Introducing Soul Boom: Anne Lamott: What is the Key to Lasting Love?

Today I’m sharing an episode of Soul Boom—a new podcast hosted by Rainn Wilson exploring meaningful and inspiring topics that tickle the mind, heart and soul. Subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Watch on YouTube In this episode, author Anne Lamott joins Rainn for an enlightening conversation about the complexities of love, spiritual growth, and self-acceptance. Anne shares her insights on the journey of finding love later in life, the importance of community, and the transformative power of radical self-care. Their discussion delves into the profound impact of prayer, overcoming judgment, and the continuous process of healing and personal development. Browse all episodes of Soul Boom: soulboom.com Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange 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?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Rainn Wilson?

  Pretend you're like the wisest Tibetan monk and you've been living in a cave for 40 years. And I'm the guy from like the New Yorker cartoon clamoring up the side of the mountain. And I pull myself up to your cave and you're cross-legged. And I'm like, what is the meaning of life? I was like, what is the meaning of life? And you know what? He had an answer.

• 1:25Rich Roll?

  Are you gonna keep that quiet until the episode drops?

• 1:30Rainn Wilson?

  So long, everybody.

• 1:32Rich Roll?

  Rain Wilson, good to see you.

• 1:38Rainn Wilson?

  Rich Roll, how are you?

• 1:39Rich Roll?

  Good, man. I'm happy to be sitting across from you. We have a couple interesting things to talk about.

• 1:45Rainn Wilson?

  We do.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  The first thing is, you and I were in India together, were we not?

• 1:49Rainn Wilson?

  We were. It feels like a dream, doesn't it? Just a few months back.

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  It was a little bit ago. I'm curious, has the experience of spending a couple days with Arthur Brooks and that interesting group of people convening with the Dalai Lama, has it stuck with you? What are the lessons that you find yourself ruminating on in the wake of that experience?

• 2:11Rainn Wilson?

  Well, it's interesting. When people ask me about those sessions with the Dalai Lama, and they ask... You know, what did you take away? Do you feel like wiser? Did you have some kind of profound experience? And, and truthfully, I did not. I was incredibly moved by the experience and by the trip, however. Being around hundreds of Tibetan monks that since childhood have been practicing being in the present moment, finding joy, being of service, studying what makes human beings, human beings was jaw dropping. I had so many wonderful conversations with the monks. His holiness was incredible.

• 2:55Rainn Wilson?

  Every conversation that Arthur Brooks and the team of monks that were there had was him turning it toward that most important of all topics, which was love. I mean, Arthur Brooks could ask him about AI and the Dalai Lama would start talking about love. And, and that really taught me something that those are always the most important conversations.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's a situation in which you go in and think you're going to get this key that's going to unlock everything. You're going to go behind the velvet rope.

• 3:30Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  Only to find out that it's the same thing you already kind of knew. But also, you know, an experience in which it just reaffirms that truth, right? Basically, no matter what Arthur threw at him, the answer was the same. And it wasn't necessarily a direct response to whatever Arthur was asking. It was kind of what, it was like he was reading the room and trying to figure out what, what do these people actually need to hear?

• 3:58Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Rich Roll?

  And his answer was always some different version of the same response. Which pivoted around love, compassion, forgiveness, like these, you know, age old concepts that we all know are the answer. But it was good to kind of have it reaffirmed in that way.

• 4:20Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, it was, it was essentially love better, love deeper, love truer, and all that goes with it. And, and so that was inspiring. I, I got to interview one of the monks. I'm, I'm blanking on his name right now. We're going to put his interview on our Soul Boom YouTube page. But basically, the bottom line was, I asked him a question. Okay, pretend you're like the wisest Tibetan monk and you've been living in a cave for 40 years and I'm the guy from like the New Yorker cartoon clamoring up the side of the mountain. And I pull myself up to your cave and you're cross-legged and I'm like, what is the meaning of life? I was like, what is the meaning of life? And you know what? He had an answer.

