Mastering The Mystical: A Deep Dive On Spirituality

For too long, the growing body of evidence showing that a spiritual practice is associated with better health and wellbeing has been dismissed by stoics and scientists. That is, until now. Welcome to our sixth masterclass episode, where we share big truths from some of my best podcast guests, honing in on a single theme or subject matter. Today we are diving deep on all things spirituality, sharing new perspectives, the latest scientific findings, some concrete and non-secular spiritual practices, and the value that an awakened state of being can add to your daily life. Whether you’re already part of a rich spiritual tradition or someone just beginning to seek a spiritual path, this one’s for you. I sincerely hope that after hearing all these perspectives on spirituality, you find yourself with an open heart, armed with new practices that can elevate your thinking and behavior toward a more spiritual consciousness—and ultimately, a more fulfilled life. If you’ve been inspired, then consider visiting the full, in-depth conversations with these esteemed guests. You can find links to each episode posted in the show notes below. Watch: YouTube. Read: Show notes. Masterclass Series: Click here to listen to our first deep dive on the microbiome, here for our second on mental health, here for our third on addiction & recovery, here for our fourth on mindset, and here our fifth on longevity. The full episodes for all guests featured in this episode can be found in the show notes below. I sincerely hope you find this experiment helpful and instructive—and/or that you share the episode with those who could benefit from it. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  We all have the opportunity to choose our sovereign connection to our spiritual nature.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  It's about getting into your pure, basic awareness.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  There is some bedrock of love, unalterable love, that is the truth of who we are.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  It's not just darkness. It doesn't just end. We continue.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  We have physical fitness for the physical core. We need spiritual fitness for the spiritual core.

• 1:53Speaker 06

  You need a practice without devices where you can be at peace.

• 2:00Rich Roll?

  One thing I've learned from conducting hundreds and hundreds of interviews over the past 10 years is that regardless of who you talk to, doctors, theologians, therapists, researchers, or even addicts, the collective wisdom of various disciplines all agree. A spiritual practice of some kind, any kind, is essential to human growth and flourishing. So, in this, our sixth masterclass, my team and I have compiled a variety of helpful clips on spirituality from a variety of past guests, in the hope that you may glean essential

• 2:39Rich Roll?

  wisdom, new perspectives, as well as some concrete practices that can add value to your daily life. Whether you're already part of a rich spiritual tradition, or somebody just beginning to seek a spiritual path, the following clips can help all of us understand the importance of spirituality to our overall health and well-being. And in just a moment, we begin with Dr. Lisa Miller. But first.

• 3:12Rich Roll?

  Okay, a leading generational psychologist on the benefits of spirituality, Lisa is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the founder and director of the Spirituality-Mind-Body Institute. In this clip, Lisa unpacks the recent neuroscience research that establishes that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for and inclination toward spirituality. Here is Lisa Miller.

• 3:47Rich Roll?

  In terms of evaluating the sort of scientific...

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  Based benefits of cultivating a spiritual life, we should probably define what you mean by spirituality.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Great, so thank you. So, as you are well aware, scientists do not define spirituality, all told, but we can use the lens of science to identify threads of lived human spiritual life that have enormous impact on the rest of our lives, our health, our wellness, our performance, our ability to connect and love. And the two threads within lived human spirituality, where I focus in the awakened brain, are the two areas where the lines share of science says our lives are entirely different. These two threads of lived spirituality are entirely game-changing when it comes to our possibility and our realization, and they are, one, the seat of transcendent awareness,

• 4:44Speaker 05

  which is to say our innate, hardwired capacity to see into the deeper nature of life, where we see that we are loved, held, guided, and never alone. There's a capacity hardwired in us to see a transcendent relationship with life. That is the first of the two. And the second is that that might be shared with one another, so that we can show up and be part of that symphony of life where we're loved, guided, held, and never alone, because we treat each other that way. So, religion is, through the lens of science, has been shown to be transmitted entirely environmentally. It is a gift of our ancestors, it is shared by community, but spirituality, as I'm discussing

• 5:29Speaker 05

  it in the awakened brain, our innate capacity for transcendent awareness, and that that might be shared, that is hardwired. It is not merely a gift of our environment. So spirituality is innate, and the environment alone transmits religion.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Sure. Innate and also heritable, which is something to get into, which is super interesting. But before we even do that, I suspect that, and you talk about this in the book, that It is a challenge for many and, and, and obviously some within your profession to kind of reconcile science and spirituality. It presents this conundrum, this conflict, spirituality being something that is considered outside of science, that is, you know, something anecdotal and observational. So walk me through the process of trying to drill down on how you actually study not

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  just the impact of a spiritual life on one's mental health, but just identifying it in a situation where it can be calibrated to produce results that are reliable and, you know, compelling enough to draw conclusions from.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  So, Rich, many people will say, indeed, you know, I am not spiritual. I am very scientific. And very often, certainly, there was a huge ice age around spirituality in the scientific community in the 20th century. It's starting to thaw a bit now. But for most of the 20th century, and still many people, you know, the, the bad gift that science as a profession gave our larger society was a false split between spirituality and science. And that is indeed a very false split. It turns out that science is a method. It's a lens. Whether you're talking about genotyping, or MRI studies, or long-term clinical course studies, science is a form of observance. And you, we can point that lens at just about any question.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  And the host of questions are broad. We can ask questions that are compelling and new, or we can repeat the same questions we've asked 100 times before. The questions we ask live within the imagination of the scientist. So the limitations that science faced on turning our lens to ask questions of spirituality in the human life were limitations of the culture, the climate, the vogue. In which scientists were immersed. They were not limitations of the scientific method. Now, with the shift in culture came a shift, really the thaw in the Ice Age of the imagination of the scientist. And as culture really, in some ways academia was the last to the party.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  Our culture became much more spiritually aware before academia got on board. And as the group of scientists who were early in this transformative process, being amongst those labs that really brought the lens of science to spirituality in the human life, still to this day, I can say there's a number of scientists who've yet to separate the difference between the scientific method and the vogue tastes and appetites and the culture around academic science, which are actually sort of implicitly, latent, secular material. There's no reason that the scientific lens has to be limited to interpretations or understandings that are simply, I don't mean materialistic, although that can come with material, but material, only that which we can touch, which we can point to.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  I literally have friends who are scientists, who say that because you've shown the neural correlates of spirituality in the brain, we now know spirituality is real. That is a limitation in the culture of scientists, not in our method. Then let's look just squarely at the science. And the science says, we are all innately spiritual beings, with or without the embrace of religion. We're all born with a spiritual core. And if we build the spiritual core, we have physical fitness for the physical core, we need spiritual fitness for the spiritual core. And if we do, we are 80% less likely to be addicted, 60% less likely to take our lives. We're able to be whole and thrive. We have disintegrated the spiritual core from the rest of the person, and disintegration is unhealth.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  So how do we put the spiritual core back in? Well, if it's a public school or the public square, it's minus religion. That can happen at home, but spirituality exists independent of religion. And how can we do that? Again, at home, the religious embrace of spiritual awareness is important for many families. Roll with it, do that at home. But in a public school, we can strengthen the muscle of transcendent awareness, of spiritual values towards one another. And in fact, when we look in the MRIs at the neural correlates of the awakened brain, of all forms of spiritual practice, that which most correlates with a strong spiritual awareness, is love of neighbor. Love of neighbor and service altruism. And that can be taught in school. We have to do this work of formation.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  We have no choice but to go on a spiritual quest. Every tradition has known it. When we foreclose the quest, what we get is the big donut-sized hole in the heart. We get the lack of formation, the lack of the knowing heart, the perceiving heart that is a direct connection to God or the higher power, the perceptual organ through which we say, ah, he left me, she left me, but look who just showed up. This ability to see that life is dynamic and full of surprises. And we don't make those surprises and we don't make that dynamism, but we can embrace this give and take, this dialogue with life. That is quest. The knowing of the heart is real. That's hard data.

• 11:04Speaker 05

  And so honoring and respecting the hunch, the little whisper, and the tiny, tiny little sapling of a hunch, honor that. Give it love, give it attention. When you pay attention to your flashes of awareness, when you catch a synchronicity out of the corner of your eye and say, I think I saw something, honor that. Treat your perception as real. And when you do, it grows very, very quickly, tenfold, a hundredfold. Listen to yourself and honor your inner knowing as hard data.

• 11:38Rich Roll?

  The spiritual path is described by some as a search for or an embodiment of a feeling of unconditional love. But this next speaker, Professor Arthur Brooks, takes it a step further to claim that love is a decision, not a feeling. Arthur is a professor at the Harvard Business School and the bestselling author of From Strength to Strength: A Roadmap for Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in Our Later Years. Here's a clip from our conversation.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  I love all religions, but I'm in love with the Catholic Church. And I learn as much about who I am as a Catholic by talking to people who are not. It's really, really important to talk to people who are not you. Because you know, there's too much, too much uniformity and spiritual compatibility does not expose you to enough complementarity. Complementarity in life is actually how you learn things. You learn things from people who are different than you in a lot of ways.

• 12:39Rich Roll?

  And you can stress test your...

• 12:40Speaker 06

  Stress test and also just they give you the better technique. I mean, studying with the Tibetan Buddhist monks in Dharamsala is how I learned to pray my rosary.

• 12:48Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I learned how to pray the rosary with my breath and heart by studying with the Tibetan Buddhist monks.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  That's interesting.

• 12:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  And you've, you've, how many times have you visited with the Dalai Lama?

• 12:59Speaker 06

  10, 11, something like that. Problem is that he's completely sequestered, so he's 86.

• 13:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  Or 87 now, in July. It would be 87 in July. And, but he's been in the States many times with me too. So when he would come here, you know, and we would, we've been in different parts of the States and I would interview him. And we've written together too, which is interesting.

