Kerry MacLean

♪♪ ♪ When I go, don't cry for me ♪ ♪ In my father's arms, I'm mean ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Sun and moon will be replaced with the light of Jesus' ways ♪ ♪ All my tears be washed away ♪ ♪ All my tears be washed away ♪ ♪ All my tears be washed away ♪ ♪ All my tears be washed away ♪ ♪ All my tears be washed away ♪ Welcome to Synchronicity. I recorded this episode a week ago, a little more, but you make... I don't know if you can still hear it in my voice. I lost my voice literally the day after. It's not COVID. I already had COVID. That was nothing. I just got like a regular cold that was like a doozy and a half. So that's why this episode is a little after it was recorded.

But getting it in under the gun for December, a reminder for patrons. We are doing the Q&A later today. Get your questions in if you're there. That's it. My guest this week is Carrie McLean. You may remember her daughter, Kelly McLean. She has a wonderful podcast called "The Dow of Comedy." That was on MindPod Network. She's one of the coolest people I've ever met. Her mom is also very, very cool. She has a new book coming out, an illustrated children's book, called "A Peaceful Piggy's Guide to Sickness and Death, Sadness and Love." And it's amazing. We talk about that a lot, some other things.

If you have kids, even if you don't have kids, this is a really useful discussion. There's a lot of fucking crazy shit going on between the pandemic, the world seemingly falling apart, Armageddon. It's just, you know, it's pretty fucking nuts out there. This episode really delves into some practical techniques of how to kind of broach the subject of some of these things that we're really not typically prepared to speak to children about, or even ourselves, right? So it's pretty good. You're going to enjoy it. Before we go any further, big shout out to the guys at Ned. Hello, Ned.com. Use the code SINK, S-Y-N-C at checkout.

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Love those guys. So yeah, this episode is pretty cool. It's a fun time. I'm just glad to have my voice back. That's pretty fun. I was on a podcast with Lacey recently. I was on another podcast. I can't remember what it was. I don't know. And I believe I'm going on James McCrae's Words Are Vibrations podcast next week in the new year. 2022. What do we think? We'll get into that in the next episode. But I want to get to this one. It's cool. Sorry for the hot mic. My mic was pretty fucking jacked up. I've tried to reduce as much of the gain as possible. But you know, when you're a hard hot, there's only so much you can do.

So apologies for that, but I think it's manageable and you'll enjoy this. So without further ado, here is the wonderful and lovely, Mary McLean. Oh, I was saying like you're my favorite astrologer. I really like your, your electional abilities just in tandem with kind of like your intuitive capacity to do this is easily the best I know of. Also, I love you told me that you don't take money for it. And are you telling me the story of like your husband being like, Hey, you need to charge for this. You're like, I can't, I can't do it. So I, you know, it's like an added layer of goodness when someone says they can't charge for this stuff and they're so good. So sweet.

I don't know why it's just, it feels like it needs to be my little offering, you know. Yeah, it's great. Well, it's appreciated. But we're here. First of all, thank you for coming on. Thank you. I'm so excited. This is your first time on. I've had your daughter on Kelly a couple of times. How's Kelly, by the way? I haven't spoken to her in a little bit. She is great. She is so, she's a completely different person since you saw her last because she's a mom. Yeah. So as a magnificent three year old, she is the most loving parent. I've ever seen she and Jane. And to call in their three year old is the most loving toddler I've ever met.

Yeah, it's, I'm not surprised. She's, I mean, Kelly, Kelly and I hit it off really quickly when we first met because she's just like one of the night. First of all, you know, this one of the best huggers of all time. She's like, truly, it's something you'll remember forever because she's such a good hugger. So I'm not surprised that there's a lot of love in their family. And that's awesome to hear because she was a student, of course, comedian. That's awesome. Yeah, but you're here because you wrote or have a new book coming up that you illustrated this too, right? Yeah, I wrote and illustrated it.

It's so good. And it's so weird. It's called a peaceful piggy's guide to sickness and death, sadness and love. And so I wrote it because I saw, I've been watching my three grandchildren struggle with the pandemic and, you know, just the fear in the air in general. And all of us having to run and get COVID tests and, you know, not be able to see each other when, and wondering if somebody has COVID in the family. It's really incredibly stressful for them. And I think, so this provide the whole point of the book was to give them to empower them. So they don't feel helpless when they're surrounded by this kind of anxiety, especially if somebody they know who's close to them actually is sick.

