Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

[music] where we revisit past episodes

for the most potent and actionable

science-based [music] tools for mental

health, physical health, and

performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and opthalmology at

Stamford School of Medicine. And now for

my discussion with Dr. Sam Harris. Dr.

Sam Harris, what is this thing that we

call a self? You know, as far as I know,

we have not localized the region in the

brain that can entirely account for our

awareness of self.

>> The problem is we we use the term self

in so many different ways, right? And

and there's there's one sense of that

term which um is the target of

meditation and you'll hear it from me

that this self is an illusion, right?

And and that there's a there's a

psychological freedom that can be

experienced on the other side of

discovering it to be an illusion. And

some people don't like that framing.

Some people would would insist that it's

not so much an illusion, but it's a it's

a construct and it's not what it seems.

The thing that doesn't exist, uh it

certainly doesn't exist as it seems. And

I would I would want to argue that it

actually is just a proper illusion is

this the sense that there is a subject

interior to experience in addition to

experience. So most people feel like

they're having an experience of the

world and they're having their an

experience of their bodies in the world.

And in addition to that, they feel that

they are a subject internal to the body.

Most people feel like they're behind

their face as a kind of locus of

awareness and thought and intention.

It's almost like they're you're a

passenger inside your body. Most people

don't feel identical to their

experience. They feel like they're on

the edge of experience, somehow

appropriating it from the side. You're

kind of on the edge of the world and the

world is out there. your body is is in

some sense an object in the world uh

which you you know it's different from

the world you know the the boundary of

your skin is still meaningful you can

sort of you loosely control your body I

mean you can't control you can control

your gross and subtle you know voluntary

motor movements but you're not

controlling everything your body is

doing you're not controlling your

heartbeat and your hormonal secretions

and all of that and so there's a lot

that's going on that is in the dark for

you then you give someone an instruction

to meditate A and you say, "Okay, let's

let's examine all of this from the first

person's side. Let's look for this thing

you're calling I." They're going to

close their eyes, very likely, and now

they're going to pay attention to

something. They're going to pay

attention to the breath or the sounds.

And it's from the point of view of being

a locus of attention that is now aiming

attention strategically at an object

like the breath that there's this

dualism that is set up. and the ultimate

promise of meditation. I mean, there

really two levels at which you could be

interested in in meditation. Um, one is,

you know, very straightforward and

remedial and non-p paradoxical and very

well subscribed and it's it's the usual

set of claims about all the benefits

you're going to get from meditation,

right? So you're going to lower your

stress and you're going to increase your

focus and you're going to, you know,

stave off cortical thinning and there's

all kinds of good things that science is

saying meditation will will give you.

But from my point of view, the real

purpose of meditation and its real

promise is not in this long list of of

benefits and you know I'm not

discounting any of those though you know

the science for many of them is quite

provisional. It's in this deeper claim

that if you look for this thing you're

calling eye, if you look for the sense

that that there's a thinker in addition

to the the the mere arising of the next

thought, say, you won't find that thing

and you cannot find it in a way that's

conclusive. Uh and that matters, right?

and and it and it has a there's a host

of benefits that follow from that

discovery which are quite a bit deeper

and more interesting than engaging

meditation on the side of its benefits.

You know, de-stressing, increasing focus

and all the rest. Many people think

meditation is about changing the

contents of consciousness. You there's

some some contents you want to get rid

of like anxiety. Other contents you want

to to encourage like calm and you know

unconditional love or you some other you

know classically pleasant pro-social

emotion. Um, and that's all fine. That's

all possible. But the real, you know,

wisdom of, you know, the the 2,000-y old

wisdom of meditation that really is the,

you know, the the chewy center of the

the Tootsie Pop is a recognition of what

consciousness itself is always already

like, regardless of the contents and the

changes in contents. And classic flow

experiences have this this quality where

there's the and this this tends to be

why they're so rewarding. um where

there's just if you're in in some you

know athletic activity or you know an

aesthetic one or you could be having sex

or you could be whatever it is some peak

experience. Its peakness usually entails

there being some brief period where

there was no distance between you and

the experience. Right? for that moment.

