Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 553: Raghu Markus

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

Raghu Markus, administrator of the Love Serve Remember Foundation and brilliant friend of the show, re-joins the DTFH! Check out the Love Serve Remember Foundation for an up-to-date listing of their... courses and upcoming events. You can also hear more from Raghu on his podcast, Mindrolling, part of the Be Here Now podcast network. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Lumi Labs - Visit MicroDose.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout for 30% Off and FREE Shipping on your first order! Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase!

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Greetings to you, my sweet, sweet darlings. It is ID True Cell reporting in for my podcast studio at Raytheon in Los Angeles. I'm here visiting. I have podcast studios all over the country, much the same way the United States has military bases all over the planet. I just want to make it so that anywhere I go, if I need to record a quick intro for my podcast, I can do that. And I want to thank the folks over at Raytheon for making that possible. Does it suck to ride an elevator over seven miles to the depths of the earth in a deep underground military bunker and take a tram, which by the way is very slow. I know they could do better. They're fucking Raytheon over five kilometers to a vacuum sealed chamber where I'm currently recording this episode. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:00:51 it does. It takes a big chunk out of time that I'd rather be spending working out that I'd rather be spending jogging that I'd rather be spending practicing the new male only sport of burrowing. Now I don't mean that in a misogynist way. It just hasn't caught on with the ladies yet. I'm sure it will. For those of you unaware of the sport, essentially you get together with a bunch of your guy friends, you strip down and you burrow as far as you can into the exterior of a muddy hill. It's dangerous. Sometimes the hills will collapse and sometimes the bodies are never recovered because they get sucked down into the earth. And that's one of the things I love about working here at my podcast studio beneath Raytheon is that we can actually use this incredible
Starting point is 00:01:41 lidar technology that sends some kind of signal into the earth and I've been able to identify over 15 people that I was competing with where their body is and it's incredible how fast the earth will suck a naked man down into its core. Regardless, I'm excited to be out in the road again. It's nice to be back in Los Angeles. Missing Los Angeles. It's tough to be out here and see these beautiful green hills in the interstate from my hotel room. The hills I don't miss so much, but God knows, man, the LA traffic. That's the reason many people come to this great city. I certainly did not come for that reason. Originally, I came because I was forced to because of some divorce bullshit, but gradually I fell in love with the traffic and would make it a practice to
Starting point is 00:02:38 get out there every day, find the thickest cloud of traffic using. In those days, we didn't even have iPhone technology. We didn't have maps or GPS in the normal sense. So you just had to get lucky, call some of your friends. Hey, did you see any good traffic out there? Watch the news. But yeah, I just get out there in a nice, thick clump of hardcore Los Angeles traffic, put on some Vivaldi, pull my pants down. No one would see it. I had very thickly tinted windows in those days and just spray a variety of condiments onto my genitals. That was a typical morning in Los Angeles. So yeah, it's tough to be out here. Did I rent a car when I got here? You bet I did. You bet I did. And so, at least for a moment, before I had to get down here in
Starting point is 00:03:32 this bunker filled with the most obnoxious aliens you've ever met, I got to experience what LA really meant to me, what it really was, which is that, you know what I'm talking about, everybody, that nothing's quite as pleasant. It's just a nice, chilled mayonnaise jar being dumped right on to your penis or whatever you got down there. Just activates you, clarifies some things, helps you understand, yeah, I am a person. Yeah, I have wants, needs, habits, things I react to, things I don't react to that I probably should be. But underneath it all, what am I really? Basically a Caesar salad. I'm just a sandwich. I'm just a bowl of lukewarm French fries that needs a little something extra from the outside world. And that's not money. That's not fame.
Starting point is 00:04:34 That's not power. For me, it's either mayonnaise or sometimes blue cheese, Hellman's blue cheese. It just touches that place inside of you. The place you always wanted to be touched. And lots of us try to touch that place using methods that aren't healthy, they aren't good for the community. Some of us try to touch that place by smoking crystal meth. Some of us try to touch that place using the glory hole path, which by the way, I just released a third edition of the glory hole path. It's available on Amazon. I hope you check it out. But when you find out that all you're searching, all you're putting yourself out there to feel again, crack through that shell of numbness that you've come to understand
Starting point is 00:05:30 as who you actually are, all of that was wasted because you could have just gone to the grocery store in Calabasas or Sherman Oaks, picked up your condiment of choice, gotten out there in the thick of traffic and blasted yourself down. Like Jesus reaching into the tomb of Lazarus, pulling out Lazarus, his genitals covered with gray pupan or whatever it was that Jesus sprayed on his junk to wake him from the dead. That's how you'll feel resurrected, born again. And you will go back out in the world with a new perspective that you didn't have before. You'll look out and you'll see so many people suffering just like you are. So many people in the rat race looking for an old bit of cheese. So many people out there with an unquenchable hunger, a thirst that they
Starting point is 00:06:36 cannot satiate no matter what they do. And you're going to want to go up to them and say, Hey, have you tried just spraying a bottle of ketchup all over your balls or under your taint? And you'll probably do it. I sure did. Lots of us did. But you'll find out that people don't want to hear the truth that they're not ready for it. They don't want to realize that the point of it all here on this, as Carl Sagan called it, pale blue dot. It's not to control the world. It's not to live in some mansion with models, snorting endless rails of ketamine while you play versions of God of War that haven't even been released yet. No. No, no, no. And it's not going into nature. It's not taking your bag of
Starting point is 00:07:40 crystals and your handmade sandals to Niagara Falls, meditating in some beautiful mountain temple, zip lining. And it's not, it's not about having kids. It's not about discovering the love that you feel when you, when you see your baby for the first time. It's not about eating. It's not about listening to your dumb animal body when it screams out for food after you haven't eaten for a couple of days. No, it's about getting in that car, getting into traffic and spraying condiments all over the most sensitive part of your body. With us here today is the brilliant Ragu Marcus. He's one of my favorite guests on the DTFH. I love him so much. He is the administrator of the Love Serve Remember Foundation. He's the one who
Starting point is 00:08:52 helps organize all the retreats and all of the insane work that that foundation is doing out there. Also, of course, he's my friend. He's one of my teachers in the world. He's someone who has actually sat with Neem Karoli Baba, the great Indian saint. And I always love it when we get a chance to hang out on the podcast. But first, if you want commercial free episodes of this podcast, all you have to do is go to patreon.com forward slash family hour and subscribe. You'll get zero commercials in every episode along with access to our discord server and our weekly family gatherings or mostly weekly family family gatherings as well as our weekly meditation group journey into boredom. So check it out. It's patreon.com forward slash family hour. If you happen to be
