Gradual Awakening with Dr. Miles Neale

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This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. (tense music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to synchronicity. I have an amazing guest this week. Dr. Miles Neal is on the show and man, I gotta say truthfully, this is one of my, not one of my, this is top three favorite episode that I've done and you'll see why. So I wanna, I have a bunch of stuff to cover in the intro here. We have some cool new sponsors that aren't made up. There's other fun things going on, but I'm recording this intro in the midst of a political situation, which I think is, is really not a political situation. It's just kind of a human situation where the Supreme Court, potential Supreme Court Justice, Kavanaugh, is going through hearings with an accuser, and now there's multiple accusers, Dr. Blasey Ford, she's providing testimony today to the Judiciary Committee.

So basically this is the step before the Judiciary Committee votes to send it over to the Senate where then a potential justice is confirmed or not. So this is important for a lot of reasons, obviously. This determines the conservative or liberal lant of the Supreme, slant of the Supreme Court, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Very important, especially in Roe v. Wade, which I'm not minimizing this in any way. I'm saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I really don't think this is about politics. You know, that's ultimately, at the end of the day, like, this isn't about that, it really, really isn't.

It's about a lot of other things. So I wanna preface this by saying that the area that Brett Kavanaugh is from, Georgetown Prep, is the school he went to, Dr. Blasey Ford went to Houlton Arms, is the area I grew up in. I was from Silver Spring, Maryland. It's a little bit different than Bethesda and Chevy Chase, but the high school I went to in the middle school were all in Bethesda. So although they did move that high school temporarily, right close to my home, the last year's high school, which is fucking awesome. But it was Bethesda, Chevy Chase, high school, there's a lot of schools there. It's generally, although not 100%, a lot of rich white privileged people.

And not everyone, not everyone acted the way that Brett Kavanaugh is accused of acting, but there are certainly, I was just talking about with Alexis, she's from the same area. Fortunately, never had anything happen to her. But, you know, we could recount instances of hearing about or first or secondhand knowledge of shit like this happening. Just really stuff that if you're not from that type of area, or if you just can't fathom it, does happen. It absolutely happens, and there's a culture that kind of breeds it. It's kind of like penalties for these things, whereas, you know, we don't drive drunk and we don't do commit crimes and things, 'cause we view the penalty, the legal penalty, their fines or jail time as deterrence.

People of a certain class view them as kind of just, that's the cost of doing it. Oh, I was driving drunk while it cost me this much to hire a good lawyer to get off. Oh, I did this sexual assault while I just hire a good lawyer, and that's the cost of doing that thing. And of course, like that's, we don't have, I'm not calling that, we know that's bad, obviously. We know it's bad, but when that becomes pervasive within a culture and within a geographical region, you get a really fucking crazy feedback loop. So I'm prefacing everything I'm about to say, but I think I have firsthand knowledge of this culture grew up on the outside, because like I said, I'm a few towns over, but really, and just obviously you can tell my personality, I'm not going on raping people during high school and college, I saved the raping behavior and I'll save that for my 80s, okay?

This is Jesus Christ though. The fact that we can't even comfortably joke about this shit is how fucked up things have gotten, but anyway, this was a culture that was pervasive and I have firsthand knowledge of and secondhand knowledge of this is something that anyone from my high school who went out and partied and did this stuff, I went to the beach week that everyone's talking about for Brett Kavanaugh, knows that this shit takes place. Not everyone is doing illegal sexual assaults, but it happens more than it should, which is never. So today I'm watching the GOP, the Republicans use a proxy, a woman to interview, Dr. Blasey Ford, who just, let's be clear, incredibly believable and credible if you disagree and realize that it might hurt your political stance by acknowledging that she's believable, then that requires its own soul searching, but really you can tell she's a victim of sexual assault and furthermore, she could identify Brett Kavanaugh's.

Her accuser, we're seeing the Republicans use a woman, another woman who is well versed in sexual assaults, kind of try to poke holes in what Dr. Blasey Ford was saying and I just think we've hit a point, like this is the point. What really led me to this is I'm watching the analysis while they're taking a quick recess of basically the CBS news, the one I watched were free online, they're only putting women pundits on, they're not daring to ask any men what they think, which I think is kind of shitty because they should include men who are capable of speaking about this clearly just 'cause you need, you want men who can call this shit out too, but they're just, they're saying what women can intuitively tell, this woman is telling the truth, this isn't some coordinate campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, he might just actually be a rapey type of asshole, but the fact that this is being trotted out kind of publicly and forcing people to check kind of their internal motivations is just, I think a pivotal moment.

I really think how this is viewed and kind of perceived from the general populace, you know, constituents of a lot of these Republican senators who will be voting on this, I mean, it would be truly unfathomable for me, even the age of Trump to see Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed. So I'm just, it's curious, I mean, it's just really in a crazy thing. Personally, if the Judiciary Committee, I can't imagine this is gonna happen, but if they do confirm him tomorrow is Friday, probably when you'll be listening to this, if they do confirm him, I'm going to DC to protest, just 'cause like this is not a political issue.

This is a sexual assault victim who even if you don't believe she was sexually assaulted, you at least could agree that an investigation should be done at this point. It's credible enough to do an investigation. You know, it's basically being trotted and two, you know, some rich, white, old men or two chicken shit to ask her questions themselves 'cause they don't like the optics of it are basically trying to discredit her so they can get someone appointed for a lifetime seat to do their political bidding. It's some next level shit and I really think it's an epivital moment. And I think this is also another instance of women kind of just like step into the spotlight here.

I mean, I think all of the women that I saw who are analyzing what was going on, you know, even the people who probably brought in to be a little more Republican leader, just like, yeah, no, we believe her, it was heart wrenching. She describes the scene where she remembers the laughter that was going on while she was being assaulted and it's just like, you know, anyone who's intuitive and can actually feel this stuff recognizes what it is. Anyway, not to get too heavy before this episode, although it does kind of fit in. Yeah, Dr. Miles Neal, holy shit. Big thanks to Saad to Simone for introducing us.

As you know on this podcast, I am often trying to reconcile my past as a digital marketer for our spiritual nonprofits and teachers with my spirituality, my particular outlook on the way the world and the universe and all these things we can't see and can see are and how to effectively kind of call out some of the market-y packaged spiritualism and meditation advice and secularity of some of this stuff and pulling away the roots of what created some of these systems and tools, I'm trying to strike the balance often of how to get that out and how to communicate that without being like, I'm just some bitter asshole who got burned by some shmocks and doesn't want to stop talking about it because I do think it's a larger and kind of emblematic, but larger thing that happens with spiritual, the merging of spirituality and capitalism in Western culture.

So in addition to writing an amazing book, gradual awakening, and there are links on the podcast page on the episode, anything you hear, I'm gonna make it abundantly easy for you to get this book and to take Miles's course, the audio version. It's gonna be super easy to do that and you should and you'll hear why at the end of the episode, ah, just tell you now, all of the proceeds, 100% are going to support nuns in Nepal. You wanna learn Buddhist stuff who've come from back. 100% that shit is not done in this world, I'm telling you I work with these people, I know who's getting paid what, I know how they make their money, no one does that.

But anyway, Miles has not only put together an amazing book of kind of calling out critically some of the bullshit that we see in the spiritual landscape, but also, 'cause that would just be an asshole thing to do if you didn't have a solution, has used an ancient text and kind of framework called the Lam Rim from Tibetan Buddhism to kind of introduce another way of gradual awakening. And so this is positive, this is two different ways of thinking of awakening or enlightenment. This instantaneous transcendent I'm there, I've arrived. The other is this gradual, okay, like let's build on these foundational aspects of how to become a better person and how do we integrate our spirituality or unseen things with the seeing world.

And that's what the Lam Rim is. And I had seen references to the Lam Rim, I've read a lot about Tibetan Buddhism, I'm very, very taken with it in a lot of ways. And, but never seen something laid out quite this way and that spoke so closely to kind of my personal experience in the spiritual world. So, truthfully, this is just an incredible episode. I don't wanna take up too much time, you know, glorifying at the beginning, you'll hear me do that in the episode, but really like this is one of those, I'm just like, man, talk about synchronicity every so often an episode comes around when like, yup, that was it, that was the show, working its magic that thank you for whoever's doing that, very, very happy.