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  And what would you say is the, the primary thing that you've kind of extracted from being in his presence?

• 13:23Speaker 06

  The understanding that did the decision that, that love is a decision and not a feeling.

• 13:30Rich Roll?

  Elaborate.

• 13:31Speaker 06

  It's that, that, well, same time as Aquinas said that to love is to will the good of the other. It's nothing about feelings. And this is an ancient medieval teaching that actually comes from Aristotle. That love, filia, is a, is a positive decision on the basis of who we are as people. And the Dalai Lama lives that every single day. He says, you must decide to love. You must decide to love. Might not like. To like, as Martin Luther King said, to like someone is a sentimental something. But to love somebody is a positive decision. It's hard. It takes work. It's, it's a measure of who you are as a person, is your decision to love in a world full of hate. And the Dalai Lama is a living embodiment of that. He's as wonderful as he seems.

• 14:14Rich Roll?

  I suspect that's true. And it's interesting to hear love contextualized as this action verb that you have control over. It gives you a sense of agency.

• 14:24Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 14:24Rich Roll?

  And I think our Western notion of it is backwards in the sense that we're looking to receive love, but we're not really adequately focused on how we're giving it or exuding it.

• 14:34Speaker 06

  Absolutely. We're a feeling-based society, and this is actually one of our great... I mean, you think... So, one of your sort of preternatural gifts is how you've engineered your life on the basis of what you wanted it to be. You know, this is one of the reasons that I listen to your show, and many people do, is because they want agency. They want to be fully alive and to be managed by themselves, as opposed to be managed by their urges, their impulses, their appetites, and their feelings. That's a phenomenon that we call metacognition, and you're the walking example of metacognition. You made decisions on how you're going to live, and you live that way. And that is not just a Western brainy idea, on the contrary. You know, the Dalai Lama shows that by understanding ourselves at a certain remove, we can make these decisions for ourselves, including how we're going to treat others,

• 15:18Speaker 06

  the love that we're going to show to the rest of the world. You know, you find that people tend to walk away from faith or spirituality in their twenties, and the reason is because the world's messy. You know, and you say, "How can there be a benevolent creator with so much pain in the world, etc.?" And I understand that this is troubling to a lot of people. But when you're our age, you're like, "Yeah, everything's messy. Nothing's consistent." I can accept a whole lot of cognitive dissonance now that I was unable to accept when I was 28 or 32 years old. Just couldn't do it. And so, the result of that is that whereas superstitions tend to fall away... I don't believe in the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny, I'm more willing to be childlike in understandings of the supernatural. Now, for some people, it doesn't work that way. But here's the deal when it comes to happiness.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  If you're left to your devices, your ordinary quotidian devices, your life is going to be like a continuous tape loop of one episode of Better Call Saul. Like, it was okay the first time, and then it's the same and the same, and you'll go mad with tedium, with boredom. It's just... Really, my job, my car, my money, my friends, my time, my show, my me, me, me. Just give me a break. The Dalai Lama always says, every time I see him, he says, remember, you are one in seven billion. By which he does not mean that I'm an ant, that I'm insignificant. By which he means, don't forget the adventure of looking at things from a distance.

• 16:45Speaker 06

  Don't, don't, don't forget the adventure of seeing life in its spectrum, its majesty, its scale. At 40,000 feet, looking at the whole world where you're part of it, gives you perspective and it gives you peace. You need that. Everybody has a transcendental walk. Now it comes, maybe it comes from the, you know, the incredible. I mean, it's like I hang out with a guy named Ryan Holiday.

• 17:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I just talked to him like two hours ago. I talked, I talk to Ryan all the time.

• 17:10Speaker 06

  He's fantastic. Fantastic. And he's, he's cut his teeth by, by, by introducing Marcus Aurelius to a generation of, of Gen Z'ers like, wow, Ryan Holiday discovered Seneca. It's awesome. But it's so smart and so good. He's such a, Ryan's a visionary guy. And, and you can study this, the philosophers, or as I mentioned before, the, the works of Bach, or understanding nature in a, in a very metaphysical way, or a traditional or non-traditional faith or spiritual practice, or a meditation practice. There's lots of ways to do this, but we must have a transcendental walk because life is simply too intense and exhausting and boring if we don't do that.

• 17:52Rich Roll?

  So how does one embark upon that if this is a new alien concept?

• 17:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've asked the Dalai Lama that very thing, you know, it's like asking for a friend, kind of. But in, and I have a, my more traditional religious life actually proceeds from this. Because I realized, I mean, there are times when I was more religious and times when I was less religious. But in my 30s, I recognized that this was a big hole in my soul and I didn't need to go across state lines to go to a different supermarket.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  What precipitated that?

• 18:21Speaker 06

  A need. I recognize the need that I needed, I needed better, more peace and better perspective. And I just have a sense that this is right. No, what part is right, I don't know. I don't actually know, but I need a physics of spirituality. And just as I would not try to create my own mathematical structures and, you know, to create my own alternative system of mathematics, I don't feel like I have to do so in a religious way. Other people feel differently about it. But the Dalai Lama talks about kind of a pyramid, where the basis of the pyramid is moral living. Figure, and this is a Jungian perspective too. Carl Jung said that happiness comes from defining your values and living according to them. If you know what your values are and you don't live according to them, or you don't know what your values are, you won't be happy.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Defining your values and your morals and living according to them with impeccable integrity. That means, you know, when they say make your bed. I mean, that's just a, it's a boring example of living according to what you think is right. And even when nobody's watching, living according to it. What I recommend is that, that people don't lie ever. Just don't lie. Now, now, when the murderer is at the door and says, you know, where's the victim? Fine, but that's not what we're talking about.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  That's a different podcast.

• 19:28Speaker 06

  That's a different podcast. That's a wondery podcast, you know?

• 19:32Rich Roll?

  Or a Sam Harris podcast, maybe.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  So, so figure out, write down what your moral values are and make a plan to live according to them. That's step one. Step two is build a meditative practice. Build a practice of contemplation. Maybe that's formal meditation, maybe that's walking in the woods, but you need a, a practice without devices where you can be at peace. And finally, you need to read wisdom. You need to expose yourself to people who have had deeper thoughts and more profound thoughts than you. So number one, act according to your values. Learn your values, act according to values, practice your values, write it down, journal it. Number two is get your contemplative practice in order and make sure you start with at least 15 minutes a day. And number three is actually read the wisdom literature in whatever tradition you, you want and do that daily for at least 15 minutes.

• 20:20Speaker 06

  Starting there, your life will change. Your world will rock.

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  In this next clip, I sit down with my wife Julie, also known as Shrimati, as she takes us through the power of the breath and the posture of yoga as tools of activation for spiritual connection. She explains how our regular practice can result in a better life for ourselves, one that breaks the bonds of our past habits and allows us to reclaim our sovereignty. Enjoy.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Intellectual conversation is wonderful. It's amazing. And it's, it really is important for us as humans to bond and connect and be inspired. And then there is a whole other universe of transcendence that happens in the processes of technique. And you cannot transcend by talking about it. You know, it will only lead you to a certain place. And we see this demonstrated in our sessions of holotropic breathing when we're on retreat. And you see humans go into a breathing space. And there are people who have almost never practiced yoga before. And they have transcendent experiences. You have witnessed it yourself.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there are literally psychedelic experiences that people are having.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Literally. And, and again, it's like I worked with somebody today who came to me who said, you know, my, I feel like my life has almost passed me by and I have failed to access the spiritual part of who I am. And just in one session, she has such an awareness of her spiritual nature. Given the space, humans are connected to their spirituality. We are truly, I heard you say it recently, "I'm a spiritual being having a human experience."

• 22:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  So Water Tiger is a, is this technique, is this portal of techniques, which are designed to lead you into a deep relationship with your own being. Because your life is about you and you alone. It's not about my life. And it's not about any of the kids' life. It's about you and you alone. And you have, we all have the opportunity to choose our sovereign connection to our spiritual nature.

• 22:41Rich Roll?

  And what would those techniques be?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Oh, they're huge. I mean, they're, they're massive. I mean, there's, well, there's like forty, maybe, in the portal right now. Um, there are devotional prayers. Um, there are, um, uh, techniques that lead you to drop into the black fullness. It's, it's empty full space. It's not empty space. But it's the, it's the void where you can replenish in that meditative state and gather energy in that state.

• 23:16Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And others are, are for amplifying presence. Um, amplifying your presence in your body. You know, there's a saying that if you don't embody your, your life print, meaning your physical body and your energetic bodies, something or someone else will. So, meaning, you could have an ancestral pattern that is living inside of your life print. Because you have not embodied that. You have not claimed your energy back.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  Right. So to put a finer point on that, an example would be, uh, in my own case, me perpetuating a pattern that was imprinted on me by my mother or my father, or the way that I was raised, such that I'm not conscious that I'm in furtherance of this unhealthy behavior pattern. Um, and not totally aware of the fact that it isn't actually me. It's the result of, you know, uh, neural pathways that got cemented when I was a very young person. And thus feel reflexive as opposed to consciously chosen.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's an automatic pattern. We call it a miasm. That is basically running in you. So it means your sovereignty is not, is not activated. And then you end up doing the exact same behavior that you

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  Promise that you would.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Literally hated as a child

• 24:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  to your child.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And you're not, you know, this is not a, I mean, this is everyone. You know, this is what we do. And then you're like, oh, my God, I'm acting like my mother. Oh, my God, you know?