Like very sick in the hospital and they can't visit them. You feel powerless. And so there are meditations in here to, first of all, just help them set self-settle and self-soothe through just following the breath, just being still for a minute, build a peaceful place inside by doing that regularly. But the good news for them is that then we teach them how to send that piece, that little bit of sanity that they built in themselves, share that with their loved one who they can't see right now. So let me ask you this, because this is like perhaps my favorite thing about the book. I mean, I love that it's also as a parent of a five-year-old, a two-year-old, and a six-month-old. Like you see how something like the pandemic or even just the other themes in the book about dying, you know, death and those things, you see the different impact it can have based on age and also just that kids don't have a framework for this. We take it for granted that we've kind of been inundated and learned, you know, what the Buddha learned, which is essentially everyone gets sick, everyone gets old, and everyone dies. Kids have to go through that process of understanding it, whereas my five-year-old can understand kind of the concept of death.

The two-year-old doesn't. The six-month-old clearly as far as I know doesn't, but he knows. But he's feeling it. Of course. And that's, this is, so I, not only is it like a huge service to provide this for a relatively vulnerable group, which is children, right, who aren't even really recognized as individual beings in certain governments and institutions until way later, so they're completely unrepresented in every possible way. That's a really good point. Yeah, so it's huge, but also you, you tapped into this cool alchemy. I assume you've kind of gleaned this from aspects of Buddhism, but like this ability to kind of cultivate this stillness and calm and peace within yourself, which is great.

Everyone should be able to do that because it helps, you know, you deal with the world and everything that's going on, but then to take that next step, which is spin it out and send it towards other sentient beings, like what, what kind of made that like, that's the coolest thing to me about this. Like, what was the trigger for that? That's a very good insight because that really came out of losing my two step sons at age 35 and 37. And it was my meditation teacher who did a whole group meditation for all of us to send any sanity, calm, love that we had to my step sons. And he said, you know, they're just, they're just a very thin veil between them and us. And they're not nearly as far away as you think.

And you can seriously help them. You can seriously help them as they go through this transition to the next life, right, just by being aware of them, cultivating some peace and sending it to them purposefully. And that was, that made the whole thing so much more workable for me. It's so much less anxiety. I had a feeling of joy because I realized that it was true when I opened up my heart and, and sent my love to them. I truly felt like I would get signs of them saying, yes, I got it. Thank you. Right. So that's what inspired that. And because, and it's the kind of thing that, you know, children have that wisdom as much as adults do. They can do it.

And it will, they might even be able to do it better. I was going to say, I was going to say, like probably better because they're uncluttered with all the other kind of cultural and societal, no, this isn't how things work type deal. Like, yeah, I would think the same thing, which is obviously if there's a book here also kind of gracefully acknowledging that and empowering them. Because that's really what, I mean, what I'm hearing when you say how it helped you. And I think this is how this is what helps a lot of people with death, depending on what you believe, that like you're not powerless. There is still a communicative, just because the physical form is gone, the energetic pattern, whatever you believe about death and reality and unreality, you can't fake what you felt, right?

When you get those signs, when you get those feelings, like people can say, well, that's not real, but it doesn't change anything for you because you know in that moment, it's like synchronicity. It's not to be denied by someone else saying it doesn't exist. Absolutely. And so, yeah, to train children in this and to give them these tools, yeah, I just feel like there's a great gift. And I just want to make it clear that the book is in three parts. So if you only are dealing with sickness in the family, and you do not want to read the death part to the child, you can just stop at the end of part one. And then part two is if someone you know, someone you love is dying, and then part three is if someone you know has died.

