The Tim Ferriss Show - BONUS: Sam Harris Guided Meditations and Lessons

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

This is a companion episode to episode #342 ("Sam Harris, Ph.D. — How to Master Your Mind"), and it features guided meditations and lessons from Sam's meditation app Waking Up. Please note that it includes bonus content not found in the longer episode. Enjoy!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to an ultra-short, commercial-free edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is a companion episode to a longer episode with Sam Harris that came out at the same time as this episode, so I encourage you to check that out. This is for those who want to jump right into the guided meditations and lessons from his app, Waking Up, which I've been incredibly impressed by. You can check it out at wakingup.com. And you will find lessons 217 and 31. So days 217 and 31 for different styles of meditation practice,

even though in the app itself, there is a longer logical progression. It's very gradual. And you will find lessons, including the logic of practice. So with that having been said, please enjoy these guided meditations and lessons with Sam Harris. Welcome to day two of the waking up course. Once again, take a seat, either in a chair or cross-legged on a cushion.

It's good to sit as comfortably as you can. And it's usually best to be sitting as straight as you can. Now close your eyes and become aware of the sensations of sitting. Feel your arms at your sides. And perhaps take a few deep breaths. Just allow gravity to settle you into your seat. Now, as you did yesterday, become aware of the sensations of breathing. Notice where you feel the breath most clearly,

either at the tip of the nose, or in the rise and falling of your abdomen, or chest. It doesn't matter where you pay attention to the breath. And you can change your focus from session to session if you like. But for the moment, just pick one spot and focus there. There's nothing especially significant about the breath. But it's something you always have with you. And it's as good as any other sense object as a basis for training your powers of attention. Eventually, the practice will incorporate everything that arises in consciousness. Just feel the mere sensations of breathing. From the beginning of the inhalation

to the pause between breaths and follow the exhalation to the end. Try to cover the breath with your awareness. And once again, there's no need to control your breathing. Just let it come however it comes. Thank you. What we're doing here is sharpening the only tool you really have, your mind. This is what you take with you in any situation in life. This is what determines how you respond to emotional stress and physical pain and every other difficulty you encounter. This is the basis for every decision you make and every interaction you have with other people.

And as you begin to observe it, you will notice, perhaps with growing amazement, that your mind is totally out of control. And as you try to pay attention to the breath you'll begin to notice that the primary obstacle to your paying attention is thinking thoughts continually arise

and you forget that you're even trying to meditate at all and this happens over the course of mere seconds and you forget that you are even trying to meditate at all. And this happens over the course of mere seconds. Just try to count the next ten breaths without getting distracted. You can silently in your mind count one on the inhalation and one again on the exhalation, and then two. See if you can get to ten. Thank you.... Unless you have a lot of concentration, you probably were unable to tell how precarious your awareness of the breath actually was,

how your attention was being buffeted on all sides by discursive thought. Now, the goal isn't to stop your thoughts or to suppress any emotion that might arise along with them. It is rather to notice these mental events clearly and to experience them fully, more fully, in fact,

to recognize them as appearances in consciousness the moment they arise. But that is generally a very difficult thing to do in the beginning. So for the time being, the moment you discover that you're thinking, just observe it and come back to the breath.

In this final minute of the meditation, just start again. Just feel the next breath as it comes. Okay. Okay. Well, just take a moment to take stock of how you're feeling. Whether you're tired or restless or calm, whether your experience was pleasant or unpleasant isn't really the point. What you're learning here is a new skill. And unless you're coming to this course already knowing how to meditate, you can't expect to be able to do it well in the beginning.

And as the practice develops over the next days and weeks, you'll see that you do less, not more, than you normally do. You're not adding an artifice to your experience in the present moment. Rather, you're simply becoming less distracted. The purpose of meditation is to discover what your mind is like when you're no longer perpetually identified with the contents of your thoughts. And to make progress, you simply need to be willing to begin again. And we will do that tomorrow on Day 3 of The Waking Up Course.

