Awareness

[00:10] Rory: My name is Rory O’Toole.

[00:12] Matt: And my name is Matt Schultz.

[00:14] Rory: And this is how to be the.

[00:17] Matt: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:23] Rory: Platitudes in the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one precious and wild life. Are you trapped in a mental prison of your own making? The answer is yes. Listen to our conversation with author Don Zoe to discover how to set yourself free with the practice of awareness. Hi, Matthew.

[01:06] Matt: Hey, roar.

[01:09] Rory: Well, I just want to say that we’ve actually gotten a lot of new listeners lately.

[01:15] Matt: Really?

[01:16] Rory: Yeah, we have. And so I just wanted to welcome our new listeners to the podcast. Say thank you for downloading.

[01:24] Matt: Thank you.

[01:26] Rory: And we’re on Instagram, so if you want to shoot us an DM about a topic you want to hear about, or some thoughts you might have, we would love to hear them from you. And as always, everyone, please, like, subscribe, share rate, all that good.

[01:42] Matt: It helps us so much. It really does. One share, one recommend to a friend is better than a billboard in Times Square because people listen to their friends, but no one looks up when they’re walking.

[02:03] Rory: Yeah, I think word of mouth is the lifeline of podcast success.

[02:07] Matt: Yeah, I think so, too.

[02:10] Rory: Okay, Matt, so you know what I’ve been thinking about this week?

[02:13] Matt: Tell me.

[02:15] Rory: A bad habit of mine that I want to stop speaking of habits.

[02:20] Matt: Okay.

[02:21] Rory: And other people have this habit, too, but I can’t control them. So it’s just about me. And that is when someone tells you something and you say, I knew it instantly. A family member of mine is having a child, and they told me the gender, and instantly, the first thing I said was, I knew it. Yeah.

[02:45] Matt: It’s like, no, you didn’t.

[02:46] Rory: It’s like, well, first of all, one and two chance. Second of all, why is that? The first response you want to hear when you tell someone the gender of.

[02:56] Matt: Their baby, there’s another variety of that, which is the people who need to say, like, I had that knowledge already.

[03:06] Rory: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I’m also one of those people.

[03:12] Matt: Yeah. You know, George Elliot married a man 20 years her junior. Yes. Yeah, I know. Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that crazy? I remember when I first heard that, I thought, isn’t that crazy?

[03:27] Rory: But I think that this also leads to people who are the. George Elliott isn’t an example of this, but people who spew common facts as if they are new knowledge.

[03:41] Matt: Yeah, that’s a common thing. I mean, I think that some facts never make it out of being told as if they’re new. They never fully land in the culture, and they continue to circulate as new and interesting facts, even though we all already know them.

[03:58] Rory: It’s very challenging for me to eat mexican food with people because they’re like.

[04:03] Matt: Do you know that this was actually invented in California?

[04:06] Rory: No. Because I’ll be like, and can I have dough? Cilantro on that. Instantly, the table explodes. Oh, did you know that’s genetic?

[04:18] Matt: Cilantro is a classic example. People love to go over that again and again and again. We all already know. We all did the experiment at school. There are others. There are others. I’m always trying to catalog them in my head, like, fun facts that never land in the culture, never absorb. They’re always being repeated. Anyways. Do you know having six fingers is actually a dominant trait? Maybe you didn’t know that one.

[04:53] Rory: Everyone could see your face when you’re telling this. I did know that six fingers is a dominant trait.

[05:01] Matt: Anyways, I went to yoga today. I’m done with the gym. I quit going to the gym.

[05:07] Rory: Okay. So that hearkens to two episodes that we did. One, the gym, and two, quitting.

[05:12] Matt: Yeah. And kind of habits, too.

[05:15] Rory: Yeah. Your routine got interrupted by moving. Do you think that was the beginning of the end for the gym?

[05:22] Matt: Yes, it absolutely was. I never really connected with the new gym. And then I gave it one last shot, real shot. I got a personal trainer. I said, let’s really do this. And I really didn’t like him. He was quite cringy, as the youth say. Tell me how he’d be like, spread your legs more. That’s what she said. He would give both the prompt and the response to the. That’s what she said. Oh, Boy. Once he found out that I’m a rabbinical student, he would be like, sorry, rabbi. Like, if he swore. If he said a swear word. Sorry, rabbi.

[06:09] Rory: Oh, God.

[06:12] Matt: We are never getting back together. So after I dumped him, I was like, I think I’m done with the gym. I think I’m done. All of the things we said about it in that episode, the fact that it’s a weird 19th century factory for artificially building mass in the body where there should be no mass.

[06:33] Rory: All of.

[06:34] Matt: A sudden really hit me, and I was like, I’m done. I’m out. So now I’ve been going to yoga again. Yoga is an old flame of mine, and I did something today in yoga that I’ve never done before, which is, I took off my shirt.

[06:55] Rory: Whoa. Okay. You know how I feel about that.

[06:58] Matt: You don’t approve?

[07:00] Rory: Do not approve.

[07:03] Matt: But what I discovered if you had.

