

I, that's when I discovered meditation actually was when the urge to smoke was arising and it was very uncomfortable and I would normally not even notice it. Um, I started to just sit with it. Yeah. So some concrete first steps, the thing that we did with you where you're feeling that energy and sitting with it, I think that's the most important thing that they can do. And yet that can be a difficult thing. So having some kind of practice container for that, whether it's sitting in for five, 10 minutes of meditation. And actually I recommend people as a habit building thing, start with two minutes of meditation. Um, and yeah, I know you, um, used to use, I don't know if you still do the headspace app. That's a great one. Um, there's, I use a insight timer, another great meditation app. There's some good ones on there that just

can give you some guided meditation to start with. Um, I found that meditation to be one of the best like fundamental habits that, that helps you to build other habits and helps you along all of these journeys. Um, so yeah, I would start with that. And if you can, if you are a procrastinator, I'm actually doing a whole thing with a program that I have on procrastination this month. And it's just like watching your patterns and the way that I, I, you can, instead of doing meditation, if you want to work on procrastination, it's the same exact thing, but say, okay, before I check my phone, before I check email or Facebook on my computer, all I'm going to do is set aside five minutes, maybe 10 minutes a day, depending on where you are. Um, if you're super procrastinator, do five minutes. So five minutes a day before I check

anything, and I'm going to set myself a task, one little task that will take like five minutes of writing my chapter, right? So write five, five minutes of this chapter, and I'm going to set a timer and I'm going to set an intention to stay with my discomfort. And you set that timer and you stay with it and you're going to watch yourself want to run like, Oh, I'll start the timer in a minute because I'm going to go do my dishes or whatever, you know, and you want to stay there. So you're, you're, you have two choices, sit there and do that task or just sit there and you can't let yourself run. And this is a intentional, like kind of corralling yourself in and just watching that urge and then practice with that urge. So just sit there and watch the discomfort.

Where is it located in your body? Not your, your thinking like, Oh, you know, there's always stories that are going on. Like, am I going to fail? Like, are people going to judge me? All these stories. But what you want to do is go into that body feeling that we talked about. Where is it located? What does it feel like? Describe the energy, the physical energy in your body, and then stay with that. And then when you feel like that's, you know, gone to a point where it's not that not overwhelming, go back to the writing your chapter. I'm going to try that. All right. That sounds good. And if you are a, uh, a master at this already, uh, do 10 minutes. And if you're even better than that, do 15 minutes. And if you

want, if you get to that level where you can do 15 minutes straight, take a break, have some tea as, as rich likes to do and, um, and do another 15 minutes after that. So it's like interval training. Um, and you don't have to do like, you know, 20 intervals. You can just do two or three, uh, but, but build up to that. Start with the five minutes. Right. It's like a workout. It's like a workout for your brain, for your consciousness. It's training and staying with uncertainty and discomfort and because you want to you're rebuilding those you're rebuilding those pathways and then trying to reinforce them yeah and the the side benefit is you'll do your taxes yeah exactly right unless you want to be the guy who just sits there and does nothing. Hey, that's a practice too.

Right. I guess so, right? Hopefully by now you can see the vast benefits of meditation and even have some practical ideas on how to begin. But there is still one pesky subject left to address. Time. Fitting meditation into our everyday schedule. And for this topic, I can think of no one better than Jason Garner. Scraping his way from a weekend job at a flea market to owning his own concert company, by the time he was 37, Jason Garner had become CEO of Global Music at

Live Nation Entertainment, the world's largest concert promotion company and arguably the most important corporate entity in the entire music industry. Garner, an incredibly successful entrepreneur and author, decided to leave his lucrative and, might I add, time-consuming corporate gig to make it his mission to help others find inner peace and purpose. Today, Jason's expertise in mindfulness and meditation has been sought after by Fortune 500 companies, top athletes, and high-performing executives. In this final clip, Jason shares his insights on how we can carve out the time to meditate, even in the midst of our busy schedules. In a world that glorifies the hustle and the grind,

it can be easy to neglect our own well-being. However, as Jason reminds us, taking a few minutes to pause and to connect with our inner selves can actually make us more productive and more focused in the long run. His tips on creating a personalized meditation practice that suits our individual needs and goals are truly invaluable. So here is Jason Garner.