And I also wanted to say, I did not plan this book. I have Lyme disease. And when I came down seven years ago, I lost, completely lost my ability to write books, children's books. I have all the cognitive problems. I literally went from being incredibly prolific for 20 years to nothing, not one sentence. I did not write it. And then last year, this book just started writing this book. I don't know where it came from. I had no plan for it. And I wrote it in two days. It just came through. And then now, guess what? I can't write anymore. You just got it out. Yeah, it had to be birthed. Yeah. Also, I mean, I don't want this to get lost because this is an audio podcast. But the illustrations are adorable and amazing. And like, you know, like that I read a lot of children's books to my kids. I know the range and spectrum of what you can get. I didn't have you always been able to draw and create characters like that. It's amazing. Thank you. That's so sweet.

Yeah. No, I mean, no, I just, I don't even know. I honestly don't know where that comes from. It just happens. It's not plain. I don't, I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I do. Yeah. We reproduce it or do another book that has that, you know, that feeling. It was just like pure magic. The whole thing came together in an incredibly simplistic way. And then, and now it's being born. Now it's coming out next month. Yeah. That's it. I doubt I will ever write another book or illustrate another book again. You never know. I mean, you didn't know this one was coming. These things can maybe happen to you every three years. Who knows what's going on?

But I mean, at least when it comes to like any artistic endeavor or creative endeavor, anyone who does any creative thing in their life knows that when they just kind of come from within and they take over and they're, you're kind of the vessel in which they go through, those are usually the ones that kind of have that juice that people want to find because, you know, I went to a music school, right? At some point, I thought I was going to make money from my art and my passion. Like there's a whole thing that goes into artists when they're trying to make a living out of it. But when something just kind of like percolates up to the top and kind of you just feel it happening. We're an exciting thing too, especially, you know, since you hadn't been able to do that, right? What a, what a crazy. Wow. It was, it was just felt like pure magic and I was so excited and happy to be able to write and illustrate again. Yeah, it's completely amazing. And if it never happens again, I'm fine with that because I have three grandchildren. I know you have three kids. Yeah. And two of mine are three years old. And then one is nine years old, ten years old. So, I mean, when I'm not sick with Lyme disease, they are my world. Yeah, of course. And my kids bought houses right next door to me to all of my grandchildren are on walking distance. They did that when COVID hit and they knew we were going to be locked down. So we have this little family bubble.

And it's pretty special when that happened. I mean, because my family is also within like a 20 mile radius and we see each other often. It's, it's pretty cool. It makes you realize kind of how special this realm can be when in the midst of like objective chaos out in the world, you actually, and I know not everyone has this luxury and this ability to actually be this close to their family or would they want to be all the time, which sometimes, you know, you don't always want to be next door. But for the most part, it is a lovely thing. Like, it's a real blessing. I mean, what do you think? Do you have any thoughts or feelings about what are the things that have happened? Like related to this book or broader? Because I mean, we're obviously in, you know, it's hackneyed now to say it's unprecedented times and weird shit's going on. But like, what do you think kind of is behind this?

Do you think this is, you know, a spiritual guru helping out or just kind of some you know, culmination of, you know, good karma? What do you think this is? I think what you just said, both yes, guru, other unseen friends, helpers. But I also, you know, we meditate, we have a big shrine room, and we all meditated in here together sometimes for just one minute, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we'll go for 20 minutes or something, and we'll do chanting and they think that's singing and they love it. Of course. But when we're all in here together practicing, no matter how chaotic it is, it just feels, it really feels like it's like a destiny. It really feels like all of us, this whole crowd of my three daughters and my two sons-in-law, who I'm madly in love with really amazing beings, and then my grandchildren who are just so such beautiful.

I just feel like we all like almost planned to come together like this. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's just too much help, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, magic is afoot and you know, that in this world can really be hell. And for us, for our family, it's actually a time of intimacy and sharing these gifts of meditation and meditation arts, what Colin and I just did a flower arrangement yesterday for my daughter Sophie. She arrived from England. Oh. And so, but we do it as a meditation. And we do it very slowly and there's a whole art form, a Zen art form to doing Ichabana flower arranging. And so... That's in the book too, right? I mean, isn't that I see that, that there's a flower arranging meditation? Yeah. Yes. And you can, if you, you can give, give that to your loved one. If they're in the hospital and they won't let you send flowers, do a silk flower arrangement that you can send, you know.