You were no longer looking over your own

shoulder or anticipating the next moment

or trying to get somewhere where where

you weren't or, you know, micromanaging

errors or you like this, you know,

there's not there's just the flow of

unity with whatever the, you know,

whatever the experience is, you know, a

surfer on on the wave, right? And we

love those experiences. We are

continually abstracted away from them by

our thinking about them. We're think,

"Oh my god, that that was so good." Or,

"How do I get back to that?" Or, you

know, you're looking at a sunset, it's

the most beautiful sunset you've ever

seen, and then you're continually

interrupting the experience of merely

seeing it with a commentary about how

amazing this is. And I wonder, you know,

what are real estate prices here? I

mean, is it possible that we could we

could move here? And like you your your

mind is just continually narrating a a

conversation you're having with

yourself. However, paradoxically, I

mean, you're telling yourself things

yourself things that you already know uh

as though there were two of you rather

often, right? Like, you know, you're

just, you know, I'm looking for, you

know, which which is the water. And I

say, oh, there it is, right? But like

I'm the one seeing it. Who am I saying,

oh, you know, there it is, too? So,

there's someone else who needs to be

informed about the thing I already saw.

Right? So, it's it's um there's

something about our internal dialogue

that is paradoxical. And that's what

ultimately meditation is. I mean this

kind of meditation you you ultimately

learn to recognize that there's no

separation from you between you and your

experience, right? There's not the

experience on the one hand and the self

on the other. There's just experience.

It's not that you're on the riverbank.

Uh and this is this is how it can seem

in the beginning. Even when you're

practicing meditation fairly diligently,

it can seem like you're on the riverbank

watching the contents of consciousness

flow by. And then and meditation is the

act of doing that more and more

dispassionately. So you're no longer

grabbing at the at the pleasant or

pushing the unpleasant away. You're just

kind of relaxing and in in the most

non-judgmental frame of mind, just

witnessing the flow. Right? But if

you're doing that dualistically,

you feel like the meditator. You feel

like the subject aiming attention. And

so now you're on the riverbank watching

everything go past. But the truth is

you are the river. There's a process by

which you would eventually recognize

that there's no distance between you and

your experience. And again, you can you

can wait for those moments in life where

experience gets so good or so

terrifying, you know, or just so

salient, right? Your amygdala is driving

so hard. I mean, so you're in in a war

and you can't think about anything

because, you know, the enem is shooting

at you and this is the most thrilling

video game you've ever played in your

life. uh and your life is on the line or

you're you're you know at the peak of of

some you know athletic event where

there's just you don't know how you're

doing the things you're doing but it's

all happening automatically right but

those are 1/100th of 1% of one's life

and what I'm calling meditation is a way

of simply

understanding the mechanics of attention

whereby you are denying yourself that

unity of experience so much of the time

and recognizing that that's, you know,

it's based on a a misperception of of

the way consciousness always already is.

>> Something about our developmental wiring

and the algorithms that these neural

circuits run tend to bias most people,

the non practice meditators to live a

somewhat functional life at least um

without this awareness of actor and

observer,

>> right? And so what you're really talking

about is an a deliberate intervention to

understand and resolve that gap in the

algorithm. So what are your thoughts

about the organization of the circuitry

to to essentially under normal

conditions to not reveal its what seems

to be one of its more important and

profound and um for you know dare I say

enlightening features. Right? It's

almost as if that we have to intervene

in the self in order to reveal the self.

We are not set up by evolution to be as

happy as we possibly can be and to do

almost anything that interests us. Well,

I mean, we're not set up by evolution to

be mathematicians or musicians or to to

create democracies that are healthy. We

are doing these things based on

cognitive and emotional hardware

uh that we are leveraging in new

directions, right? Right? I mean, we

have we are primates and we are, you

know, we're communicating with, you

know, small mouth noises. I mean, we're

language using primates and all of that

is clearly evolved and we're doing these

amazing things, including science, you

know, however improbably where you we're

actually able to to, you know, almost

entirely with language uh understand

reality that at at a scale that exceeds

us in both directions. I mean the very

the very vast and the very small and and

you know also temporally the very old.