• 24:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  So the, the point is, is that You know, I always say of anything that transformed my life in a positive way, in a transcendent way, was the practice of yoga, physical asana, which you and I met in that environment.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And yogic techniques are shelter from the storms. No matter what's happening, if the world is ending, practice yoga. It's like it creates an awareness of energy that is beyond space and time. It empowers your energetic. It expands your ability to live free. And I'm not saying go into a yogic sect and get into all the lineage and all the teachings. I'm just saying, just get on the mat, develop a meditation practice, and ask ourselves, like those of us who have apps

• 26:02Speaker 01

  who say they meditate and are running around. I mean, really, like, how much are you really meditating? Are you really meditating? Or are you listening to a podcast? Are you reading more news? Like, if you just took your life like a pie and look at your energetic, the amount of energy that's available, how much of the time are you engaged in intellectual activities, pontificating, analyzing, judging, assessing, summing up, like, on a daily basis in this, you know, in this coliseum of life that we find ourselves in now? And how much time have you been in nature?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Have you stopped? Are you connecting with your breath? And I mean, being in nature, not listening to a podcast, not listening to music, dropping in, sitting with a tree, like, dropping in. Like, are we communicating on that level?

• 27:04Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  So what I can do as an individual is I can dedicate my meditation to expanding the power in my energetic field. And this could be through breath, through presence, through dropping into the state, the void. And what I'm doing is I'm amplifying the amount of light that I'm able to hold. And then I bring into my heart this feeling of peace, of humanity, of love, of where every human has a safe place to live, to, you know, food to eat,

• 27:45Speaker 01

  place to love their children, and I amplify that as much as I can. And then I say to the one breath, "Hear my prayer. May all my brothers and sisters who are suffering feel my presence, that I am with them and that I hold this vision for a more expanded life experience together." And that could seem trite and silly and ridiculous to an intellectual, but thoughts are things. Energy is something.

• 28:25Rich Roll?

  I feel like humans are not hardwired to inhabit that disposition. And that's why it is a practice and things like meditation and yoga are so crucial for developing that internal connectivity. Because humans in our minds are disposed to pattern recognition. We're looking for patterns like, "Oh, these things are always like this, and so that's the way this is." And, you know, we observe things and we listen and we hear and we assemble experiences and we try to extract greater truths out of them. And the practice is about detaching from that

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  and understanding that that's just a very small piece of the story of reality. Which is another way of saying-

• 29:17Speaker 01

  It might not be reality at all, actually, quite honestly. You know, in either camp. You know, any ideas that I have about meditation, you know, it's probably not that. You know, so I'm just saying like-

• 29:34Speaker 01

  It would benefit us to develop some reverence for the great one breath, the ancient force that is inhabiting all life, and to return to some of the ways of the indigenous, of listening to the winds and the trees and the earth and the air and the fires. And so, you know, listen, we have a lot of things that are inciting fear in the world. And there's a lot of systems that we believed in, or maybe we're an illusion over, that we have put our trust in, I guess. And what I would say is the only thing you have,

• 30:15Speaker 01

  the only thing you have is your connection to consciousness through your own heart. That's it. Everything else will fall away. This relationship will fall away. The kids will go their own way. People come into your lives, they go. Careers come in, they go. But what do you have? You have your consciousness. And, you know, if you're still here, if you're listening to this podcast, if you have a dream, if you have a desire, if you have breath in your body, really, really embody that. It's a precious gift to be here. And we all agreed to come here to be part of this transformation.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And transformation is happening. But it's our job to hold the highest vision. And it's not about political parties, or us and them, or masculine versus feminine, or it's about integration and the community.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  Fear not, we've got more spiritual wisdom coming your way. But first...

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  Este clipe de folie este de unul dintre cele mai agrașe, comedianul Pete Holmes. Pete crescut în un entornament fundamentalist cristian și în fapt a studiat să devină un pastor de învățare în copilărie înainte de a pivota la comedie de stand-up. În acest clip, Pete explică ce îl avertizează în primul rând apoi îl înființă cu perspectiva spirituală actuală și îi împărtășește practicile care l-au ajutat să devină o versiune mai plină de încălcati.

• 32:02Rich Roll?

  Mantrul pe care îl adopta și îl spune în cărța lui este ideea de: "Ce este asta? Ce se întâmplă?" Un sentiment de muncă într-o vreme foarte muncă unde văd pe toată lumea și toată lumea văd să văd și aveți această sensibilitate indenabilă de adevărat și de adevărat despre lumea și ce se întâmplă în acest lucru. O făcută de blu, în război, în spațiu. Cînd nu știți că nu e în lumea, dar e dintr-o parte.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  E deasupra tău.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  Așa că... Într-un fel confuz de ce nimeni nu vrea să vorbim despre asta. Așa că, în final, se pare că, în plus de impotiea tău de tată de ce te dă la scârbi, unde te înțelegi un loc pentru a discută și să vorbesc despre aceste lucruri care înseamnă și comedie.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  "Ce este asta?" a fost lucrul meu de copil și a fost manifestat în fiind foarte interesat în UFO, în Bigfoot și ESP.

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  A făcut-o imediat popular.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Foarte încălcat. Și comedie, comedie este ca o operare. Vom începe să descoperim unde locuiesc limitele socialității. Și asta de "Ce este asta?" a fost înființat în scârbi. Ce așa de alegaște de scârbi a fost: nu discutam cu tine atât de mult, dar degrabă au zis "God", cea ce așa de alegaște. Așa că așa de alegaște că au un răspuns diferit de "Ei, să-i mănâncă săracul." "Ce se dă? Nici cum să zicem? Măcar trebuie să mergem la scădărie." A fost bine că au zis "God", pentru că "God" era ceva. Făsesc o comparare în cărța mea unde mălăsesc la un film de super hero și așa că așa că un copil a zis la tată: "Tată, cum le-au facut așa unui om să flieze?" Și tată, fără să mă gândesc, a zis "Computări".

• 33:47Speaker 02

  And I was like, this is very funny, because computers really just means, I don't know. He's just saying, I don't know. And in the same way, God might mean, I don't know, but at least it was something. At least it gave us a symbol and something to explore and unpack. If you're feeling curious, computers or God, it gave, gave me a foothold. But then I lose my faith because my wife leaves me. And I felt like I had been paying protection money to God. I think a lot of people feel this way, like the mafia. And yet still, someone had thrown, for the fifth time, a brick through my bakery window. I'm like, what am I paying this guy for? You know what I mean? I'm his sheep, shepherd me. Sheeps don't have their wife sheep get fucked by a wolf. Like, you fucked up. That's how I felt.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  So he broke his, he didn't hold up his end of the bargain in my sort of third grade, second grade, kindergarten, understanding of God. But that was one of the things is when my wife left, I had to take a real hard look at like, do you really believe that? Like, the example I use in my book is my brother is going to hell. He didn't believe like I did. Do you, do you really believe that? Like, really, really think about it. And I was like, well, my behavior is maybe more honest than my thoughts. And my behavior was very clear. I wasn't really actively grabbing him going, you fool, there's a train coming. And you're on the tracks, you idiot. I wasn't doing that. I was having tacos with him, tacos again. But, so then I lose it.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  And then I'm out in the wild and I start kind of feeling, growing up a little bit and all these kind of interesting things. And then I took mushrooms with my girlfriend at Bonnaroo. And we just thought it was like, something fun to do. I wasn't a big drug person. I'm not a big drug person. I hadn't done a lot of drugs. I'd probably smoked pot like, I don't know, 15 times in my life at that point. And then we bought some mushrooms from a roadie and we went on the Ferris wheel. And I, at the time, I would not have said that I experienced the divine. What I did experience was something that was completely beyond language. So what we're saying, it was trans-rational. It didn't make any sense. It wasn't something I thought. It was something that I became.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  And this, this sounds like if you read other people writing about mystical experiences, that's what they say. You can think, I am made of the same molecules as this table and as you. And yet here are two consciousnesses talking to each other. It's fucking trippy. But to become that, that'll lay you on your back. And it did. And I laid there, mouth agape, staring at the clouds and receiving like direct, real, even after I had come down, real transmission from the universe grabbing me and saying, "We're so glad you're finally fucking here. So you can put down your briefcases, filled with your precious little beliefs, and you're in..." I'm in. I'm a Christian. I'm in. "Get all that shit out of here. Lay the fuck down on some grass and stare up

• 36:42Speaker 02

  towards infinity, you idiot, which is always there, you idiot, and really like, listen to me for a second. Stop praying by thinking, 'God help me find parking, God help me beat that flu that's going around,' and listen. Shut up for a second. So turn your brain off for a second."

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  And that just plays directly into your main thing, which is, "What is this?"

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  And I was finally getting a taste. And it was through something, it wasn't from, as Richard Rohr would say, "It wasn't from doing it right, abstaining from drugs. It's from doing it wrong." What a beautiful paradox. God hides himself in pain and strange, wayward afternoons in Tennessee. That's fucking gorgeous. That's amazing. So I did mushrooms, and then I realized that there was some, there were some things that we can't really talk about, right? And then I started, my heart I didn't know, had opened up to the potential that the writers of things like the Bible were also trying to use myth and metaphor, because as Richard Rohr says, "Metaphor is the only language we have to talk about God." That doesn't mean it's not true. It means it's so big and vast and mysterious that how else are you going to talk about it? I'm sorry to be so aggressive, but like, you're going

• 37:46Speaker 02

  to talk about it directly? You're going to talk about it like the contents of your refrigerator? You're going to add it to your Amazon wishlist? The mystery of everything? You can't talk about it directly. You can talk about it through music, sex, drugs, poetry, and metaphor. So, once I opened up the idea that Jesus's death and resurrection, for example, is a metaphor for your death, your ego death, and you're resurrecting to the dynamic source of all being. So you need to wake up to Christ consciousness, basically. Suddenly, it wasn't about worshiping someone else's story. I write about it in the book, like, Jesus was,

• 38:26Speaker 02

  you're on a football team with Jesus, and he does this incredible return after a punt or whatever. I don't know football. So he catches the ball and he runs it back to like his own 30 yard line. But then he gets tackled and the ball splits out and falls in your arms. And instead of like, running with the ball, you put the ball down so you can.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  Wow, that was amazing, Jesus.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  And Jesus is going, you idiot, go, this story isn't about me. It's about you. And worshiping someone else's story isn't gonna do shit for you. Like, we need you to do it. You die, you die. You know what I'm saying? I get all passionate about this.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  No, I like it.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  What is, you know, it's one thing, like, I believe this, so I'm in a club, is way different from going, oh, I saw what he did, I'll do it too. I can't literally raise from the dead and I can't literally heal the blind and I can't literally turn water into wine, but I can metaphorically. And I, and I have, and I do, and you do too.