[07:05] Rory: A sports bra on.

[07:07] Matt: I did not. But my shirt just kept covering my face during downward dog, so I had to take it off. But then when we were doing stuff, like on our back, my wet, sweating back, naked on the mat would create these air pockets and make these disastrous fart noises that were indistinguishable from the real thing.

[07:34] Rory: Are you going to go back to this class? I would never be able to go back.

[07:37] Matt: It happened like three times.

[07:39] Rory: Well, I think maybe you’re going to have to go back to running because that’s too embarrassing to show your face again.

[07:45] Matt: Maybe people know about the air bubbles.

[07:48] Rory: I didn’t.

[07:50] Matt: Yeah, I didn’t either. That’s why you keep the shirt on.

[07:57] Rory: Let us know, listeners dm us. Do you know about the air bubbles when you do yoga? Yeah.

[08:03] Matt: Have you heard, like a really. It sounded like a bad one, too. It was like, oh, no, it wasn’t. A little tape.

[08:15] Rory: No.

[08:20] Matt: It was a real.

[08:21] Rory: I can’t believe you could see. What I would have done is made sure somehow that I would have moved around on the mat to exaggeratedly make more of those noises.

[08:34] Matt: Yeah, exactly. That’s what you have to do. Like when a chair. Sometimes it happens. Chairs.

[08:43] Rory: I feel like you can tell the difference, though.

[08:45] Matt: This was so realistic.

[08:47] Rory: No, I believe you in your situation.

[08:50] Matt: They should use this for movie.

[08:52] Rory: A Foley artist get his back real sweaty.

[09:00] Matt: Yeah, I think that was part of it. It was moisture. Now I need to figure out a shirt to wear. I need, like, a sports bra.

[09:12] Rory: You need a tight unitard.

[09:15] Matt: I need a tight unitard.

[09:17] Rory: You just need a tighter t shirt. That’s what I do. Yoga in tighter t shirts.

[09:21] Matt: Yeah, this would actually work. This is a tight t shirt. My Marianne Williams shirt.

[09:26] Rory: But you don’t want to ruin that by sweating in golden boy.

[09:33] Matt: Who knows how many times she’ll run. Is she still in it?

[09:40] Rory: Pretty young. I have no idea. I’ve not been paying attention. I don’t pay attention to those things until June. Should we say a little something about how our episode is different today?

[09:50] Don: Yeah.

[09:51] Matt: Something special is happening. Everyone and me and Rory want to talk to you about it.

[09:57] Rory: Yes. Today we have our first ever guest on the show. We are doing an interview style discussion with someone we will be introducing. And we hope you enjoy this sort of different content that we have for you.

[10:13] Matt: Yeah, we’re talking to someone. We’re so excited. Our first guest.

[10:17] Rory: Yeah, we really are. So if you’re listening, and you could be a good potential guest. Pitch us. We want to hear from you. We’re too lazy to pitch you.

[10:32] Matt: Take it seriously. Come on. Are you an expert in know?

[10:36] Rory: Yeah.

[10:43] Matt: So today we’re speaking with Don Goey, and we’re speaking to him about awareness. And we’ll get into what that means exactly, or what we mean by it today. Don spent six years directing a research effort that integrated breakthroughs in neuropsychology into a model that changes brain structure to extinguish stress reactions and amplify the higher brain function that enables a human being to flourish. The model has achieved outstanding results in high pressure workplaces like Cisco systems and Wells Fargo Bank. Don and his work have been featured on the Today Show, CNN, and NPR. Don is also the author of the bestseller the end of stress, four steps to rewire your brain, mystic cool, neuroplasticity, thought, and the power of attitude. And the editor of Stop fixing yourself. The definitive reader on the spiritual philosophy of Anthony DeMello. Those all sound super fascinating. I would love to read all of those at some point. So if you could define for us what is awareness in sort of the terminology that you’re using, and what was your path towards this type of work?