It's amazing that we can do all of those

things but evolution is blind to all of

that. We have flown the perch that was

created for us by evolution. I mean

we're just not it's not just the primate

things. So, so it is with learning how

to regulate our emotions and and you

know punch through to a self-concept or

beyond a self-concept that is more

normative psychologically that allows us

to you know not be um terrorized by our

apish genes. Evolution never thought to

build us an off switch for this, right?

I mean the language is so useful and it

gets tuned up so strongly for us. Uh and

there was never a reason to shut it off,

right? There's never reason to give you

this ability to say I wouldn't it be

nice to have 4 hours of quiet now like

no selft talk for most of us um we are

covertly talking basically all the time

and and there's an imagistic component

of of this for many people you're

visualizing things as well but there's

just a lot a ton of white noise in the

mind that feels a certain way and you

know what I what you discover in

meditation ultimately is that

the self is what it feels like to be

thinking without knowing that you're

thinking. So like you and I are talking

now you're you know people are listening

to us they're struggling to follow the

train of this conversation because it is

competing with their the conversation

that's happening in their heads. So

it's, you know, the the first discovery

people make in meditation is that it's

just so hard to pay attention to

anything, the breath or a mantra or

sound, whatever it is, because

you're thinking every you're thinking

about the thing you need to do in an

hour and oh, it's so good that I I

downloaded this app. I'm like, this is

really good. This is going to be good

for me. But and you're but you're that

that chatter isn't showing up. you

you're not far back enough uh in the in

the kind of the theater of consciousness

so as to see it emerge. It's it is just

sneaking up behind you and it feels like

me again. It feels like when someone is

thinking the thought, well, what the

hell does that mean? Right? They're not

seeing it as an emerging object in

consciousness. It just feels like me. It

just feels that that that's it is it the

the you know subjectively it's like the

mind contracts around this appearance in

consciousness and it really is just it

is just a you know it's just a sound

with the voice of the mind if you

actually can inspect it. It is it is

deeply inscrable that we ever feel

identified with our thoughts. I mean how

is it that we could be a thought? these

thoughts, a thought just arises and

passes away. And when you inspect it,

when you go to inspect it, it's it, you

know, it unravels. It's it's just it's

it's the least substantial possible

thing. And and it could but yet it could

be a thought of self-hatred. You know,

it could be a a thought that that

unrecognized

totally defines your your mood. If you

could elaborate a bit on this notion of

internal chatter and external stimuli

>> is just the recognition that there's a

dialogue ongoing internally is that

itself valuable?

>> Yeah. I mean, so here here's a claim I

would make that some people might find

surprising, but I I think uh this is an

objectively true claim about the

subjectivity of most people, which is

that unless you, you know, have a fair

amount of training, unless you just

happen to be some kind of savant in this

area, which, you know, most people by

definition aren't, I believe this is a a

true claim that, you know, if we just,

you put a, you know, a stopwatch on this

table and and, you know, people could

just watch, you know, 30 seconds elapse

And I set, you know, I set all of our

listeners or your viewers the task. Uh,

for the next 30 seconds, just pay

attention to anything, your breath, you

know, or, you know, this the sight of

your hand or the sight of the clock or

uh any object without getting lost in

thought, without getting momentarily

distracted by this conversation you're

having with yourself. A couple things

would happen. One is no one would be

able to do it. This is not just a

superficial inability. I mean, if your

life depended on it, you wouldn't be

able to do it. I mean, if if the fate of

civilization depended on it, none of

none of our listeners would be able to

do this. Um, and yet some percentage of

them are are so distracted by thought

that they would think that they will

actually try this experiment and think

they succeeded. Right? And for these

people, what what happens is you put

them on a meditation retreat and you

have them spend 12 hours a day in

silence doing nothing but this. Right?

So the practice is just pay attention to

the breath when they're sitting and then

eventually you know you incorporate

everything sounds and other sensations.