Starting point is 00:09:46 listening to this the week of February 23rd, I'm going to be in San Jose, the San Jose improv this Saturday and Sunday with William Montgomery. So won't you come out to a show, please? I'd love to see you. Okay, everybody. Welcome back to the DTFH Raghu Marcus. Here we are. We are live. Raghu, welcome to the DTFH. It's good to see you again. You seem very glowy. What's going on over there? Is this some kind of zoom age reversing filter? You've been doing yoga. I guess you always do yoga. I don't do yoga ever. Are you kidding? I do Pilates. I like Pilates. Oh, wow. There is a biscuit. So you never really got into the yoga thing. That's surprising, seeing as how you're
Starting point is 00:11:03 surrounded constantly by yogis. Well, yoga is yoga is the ossiness, right? Doing various positions that enhance the flow in one's body. No, I have not been a big, although what I do include some yoga actually. It's like a Pilates yoga combo that I figured it out. So yeah, it's core. It's all about core, especially when you get older. There's something I'm beginning to ask you about. So at the retreat, we watched that and what's the name of the movie you made? I'm sorry, I can't remember the name. I can't remember anything anymore. What's the name of the movie you made? You and me, both, brother. Yeah, brilliant disguise, the Samadhi of KC Tuari, our mentor from back in the day. Such a good movie, so intense. But there was a scene in it that is just, I keep
Starting point is 00:11:59 bringing it back. And maybe you could sort of describe this scene, but there's a story of Neem Karoli Baba. I guess he's at the base of some mountain with KC and some other people and these orbs up here. Can you tell that story from the documentary? Yeah. Basically, yeah, this temple ashram was in a valley with high mountains all around, not the snow caps, the foothills, but there's still like seven, eight thousand feet, nine thousand feet. So around this particular valley at the top of it, almost to this day, there have lived yogis in caves. We knew about it back then and really only one actually died, only a few years ago. So they're sitting there, Tuari and Neem Karoli Baba and I think it's getting towards dusk or
Starting point is 00:13:09 it's dusk, something like that. And suddenly these orbs that look like saucers come flying from one side of the mountains across the valley to the other. And Tuari said this was some phenomenal experience of seeing these things. And basically what one of the Westerners who actually did the interview with Tuari in that circumstance said he knew of, there was a specific name of an ancient yogi who had lived up there and supposedly can manifest in any different way that that yogi wanted to in terms of having a body, not having a body becoming light and so on and so forth. I think his name was, it was a Rishi, Garg Rishi. Now they're remembered. What's a Rishi? What does that mean a Rishi?
Starting point is 00:14:10 Rishi is a sage, like an enlightened sage. This, you know, just the Vedas and everything came from these Rishis, right, emanated through them. So anyhow, so he said this was, you know, probably what was happening that they had these powers and Maharaji in that moment, I guess, opened up Tuari and others, whoever was around their third eye to be able to see it. See it. That's my conjecture. I have no idea. But Maharaji said, what are you making these things out? Do you think like I can do something? You're making me out to be a miracle worker? What the fuck? That's what he said about it. But this is pretty classic for him. Like he consistently denied having any kind of
Starting point is 00:15:03 extraordinary powers to people and was always saying it's not me. It's wrong. It's God. It's not me. But the reason of all the amazing miracle stories of Neem Kali Baba, the reason this one really stuck out to me is because these orbs, you know, this is something that people like in the UFO community or people in the UFOs, they talk about these orbs. And one of the threads in the discussion of whatever these things are is that they show up around certain people. Like there are some people, for whatever reason, when you're around them, they appear. And I just thought it was really curious. And I wondered if you had any other, if you ever saw them around them or if you've ever seen whatever these things are.
Starting point is 00:15:50 No. Never saw anything like that. And I do believe the reality of being able to connect with phenomena on other planes that are interacting with our plane here, our material plane, that reality is, for me, a given. But it means, I think it infers, to be able to be open, somewhat psychically, to be able to see these. I bet these people have that kind of an ability. And they're open in that way. But in this sense, that's the power of being like Neem Kali Baba, who's no longer bound by polarity and is just part of whatever it is that we call this universe. Then there is the ability to have people being able to have that experience and being able to be open to be able to see. And maybe what some of the UFO stuff that goes on and people experiencing
Starting point is 00:16:58 may be part of it is these rishis. Rishis is just a word that was used in the east. There could be brujos or whatever in South America that are able to actually live on beyond coming in and out of a body. There is that's proven stuff, certainly from India and from the east. And they manifest this. And maybe that's part of what people are seeing, not are experiencing. Maybe at the same time, it's also true that we are getting visited. And that's not even a question, I guess, with all of the what's coming out more recently around UFOs and so on. The reality of them is unquestionable. So it's a combination of all this stuff, I guess. Can I do a commercial before you go on? Yeah, go ahead. That movie Brilliant Disguise is now available on Amazon, Google Play,
Starting point is 00:17:58 Apple, and Vimeo. Just for a small rental fee, you can stream it. It's really, really good. You all should watch it. It's really, really good. So, I don't know, there's a lot of theories regarding why all of this. One of them being, well, it's because what's happening is we have the technology to record stuff that is moving very fast or to pick up on things that might be cloaking themselves or something like that. And now we're starting to be able to do it. The other one is that, well, the upsurge is because something crazy is about to happen on the planet. And so they're all sort of gathering to show up or whatever this event is or whatever it might be. But I love, you know, that is what I, that's what I was thinking.
Starting point is 00:18:48 We know watching it, it's like, oh, wow, that would be so curious and wild. Like, all this whole time we're thinking these things are from another planet. And they're just people living on the planet who have been able to do this forever. And now we're just starting, we have the technology to record it that we didn't have before. Yeah. I think it's, like I said, I think it's, I think it's that. I think it's, it's both. I think it's the ability for transcending off this plane on this planet is to me, you know, pretty much the same thing for somebody who lives on another planet and way advanced and has the ability to transcend limitations that we are just starting to really work through scientifically here. No.
Starting point is 00:19:35 Well, yes. And I mean, this, this, the UFO phenomena or whatever, I mean, we call it UFOs now, but innovate it as there's reference to, I don't remember what they call them, some kind of sky cherry, it's people could fly around and that they had these, there's some lost technology back then that allowed them to do stuff. There's in India, there's an area that was referenced in the Vedas that I think has like radioactive material there that would have, one way it would have been generated was from an atomic blast. And so there's references to some kind of weird weapon they had back then or some war thing that they had back then. So who knows? Who knows? We put the planet, it's very old. It's all possible is the one thing,
Starting point is 00:20:27 honestly, that I am firmly, I believe experientially positive that it is all possible. There isn't anything that is impossible. Now, of course, we've seen it with this particular being Neem Karoli, Baba, transcending time and space and all of that kind of stuff. And that certainly just reinforces the fact that it's all possible. I meet so many people through the work that I do as the Director of Love Server Member Foundation, because I see, I insisted to be able to see, even though it's overwhelming to a larger degree, all of the mail that comes to info at ramdas.org. And the level of different realities for people, how they're experiencing this stuff, especially Ram Das isn't here anymore physically, is just wild. I mean, wild. It's all possible.