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  Are you gonna, are you gonna keep that quiet until the episode?

• 5:06Rainn Wilson?

  So long, everybody.

• 5:09Rainn Wilson?

  I'm gonna share it with

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  The cliffhanger.

• 5:11Rainn Wilson?

  I'm gonna share it with you.

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  Master storyteller.

• 5:12Rainn Wilson?

  I'm gonna share it with you right now and trust that your audience is gonna go subscribe to Soul Boom on podcasts and on our YouTube page.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the whole purpose of us having this conversation right now.

• 5:24Rainn Wilson?

  Okay, good. So, do you promise, do you guys pinky swear?

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  Everybody, everybody's swearing. Pinkies up.

• 5:32Rainn Wilson?

  Okay, very good. It was, again, incredibly simple. He said, "The meaning of life is service to others." That's it. He said, "When you are a service to others, that will vanquish your own inadequacies, your anxieties, your depression. It brings you into the moment. And not only that, it makes the world a better place. And there's a lot of people that need a lot of service right now. So shifting humanity's entire focus from self-interest to other

• 6:11Rainn Wilson?

  interests, you know, instead of self-ishness, other-ishness, was his entire thesis of the meaning of life. And I thought that was, I mean, it just, it's so true. It doesn't get better than that. I mean, ask the Buddha, ask Jesus, ask Oprah.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that is a consistent strain in every spiritual tradition and also a core precept of recovery, right?

• 6:37Rainn Wilson?

  Yep.

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  Service is the ultimate antidote to the self-obsession that keeps us stuck and drives so many of our neuroses and our anxiety and some of these, you know, off-kilter mental health issues that, that we all kind of

• 6:51Rainn Wilson?

  It's kind of the answer to everything. So that's what I got to come away from. The foothills of Tibet with, and my wife and I got to go to a bunch of holy sites in northern India, which was amazing. The, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, we went to Rishikesh, uh, which is a Hindu holy site where the Beatles stayed and studied.

• 7:14Rich Roll?

  Where the Maharishi was.

• 7:15Rainn Wilson?

  Maharishi was, but there's beautiful fire ceremonies and, um, it was really, uh, it was incredibly uplifting and I was doing it right as we were launching Soul Boom. So that, that helped as well.

• 7:27Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about Soul Boom. You've got this new, relatively new podcast. What inspired you to get back into the podcasting game? Cause this is not your first, uh, spin of the podcast.

• 7:39Rainn Wilson?

  Not my first podcast rodeo. Yeah. Reza Aslan and I came on your show several years back, four or five years ago, when we were doing one called Metaphysical Milkshake. I've always loved big ideas, big human ideas. It's why I love your work. I love what your network is doing, uh, voicing change and what you're doing. And I wrote a book about a year and a half ago called Soul Boom, Why We Need A Spiritual Revolution. We spoke about it on here and I really feel that one of the ways I can be of service is to have conversations about deep, real, impactful, spiritual issues and using spiritual

• 8:20Rainn Wilson?

  tools for personal transformation and spiritual tools for social transformation. It's my passion. I've gotten to speak to stand-up comics. I've gotten to speak to humanitarians, theologians, musicians, um, different facets of the same conversation. Cause spirituality isn't like a, it isn't woo-woo and it isn't church. It's just being a human being.

• 8:47Rich Roll?

  You said on this podcast, spirituality is reality.

• 8:52Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  And I think about that almost every single day.

• 8:55Rainn Wilson?

  Wow.

• 8:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do. I do. And I think what you're creating is, is a really beautiful offering and much needed right now. I'm really honored to be able to be supporting you in this adventure. And I've also noticed the level of not just professionalism, but integrity and intentionality that you've brought to this with yourself and Kartik, your producer. You're really attacking it with, with vigor. Like, this is not a side hustle. Like, this is like a mission for you.