And then you interle that with walking

meditation where they're paying

attention just to the sensations of

lifting and moving and placing their

feet. And then you know once the

practice is going you you incorporate

sounds and sights and everything but so

you can pay attention to everything but

the goal is for every moment

um you are going to you're going to

cultivate the what this this faculty of

mind which you know increasingly is

known as mindfulness right so and

mindfulness is nothing other than this

very careful attention to the contents

of consciousness. Uh but the crucial

piece is it is not

a moment of being lost in thought,

right? You're not you you're not

blocking thoughts. Thoughts themselves

can arise, but in those moments of being

truly mindful, you're noticing thoughts

as thoughts. Whether they're whether

it's language in the mind or images,

you're noticing those two as spontaneous

appearances in consciousness. Most

people, you know, certainly anyone who

thinks they can pay attention to

something for 30 seconds without being

lost in thought. You put those people on

a meditation retreat, what they're going

to experience is, you know, on the first

day, they're going to feel like, oh

yeah, I was, you know, I was with the

breath or I was walk, you know, I was

with the sensations of walking and I'd

be there for like five minutes, you

know, solid and then I would get lost in

thought, then I come back and, you know,

five more minutes I'd be lost in thought

and get back. But as the days

progressed, you know, even, you know, 10

days into a silent meditation retreat,

they're going to experience

more and more distraction. They're gonna

it's going to seem like, okay, wait a

minute. Now I can't pay attention to

anything for more than five seconds,

right? Because what they're discovering

is just how distractable they are. If

you train your attention in this way to

notice the particularities of of sensory

experience and emotional experience,

like you're looking for the atoms of

experience, you know, um you get better

and better at that and certain things

happen. But one thing that you one thing

that I really do do think happens is

there's a kind of frame rate change in

in the the data stream where you really

are just you're just noticing much much

more. This whole dance of I'm lost in

thought now I'm now I'm strategically

directing my attention again. All of

this seems to ramify this sense of self,

the sense of of there there's one to be

doing this. There's there's somebody

holding the spotlight of attention and

getting better at coming back to the

object of meditation. But the thing I

like to do when I talk about all of this

is undercut the false assumptions that

are anchoring all of that as early as

possible. Because where where I think

you want to be is recognizing that there

is no place from which to aim attention.

Right? This whole dualistic setup of

subject and object is the thing that is

already not there. And it's not that you

it's not that it's there and you

meditate it out of existence

successfully. It's really not there. And

if you if you learn how to look for it,

you can see that it's not there and feel

that it's not there and it no longer

seems to be there. Right? Right. It's

like it's it's not and it becomes like

again like a bstable percept where you

looked at it long enough and you thought

okay now I see the vase and the face and

um I can't unsee it and every time I

look it's it's there again. If we were

to kind of break it down meditation into

some basic component parts, what are the

component parts? And where I'm really

going with this is why would those

component parts eventually allow for the

realization that there is no um

distinction between uh actor and

observer and so on.

>> Ultimately, meditation

is not a practice that you're adding to

your life. It's not it's not a doing

more of anything. It's actually ceasing

to do something. It's ultimately

non-distraction. I mean, it's ultimately

you're recognizing what consciousness is

like when you're no longer distracted by

the the automatic arising of of thought.

It's not that thoughts don't arise. It's

not that you can't use them. It's not

that you've become irrational or or um

uh you know, unintelligent. I mean, like

all of that you you still have all of

your tools, but everything is in plain

view. I mean there's an analogy in in

Tibetan Buddhism which I love which is

um thoughts are like thieves entering an

empty house. You know there's nothing

for them to steal, right? So you know in

in the usual case thoughts are there

really is something in jeopardy. Every

time a thought comes I'm not meditating

anymore and and not only that I feel

terrible because of what I'm thinking

about most of the time. Right? So it's

totally understandable that thoughts

seem like a problem in the beginning and

for certain types of meditation they are

explicitly thought of as a problem

because you're trying to focus on one

thing to the exclusion of everything

else including thought and that's a

training that can be good to do. It

becomes a tool that you can use for

other kinds of of of insight but it's a

very specific and kind of brittle skill

in the end. I mean it's it is it's a

skill just like I'm going to pay

attention to one thing and I'm going to

do that so well that everything else is

going to fade out meditatively. If you

have a laser focus on any one thing

whether it's the breath or whatever it

is you can lose all sense of everything.

