Ep. 6 - David Silver

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. - This is synchronicity. (crowd chattering)

Welcome to episode six of Synchronicity. Today's guest is David Silver from Mind-Rolling Podcasts and also one of the co-founders of Mind-Pod Network, as am I, so there you go. So we're doing a little cross-pollination here. David also happens to be one of my best friends. I think he's like one of my newest best friends too, 'cause you don't get best, you mean you can be friends with a lot of people up, clearly. But best friend, someone who, I will say this, this is the mark of a best friend to me. If you can talk on the telephone for more than an hour, then that's someone who is your best friend.

Doesn't matter who it is, unless it's customer service people, then they're your sworn enemies. But, you know, people you actually know, that's the true mark of a best friend. And David is of a very select group, small, small group of people I can do that with, 'cause generally I hate the telephone. I don't like holding up to my ear, so usually I'm on speakerphone, and I just, I don't like, I don't like the telephone. Father's me, texting slightly better, but also getting into not-so-great zone. Whatever the next thing is, we'll see if that's good. But yeah, David is awesome. I say everyone's awesome, but I think my wife pointed out to me, you're so general, you use these generalities awesome.

I have limited vocabulary at times, but David is brilliant, insightful, smart, kind, compassionate, cool, and also has, tell us some of the best stories. Also literally knows everyone. If you, there's six degrees of Kevin Bacon, there's 100% like four degrees of David Silver. It knows everyone, literally. And we talk about a lot of things in this podcast. Sports among them, and it's funny. When this was recorded, I think the Giants, football Giants, had just lost to the Eagles at the time, but still applicable to this week because the Giants just lost to the Redskins. And I am not making fun of that, because I'm a Dolphins fan, and the Dolphins have ripped my heart out for two decades now, I'm proud to say.

So yeah, I'm not making one of the Giants. I actually like the Giants. They beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, and when the Patriots are about to go undefeated and ruin their dreams, which made me very happy. So you can see, the sports you'll hear me mention, I say it's my sauna, it's a spiritual practice for me. And it really is because I have had to notice quite some not so great behavior in myself over the years, which is well documented by some of my friends back in the day. But what I like about sports is this, is we put our faith in these teams that we choose to like. Some people like it based on where they grew up.

Some people are like me. They looked and just watched and fell in love with the player. Damarino for me, best quarterback ever. I don't care what anyone says. If you listen truthfully for however many people out there who understand what I'm saying about this, Damarino would have been so much better than all these quarterbacks now. It's a different league now, passing different. Anyway, I digress. What I like about sports is you put your faith in these players and teams that you ultimately don't really have any direct control of. Not control of, but you just can't, you can't dictate what's gonna happen.

And that to me is kind of a metaphor for life. We may like to go around and pretend like we know what's gonna happen or have some control over circumstances. But if you've lived, you don't even have to live that long to know that's not really how things work. We can construct these realities that make it feel like we're controlling things. But in reality, that's not what's happening. There's quite a bit of uncertainty. Even from the molecular level, there's uncertainty. So I like that sports kind of emulates that in a way, which if you're into, no big deal. You don't have to like sports. If you're into sports and you're feeling weird because it seems like it's not like the most spiritual thing to do or it's not super holy.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Anything can be spiritual. You can find spiritual stuff and meaning in the most mundane of things. And that's when you're really starting to get on the right path. So for me, sports is very spiritual. I remember, in fact, it's going on right now to open your heart and paradise retreat in Maui with Ram Das and friend Sharon Salzburg is there. Krishna Das, Jaiutal. It's going on right now. And I wore my Ryan Tannehill. Oh, really Ryan Tannehill. But I wore my Ryan Tannehill jersey the two times I went to the retreat during the retreat. And you know, some people I think maybe looked at it and was like, whoa, why is this guy wearing a sports jersey?

But honestly, you know, you got to sport the team. You got to sport the team. So I like sports. We also talk about a few other things. So we talk about news cycles too. He's super into the news. I'm getting more into the news, but I don't watch the news, but he watches the news and we go into politics. And I think that's pretty pertinent right now. Also, I wanted to remind everyone to leave a review and a rating on iTunes if you can and are able. I'd like to read a review that someone left. Here it is. This podcast has quickly become one of my regulars. Now it has a great sense of humor and some really amazing guests.

Not only is synchronicity relatable, it also forces you to think outside yourself. So this is great. Love this review. Thank you so much. So I go to look who it's by and it says Noah 13, 13, 13. And I'm like, man, that really looks like I just left like a really glowing review about my own podcast, like a jerk, like on my own podcast. Look at this, this is great. Noah is wonderful. So I pointed out to my wife and she's like, wait, that's my podcast. That was my review. So I found out that she left the review. She changed her name. So now it doesn't look like I'm just stroking my own ego. But seriously, if you like the podcast, the best thing you could do, don't need donations, don't need any money.

If you want to give money, give it to MindPod Network. There's a donate button on mindpodnetwork.com. Use that. But if you could leave a review, if you like the podcast, that would be awesome. Or leave a comment on the podcast page, whatever you want to do. Somehow, someway, that's all I need. So yeah, that's today's podcast. We talk, David and me talk about a bunch of stuff. We always talk about a really wide variety of topics. So I think you're going to like this. Again, David is one of my favorite people. This podcast easily could have been 10 hours, but we decided to not make it 10 hours. So without further ado, here's David Silva.

(upbeat music)

My first question is, you are one of my good friends, one of my best friends. And you're also a good example, if not the best example, I know of someone who is what I would classify, definitely in the real world, right? Like you engage with a lot of things that many people engage with. You participate in popular culture, you participate in news cycles, maybe to your detriment, I don't know. But you're also, you know, right behind you, I can see all the pictures I've been to your home many times. You're definitely on the spiritual path too. You have Anandama, Ramakrishna all around you. So my first question is, and you have a, you know, mind-rolling podcast where you go in and ask a lot of people from different sectors and walk to life how they got into the spiritual path.