[12:06] Don: Well, like most people, my path towards this kind of work came from wanting to break through the way in which I was making myself miserable in my life. And by miserable, I’m talking about the ordinary stress, anxiety, depression, concern about what other people think about me, whether or not I was succeeding to the degree that society said that I was to succeed at. And we’re indoctrinated from very early on to abandon the innocence, the loving nature that we were born with, that not only within us, but surrounds us, and to begin to externalize our view, to look to the outside world to make us happy, to look to the outside world to define who we are. And unfortunately, we live in a fear based culture. We live in a shame based culture. And so as we go out there, we bang into these imperatives that we achieve success measured in terms of the position that we have, the level of prestige that is extended to us, the amount of money in our bank account, the property that we own, and we operate from this belief that I cannot be happy, I cannot really be at peace, until I get this possession, or I get this person to do what I want them to do, or I get this person to want me, or I achieve this outcome, or I’m able to control this situation in most situations relating to the future, and we live in that world. And we go up and down depending on whether or not we’re measuring up by a criteria that’s been imposed on us by the culture. And we’re constantly plagued with the fear of failing, and we’re constantly plagued with problems of self worth. People don’t feel good enough. I coach ceos of major corporations who are deeply concerned about the fear of failing and don’t feel good enough. Even though they’re incredibly powerful people. I mean, they possess a great deal of power, at least in terms of the way our society measures that. And so what ends up happening to people and what ended up happening to me is they live like that. They live according to those standards. They live looking to the world outside, to the world, to determine how worthy they are, how successful they are, how happy they are. And they bounce around in that for a long, you know, we all put our nose to the grindstone on the belief that if we work long and hard enough, and where I come from, Silicon Valley, everybody’s working way too hard. And with the promise of that, once I achieve what I’m out to achieve, I get the stock options that I’m promised to get, that I earn the reputation through which everybody sees me in the way in which I want everybody to see me, that I’m going to be fulfilled. And people reach midlife. It’s now occurring to people what they call it quarter life. It’s now the quarter life crisis instead of the midlife crisis, in which they stop and they look around at their success. However, they thought that they’ve measured up in terms of the way the world sees them. And they look around and they ask themselves, why am I still so stressed? Why am I still struggling with unhappiness? Why are my relationships not working to the degree that I think they should be working? Why am I not at peace? Why am I still in this state of struggle? And it’s a big wake up moment. And what people end up discovering is they’ve been looking for themselves in all the wrong places. There’s nothing wrong with succeeding. Absolutely nothing. In fact, we’re here to leave our mark, certainly, and leave it in a way that helps our culture, helps our planet, helps our families, helps our communities. All of that success isn’t unimportant. But these midlife crisis is waking up to the fact that nothing of the world, no matter how hard you try, can make you happy. It’s not in the nature of the world to make you happy. The world is very material. It’s incredibly neutral. We project onto it the rights and wrongs and goods and bads that we impose on it. But it’s just neutral. It’s just doing its thing. And one of its thing isn’t to make us happy. In fact, if anything, it’s to give us problems and takes a spiritual perspective. To begin to look at your problems as mirrors, as helpful mirrors there to wake you up. And wake you up to what? Wake you up to this inner nature in which we were born, in which we’re happy already, in which we’re fulfilled. Tony Robbins says he’s coached all these people that people I’ve coached millionaires who have had great success in life, but who aren’t fulfilled. And they don’t even know what inner peace is. They hardly even believe it’s something that’s of any importance. And Robin said, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure because it’s failing at living. And so how do we make that correction? How do we deprogram ourselves from the way in which we’ve been indoctrinated by our culture to look for ourselves in all the wrong places and define ourselves in ways that have no meaning whatsoever? Ultimately. And the answer is awareness. We have to begin to bring into awareness the way in which we were put together and the way in which we function. And that begins with being willing to feel whatever we’re feeling. We’re programmed to upset ourselves. We’re programmed to react when the world doesn’t behave in the way that we were programmed to expect it, to behave in the way in which we expect people to behave. And when that happens, what we’re wired to do is to react with anxiety, with upset, with resentment. Or when the future feels uncertain, when the future doesn’t look like it’s bending in our direction, then our brain is going to, through our program, is going to default to anxiety and tension and worry. And then we’re going to spend a ton of energy coping with these negative feelings by expending even more energy trying to rearrange the world and rearrange people in our lives so that the demands of our programming will be met. And if that happens, we’re granted some measure of precarious peace. But it’s precarious because any moment, the way in which we’re programmed, the way in which we’re wired for fear and shame, is definitely going to see something through that distorted perspective. And something else is going to come along that’s going to appear out of conformity with our programming. Our brain is going to react by upsetting us. So it’s a pathetic existence that leads to this midlife and now this quarter life crisis in which we’re constantly at the mercy of things and people and events and trying desperately to make them conform to this irrational programming and its demands, so that we can enjoy the only peace we can really ever know, which is just a reprieve from negative emotions, a momentary reprieve. And now we cycle right back into it. We got to break that cycle. And awareness is how we break that cycle.

[21:32] Rory: Yes, I think you’ve said so much that is really interesting. One thing that I think you’re talking about that really resonates with me is sort of the friction between our internal life and our self conscious mind and the world that we interact with and all the disconnects that we can have that causes suffering for us, deep suffering and strife and emotional problems. What are some ways, practical ways, that you can integrate awareness that sort of makes your inner life and your outer life more in harmony?