So, this is one of those episodes. So, also, I wanna say, I actually have a new sponsor, I'm debating you may hear the music underneath here, but this one is real after I've made many fake advertisements. So, my buddy Davis, who you may remember from an earlier episode, if not, go check it out, has a weed cannabis, what are they called? Cannabis weed accessory company with some really cool shit that I actually use. So, this is my new pledge to anything, and I don't think I'm gonna get a shitload of advertisers, shows an abundantly popular that people are beating down the door, but I would love it, this can be some kind of sustainable thing for anything, but anyway, I'm only gonna be advertising or sponsoring or helping get the word out for stuff that I actually use or believe in, and I can tell you for a fact that I actually do use my stir products I have, and they're fucking great.

If you smoke a lot of weed or you're a casual weed smoker and you kinda want some nice stuff that makes your process easier. So, I am a big personal fan of the stash tray, but if you use the code S, Y, and C, sync, get my stir, my stir with a Y, M, Y, S, T, E, R, there'll be links for this stuff too. We got the nuns, the free nuns, and the weed stuff. This is a perfect, I couldn't be happier with the way this show is going, just to be clear. So, if you're like me, I smoke weed a lot, and my wife is a clean person, doesn't like weed messes, I also don't wanna be leaving messes around for my toddler, that's not appropriate.

So, there is something that I've used, Davis hooked me up with one of these a long time ago called the stash tray, and it's basically a all-in-one container with a cool accessories for your smoking rituals. It's very cool, you can check it out. Anything you get on getmyster.com, if you use the code S, Y, and C, you will get 15% off, and that's pretty fucking awesome. So, I would love to continue to do these things just because I think it's good for the show. I only wanna use stuff that I, or speak about stuff and advertise or have sponsors for stuff I actually use, or trust or know, like I don't wanna be just pitching some, you know, whatever the people are pitching these days.

So, I'm trying to find this line, and use my audience, use my listener, let me know. I wanna know if I'm stepping, treading, being honest to you guys, and respectful, because if I can tell you about something cool, and you can get a slight discount, that's cool for me. If it feels like I'm pitching you shit, I don't like that, so just keep me accountable. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, that's it, probably for the intro. I think I've spoken long enough. Big thanks, though, to myster for doing that. Super big thanks to Dr. Miles Neal. You will hear why in this episode. And then always, Patrick Nemchek, the hero of men, king among men, men among men, the coolest.

Thanks, man, Patreon, really appreciate it. Everyone else, step it up. What the fuck? Just kidding. All right, without further ado, here is Dr. Miles Neal. (applause) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You have two kids, right?

I have two kids, and I was raised like military standard, cleanliness, and--

Oh, geez.

You know, like the kind when I was like seven, I was already making the bed, and the toys couldn't be out, and the carpets couldn't be ruffled, and so my nervous system just goes through shock, and awe, every single day.

You sound like my wife. She has that, too. She wants everything to be clean, and with the two and a half year old, it's just, it's quite a cicipissian. Yeah. (laughing)

It's a really--

That's what it is.

That's good. Good.

Yeah, we could jump in anytime.

Yeah, let's just get started. Thank you for coming on. I'm super excited to do--

Are you kidding me? Thank you for having like that synchronicity of Saul putting us together, and then you having a spot, and before I leave, and the book came out, I really appreciate it. And I enjoyed our conversation, so I know I'm gonna enjoy this one.

Yeah, yeah man, and just to, you know, lay down the synchronicity a little bit more, I didn't have an episode this week, which is rare. I usually am like very well prepared, so this is really doing me as much of a favor as it is for anyone else, so thanks, man. So, the main thing I think we're gonna center on, I'm sure we're gonna go a lot of different places, but your book, which I just started reading, gradual awakening, is just an incredible, just from the first 25 pages and just getting an overview of who you are and what it's about. I'm blown away, man, and what I'd like to do, and this is very untraditional for me, I'd actually like to read just a little passage from the first few pages of it that really resonated with me, and my listeners will know why, and you will know why, but it's just so profound that I wanted to bring it up.

So, this is in the context of talking about kind of my mindfulness and this idea of these quick hit packages of wisdom or spirituality that are so pervasive, so this is what you wrote. It says, "Any meditation practice that fails to address "our culture's distorted worldview "of scientific reductionism, grounded in nihilism, "and it's equally misguided offshoots, materialism, "hedonism, imperialism, neoliberal capitalism, "and consumerism that constitute the current zeitgeist, "and fails to connect them directly "to our society's mental health pandemic, "general apathy, and the broader plight of our planet "in peril is dangerous.

"Any such approach is the equivalent of encouraging people "to rearrange the furniture when their house is on fire." Dude, like you're speaking right to my heart, so--

Well, thank you, thank you so much, and I didn't think, as I mentioned to you earlier, I didn't think it was going to be received like that, I thought it was going to really shake the tree and generate a lot of criticism, and it may do that, but I want to stick my neck out. And I really, that is something that I have felt for a very long time now, and the book was a platform, really, to just share my criticism of where I think we are in our culture, so people like you who resonate with that message, I'm really grateful.

Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you that I have been trying to figure out a, you know, we spoke a little bit briefly on our phone conversation the other day, but my experience is in the nonprofit world, and with a lot of spiritual teachers, the business side of things really have put me in kind of an interesting situation of kind of recognizing the business mechanic, how this stuff works behind the scenes, but also recognizing that what attracts so many people to this stuff is a genuine kind of lack of connection, and wanting to find that thing that will make them whole, and this weird kind of nexus of capitalism, and that is what we kind of find ourselves in, and I've been struggling with personally, how to effectively speak about this, call attention to it, without seeming kind of like a bitter, angry, oh, shake in the fist at the world, and here we have a book that you've put together, I'm so excited to read the rest of it, that really is doing just that, but also, and this is very important, really bringing with it a ancient rooted, the Lamrim here, that really gives kind of like a blueprint for how to do what we wanna do, which is not just being lightened people, but how can we be enlightened or work our way towards an enlightened perspective, but also live in the world and make it a better place for everyone?

So let me ask you this, what was your journey, like what's your background, how did you get into this? I know you have a PhD, is it in psychology?

Yes, it's in clinical psychology. The background is pain and suffering, of course, that is where we all start, I mean, I had alcohol and a dysfunctional family system growing up, and I mean, my journey starts, I remember 12, 15, 13, 14, 15, and they're already having an existential crisis. And I grew up in a secular, modern, materialistic family, wealth and fame and fortune and success were the benchmarks of human success. And my family fit that mold perfectly. My father was an astute businessman and my mother was an interior designer. And so they liked nice things and we were surrounded by nice things and we had nice adventures and trips as a family.

But the internal world was quite barren. And so my journey starts just as a kind of hero's journey just waking up very early to the fact that I was very deeply unhappy. I didn't know what I needed, but I knew where I was, wasn't satisfying. And we had all the accoutrement of a, we had arrived as far as the standard of living and what our culture reinforces us to go after, we had it. And so I think that's the genesis, the origin of my spiritual journey is really starting with everything and yet feeling so distraught. And so, I mean, I was burning and cutting myself. It was bad, I was deeply, deeply unhappy.

But to flash forward, I mean, I think, you know, I've had an opportunity to do a number of these podcasts where I give a lengthy history, but I think to just cut to the chase with you, I think I found my way to India. I had a deeply, deeply transformative experience in six months living in India at 20 years old. And that was like a coming home, that was like a finding my path and finding my truth and finding a language and finding a direction and finding an orientation that was worth living. And that set the stage for the remainder of the course of my career and personal journey from 20 years onward.

It's now been 22 years since then. But I had experiences coming out of India where then I was studying the scientific basis of meditation at Harvard in my early years. And there I think we have what I call the contrast or the junk's position of secular meditation versus culturally based meditation. So within a year span, I had gone from living with the monks, meditating under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha gained enlightenment at ground zero of the awakening movement. Having my heart blown away by a teacher's fully embodied loving presence and unconditional positive regard after having grown up in a family where that was not even part of the lexicon and being so thoroughly transformed by the experience and then winding up at the scientific lab of Herbert Benson at Harvard, where it was extracted from that cultural milieu and to me it was a complete disillusionment.