Starting point is 00:21:31 And some of it is completely woohoo. And some of it is just wild projections or it's a combination of real projections and woohoo. I mean, you just don't know. That's a great story, Ram Das. You never know. You just never know. It looks like it's something and then it's something else. You don't know. So you've got to go behind all of that bullshit. I'll, are you ready to rock Dave's killer bread is the country's number one organic bread for a reason, always delivering killer taste, killer texture and killer nutrition. This isn't bread. This is bread amplified a good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney, family get togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two.
Starting point is 00:22:40 We do it all in style, dresses, suiting and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford and Jay Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids, super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at JCP.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. I mean, this is, I, this is one of the, I was getting to know you only for starting to become friends. This was one of the more surprising aspects of your personality to me is that I don't want to call it cynicism, but you are, you're, you're very skeptical regarding a lot of this stuff. Like, whereas like lots of people in that community and another fringe, if you want to call them that
Starting point is 00:23:45 or outside default reality communities, I guess you say they're more willing to just accept this or that, the story that someone says or an experience they might have had or whatever is being proof of just what you're talking about. But you, you don't seem, you're not like that. Like you seem, is this, do you think this is a result of having spent your entire life hanging around people on really good acid? At some point you're just like, I don't believe, I don't know. I don't think you walked through the wall. I don't think you emanated a golden light. I don't think you levitated. I think you were just high. But I've seen the golden light, so to speak. I've seen the reality of the complete possibility of transcendent, transcendence in any moment.
Starting point is 00:24:41 I've seen it. I've seen, you know, of course, because I saw named Karoli Baba and day to day over a period of time, it was all just became a reality. And it just shattered my, you know, mind. But you know, what you're talking about, cynicism, yeah, you know, I love Larry David. So I guess, you know, like I could never get Romdus to watch Larry David. He was too off the wall for Romdus. He was too, you know, nasty. You know, so I work on why I have this thing that I really love that stuff, dark humor, you know, all of it. And but so in this movie, Brilliant Disguise, there's one part which speaks exactly to what I think you're alluding to. And that's named Karoli Baba sends Casey Tuari, right, who's the protagonist in this
Starting point is 00:25:42 movie, Brilliant Disguise, it's about him, to go over to a fire ceremony that was happening at the time where they were propitiating maybe the divine mother goddess thing. So here you go over there and do that. So he's over there and nobody knows how to do that better than this man in terms of actually doing a ritual where whatever you're propitiating, whatever you're calling down comes down. I mean, I've never seen it any other time in my life except with this man. I mean, it's just extraordinary. So he's out there. What do you mean, whatever comes down, comes down. The divine presence that's within whatever we're calling that Shiva, or in his case, he spent a lot of time invoking Shiva and Durga, the mother, that was his poojas were centered in that way. So when
Starting point is 00:26:37 you're sitting there, yeah, when you're sitting there with him and he's invoking, it's in the movie, you can see what him completely going out, you know, I mean, this is somebody who we would be sitting with him and he went into a state, a trance state called Samadhi, that there was no pulse and no breath. You read about it in ancient mystical books forever, but when it's right there, it's mind blowing. So this is a person who did that. And he could do it when he was invoking. So if you were sitting with him and he was doing this ritual, invoking the divine presence of whoever it may be, you absolutely felt that in your body as it came down, okay, period. And then after a while, I'd get tired. He'd say, yeah,
Starting point is 00:27:29 just go sleep. He'd do it all night. And I'd have to go sleep on his bed in India, because I couldn't handle it. It was just... What did it feel like? Like density. I'm sure you have... I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And that's the first thing that happens in absorption in a meditative state, density. And it happened to me when I was nine years old. I didn't understand it until I first started meditating when it happened again. I went, holy shit, this happened when I was a kid. You know, you weigh like 2,000 pounds all of a sudden. And this is... Anyhow, so here's the story. No, wait, don't keep describing it. You weigh 2,000 pounds and there's what?
Starting point is 00:28:12 You weigh 2,000 pounds and then there is this sweeping thrill of kind of like when you start to just start peeking on psychedelic. And as your whole body gets filled, it's dense, dense, dense, then suddenly it gets filled with like particles of... It's ineffable to tell you what it is. Joy, it's a stupid... You know, there's only stupid words to describe it. But there is a vibratory thing that happens inside you. And then this kind of spaciousness that happens at this time is extraordinary where you stop having boundaries and you're going out of your body. So... There's levels of... This is... I can't remember the name. In Buddhism, this is described. It's a practice you could do in meditation that starts with you
Starting point is 00:29:17 putting your attention. Like when you're meditating, you know, some people, when they're meditating, maybe they'll get to the very edge of it where you start feeling a good feeling. Like basically, like it's a nice... Maybe it's in your heart if you're doing metatractice. Your hands maybe... Peace. Peace is there. Yeah. You start putting your attention on that. Yeah. And it starts off and so the first phase of it is what you're describing. It's this sort of radiating, joyful, warm thing that happens that can get really intense, vibratory even. Like you touched a light socket and then it's followed by what you're talking about the next and it continues to become increasingly like more expansive or something. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know about that.