But yeah, there are a lot of moving meditations. It's not just sitting, you know. There's walking meditation. There's a sky meditation, which is really for children who are really like manic or freaked out or just really having a hard time. You just lay outside on the grass and look up at the sky for a long, long time. And that space decompresses the anxiety in their mind. The anxiety is a tightening of the mind. And looking up at space, literally physically looking up at space, which is endless decompresses the mind. It relaxes. So that, that would be, I have a friend who is like pretty crazy.

And she, she was told by our meditation teacher to do this every day. Meditation teacher being chosen by the controversial. Yeah, we skirted around it, but you, you attended Naropa. You were, you know, right there with him for a lot of this stuff. I'd love to get into that too. Controversial. That's what it's known as these days. Right? Controversial. All I tell people when they ask about that is the proof is in the pudding, you know. I went from the most insane childhood with drugs and sexual abuse throughout. And just, just, it was just ugly. And I left home at 15 and became his student. I've been his student ever since. I've been a serious meditator and, you know, I'm the only person out of the 10 kids in my family who is not an alcoholic, who's not addicted to some drugs, who actually has a happy, loving, healthy marriage after 30 years. And, you know, an extended now happy family.

This is, so that's, that's the result of all of following his directions, you know. Yeah. And every, and he was the one who taught us, he wanted us to teach our children all of these different meditations. So I have been teaching it around the world for 25 years. And now it's coming out in this book, which I really hope, really hope is helpful and brings families closer together. They can do this. These things regularly. I don't see how it can't do that basically. I mean, I know that there's a lot of parents like be out there who obviously want to instill good habits and belief systems and really give our kids the freedom to believe what they want and explore and be curious about things that maybe aren't being spoken about in school and even my, my five year old goes to a Waldorf school. They're pretty liberal, but still, there's things that aren't being discussed related to spirituality for a lot of reasons in today's culture. And these books and things like this are direct paths to that. And it's invaluable when you're trying to figure out like, you know, I know if my mom, my mom has done that she's been a meditator for almost 25, 30 years now, whatever she would specifically talk to me about meditation.

I'm like, I don't care. I don't want to hear about that mom. I mean, I've seen how it has clearly helped her. Like there's no denying that. But if someone, if your parent comes to you and says, learn about this, it's good for you. That's actually not the best way. But when you have something like a book with amazing illustrations that are, or even just giving you ideas, like I love the flower arranging thing like, and the sky thing, like I immediately, when I saw those, I was like, I could definitely do the sky thing with my five year old. I know both my kids, you know, who are old enough to do this now will love the flower arranging thing.

And this doesn't have to be just done for someone who's sick or dying. It's just a meditation that can be, you know, transposed onto anything. My daughter Sophie is now 40 and she has been creating flower arrangements. Like three, she'll create three at a time once a week and her house is just so uplifted and beautiful. And that is her, one of her main meditation practices. And there's also the mind jar, which I have, which I've put in, I created that for a peaceful piggy meditation. And then Kate, which I showed it in moody cow meditates. And we have it again here in the section for when someone you love is dying.

Because it gives you a chance to talk, when you put, you get, you choose different colored sparkles and you can buy biodegradable healthy ones now. And so black is, is for anger. You know, pink is for love. And they, as they grab a handful of sparkles and put it into the mind jar, which is to jar of water, they're talking about, they are talking about their feelings or articulating it. And then we stir it up and then we bring the gong. And then we just quietly watch all of those sparkles settle down. And then, and then I say, okay, now the water is clear, our mind is clear. This is, this is how our mind cleans itself.

And so it's okay to have all of this anger or sadness or fear. And also joy, maybe we have all of those feelings at the same time. Yeah, of course. Yeah. No, it's great to be able to have kind of a medium to communicate with kids of any age. I mean, I know this is always the parents struggle and the child struggle as well from being both of those at this point. Just any tool that can kind of like get these thoughts into a child's head where they can then figure out what their relationship is going to be. It's never a bad thing. I mean, like there's, there's no downside to these things. And I just, I don't know what every parent has gone through over the past two, three years, right?