I felt, oh my God, this isn't even recognizable. And it's been a long journey since McMindfulness. Around 2010 I come out with this term McMindfulness as a kind of cultural critique to what I had been witnessing which was this massive revolution. The mindfulness revolution had really hit its apex and we had probably 20 to 30 years of very credible research coming out of John Kabat-Zinn and colleagues. Really suggesting the health benefits of mindfulness of secular version and millions and millions of people benefiting.

Yes.

And at that time, 2010, if you looked at the publishing industry, mindfulness was such a buzzword and such a marketing hook and it seemed like everybody was jumping on the bandwagon. Everybody from A to Z was becoming a mindfulness teacher. (laughs) And mindfulness was being applied to just about everything from mindful eating to mindful having a poo.

Yeah.

I just got unnerved by it because this is not how it's done in the tradition. It's, they're, so I guess all what I wanna say is I had, I did have a fist raising reaction. I mean, I'm not gonna pretend that I wasn't unnerved by it, I was and it's taken me a few years to nuance my position on this but I do wanna take responsibility that in the early years, I was a little, what would you say? Flummox pissed off, how about that? (laughs)

Yeah.

Because I just felt like mindfulness had been packaged, at first it had been extracted like a mineral, okay? It had been packaged well and marketed well and then there was this underlying promise that in three quick steps or in 10 days you could learn this unbelievable thing and then anybody could become a teacher of it.

Yes.

And I just, I was like, this is so, if you don't mind me saying fucking American.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like this is, there's something wrong with this. This is, this is, and you know, and that critique sat right aside all the literature that I stand by also and all the people that, the millions of people that would have never had a chance or narrowly to come into contact with such a position, of such a met as such a technology. So I think, I didn't, I wasn't hearing enough concern about it. And of course I was a nobody at that time, still I am, nobody really who I am. And so some bigger name figures picked mindfulness, mixed mindfulness up and a conversation was born. And I think it was a, I think in any cultural zeitgeist there needs to be a strong critical side.

So that those people that are spearheading an agenda also have some, a wall to brush up against, okay. So I think there were a number of more prominent figures that picked up the conversation and the the term, "Mmindfulness" took off in a way, and in an important way, because I think it offered this cultural feedback loop or cultural critique. And I think that makes for a much more nuanced conversation. It brings much more complexity to the nuance, to the argument. And so that was 2010. And it took me another eight years, let's say to come up with the current thesis of the book of gradual awakening, which takes mindfulness as its start.

And then the quote that you read at the outset, which I'm very grateful that in your reading, you caught a glimpse of that and felt that it resonated because that is the central argument of the book. We are, it is, I mean, I'm sure you share this with me. We are in a particularly complex and dangerous situation on the planet right now. And mindfulness is just one little piece of it. But if you take that critique down into the broader iceberg from the apex down to the broader level, you can see that the convergence of crisis that we're facing on the planet from ecological to economic to geopolitical, and also just the broad apathy of the current generation, the younger people of this generation, you can see that we have reached the limit, the ceiling, I believe, on a paradigm that is based on reductionism.

Without a doubt, and I think there was another person you mentioned, and I read this in his book 2012, Daniel Pinchbeck, he likened to our cultural paradigm as being like a car that was going 65 miles per hour in the highway, ran out of gas. It's still gonna move, but the car has no more gas. There's nothing else propelling it forward except momentum. So when that car eventually slows down, we're gonna have to figure out how to get into another car if you wanna keep driving. And it feels like absolutely the apex has been hit. And what I like about kind of centering around this kind of the McMindfulness, and I didn't know you coined that phrase until I saw that you wrote that.

I remember using that phrase quite a bit because it's always been something that's on my mind because there is that juxtaposition, that interplay between, listen, this is gonna help someone who's suffering. Even if it's McMindfulness, just being tuned in to something being aware of your breath can have a positive change on people's lives. But the kind of perversion or opposite of Carl Jung's exoticizing other traditions is making it so culturally American or capitalist that now it's just exactly, as you said, we're just packaging this stuff, now we gotta market, now we gotta sell it. And it does such a tremendous disservice to remove some of the deeper roots of the traditional aspects of meditation and compassion and wisdom.

If you just kind of isolate those and take them away, kind of like GMOs, it's not going to promote that real sense of change or positive change that I think we're all looking for. No one is gonna be like, yeah, everything's great. Everything is going wonderfully now. Everyone is happy, what are you talking about? Even the 1% don't think that. Their actions say that. So I do think it's such an important place to focus on because a lot of people gravitate to this because they want to make the world a better place. But then they're kind of being sold a diluted version that isn't gonna really give them the true juice to kind of get what they want, which you and I both know is embedded in our interconnectedness.

It's embedded in our altruistic tendencies. So yeah, man, it's just like, it's such an awesome angle to be taking.

Well, no, I gotta say, man, I could listen to you for hours. I don't think you need to read the book. I just think that, I mean, I think you're just talking the same language and I'm, and so astute, you've really put some, obviously you've really put some thought into this and you've been around the block. So I'm grateful to have met you and it's nice to have some synergy 'cause usually what I get is a lot of fun.

Me too, man. Well, because like, here's the thing, like I went through through some communities and listeners are still part of these communities and they tune into some of the people who I have personal differences with. So I have to, when I'm talking about these things publicly, really be mindful that I'm not just shitting on stuff because it can really just, it can hurt someone. It can say, oh, well, I thought this person was genuine. Now is it all bullshit? Should I throw the baby out with the bath water? So it's trying to find that line between calling out bullshit but also not offending people.

Maybe some of the people who are promoting some of this bullshit aren't even aware that they're doing that. They're thinking it's genuine. So it's a very kind of difficult path to walk, but that's why I'm just, again, not to be overly glowingly with praise here, but this book kind of like elucidates and breaks down what is going on and antidote towards it for it, but also the Lamrim man. Like, don't sell that. Like, please explain to people kind of who's on Kappa and the Lamrim are and why this stuff is so important for us potentially right now.

Well, thank you for that. And I agree. I think you have a very compassionate approach there, which I think is respectable. I think as I did do some fist raising, that's just my nature, but I think I sort of nuanced it and arrived in a little bit of the place where you are at now, which is I don't want to alienate people and I don't want to suggest this kind of bipolar or bilateral movement where it's either or.

Right.

I think the secular mindfulness movement has offered a window of opportunity for many millions of people and they are definitely benefiting. And at the same time, I wanted to caution people to recognize that meditation is just one piece of the puzzle and it's a very important piece of the puzzle. And there's good research to suggest that that piece of the puzzle has benefits. However, if we look at our cultural milieu and the zeitgeist, the current crisis, we are going to need more than meditation. And if, and for that, the components of the entire curriculum that we dispensed of in our extraction, if we can return to those and see them as science as credible disciplines, we do have a chance to prepare ourselves to address the widespread crisis that is at hand.

And so that is how I'm coming full circle now with less saber rattling and more nuance, which is for millions of people who are averse or not prepared to go very deep or just need an entryway and just need something simple, we now have a secular version to give them an avenue in. However, it's been 30 years now since MBSR came out. We do have a mindfulness revolution. Mindfulness has gone all the way to Google and the World Economic Forum at Davos. It is now a household term. What about millions of people who have done mindfulness and are now wondering what are the next steps?

That's right.

And so far be it for me to come up with a new roadmap. Why don't we just go back to the original source and ask them what to do next? And so that's where I positioned this book. And let me just say a few things before we get into what the roadmap is is, I'm not pushing Tibetan Buddhism as the only viable option. What I'm suggesting is there are wisdom cultures and traditions that are almost extinct on this planet, that modern consumerism, materialism and imperialism have driven almost to extinction that may contain within them helpful insights and practices that could help us live on this planet more sustainably.

They could be the direct solution for the ills that are troubling you because they hold within them a different kind of paradigm. One that completely challenges the reductionistic paradigm that is actually at the heart of our sickness, what I call the sickness of paradigm. And so if we look at shamanism, if we look at Indian yoga and the Indic Sciences, if we look at true mystical traditions, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Judeos and Kabbalah, if we go to some of these very sacred sources, not the mainstream versions, not the ones that have been disempowering, not the ones that maintain some top down authority, not the ones that are rife with pedophilia, et cetera, but the ones that are truly empowering of the human beings capability of breaking through the veils of illusion and to become one with reality, all of them hold that in common.