[22:17] Don: Well, the first thing to be aware of is that is basically admitting to yourself that your life is a mess. And most people, when I say that, they think in terms of, oh, well, my house is a mess, or my finances are a mess, or my relationships with my kids, my spouse is a mess, and certainly those are manifestations of it. But what I mean by a mess is you’re an emotional mess. You’re stressed a lot. It doesn’t take much for anxiety to upset your apple cart. And if you have enough of that, it eventually bottoms out as depression and pessimism. And then now you’re trying to use some kind of affirmation to pull yourself out of it. And it might work for a few moments, but it turns out to be not a solution. And people don’t like to hear that, that your life is a mess, which may be proof that it’s true. And the second thing that we need to be aware of, to admit to ourselves, and this is a bit tougher for us to accept, and that is that you don’t want to get out of the mess. You want your little comforts that your materialism gives you, your attachments give you. You want the outcomes that society has falsely taught you are essential for happiness, and that have actually nothing to do with happiness. You want things, not happiness. You want control, not happiness. You want to be right and not happy. And just to see that, that’s what you got to bring into awareness. And the third thing you need to understand is that the reason that your life is in a mess is that your head has been programmed with a bunch of wrong ideas. And so the mess really isn’t your fault. Although you’re responsible for cleaning it up, there’s nothing wrong with you except this programming. You’re okay. If you were to get deprogrammed, if you were to drop, and this way in which you function in the world, this upset way in which you function in the world were to quiet down and drop, you would discover that you’re okay. You’ve always been okay. We’re all okay. In fact, we’re great. And what would begin to arise is this natural state of happiness and peace that would really knock you out. It really would surprise you to realize what has been there the whole time and that has been awaiting for you to show up. That’s what’s involved. Admit that your life is a mess. Admit that you’re so programmed. And though all of us are so programmed that we don’t even question it. So we never get out of the mess. We don’t want to get out of the mess. And the mess is the result of not who you are, essentially, but the way in which you’ve been programmed, with a bunch of wrong ideas, and the most fundamental wrong idea of them all is that I cannot be happy without this person or this outcome or this change or this result. And it’s a false idea. The truth is that we have everything we need to be happy and at peace every moment. And the only reason we’re ever unhappy and stressed is because we’re focusing on what we don’t have and not on what we have here and now. And that’s an attachment. An attachment is the false belief that without this particular person thing change, outcome, we can’t be happy. And the truth is quite the opposite. You have it all. You have it all right now. You just don’t know it. You’re so programmed. And so how do you get deprogrammed? Well, you bring into awareness what it is that’s causing these negative emotions. And how do you do that? It couldn’t be simpler. You feel it. You feel your upset, and you understand that this upset, it’s happening in you, not in reality. It’s not happening to you. It’s happening in you as a result of the way you have been indoctrinated into your culture with a set of false beliefs. And you allow that. You allow yourself to feel what you feel. The way in which to do it is to look on yourself as you’re in the midst of whatever turmoil upset you happen to be in at the moment whatever stress is going on inside of you, you look at it in a kind of detached way while at the same time really allowing its valence to be then, because you need to get a detachment from it, because this is not you. Anthony Demello, who wrote the book awareness, he suggests that you don’t even say that I am afraid or I am depressed. He can say, fear is there right now. Stress is there right now. Fear. I mean, depression is there right now. But don’t identify with the emotion, because your brain takes that literally, and then it amplifies it. So you don’t identify with your emotional state. That’s your mistake. You are far more than your present emotional reaction. And then what you will notice as you observe it in this way is that it passes. The upset you had yesterday, you probably can’t even remember. It comes and goes so fast. Everything passes, especially emotional reactions.

[28:43] Rory: Yeah. As someone who struggles with anxiety, I’ve noticed that the more I’m attached to the emotion, the longer it sticks around, actually. But if I just say to myself, well, let’s see how long this lasts, let’s let it pass. It passes faster.

[29:00] Don: Absolutely.

[29:01] Rory: Yeah.

[29:02] Don: And the more you allow it, allow yourself to feel it and not identify with it, not define yourself by it, the quicker it passes.

[29:11] Rory: Yes. I was very influenced by a book what was called Help and Healing for your nerves. Have you ever read that by Claire weeks?

[29:17] Don: No.

[29:18] Rory: Oh, it’s wonderful. It was written a long time ago, but it has a lot of what you’re saying in there about recognizing feeling and just, like, letting time pass. Basically, a lot of what you’re saying is really resonating with me, but I’m wondering, okay, so I live a nice life, and a lot of my problems are self made. That is no doubt true. And what you’re saying is it has a lot to do with my perception. What about people who are experiencing a lot of external affliction? They’re really suffering because their lives are very challenging. They maybe are refugees living in poverty, et cetera. What about them? Who maybe their situations are a little bit more challenging than my own.

[30:09] Matt: Yeah.