• 39:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  And that's what we're supposed to be doing.

• 39:30Rich Roll?

  So if somebody was to say to you, you know, Pete, how do you define your faith? How do you canonize it? How do you, how do you articulate your perspective on these things?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  I'm a Christ-leaning spiritual seeker person.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  I still enjoy that because for better or worse, those, those things got in there and were imprinted on me when I was young. So I get very excited when I can reclaim those stories and, and bring them with me and not throw the baby out with the bath. But a lot of it, you know, I spent so much of my life thinking how to be more like Jesus would wear those bracelets to say, what WWJD, what would Jesus do? We wanted to be like Jesus, as if Jesus, like, the point of Jesus was how nice he was and how he got along with everybody. And when people say, how can I be more like Christ? I'm like, when? You know, like, in, in between each of those words, I think you're probably closer than you think, you know, when we can stop and turn the volume down. This is very un- unpleasing to the ego, when we think it's not about having something,

• 40:29Speaker 02

  it's about letting go of something. But stillness and quiet, be still and know that I'm God, that, it's right there staring you in the face. It's, it's about getting into your pure, basic awareness.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  One of the more challenging aspects of spiritual practice is the act of forgiveness. Here to offer wise counsel on this subject is spiritual thought leader, activist, and former presidential candidate, Mary Ann Williamson. How can we extend forgiveness to others and to ourselves? And how does that spiritual practice affect the way we interact with others in our lives and on social media? Here's Mary Ann. How do we develop the facility to forgive? And why is that so important in terms of, you know, living our lives in a manner in which to be most whole and complete?

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Well, I'm a student of A Course in Miracles. And the concept of forgiveness, which is central to A Course in Miracles, presents the word in a very different way than it is presented within traditional Christian terminology or any religious terminology. Usually, when we think of forgiveness, it's, "You're a jerk, but I'm so spiritual now that I deign to forgive you."

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  The condescending, my favorite kind of forgiveness.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  It's judgment to destroy, the Course in Miracles says. But forgiveness, within a deeply spiritual metaphysical concept, means knowing that we are all created by God as innocent and good, and we make mistakes. And how you treat, and that God does not punish us for our sins. Sin is an archer term, means you missed the mark. He seeks to correct us for our mistakes. And when you are in that place, you realize that the love that is who you are and who I am is real. The rest is this mortal hallucination that we're having. Buddha called it an illusion. Einstein said, "Time and space are illusions of consciousness, albeit persistent ones,"

• 42:36Speaker 03

  that there is some bedrock of love, unalterable love, that is the truth of who we are. And I think that everything that we're talking about today, if you stand on that... That our function in this earth, on this earth, is to see that love in each other and to stand on that love and to invoke that love. Everything changes. Your criminal justice system changes, your economic system changes, your personal relationship changes, your treatment of the earth changes. Now, that doesn't mean you don't say no. Sometimes, love says no. Forgiveness doesn't make you a doormat. Forgiveness simply makes you someone who is capable of owning your yes and owning your no. You have children.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  If a child, a small child, walks into the kitchen, "Hi mommy, daddy, look at this razor blade I found." You know, it is incumbent upon you, out of love for that child, to make sure the razor blade is taken out of their hands. But you don't look at that child and forget who they are just because they were so uninformed and not old enough to realize you can't play with razor blades. Forgiveness means knowing that who we are is good. Living on this earth, we forget that. But when I look at you and I base my perception of you only on your error, only on your lovelessness, then I am stuck within that realm of lovelessness. And the Course in Miracles says,

• 44:05Speaker 03

  "You are at the effect of the laws that prevail within the world that you identify with." If I'm willing to extend my perception beyond what my physical senses perceive, your error, your lovelessness, to what I know to be true in you, then I remind both you and myself what is true in us, and the situation repairs. And we're going to have to do that on a larger level. The hatred, the cynicism, the anger on both the left and the right dispels and deflects the possibility for political miracles. And We must open our hearts and still passionately disagree, form boundaries, just like you have boundaries in personal relationships,

• 44:49Speaker 03

  you have boundaries in political relationships. But you can do all of that with love. You can do all of that with respect and humility. And to me, that's the portal through which we can walk to a more sustainable world.

• 45:02Rich Roll?

  The resistance to forgive, that impulse that we feel when we sense that we've been wronged is ostensibly to shoulder a burden. It's a self punishment, right? And there is a liberation or a freedom that happens when you can develop the facility to let go of it, to forgive, as difficult as that might be. And that forgiveness should be, you know, sort of turned inward as well, like self forgiveness.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Well, you can't forgive yourself if you don't forgive others. That's why the course says you become generous out of self-interest. The course says when you're attacking someone, blaming someone, imagine that there is a sword falling down on their head, but it's actually falling down on yours. Because at the deepest level, if you get into the metaphysics of it, there's no place where you stop and I start. None of us, except enlightened masters, are perfect at any of this. But even making the effort transforms our lives.

• 46:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we've all seen our soul elevated by witnessing somebody forgive somebody where logic would dictate that maybe they shouldn't. And we understand fundamentally that that is a noble act, right? That is nourishing. And yet, we're in a culture where we're increasingly judging everybody based on their worst day and canceling people and saying, you go away now and that's it for you. There is no room, at least in the social media space, for that forgiveness. And yet, unless we find a way back to that,

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  a way to prioritize it and inject it into our kind of discourse and conduct, you know, we're lost.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  You are so right. I think you put it so well, you know? We're judging everybody according to their worst day or their most stupid tweet. Everything's, I gotcha. It's terrible. You know, many years ago, my best friend, who has since passed. We were sitting in my bedroom and I was on the phone with someone who worked for me. And I started yelling at the guy. I got off the phone and Richard said to me, what was that? And I said, well, he did this, or he didn't do that, or whatever it was. And Richard looked at me and he went, Mary Anne, he made a mistake. People make mistakes. And, you know, it was a brick to my forehead, I remember.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  And no matter what he did, the fact that you were such a bitch about it makes you know better than, I got it. I mean, I can't, I'm not 100% of practicing it, but a lot better than I used to be because people make mistakes.

• 47:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so how do we, how do we try to create space for that?

• 47:52Speaker 03

  The Course in Miracles says, you say, dear God, I'm willing to see this differently. You know, the, the, the path that we are here to monitor is not somebody else's. You know, it's like you were talking about, you don't, you're not here to take somebody else's inventory.

• 48:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  The path you're here to monitor very vigilantly is your own. Dear God, I see how self-righteous I am in this moment. Dear God, I see how judgmental I am in this moment. Dear God, I see how blaming, like, who do, how do I think I am? Dear God, take this away from me. And then, and then, and I see this all, all the time. Then what happens is, sometimes you realize, just keep your mouth shut, there's nothing that even needs to be said. Sometimes you realize, oh, there's something that's going to need to be communicated here. But you will communicate it from such a different place. You will communicate it from elegance and charity and compassion. The Course in Miracles says, if you're judging and attacking someone, you're wrong even if you're right.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  Right, but we have a social media ecosystem.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, we do.

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  That has a misalignment of incentives because it's rewarding people for that level of judgment and invective.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  We do, but each and every one of us can refuse to participate in that and do what we can because there's also some beautiful stuff on social media. You know, there's a line in the Course where it says, "Nothing in the world is unholy or holy, except as determined by its purpose." What the mind is doing with it. And you can see incredible things, incredible good that comes from social media. And you can see terrible, even evil things that emerge from social media. It all gets back to the ethics and the... Principles of right and wrong and enlightenment that I do think so many of us are at least trying for.

• 49:43Rich Roll?

  A New York Times bestselling author, monk, philanthropist, activist, and teacher, His Holiness Radhanath Swami is a man that radiates love. He radiates compassion and grace with this really sweet and joyous disposition that has immeasurably impacted millions of souls across the world. In this next clip, Radhanath explains the idea of a spiritual calling and how following a calling can shape someone into the person they were meant to become.

• 50:19Speaker 07

  We all have our calling, and it's not really so important what age we have that calling. But when that calling for goodness, when that calling for truth, when that calling for light, when that calling to be the change that you want to see in the world. And I deeply believe it's God's calling, coming from within us, which could echo from around us through other voices too. But ultimately, it's a calling from within. We all have our ways of responding to that calling too. But in my life, you know, this is how I responded to that calling.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I suppose in order to heed whatever calling is happening, you have to be present and aware enough to notice its arising.

• 51:15Speaker 07

  And sometimes situations in the world that are startling, that are worrisome.

• 51:25Speaker 07

  Even sometimes situations that appear hopeless, they alert us to responding to that calling.

• 51:37Rich Roll?

  So you find yourself in London, you're trekking about Europe, you're in Athens, you're sitting on the banks of the Thames in London at night, soaking in the moon, watching the river flow. At some point, you have this undeniable urge or calling to go to India. So walk me through that experience.

• 52:02Speaker 07

  Well, you know, coming from northern Illinois, I went to Europe with two of my friends. We were supposed to be there for just two months and then come back for going back to college. I went to one semester of college. And that was the plan. That was our plan. But we got robbed the first day we were in Europe and we had no money. And one of my friends went back to America that same day.