My question to you is, how do you kind of reconcile those two things? How have you done that throughout your life and how do you continue to do that?

Boy, that is a really strong question to start with. Doesn't surprise me caring for you to know, but it's a really good question because this question I asked myself. It's not something that I've totally resolved. It's, you know, it's sort of a mood thing. There are times when I absolutely cannot stand the world and don't wanna, certainly don't wanna switch on the TV and don't, I'm not interested in any relationship or form with the sort of ebb and flow of worldly news, music, anything. You know, it's just a no, take me away from that. I don't wanna, I don't wanna know about it because it's distracting me from deeper inquiry.

But over the years, I've met enough people who also were like this who were, you know, terrifically, you know, deep people who really had gone deep into their own psyche to find a spiritual truth who were also involved in the world. However, I must say that on the whole, my experience is that people do, you know, bifurcate that. And I find it a little bit discouraging because we are in the world. We are incarnated for a specific reason. And, you know, you can kind of be here now and find the present intensity and the one and all of that. At the same time, you know, I enjoy, tremendously enjoy certain things and they relax me and make me less testy and less full of fear because from moment, maybe I should be meditating, but instead I'm watching, you know, the Champions League tournament this week and for the rest of the tournament this year, I watched the execrable display by the Giants last night against the Eagles.

Wow, what a fantastic game. Oh my god. - Yeah, really awful. And yet I got a lot out of it because I found myself just tuning down and letting it go. Now, I saw someone who I know recently, a woman, said, "How can anybody be interested "in professional support?" So, you know, you're just sitting there like an idiot and these guys getting paid millions and you care. And, you know, I couldn't really answer that question. All I could say was, "I like it."

Yeah, you know, I like it. I like Keith Richards' new album. But then I draw the line. And this is sort of like the essence of the answers, you know. I draw the line at stuff which is purely designed to manipulate us into a kind of synambulism.

The news, you know, television on the whole is synambulistic. It puts you into a state which is, which avoids major issues in your own life. You can go a whole life and never contemplate certain things because you've been obsessed with, and that's why, you know, the '60s, I mean, just to further move on, this is very special because pop culture started to, you know, deepen and deviate into universal issues. So after the Beatles had done a few sort of, you know, kind of faux three-part harmony American Black women from Detroit group copies.

Yeah.

You know, you really got to hold on me all those great songs. They started to do songs about spiritual reality. And then, you know, we saw The Dead and bands like that all over the world starting to talk about things and sing about things that were really very, very, very special and to sort of infiltrate our lives and make it, make it so that we actually went towards those things where we might not have done. And so that kind of brought the two things together in a way. And I think that still applies, you know, you go and see a movie and it affects you deeply and has a spiritual impact. So I'm always open to that.

But there's a real distinction between that, which is sort of like deepening and widening, it makes you more of a person within people, within everybody. So you can have a conversation with anybody, which I think is really important. Living in a bubble is something that I deplore, whether it be living in the bubble of a cult or a spiritual discipline that just doesn't allow you to talk to people on the bus. It's like people who drive around in limousines in private planes because they never meet at anybody and then they read the news to us and they think they know what's happening. You know, so that's a long answer.

It's a great answer.

It's a complex question, Will.

It's a very complex question. I know that and that's why I gave it to you right off the bat. I mean, funnily enough, you touched on, I have a few questions jotted down and I know a lot of this is gonna be kind of freeform, but you touched on like almost all of them in that answer, which is awesome 'cause it naturally leads to a lot. But one that I wanted to start with is, 'cause you mentioned the news. You are one of the few people I still know who really actively is involved in the news cycles. Like we talk about this, you watch the cable news shows and I know other people would do, but you are someone I've personally over time and not to completely disengage.

I still watch the debates and try to keep read articles about what's going on, but I cannot watch local news. I can't watch nightly news, I can't watch cable news because I find what you're talking about, it's kind of like a sedative or it's like a red herring. It's like a distraction from either what's going on in your life, which is very important, or what is maybe what you can do about situations to make a change or help or things like that. So what is your relationship with like the cable news is? How do you weave that into the David story?

Well, that's another penetrating question. I might say to people who are listening that Noah and I have had multiple conversations over the last few years and you don't get away with a trivial pursuit, it just doesn't exist on that level and for that I'm internally grateful. 'Cause there've been some sterling exchanges and we usually agree about everything, but we do have exchanges. That's a really good question too. I think on the whole it's a failing. (laughing) I think that I'm trying to cut it down and I know that my partner in life, Sandra, will, you know, if she's here, 'cause she's so busy, but when she's here and I'm watching something and it's some ridiculous nonsense about, I don't know about Ben Carson or about something, she will say, could we just not watch this, please, it's just so meaningless, and I will stop.

So it's a bit of an addiction. However, there is sort of a kind of an interest on my part as to how the world is going. Most of my friends would say, well, David, that doesn't tell you how the world's going at all. It's bleak, it's full of false dialectics, it's full of all kinds of games that they play in order for ratings and all of that sort of superficial stuff and I agree with all of that. So what I'm trying to do now is cut down, actually, and not watch it all, because if you watch CNN long enough, you will end up in an institution.

Right, I mean, or if not, just like, you're medicating yourself in some serious way. I mean, because it's not, it's such a polarized, it's like the politics of actual politics has completely seeped into these news channels over the past X amount of years, and now it's just like, hey, divisive this, divisive that. Be mad at this, did you see this? Oh, here's some horrible shit that happened, and it's not to completely dismiss it the media. I find so many articles and interviews that I've seen over the past few years that have been incredibly informative, but at a certain point, it's kind of like, the analogy I would give is the corporations that exist now.