[30:10] Don: Well, I’ve worked with people for years facing some of the most stressful situations any human being faces. I worked at the center for Attitudinal Healing. It was founded by Gerald John Paulski during the AIDS epidemic and after. And we worked with people who were life threatened, people with cancer, AIDS, ALS, really serious diseases, diseases where the deck was really stacked against them, at least statistically, in terms of their ability to survive it. And we also went into the refugee camps in Croatia and Bosnia during the bosnian war. I mean, we went into all kinds of really frightening places that are basically defined as frightening places. My children used to think, God, you got a really depressing job. And the truth of the matter was, it was the most illuminating job I’ve ever had because these people were so up against it. They really had to bring into awareness what was really causing their suffering. And in every case, they came to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t their illness as much as the fear that it caused them, the fear that it elicited in them. And as they began to confront that and let it go, find ways of letting it go, and they found ways of letting it go through mutual support of one another. They were in support groups of one another. They made discoveries about themselves and about their capacity for living, their capacity for happiness that blew their minds. And they would describe their life before they got their life threatening illness as their misspent life, because they were always afraid. They were afraid of things that small matters, large matters, it didn’t matter. Their knee jerk reaction was to be afraid. We’re all programmed to be that way. Their knee jerk reaction was to feel guilty and ashamed of themselves, to not feel good enough. And their illness, their crisis, forced them to face that. And I went through the same thing myself, which is why I ended up doing that kind of work. I had a brain tumor. And actually, I was fired from a job that I had spent a decade climbing the career ladder to reach. And nine days later, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor that did not have a happy prognosis. And I spent the first two weeks just waking up at 03:00 in the morning and pacing the floor in abject terror. And I was married, four kids, a mortgage, and it looked like the ods were. And it was pretty good ods, that I was going to end up homeless. I was going to end up broke and disabled or dead, and my children and wife were going to suffer as a result of it. And one night, I reached this point where I just had to ask myself what was worth the future ideations I was having about how screwed I was, or that possibility, or the abject fear that those thoughts were making of me. When you look at yourself in here and now time, the answer is obvious, is that this abject fear is what’s worse. This is punishing me, and it’s probably depleting my capacity to overcome if there is any chance of overcoming this. And so I started using this awareness process that I was just talking to you about. I just started surrendering to the fear that I was in. And I kept watching it as I embraced it. It would amplify, and then it would shrink and it would disappear. And over the course of an hour, it went through that, and it finally proves to me that my fear was illusion, and that was not a place I needed to ground myself at all. And so I started practicing being. I reached this point where I was actually at peace, where everything’s going to be the way it is, and I’m just going to be present for the journey every step along the way and do the best that I possibly can do. And it was through that process of awareness that I could get to that place in me, that place of faith, that face where. Place where things began, where I began to calm down, where my brain’s amygdala fear center began to calm down. And then at one point, I was actually at peace. And I knew I was at peace, because every night when I would look out the window, I would look out at this dark night, and it looked like this black hole that was about to swallow my life up. And once I had gone through that whole journey over that course of that hour, at 03:00 in the morning, between three and four, when I got to that place of peace, I looked out, and what I saw was this beautiful night, the star studded night with the moon. And we had this lovely oak tree, and the light was shimmering off the oak tree. And suddenly I realized that what I was seeing really felt sacred. And it made me feel optimistic. And I realized I was seeing the polar opposite of that when I was afraid. And so I made that shift. And I had two more weeks before I had brain surgery. And I practiced letting go of fear in this way of bringing into an awareness, of understanding. This is in me, not in reality. I don’t know what the future is going to bring. I’m inventing it and scaring myself with it. And if I just breathe and let myself feel what I’m feeling in a detached kind of way, it’ll pass. And then what would happen is this space would open up in me. I would feel it viscerally. It’s hard to describe, but suddenly I wasn’t in this tight little squeeze corner. Suddenly it opened up, and then it would fill with light, with this kind of soft light glow. And after a few times, I realized that that light was my light. I was in the light. And I decided, and it was very pleasant to be. And the world looked beautiful. And I was okay as long as I was in there, in here and now moment. And so I made a commitment to myself between then and the surgery that I’d let go of fear. In this way. I think I created this mind body connection because the surgery was an enormous success, and I didn’t end up as disabled. And I actually even got my job back because I had this golden parachute where they required me to work those last two weeks and finish up a project. And here is this guy that his life is completely in checkmate, and everybody’s glad it’s him and not me, looking at me through those eyes. And yet I’m cheerful. I’m friendlier than I was before. I appear to be okay. And I was at Stanford University at the time. And one of the people in another department, partner psychiatry, the chairman, called me up and asked me to come over, and he hired me. He said, our department needs someone with this kind of attitude in it. I want you to come in here and fuse this department with your attitude. And I told him, I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t even know if I’m going to be alive at the end of this. But, well, I got my job back. And after about three years of doing that, I decided I didn’t belong at Stanford. I belonged out there in the world, working with people who were going through with what I went through. And those people all taught me what that brain tumor taught me over and over again, that we’re larger than circumstances, but we’re never larger than circumstances when we’re afraid and when we’re being worked on by a set of false beliefs that says we can’t be happy. I can’t be happy if I have a brain tumor. I discovered I can be happy and have a brain tumor. I don’t want it. But here it is. And it doesn’t have to cost me my ability to be open and alive in this world and be loving with whatever I encounter day to day. And so that’s called waking up. And awareness is how we wake up. We got to get in touch with how we are actively making ourselves miserable all day long and see it and understand it. And just in understanding it, it begins to drop. It begins to lose its power over us. It begins to shift for us. And the process is so simple. Ten year old kid could do it, but we don’t do it. We just don’t do it. And then if we first become aware of that, I really don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to change or. I really don’t believe I can change, change this. And what you find at the end of it, though, once you step into it, is that there never was anything to change. You were fine. You are just being ruled by a set of illusions that through awareness, have now crumbled.

[40:32] Matt: So I’m curious. I’m a religious person. A lot of the language you use evokes religion. You talk about the night looking sacred, about feeling some sort of presence of light. But you also speak about this.