• 52:43Speaker 07

  And the other, you know, we made the scene in various places. And we were very popular. And in many ways, we saw there was, the world was opening up to us like anything, even though we really didn't have a home or money or anything, just because, you know, the interactions with such beautiful people and such opportunities. But this calling, this little whisper to find a spiritual connection was always there in my heart. And it was getting louder and louder and louder. And that's really what started.

• 53:31Speaker 07

  Me on this quest, I was spending a lot of time on riverbanks and in forests. And I was meditating and reading various spiritual literatures from various religions. I was going to synagogues, I was going to churches, I was going to cathedrals. I had lived in Catholic monasteries. I was studying, I was searching, I was going to museums to study art, to find spiritual clues. And eventually, I was living in a cave on the Isle of Crete, which is part of Greece. And I was just praying to God for direction.

• 54:11Speaker 07

  And it was there that I had this voice within my heart that said, go to India. And I had never met an Indian person in my life. I've never ate a chili pepper in my life. I had no map, I had no money for a map. But I just left my friend the next day and started hitchhiking to India. And I just believed if I just go in the eastern direction, eventually I'll get there.

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  You're gonna get there eventually, right? You travel through Afghanistan, you're immersed in extreme poverty in that situation. You're in Pakistan. You have this extraordinary story about getting caught up at the border between Pakistan and India. Can you tell that story?

• 55:02Speaker 07

  Well, I hitchhiked through Turkey and then Iran and then through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The whole trip took over four months. Now I get on an airplane from London and I do it in nine hours, the same amount of distance. But it's not as educational, but it's much safer for sure.

• 55:34Speaker 07

  When I finally, when I was in the European countries, I was studying Christianity and Judaism. When I was in the Middle East, I was studying Islam from some Islamic scholars and very holy people, actually. And when I finally came to the border of India, India and Pakistan, you know, have been in conflict politically for, you know, since the partition. And there's a no man's land between the two countries.

• 56:17Speaker 07

  And when I left the border of Pakistan, I had to walk a couple hours through this no man's land to get to India. And at that time, the border post was in a forest near the city of Ferozpur in Punjab. And when I arrived, they asked how much money I had. And as far as I remember, I had 26 cents in about four different currencies. And the immigration agent was very, very angry. She said that we have enough beggars in India.

• 57:01Speaker 07

  We don't want another one. Go back to where you came from. And I pleaded with her that I just hitchhiked from London and I got so many diseases that almost killed me and people tried to kill me and so many difficulties I had to get here because I want to learn from your people. Please give me a chance. And she wouldn't do it. So for hours and hours and hours, I was just sitting under a tree and kept coming back and asking and getting rejected. But the problem was I couldn't go back to Pakistan either

• 57:46Speaker 07

  because I only had a one-time visa. So I was in this no man's land and there were no cell phones in 19... This was 1970. And there was no phone booths. There was no... I was just there.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  And finally, just around the sunset time, the guards changed. And one man from the Sikh community, who was a soldier, took the post. And after the other immigration drove off in a jeep, I went to him. And this man said to me that I have been ordered by my commanding officer to reject you unless you show me at least $200.

• 58:40Speaker 07

  At that point, I cried. And I really cried because, you know, I was 19 years old and it was hopeless. And I begged. I said, I've given up everything of my life to learn from your country and to learn for your people. Please, just give me a chance. And I promise you that someday I'll do something good for the people of India. And being an immigration agent, he looked into my eyes with such an interrogating glance.

• 59:22Speaker 07

  He was just looking into my mind and into my heart. For about a minute, he just stared at me.

• 59:32Speaker 07

  And then he spoke. He said, "Sometimes a man must follow his heart. And even though I have been ordered to reject you, I am going to give you the chance that you're crying for." And then he stamped my passport and said, "Welcome to India."

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  I love that. That's beautiful. I feel like you need to reunite with him. I would like to see you visit him again and recount that story to him.

• 1:00:04Speaker 07

  I wish we could.

• 1:00:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 07

  But that was... This year marks 50 years since that event happened.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  And so what was it about this experience in India that was so compelling and transformative for you?

• 1:00:27Speaker 07

  Well, I was, I went to the Himalayas. And I was studying from yogis. Some of them were living in the forests and mountains and in caves. And I was going to different ashrams of different saints or gurus. Some of them were very famous. Some of them were unknown to the world. I was studying Burmese Buddhism and Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. And I was, I was, I met people who were from the Baha'i faith. I was really trying to understand.

• 1:01:07Speaker 07

  And of course, within the Hindu faith, there's so many different branches of ways of approaching the one supreme being. So I was just like a little sponge that was absorbing and absorbing and absorbing and learning. And many situations were such blessings to my heart. Some of them were very disappointing and some of them were enthralling and so full of joy and gratitude.

• 1:01:46Speaker 07

  But they all kind of were, were bringing me forward in my, in my search. And Rich, I ended up like this.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  We continue this exploration of faith with one of the most fascinating spiritual leaders in America today. A Lutheran pastor and public theologian dedicated to redefining how we think about church, how we practice religion, how we ritualize divinity and cultivate community. I'm talking about Nadia Bolz-Weber. In this clip, Nadia and I discuss the concept of grace, how it's often inconvenient and frustrating, and how it can lead us towards living lives filled with more compassion.

• 1:02:35Speaker 08

  I mean, the thing I've written about more than anything and spoken about more than anything in my career is the idea of grace. And grace is a really difficult thing for us because it means, it inherently means the ball's not in our court. You can't earn it. It's not something that you climb toward. It's something that you get. And on some level, we think it must, if it's free, it must be worthless. And so I think that people, instead of focusing on grace, like to focus on being good. But being good has never set me free in the way that truth has and things that have interrupted

• 1:03:20Speaker 08

  me from outside of me. So...

• 1:03:23Rich Roll?

  Well, I think good, or the pursuit of being good, is the thing that provokes the feelings of less than and shame and guilt and insecurity, whereas grace is permissive, right? Grace is also something that you describe as being a pain in the ass from time to time. Like, it's inconvenient.

• 1:03:43Speaker 08

  For sure, especially...

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  So, explain.

• 1:03:47Speaker 08

  When it's, when, the reason grace is tricky is because I want to feel like I've made myself worthy of something. And if it's truly grace, it means it has nothing to do with worthiness, it just is. And that's hard. And then also, grace sucks because if it's, if it's true for me, it means it also is true for the people who've hurt me.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:13Speaker 08

  And I don't like that.

• 1:04:14Rich Roll?

  That's definitely inconvenient.

• 1:04:15Speaker 08

  I don't like that.

• 1:04:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:17Speaker 08

  And like, I'm all for it until we get to that. That's why I always say that, like, with my luck, I'll be seated at the heavenly banquet between, like, Ann Coulter and some racist cop.

• 1:04:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Right, exactly.

• 1:04:30Speaker 08

  Like, if you believe in grace, it's like, super uncomfortable in that way because, because self-righteousness is just never an option. And I love self-righteousness like I love chocolate.

• 1:04:41Rich Roll?

  It's intoxicating.

• 1:04:43Speaker 08

  It is. But...

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  And purity plays right into that.

• 1:04:46Speaker 08

  A hundred percent.

• 1:04:47Rich Roll?

  Because if you can really, if you really feel like you're more pure than your fellow person.

• 1:04:50Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  That just, you're right on your bully pulpit to be self-righteous.

• 1:04:54Speaker 08

  Yeah, totally. Well, that's why it was that, that moment was so interesting when I was interviewing Lance Armstrong. I had that conversation with Lance Armstrong on stage at Tuckett because that day it was so interesting when people knew I was the one. I, so I'm super, I'm like obsessed with the idea of compassion right now, but not like as a virtue to adopt, to be good. Fuck that. Nothing's ever worked like that for me. I'm not, like if someone's like, oh, did you read that, that really great book about compassion? I'd be like, yeah, not interested. But I'm so, because I'm such a pragmatist, I'm super interested in the effect of compassion. That I'm interested in because when somebody's been in a true space of compassion, right across from me,

• 1:05:36Speaker 08

  it's moved the needle for me in terms of considering something I hadn't considered on my own, seeing a way I might have been wrong. Like it's a safe and it's a loose place to consider those things. Whereas when someone's been accusatory or challenging or calling me out, I immediately get defensive.

• 1:05:54Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:05:55Speaker 08

  I can't hear it, right? So I'm, I'm just obsessed with this idea of what's the effect of compassion on me or even on my body in conversations. And so this person I know who does, uh, trauma work, they work with people in trauma. I was asking them like, how do you, how in the world do you manage to not be completely depleted all the time taking in these stories?

• 1:06:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:20Speaker 08

  And she had this image I just can't get over, which is, she said, I imagine the heart of God like right behind my heart. So that whatever that person is saying, I feel it genuinely because it comes through my heart, but it doesn't land there. It lands in the heart of God. So and then anything that comes out of me towards them doesn't originate from my own resources and deplete me. It originates from the heart of God and just comes through me, right?

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:50Speaker 08

  Obsessed with this.

• 1:06:51Rich Roll?

  Well, that's a very like unique and specific way of imagining healthy boundaries for yourself, right?

• 1:06:58Speaker 08

  Right, right. Okay, so that day when people knew I was the one having a conversation with Lance, they um, they said, hey, uh, don't let him off easy. Like people would come up to me all day and be like.

• 1:07:11Rich Roll?

  Well, when it comes to Lance, everyone's gonna have an opinion or some advice.

• 1:07:15Speaker 08

  Right, okay. But like, why? Right, so I was.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  What is the end game?