• 9:29Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah. It's, it's incredibly important to me. And, you know, was it Dionne Warwick? What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

• 9:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Rainn Wilson?

  Dionne Warwick and the Dalai Lama have said it here, folks. But I, I love having these conversations. It's, it feeds my soul. And I think we're in an election cycle, obviously. And it's one of the most kind of toxic, destructive times we've ever gone through. And these are the conversations that give us hope, purpose, meaning, direction, all that good gooey stuff, plus a few laughs along the way.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Your, your show, as you're always pointing out to me, is much funnier than mine.

• 10:15Rainn Wilson?

  Yes, it is.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  But you have these deep thinkers.

• 10:18Rainn Wilson?

  You take yourself so damn seriously, Rich. Oh, my God.

• 10:22Rich Roll?

  I know. You've got these deep thinkers. You've got, you know, Douglas Rushkoff and, you know, Kate Bowler and all these interesting people. But you also, you just had Bryan Cranston on.

• 10:33Rainn Wilson?

  Yep.

• 10:34Rich Roll?

  Sarge Tarkanian?

• 10:37Rainn Wilson?

  Sarge Tarkanian.

• 10:38Rich Roll?

  Sarge, I always get his name wrong.

• 10:39Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, System of a Down.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Super cool, eclectic group of, group of guests. And it's been fun to kind of part-time, like, work in an office with you. Like, I'm sharing an office with Maureen Wilson. That has its own inherent, like, there's some kind of weird joke built into that at some point.

• 10:59Rainn Wilson?

  You've kind of got the Michael Scott office. Like, I come in the building and you're in your office behind the computer and I'm coming in and...

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  Or I'll be out of town and you'll text me a photo of you sitting in my chair at my desk.

• 11:10Rainn Wilson?

  Yes, using your coffee mug.

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  Am I being fired?

• 11:14Rich Roll?

  Anyway, we are doing this because I very much want to introduce Soul Boom to all of you guys. I'm speaking to you, the listener and the viewer. And so we are going to share an episode of Soul Boom on this feed to kind of introduce you to Rain's work. Which episode are we going to be putting up here?

• 11:33Rainn Wilson?

  We're going to put up a conversation that I had with the great writer, mystic, humorist, philosopher, creative artist, Annie Lamott.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  She's the best.

• 11:46Rainn Wilson?

  She is the best.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  I love her.

• 11:48Rainn Wilson?

  Hysterical, brilliant. Her recovery program is deep. Her creativity, she writes novels and books that are like Bird by Bird is a classic. One of my favorite books she ever wrote is called Help, Thanks, Wow!, which are three different forms of prayer that one can say, "Help me, thanks," or "Wow, isn't the universe astounding and beautiful?" She's an icon, and I thought your audience would really respond well to her stuff. And she's also funny as hell.

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I love her to death. There are plenty of her books that I have yet to read, but Bird by Bird sits up near the top of my favorite books, particularly in the genre of unlocking your creativity.

• 12:37Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  Her way with words. And I also listened to it on audio, and she narrates it, and her voice is so distinctive, and the way that she reads her own material is really wonderful.

• 12:50Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Rich Roll?

  She's up there with Julia Cameron and Steven Pressfield and all the other icons of creative expression, I think.

• 12:59Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:00Rich Roll?

  So, here we go. We're going to introduce it. If you're watching this on YouTube, we are going to link in the description below the episode, so hit that right now rather than appending the entire video here. You can go to the Soul Boom YouTube channel, subscribe there, and you'll find all of the Soul Boom episodes there.

• 13:21Rainn Wilson?

  That's right.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  And go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy the show, and click Subscribe there, because you're going to love this episode. Where else should people go to learn more about Soul Boom?

• 13:33Rainn Wilson?

  They could pick up a copy of my book if they wanted. I mean... I don't know.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  That's such a heartfelt, strident call to action to get people to read your book, Rain.

• 13:43Rainn Wilson?

  It really is. It's so, it's so crude.

• 13:48Rainn Wilson?