[40:48] Don: You have to be religious to have a feeling of the sacred. I mean, you’ve never had a feeling of the sacred that was non religious?

[40:57] Matt: No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just curious if you conceive of this as a spiritual path or if you even draw that distinction between. Or if you even feel the need to draw that distinction or put that box around it.

[41:12] Don: No, not at all.

[41:15] Matt: I guess what I’m curious about is this sounds to me like a sort of spiritual reality. It sounds like I hear a lot of what I hear in buddhist philosophy. What is brought to this by the scientific research that sort of the ancient ones didn’t discover already through sitting in meditation long ago?

[41:45] Rory: Well.

[41:47] Don: I think I understand your question. What’s a scientific perspective on some of the things I’m saying? Is that what you.

[41:55] Matt: I guess what I’m asking is, do we need the science on this when it’s sort of these really ancient spiritual truths that I feel like a lot of different peoples have come to through experience, through meditative practices, through contemplation. Is the science illuminating new pathways towards this sort of awakening? Or is it just sort of confirming, putting a stamp on the ancient wisdom that now it’s been verified by the scientific method?

[42:38] Don: Yeah, I hear you. Okay, so what’s happening, what’s been happening for the last 20 years is there’s been a clear convergence between neuroscience, psychology, and what’s called practical spirituality. You can have a spirituality that’s more or less secular and one that’s religious doesn’t really matter, but it’s a practical spirituality. What is it that you can do to be at peace? Because being at peace is a much better place of being than being stressed. Right. Being loving is much better place than being in conflict, that kind of thing. And so what science has discovered is that two things, one is that we appear to have two natures, and one isn’t a nature at all. One is the way in which we’ve been programmed, the way some of these things I’ve been talking about. And so sciences came to that understanding because as they began to try to define what is human nature, because we talk about it so much, what they began to see is that our human nature is very loving, is altruistic, is peaceful. They’ve even had studies where they found that prior to the rise of civilization, it appears there weren’t any wars. It’s when we came into civilization and property and the possession of property and boundaries and all of that, and greed, the expansion of those boundaries to enrich a culture rich, a society, that war emerged. And then if you work in the field of dependency, drug addiction, or any kind of addiction, what you begin to discover is that it’s through a return to this basic nature that those addictions and dependencies begin to drop. And so much of the suffering that we go through is that our hearts are closed, that we’re out of touch with this basic nature. We’re not operating from it. And so we’re operating from this other nature that we’ve been indoctrinated with, which externalizes us and externalizes everything. And so about 20 years ago, too, neuroscience got into the game. And what they discovered is that we have these two major systems in the brain. One is located in the prefrontal cortex. It’s the seed of everything that’s wonderful about a human being. It’s the seed of creativity, intelligence. It’s why we have art, science, democracy, architecture, you name it. Seven wonders of the world wouldn’t have them without it. And then we have this other part, which is more primitive, which is our fear center, the amygdala and the limbic system, which is focused on our survival. And it’s fight, flight, or freeze. Whenever there is an issue that relates to survival and with human beings, what we found is that we human beings go into survival mode off of perceptions and largely off of misperceptions. We mistake a hose for a snake to give you an image of it. So we misperceive threats that don’t even exist. But that fear system, the amygdala, doesn’t have the capacity to distinguish between a real and present danger and one you’ve made up in your head. It releases these stress hormones that cause you to have these intense fear reactions, and they stem into pessimism, depression, all kinds of things. But they all fall under the heading of fight, flight, or freeze, and they hijack the prefrontal cortex so that you actually begin to lose your iq. You lose it temporarily, but up to 40% when those stress hormones are surging in your body. And they not only do that, they compromise your whole physiology. You start producing abnormal cells because of they impact your chromosomes, they impact your cardiovascular system. It’s huge problem that this part of your brain is creating from you. It’s hijacking your prefrontal Cortex all day long, particularly based, and it’s particularly because of the belief system you’re operating out of, that you live in a threatening world, that because your boss didn’t respond to you, you’re in some kind of threat. Your day goes on like that, and you’re reacting all the time fearfully, and you’re in misery. You’re living to some degree of misery because of that. And what they found that is that people who meditated actually reversed that process of hijacking to the point where they could see the fear center. The networks of the fear center would shrink, and the networks of the prefrontal cortex, the higher brain networks, would actually expand as a result of a spiritual practice. And that was a huge discovery. And that’s where the invitation came from. Let’s get psychology, spirituality, and neuroscience together here to help people fundamentally change their lives from negative to positive. And so that’s what we’re in the middle of right now and a ton of research around it.

[49:02] Rory: Meditation.

[49:03] Don: Do we.

[49:03] Rory: Sorry, do you want to go? Matt?

[49:05] Matt: I just wanted to say that I sometimes wince when I check my email. I’ve noticed this recently. I’m so scared of what’s coming in or what’s not coming in that I wince when I open it. So I think that’s probably an example of me, my brain thinking I’m in a life threatening situation of some kind when I’m checking my email.