• 1:07:21Speaker 08

  Because we love to know who we're better than, right? We're obsessed with it. So if somebody so obviously had a fall from grace, there's the scapegoating um, instinct in the human being is almost inescapable. This is why, like when Brian Williams, uh, you know, when his career had that huge bump because he didn't actually falsify a news account, he exaggerated a personal story, which by the way, we all have done. And every single time we do it, it creates an icky feeling in us. And those icky feelings build up and we have to do something with them. So what do we do? We wait until someone like Brian Williams comes along and we just throw all of our icky shit that we don't want to tell anyone onto them and then we have to kill them, right?

• 1:08:06Speaker 08

  It's this collective way of relieving the anxiety of the group.

• 1:08:09Rich Roll?

  And we think that's gonna make us feel better.

• 1:08:10Speaker 08

  That's right.

• 1:08:10Rich Roll?

  But actually, it's like empty calories.

• 1:08:12Speaker 08

  It completely is. I mean, self righteousness, I always say, feels good for a minute, but only in a way that peeing your pants feels warm for a minute. You know, then you smell bad, it's cold, you know what I mean? Okay, so I'm having this conversation with Lance and I and I'm currently.

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  Hold on, let me just say one thing. I don't want to interrupt you, but like, this was my first exposure to you. And everybody needs to know, like, you're, alright, so Nadia's gonna interview Lance and it's in the round at this very cool event called the Nantucket Project. And you're opening line to him.

• 1:08:46Speaker 08

  Yeah, okay, you are. Okay, so I won't steal it. No, no, no, okay, this is where I'm going. Alright. So just so you know, they had asked me, Nadia, would you? So I'm, I'm, I'm really interested in compassion right now. I'm only really experimenting with it. I don't want anybody to be impressed. I'm just, I'm dabbling in compassion. Okay, so, but I'm thinking about it a lot. And they said, would you have a conversation on stage with Lance Armstrong? And I said, yeah, I totally would, right? Then they said, would you have a conversation on stage with Sean Spicer? And I said, no, fuck that guy. Just to say, my, my ability to be open and compassionate.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Speaker 08

  Fucking limited. Okay, so I, I get to that day. Everyone's like, give him a hard time. And I sit there and I have that image of compassion, of having God's heart behind mine. And, and sort of being open to this human being across from me as a person with a unique story. And that most of which none of us know, right? Most of us don't really know this human being's full story. And, and I said to him, opening thing I said was, Lance, I see from my notes that you took drugs you weren't supposed to. And then you lied about it. And then I said, oh my God, I did that shit so many times.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  It was so great. How long did it take you to figure that line out?

• 1:10:19Speaker 08

  It was just that day. I was like, how's this gonna happen?

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  It just broke the ice.

• 1:10:23Speaker 08

  Totally.

• 1:10:23Rich Roll?

  And everybody, there was like this, there was a catharsis, not just with him, the whole audience.

• 1:10:28Speaker 08

  And then I looked around and I don't know if you remember, I said, if you raise your hand, audience, if you at any point in your life took drugs you weren't supposed to and lied about it. And people are like, yeah, I did that shit, you know?

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but there's also a lot of yeah, but. Correct. I get that. I get that. And it's tricky with Lance, you know, I see the gray and I've interviewed him for this podcast and I got the same thing, like, you know, you weren't hard enough, you were too hard. Every, I mean, everybody's got an opinion on this guy and my only agenda was I want to understand this person better, who's on the receiving end of, you know, a lot of criticism and a lot of celebratory pats on the back, like, how confusing for a human being and how many people on planet Earth have been as high as he has gone and as low? And that's inherently fascinating and it's incredibly human to explore that. Yeah.

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  Coming back for more, but first,

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  one of the biggest spiritual and existential questions that humanity has grappled with for millennia is, what happens when we die? And here to respond to that question are Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan from the Metaphysical Milkshake Podcast. Each of them shares their perspective on the afterlife, but more importantly, reflects on the implications for how, what we believe about the afterlife affects how we live while we're here. Here's Rainn and Reza.

• 1:12:07Speaker 09

  What happens after we die? I've, I've talked about, you know, my belief as a Baha'i. In the Baha'i faith, we believe that there's an analogy that the body, it's not just the Baha'i faith, there's many spiritual traditions that the body is a cage and that our reality is the bird within the cage. And when the cage is broken, the bird goes free. And that's not something to be mourned, the brokenness of the body or of the cage. It's to be celebrated, the glorious journey of, of the bird flying free of the material and physical limitations. But I will say that I recently had a friend pass away and this has been a big year of death for me. My father passed away about a year ago.

• 1:12:49Speaker 09

  The co-founder of our nonprofit in Haiti died of cancer and then one of my dear friends died of cancer. Sorry to hear that. Thanks, recently. And You know, it's such a tricky topic, but there are, there are good ways to die and there's not so good ways to die. And in fact, one of our episodes, sorry, I feel like I'm really plugging the hell out of this podcast. Well, we do ask a lot of these questions. But we had a-

• 1:13:17Rich Roll?

  You are here to do that anyway.

• 1:13:18Speaker 09

  A little bit.

• 1:13:19Rich Roll?

  Just lean into it, brain.

• 1:13:20Speaker 09

  We had a death doula on the show, and she was amazing. And that's like a birth doula. It's exactly what you think it is, yeah. And it's, she helps you transition towards death. And that can be everything from like, where do you keep all your Facebook passwords? And, you know, and also, you know, how do you want your ceremony to be? How do you want a pass? What do you want your deathbed to look like? Yeah, that was the big question, what do you want your deathbed? So, in having these discussions, we talk a lot about death. And, you know, this friend of mine who passed away, like, he didn't want to look at death. And I think probably because he was mostly atheist, I think that he was like a third, you know, wandering, but mostly. And so for

• 1:14:05Speaker 09

  him, his journey towards this inevitability of death, because he was given stage four stomach cancer, was like, I'm gonna fight cancer tooth and nail with every power in my being, which is great.

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:18Speaker 09

  Which is important.

• 1:14:19Rich Roll?

  But, but, but fueled by this terror of death.

• 1:14:23Speaker 09

  Fueled by terror and a, and a kind of like, and I would talk, I would be always the voice to talk to him and say, David, can we talk about this a little bit? Or I would send him like a little writing about, from the Dalai Lama, or a Buddhist text, or something about, something about death. And like, you know, I would encourage him to get some therapy, help process the emotions around it. But we live in the Western culture in this abject terror of death. We don't talk about death. This friend, a friend of mine was telling me that in-

• 1:14:53Speaker 09

  Now, in contemporary society, like we, the Victorians never talked about sex, but talked about death all the time in Victorian England. There were death parties, and there would be corpse viewings and séances, and there was just this thing, and sex was like not talked about. Now, we just talk about sex and everything is like, reality TV shows are just literally like, hey, who, these people are gonna hook up. But this, uh, this idea that, uh, we, we are so afraid to talk about death, and it is the one thing that we all have in common, everyone on this podcast, and everyone listening to this podcast, and, um, if we embrace it as a continuation

• 1:15:35Speaker 09

  of the mystery, and yes, it's scary, um, we can have a very different relationship to death.

• 1:15:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think it is less, less about what happens when, when we die. I mean, anybody who, who, you know, answers that question with any level of certitude is somebody I'm probably not going to trust. Right. I was just gonna say that. But it is, it is about appreciation of death and how to bring death into our daily experience so that we can appreciate the richness of life, you know? Because that is a certitude and a certain duality, you know, that we need to understand. Our, our culture is so whitewashed of any references to death whatsoever, and despite our, our, you know, our brains intellectually.

• 1:16:24Speaker 09

  Look at the mass denial happening in our country right now.

• 1:16:26Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:16:27Speaker 09

  650,000 people dead in our country in a, in a year and four months, and we're not talking about it, and they're partying like it's 1999, and there's no one is, is looking at it, and so half of the population is going, I'm sorry to say this, is going, you know, like, what the fuck?

• 1:16:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Speaker 09

  And, uh, I know that gets.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  It's a, I think it is a reflection of this very thing, right? Because we're so afraid of death, and we have so little, I mean, like, you know, we don't. Connect with it in any way, like the minute somebody dies, they're removed from our line of sight. And we don't have language for how to talk about it in a healthy way. Beyond kind of like the traditional structures around funerals, et cetera. And I think intellectually, we all understand that we're gonna die. But I think, deep down, we all think somehow we're gonna figure out an end run around it for us personally.

• 1:17:19Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  And that creates that like, low-grade fear that we carry with us that forces us to even put it further out of our.

• 1:17:28Speaker 10

  Well, I think the answer is ultra-marathons.

• 1:17:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Speaker 10

  Here's what I would say. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I have no idea what the hell happens after we die. But to go back to kind of what I was saying earlier about the scientific fact that we are eternal. Right? That the things that make me what I am, I mean, like the cells in my body, the atoms, you know, the, the sort of most base structure of what has created this body is eternal, is forever. Those things don't just go away. They are, they become something else, right? Matter and energy is forever.

• 1:18:17Speaker 10

  So that means my cells, my atoms, they are forever. They don't just stop being, they just stop being me. But I am more than just this physical body. Whether you believe in a soul or not, you believe in consciousness. A lot of, you know, philosophers, a lot of theologians will say, your consciousness is your soul. Stop thinking of them as different things. That your ability to say, I am me, is you recognizing and communing with what is your soul.

• 1:18:57Speaker 10

  Whatever consciousness is, and we don't know, is involved in our biological processes. Right? So I guess what I'm saying is, when I die.

• 1:19:10Speaker 10

  All the things that make up my material self continue forever. That's science. The matter continues forever. The energy continues forever. Well, if my consciousness is in some ways the sum of my matter and my energy, then who's to say my consciousness doesn't continue forever in some way, shape or form? Do you know what I mean? So when people ask me, like, do you believe in life after death? That to me is life after death.