Starting point is 00:30:04 That's a good generalization for going into a meditative absorption state for sure. But he, Tuari, would completely gone. There was no... He would come back after a while and he would get... This would happen under any circumstances. It didn't have to happen that he was meditating at all. I mean, around Maharajji, around him, Karoli Baba, he would... He'd just look at him, boink, he was gone and then he'd look at us and go, what happened to him? What's wrong on here? You know, and he would just dive us. He was like having fun. Anyhow, back to the story. Okay. The story of being... He was sent to do this ritual, not that far from Maharajji, like 30 yards or something. So he's doing it and he's completely into it. And then suddenly here's
Starting point is 00:30:56 Maharajji like shouting, what are you doing there? What are you wasting? We're going to die here of hunger because you're doing this bullshit. Stop. Okay. Who would... This was the kind of... So when you talk about rascality, when you talk about cynicism, you talk about... I don't know. Only some of the Tibetan masters, you know, and only like Shirdi Sai Baba, who's one of the great Siddhas of India and, you know, left in 1918, 15, something like that. Only they had that thing. There was no positive, negative, right? They were beyond polarity completely. So there was... In Maharajji's case, he had an irreverence. Okay. What was important to him was bust the casus to feed people, you know, don't make them sit around and pray. And then, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:00 he was... That was who he was, is actually. And so that irreverence and stuff. And, you know, it was in Ram Das's humor. It's in... Actually, you can see it in the film with me and Krishna was going back and forth about our experience and so on and so forth. But there are so many stories of this thing. It doesn't have... It doesn't have sanctimony. It's like what's cool. It's like... Because you would think that whatever these rituals are, whatever the ceremonies, they're... They didn't... It didn't start with the rituals and the ceremonies, but it was a by-product of that state that Nibbakaroli Baba or the cities are in. Once you're in that state, you start doing things. And maybe some of those things over time turn into the rituals that people replicate
Starting point is 00:32:51 throughout the world. But the first people to do those things, they probably... It's inside out, right? Not outside in. And it seems like Nibbakaroli Baba was trying to get to the nucleus of what any of this stuff is all about. Because you can control a ritual. You can control a ceremony. You can even trick yourself into thinking that you're doing something particularly special because you have managed to bring down some energy or summon orbs, whatever. But all of that is sort of an exterior, a shell or something around something that's much bigger, right? That's not... It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant to the point. It's like people who want to... I'm going to meditate my ass off. And I'm going to... Something's going to happen. I have an expectation that something
Starting point is 00:33:50 will happen. And that's especially in the West. It's such a common way. This is how we are. It's goal-oriented stuff. It has nothing to do with... Which is why you'll hear Krishna talk about this and me and others of us. It's about... How can you be a little bit more kind? A little bit more compassionate and loving as a human being. This is what the paradox of the path or whatever people are calling it these days is that rather than shifting you into a state of what we've all been heard a million times, being kind to yourself, loving yourself, forgiving yourself, letting go of all that neurotic bullshit, it doubles the neurosis. You start off a neurotic and you... So you're like,
Starting point is 00:34:42 I... This is unbearable. I'm going to start meditating, chanting, going to Ram Dass retreats, listening to Ram Dass audio books, taking ayahuasca, whatever it is. And somewhere in that process, all of a sudden, another level of neurosis appears where now you're walking around like, oh, I'm profane. I've fallen. I'm so impure. I'm horrible. So now it's double horrible. You already thought you were horrible by some intuition. You're doubling the horrible by this practice or this thing you're calling a practice. Oh, here's another story. This is great. This addresses exactly that. Exactly. This is great. So Krishna told me this story and he's repeated a couple of times. He goes to Maui when Ram Dass was alive and every Monday, Ram Dass would go
Starting point is 00:35:31 swimming at a beach in Maui. He loved to do that because weightlessness for somebody who's been in a wheelchair for 22 years was phenomenal. So anyhow, he went there and he got there late and suddenly Ram Dass is sitting in his car. Nobody else is around. Krishna walks up to him, looks through the window and he sees he's like, he looks awful, like depressed or something. And he turns to Krishna and he says, we're all fakes. You're a fake too. And Krishna came back with? Yeah, but we're real fakes. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than choosing slash to be in your band.
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Starting point is 00:37:25 and we're never short on options at JCP dot com. All dressed up everywhere to go. J.C. Penney. Yeah, I love that story. Well, yeah, that's the thing is, you told me and I think about all the time as a real fake. Obviously, we all love to hear that. But that's the sort of the, to me, there's a, I used to watch this interview with, God, what's his name? I love making fun of him. He really upsets people, even though I really like him. It's that guy. He got an argument named Crowley Bob. Oh, Krishna Murdy. Oh, yeah. So Krishna Murdy talking to Chuggum Trumpa and starts off the conversation with why meditate? Life's complicated enough. Why are you adding this other thing that we all of a sudden we all have to do? Like, what is that all about?
Starting point is 00:38:31 And I remember watching and really getting annoyed with Krishna Murdy. But lately I keep thinking about, like, maybe he's right. Like, you know, what's the, why add another level of shit you got to do to your life before you can feel okay with yourself? Like, why? Why do you, why do that to yourself? Why? You're saying that. You're saying that? That's ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Yeah, it's ridiculous. These, these things, there's a wonderful balance in just going back to the reality. There is a, of, of us being fakes, right? Which is what you were describing before. You know, we do all this shit and we just, you know, you know, start to feel like a complete moron because we see
Starting point is 00:39:28 ourselves doing all of it for the wrong reasons, basically. So then we kill ourselves with judgment and so on. But the reality is, so the real fake is we know that it's okay because we're just little human guys and gals. We know it. And it's okay. And so we don't have to live that story, which just self-perpetuates based on the fact we have so much self-hatred. Okay. We don't have to live that story. So there is a, that's what I mean by a balance. There's a, the balance is we're real fakes. We understand that we are doing this shit and we are self-identifying in all kinds of dark ways. It's okay. We're human. It's okay. And yeah, even though even that part's okay. Yeah, even that. That to me, see, this is like, I love this line of contemplation because
Starting point is 00:40:36 I think for me, that I could hear stories about someone walking through a wall, turning in the light, flying around the room, raising the dead. And I can be like, yeah, sure. I believe that, that could be possible. But just when it comes down to me and the idea of being just okay, like this, like this is it, like this is where you're at. This is it. Well, that sounds interminable. Now, yeah, that's, that's, this is it in this moment. Okay. That we understand. In this moment, you know what I mean? The times I've been able to, instead of constantly judging myself for whatever I'm doing that I consider to be out of line, the times I'm just like, no, this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm doing. I'm