These monolithic huge corporations that kind of have their own autonomy, so no individual person is like, I'm doing some fucked up shit working for this company, 'cause they're isolated from the mechanisms that allow companies and corporations to do fucked up shit. That's kind of what the new traditional news media feels like to me at this point. Obviously with the internet, we have the choice of finding different things and seeking out our own information, but that relates to another thing you said, which is the bubble, and I had a conversation with Zach Leary about this on the show about these filter bubbles, right?

When you go on Facebook, when you go on social media, when you're on Google, you are basically getting presented information that they think you wanna see, which includes the type of media you consume, which means after a certain period of time, you're not gonna see anything from Breitbart, you're not gonna see anything from right-wing conservative channels if you're a liberal, because they know you don't wanna see that, you're not gonna like that, you're not gonna enjoy that. So you start whittling down, and I've noticed this also in the spiritual sector too, right? I had a weird, interesting thought the other day that I finally thought about the word new age, and I'm like, what the hell is it?

This is like the weirdest term, and whoever came up with it for the relevant time, I'm sure there was an intention behind it, but now it is just a label, right? It doesn't mean anything, but I see that those filter bubbles take place in everything from sports to spiritual, and I wonder what impact that's having on us as individuals and collectively, because we kind of move more towards what we're interested, and maybe not even what we're interested in, what these companies think we're interested in, getting a call, but what these companies think we're interested in, and what does that do? How does that shape our collective reality?

So I'd be interested to hear your kind of statement.

Well, I think I could hardly articulate it better than you did, because I think you said it perfectly, that these large corporations, which break down into all kinds of expressive channels, and so-called communicative channels, they do create phenomena, which are distorted and strange, because people become obsessed with, I saw an interview last night, actually, from a woman who was waiting to get into a Trump debate, and he just made the comments saying that, Jeb Bush had stopped saying that his brother kept us safe, and they asked her, "Well, what do you think about that?" And she said, "Well, I don't think he should say that about it.

"I'm a Republican, he shouldn't say that about Jeb Bush." So then the interviewer said, "Well, how does that impact "on your feeling about Trump?" "Oh, not at all, not at all. "I love Trump, what he thinks, I think." And I saw this, I turned off the TV, and went back to reading a book, but those kinds of numb, dumb axes are caused essentially by television, and by the internet to some extent, but certainly for a generation above 40, by a mix above 50, by mainly by television, below 30, I'd say, entirely by the internet. I have great respect for younger humans now who are just saying, "I don't even own a television."

It's not like I say to them, "Oh, come on, you know, "don't be so, get yourself a TV and watch Homeland." No, they're into better things. And they're into a more communal, more people-oriented activities than just sitting there and imbibing what is basically, as you said before, corporate spew. I mean, a very good example is MSNBC, which I just talked about for a second. Danny Goldberg, one of our podcasters and my oldest friend in the world, he and I had a conversation about a year ago saying that as Comcast had bought MSNBC, how quickly would they get rid of the radicals? Well, they've gone. They put Al Sharpton, I'm not a huge fan of his, but he does have opinions that represent a certain number of people, and he's quite courageous in what he says.

They took him off at Nightly Show at Six and gave him the African-American ghetto on Sunday morning, which has traditionally been where African-American broadcasters are put, and it's an awful thing, and he's there now. They took away all of the opinionators as it were during the day and put in a bunch of Ken and Barbies who just say the news and do stuff about, a lot of stuff about Halloween and a lot of stuff about supposedly good news, whereas some news that we might wish to hear, that might impact our lives, like the state of social security and all kinds of the state of the education system, it's gone because people are bored by that, so they'll put stuff on what isn't boring, and therefore you learn nothing.

So that's not dissimilar to a lot of people's web consumption at this point. I mean, we know the word partners in MindPod Network and one of our mission statements there is to actually put out content that is meaningful, impactful, and for lack of a better word, Evergreen, that it's constantly useful for people, so you can revisit it and it actually should have a meaningful impact on your life, that's the whole point of it, whereas a lot of the things on the web are specifically set up to be not that, they're supposed to be quick attention grabbing, headlines, bites, things, entertainment that's transient and is gone, and we'll see how that impacts younger generations and everything, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, and I don't wanna get on the shit on mainstream culture tangent too much, because I think one of the things you mentioned, you said Homeland, right?

I think one of the things that all of this gender connectivity with media has allowed us to do is really tell these cultural myths and stories in a way that is collectively shared, that's kind of unprecedented, right? I mean, before there was a limited number of channels you could get, only so many movies would come out, yes it was a shared experience by only a small number of things, but now, if you're into Game of Thrones, you understand the mythology behind that, like the Star Wars thing, they premiered it last night during the football game, I was looking on Twitter, people were like, I'm crying, and they're crying, not because they probably don't know why, but it's because it taps in the symbolic references in Star Wars cut really deep, so when you see those things and it mixes with nostalgia, it evokes an emotional response, but I think the power of, you know, that the ability we have to tell stories now and narratives that are collectively shared is potentially amplified and also a broader spectrum, which I find really interesting, and I don't think it's good or bad, I think we can look at news stations and say, well this is kind of bad, I mean, I don't think that they're putting, think the intent that's behind that is not to make the world a better place, it's to pay the bills, to grow as a company, to increase revenue, which I think a lot of, I mean listen, Bernie Sanders, right, he's running on this entire platform, basically, that that's what's happening right now, corporations have taken over, they're squeezing the middle class, all of the social injustices would be rectified if we had, you know, middle class reform and, you know, started taxing the wealthy, which I agree with all of those sentiments, let's just go into there, after I went on that tangent, let's, what do you think of Bernie Sanders, what do you think of Hillary Clinton, what do you think is going on?

Whoa, so Noah's not gonna ask about Sharon Salzburg, whatever, okay, well, no, I'm out for this as you know, I think, but I've been watching Bernie Sanders for years and interesting parallels are going on, Jeremy Corbyn was just elected the head of the Labour Party in England and in Britain, and if people think that the Labour Party has been a socialist party ever, they have to read up, because it might have been in the late 30s, but since then it's been a party that's trying to get elected and therefore was centralized, so it was Clintonized by Tony Blair, who took the Labour Party and made of it a centrist party, which won for a while, and then he ended up supporting the war in Iraq and everybody knew that he'd somehow lost his way.