• 1:19:47Speaker 10

  That the thing that makes me me continues in some way. My consciousness doesn't disappear because my consciousness is the result of matter and energy, and matter and energy doesn't disappear.

• 1:20:03Speaker 09

  And that's very Sufi.

• 1:20:04Speaker 10

  Right.

• 1:20:05Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 10

  So the answer is I don't know, but that's my prevailing theory.

• 1:20:11Speaker 09

  There's a great metaphor in the Baha'i writings that I talk about in my chapter on death, which is, it's pretty simple. It's kind of like the bird in the cage one. It's a little bit, you might go, that's kind of simple, but it's also profound. And that is that when we're a baby in the womb, we're growing what we need for this physical world. So we're floating in this kind of stasis, growing our bones, our eyelashes, our ears and lips and eyebrows and elbows and everything that we're gonna need. The baby has no idea why it's growing elbows. If you ask the baby, interview the baby, what's up with the elbows? Baby like, I have no idea. I'm sitting in this amniotic sac. I'm fine. I'm connected with my mother. It's all good. Elbows, I don't need elbows.

• 1:20:56Speaker 09

  But then there's this very scary event of like going through the birth canal. I'm like, oh shit, this whole, this whole experience is coming to an end. This is terrifying. There's blood, there's pain, there's discomfort. But what an incredible world we get born into. You get to kind of, you know, you get to see. You know, Picasso paintings and you get to have, you know, parties and you get to fall in love and there's all kinds of new experiences await you. Well, the same thing happens. So I don't know what happens when we die, but, but I think metaphorically speaking, we are, like the death doula might say, we are being born into a new experience. And

• 1:21:36Speaker 09

  what we're growing in this world are not physical arms and legs. We're growing spiritual arms and legs and elbows. We're growing patience and kindness and humility and compassion and, and love and honesty. And these, these qualities that are kind of quote unquote higher qualities, but qualities of light, those are what we take with us when we're, when we're plunged through that painful, difficult, bloody, difficult, painful birth canal of death into this other reality.

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  I love that. There's also something beautiful about wonder and not knowing the answer that I think gives our lives a level of richness. Like if we could know everything, is that something that we should aspire to? And/or is it even possible to know everything? Is it possible to answer that question with certitude, what happens after death? And if we could answer it, should we?

• 1:22:32Rich Roll?

  What does it actually mean to drift between this life and the afterlife? Are there personal or universal truths to be gleaned from those who have survived in your death experience? Well, my conversation with ultra runner Tommy Rivs shines a light on those questions as he unpacks the particular spiritual awareness that he gleaned as a result of the coma he endured for several months. I hope you find this experience as profound and as enlightening as I did.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  Where do you think you went? Like, like paint that picture for me of being in that in-between?

• 1:23:12Speaker 04

  Oh gosh. There was exhaustion, I think, is, is the overwhelming feeling that I felt initially. And it was, it was that I was trying so hard to stay here. I could sense that something was pulling me.

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  And it was painful, it was uncomfortable.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  I was trying really, really hard to not leave whatever this was.

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  Trying to be held by my body still. And, and then I remember there was a, there was a time where I,

• 1:23:57Speaker 04

  I was just so tired, just so, so tired. And I remember thinking, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't think I can do this anymore. And, and by then I, I'd lost any recollection that I, that I had a life here. I, I didn't remember that I had kids. I didn't remember, um, you know, that I lived in Flagstaff, that I, um,

• 1:24:26Speaker 04

  any of it.

• 1:24:28Speaker 04

  And there was a, there was a point where, the, the weird thing is that Steph was always with me the entire time. I thought, I thought we were on this just grand adventure, you know, that we were exploring the cosmos together. And, um, and I got to a point where, um, it's gonna be hard.

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  I stopped, uh, I made the conscious decision that I was gonna be done, that I didn't want to fight whatever was pulling me away anymore, that I didn't have the strength to fight it anymore. And, um, and there was a sense of,

• 1:25:15Speaker 04

  peace and just, um, comfort in wherever it was that I was going. And, um, and I saw it. And it was inviting and, um, beautiful and safe and, um,

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  And Steph nudged me and she said, "You've gotta go back." And I said, "I don't wanna go back. Look at this place."

• 1:25:51Speaker 04

  I said, "Come with me. Just come with me. Don't you wanna be here too?" And she grabbed my face and turned my head. And I said, "I don't wanna go back." And she said, "You don't have a choice."

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  And she pointed.

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  And I could see in the distance my girls. And I'd forgotten that they even existed. And she said, "You don't have a choice. You've got those three little girls that you've gotta go home to." And I remember seeing it and being so angry. Just because I felt like, "I don't know how I'm gonna do this. I don't have the strength to go back."

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  "I'm so done. I'm so ready to just stop fighting whatever this is."

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  And I remember just closing my eyes and breathing and just kind of just accepting it. It was like, "Okay, I guess I don't have a choice. I guess I have to come back." And then the...

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  The pull, all of that fighting that I had done to stay where I had been initially, it was the same amount of effort to come back.

• 1:27:40Rich Roll?

  But this idea, like the mysteries of consciousness when you're in a comatose state, right, is fascinating. And you have this, you know, basically near-death experience that you recollect with incredible clarity.

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  The idea that you had awareness

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Rich Roll?

  in that liminal space is fascinating. And coming out of that, and now with some, you know, time and distance between that experience and where you're at now, like, what do you make of that, like spiritually? You know, like, that's a trip.

• 1:28:12Speaker 04

  Right, yeah. I don't see it in any way as though, like, oh, I discovered the truth. You know, I had this, I had this vision, I had this experience, and this is the experience that you have. I don't, I don't feel that way at all. It was the experience that I had. But I remember, um, we continue. We don't, it's not just darkness. It doesn't just end.

• 1:28:44Speaker 04

  But it's, um, and it's right here. It's all happening right here. But it's, it's different. I remember realizing that, okay, if, if I, if I become unmoored from this body, I can't go back. And I will still be here, right here. All of this will still be happening. But I won't have the ability to communicate with everybody who's still in that space.

• 1:29:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  And I remember thinking how agonizing that would be to see my girls and...

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  And that they would still be right here, but I wouldn't be able to communicate to them. I wouldn't be able to let them know.

• 1:29:32Rich Roll?

  But you would have awareness of the other dimension.

• 1:29:35Speaker 04

  But also complete awareness of all of their fear and all of their questions and all of their grief and all of their heartache and, and being able to see it and feel all of it, but not be able to reach across and say, but I'm still right here. Just so you know, I'm still right here.

• 1:29:51Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  And that was, um, the fear of that was a huge motivator.

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  I remember also thinking and, and feeling and seeing

• 1:30:08Speaker 04

  that, um, that heaven and hell,

• 1:30:17Speaker 04

  they exist, but they exist to everybody simultaneously and, and they exist in proportion to the amount of love that we gave and the amount of love that we were able to receive. And then

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  the hell part

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  is the recollection and the understanding of all of the love that we didn't give and didn't receive when we could have. And that, that heaven and hell exists simultaneously.

• 1:30:51Speaker 04

  Based off of the different relationships that we had, um, while we had the opportunity to express those things. And, um, that there could be a sense of, of heaven.

• 1:31:04Speaker 04

  Such a big term, but a sense of, a sense of peace

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  with the way that we conducted ourselves with a certain individual and the complete opposite was an awareness of the way that we conducted ourselves with somebody else. And, and that it is all, that it's all connected, that it all continues. Um, and that,

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  gosh, just the urgency of, of now and, um,

• 1:31:41Speaker 04

  That what we continue to feel beyond this is is directly linked with the way that we interact with people.

• 1:31:58Rich Roll?

  Comport ourselves now.

• 1:31:59Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that's so powerful.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  There is not this idealistic future somewhere down the line where we're going to find happiness. You know, where happiness exists there and we're we're going to be happy, you know, that we're going to get there and everything's going to be right. We're going to have this sense of just contentment and rest and ease. It's like, that doesn't exist. It's right. It's right now. It's it's it's all happening this very moment.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  It's the choice that you make about how to experience your life moment to moment.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  The heaven and hell, heaven and hell are all happening all the time to all of us. The entire range of of human emotions, experiences, all of that is happening to us all the time. And and whether or not we experience that joy, that happiness is is based in our ability to see it as it's happening, rather than in in retrospect, rather than looking back and saying, oh, OK, I was happy. I didn't realize it, but I was. Things were really good back then. Those were the good old days, you know? We don't ever realize that until after the fact. And our ability to to have joy, to have happiness, to be happy. It's is 100% based on

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  our capacity to see it as it's happening.

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  When we investigate what it means to have a spiritual life, to live a spiritual life, to pursue a spiritual life, we can benefit from learning concrete principles by which to live. Enter Raghunath Cappo, a punk rock vanguard who walked away from a successful music career to don the robes of a monk. In this final clip, Raghunath takes us through six very practical codes for living, distilled from the ancient teachings of a renowned Indian scholar and mystic that, when practiced, are extremely valuable.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  So what is the process of rewiring that? Like, when you go to the ashram and you start living as a monk, what is the teaching like? And what is the day-to-day existence where you start to intuit these teachings and put them into practice?

• 1:34:19Speaker 11

  Well, there's a lot to share. I'm working on a book right now that extracted six very powerful principles that I taught from the teachings. And the first one is, and these are based on the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is a great... Considered by some as a child prodigy, because he was a child prodigy in Sanskrit. Some other people that knew him more intimately thought of him as a mystic, because he performed so many mystical things, Christ-like mysticism. But his intimate followers, who are great gurus in their own right, they considered him an avatar. So his teachings were very simple.