Starting point is 00:41:23 eating butterfingers. I'm watching forensic files late at night. I'm staying up late eating butterfingers, watching forensic files. And those times when instead of that being an issue, it's just what I'm doing. I don't know if there's much of a difference between that state and states that have happened to me through like the best meditations. I don't know if there's much of a difference. It's just you're, you know, that's bullshit. That's an intellectualization. Come on. You don't know fully become yourself when you fully become blended in to the wave form of your karma and what you are. And this is where you're at. And all of it, the whole thing, whatever the fuck it is, all of it, including the self-reflective guilt, shame, bullshit,
Starting point is 00:42:10 all of it, instead of resisting it, you're just, this is what, this is what I am right now. This is it. Yes. Yes. Fully, fully accepting moment. That's an incredible moment. That's an incredible moment because that is not what many of us consider to be a holy moment. When you said earlier, they happened at the transcendent experience or the possibility of waking up or whatever you want to call it. When people hear that, they picture the fire ceremony. They picture the flowers floating in the sea. They picture the sound of temple bells. They don't picture the forensic files narrator going on in the background in some hotel room in Nashville. But I think, I think it can happen there just as much, which is why name curly Baba made a point of popping those
Starting point is 00:43:08 bubbles so many times while he was always popping any bubble. Someone was inflating around elevating this moment compared to that. Yeah. But as much as that's, yeah, that's a bit of a, there's a bit of a stretch in there in terms of being a little bit too intellectual. The reality is that moment of the forensic files, that it all comes together. I am human. I am just watching the forensic files. It's all okay. It's as real a moment as some transcendent meditative moment. I'll go along. But my moment last night of watching a Dutch police show that was subtitled, okay, that's how far I went to watch this fucking thing. I'm not even sure that they're speaking German sometime. I can't get it. They did speak French at times and I speak a little
Starting point is 00:44:09 French. So me getting, you know, and I'm seeing my, I got the moment, okay, are you really lying here watching this bullshit? You could be as Larry David, you know, in that one scene when he cut high on pot. Can't you read a book? Do you have to watch TV? What's going on? So I could be reading a wonderful, so I had that whole thing of like, you know, I'm tired. And then I went through all the excuses for why I just got to lay here. I can't, you know, maybe I'd watched more than five minutes of Joe Biden on television last night in the speech and people calling him out, you fucking liar. I mean, it's insane what's going on. Anyhow, so that's that moment and it's a legitimate moment. And I have all the compassion for myself being in this moment and indulging
Starting point is 00:45:01 that particular way forensic files. It's just this kind of parallel actually show. And then this morning where two lines of the Honomon Chalisa that I chanted as part of my practice this morning became completely transparent. I got him. I got what, you know, and it just the spaciousness. So it just was so self evident. It was just a wonderful moment, you know, and it was just two lines out of the whole. There's 40 of the 40 verses of the just two of them. So that moment, you're saying it's the same moment. It's the same moment, the moment of compassion for yourself in the moment. And then it's the moment of transcendence through a ritual of some sort. And I totally agree with you on one level. On another level, the reality of
Starting point is 00:46:03 wanting to change, wanting to not be any longer have any kind of paranoia, fear, separation is powerful enough to do something about it, regardless if the fact is that it's it's all written, so to speak, you you are going whatever is going to happen to you in terms of being able to transcend some of the Coletius, right, the impediments of our existence, greed, lust, anger, blah, blah, blah. The desire to do that means to use some of these practices in order to to have an opportunity to transform yourself through the help of the universe is real as real as what you're saying, it's all parallel. Okay, okay. So I'm going to push back, though I do any time you or David accuse me of saying bullshit, I generally secretly agree with
Starting point is 00:47:09 you. But let me just push back a little bit. The Okay, I'll use a different example in the psychedelic community, something that has emerged, which I don't think existed back when you were getting blasted on that incredible LSD that I will be perpetually jealous. You got to meet Neem Karoli, Bobby, you took acid that was given to you by the brotherhood of eternal love. Great karma. But back then, when people were taking acid, and maybe they were saying this, I don't know, I don't know if there was as much talk about healing medicine, when you were taking acid at a acid test in the 60s with Ken Keezy, no one is saying, I'm using this to treat my trauma PTSD. No, this is no one's calling it that no one's calling it medicine. Okay. And the reason that I've
Starting point is 00:48:01 always felt a little like bummed by the though I respect it, and I'm glad it's happening because it leads us closer to the end of the prohibition. But the reason I always felt slightly bummed by this sudden putting psychedelics into this cabinet of medicine is because this isn't by taking a medicine, you're implying you're sick. And so when in the spiritual community, the parallel of that is you're fucked up, man. And you want out of this thing. And so here's what you do to get out of it. Here's your medicine. It's the mantra. It's the Hanuman Chalice. It's the meditation. And so even if you're not aware that that's that's what you're thinking, if that's how you get into it, then you are putting yourself in a sand trap where to continue to do these
Starting point is 00:48:56 practices that are incredible. And I know those moments you're talking about in the early morning, when you've finally gotten your shit together enough to do your puja or your meditation or whatever it may be, drink water instead of coffee in the morning is the sun is just starting to rise and suddenly it comes down. What you're talking about, it comes down. And it's not what you expected. It's way bigger than your human brain could even comprehend, but instantly familiar and the most beautiful thing. It's your mom, it's your kids, it's all of it together, but there's nothing there but you and the earth. So I know what you're talking about. But when you get into that, because you have this sense of wrongness in your heart, I got to be compassionate to myself. Why
Starting point is 00:49:42 do you have to be compassionate to yourself? Well, because I'm fucked up. It's like you end up accidentally affirming and potentially attaching yourself to a broken quality, a brokenness of malfunctioning quality. And then you, it's the same thing could start happening to a psychedelic, someone who loves psychedelics or somebody who loves spirituality that happens to comedians, where you'll hear a comedian say, I don't want to get better. Because if I get better, I won't be fucked anymore. Yeah, I'm not going to be funny anymore. So the same thing repeats in this way instead of removing this, this constant never ending, I'm fucked up, heal me, help me, make me better acid, make me better, Maharaj, make me better, whatever art is instead of being like,
Starting point is 00:50:30 no, you're fine. Oh my God, you're fine. You're better than fine. In fact, you're great. There's nothing wrong with you at all. Anything you've been doing is just absolutely okay. It's okay. Oh, boy. See, there's a part of me that like that. You know what I mean? I don't like that. I don't want to be okay. I don't want to be fine because if I'm fine, if I'm fine, then that means this is it. And then that's not a good plan. I get it. I know. I feel for you, actually. See, there you go. You don't feel though. This is what I'm talking about. There's, I think, and again, I'm so good at interpreting shit to gratify myself. But in these stories, Holy Baba, that's what I keep hearing. I keep hearing that. I keep hearing, no, you're okay.