[49:28] Rory: Yes, email dread. It’s a real problem for the.

[49:34] Matt: Go ahead.

[49:35] Rory: Really quick follow up. How much meditation does a person need to do in order to reduce this sort of fear based perspective? Because started meditating this year, I do 10 minutes a day only. And I’ve noticed it helps. Is just a little bit of consistency something we should be aiming for?

[49:58] Don: Well, I. A study came out last year found that 5 minutes a day.

[50:06] Rory: 5 minutes a day. And does it matter what kind of meditation you do?

[50:09] Don: No.

[50:10] Rory: Okay.

[50:11] Don: And so the point about meditation is that you don’t necessarily even have to sit on a pillow and close your eyes and go inside. You just need to be open, have your heart open, and be awake to what’s going on in you and around you, and to be in relationship with it in a quiet way, to quiet down, and as you quiet down. Your amygdala quiets down. One of the things that you’re reacting to when you’re getting an email and you’re afraid to look at it, you look at it with one eye or a telephone call, I’m sure there’s people who call you. And as soon as you hear their voice, oh, my God, your heart starts beating a little faster. What’s going on in there, of course, is you’re feeling a threat. And the moment that you stop and you go, anxiety is there. Right now, I’m feeling at risk right now. I’m feeling. My future is uncertain. Right now, depending on what this email is going to say. I can feel it in my body, my heartbeat. And you just bring that into awareness. And in the way that I’m talking about, you don’t identify with the upset. You just watch it. You observe it. You remind yourself, this is in me. It’s not in the email. The email isn’t doing it to me. If I planned a picnic and it rains on my picnic, the rain is not the blame, it’s my response to it. And so as you do that, what that does is sends a message to your amygdala, to your fear center, to your fight or free stress reaction department, and it says, I have control. Now, to bring something into awareness is to exercise a degree of self control. Instead of it overwhelming you and washing over you, you’re doing something. You’re doing something active and positive with it. And that message will go to your amygdala. And your amygdala will quiet down. And that you do that. If you do that consistently for six weeks and they do a brain scan before and after, the brain circuitry in your fear center will have reduced.

[52:39] Rory: I would love to get a brain scan. I wish they offered that to everyone in your physical.

[52:45] Don: Well, it’s something that. It’s interesting. I don’t like to sit in the tube myself.

[52:55] Rory: I’ve never done it, but I know Matt found it a meditative experience.

[52:58] Matt: Yeah, I had a spiritual experience in an MRI machine. Where something about the repetitive beats of the machine working really put me in a trance. And I thought it’d be a wonderful business idea. Recreational MRI as a spiritual practice.

[53:22] Rory: I think we just have one more question.

[53:25] Don: Okay.

[53:26] Rory: Yeah.

[53:27] Matt: So you’ve talked about our programming and the societal influence on how we think. I think this is something me and Rory talk a lot about. It’s a running theme throughout a lot of our conversations. Is this just how humans are? Or is this what humans have been made to be. So I think if you could speak to sort of are we in a crisis right now where our culture is making us miserable? Or is it kind of human nature to be miserable in this way? Or the other option possibly, is that it is a cultural thing, but it’s not especially acute right now that this is sort of what it’s like to live in a society. And once human beings arrange themselves with this level of complexity, we start torturing ourselves with fantasies and delusions and misperceptions.

[54:36] Don: Go ahead.

[54:36] Rory: I was going to say, you talked about the importance of quiet moments and open hearts. And I just feel like to an extent, we’re always so bombarded with distraction, our phones, our tvs, our podcast, that we have less and less quiet moments than I imagine people in the past. Basically, the distractions of today, are they unique?

[55:01] Matt: No.