Those traditions do have within them some sacred knowledge that is definitely essential if we're going to survive and sustain ourselves and even thrive on this planet. So my attempt is, I've spent 20 years with Buddhism, that's the one I can write about, but I'm not here to champion Buddhism at the expense of others, what I'm saying is, let's be very careful at wherever you come from, try to find an original wisdom tradition source. And you can put that wisdom tradition source into some of the technologies that I present in the book, which is a very open door invitation, not just to be practicing Tibetan Buddhism, but to be practicing the sacred rituals, the sacred lineages, the sacred insights and the sacred practices of these last extant remaining traditions that hold some value as we stand on the precipice.

So that's my cautionary note before we get into the specifics of Tibetan Buddhism. But I think what we've laid out so far with your help know is that we all agree we're in the shit here. Okay, and then we looked at the origins of the shit and what we've discovered is that it's not just, it's not random, this is traceable to an erroneous or warped worldview. Yes. We think we're at, we're think we're atomic structures building like billiard balls that knock up against each other from a Newtonian perspective. That's right. There's you over there and me over here and there's only enough resources so we have to fight over them, which is a, which is a, which is a, which has brought us to the brink of mass extinction.

Yes, yes, and that's, and we can trace that paradigm problem through each of the spheres of the ecological, geopolitical, economic, et cetera paradigm. So there we are. We have now, we have brought ourselves to this crossroad. What do we do? And what I'm suggesting is it's not just one option. We all have to be Tibetan Buddhist. What I'm saying is let's try to reclaim spirit into the equation. And there are a number of avenues back to spirit and most of the indigenous traditions all have their own particular avenue back to spirit. And that's what that's what's going to counterbalance this atomic Newtonian perspective.

Yes, which we know is just one slice of reality. We know this even from the material standpoint with quantum physics that things don't work the same as they do when they're in the Newtonian scale. When things are smaller than one one thousandth of an inch, all bets are off. We have the observer principle coming in. We have all of these funny things. So we know there's some kind of inefficiency of viewing everything through that lens. And then the forces you're speaking about too, we have two of these forces actually pushing on our cultural kind of modern consciousness. We have this idea of the reductionist scientific materialist view, which is very, very dominant is a counterreaction to this oppressive religious dogmatic, typically Judeo-Christian Abrahamic religion dominance that's happened, which really also just flopped off the feminine from everything too.

So we have these two forces really just pushing down on our modern minds. And that's why we need something like this. And I'm so happy you brought up that it's not just about being a Tibetan Buddhist or being a shaman or a Hindu or a Western mystic or a Waldorfian Steiner adherent, what you'll begin to realize and people who really have a heart pole for this stuff, when you study the mystics, you study the traditions that are going on, they're all talking about the same thing. There's maybe different colors and shades about how they speak about it. But this stuff lines up so beautifully and so perfectly.

It's just completely hard to discount that once you get to that point. So that's really important. And then furthermore, the great treatise that Sankapa wrote, I hope I'm saying his name correctly, if you just read that at the beginning part of it, like it's applicable to anything. There is nothing in there that says you have to believe in Buddha, you have to believe in this, it's just good advice. And I think that's why Tibetan Buddhism has caught on so well in the Western world is, not only is it kind of empirical and scientific in the way it's presented, but it's not telling anyone they have to do anything.

And that's very, very counter to a lot of the Abrahamic religions with how strict they are in rule. So I'm really happy you brought that up.

Yeah, thank you. And I'm really enjoying this conversation 'cause you just totally get it. And that just makes it so easy for me. It's almost like, I'm pinching myself, I'm wondering what the fuck is going on here. (laughing)

That's great, that's my role. But tell me about the Lamrim. And tell me kind of how you got hooked in. So you went to India, you had some transcendental experiences, which I'm not meaning to minimize in any way, but what was kind of the hook into Tibetan Buddhism for you?

Yeah, so on that journey, when I was 20, I discovered the Tibetan Buddhist path. And to be honest, at the beginning of my journey, the Tibetan Buddhist path was way too complicated. (laughing) And overwhelming. And I actually met a terravada teacher who was really just down to earth and very simple and very, and basically modeled presence. And that's what I needed at that stage in my life. But I did have exposure to Tibetan Buddhism and it wasn't until several years later that I met my main teacher, Joe Louisa, a psychiatrist who was also Buddhist scholar. And then he, his mentor, Robert Thurman, of course.

So I worked with those two profound teachers for 20 years of my life, serving them and studying with them and teaching with them and growing with them. And really they are the American exports of the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. And of course, the lineage of the Dalai Lama began with 15th century Tsongkapa, which is the whole lineage traces its origin to him. His main students become the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. So anybody who knows about the Dalai Lama may not know about Tsongkapa, but that is the mystical tradition is traced through from Tsongkapa. So the Lamrim is, let's start in the 10th century.

In 10th century Tibet, we have a lot of similarities to what we see today, which is that there were teachings, just like there are in the marketplace, if you walk down New York City, you can go into a Kundalini yoga workshop and go into, you can talk about emptiness, you can talk about wisdom, you can go across the street and there can be some tantric initiation, you can, the mindfulness revolution. It's like a Schmorgasborg, right? And in India, 10th, 10th century, there were all kinds of teachings and people started scratching their head, wondering what the hell's going on. I mean, like the Buddha taught one thing here, but he teaches another thing there and so what the Tibetans did at that time was they, because they were just very like we are right now, we're just children in their transmission, receiving the transmission of the Dharma, they look to their elder brothers and sisters and that is where we are and that's what we should be doing.

They said, okay, let's go to the main source and let's bring some of the great scholars and pundits to help resolve our concerns. So this great scholar from Nalanda University in India comes to Tibet, his name is Atisha and Atisha does this amazing thing, which is to synthesize all the various streams and traditions of teachings but to coalesce them in a way that puts them in a strategic roadmap, linear sequential and still sophisticated and comprehensive sequence that allows people to understand that certain teachings serve as provisional foundations for learning and other teachings are more appropriate at different developmental milestones along the evolutionary development of a human mind.

And when you put the teachings in that order, they no longer contradict one another, they make assets. And so just for the audience, what could be an example of that is, well, which one do you think comes first, taking care of yourself or taking care of somebody else?

Right, right, right. And then which one comes, you know, once you have compassion and now you're in the matrix of reality dealing with the toxicity of everybody else, which one comes, which one's more important to come first, the open heart or the mind that sees the deep interconnection of things and the possibility of things. And then when you get there, which one should come first, should it be, you know, then what about the power tools of Tantra? Should you be studying those right out of the gate or should you get some basic foundation first?

So right there and then that's a pith teaching in the three principal paths, which I allude to and highlight in the book, which is let's get our shit together in birth and work with our addictions. Once we have competence, I don't have to say that we arrive at some place in some place where we no longer have any problems, but I'm saying it's have a sense of competence that we know how to work with our inner afflictions. Then we can open our hearts and begin to use different types of technology to deal with the afflictions of others. Why is that important? Well, we live in the world, we're not yogis.

We're not living, we're lay people and you and I have kids and we both know how crazy it is and I don't know about you, but I lose my shit all the time.

Man needs to.

But no one seems to talk about it, especially if you're suddenly you're a meditation teacher, you can't come up. - Right.

Fist through the wall the other day because your kids were having a tantrum.

That's right.

You have to be, you have to be so like, you have to match the delusion appearance of what people expect you to be, right?

That's right.

Always tranquil and always on your game, which is a complete, this is part of the problem with the packaging in our consumeristic society.

Yes.

It's bullshit.

Yes, I call it when a teacher starts developing an affect in their voice when they're giving either a Dharma transition or something, that's my cue to kind of be like, and I think that it's hard for people who really enjoy a lot of teachers, Western teachers talking about this stuff because they are really doling out some heavy stuff that can really help people, but like just recognize that the chances are not everyone. There are some teachers who I am just astounded how they walk the walk when they talk the talk, but there are many of them who are dealing with the same fucking troubles that you and I are just getting upset, they're stuck in traffic, they have bills, there's expenses, and I think when these personas and young knows all about this and Campbell knew all about this, when you construct these personas that have to be adhered to that isn't your authentic self, man, that's when all the negative stuff can start seeping in and all the weirdness can get in and I think it kind of reinforces this paradigm that you and me both have probably spent too much time shaking our fist that, but nevertheless have shaken our fist that because it is, it's ridiculous at the end of the day.