I mean you can lose all sense of hearing

and your physical body can disappear. I

mean like literally it can become

incredibly subtle and vast and

drug-like. Um, and many people approach

meditation thinking kind of climbing the

ladder of those changes into subtlety

and vastness. That's the whole that's

the whole game, right? And it can be a

deeply rewarding game to play. And it

also does come with all kinds of

ancillary benefits. I mean, all the

focus and the calm and the and the the

kind of smoothness of emotional states.

I mean, all of that comes with greater

concentration and it it can be quite

wonderful. But again at best that's a

tool to aim in the direction that I'm

talking about now with with respect to

meditation which relates to more what I

would call you know mindfulness

generically and ultimately kind of

non-dual mindfulness the underlying goal

is to be more and more aquamous with

changes. So not to grasp at what's

pleasant or interesting and not to push

what's unpleasant or or you know boring

or or you know otherwise non-engaging a

way. Um what you want is just a kind of

a skylike mind that just allows

everything to appear and you're not

clinging to anything or or or reacting

to anything. This applies not just to

something like mindfulness but even to

something like the self, right? So the

sense of self is also a process. I mean,

it's it's a verb. It's not. So, we're

we're selfing more than we are selves,

right? And even appropriate uses of of

of the term self that don't go away even

when you when you recognize that the

this the core subject self is an

illusion. There there are states of

self, right, where you you can recognize

in your life that you inhabit very

different modes of of being depending on

the context. So like there are moments

where you just by walking into a certain

building you suddenly transition into a

different state of self like like

suddenly you pass through a door and now

you're a customer in a store right so we

know what that customer feeling is like

you're now the person who's getting the

attention. It's a very kind of

formalized type of attention from the

person who's running the store. You can

be a student in the presence of a

teacher. You can be a parent in the

presence of a of a son or a daughter.

You can be a spouse in presence in the

presence of your spouse. The change in

context really does

usher in some fundamental psychological

changes in just the states of

consciousness that are available. More

and more as you become sensitive to

these changes and you become sensitive

to what it's like to actually not be

psychologically reactive and and not be

definable by your own self-concept, your

own ide. You're not identifying with

anything. You're not hanging your hat on

anything. You're not thinking about

yourself in the in the kind of terms

that you would export to others and then

care about what they think about you,

right? Like you're there's a kind of

invulnerability

uh that that arises that's not born of

being welldefended.

It's born of of of being evaporated.

Right? It's like you're no longer

keeping score in those ways. You can

leave aside all those circumstances

where it's appropriate to react to

someone and you know I'm I'm sure,

>> you know, I'm into martial arts and

self-defense and yes, you're not

supposed to be just this puddle of goo

out in the world who can be just

mistreated by people and and you know,

never put up, you know, resistance, but

it's um psychologically,

you know, even if even if a state like

anger or contraction is sometimes

normative and appropriate, the question

is how long is normative and appropriate

for like how how long do you want to

stay angry for? In my experience, you

kind of classically negative emotions

like anger and fear are appropriate as

salience cues. You know, they they

orient you to, you know, an emergency or

a potential emergency, but then in

dealing with the emergency, they're

almost never the state you want to be

in. It's better to actually be calm in

an emergency. Would you say that

meditation as a practice done for a few

minutes each day or with the app that

it's a um kind of a step function is it

very nonlinear in terms of people's

progress? What does the meditation

practice look like over time?

>> The first step function is to very

clearly experience the difference

between being lost in thought and being

clearly aware of any part of experience

including thought. and to notice

the freedom the comparative

psychological freedom that gives you.

Right? So you can like you're

something's made you angry and now

you're thinking about all the reasons

why you should be angry and have every

right to be angry and what you're going

to tell that person when you see them

and and then you notice you're thinking,

right? And you notice the connection

between the thought and the anger,

right? you like like the the minute

spent lost in thought about what's

making you angry is the thing that

dragged through the physiology of anger

and from the point of view of the one

who's being mindful this is tremendous

relief I mean and at minimum it's a

degree of freedom you can at that point

decide well how long do I want to be

angry for right is it useful to stay

angry do I want to be angry for 1 minute

2 minutes 5 minutes 10 minutes or

because but and but before you have that

capacity to be mindful

You're going to helplessly be as angry

as you're going to be for as long as

you're going to be that way just based

on the kind of the time course of your

thinking about it, brooding about it,

telling your wife about it. You are

going to be the hostage of that for as

long as you'll be the hostage of that.