My sister who worked for the Labour Party gave me a lot of insight into this, so Jeremy Corbyn is a mixed Bernie Sanders, you know, looked like Donald Trump, but Jeremy Corbyn is a serious anti-war, nuclear disarmament socialist who makes very little money, lives in a small house, drives a small car, like Pope Francis, so forth, and is a true egalitarian. I think that Bernie Sanders has the same, has the same kind of real, real feelings about the way income is distributed in the United States and believes in the country, because he believes in certain facets of the original concept of the country disregarding slavery and the massacre of the Native American people, but I mean, he does see that Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and those guys had a vision, which was much more people oriented than anything that had existed in Europe, and I think that's kind of ultimately where Bernie comes from, his socialism is just about equalization of income and the opportunity for young people to gain a college degree without having to, you know, mortgage off their entire lives.

I think Hillary Clinton, who I have met and spent almost 30 minutes talking with, one to one, very smart woman, quite a compassionate woman, not a hard case, not just an opportunist. When people say that, I don't think they know her, it's been said many times, that one to one, she's very humane, very human, very likable, and looks you straight in the eye and listens to what you said, which is more than I can say for some of the people I know. So, you know, I do not hate Hillary Clinton. I have arguments with people about it, 'cause they say, well, she's not the real thing, she just wants the power, and her husband was another centrist of the Tony background.

But what is their alternative? So I think, you know, I'm rationalizing a little bit, because I think Hillary can beat pretty much anybody if she's on her game-- - Rubio, who's it gonna be?

I think it's gonna be Trump.

I just am buckling up if that happens.

Well, I mean, you know, it's just a horrible thought, but I don't see, I mean, at this moment, I don't know how they're gonna bring him down, unless they find out that, you know, that indeed, he's been doing, you know, bestiality or something, really, really-- - What Tony Blair did that, and it's no big deal. That doesn't mean, bestiality is cool. That's like a little feather in your cap these days.

Okay, well, there you go. I think that, I hope it isn't Trump, even though Trump is a strange being because he's obviously a power seeker, something of a megalomaniac, definitely an egomaniac, something of a hypocrite, but he is bringing truths out that no one else, because he doesn't care. - He doesn't care.

So when he says, you draw the line when he calls, you know, he says you can't look at Carly Fiorina's face, therefore don't elect her, which is insulting, disgusting. But he also represents a sort of proto-fascist idea that all foreigners should be ejected by--

Oh, xenophobic, for sure. I mean, horrible. - Horrible.

But just to get back to Clinton-- - Yeah, yeah.

I think that she is a smart woman, and I don't think that I'm not affected by the money she's earned or any of that. You know, that's okay. I mean, if someone's willing to give you all that money to give a lecture, there's a reason for that. And they don't give it away and then depart the scene because they gave all their money away. They can afford to.

The question is really with her, whether she'll actually get anything done. I don't know, but I know this much, that when I watched the Democratic debate, there was a lot more issue-oriented conversation than there ever was.

Right, and that's what struck me too.

I think Rubio is a possibility because he's young, he represents a different generation, he has a brain. I personally wouldn't vote for him in a millennium, but I think that compared with the other circus performance that are in that group, yes. 'Cause you think of the other people, you know, Jeb, he may not be a bad guy. I don't wanna make any judgments about Jeb. He's obviously got intelligence. He's obviously, you know, a real person, but he's burdened down with the past of his brother. And, you know, he's not gonna be the nominee. You can't be the nominee with 7% of the Republican vote. Anything can happen in the next six months, but it is six months.

It's not a year.

Yeah, no, it's not a year anymore.

Primary.

It's almost November. Yeah, no, I get it.

So, you know, I don't know. I think that the Democrats have been a weak force in the last, actually, as far back as I remember, I'm dissatisfied with their compromises and their lack of ability to get things done. And so, I'm very disappointed in them, but it's all, you know, in the world we live in? No, it seems to me on that level but it's always the best of the worst.

Well, here's my question to you. Why should we care? This is something I have thought about for the past 10, 15 years ranging from very political-minded, really interested in what was going on to completely uninterested, could not care less. And now I've kind of centered on, like, I'm actively involved because I realize these people are kind of gonna be leading our country in one way or the other. But why should we care about all this stuff? What is it?

Yeah, and I mean that in a sense also of like, when you're talking about the oneness, when we're talking about, does this really matter? What is, why should we care? That's the question.

Well, we're in this incarnation with all, with 7.1 billion people on the planet. We see this great suffering. We can alleviate suffering sometimes. You know, in ways that are diverse, but it happens. When Lyndon Johnson became president, despite his rap, you know, which is not good about Vietnam and so forth, he did bring in the great society, which helped a lot of people. When Richard Nixon came in after him, he implemented much more strongly Medicare, Social Security, and boasted up those things. These are non-partisan things that I'm saying. You know, they did things which helped old people, for instance, by old, I mean, anybody who was collecting Social Security, they created a bit of a safety net, so people wouldn't be in dire poverty in the richest country in the history of at least this cycle of the world.

They did those things. Nowadays, what's the problem is that nobody seems to get anything done. And, you know, yesterday I saw they're going to bring them rules about drones, which means that you're not going to be walking down the street and be killed by a drone that was set off by someone who was drunk, or a vicious, or just careless.

Not if you live here. If you live in Afghanistan or Pakistan or somewhere else.

You live here, exactly.