Starting point is 00:51:23 No, you're okay. You're fine. You're okay. You're all right. You're fine. And that is the one little bit of the teaching is the most difficult to digest, to process. That's the koan. That's the thing where it's like you will slam into the wall of your attachment right there because you're not, your problem is an attachment to vaping, to Dutch police dramas, to forensic files. Your problem is you're attached to the fucking idea that you're a mess when you're not. Golly Moses, that's why I'm a mess. West Side Story. Holy shit. And by the way, Meese, poor you is poor me. We are all doing what you do. We are all doing the same thing. It is not different. I wouldn't even be having these thoughts if not for associating with you
Starting point is 00:52:19 people. I mean, that's the thing. I'm saying like, this is years and years of hanging out with you all and years and years. This is like, is I get even somewhere close to the proximity of loving myself? Within it, I just realized, you know what? You're going to have to give up. You're going to have to give up not loving yourself. You're going to have to give up that the fraudulence is in that you're acting like a holy person and you're not. The fraudulence is that you're acting like you're a piece of shit when you're not. That's the fraudulence. Yes, but you're real. It's real fraudulence. We just had that story. It's real fraudulence. Why? Because fortunately, we have been granted this wonderful karma of having mindfulness and being on that part of
Starting point is 00:53:16 the practice that most of us engage with, which I highly recommend to absolutely everybody, is having awareness of the kind you are speaking to, that we fucking hate ourselves, that we judge ourselves all day long, that we do practices and so on because we want to get an A on the exam, that we have a perspective that we see, fortunately, that looks out at life from that complete separation angle. We are separate individuals from everything and anybody and therefore we see that and we see the fear we have and the defensive mechanisms with everybody around us and the manipulations that we do to get what we want. We see it so clearly. It's just, it can be just over the top and so let's accept that. We have that. Well, then you have kids,
Starting point is 00:54:26 no, I'm saying that will remedy some of the guilt you might have about being manipulative because you're like, why did I turn into this manipulative thing? Then you have kids, they're fresh out of time space and they've barely been able to talk and right away, they start lying, manipulating for sure. I'll come downstairs in forest. I know that in the morning, there's no way in hell that Aaron is like, forest, you can have another slice of your birthday cake before I have to drive you to school. We're going to give you just a lot of sugar as I write before I have to comb your hair and get your shoes on. But he will look at me like an angel and be like, daddy, mommy said I can have a slice of birthday cake and you're like, wow,
Starting point is 00:55:17 that's incredible. You're gaslighting. You're free. You're gaslighting already. This is amazing. It's built into us is what I'm saying. It's built into us. So that's why that's the human quality. It's okay where human is the mantra. It's okay where human, but that doesn't mean that we, the perspective of self-identifying with that cynical, separated, hurt individual is, I mean, it's erroneous. Well, this compassion to the separated, broken, hurt individual is actually, you know what you're doing every time you do that? I think you're sitting down and you're blowing your blow up doll. You're blowing up your blow up doll that you have been like of the neurotic you every time you're like, oh, I forgive you. You're just human.
Starting point is 00:56:13 Blow it back up. Blow it back up. You're going to do that until it explodes. You're going to, we are doing that until it explodes. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and J. Ferrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store and we're never short on options at JCP.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. We are doing that until it explodes. That's cool. That's cool. We just are and that's just reality.
Starting point is 00:58:02 The moment that we get awareness, which happens, and it can be through all the different means that we've been talking about, including psychedelics, and we get that awareness and then we're able to back into the real place, which is more of the intuitive place behind the mind and the thoughts and the stories and what you and I have been doing for years now, trying to put together from the movie of me to the movie of we is exactly what we're describing. I want to introduce this one thing that I mentioned to you earlier before we got on. It's something called wise selfishness. So this guy, Dan Harris, many people know him. Dan's got a great show, 10% happier, and he went to see his holiness and he thought in the way he's saying selfishness.
Starting point is 00:58:58 It's a bad rap, which for the most part is richly deserved. Nobody likes people who hog the ball or Bogart that join. Because we see in those people a reflection of our own lurking capacity for greed. We say we care about others, but as George Carlin used to say, we still take the bread from the middle of the loaf. And then he goes on and says research says a compassionate generous people are happier, healthier, blah, blah, blah. Yet we all need to have some self-interest. If we lived in a state of, and this is addressing exactly what, and you'll get this right away, state of perpetual, perpetual, altruistic concern, refusing to speak up for ourselves and generally being doormats, that would constitute, and he doesn't say the name, but what Trump
Starting point is 00:59:53 a Rinpoche calls idiot compassion. That is just takes everything we've been just talking about in terms of reflection on ourself and the way that we define ourselves and then trying to give compassion to that horror that lies inside. That's idiot compassion, right? So he goes, yeah, it's compassion for all the wrong reasons. It's compassion. I think you could argue it's cowardice. Cowardice. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So anyhow, he goes to India, you know, and he talks to his holiness, the Dalai Lama about it, and he has, he has a theory, exposing the false binary between selfishness and selflessness. He called it wise selfishness. We all have an inborn penchant for self-interest, his holiness says. It's natural, nothing to be ashamed of,
Starting point is 01:01:00 but he says, a truly enlightened self-interest also means recognizing that acting in generous and altruistic ways makes you happier than solely being out for yourself does. Right. Okay. That's Ram Dass is that you live on more than one plane of consciousness at the same time. That's the key to all of this. He said, thinking, his holiness says, thinking in a more compassionate way is the best way to fulfill your own interest. He added that his own practice was to think about benefiting other people as much as possible. The result, I get benefit. Altruism does not mean you completely forget your own interests. No, he said. And so the so wise, the important thing for wisely ambitious people, which you and I would kind of fall into
Starting point is 01:01:56 that category along with most other people, is to remember that other oriented states such as altruism and compassion, which you can think of simply as our innate capacity, innate capacity to care, pull you out. This is the key. Certainly is the key for what we're trying to from the movie of me to movie of we pull you out of the exhausting loops of self involvement into which we are so often thrust by modern society with its emphasis on individualism, consumerism, and the frantic aggregation of likes for selfies. Okay. If you want to do selfishness better, work to cultivate a compassionate mindset. Research suggests that compassion and altruism are not unalterable factory settings, but skills to develop. So this goes back to why do we meditate?
Starting point is 01:02:56 Why do we follow mindfulness practices? It's we can, you know, through and we know this through neuroscience, we can actually change these neurotic tendencies and habitual patterns. And we can develop the skills that are innate. We do give a shit about each other. We really do. Yeah. Yes. I mean, God damn right, we do. I mean, if you care about yourself, you care about other people because, you know, this thing you call yourself is just an imaginary friend you've invented anyway, right? It's just some bundle of karma that you've decided is you. So if you're caring about that, you're shoveling butterfingers into its mouth to try to make it happy as you watch forensic files furiously masturbating the porn or whatever you're doing, you're serving
Starting point is 01:03:44 somebody, you know, and I got to tell you what you just read it answered a question for me. Something I was wondering about and something I know you have experienced as anybody who gets into the spiritual universe has experienced a spiritual person. They look great. They're wearing the spiritual clothes. Their skin is amazing. They can do the plow position in yoga. And yet somehow leaking out of them is something so mean that seems to fly in the face of all of it. We're like, what the fuck is that? There's something in there that's like as mean, like there's a snake hiding in that beautiful, beautiful forest that you have so spent so much time cultivating. And I think I see what the snake is. I see what it is now. It's like, oh, I get it. You couldn't
Starting point is 01:04:41 figure it out. You couldn't figure out a way to love yourself really. You couldn't figure out a way to accept what you actually are. And because of that, you went outside in, you tried to cultivate like a good body, the right, you know, Birkenstocks, whatever the fuck it is, these amazing Mala Beads. Oh my God, these Mala Beads have been blessed by the seven saints of the seven holy mountains of earth. And because all of that traveling to the seven holy mountains of earth to meet seven saints to get them to bless your dumb Mala Beads was easier than having to deal with your own reality, finding a way to like sync up with what you actually are. And so then that leaks out. So that thing you're talking about. Wise selfishness. It's wise selfishness is, yeah,
Starting point is 01:05:30 first figure it out like you've got to sync up with the way you are right now. Like that's it. Do that. Do that. And then in the midst of that, yeah, do your experiments and benevolence with people around you. My God, what's better than cooking a nice meal for someone and watching them eat it and how happy they get and feeling those those the the the the neuro receptors, the synapses in your brain just spray pleasure chemicals out because obviously like how the hell did we make it this far as human beings on this planet? It wasn't from keeping food to ourselves. That's for sure. There's obviously built in endogenous physiological reward mechanisms for doing the thing that is going to perpetuate the species. That's what he's talking about there.