• 1:35:02Speaker 11

  And one of them is very basic, and it's a great takeaway. If you want to take away anything from today, you can take this way. Stop criticizing other people. Like, the sound coming out of your mouth can be toxic. And that was a powerful thing. Stop criticizing. And I realize I'm living with so much criticism in my mind. That doesn't mean we should throw discernment out. We need discernment. But the condemning language that happens on a regular basis from finding fault with other people, and how you would do things so much better if you were doing them, cut it out. Stop letting that pour out of your mouth.

• 1:35:44Speaker 11

  That's a big one. If you want, I'll just run through these six.

• 1:35:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's do it. No, this is great.

• 1:35:50Speaker 11

  That's one.

• 1:35:51Rich Roll?

  And first of all, when did this guy live?

• 1:35:53Speaker 11

  About 1400... Same time Columbus was showing up here.

• 1:35:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:35:57Speaker 11

  This person, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, was in Bengal and traveled throughout India. And basically, it was a renaissance of bhakti. Bhakti means... Bhakti yoga means connecting to source through love. That's all the word really means. And so, a lot of the practices are singing, are cooking, are meditation. But everything is in an action. Like you're acting in a loving way and dealing with other people. And so, um, so yeah, this is one of the teachings. I call, uh, the book is called The Six Pillars of Bhakti. And so, one is not criticizing.

• 1:36:39Speaker 11

  The second one is being tolerant, where it's criticism deals with, with other people. Another one is just dealing with life situation and stop blaming the world for your unhappiness. And this is very powerful. It's transformational. Even if you're a materialist, this main teaching can transform your life. But if you want to really experience like the higher echelons of meditation, it's gotta be there. Criticism, tolerance, and this is a huge one, the number three. And if, if you can add this one to your life, it will, it's just such a game changer. It's, um, I take no offense. Meaning, I will not be offended on a regular basis. And that's a very common thing.

• 1:37:22Speaker 11

  Sometimes we could see somebody talking over there and I get offended. I think they're talking about me. Without provocation, I think someone's got something against me. And sometimes we'll walk around, uh, holding some resentment for a person who didn't even mean anything. And that gets split in two things, because sometimes people don't mean anything, but due to some proclivity that I have, that I don't trust the world, that I take an offense and I carry that resentment around with me and it becomes a burden. But sometimes people have hurt me. They've actually deliberately hurt me. But still, that desire or that need to forgive has to be there.

• 1:38:06Speaker 11

  Because in, in the, in the Bhakti culture is nothing's actually happening to me, it's happening for me. That there is a benevolent energy lifting us higher and higher and higher. And we have to, and we have to see that everything is for my edification, for my purification. And sometimes even tragic things. And so, there's a firm faith that everything's happening for me and that we shouldn't be... We shouldn't be heartless when it comes to someone else's suffering. I should see, okay, he's having a hard time. We should feel like I have to reach out to that person, they're having a hard time. But for my own situation, I should feel like, you know, I'm going through a hard time and this must be for my benefit. What is that benefit?

• 1:38:49Speaker 11

  And I can look at, I can look at life like that. So, we don't hold any resentment, we don't criticize, we're tolerant. Next one, we see the good in others and we let them know it. Find good, and this is what we're talking about. Instead of finding what this person's doing so wrong, what are they doing right? Why are they good? This is such a powerful practice in this day and age. Because otherwise, we're gonna lock in and we're just gonna foster hate with others. And you're, we're gonna have no commonality whatsoever. What do we have in common? What is right about this person? And it's such a great thing. Truthfully, it's a, it's a, it's a marriage saver, it's a relationship saver. You know, what is good about this person? And then sharing it with them. Tell them why I appreciate you.

• 1:39:34Speaker 11

  And that lack of appreciation can really kill, it can kill love, quick. I mean, isn't that what romance is? Is full, 100% appreciation for that person.

• 1:39:45Rich Roll?

  Right, and the, the peace, the second piece about letting that person know is, is crazy powerful.

• 1:39:53Speaker 11

  Right.

• 1:39:54Rich Roll?

  And it's something that most of us don't do nearly enough of.

• 1:39:58Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, we might have a person that would do anything for us. They would come anywhere, at any time, at any moment. "Hey, I need your help, can you come here?" Yeah. That person, I never let them know how much I appreciate them. Sometimes the people that are the closest to us, we never share with them how much we appreciate them.

• 1:40:16Rich Roll?

  And in you recounting these, these lessons, I'm thinking, this should be the terms and conditions on Twitter. Like, what if you, before you could log on to Twitter, you had to read through these sort of, you know, guidelines? Or, you know, got, you know, sort of guideposts for how to behave or acquit yourself? Because everything that you just shared is so anathema to the way that we conduct ourselves. In the kind of public conversations that are happening on social media and we're all seeing, you know, the fractures, the fissures that are, are starting to expand in the fabric of, you know, our society. Like, we're no longer able to productively communicate in a healthy

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  way. And it's because we've lost sight of these very things that, that allow us to remember that we are, that we are truly one.

• 1:41:11Speaker 11

  And no one's happy. They're all sad. Even if they're righteous, they're just like sad in their righteousness, of their rightness. Um, so that, anyway, that's, that's, see the good in others, let them know it. The appreciation is such a powerful, it's powerful in this world, and it's powerful in the spiritual realm as well. That's why I love this stuff, because it's relevant, it's real. It's not just like, when I die, I'll go to heaven. Who cares? I don't know about heaven. I don't know anything about heaven. I don't even know if it's real. But I do know, these are very, very practical in this life, for my own personal joy, my own

• 1:41:50Speaker 11

  personal integrity, my relationships. Um, you were saying like, yeah, people in Twitter should learn this. The, the reason why I sort of like extracted these from the teachings, because I was taking groups, every year I take a group on pilgrimage. This year I'm going to Nepal, it's sort of like, you would like it. You should go!

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  You go to these various like spiritual sites all over the world.

• 1:42:10Speaker 11

  Spiritual sites all over the world. So we go trek, this year we're going trekking through Nap, uh, Nepal in April.

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:42:16Speaker 11

  Um, and so half the time is trekking and then holy places. And Nepal is like an old part of the Indian kingdom. One of the Indian kingdoms, they preserved a lot of the ancient Hindu texts, the Buddhist texts, and it's got, whatever, 1300 Himalayan peaks. So, we're gonna do day hiking half the time.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  When are you doing that?

• 1:42:33Speaker 11

  April. Come. Great.

• 1:42:35Rich Roll?

  That's tempting. But keep going.

• 1:42:38Speaker 11

  And then, and then we do, and we do India every year, which is also great. And we've got holy places, but you know, you're bringing a bunch of people to India who've never been to a third world country and we're traveling together and they're not used to it and it's a little shocking sometimes. So I've really set up these six pillars as sort of behavior, sort of guardrails. This is what we do. We don't criticize. And it's sort of a contract. We like mentally sign. I read them over every day. This is what we're doing. We're not going to criticize, not going to find fault, we're not going to be resentful, right? And we're going to find the good in others. We're going to let them know it. The next one was quick to apologize. If you feel like you hurt someone's feeling,

• 1:43:21Speaker 11

  if you're a little obtuse, you apologize first. You say, hey, I'm sorry. I don't know if that offended you, but please forgive me if it did. A big game changer. And another one is we keep a tally of how we, of how we are blessed. We keep a list of how fortunate we are.

• 1:43:39Rich Roll?

  A gratitude practice, basically.

• 1:43:41Speaker 11

  What's that?

• 1:43:41Rich Roll?

  A gratitude practice.

• 1:43:42Speaker 11

  A gratitude practice. And sometimes people don't have a gratitude, gratitude practice. They have a, this is unfair practice. This is why, entitlement practice. And the problem with that is it's, it's simple math. Entitlement makes you sad. Gratitude makes you happy. If you feel like the world owes you everything, you're always going to be miserable. There's never enough the world can owe you.

• 1:44:09Rich Roll?

  Right. This, this architecture is not that different from 12 step. And I know you've got this like Bhakti 12 step recovery program. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this because, you know, there's a lot of similarities, like, you know, do a personal inventory, hold yourself accountable, like take the next right action, you know, make your amends, practice gratitude, you know, all of these things are endemic to.

• 1:44:37Rich Roll?

  Recovery and are applicable to humanity at large. This is not like just something that alcoholics and drug addicts need to figure out a way to master.

• 1:44:46Speaker 11

  Because truth is for everyone and no one owns it and no one's got a monopoly on it. And there's people, Bill Wilson, they're like inspired, they're somehow inspired, they've got the receiver on, just like right now, there's like radio waves in this room, but we don't have our receivers on, we can't pick up the ham radio receivers or the channels from France or the channels from the country western station. But when you have that receiver, you can start picking up all. When you start to fine tune your radar into spiritual truth, not for your ego, if you tune in with your ego and spiritual truth, you'll find your little group that hates, that finds others, but you won't find commonality and connection.

• 1:45:27Speaker 11

  It'll be just another way for your ego to live out in the name of I'm better than. And we find that in any type of, I mean, come on, like I said, I'm a cult aficionado. I found it when I was a raw foodist, I found it with a local farmer growing straight edge Krishna. You can always find people who are into things, you find it in politics, you definitely find it in religion, that if I'm doing something for my self betterment, I shouldn't become more hateful. If I'm becoming more hateful, I think I'm doing something wrong.

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  I sincerely hope that after hearing all of these amazing perspectives on spirituality that you find yourself with an open heart, armed with new practices that can elevate your thinking and behavior toward a more spiritual consciousness and ultimately a more fulfilled life. If you've been inspired by what you've heard and learned today, then please consider visiting the full in-depth conversations with these esteemed guests. You can find links to each episode in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Thanks for listening and watching, and please know that I'm wishing all of you the greatest spiritual life possible.

• 1:46:50Rich Roll?

  Until next time, peace. Plants.