On the other level, I think that the reason someone like Bono has really pressured politicians in various countries is because he saw some real inequities that were, that could bruise all easily, like debt forgivable, forgive, give nuts. You know, the idea that countries in particularly in Africa and in the East, and the Far East and the Near East owed money, which the people they owed it to didn't really need. And at this point, they could be forgiven and their economies could grow consequently. He did that because he believed he'd get influenced politicians. But it seems in this culture right now that it's a do-nothing type of deal, like in the 19th century, you know, that just don't do anything to upset the corporate kings and robber barons who pay for, within Citizens United, pay for the super PACs, who support the politicians who get in, and they're scared to death of alienating people.

And it's very complex because with the Koch brothers, if you watch television a little bit, you'll see that they support some very good things. Lincoln Center would not be what it is without the Koch brothers in New York. They do support good things, so they're very clever. They will support things which enhance us while destroying our ability to be sort of equal citizens. So it's complex. I think that on the local level of gubernatorial and mayors and so forth, much more gets done on the federal level, which is kind of indicative of the American political consciousness of the past 200, God knows how many years.

The idea that a federal government could impose things upon a population that they don't want is sort of visiated by the balance of local non-federal decision-making, which is based upon, okay, that the education system that works in New York City does not work in Shreveport. So the system has got all kinds of complicated, I think rather brilliant things, but it's not a parliamentary democracy. So I myself, for instance, do not think that Wyoming should have the same number of senators as New York. I really don't. I think that should be stopped. They should have one senator, we should have eight.

You know, because there's millions and millions and millions and millions of us, and there's nine people in Montana, and they shouldn't have two senators. So those are, there are things about the system. My brother-in-law is an expert on the growth of parliamentary democracy in the West, and I've read his work, and he has maintained, he's an American, by the way, he's maintained that the system in America, the Electoral College and the Sanitorial representation, is part of the reason that there's a lot of iniquities in America, and I agree with him about that. So, but I haven't given up on politics because I see it as being karma yoga.

Not the politicians, maybe, but personally, when I give up on it and don't pay attention, I feel like, oh my God, I have the ability to make words and sentences and to influence at least the people around me, and I try, and that's a little bit of karma yoga. However, as you said at the beginning of this thing, the partisan nonsense that is presented to us by the corporate media every day has destroyed a certain aspect or facet of representative democracy, and that is dangerous because the alternative is dictatorship or just chaos, you know?

So, yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a really, that's a good, it's something that I just, I consistently deal with too. I mean, it also in an interesting way relates to the sports stuff you were mentioning. This is another question I had, I mean, because to me, I've realized one of my biggest sadenas or spiritual practices has been being a sports fan. Like, and I mean that in a very real--

It's really helping the dolphins fan.

Yeah, I'm a dolphins fan. I have had to learn the skill of equanimity. Like, I don't mean that as a joke. Like, I used to, if we go back 15 years, I'm freaking out at bars, screaming, just like I would be mortified seeing like a video of myself, which I'm sure exists. But now, like, you know, after a miserable loss, which are often, I actually can get over it really quickly. And just by being aware of the difference there is something, but like, I mean, there are values, is going back to what you were originally talking about with the sports thing. And this does relate to politics. 'Cause to me, politics, I don't mean to trivialize 'cause there's lots of very important issues, it's like, but it's also a game, right?

It is also a game that people are playing. They're, they're involving their egos, they're involving, you know, compassion. They're involving all this stuff mixed and jumbled together. But the sports stuff, I will say, like it teaches you to kind of put yourself out of yourself and see how you're relating to a situation. And that to me has been one of the more interesting aspects of it. And I know you're a huge Manchester United fan and you follow them as avidly as I follow the dolphins, which I know, like, my soul has hurt after losses in a specific way. Like, and I don't, I don't mean, like, I, and then I'm mad at everyone the rest of the day, I'm acting like an asshole, like this is wrong and I can't stop it, but I do think it gives you insight into how we relate to things in life.

You know, you can use it as a metaphor for any relationship you have to something. So I thought that was, that was really interesting. You said that.

No, I think you're right. You know, my father was, we're from Manchester. So this isn't some sort of evening. United of the, I think, maybe apart from Real Madrid and the richest and most popular sports club in the world. And I'm not just jumping on this. I, you know, my whole family has been United fans since 1912. So we're, we're, died in the wall, you know. And what you just said is totally correct. And why is that my father used to get so depressed when United lost and it would, it would influence the whole family and it wasn't abusive. He wouldn't hit anybody, but he was kind of, he was kind of dull for the rest of the day.

You know, I think they lost. Well, my United lost three nothing to Arsenal two weeks ago. They were, they were just murdered. I watched it on television and they were massacred by a team that United of the fans find the most obnoxious of all. And I must say that, you know, they were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game.

They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They were losing early in the game. They realized, oh, this is crazy, you know? So it's like anything else. I don't, you know, I mean, I love music, but I used to get very partisan about it and say, oh, God, you really like that man? How could you? They're awful. And why don't you listen to, you know, little feet or what it means to talking heads, you know, bands of great quality and sort of stop that?

Because I realized that, you know, it's all exquisitely designed in comic terms that you like something you don't like something else. I personally went through a period when I loved Shakespeare, was crazy about Shakespeare, attended the Shakespeare Institute in England for two to three years and was, you know, completely involved in that. And I guess I was a bit of a snooty person because I certainly could compare, you know, James Bond films with King Lear. I got over it because I realized that, you know, some people it just doesn't speak to and to be, you know, sort of snobby about these things as well as being totally partisan about my Schneider door but my only dolphins are the New York Giants.

It's foolishness and, but it gives you a moment of relief. Life is so replete with minor and major suffering that if you can overcome that to some extent by a relaxation form of entertainment, which of course didn't exist until fairly recently. I mean, what were people doing in the 17th century for entertainment?

Cards, right? - Well, they're like, you know, things like that.

They were playing the harpsichord, they'd play cards, they'd drink, they'd look at each other, whatever. But, you know, here we are for now almost a century now. Well, not quite, but sort of three quits of a century. We've been, you know, sort of bombarded by all kinds of entertainment and it, as we go back to the beginning of the podcast, it can be a distraction which can suddenly you wake up from it and realize that your life has been mainly watching a screen and, you know, and the only way I rationalized it was 'cause I was making a lot of stuff that was on a screen, but that didn't, that doesn't excuse me.