You'll have nothing you can do apart

from just deciding to, you know, check

out and watch Game of Thrones again for

the third time, right? Like like it's

just you can divert your attention to

something else, which is, you know,

sometimes a good thing to do. But

mindfulness even dualistic mindfulness

gives you this capacity to just observe

the mechanics of this and then get off

the ride when you when you whenever you

want. The other step function is

noticing that there is no one who is

doing that. I mean this is the

non-duality the the selflessness the the

centerlessness of awareness right the

fact that there's no place from which

the mindfulness is being aimed but the

fact that there's just this open

condition in which everything is

appearing you know thoughts included at

that point your mindfulness no longer

becomes

it's no longer this this dualistic

effort to strategically pay attention to

anything as opposed to being lost in

thought It's just what's left when the

present recognized thought unravels.

Even before it unravels, what's

recognized is you are simply identical

to the condition in which everything is

appearing.

>> Could you tell us why psychedelics can

be useful, use safely and responsibly,

age appropriate, context appropriate,

>> ideally with some clinical or other type

of guidance. All that stated, what are

your thoughts about psychedelics in

terms of how they intersect with the

discussion that we've been having and

what utility do they play in recognition

of the self or in other sorts of brain

changes?

>> I would just say that for many of us, I

mean, certainly for me, psychedelics

were indispensable in the beginning in

proving to me that that a first person

interrogation of the mind was worth

doing. For somebody like me at 18, the

noun meditation meant absolutely nothing

to me before before I uh took my first

dose of in this case it was MDMA. The

the li one of the limitations of a drug

is that you know obviously no matter how

good the experience the drug wears off

and then you're back to you more in more

or less your usual form and now you have

a memory of the experience and it can be

a fairly dim memory. I mean, some of

these experiences are so discontinuous

with normal waking consciousness that it

can be like trying to remember a dream

where you recognize, okay, there there

was a way of being that is quite

different than what I'm tending to

access by default. And it is different

in ways that are obviously better and

and and psychologically more healthy. I

mean, it's possible to be healthy

psychologically

in a way that I I never imagined. Once

you have one of these experiences on

psychedelics or on a drug like MDMA, you

know that there's a there there. You

know that unconditional love is is a

possibility. If your only framework is

the good experiences, the good feels you

had on whatever drug it was, I think you

can be misled to just seek lots of peak

experiences. You're just trying to

string together a lot of peak

experiences, hoping they're going to

change you. every one of which by by

definition is going to be impermanent.

What everyone really wants whether they

know it or not and their right to want

is a type of freedom that is compatible

with even ordinary states of

consciousness. I mean so what I I hadn't

done psychedelics for 25 years because I

again they were super useful for me in

the beginning. Then I discovered

meditation on the basis of of those

experiences. got really into meditation

and realized okay this is a much more

you know conceptually this makes much

more sense to me this is delivering the

goods you know in terms of my experience

um there's no need to keep having these

you know seeking these peak experiences

with with drugs so what I think people

want is um a way of be having free

attention

and unconditional love

in this you know totally ordinary and

potentially

chaotic human experience, you know,

which can be psychologically fraught and

you can meet, you know, iterations of

yourself that you don't like that are

that are not equipping you to be the

best possible person in that

relationship. And what we want to do is

cut through all of that and actually,

you know, be in love with our lives and

with the people in our lives more and

more of the time. I'm not saying that

repeated psychedelic journeys aren't

can't be integral to that project but

but you know that it can't that the

project can't be being high all the time

right so whatever is extractable from

that the the the occasional you know

psychedelic trip has got to be mappable

into ordinary waking consciousness and

the point of the real point of contact

does kind of run through this you know

what I've been calling the illusion of

the self and again it is that part is

discoverable without any changes in

contents.