This has been such a radically different shift in terms of how people are meeting, what they're doing, what they're discussing. It's just there's never any normalcy. We're not going to go back to that likely either. So being able to carve out these kind of like mediums for discussing this stuff in a way that prepares kids to be resilient too. And I think that's like a big thing that comes through. And the book is like, this is about resiliency and being able to prepare yourself for when things are difficult or there is a challenging situation that you have some inner resources on which to draw upon, like that, that's all we can hope for as people.

Because like, we know that it's coming. So you have to be somewhat prepared or have an idea of how to be so. Yeah, I mean, why don't we give our children these tools in our society? You know, I was not given those tools. And a friend of my mom's taught me how to meditate when I was 14 and I was like on fire for it. I loved it. It helped me, it soothed me and such a painful time in my life and grounded me. It got me through, you know. So 14, right? Yeah. You got taught, told by a friend, a mom's friend about meditation. Then 15, you met Chogim Trungpa. Was it that? Yeah. Can't explain. Yeah. It was, but it was weird.

It was magical. My boyfriend's dad was a student of Chogim Trungpa. And he was helping to open Naropa University for the first time, the first session. And he actually, it was this very elegant gentleman and very trustworthy. And he sat down with my mom and had a long talk with her and convinced her to let me come with him for the summer. So my boyfriend Jamie and I came with him for the summer so that we could witness the opening of Naropa University because we were both very interested in spirituality. And my mom really wanted to foster that. How lucky. You know, 14, 15 year olds getting into spirituality, don't usually get the bootstrap up to Chogim Trungpa.

You know, there's like, there's at least four dodgy weirdos in between there. So, well, no, I actually had been on a search. I had been like, things were so bad by the time I turned 13, I became suicidal. And, um, and I heard Chogim Trungpa's voice like from across the universe. I didn't know him. And it said, if you kill yourself, you're just going to have to go through this all again. Yeah. And I knew it was true. It was just like, Kaboom, he was just throwing down the gauntlet and I was terrified. I didn't want to go through this all again. And then later, he said, it's time to find your guide.

And so I didn't know what that meant. So, but my boyfriend knew the whole spiritual scene in San Diego where I grew up. And so he took me to ashram's, you know, and I met. I can't remember the same anyway, I met some famous teachers and everything turned me off. You know, the whole spiritual scene. Yeah. It was not what I was looking for. And then when I came out here and Chogim Trungpa walked into the shrine room that he was going to give a talk at. I just looked at him and I said to my boyfriend, what is my heart doing in that person's body? No. I can literally see my heart in that person's chest.

That's like scientifically impossible. I love that. This is not physically possible. Yeah. And I was like, you know me, don't you? And he said, yes. And I said, no, you know me better than I know myself. And he goes, that's right. We're old friends. And then he said, laughing, like looking me up and down and laughing hysterically. So, and I got so embarrassed as the self conscious 15 year old everybody's looking at us, you know. So I was, and that was the beginning of my relationship with him, like being on the razor's edge because I was like, Oh, I think I found my guru and I think he's crazy.

Yeah. What a, those are, those are always the, uh, the revelatory moments, right? When you realize you're actually walking a spiritual path and apparently everyone's a lunatic. Great. Wonderful. Yeah. This is, this is good. Yeah. Many of us have come to that realization. Yeah. I mean, it's not all these years later. I'm 62, 63. And I'm still on the horns of that dilemma. Yeah. That is the path, you know. You know, I, I, obviously, I think some of us incarnate specifically to realize the truth. Of that reality, right? I mean, not everyone wants to take that leap. I mean, Tokyo and Trunkba has the, the quote himself, right?

The, the bad news is you're falling through the sky through the air with no parachute. Nothing to hang on to. The good news is there's no ground. That's a, that's a real, uh, commitment to kind of take as a human being to be aware of that, um, as much as you can without going nuts. Um, but it is, there's a freedom to it, obviously, right? I mean, that's, yeah. After all these years of practicing, uh, basically softening the edges of ego and ultimately, ultimately transcending ego and realizing you really don't exist. This actually is a dream. Yeah. Um, it's, it's extremely liberating. And I, and, uh, and you transform emotions, which is what this book is about.