I mean, you know, do I really need to watch Bill Maher? Do I really, I mean, it makes me laugh and there's some truth in there and so forth. But if I don't watch it, nothing is lost.

Yeah, well, so what you're saying though, is something that I experience a lot in my life. I go through these oscillations of kind of really, really like hyper productivity, where I'm getting a lot of things done, I may be meditating, I may be exercising, I may be, you know, creating things and then I'll have a period and seemingly brought on by nothing where I'm just like, if you ask me to do like two different things, I'd be like, nah, I can't do it. Like it's too much, I need to just zone out, I need to refresh, whatever you want to call it. And I wonder how much of that is our built in kind of karmic tendencies or if you want to take the modern scientific view neural pathways that we're emphasizing over a course of a lifetime or any period of time.

And I wonder how that really, what the relationship is there? Because I see it change in myself often. Like it truthfully does and I try to foster the qualities that I think make me a happier person and a better person to be around and, you know, more fulfilled. But it's not like it's a switch always, you know, it's not like something I can just turn on and turn off as an analogy for something I was able to do like that. Like when I stopped smoking cigarettes, I was done. Like it wasn't like, eh, I'm gonna start smoking cigarettes again, maybe I won't. Like, you know, people have a hard time quitting and I know and I'm not to minimize how difficult that can be.

But like when I was done, I was done. Like that was it. But I can't do that for all of my negative behaviors or habits. So I wonder, so what I've started to do is look at it like this. It's not look at things as though they're negative patterns or behaviors. But again, this is a Sharon Salzburg thing, right? Looking at it as an opportunity to look with fresh eyes, to begin again, to see the patterns that you're doing. And over time, if you notice enough things, you have the ability to consciously change that or reassess those patterns. So it's a little less harsh rather than being like, I didn't exercise today or I ate this today and I should know I'm a big dumb idiot.

You know, being like, oh, well, you know what? Next time when that happens, I can note it again. And then when it happens 10 more times, I can be like, all right, guy. Gotta actually pay attention here. So yeah, I don't know how I got on that tangent, but it's something I've just noticed in the oscillations of really being like hyper-involved and feeling productive in whatever aspect of like, next to just kind of relaxing a little bit. Not to say one is better than the other, but just noticing those oscillations kind of naturally occur for lack of a better turn.

Well, you know, relaxing is an individual thing and we all do it differently. And the problem maybe is that, you know, in the American paradigm, entertainment and so forth has become a sort of life, almost a spine of daily life. You know, in Europe, it was the royal thing. You know, the king and queen and the nobility were your sort of like demigods. And then that went away, thank goodness, at least in most places. And but here, that isn't the past. So now it's sort of rich people. So you know, you've got vastly rich people running for president. And then you've got people who've made fortunes in the entertainment area who are clearly have nothing to contribute to us, except their hairstyle or their latest plastic surgery or some other, you know, obviously worthless thing for us to be, you know, thinking about it.

And it's infused all over the world because you could go to other countries and you'll see that, oh, God, you know, I've never missed the Big Bang Theory. It did a wonderful show.

I like the Big Bang Theory.

Well, no, I'm not making a comment. It's just, you know, you're in Colorado or something. And someone's saying, it's happening all over the world. My feeling about this is that it's a personal choice and that, you know, I know that people that devote themselves to a monastery or a monks or roshis or whatever, you know, a good number of those people are sincere and really do not want to waste time with, you know, with anything, even with, you know, they may like to, you know, check out a Bruce Springsteen record or something, but basically they're not watching sitcoms. They're not wasting time. And that's totally wonderful 'cause they are our teachers in a way.

But for most of us, I think, to be honest, I get kind of bored when, for the sake of it, let's call it spiritual people, when all they want to talk about to me or think that we can actually exchange ideas about are things that are so, you know, sort of, you know, we know, we don't know the answers, but we know the words and the words keep coming out. And if I'm constantly being communicated to you on that level, I get bored. I'm sorry, I just get bored. The words begin to lose their, what they used to go, valency, but certainly they lose their power to inspire and to transform. A lot of what is transformational, it comes from silence.

A lot of it comes from study. A lot of it comes from interaction. Our ability to be happy, which is the ultimate, you know, it's kind of like, that's it. We want to be happy and kind and thoughtful, compassionate. Our ability to happen, you know, it varies with everyone, you know, I mean, we all, you know, we know people who like what we like, and that's certainly in a pop cultural world, that's kind of where it's at. You know, so people who really do like Miley Cyrus, I really like Miley Cyrus and I really like Miley Cyrus. I have two for two here, Big Bang and Miley Cyrus. I think she's extremely talented and wakes people up a little bit, you know, she sort of says, "Well, you know, is nudity like evil?"

You know, she's a little evil. But I like her, I think she's talented too, and you know, this is the worst things to promote the nudity and weed. So, I mean, you know, I do a lot worse. She's in a tradition of artists. She's an artist. From Salvador Dali and Moistel Duchamp through to Jack Kerouac and John Lennon and Miley Cyrus and so forth. And also in other forms, you know, filmmakers like Godard and even major filmmakers like Scorsese, you know, constantly can wake us up. You know, they can wake us up into realities and into accusations that we didn't know through the pop medium. And, you know, people are amazing when they dichotomize like you.

They say, "Well, you know, the Beatles weren't Beethoven." Well, no, they weren't, but, you know, Beethoven.

What does that even mean, though?

Well, Beethoven wasn't Beethoven.

Right.

You know, when Beethoven was playing, he was sort of dying to get patrons and Mozart too and Schubert and all of them.

Yeah.