So I get it, man.

Yeah, and it's dangerous, it's dangerous to encourage and to reinforce that. I think what that does, the Instagram Facebook reality that we live in where we're shooting out images of our best sides filled through our idealized sensibility and then secretly everybody else's harboring some kind of neurotic shame that they're measuring up. I think this just gets transplanted into the spiritual world where we're putting out a picture of us being always sublime and always happy and always serene and always having it together. And I think it's the wrong message. And but on the other hand, I do agree with you and I have met some very evolved, very transformed, deeply transformed people.

So I want to also say I'm not one of them, but, but I have seen really transformed individuals and they inspire me to do my practice. But at the same time, I'm filled with my own negativities and I have breakdowns all the time. I've just survived and I am surviving through a massive mid-life crisis. And all of that is happening in the midst of my spiritual practice.

Yes, yes, yes.

All of which is to come back to the Lomrim, the first stages of the Lomrim are largely what we see in our culture right now and necessarily so, mindfulness and loving kindness and practices for going inside and taking care of ourselves in a more reasonable way. This idea of self-care is how I translate the first principle path. And so that is, so that's just the first stage. So then the second stage, and interestingly enough, if you just look at the literature and the research waves that are happening, the first wave was on mindfulness, which is about self-care. But if you notice now, there is a new wave of literature and science on compassion.

Yes.

So that is following the Lomrim. People don't know this, but the natural instinct of our culture is following the waves of the Lomrim. We have 20, 30 or 40 years on mindfulness and now just beginning a whole new, a whole new movement towards compassion-based training. And eventually we'll see what's called the third wave, which is the Tantras will be very, very prominent coming in maybe in the next five years, which are all the visualizations, the energy work.

Yes, it's happening.

It's already happening, you know, like my publisher just put out a book by Damien Nichols, which is on magic.

Yes.

Okay, high magic and ceremony and rituals. And there's a lot of interest now through Steven Porgez work on the vagal nerve about how chanting and body energy and body-based practices like yoga can be therapeutically beneficial for trauma.

Yes.

And there I think you'll see a bridge, a natural bridge for science to reclaim some of these things that we used to thought were woo woo.

Yes.

We're now gonna be a captive and receptive audience for them, which is an unbelievable thing.

Yeah.

It's just taken a long time. So that's the stages of the Lamrim. First, you take care of yourself and you understand that you're creating your own nightmare because you are living basically unconsciously and you are pre-programmed to create a familiar outcome that you've already experienced. So if you had hostility and alcoholism and confusion and dysfunction in your family, guess what? If you don't wake up and you don't stop the wheel and spin, that's how you will live your life, your life going forward. The second step is once you live in the world and you have some confidence and you've trained yourself to have some intervening capacity in that wheel and spin, then you live in the world with other people who are deeply disturbed and have toxicity and negativity and haven't met any technology to help them break out of their nightmare, you then become, you take on a vow, you take on a pledge to make, as part of your own spiritual development, the inclusion of working with others.

And there, you're gonna need a whole new set of new technologies. The old ones won't serve because the old ones are for a different purpose.

Yes, yes, yes.

So then you start to work your compassion training practices and then there is finally this final frontier which is about how do you transform the world? Well, it's not just working with one or two other addictive people in your family system or your neighbor or your colleague or a difficult person, how do you go to recreate societies that are more equitable and how do you change culture? Well, there, you're gonna have to need another completely new set of technologies. And so what the Lomrim offers is a staged roadmap of evolutionary development of a human being as they progress along the path with the concomitant practices and theories that are appropriate for each of those stages.

And that, what I think is so appropriate and awesome about that is that you and I and most other people listening right now have already been through a training. We started with very basic courses that would serve as provisional foundational information for later subsequent courses and that was called college. And so we already know how to study and integrate material in a staged sequential model. And that is what the Lomrim does. It comes from the 10th century, but it is no different than following a college curriculum. Yeah, and as you're saying this, it just strikes me that the core truth of the Lomrim lines up with every experiential incident I've had in my life.

Whether it's through meditation, chanting, community, family, even psychedelics. These, this experience of experiencing the transcendent, recognizing it for this, kind of shattering your conception in mental or psychological paradigm. Then the next step is, okay, I have to make myself a proper vessel for this, but then how to communicate this? How to get this out in the world? And that necessarily starts with your immediate surroundings. You're not going to jump right from you to everyone. That's going to be a tough jump. It's just the natural progression. It also lines up perfectly. You pointed this out with the hero's journey or self actualization, these things line up perfectly for not only a conceptual way of envisioning these, but our experience too.

I mean, anyone can look at any traumatic experience that they've come out of and were able to integrate and then use to serve others. Like that's what this is. And it's one of the reasons that I do find Tibetan Buddhism to be so poignant is it just kind of works with our Western minds, the way that like we naturally think. We like sequential things. We like chronological things. We like many examples of things and classification. So it's something that does seem very well suited to the Western psyche.

Yeah, some parts of it are outrageously otherworldly, okay? I mean, Tibetan Buddhism has these, this one really amazing thing about Tibetan Buddhism that I mentioned in the book is that it is a example of a paradigm that didn't abandon spirit to overemphasize science, but was able to maintain faith and reason science and spirit for its duration. And so you have a epistemology, ontology, psychology and physics in Tibetan Buddhism that if the Dalai Lama's on stage with the most competent psychologists and physicists, they can share a common language.

Yes.

But the Dalai Lama escaped Tibet in '59 because he consulted his state oracle on when the right time to flee in the darkness of night would be. So that would be like Obama consulting an oracle in our astrologer or spirit guides to make executive decisions about the political functioning of the society. Now, can you think of something more far out than that?

Right. And so there are you, therein lies this uncanny synthesis between the world of the unseen and a deep, deep understanding of the world of the seen and of reason and of rationale without the two seeming in contradiction.

Yes. I mean, that what you just described is truthfully what this podcast is about, what my life is about, it's knowing like a deep sense of knowingness that it is far more weirder, wild, magical, transcendent. Our reality is so different than we like to conceptualize it as being, but also knowing that, meaning that we still have an address, we still have a zip code, we still have responsibilities and walking that line, walking in both worlds and recognizing they're not at odds with each other is a very difficult but ultimately very fulfilling thing to do. And that again, I think that's also what I'm getting at.

I mean, some of the visualizations and the Bartos states, I mean, that stuff is, it's just woo to so many people, but when you recognize there is a thread of logic and reason that also supports that, it's amazing. And I think it's in no small part why it has kind of proliferated in this country and in the West so much, because for those of us who recognize that they, you know, mysticism and rationality aren't mutually exclusive, it's not Aristotle versus Plato, they can both have their viewpoints and be accurate. I think that's an amazingly refreshing thing to see kind of reinforced by very real wisdom traditions.

Yeah, and I agree and I think personally, that's if you just look at historically where I think what has happened is that we have had pendulum swings for centuries we were dominated by religion and religion hit its ceiling effect where it became internally corrosive.

Yes.

And somewhere around 350 years ago in Western Europe, we have the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. And people said enough is enough to blind faith and servitude to corrupt authoritarian religious governance, let's empower the individual and let's go from right brain to left brain and become much more linear and logical. And we have 300 years of medicine, technology, democracy, materialism, modernity, industrialism, and with it all the successes of the internet and going to the moon, medicine. And then now we see the pendulum going so far extreme. And we have to learn our history that we cannot just swing back right away.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So what I talk about in the book is called this Age of Integration. The Age of Integration is when we take a big step back and we can, as human beings, we're capable of taking a large step back and going, okay, thousands of years of religious indoctrination and authority didn't work. Just like hundreds of years of communism hasn't worked. But we can also go, well, the scientific revolution was wonderful, but it destroyed the planet and we armed ourselves with nuclear weapons and that hasn't worked in a way because look, 50 people on a Greyhound bus or own more than half the resources of the planet, something is wrong.

So we have to learn our history and then we have to go, okay, what is the best that both of these things offer and what are the limitations of each of them? And how can we come to the middle and create a society that takes the best from spirit and the best from science and create a new possibility? Take the best of socialism and take the best of capitalism and let go of the outliers where the extremes were corrosive and create something new. And in my own personal journey, I have to say in speaking about the age of integration, I am both a therapist and a Buddhist teacher, someone who's studied Buddhism, but I have felt and come up against the limits of my learning in both of those traditions.