You let them come up. You feel them. You don't act them out. You don't repress them. And that energy becomes great joy. Yeah. In a weird way. I mean, it's, you recommended a book, uh, to me, the millarepa, right? Is it the 10,000 songs, 100,000 songs? Yeah. I'm only off by a factor of 10. Um, I have been slowly going through it since you mentioned it. And what's striking about that book is at first, like this guy obviously seems insane. He gets particularly happy when demons and stone demonesses all are, he gets very happy. What it seems like things are going very wrong. Like he's relishing these opportunities.

Like, oh, this guy's insane. But then you start to realize like this is the truth. Like this is his, his moment to actually transcend and show not only to himself and for the honor of his grooves, but like the people around him that like these are the moments we're looking for. Like this is why we go, uh, and incarnate and try to like put ourselves through these trials and tribulations and transcending ego is obviously. It's been a term that's been, you know, through the spiritual washing machine for however many decades in the West. So it's, it's lost some of what it actually means, but anyone who is genuinely interested in doing that knows what comes along with it.

It's not pleasant. It's not a pleasant discovery initially to find out that this is. You go, you go does not want to die. No, and it makes sense. I mean, it's how we navigate. I think a big part of it too is befriending and acknowledging ego and treating it not as like an enemy who we need to subdue an attack, but also to welcome because it allows us to experience this kind of nexus of consciousness and that's how it is. So that's so wise, Noah, and watching the 1974 talks at Naropa. There are 28 talks that he gave. And in one of them, he says, no, you're not trying to get rid of ego. Yeah. When you attain enlightenment, you still have an ego.

And since you're in the dual list, this dualistic realm, you still have dualistic thoughts. So that, that really stopped my mind. I was like, Oh, wait a minute. I think I've been doing this wrong. Well, because that's what also to be clear. From what I have seen in terms of the evolution and the etymology of how a lot of these Eastern thoughts. Got transpose and transcribed and kind of communicated in the West is like, that is how it naturally sounds to someone is ego is bad. We must get rid of it. We must transcend it. It's due. It's making us do things that we don't want to do for our ultimate benefit.

And you hear that enough that gets parsed through enough gurus and teachers and schools of thought that even if you didn't believe that at some point, it's embedded there is some subconscious reality for people. That's a tough one, right? I mean, that's a, that's a big. I found that as I've kind of more discovered, the more I've discovered about desire and its implications and relationship to spiritual progress or advancement. A lot of what Jo-Gem Trunkba not only said, but what he did and acted on in real life really is the most honest and kind of accurate portrayal of walking any type of spiritual path would be, which is not to pretend that you're some aesthetic, you know, who's never going to do anything and you're just going to be this monk living in perfect peace.

Maybe if you were born into bed when everything was calm, that's a valid path. But like, we're born in the United States of America, which is insane to begin with. Like, you're not going to skirt that and to deny that is your home or where you were born into isn't going to do you any favors. This exoticizing kind of Eastern cultures or whatever culture it is, whether it's aliens now or whatever it is, that's never going to work. Like, there's a reason you were born as you where you were and don't try to shirt too much of that kind of identity. Even if it's a dream, yeah, it's also the whole path is transforming the self, or transcending it in such a way that you realize within carriness, whoever carry is, and all of her emotions and neurotic habitual patterns that she inherited from her past.

And within that is a wisdom goddess. And she's been there all along. And this is an uncovering process. And also, you, going back to what trigon trim percent about this, even if you're enlightened, you still have dualistic thoughts. What he was saying is you rise above, and you have this panoramic view. And you have no allegiance toward any reference points whatsoever, including like being a good little bodhisattva. You still have all of that, but you have this view from the sky that is infinite and unbiased. And that is what guides your actions now, not the ego, which is still there. And he said you can even use it, you might need to use those dualistic thoughts to have a conversation. But there's a view, constant panoramic view that is above and beyond.

And yet it is also deeply within. Yeah. And always accessible, even though at times it seems anything but, I mean, that's something that I think everyone begins to learn, hopefully at some point. And that doesn't mean anyone who's learned that is a master at it, when chit hits the fan. A lot of us will not be able to get that panoramic view. But I think most people know it's there. They know that that ability to kind of step above whatever things are happening in duality in this dream like world world. They can sense that it's there. It's one of the things, it's interesting you mentioned about the suicide thing. I've never been what I would describe as truly suicidal, I've encountered suicidal thoughts.