You know, they do anything to get a patron 'cause they were starving and they needed, you know, the count of Monte Cristo, whatever. Some aristocrat said, "Well, you can play at the court and I'll give you some shackles." And, you know, it was sort of a commercial thing. There's no difference. It plop becomes classic when it's stopped, you know, it's sort of like interesting because, you know, people can get weird about Miley Cyrus, but they're very, very respectful of Joni Mitchell. But I guarantee you that Joni Mitchell in 1968, '69, '70, whatever, was also trying to have hit requists as she could pay the rent.

So, we're all human beings here. I kind of, I do get bored with constant, so-called spiritual conversations when I know that the real, and this is something I've learned from the Sharon Salzbergs and Joseph Goldstein's and Ram Das's, and even from our friends, our close friends, that, you know, it is important to see that there are other people around. And, you know, sometimes I'm in an elevator in Manhattan and somebody's wearing a rangers shirt, you know, and I can have a little talk with them about how terrible the rangers are, how great they are, whatever, and I'm not really that concerned about the rangers, but that little interaction with me and that guy or that woman can create a moment when there is indeed some communication which might just brighten her or my day.

And that is so important.

I agree.

You know, if you were Buddhist walking around and all you care about is, I mean, I was at the Apple Store over the weekend in Grand Central and was amazed to see a whole bunch of saffron road Buddhist monks in there.

They're not the scammers, right? They're not the people going out in the city. I don't, well, I can-- - They can be. Give me some like, give me some iPad.

No, they look very authentic today and it's something in their eyes. And I don't know, I didn't talk to them. They didn't ask for money. They were looking at iPads.

Yeah.

And, you know, I smiled to myself 'cause I thought, I wonder if, when they get their iPad, are they just gonna be looking at the poems of Milarepa? Or are they gonna be checking the scores in the Premier League in England? I don't know, but it's beautiful, you know, it's a beautiful canvas.

Yeah.

You know, it's a beautiful canvas. It's been marred by divisiveness and a total sort of movement away from, you know, kind of, well, let's put it this way. Organized religion has its place, but it's place of total domination of telling Catholics you can't do this, you can't do that, of telling acidic people, you can't do this, you can't do that. We're not in that world anymore, some are, but most of us make our own decisions. That's a double edged sword, because it means that situational vision can be quite selfish, whereas the original, you know, sort of Christian and Buddhist and so forth is about understanding that you live in a nexus of humanity.

And therefore, it's very important to connect with that humanity. The word bubble, you go back to that word bubble, it's very big with me right now, 'cause I'm just tired of it. We all live in some kind of bubble, but I'm tired of this, you know, kind of, I'm not interested in anything except this. Well, if you're in a monastery, great, but if you're not, how are you gonna communicate with people who do not know about Ramakrishna? Do you just not want to?

Right.

You just wanna sort of let die on the lamb, you know?

And you touched on Ramakrishna, who is one of my favorite mystics saints of all time. He's much like the name Karole Baba, Maharaji, all one thing. All of the paths up the mountain lead to the same place. There's a ton of them. It's all the same thing in one different permutation. And that's kind of how I look at what we're talking about with like the cultural paradigm here is the more experiences and understanding you have about different aspects of life, culture, music, arts, entertainment, politics, the more able you are to relate and have some type of understanding and hopefully some compassion for differing points of view.

It doesn't, by reading something that's right wing, I don't become right wing. But at least I know that's where they're coming from and maybe there's some truth there or maybe there's some, I've learned this with music too. Listen, I'm not gonna pretend that it's all for everything. There's still plenty of music out there that I think is crap, like for lack of a better word. I think it's soulless crap and maybe it is, maybe it isn't, who knows? But my point is is that there's a lot of stuff out there that we can look at and essentially make, determine our relationship to and the more you experience, this is like a hallucinogenic epiphany I've had and I'm sure a lot of people have.

If you know about everything, if you had all of the knowledge in the world, you could talk to anyone about anything and you notice this in life. You know what you're describing with the Rangers jersey. I've had that plenty of times because I'm a dolphins fan, when I see other dolphins fans out in public, we can have a quick little conversation about something and relate on a human level. Maybe it's about sports. Maybe that's something people think is silly, but there is a connection that's forged there. So I think, I mean, the theme of this podcast, what I'm realizing now is kind of the interplay between spirituality, which was the opening question here, and culture, and how do we weave those things together?

And I'm much like you, very reticent to go full bore, 100% spiritual all of the time, right? Everything can be spiritual in one sense, right? You can mow your grass and that can be spiritual, but you don't have to talk about the six parameters every single day with every single person you meet. You can weave that in, and what I'm interested in seeing happen here is kind of normalizing for lack of a better world. Some of these concepts and really deep things, but also having them be loose enough and light enough that we can use them in our everyday life too. That's what it is. You're some, I don't know if the Donald Trump people are gonna do it, but you know, if you like Donald Trump and you wanna believe in some Vedic philosophy, more power to you, you'll have an interesting perspective that no one else has, and that can at least create a platform for some engagement.

Maybe Donald Trump is, 'cause I agree. And listen, the crazy thing about Donald Trump for all of this stuff that we're talking about, a lot of the things he's saying are refreshing, even to me, right? I know he's an idiot. I know what he's saying is probably, hopefully well orchestrated by himself. He might just be adult, who knows. But like, when you see someone up there just not giving a fuck for lack of a better word, that's somewhat refreshing when all we've been given is people who are constantly giving out canned responses. We know they're beholden to lobbyists. So it all boils back down to me that I think everyone, and this sounds kind of hippie-ish and new agey, but everyone has a unique perspective based on their experiences.

And the more experiences we're open to, and attempt to understand, the easier our relationships with other people will be. I guess that's kind of the summation of what we've been talking about in a lot of ways.