Welcome to Day 17 of the waking up course. As you get comfortable in your seat, you might keep your eyes open for the beginning of this session. And take a few deep breaths, and just let yourself settle into the feeling of resting in space.... And as you gaze in front of you, just let your gaze be as wide as possible. No need to focus on anything in particular. just stare into space with soft eyes feeling the breath

come and go. Listen to the sounds in the room arising and passing away. And as you stare into your visual field, take a attention at the one who is seen. Now, this may sound paradoxical, but see what happens the moment you look. There was a teacher named Douglas Harding who wrote a book titled On Having No Head. And the exercise he recommended to his students was to gaze at whatever is before you and look for your own head. Notice that your head is not one of the things you see. What is it like to see the world and simultaneously notice that your head is not appearing in it. See if that does anything to your sense of awareness.

Harding used to say that where his head was supposed to be, there was just the world. See if you can be mindful of that in each moment.... and now gently close your eyes and pay attention to this feeling that you might have that you're now inside your head that your attention is in something but again what you're calling your head, that your attention is in something. But again, what you're calling your head,

the sensations you get from your skin, the muscles in your face, all of that is appearing that which is aware is not inside of something everything is in it see if you can feel that open your eyes again and ask yourself what has changed is there a sense that the world comes rushing in that space just got bigger Is there a sense that the world comes rushing in? That space just got bigger? You might play with this, opening and closing your eyes periodically.

Is there really a change? There's a change in the contents of consciousness, clearly. There are things you can see with your eyes open that you can't with your eyes closed. But you still have a visual field in both cases. When you close your eyes, your visual field doesn't disappear. All that is changing are the contents that consciousness has a center that there's a meditator in the middle of each moment of meditation, a thinker of thoughts, a seer of sights, a hearer of sounds. We'll be looking into that,

that feeling that awareness emanates from a single point inside the head. And in some ways this is even easier to do with eyes open because we use vision to define ourselves in opposition to our environment more than we do with the other senses. There's a clear feeling that most of us have most of the time that we are behind our face looking out at the world through our eyes.

But as you look out at the world in this moment, see if that feeling is true. You might look to see if there's any evidence that you are behind your face at this moment. Thank you. And the moment you notice you're lost in thought, come back to this exercise, keeping attention very wide, with our eyes open or closed. and seeing if this feeling of being inside the head survives scrutiny. In the last minute of this session,

just give up all efforts and notice whatever appears on its own. Thank you. Well, today I introduced a slightly different exercise, and there'll be some more of that coming from time to time, because it's good to use this growing facility with mindfulness to engage a kind of structured analysis of experience. You can definitely precipitate certain insights by doing something a little more directed than just noticing whatever happens to arise.

And if you're interested, you might get that book I mentioned on having no head by Douglas Harding, because he, in a way that was quite unique to him, developed analogies and exercises that can provoke an insight into the illusoriness of subject-object perception. It's not to say that consciousness isn't arising in the brain. It's not making any claims about your mind being coterminous with the rest of the physical world. What Harding was doing was showing that this sense of being inside the head from the side of experience changes when you actually look to see if it's true. And as you play with that exercise, you might find that a very expansive and centerless sense of what awareness is can emerge in place of this feeling that you would otherwise call I.

And we'll look into that more tomorrow when I see you back here for day 18 of the Waking Up Course. Welcome to day 31 of the Waking Up Course. Once again, sit however you're comfortable and try to connect with your experience all at once in a flash. Just feel the body as a cloud of sensation. Don't give any scope to distraction. Be entirely present.

Notice that however you feel, whether you're tired or uncomfortable, consciousness itself is already vividly aware of whatever's appearing on its own. Thank you. Thank you. See if you can relinquish the shape of your body. Notice that you don't feel hands or shoulders or feet. There's just a cloud of sensation. Individual points of pressure, tingling, heat or cold, vibration. Thank you. And the moment you notice that a thought is present to or coming from?

What is thinking? And then rest is the open space in which the thought itself unwinds and disappears. Thank you. Listen to the sounds in the room and notice how each one articulates this space of consciousness consciousness is simply the space in which everything is appearing on its own. Rest as that.... In the last minute of the session, simply begin again,

but recognize that in practicing in this way, you are expressing an intention for yourself, an intention to be happier and be better placed to make others happier, an intention to suffer less and to be in a better position to help others suffer less. The goal here is wisdom, the wisdom that comes from recognizing how things already are in each moment. And stepping out of the fantasy life