I think everyone probably has at some point. But I've never had the strong desire to do it. But I very much came to the same conclusion. And it also felt like not totally from within that you're not doing anything there. There's no accomplishment. That's taking this game of life as a final, one-time, isolated, siloed-off existence that somehow you'll escape. And it's like, that's clear. Like, I mean, take a little LST, you know, that's not true. It's like, you don't have to do any real diving into your soul and psyche to know that that's just not really what I guess if you were like a purely materialist, you know, scientific materialist.

You really felt everything was just a product of like physiological function and, you know, brain and all that. When you're dead. Yeah. Yeah. It just seems that there's so much evidence that intuitively and with the heart, you can sense that that's just not accurate. You know, and I guess there could always be the devil's advocate who says, well, these are just calming stories. People tell themselves so they don't have to fight this terrifying prospect. I'm like, wait a second. Try doing it the other way and see how much terrifying shit comes up. It's not like you're immunized from terrifying concepts if you believe that maybe this life isn't the finality that you're envisioning it is.

Like, that's not, don't worry. There's always stuff to be terrified of. Yeah. Yeah. It's a trip. I mean, I don't know. I like this idea when you were talking about kind of this destiny when you're with your family and you can feel it. This is something I've been feeling kind of more and more over the past few years. Really, since the last time we spoke at length when I was going through a lot of life changes that I am not now, but it really has seemed to feel that there is this destined quality. It doesn't feel that it negates free will or choice or any actions we may take individually, but there is this kind of broader overarching sense of family or home or peace that is desperately trying to break through people's consciousness and if they can kind of access it and allow it. I mean, the magic that comes from it. I mean, the books and being with family is just the start of it. I mean, you really begin to navigate this world or have the ability to navigate the world in a joyous way, which is cool.

A loving family can celebrate life, you know, just celebrate together. Yeah. My husband just got home. He is so excited because he bought after telling me it wasn't going to buy a rib roast, which I really want to pick. He got this massive one that has tons of fat on it. And he's like, so then he took a picture of it and texted it to the whole family. And now they're going to probably have long discussions about how exactly he's going to cook that thing. And at some point, we're all going to come together and everybody's going to bring, you know, their offering and we're just going to have fun. We're going to talk and laugh. I, you know, that's never not happened in my family when we get.

It was a lot more unplayfulness. And by the way, I know we have to end soon, but I want to end on the note when you mentioned about how your mom wanted to share meditation with you and you were like, no, thanks. Yeah. I mean, I saw none of my friend, no, none of my friends supported me when I decided to start family meditation. It was against the culture because nobody wanted all their spiritual trip on their kids. Right. And I was like, you know what, these guys are having a hard time. They're stressed out. They're bickering. You know, they're in a really difficult, stressful, speedy society. And they need these tools. So I told them, you know what, you have to brush your teeth to keep your, to keep them healthy.

And so your breath doesn't stink. And you have to clean your mind so that your mind is healthy and happy. And this is a tool that we're doing. We're going to do this together. And we're just going to sit and practice being peaceful together for a couple of minutes every day. And, and then I made them a part of it different. Everybody got to take turns who run run the gong. The older kids were allowed to light the candles. We didn't talk about Buddhism at all. Yeah, lay our spiritual trip on them. But we said, you need to learn how to slow down and just be. Well, you know what, they went for it. All three of my daughters are now lifelong intensive meditators who do.

Sophie's teaching it at Oxford. She opened the first school of meditation in this business school. They never had it. And Kelly and Tessa have taught it. You know, now they both have kids, so they're not teaching it. But they're teaching it to their own children. Right, which is probably the most important thing you can do as a parent is pass that on. Yeah, the point is that we do it with humor and a light touch and, you know, try to make it fun for them. Right. And it becomes this time that they look forward to because it's a very intimate time for all of us to just sit and be quiet together is incredibly intimate. And that's kind of satisfying for all of us in a way.