Yeah, and everything you just said was very, I think very penetrating. I mean, I recently had a, I've been having a correspondence with someone who makes propaganda films for the pro-life people. He doesn't just, he isn't just anti-choice. He's actually making the films that are sent to whatever. And I've known him for about 20 years, and he's a guy that's impossible to dislike. I mean, he's just very, very, very affable, very funny, very smart, and you know, it's interesting that my quick sort of reflexive responses to say, I don't wanna even know you, 'cause you're doing things that are, you know, the most women that I know at any rate would find repulsive.

But he has a perspective, and he believes in it. And I don't even wanna say to him, you believe in it, but you're a fool, because who am I to say that? Now, it changes if, you know, you see someone like, I see someone like Silvio Berlusconi, or dictators, where also thieves and crooks and liars.

Yeah, it's not a passive thing. I don't mean this to be like open to everyone if they're like, listen, if Hitler's on your doorstep and someone's committing the horrible atrocities, there is some strength that needs to be cultivated, to be like, this is wrong, that, yeah.

It's wrong, and you stop it. Yeah, and everybody would agree with that, including I think his Holiness and Dalai Lama, but I think that everybody has to be aware that if something, if something is called a democracy, well then debate is necessary, and you can't have people like suddenly pulling out a gun and shooting each other when they don't agree with each other, which might have been the case, you know, a couple hundred years ago, but we've come a long way in a way, because at least now people don't, you know, actually engage themselves in physical horror shows, at least, you know, on the political level, what they do do is they lie, and they don't want to alienate people who pay for them, and that's just awful, and we know that.

But, you know, I, you know, I can't say that I'm down the line, completely left wing, but I, you know, the other people have got ideas about how to improve an economy that are not necessarily anything like what I believe in, and I'm not an expert, so for me to sort of start saying, well, there's only one way to do this, and that's this.

Right, which is what we're talking about too, is like the elitism and music and all that. All right, I want to bookend this with your, I want you to give a tip for, quote unquote, normal people who are on the spiritual path. One tip that you have found to be particularly helpful, I'm sure you have a lot, but one.

Well, mm, Ram Das has been very influential upon me because of his brilliance, not, you know, I don't regard him as a guru, and he doesn't want to regard us. And the tip that he gave me, not one to one, but sort of over the years, is that all paths lead to one, and that just because someone goes to church, and lights a candle, and prays to the mother Mary, and does ritual things that we might find nonsensical and meaningless, does not mean that they are any less close to the one than you are. If you, it's like, it's almost like saying, well, if I'm a Catholic and I see someone praying to a monkey, I'm gonna say, that's ridiculous.

Why are you praying to Hanuman? Who is that, what is it about? And then, you know, people can talk about it, and say, well, he's sort of an equal symbol of service, and of love, and of devotion and loyalty, but then that person could then say, well, yeah, but what about Jesus? He was actually a human being, not a monkey, what's the matter with you? You know, so I would say that whatever gets you through the night, if it really does, is crucially important for you to maintain, and obviously, I'm not talking about, well, you know, let's dress up in uniforms and have swastikas, and I believe in that, it gives me a real hit to do that.

You know, within the realm of humanitarianism, kindness, and exploration of consciousness, you have to be tolerant. And that within that tolerance, which is different, it's easier said than done, because, you know, you can look at, you can walk around crime heights and see a bunch of Hasidim and Lubavitch and Jewish people with fur hats and long dark coats in the middle of 95 degrees in July weather, and think these people are lunatics. It's kind of like a reflex, but they could turn around and go, okay, well, who was Rama and Sita, and why'd you go rom-rom? Who were those people? Do you know they existed?

You know, this argument can be immediately made nuclear as soon as the word tolerance is taken out of the picture. So I would say the tip I would give to people is, be tolerant of something which you at first find antithetical to the way you were doing. Even if somebody says, I can't meditate. I just don't wanna meditate. Well, don't just go, you should meditate, because you know, maybe they don't need to meditate.

Right, or maybe they're not ready, or maybe it's not gonna mean the same thing. No, I think that's great. All right, well, David, thank you. Thank you for joining this. Yeah, we're definitely gonna do it again. I love, I love talking to you, it's just true. You know what it is? No, before we leave, I just wanna say, it's what the rest of Farron's call reasoning. And it's got nothing to do with the reason or rationalization, it rationalized. What it's about is reasoning means the glue that holds two people are more together while they talk. That's truly a glue that makes you happier and makes you closer to that person and closer to truth.

And it can go on as long as you like, and it is reasoning, and it may go to the mystical, it may go to the downright, it may be the eagles and the giants, but it is two people exchanging a form of communication, which is an actual metaphor for love. I love it, man, I love it, I'm right with you. All right, well, we'll talk soon. Yeah, thanks now, great. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Well, if you've listened this far, I'm assuming you must really enjoy this. So I'm gonna remind you again, leave a review on iTunes. I think there's like, I read I have like three or four more weeks. This isn't early on.

If you're going back and listening to this, when this pop cast, this is what you get when you listen to the end. You get pop cast. When this podcast is wildly popular and everyone is talking about it, and you're going back and you're hearing this now, again, I had a message to the Johnny and Sally come lately, which my mom was not happy about. I use the bad word, but if you've listened this far, rate and review it now, 'cause I have like a few more weeks early on, I think to get in new and noteworthy, and my numbers are pretty good. Not gonna tell you what my numbers are, but if you want, you can email me at nlampred@mindpodnetwork.com, and I'll tell you exactly what my monthly statistics are.

So there's no doubt, but yeah, rate and review it, that's all I want. Next week, my guest is Vic Burger. If you don't know Vic, get ready, gonna be sweet. All right, have a good one, bye-bye. The savings are here! Happy birthday, America! It's America's 250th birthday. We're celebrating all month long at Nielsen Chevy. By giving you freedom of choice. Save up to $250 off service. Save up to $250 off accessories. With leases for $250 or under. Perried, a Route 46 and Dover, or shop online at Nielsenchevy.com. Together, let's drive. And Nielsen Chevy, fun is in the driver's seat.