Now, it has been extremely helpful that as a second generation person, I could learn from the outset, these two things together, whereas the generation before me had to learn Buddhism and then they had to go to psychology. Whereas I write as soon as I was 21, I was studying Buddhist psychotherapy right out of the game.

Right, right.

And for that, I am grateful. However, both of them have to do with creating different internal environments and creating internal change. I don't know anything about new economic systems. I don't know anything about politics. I've been under a rock for 20 years, trying to get my mind together and working with the minds of individuals. So what does the age of integration mean for me? It means that I meet a guy named Dan Pinchbeck who spent his last 20 or 30 years looking at all the social systems and why they failed and what are their alternatives. Things like regenerative agriculture, things like unique ways of social governance, Bitcoin, blockchain, we live in the world and we are going to need social systems to adapt in the world.

And I don't think the Buddhists or the therapists are all that well prepared to articulate what those social systems are going to be like. So for the next 20 years of my life, having spent a large, honest push to understand the internal workings of the human mind, I now want to spend the next 20 years and hopefully you can help me Noah, putting myself in contact with people whom we can collaborate with. In an age of integration, it is going to be a collective effort where each of us stitch together our disciplines into an interdisciplinary cross-cultural matrix where solutions are formed from different points of view.

This is, I got some good news for you. This is something that's naturally occurring. I'm seeing it kind of in a revision of the 60s communal living kind of idea, which is I know a lot of people in a lot of different kind of communities, some coming from the Burning Man camp, some from electronic music scene, some from people who made money in the tech world, where they're recognizing that the nuclear family, which I am a part of growing up, I have a nuclear family now, is an experiment in a lot of ways that we think of it. And I've noticed that there's a tendency for people to kind of get together in larger groups now.

And I think that enables exactly what you're talking about. This interdisciplinary, multifaceted kind of approach to building a society, whether it's small at first and then larger, but learning about each other. Now, this also, I mean, who, you know, we got the Chinese curse, may you be born in interesting times, we have the emergence of many of the things you spoke about. Economically, people are sick of me talking about it on this podcast, but things like blockchain technology, which is kind of like a red herring, it really just is Bitcoin at this point, just to be clear, blockchain technology is just a slower, more expensive database, really not needed for most things, but for certain things like people who are middlemen and steel and can change ledgers, very useful.

Those type of technologies, really, people don't recognize it yet because it's such a new thing, it's gonna fundamentally reshape the world. Though the old power structures, I think personally are already crumbling. I think we see that and we see kind of this hyper polarization in terms of economics and classism and racism. These things get hyper kind of, it's like the eaching, right? Right before you get to the apex right after the apex, the possible peak of one thing, it flips over to the opposite. So I'm hoping and seeing enough, just anecdotally and conversationally, over the past three years, having a conversation every week about this stuff, it's organically happening.

Much in the way that the alarm rim, those waves are kind of mirroring our current cultural consciousness. I'm seeing this stuff pop up all over the place, but I do think saying that, it requires a tremendous amount of effort for us to stay focused and mindful on how to do this in the right ways, meaning bringing in compassion and wisdom together to these situations, rather than just kind of repeating the same follies of the methods where people tried to break out of the unfair constructs we have now. So yeah, I mean, I think you're probably, your timing is pretty good, man. Like things are happening, things are definitely happening.

Great, yeah. And I'm like, I'm putting a seat in there. Please do feel free to connect me because I want to be part of that conversation. I'm ready to listen. Like Dan Pinchback blew me away. There is, is it Charles Eisenhower or Charles Eisenstein?

Yeah, he does sacred economics.

Yeah, my buddy, Michael Garfield, who has a podcast on my network, you should definitely connect with him. He's probably knows more about the current cultural kind of renaissance for all these things than anyone. Rushkoff is also a very good thinker in terms of economics. He's, he really has broken down kind of how we got to where we are, at least economically speaking. And he traces that back down to, you know, the bizars of old when the coin of the round came in and basically said, "Hey, stop free trade. You have to use this or we're going to kill you." And then all the way to Adam Smith to where we are now, that kind of has set the course for how we get to this very, very growth for the sake of growth mindset, which you can apply not only to economics, but everything.

It really is like a very unhealthy way of living. But there are enough people I think now who recognize not only how fucked up things are, but who also can kind of get past the initial shock of it to try to build something a little more, just better for lack of a better term. It does, I am encouraged despite the crazy amounts of horror. I mean, right now there's probably the testimony from Dr. Blasey Ford going on with Kavanaugh. Despite the horribleness that we're faced with every day, I'm still kind of an eternal optimist and not 'cause I'm deluded, but because I do see enough. I do see just enough for me to be like, "You know what, people get this.

They're waking up to this shit."

Yeah. And I, yeah, so thank you. I mean, I think it's important that I just underscore my own interest in collaboration because I think, because I think that's going to form, I think that's going to be part of the only way that we're going to go forward is, I don't think the movement forward is going to be top down and led by one leader. I think we're all going to have to contribute our insights from various disciplines to hatch a solution. The activists need to learn how to meditate. The meditators need to know about social systems. Psychologists need to know about physics. Physicists need to know about the inner world.

I think we are coming to what maybe Ken Wilbur was well ahead of his time and talked about an integral system. We are coming, we are new on seeing the complexity of just how vast and broad and deep and sophisticated the human psyche and the world is. And it's only through collaboration and creative connection that we're going to come up with a solution widespread enough to be inclusive of all the various ills, troubles and challenges that we're facing.

Yes, yes, yes.

But I also think that just to return to one of the main theses is that it is going to require effort. I get people coming into my office all the time wanting a quick, my whole world is falling apart, can you teach me meditation? And I usually don't actually. Because I don't think meditation can resolve everybody's life problems. I think there's going to have to be more than, I mean, if you look at the problems, you're going to see that they're more than just a stress reduction technique can alleviate. And so I'm looking, this book is for people who have been around the block and know a little bit about meditation already and want to contribute to a deeper movement.

Zeitgeist shift, cultural shift, but are also willing to make priority changes in order to free up the time and resources and energy that it really takes to change. And that might mean like we have to give up our gadget time or our binge watching or we might have to change a job or we might have to move somewhere more rural or we might have to make drastic changes that, see, I think the current paradigm is can you put a three minute technique in my-- - Right, TV dinner. Give me the TV dinner meditation fix to my problems.

Yeah, but don't make me change my life.

Right.

I want to keep my life the way it is and I want you to introduce something that can help me within my life. And I don't do that. I don't do that. I think if you only have three minutes, think about how sick and disturbing your life is that's your meditation. Get very clear about how it's not working out and start to ask yourself on a daily basis, is this working out for me and who told me? Who told me it would and what am I expecting out of this? And just start contemplating looking deeper. If you only have three minutes, don't start meditating. Just start analyzing your current predicament and get very clear until you get either, I mean, this is what the first step in the long rim is is renunciation, which is translated as, really get disgusted with the way that we're living so that you can radically shift your priorities in order to embark on a journey of transformation that is really going to require every ounce of your energy.

And that's what it really takes. That's what real transformation takes. Don't listen to the people that are saying, you know, you can biohack it in three minutes. I think it's bullshit.

I do too, man. I do too. I think it's beyond bullshit. And I think the worst aspects of that are not that it's bullshit. It's that there are valuable things that meditation can provide us. There are so many wonderful things, but if someone approaches it where it's a panacea, it's going to fix every aspect of your life. It's going to allow you to live the life you're living now, just happier and more peaceful. You really can end up with a very kind of big letdown when that doesn't happen. And then you can write off and, oh, well, Buddhism, all mindfulness, all this stuff. Yeah, there's nothing there.

It did work. It didn't work, right?

Yes, yes, yes. That's right. And I think it's just one of those things that like, I do, listen, I have friends who are either intentional, I don't think intentionally, but are positioning themselves as teachers. And I just personally could never do that because like, I know myself. Like I know that if I start saying I'm a teacher, then I'm not being authentic. I get to a point where I feel like I have real wisdom and I want to position myself as someone who can tell other people that, of course, do that. But marketing yourself and treating yourself as someone who has arrived and then pitching the vehicle of mindfulness and meditation, I do think it's a very, harmingly, it's a very risky thing to do.