[55:04] Don: The distractions of today, the misery that most people, well, let’s not use the word. The stress that most people suffer with isn’t caused by the outside, isn’t caused by changes in technology that have people addicted to their iPhones and to their social media account. That’s not the problem. You’re the problem. And the problem is that. And you’re not to blame for being the problem, but you are the problem. And it’s been going on forever. Nobody has really come along and cured the problem of human misery. And you don’t have to look very far to see it. Look around you, look at the unhappiness, look at the stress that people are under. Look at the fear that people are under. Watch the news, look at how much we’re bombarded, the news. They think the only thing worth reporting on is something that makes people fearful, because the truth is we get really attracted to that. They did a study of 900,000 people in Europe to determine what was the effect of people’s exposure to advertising, particularly know tv, radio advertising. We’re bombarded with it all day. Well, not all day long, but in the evening when we just sit back and kind of get pliable and start watching tv, look at the movies we make, full of fear and everything. So they were doing it. They focused in advertising, and they sifted through those 900,000 surveys. And what they discovered was that the fundamental impact of advertising on people was it made them unhappy. It made them unhappy, it made them feel not good enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not rich enough, I don’t going on cruises enough. It’s all about not being enough. And you end up feeling ashamed, you end up feeling less than like, your life isn’t working. We’re bombarded with it. So, yes, the misery we’re in is external. And the values of this society are sick. They really are. They’re making us sick. They’re making us unhappy. And then on the flip side of that, you have the theory. It’s a theory until you actually produce an experience of this for yourself, and only you can do that for yourself. And that theory is all is well. All has always been well. Everything will be. Even if everything is a mess, all is well. And that’s what the mystics have been telling us forever. And they say to you, you were born happy. You were born at peace. You were born whole. You were born immensely creative. You were born a being of immeasurable worth. Look at children. Look at the innocence of children and you will discover your nature. That’s what science looks to when they look at human nature, is what are we in our most basic state, which is a child, and yet that child, as soon as they enter the socialization process through their parents, their schools, and beyond, what’s bombarded is their innocence. And so the question to ask ourselves, how much of that innocence of a child are we still in touch with? And I don’t mean by being childish. I mean by that sense of wonder, that sense of excitement, that ease, how easily you give yourself over to fun, how easily you fall into an embrace of love. All of that. And that’s what we’re missing. That’s why we’re unhappy. And yet all the mystics are saying is that you don’t have to change yourself. You don’t have to fix anything. You have it already. You just don’t see it. You’re just not experiencing it because your programming blocks it. And as Rumi said, our task in this life is not to seek love, not to seek this beautiful nature of ours, but to remove all the barriers that have been placed against it. That’s our challenge. That’s what we’re up against. And the way in which we do that is, first and foremost, we got to bring it into awareness. You can’t begin to move out of what you don’t see. You can’t move out of that tight corner. Your programming that has wired your brain have a very overly active fear center. That corner, it paints you into. You can’t move out of that corner unless you see that you’re in that corner and understand the dimensions of what put you in that corner. It’s the way you’ve been trained to think and react and so you catch it, and you can catch it in small and big ways. I love that example you gave about your emails. That’s a place to catch it. Aha, look at that. I feel a threat. There’s no threat in this moment at all, except the one that my mind says is there. That’s going to release stress hormones that if they go beyond 5 minutes are going to take over my entire emotional state. They may take an hour to back myself out of. To come out of. For those stress hormones to decline. That’s what we’re dealing with. And awareness is the way in which we confront it and move through it.

[01:00:54] Rory: Yes, absolutely. I mean, this conversation was so enlightening and it gave me a lot of pep, actually. I’m feeling good to conquer the rest of my day.

[01:01:03] Matt: I want to ask just quickly because we’re running out of time. The email wincing moment is a good time to check in, but what about, do we need to be doing this work with good moments, too? Like when we’re happy, when we get what we want, when we’re flying high? Should we sort of call ourselves down from those peaks also and be like, okay, you got a promotion and that’s making you happy, but that’s not really the be all end.

[01:01:36] Don: All right. How long is that going to last? Right? Yeah. Even when you have this weekend, I don’t know where it came from. Came out of the blue. I just opened up. My whole being just opened up. I was sitting there feeling it, going, wow, this is amazing. What did I do to get myself here? Well, I didn’t do anything. It just decided to show up on its own. And then about an hour later, I was cognizant of the fact it had passed. Everything passes, even good moments. And just don’t get attached. Don’t get attached to anything. One of the things about detachment, people think is, well, I won’t have the passion for my work. All detachment really is saying is that, yeah, enjoy your successes, go for your successes, but don’t fool yourself into believing that that’s where your happiness will come from, comes from within you. And the more you open up to it through awareness, the more you see exactly what you were saying, that I’m suddenly feeling more invigorated. That’s your true nature arising because some of the blocks based on our conversation have removed the barrier for you. And there it is. It arises. Wow, look at that. That’s the result we all want. We all want to be happy. And the more we get that result, the more we lean into it. Enlightenment is nothing more than you make the shift quicker and quicker and quicker. You’re making yourself miserable. It used to take you a month to dig yourself out of the hole. Then it got down to a week, then it got down to a couple of hours. And eventually it can get down to the moment. Fear raises its ugly head. You shift out of it by using awareness. Boom, you’re out of it, and that’s enlightenment.

[01:03:33] Rory: Yeah. I appreciate that sort of down to earth approach in the sense of down to our sort of mundane lives, because most of us aren’t going to leave our homes behind and become monks. So we have to live within this world where we’re working toward. We have jobs and we work towards promotions, et cetera, et cetera. But how can we do it in a way that brings us a more end suffering or minimizes suffering and allows us to have those moments of transcendence that can sort of punctuate our lives and be very meaningful?

[01:04:12] Don: Yeah. And they will. You begin to discover that within you and surrounding you is this something wonderful that’s always there, but we’re not always there to see it. And the reason we’re not always there is that we’ve been given a set of dark sunglasses. They can’t see it. It’s like we’ve been hypnotized by a hypnotist to see what’s not there and not see what is there. It’s just that. And what’s not there is these illusions of fear. And what is there is this experience that children are having, this sense of wonder, the sense of connection to all that is that in and of itself vibrates with a feeling of happiness and peace. Amazing.

[01:05:06] Matt: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a great talk. It was fascinating, enlightening, and, yes, I also feel invigorated.

[01:05:15] Don: Good. Me, too.