And so I would say, you know, like, I just think we can start with simple things like a deep breath, you know, we can, in fact, you know, we can start with some meditation and we can start with some nutrition and we can start with yoga. And they would say to me, and these are like 18-year-old young people, well, I don't have time for that. And I would say, you know what, just right here, the question you've got to ask yourself is, what am I building? You're fucking 18 and you don't have time to breathe. And I'll just tell you, I'm double your age now you know more and and it doesn't get easier it's

not like after university then in comes that breathing space that we've always wanted it's like we have to carve that into our you know what i call daily practice and in between you know getting up and checking your Facebook and running off to class and doing the homework and running to the football game and doing all these things that we do, we've got to build in some time for ourselves and some breathing room. And one of the beautiful things that I found in my life is that it's not a time allocation issue. So it's not like work-life balance is like, well, I went four hours at work and now I got to do four hours of meditation. It's like, we've so neglected ourselves that it's really similar to any relationship that we've neglected. You know, if you don't talk to your wife for a week,

the first time you walk into the room and say, honey, I'm sorry, I love you. That has a huge value. Like that counts for a whole bunch of talking that you didn't do. And so that first time that we walk in and sit down on a meditation cushion and take a deep breath and connect with our heart, and maybe that lasts one minute, right? But that minute's worth a whole, whole bunch. And so for me, that's really what I've learned is like, bunch and so for me that's really what i've learned is like we're just creatures of habit and before i used to have a habit called work myself to death and now i have a habit called just love myself to life right and this is you know it's like that's and in there it kind of becomes inconsequential what you do with the rest of the time it's okay then you go to work or

you flip the guy off on the road you know all this stuff that happens in our life keeps happening but we have these moments where we can come back to our heart and we can remember that we're human beings and not robots you know right right right like i get it i understand it i know that i need this i'm happier when i'm doing it but they're holding on to that identity and they're still like, yes, but, you know, I still need to be successful and I want this. And I'm afraid of going in too deep, of taking as deep a left turn as you did, because, you know, I don't want to be, you know, I don't know that I want to be like you and running off to China.

I still want to be CEO of my company or whatnot. So it's about like carrying these practices in the world. I mean, how do you kind of communicate with people that are coming from that perspective? I think one of the things is that we tend to be so extremist in the way that we view things. So the first thing that I like to say is like, hey, there's a long way from here to there. Like you can't breathe and you're worried that someday you might turn into a hippie like jason who goes off to china so it's like you know let's just start with step one you know and let's just take a deep breath and and and just you know sometimes it's like it's not so much about transformation but it's like we're gripping so hard onto this reality that we perceive to be us, right?

And so, you know, the fear comes from if like you could just picture like if you're just gripping onto, you know, you're in the water, right? And you're gripping onto a life raft. And the fear comes from if I say, let go of the life raft right now. That's like too big of a step, I think. That's really hard for us as human beings. But if we said, hey, from here to three years or from here to five years, we're going to just slowly let go. And so today's part of that plan is just to loosen our grip a little bit. And then we don't have to think so far you know down it's like you know in

in health it's like most a lot of us who are taking care of ourselves have a idea that we'd like to have a long life we'd like to live you know i always say i want to live to be 140 years old and i have friends who go like that's crazy crazy. But understand that my body rebuilds its cells every seven years. So I don't have a 140-year plan. I have a seven-year plan. And I think the same thing can be true in caring for ourselves and in kind of like refiguring our lives a little bit, is we don't have to have the what am I going to do in 10-year plan.

We can just have right now I'm just going to loosen up a little bit and see how that feels. Or I'm going to sit and breathe for a little bit and see how that feels, right? And then don't jump 12 steps down the road because the whole point of mindfulness is being here and being mindful. So we're here. There's a lot of stress. Let's let go of whatever piece of it we can and you you're welcome to cling to all the parts that you don't want to let go but is there just like one or two

things that we can let go of right now and i think that's how i try to approach my own my own life because there's really scary things that you know we've been carrying since we were kids and for someone to come along and go hey hey, let's just jump in the pool. That's tough stuff. Yeah, yeah. I study with teachers to learn tools. And then I build a toolbox. And I think, you know, if we use that analogy, we're going through life with a hammer.

And we're trying to build the whole house with a hammer. You know, it's like we have our job and that's it. And then the problem comes when you've got to put a window in. And you start breaking shit with the hammer. And so what I've realized is I want to have a really full toolbox. And when something's not working for me, I want to have a different tool. The hammer's not the right one. I want to have a screwdriver.