I'll put it like that. (laughs)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, man, I gotta say, I am having such a ball talking to you. I, we're going to wrap it up in a second, but, and just to--

Oh no, please, not yet.

No, not yet. We have another like 10, 15 minutes, but I do want to also just to go back to it. Man, any access, communication, collaboration, you want with anyone you see that I know or myself, like that's what this is, that's what this podcast, that's what I'm here for. I am actively trying to connect as many people who I feel are doing this for the right reasons to each other, because there are enough of those people out there. I know that from speaking with them, and I think it is going to take a collaborative and effort filled kind of mindset to get this done.

Exactly.

So I don't say that lightly, I know some people think that when I say that, it's like, "Oh, okay, great, that's being polite," but I genuinely--

No, I can hear your sincerity.

Yeah.

I can, and I enjoyed our initial conversation. I felt we, we, we totally hit a resonance, and so I can, I can tell that you're so well-intended and that, and that's really, you know, to me, that's the most inspiring thing of it, because I think that's what builds the authenticity and the synergy and the work. And I think like this is such a fluid conversation, and I feel like the enthusiasm is building. I don't want, I don't want it to end, because it feels like, it feels like meeting a brother, you know? And I think we share a perspective of the paradigm. We're both young fathers, and we've been around the block, and we've seen things in the spiritual world, the ugly, ugly of it, and that we've been dissatisfied with it, and we all, we want to have a cultural critique, but we also have the optimism that we can do it.

Yes.

And we have an investment because our kids are going to inherit a planet, and it's up to us to make that planet better, but we're under no, under no hubris that we can do it alone.

Right.

And so I think we share all of that, and it's just, it's a very, it's a blessing and a fortune to meet you, and to have these kind of conversations. And I know that you're well connected in the work that you do, I'm sure you'll put me in touch with the right kind of people, and that will continue you, and I will continue this conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah, so, and I hope that that inspires people that are listening right now, that, you know, you can, you, we each have a place in the cultural shift that's happening. I mean, that's one of the major themes of the book is like each of us secretly thinks we're not competent, and we're desperately holding on, we know that it's a bad situation, but we don't think we have what it takes to change it.

Yes.

And so we, we avert our attention and get distracted in mundane things because we really underneath it don't feel prepared to take on the responsibility. And in a way that is like the juvenile or the child or the traumatized child in each of us that doesn't feel ready to take on the challenge of living.

Yes.

And the, the book is, and not only the book, but my book tour, I've decided to make every stop on my book tour a ceremony, a ritual, not only just to freak people out. (all laughing) But also to empower people, not because I'm special, but because we are all special and we are all capable, we don't need a red robe monk from Tibet with beads and mantras to wake us up to our own innate capacity or potential. I think I'm qualified to do that because that's what this book has done for me. Like I feel on my, at my best days, I feel like I can make a contribution and it's not enough just for me and a few others to do that.

I think we all have to feel that way and we all have to get over the shame and the sense of like waiting around for somebody else to do it who's more competent and capable and cheery like the Dalai Lama and buoyant and expert. And so my book tour is really a ceremony, a series of ceremonies across the planet where we do a group ritual where we take on the Bodhisattva pledge, not that I'm competent qualified to give the actual Bodhisattva ceremony but it is a seed or a imprint or a suggestion so that people can get started feeling that they are part of this movement and a necessary part of this movement and we do have it within us to make some incremental change within our sphere of influence.

And that is all that's really required.

Well, let me tell you this. I've been especially over the past three to five months not going through certainly not a dark night of the soul but trying to figure out how to reintegrate and contextualize my natural inclination to philosophical and spiritual studies. It's just something that's been with me since I've been a kid but I've also gone through some very difficult kind of professional and personal experiences with a lot of these things. The best praise I can give your book from a personal standpoint is that reading it reinvigorated the initial kind of joy and response I have to when I'm reading about someone like Padma Sambaba and it just hits you deep in your soul.

You know this is something that's beyond time and space and it really just kind of gives you that juice to get back on the horse so to speak and that's exactly what your book did for me because I didn't have, I didn't see anyone else there saying, hey, you know what? This is kind of bullshit that this goes on. You know, we're dealing with a fucked up situation here. There are things that, you know, can't just be solved by sitting down on the cushion for two minutes every day and everything is going to be great. So I think the fact that you're bringing this out into the world for people to see, I think it's going to affect a lot more people than you possibly could imagine just because I know I'm not the only one.

I mean, I think about, you know, people in the me two situations, especially in the spiritual world, you know, like there becomes a very big identity crisis for people when they kind of have their community or affinity towards a particular faith kind of jostled. And I think this is something that we can lean on for those of us who are trying to figure out that like, you know what, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We know there's stuff here, but we also know there's some fucked up shit going on. And I mean, man, like for me personally, that's just about the nicest thing anyone could ever do for me.

So I really do appreciate it.

Yeah, well, that's beautiful, well said. Yeah, and I do, I mean, I receive a lot of clients that have been amongst or amidst the scandals that are happening in Tibetan Buddhism and otherwise, whether it be political figures in authority or spiritual figures in authority, we have been misled by people and deceived by people and injured by people. And I think the natural, very understandable tendency in those situations is to ditch the whole thing entirely. And it can be very, it can be very, very confusing if you have made it a pivotal central orienting--

Which a lot of people do, yeah, understanding.

Well, exactly, you know, so when I worked with people in the Geshe Michael Roach incident or in Shambhala or Rigpa, wherever the recent scandals have been, it is extremely upsetting and through and through from the very fiber of people's beings have completely shattered their ability to navigate in the world because it has, you know, one spiritual basis is the center of peace of it.

Yes, yes.

But really becoming a verse and throwing the whole thing out is a natural reaction, but it's not the long-term--

That's right, that's right.

Because I think that avoidance response then becomes part symptomatic of trauma. That's what we do when we have a traumatizing. If we get, if we have a car crash in a white car, we don't go, okay, just this car was a problem. We go all cars-- - All white cars, yeah.

All, yeah, all cars are, all white cars are all cars, even being on the road, you know, like the associative links just bleed out and then suddenly the world becomes very, very small. And so, you know, like, I don't wanna throw out the guru figure because a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch. I think we have to have first and foremost some very deep compassion for those that have been injured and to make space for them to grieve and to process. Then we have to have some deep compassion for people who are so internally misread about their pronouncements and their capabilities that they're still human beings and they have blind spots and families and like have to work, you know, salvage their lives.

But then we can't throw out institutions that have been for thousands of years really central to spiritual developments, all of that takes a lot of sophisticated work and can take months and years to process and come out on the other side. But I think it's, I think that is, I think I don't see that as unspiritual work. I think-- - Of course not, that is the work.

Yeah, that is the work, exactly, yeah.

Yeah, here's what I wanna do. I would love in a month or so to jump on another call 'cause I just have the sense that we could talk and have a really good time for an extended period. But I do, I am gonna wrap this up with three quick questions and then one open-ended question. But if there's anything else you wanted to mention before that, please be my guess. I don't wanna shortchange you at all.

Well, one of the things I do wanna mention is that the book proceeds.

Yes, yes, yes.

I do wanna mention it because it was important for me at the very outset of writing a book which most of the book hinges on this concept of karma and emptiness, which is the open possibility or the quantum level of reality and the intentional causality that we take within it. So this tension between there's infinite possibilities but our intention matters and has consequences. And that's what is called in the tradition the archaic language, karma and emptiness. I wasn't gonna write a book like that and not make the book into a vehicle of service for others. And I wanted to, in dialogue with the very kind Geshit Tenzinzopa who wrote the forward, one of my teachers, I said to him like, let's dedicate the book and donate the proceeds to the book to something because that is a good way of role modeling the precepts that are written within it.

And he said, well, I know this one nun at Copon. She's, you know, struggling to maintain enough finances to buy meals and to have her new, the things that she needs to sustain herself. And I thought to myself, one nun, we can do better than that. You know, so there is a nunnery in Nepal called the Copon nunnery. And the nuns that are housed there at the nunnery come from all over the Himalayan region and many of them have survived unthinkable things in both sexual abuse or orphaned political refugees that are coming over the past after a very long, arduous trek. And yet they are in a position now in the modern world as nuns for the first time in history to go for a 25-year course of study that will end them up with their Geshit Ma, which is not exactly the equivalent of a PhD, but similar enough for us to really appreciate how much commitment and perseverance it takes to study this material.