born of having a mind that's perpetually distracted. So in this final minute, just remember what an enormous expression of goodwill for yourself and for the world this practice is. Thank you.... And I'll see you here tomorrow for Day 32 of The Waking Up Course. In his apology, Plato attributes the following now famous words to Socrates, The unexamined life is not worth living. Now whether or not that's strictly true, the unexamined life is certainly needlessly painful, both for oneself and for

others. And painful or not, the unexamined life is certainly less interesting. We really spend our lives learning how to live. And this isn't necessarily as absurd or as tragic as it sounds. Most of us find a pattern of living that makes approximate sense, and we tinker with it for decades. If you're lucky, you'll discover that you can live more or less the way you want. But even if you are lucky, you'll find that it's possible to want the wrong things, to be lured into squandering your time and attention, to be bewitched in a way by things that don't really matter. Even if you're lucky, happiness can be surprisingly elusive. So why meditate? The basic logic is quite simple. The quality of your mind determines the quality

of your life. Happiness and suffering, no matter how extreme, are mental events. The mind depends upon the body, of course, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter. This fact offers ample opportunity to make the best of bad situations, because changing how you respond to the world is often as good as changing the world. Of course, you can try to change the world. You can try to get everyone around you to behave exactly as you want. You can try to never get sick or injured. You can try to keep your favorite possessions from getting damaged or lost. But try as hard as you might.

The sources of stress and disappointment and embarrassment and self-doubt will always be there. Happily, there's another game to play. And not everyone knows about it. Rather than try to change the world in each moment, there's another move open to you. you can look more closely at what you're doing with your own mind and actually cease to respond to life in ways that produce needless suffering for yourself and those around you. When we're lost in thought, there are certain things we tend not to notice about the nature of our minds. For instance, every thought or feeling you've ever had,

good or bad, has arisen and then passed away. The anger you felt yesterday or a year ago isn't here anymore, and if it arises in the next moment, based on your thinking about the past, it will once again pass away when you are no longer thinking about it. This is a profoundly important truth about the mind, and it can be absolutely liberating to understand it deeply. If you do understand it deeply, that is, if you're able to pay clear attention to the arising of an emotion like anger, rather than merely think about why you have every right to be angry, it actually becomes impossible to stay angry for more than a few moments at a time. If you think you can stay angry for a day or even an hour without continually

manufacturing this emotion by thinking without knowing that you're thinking, you are mistaken. This is an objective claim about the mechanics of your own subjectivity, and I invite you to test it. And meditation is the tool you would use to test it. Now, while I can't promise that meditation will keep you from ever becoming angry again, you can learn not to stay angry, or fearful, or embarrassed, etc., for very long. And when talking about the consequences of negative emotions in the real world and in your life, the difference between moments and hours, or days and weeks, is impossible to exaggerate. Now this is not to say that external circumstances don't matter, but it is your mind, rather than the circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Some people are content in the midst of

real deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. And there are practices that allow us to break this habit of being lost in thought, and to simply become aware of our experience in the present moment. And the main one that I'm teaching in this course is a technique known as Vipassana, which is generally translated as insight meditation. And this comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, known as the Theravada. The quality of mind cultivated in Vipassana practice is almost always referred to as mindfulness. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness.

It's simply a state of clear, non-judgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. This practice has been shown to produce long-lasting changes in attention, emotion, cognition, and pain perception, and these correlate with both structural and functional changes in the brain. Mindfulness is now very much in vogue, of course, but it seems to me that there are still many misconceptions about it. It's often taught and marketed as though it were merely an improved version of an executive stress ball, where it is really more like the Large Hadron Collider. That is, it's a method for making profound discoveries, in this case about the nature of our own minds. And there's nothing passive about mindfulness. You could even say that it expresses a certain kind of passion,

a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in each moment. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience. It is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. One of the great strengths of this technique of meditation, from a secular point of view, is that it doesn't require us to adopt any cultural affectations or unjustified beliefs. It simply demands that we pay close attention to the flow of our experience in each moment. So as you progress through this course, notice that what you're being asked to do more and more is to simply recognize what is already arising in consciousness in each moment without modifying it, without

grasping at what's pleasant or pushing what's unpleasant away. In some basic sense, meditation is the act of doing less than you normally do. It's the act of being less distracted in the midst of everything that is already happening on its own. And once one is less distracted, one finally has a tool with which to notice truths about one's mind that otherwise would never be discovered directly. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've

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And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.