Yeah, I mean, I think the earlier you can get these practices or techniques in front of a kid, the better. I unfortunately was a hardened teenager. You know, mom was going to say at that point, but like, again, if this could be, I mean, the idea that my children could look forward to something that helps them clear or still their minds. Like, that's like, that's a life hack. That's a real life hack. That's like setting up any individual for like massive success, because that, I mean, how you react when there's a lot of chaos going on outside and internally. That kind of determines the course of your life, probably more so than when everything is going smoothly.

Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible gift. So it comes out. I know January 25, where do people go to find out more to preorder to purchase. I'll have links. I'll get it out around then as well too. Bye bye. Thank you for having me. Well, it's on Amazon and it's on my website, Carrey McLean.com. Hopefully I'm going to have an animated video out in a couple of months. I'm going to actually try to make myself. I had one before for peaceful piggy meditation and it went totally viral. Yeah, I'm not surprised. And so I'm going to try to do something something animated that shows a little bit of each section of the book and that can. Yeah, so look for that. It'll be on my website too.

I, I, I, we got to do this again sometime soon. There's so many other fertile ground for us to cover in terms of life and kids and just all the cool stuff. You, what you're doing with your kids. Oh man, I mean, we can get into that off errands, this kind of branding stuff that's going on. And I always am looking, you know, for ways how to like genuinely be a better parent because no one gets the handbook. They don't give it to you when the kids pop out and they say, Oh, this is how you do it. And if they are, they're probably very wrong and don't read that. So yeah, I mean, we should definitely do this again sometime soon. You're the first guest I've had on and I think a couple of months I hadn't had people on when I was in Turkey.

And I've been doing it a lot less just because life stuff. But I'll bring back a tradition I've done with other guests in the past. I'll ask you three quick questions and then one bigger one. What's your favorite color? My favorite color is the rainbow. See, my earrings. I do. I love that answer. The full spectrum. Full spectrum. I love it. What's your favorite number? Three. Cool. What's your favorite animal? A dog. I love it. And then last question. And what's a practical, not that you haven't been giving these out the whole episode, but what's a practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people listening.

A practical tip is try this, make us make a sacred space, a peaceful place for you and your family to be. No matter how busy and stressful your life is, make this a priority. Try to do it daily, even if it's only one minute. Just keep going. Just keep going with that. And children will learn to value inner peace. And they'll know how to achieve it. You're the best. Your family's incredibly lucky. I'm lucky for having met you and know you. Your daughter Kelly, obviously, is a very special person. Kelly and I feel the same way about you knowing Kelly's jealous that I get to talk to you. I got to have her back on. I know it's hard when we have kids, but we got to find some time to do it because she's one of the coolest, funniest people I know.

She's funny and she's right now dealing with a lot of grief because of losing her brothers. And this is a good time to talk about grief. It's a great time. Especially with the comedian. Yeah, she's the best. I'll reach out and we'll get her on soon. But Carrie, in the meantime, take care. We'll talk soon, off air too. Okay, thanks so much. Love you, Noah. Alright, love you too. Bye-bye. [MUSIC] Hope you enjoyed that episode. Go check out Carrie's book. There is information. There'll be links to everything. But again, the book's name, it's a peaceful piggy's guide to sickness and death, sadness and love.

Believe it's on wisdom pubs. That's the publisher. I've worked with them before. They're lovely people. Carrie's fucking badass. We barely delved in to all of the badassers she's done in her life and been involved with. But really check this out. If you have kids, if you are looking for ways to kind of broach the subjects of death, dying, sickness, sadness, love, this is going to be a pretty good avenue for you. We'll see you in the new year. Keep it rocking. Do some cool shit. Yeah, I think so. You can join the Patreon. That's for the Discord. We probably have another few months of crypto mania. That's fun.

We'll see what happens after that. But time's still in. Probably closer to the top than the bottom, but doesn't mean there's not more room to run. Alrighty then. I'll see you in the new year. Bye-bye. Polymarket is proud to be the world's top choice to trade football. You mean soccer? Right. Soccer. Polymarket is proud to be the world's top choice to trade soccer. Know the game better than the market? You can earn cash trading on tournament and game outcomes, golds, assists, saves, corners and much, much more. Download the Polymarket app and use code free50 to unlock $50 free for your first trade.

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