>> None of this can really be solved in a

single practice it sounds like. But it

does seem to me based on what you've

told us today is that only through a um

a deep understanding of the self as it

really is as opposed to this illusion

that you framed up could we actually

arrive at some answers about like what's

actually right for each and every one of

us. I mean there's one generic answer

that I think can be extracted both from

psyched psychedelics and from meditation

and just from just thinking more clearly

about the nature of of our lives and

it's it's to become more processoriented

and to be more and more sensitive to the

the mirageike character of of achieving

our goals. Right now I'm not I'm not

against achieving goals. I have a lot of

goals. I've, you know, I'm, you know,

I'm very busy. There are lots of things

I want to get done and I'm as satisfied

as anyone to finish a project. And but

if you look at the time course of all of

that, you know, fulfillment and

you you you just there few lessons

everyone I think has to draw. One is

most of your life is spent in the

process, right? Right? Like the go like

the moment at which the goal is you know

fully conquered that is just I mean that

has a you know it's a tiny duration and

it has a very short halflife and the

moment you you arrive at it it begins to

recede because in the meantime you have

all these other goals that are have

appeared on the horizon and in some

sense if you're if you're focused on

goals you really you can never arrive. I

think what we're we're all looking for

in life, we're looking for good enough

reasons

to let our attention

fully rest in the present. That is the

logic of success. Like the the s the

sense like I've got all these things I

want to do. If I could just get rich

enough or fit enough or, you know, dial

in my sleep well enough or, you know,

improve my life in all these ways, get

the right relationship, wouldn't it be

great to be married? You know, I want to

start a family. I want all of these

these things, right? I'm not I'm not

discounting those relative forms of

happiness or sources of happiness, but

one thing is absolutely clear. It's

possible to be miserable in the presence

of all of those things, right? It's and

you can add you can add great wealth and

fame and everything on top of that. It's

possible it's possible to be absolutely

miserable having everything anyone could

seemingly want. So, what is it that we

actually want in all of our seeking to

arrange the props in our lives and our

and our and the story to have a a

convincing enough story to tell about

ourselves that we're doing the right

thing? Uh what are what is all of that

effort predicated on? is predicated on

this desire and this expectation that if

we could get all of this stuff in the

right place

and not have anything terrifying to

worry about, right? Everyone we love is

healthy for the moment, right? And we're

healthy and it's you we've got something

to look forward to on the weekend and

there's not some there's not a you know

a plumbing leak in the house that we

have to immediately respond to and we

like our house and you know our career

is going fine. Now, can we just actually

give up the war? Right? Can we can we

can we fully locate our our sense of

well-being in the present moment? Is it

can we relax the impulse

to brood about the past or think

anxiously about the future for long

enough to discover that all of this here

is enough. Even if we're guarding our

time to do the things that are most

important to us, we can spend all of

that time

work, you know, regretting the past or

anxiously expecting the future and

telling just bouncing between past and

future in our thinking about ourselves

and our lives and basically just dancing

over the present and never making

contact with it. Right? So what we I I

think what we want is a circumstance

where attention can be located in the

present in a way that's truly

fulfilling. And

unless you have had some kind of radical

insight that allows you to do that on

demand,

you are in some sense hostage to the

circumstances of your life to do it do

that for you. You're you're constantly

trying to to engineer a state of the

world that will propagate back on a

state of self that will make the the

present moment good enough. And what

meditation does and psychedelics to some

degree does this, but meditation very

directly does this. It reverses the

causality and and lets you actually

change change state such that you can be

fulfilled before anything happens.

Right? nothing. Your your happiness is

no longer predicated on the next good

thing happening. You can be in the

presence of the next good or bad thing

already being fulfilled. It's like how

much can you puncture that seeking

happiness project with the recognition

that you're already free. It's not that

you just need to be a pushover when you

learn how to meditate or do any we work

on yourself in any of these ways, but um

what I think you I think you want to

find is you want to find your point of

rest in the midst of of any struggle.

>> I feel very blessed um in no small part

because of our conversation today. Thank

you so much.

>> Well, to be continued.

>> To be continued. We'll do it again and

again and [music] again.