And so for me, the nuns of Copon nunnery represent the epitome of what it takes in the real spiritual world to put up with such challenges and hardship with such dignity, grace, and perseverance. I think they are very good role models for what we need to see more of in the West. We kind of have it easy. We are new recipients of this Dharma. We are surrounded by comforts. We wanna have our $100 yoga mat and spritz it with nice senses and listen to pleasant sounds as we meditate, but really life is hard. And there is a way to embrace hardship that is a very vital learning lesson that I think we could learn, that I think that these nuns represent.

And so it was important. And also the cover of my book, which is the hands of a very pious monk nomad in Mustang, Nepal. You can see there that it's gritty, gnawed hands in a prayer position. And I use that as a striking image in contrast to the glowing yoga journal pose of a young 25 thin beautiful model in Belize. Yeah, yeah. As a suggestion to our culture that it might take just a little bit more to be on a sincere, truly transformative spiritual practice, it might take some great, great efforts for a very long time of being in the trenches of hardship with true commitment and yet feeling buoyant and really transformative.

And I think the nuns represent that to me. The cover represents that to me. And that's really the meme that I'm trying to come across. Let's embrace the long road here. Let's not go for quick fixes, which have failed us. And so the proceeds of the book and my audio course, which is about eight hours of audio teachings, it's not a vermatium reading, those proceeds will go to the nunnery. And even if it's not a large sum of money, it is a token of appreciation, whatever awareness we can create around it, please visit the coupon nunnery online and look at some of the biographies of some of these inspiring nuns.

The female dignity is a north star for where our culture needs to go. And so I think it is a timely gesture and I'm very, very proud of it and very honored to serve that.

It's perhaps the first thing that when I started looking on your website after saw, pointed me in your direction that like really, but it's a signal for people who understand, I mean, people would be surprised, you know, how few people do things like this, you know, maybe they'll bring awareness or they'll put a tweet out or a blog post, but to actually say like this, the proceeds are going to this and to genuinely try to raise awareness for a very serious thing, like that, man, it's just, I wish there were more examples of it, you know what I mean? I wish I could say this is the latest in a long list of people doing like the things like this in this field, but man, it's just, it's so cool, it's so cool.

And I really, I think it's great.

Thanks Noah.

All right, so last few questions, they may seem silly, but they're not. What is your favorite color?

Blue.

Cool.

Medicine Buddha.

Of course.

Blap, lapis blue.

I love it, I love it, mine too. What is your favorite number?

Three, three jewels.

Yes, of course. What is your favorite animal?

Ooh.

I'm thinking right away without thinking my puppy, my dog. He's an interesting dog, I have a little French bulldog who's like the cross between like a dog and a bat.

I think I know the look. Awesome. And then last question, what's a practical tip that you could share with listeners that's helped you in your life? Could be anything.

Oh man.

Ah, let me breathe, what has really helped me? I mean, my devotion has helped me. It's been a, you know, most people don't have devotion. I was at a conference with the Dalai Lama and there was a small contingency of Tibetans in the crowd. It was in the United States, it was in New York City. It was a sold out beacon theater. It was a small contingency of Tibetans and the rest of us Westerners. You said to the Tibetans, you guys have amazing devotion. I never need to tell you anything. You already have it innately. You're doing your own money pod, me hums or prostrating. You are praying, but you need to be more critical and you need to be more scientific and you need to be more grounded and you need to do more study.

And then he turned to the rest of us. You Westerners, you have done a tremendous amount of study and are very critical and you are very refined and you're intelligence, but you need more devotion. You need to open the heart and have a little bit more faith. And I think it's true. I think it's true. We are dominated by that left brain. And for me, I've had very profound moments of surrender where I've really had to release into the tender arms of other people which is goes against my indoctrination in a dysfunctional family system. I don't know how I got such devotion, but I have been blessed with a long line of teachers that have come my way to salvage me from the edge of despair.

I don't know, having had a father figure who was alcoholic, I don't know how I had that imprint. It must be from a prior life. But it didn't take me very long, the first person whom I could trust to really put my trust in them and to serve them and to open my mind to them and to really listen to them and to allow myself to be supported by them. And that has, in the book, I talk about a long sequence of very prominent figures with whom I've had direct contact with who have made all the differences in my life. And so devotion, I think, has been something that saved me. Now that devotion was never a blind devotion.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

It was never starry-eyed devotion and anybody who's entering into the spiritual world and has that starry-eyed gaze.

Watch out. - Watch out, watch out. Because there's nothing but disappointment there for you. But on the other hand, maybe it's appropriate at the outset because there is a child in us looking for a daddy or mommy that's better and loves us more and loves us more conditionally. And I think it's a natural, it should be a natural evolution. But if you've been in a spiritual center with starry-eyed syndrome and it's now you're entering into year 10 or 15 years, you are probably in an arrested period of developing this whole point of being with a teacher who's to finally come around to feeling that you are the next teacher.

That's right. - You are the next ambassador. You are the next member in the totem. You are the torchbearer. And so that is the only point of the teachers to get you from point A to point B, not to remain in servitude. And so the devotion is really just what I would call like a salve or an oil on the rail system to get you to grease your evolution. And that is very much how it is discussed in the long rim. They say the root of the path is your kind teacher who helps you open your heart and helps you download the information that you need, not so that you can remain paralyzed in a subservient position, but so that you can fully come home to your power so that you can make a difference for others.

And that is the pith instruction of the long rim.

Miles, this has truthfully been one of my favorite. This will be the 151st episode I've done. It's been one of three years, truthfully--

Give me chills, give me chills, I don't say.

I also have the chills. So just thank you so much for coming on. Big, big bow of gratitude to Sa for hooking this up. I mean, I'm just, I'm truthfully blown away. I'm really right when we get off. I'm gonna go back to reading your book. Just thank you so much for doing this. We'll definitely stay in touch. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, I feel great synchronicity. I feel great honor and respect for you and all your work. I wanna thank Sa also. He's been an amazing supporter of mine and a helpful colleague and ally. And I feel very happy to know that this is just the beginning for us now.

Definitely. - So thank you so much.

Definitely. Thanks, Miles. We'll talk soon. - Okay.

All right. - Take care.

Bye-bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (audience applauding) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Big thanks to Miles for coming on the show. Please, if anything in this episode spoke to you, if you have first-hand experience, go check out his book. I like, you'll hear me saying the episode. I'm only 25 pages in. I am actively reading it. I just got it a couple days ago. I'm gonna be buying a copy, send it to me, the PDF, but I'm gonna buy a copy. I just think it's beyond cool that he is donating the proceeds to the nunnery. And is it called the nunnery? That's a thing, right?

To the nuns in Nepal, especially given their situation and just is fucking, man, name your spiritual teacher. They don't do that shit. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, support people like him who are really walking the walk. They're my favorite types of people, truthfully. Again, big thanks to Meister, get Meister.com, Meister with the M-Y-S-T-E-R. We're gonna have to ask Davis what the genesis of that name is. I don't really know. But if you use the code sync, S-Y-N-C, you get 15% off anything. My advice to you, go buy a bunch of shit, use the 50% off, get more bang for your buck on the discount.

But really, there's some cool stuff on there. Go check it out. I will tell you what I have personally used. I have used the station, which is this cool ashtray kind of like bowl cash or thing. I've used the stash tray and I've used the fog pen. And I endorse all of those products fully. If you are a weed connoisseur or just like cool weed related stuff. Gotta be a cross section of my audience who's into that, right? And it's like, this is nothing illegal about this. You can get this stuff sent to you and whatever state you are, because it's just stuff that goes along with your legal or let's call gray area stuff.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Thanks so much for everyone who's listening. I've been getting a lot more reviews in. If you're listening to this point, past the music, all of that stuff, go ahead on iTunes, go on there, give me a little five-star or one-star, whatever and want to be honest with yourself and with me. And review, it just makes me feel good when I read. Imagine, send me your email and then I'll send you something where I just write a nice email about you. I know I don't know you as well as maybe you know me, but I can still send a nice email. You're the type of person who sent me your email.

It's a nice thing to do. Noah@syncpodcast.com, there you go. All right, that's it. I will see you next week.