I want to have a wrench. Or in the case of meditation, I want to have a few different techniques. You know, hey, that one's not working very well right now. Great, I want to try this. You know, and so that's kind of been my impetus for, you know, continuing to seek out new teachers because I find each one has a special little gem. If you can just kind of get the intimate moment where you can spend some real time, you get a little gem. If you can just kind of get the intimate moment where you can spend some real time, you get a little gem, you know, you get, you get another tool that you then throw in the,

the toolbox because they're human beings who have lived their own version of what we're living. And they had to figure out how to make it work for them. And they figured out little tricks, you know, tools along the way. And I think you said it when you said they're human beings, because that's what they are. And I think, you know, when you kind of enter into this world of new age spirituality, you see a lot of, we see a lot of things, a lot of interesting things, you know. There's a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of bullshit. And there's a lot of, I've joked about this before, but like kind of kind of you know staring a little bit too long into the other person's eyes and and you know holding the hug a little bit a beat a beat too long for comfort

you know and that kind of thing and a lot of guru chasing right and then and then sort of propping up a guru and then when when that quote-unquote guru shows some level of humanity and a flaw then it's tearing that person down and and, well, they have nothing of value because they demonstrated that they're a human being through some foible, right? But in reality, they all have little truths that you can extract and kind of weave your own tapestry of what resonates for you and what works for you. I really feel that. And I think there's a lot of fantastic stories out there. And I actually tend to believe a lot of them you know i just i tend to believe that you know a lot of these masters teachers

who were living in a different time and place and who had a lot of time to focus on their consciousness and focus on their own awakening and weren't distracted by honking cars in New York city that they, that they very well may have achieved some things that we would look at today and go like, Oh, that's bullshit. Yeah.

But meaning like the, like the guys that go into the caves and don't eat for years and stuff like that. That's right. Yeah. Or people, their bodies don't decompose and yeah. Or, you know, they see things or they know things that are coming

or they can look at you and tell you something and then it's actually happening in your life. But I never wanted my practice to be dependent on that. So I made a conscious decision that I was looking for real-life teachers. One of my teachers says, get a piece of chocolate and put the chocolate on your tongue and just stay present as you savor the taste of the chocolate. You know, it's like, wow, that's like, yeah, there is, there's always a little bit of happiness. There's always a little bit of joy that we can find, but it takes really coming back and being present. And then I think the second piece is that we just have to give ourselves enough

space to move around, to go, hey, I'm 40 years old. I'm 50 years old. It took me 50 years to get here. Now I want to make some changes. So first I honor where I'm at. And then second, I need to be realistic about, I'm going to sit down and meditation today, and probably nothing's going to happen. Probably not going to feel any different. In fact, I'm going to feel more frustrated because I don't quite know how to do this thing called meditation, right? It's like, we go, so let's think a year down the road i'm going to give five minutes a day to meditation for a year and i think we start to open up the timeline a little bit it takes off some of that that urgency and in the and in the crisis of the moment what we have is the breath and what we

have is the ability to find little ways that we can show ourselves that we're loved and little ways that we can care for ourselves. And then we just do the best we can. If you could go back to yourself as a 20-year-old with the knowledge that you have now and the experience that you have now, I mean, what do you think your life would have looked like? I think, you know, I can't imagine a life much better than this you know it's like I think as you said through all the pain

you find the beauty right there's just these beautiful moments that happen in life I have a 17 year old son who I realized the other day if I've done nothing over the last 5 years I spent every day with my son you know and? And it's like, I talked to him a lot about these things and I think his life will be different, but I learned through him that

even though he possesses all the tools and meets with all the same teachers, he still has to go through the growth process of going, of being him in life, right? So I think we can't go back, and I think we're all just living this life that we're living, and we get the tools when we get them. And I think the beautiful part is just learning to be at peace and to be loving with ourselves no matter where we find ourselves on that path. Beautiful, man. Meditation has been a lifeline for me.

It's been a tool for gleaning invaluable insights into my own mind and for awakening a more compassionate view of myself and those around me. I'm the benefactor of a practice that while not always consistent, consistently rewards me when applied. For each of us to minimize our own suffering and to contribute to minimizing the suffering of others, meditation is a useful, practical, easier than it seems application. And my hope is that you can use this compilation episode as an inspiration and as a jumping off point for further self-inquiry

and hopefully an ever deepening practice. If the voices you've heard here have spoken to you, please consider going back to the original episodes to gain further insights from these amazing teachers. Many of the guests speaking about meditation here have written valuable books that amplify their perspective and philosophy and are surely worth checking out. world that is increasingly more and more complex, I'd love for this show and for my guests to be a lighthouse for you, guiding you to safe harbors on the premise that we each have more to offer to the world and most importantly, to ourselves. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you found it valuable. I appreciate the love. I love all the support and I will see you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Namaste. Thank you.