Starting point is 01:06:17 You shouldn't. But if you haven't figured out a way to deal with the fact that you're allowed to feel good, you're allowed to feel good, whatever you may be doing right now, you're actually allowed to just enjoy it. Trust yourself. Trust yourself that maybe this thing you're doing right now that is appalling on some level to some holy person you've invented in your mind is what you need to be doing right now. And then if you could do that, then I think the other stuff naturally would follow. You know, I'm just saying I something happened where I recognize my god, I've like managed to add another level of neurosis to my already neurotic mind by holding myself up against people like me really bought in the same way. I mean, he even says here,
Starting point is 01:07:07 instead of measuring ourselves against the Dalai Lama, we can use him as a useful poll star. A reminder that we can all train our minds to make marginal but meaningful strides. Really. I mean, this is just more simplistic reality. Even people like me who fear they're irreparably black hearted and even you. So it's back to Ramdas. You get to the point. It gets so heavy. You see all this bullshit in you and you go and in his case, you know, a great teacher and you go, I'm fake. You're fake too. You're fake. Bullshit going around the world singing Kirtan. He didn't say that. He just said you're fake. But Krishna's broke the ice in a way that completely transformed the moment to realize by saying, yeah, but we're real fakes. In other words, we are okay with all of the perils
Starting point is 01:08:12 of self hatred, all of the perils of fear and separation. And it gets even more exaggerated when you are actually teaching with people and you have to be on the spot or you have to be on the spot when you go out and do your act. Yeah, but when I do my act, I don't have to like put, I'm not like trying to, I don't have like a pedigree. People are coming to see me do stand-up. They're not coming to see me do stand-up because I'm meditated with some. No, but they're coming up to see there. But they're looking at you as a human that they are getting a certain kind of transmission from that's beyond the humor because that's who you are. You are naturally doing that. That's why you get people coming up to you after too. And speaking to you in ways that separate
Starting point is 01:09:10 themselves from you as someone higher and all of that kind of stuff. So you try to stop that as quick as you can. I mean, that's the job. It's like, and I think that if you really want to become a not a, not a, if you really want to come to the poisonous fake that maybe Ram Dass was worrying about or that Ram Dass had gotten caught up and maybe whatever part of it himself was that, then you stop doing that very necessary and kind of frustrating thing where as quickly as you can, you make them, you not, you make them like knock your whatever idol they've constructed of you down. And because again, and I think that there's that's where you branch off in two different directions. If you stop deciding to do that, or even worse, you start believing that their
Starting point is 01:10:00 projection is you, then oh my God, yeah, that's now you're on your way to Johnstown, baby. Now you're headed like this is what yeah, that's way beyond what we're talking about. That's, you know, that's insanity. What we're talking about is hollow bus. Yeah, insanity. We're talking about that's why I love this story. I love the way it happened with Ram Dass and Krishna. I love the way because that's what Ram Dass represented his whole life, being honest with himself. So in that moment, he was just expressing his own fear and his own separation. And Krishna busted that, you know, by not responding in the way. Yeah, we're just fucked up. What are we going to do? You know, Krishna is the master of that. He's so good at that. He's like throw these little throwing
Starting point is 01:10:47 stars that will just completely like, like set you back on the path. It's so wild how good he is at doing that. It's really interesting, real quick little things he says. Yeah. And so I think this story, in other words, all I'm trying to say this, this came out. And it's something you and I are repeating right now and remembering. And we're using it to reflect our own insecurity, our own fear of separation, our own self reflective selfishness. And it serves as a purpose. It serves wonderfully in being able to just like, okay, it's again, yeah, we are that. But at the same time, we are not that it's, we can live on both of those planes at the same time, which is wise selfishness, which is really what this is about. You're selfish, just like you're, that's
Starting point is 01:11:46 the way it is. And that's how you are right now. Not you do. I mean, in general, if you're human, you know, one of, I think this ties into what we're talking about. And I'm pretty sure it was Krishnadasi said this. You can trust people to be who they are. Now that you see, I think like once I remember, I remember, yeah, and I'm getting frustrated with people when I'm like, annoyed with people are when someone's not meeting my expectations or following through with something maybe they said they would do. It's like, yeah, but that's not who they are, like who they are as someone who maybe doesn't follow through with what they say they're going to do all the time. What they are is somebody who at this point in their life, in a lot of times, those
Starting point is 01:12:31 people are riddled with guilt for their inability to follow through with what they're going to do. They're, they're, they haven't gotten to the place where they're like, I'm authentically a slacker. I'm authentically a person who doesn't get shit done. So they're secretly just broken inside because they haven't embraced that part of themselves. I mean, this is what I mean. If you want to make that transit from, from, from, you know, to the point of being able to have this not idiot compassion, compassion, compassion for people, it's not going to come from having compassion for a person that isn't even there anyway, a person you've invented in your mind. It's, it's, it's going to come because you found a way to have real compassion for that part of you that is
Starting point is 01:13:19 authentically, authentically selfish, depraved, profane, blasphemous, filthy, addicted, crazy. This isn't all you are, not all you are, but it sure as hell a big part of you. And it's not going anywhere until you address it. And the way to address it is not by ignoring it or beating it up. The way to address it is like, okay, what? Okay, you can live in the basement. I know you're down there and I'm weaving the door unlocked this time. I'm not going to keep opening the door and throwing slop down there to you like some kid in the, like in the deep South or in England or whatever. Remember, you know what they used to do? They used to take kids that had some disability and throw them in the basement. It was a shame. And then they just like throw gruel down there or old,
Starting point is 01:14:11 like, I don't know, Oliver twist shit down there, throw him an old bit of leather and some coal. And then they'd stay there the entire, their entire life stinking up the house. So I think the move is to like recognize you've done the same thing. You've done the same thing to yourself. Before you judge those people who put their kids in the attic or in the basement, recognize you got one in you. It's just lonely as shit. And all it wants is for you to love it and stop questioning why it does this shit. It does because it does those things because that's what it is. Then when I, when you do that, oh my God, all of a sudden you're due, you can do that for other people for real. So then when someone's sitting in front,
Starting point is 01:14:52 yeah, you do that for me to get to that. Well, that's exactly to get to that realization where you're what you're talking about. It takes us something, a fulcrum, a leverage to be able to get behind this self-identification that you're talking about. It takes us something. Now it can be, it can be a conversation with a friend. I mean, you know, we've done this a billion times, you know, and it's enlightening for both of us. And it's, it's, it's going to a retreat. It's taking a, you know, a psychedelic. It's, it's reading a book. It's hearing a chant. It's, it's whatever it is. But there is some fulcrum that just shifts the direction enough so that the perspective isn't lost the way it was.
Starting point is 01:15:45 But to think that you are automatically just going to say, I accept myself. And, and by the way, you know, you can, I'm gonna, you can use this to hang out and we'll have a cup of tea occasionally, making friends with the demon, right? It's called, we can do that. To get there, it, it, there has to be a realization that at the same time as I'm allowing myself to be who I am and stop judging all of this stuff, and we're all doing that all the time, at the same time as that happens, me, I'm also seeing in the Teresa, after I had, you know, fucked up dreams all night from this, this horrific Dutch, German, I don't know what Belgium, it's, you know, I don't know what it was, it was just, it was incredibly well done. And it took over my mind. And, you know,
Starting point is 01:16:39 and so I got up in the morning and did my chelisa at the same time, knowing, okay, I watched the Dutch police show. Okay. Two wings of the bird, two wings of the bird. You've got to have, let yourself have the greasy, just covered wing of the bird, but let yourself have the, you also have another wing, and maybe more than, maybe you're a biblical angel, you've got lots of different wings that are different things, Ramadan's level of conscious, but yeah, I think like one of the hidden traps of spirituality is that you accidentally start hating yourself. You don't even know you're hating yourself. You're telling yourself, oh, I'm having compassion for myself. That's not compassion. Compassion doesn't feel like shit. When you're having compassion for yourself,
Starting point is 01:17:32 it doesn't feel like shit. When someone's truly being compassionate to you, they're not secretly judging you, because that sucks. When someone comes up with that. It's much easier, by the way, with another person, you look in their eyes, and you can see they're full of shit, or they're not. With us, we have so much garbage going on and layers that we don't even know sometimes that, you know, are we really, are we, you know, you're doing that. But you got to remember, this is all, go back to, oh, this section of this, the movie we did with Ramadan's Becoming Nobody, and Jamie, the director, you know, says to him, you know what, I wake up in the morning, it's, I'm so fucked up, that before anything happens, I am this primal fear in my stomach.
Starting point is 01:18:24 You know, what, and Ramda said, it's your thoughts. No, no, before I even have a thought, I have this fear that runs courses through my, oh, it's your thoughts, it's coming from a thought, it's all a thought, it has no substance whatsoever, Jamie, you know, and they have that conversation. That is what we're talking about, you know, so to grab on too much to all of the, looking at oneself and seeing all this enormous, giant bullshit is another thought. It's another thought. There you go, that's the story. Well, the thought is the story, right? This is the, you know, I think one of the, as you, you know, as you start doing that thing, where you stop running away from there, your freakish little English mutant living in your
Starting point is 01:19:23 basement and you start going down there and like spending time with the mutant guy. I don't know, it just popped out of me, but it's like, when you start, when you start doing it, you know, when you start spending more time with it, you realize, oh, this, everybody is sharing a basement like this. I might now, the way I describe my mutant boy might be different from the way you describe your mutant boy. My mutant boy might have fins or like gills or like an extra eye, lady eats rats. Don't let the dog get down there because the dog won't come back. Your mutant boy might be different via story, but the thing itself, the thing itself, I'm starting to think it's not different at all. That the core, what
Starting point is 01:20:14 Jamie was talking about or that core coal of suffering that is in us is absolutely identical and that the way we get from the movie of me to the movie of we isn't via some necessarily some benevolent embracing of all people, even though secretly you think most of them suck, but rather playing around with the idea that when you're experiencing that thing pre-story, you're experiencing humanity as a whole. This is the singularity of the human experience. That's what you're, that's what you're, that our connectivity is via, potentially one of the modes of connectivity is via a recognition of our mutual, shared, non-different, non-unique suffering. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely, 100 billion percent correct. Absolutely. And interbeing,
Starting point is 01:21:12 we can call it once we realize that. And of course, psychedelics give you that big hit of interconnectivity and interbeing. And yes, we all, I mean, his holiness says, the Dalai Lama keep quoting him today because I love this wise selfishness thing, but we all are the same. We all want happiness. We all just want a little bit of happiness. And we are all suffering and there's a struggle and we get to learn how to not struggle so much with the struggle. Somebody said, oh, a beautiful Rinpoche the other day I had on a podcast is our Rinpoche. Just take it a little easier on yourself around the struggle with the struggle. You know, I thought that was so great. Yeah, that was so great. Yeah,
Starting point is 01:22:07 absolutely 100%. 100%. I'm seeing you again. My God, you look so great. You're thinner, maybe you've been losing weight. Quite drinking. Oh, good. Really? I haven't had a drink in like eight months and I lost all that booze weight that I put on over the pandemic. It just melted off. And now I'm like, yeah, you lose weight when you quit. It's weird. I know a lot of people probably don't know this, but drinking every day is not good for you. It's like it could be bad for you. I don't know. I've been trying to contact some people in the medical community because I don't think they're aware of the fact that alcohol is poisonous, but hopefully they'll get the word out because it'll get there. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Yeah, thanks, Roger. You look great too.
Starting point is 01:23:00 You look great. I miss you. I wish you lived out here in Austin. I wish we could go shooting together. Shooting? Shooting. You know, the gun range. Oh, that sounds like this is what you do. You move to Texas and you're shooting shit and barbecuing stuff. That's good. Oh, God. All right, I'm going to sign off and it was so great to be here. Roger, thank you so much. You are the best. I'm so lucky to have you as my friend. Thank you so much. Love you. That was Roger Marcus, everybody. Big thank you to all our sponsors. And please, if you happen to be in the San Jose area this weekend, that is the weekend of February 23rd, 25th, 26th, specifically, come see me. I'm at the San Jose in Brava with William Montgomery.
Starting point is 01:23:54 Subscribe to the Patreon. It's patreon.com.com. And thank you for listening. See you next week. Hare Krishna. Everywhere to go. JCPenney.

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