  No, that's it. That's it. Join the conversation and thanks for having me, Rich. I love being on your podcast network. He said not to plug it, but I'm gonna plug it anyway. Voicing Change has a couple of really amazing podcasts coming down the pike and I'm happy to be working with you on this.

• 14:05Rich Roll?

  Thanks, man. That means a lot and it's been a real honor and pleasure to work with you and to support this mission that you're on. And I mean that from my heart, honestly. Yeah.

• 14:15Rainn Wilson?

  Thank you.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  All right. And everybody else, enjoy.

• 14:19Rainn Wilson?

  Enjoy.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  You know, I heard someone say, or maybe I read this, maybe you said this. We always like to say that we have a God-shaped hole inside of us, but that maybe God has an Annie-shaped hole inside of God, inside of Him or her, and that the way that we are gonna fill that hole is by finding other people, because everyone's got those holes inside of them. And we're gonna find other people who are conscious of it and who are willing. If the willingness comes from the pain, where does the solution comes from? You know, courage is fear that has said its prayers, right?

• 14:59Rainn Wilson?

  Hey there. It's me, Rain Wilson, and I wanna dig into the human experience. I wanna have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom Podcast.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  So how old are you?

• 15:24Rainn Wilson?

  Wow, that's getting intimate. Right off the bat, I'm 37.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  He's 37?

• 15:30Rainn Wilson?

  I'm fifty-eight.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Fifty-eight?

• 15:32Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Wow, you're so young.

• 15:35Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, don't say that.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're gonna love your sixties. I know you've had a beautiful, loving, and successful life. There's just something about the sixties that it's like you get free, you know?

• 15:47Rainn Wilson?

  Really?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:48Rainn Wilson?

  Well, I did read someone was talking about how the sixties were that perfect decade, where you still had your health

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:57Rainn Wilson?

  and your vitality

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:59Rainn Wilson?

  and your wits about you

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:00Rainn Wilson?

  before things start to fray a little bit in your seventies.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:04Rainn Wilson?

  Sorry to say, I know you're seventy. You just turned seventy.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  I think I'm in my extremely late sixties.

• 16:09Rainn Wilson?

  You're really late.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Such, so late. But, no, there is something freeing, like, you know, that, all that hustle and con just quiets down. And you can go either way. It's like, it's not like that thing, that clinch anymore. And it's just like, you've thrown so much shit out of the plane, your psychic plane, that just kept you flying really, like, caring about certain stuff, that at sixty, you just, you think, you know, whatever, you know, I don't care anymore. And, and, and then that just gives you you back in a way that I hadn't experienced.

• 16:51Rainn Wilson?

  Hmm, so I have a lot of things I want to talk to you about.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Okay, great. Have we started recording yet?

• 16:56Rainn Wilson?

  No.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:57Rainn Wilson?

  We're not gonna record any of this. This is just a conversation that's gonna live, it's gonna live in our memories forever.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  That's a lot, okay, I don't care what we talk about.

• 17:05Rainn Wilson?

  I am really moved by your new book somehow, and how audacious it is for you to be tackling something as enormous as love. And to start with that, I got to meet Neil, your new-ish husband. How long have you been together?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Been together almost eight years, but we got married three days after I started getting social security, so that was five years ago.

• 17:30Rainn Wilson?

  Okay, that's a great marker. I have so many questions, but let me put it this way.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:36Rainn Wilson?

  In my book, I talk about love a little bit, and I talk about how limited that word is. Because in the English language, there's like one word for love, whereas like Sanskrit, there's supposed to be like 97 words for love. And in English, it's like, I love my skateboard, I love Nantucket, I love God, I love my grandchild. And it's just like one word that is so all encompassing. And you even reference in here, like, the ancient Greeks had agape for like divine love, and they had a word for romantic love and for filial love, kinship love. You have a word for pet love, what was that one?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Mascottis.

• 18:14Rainn Wilson?

  Mascottis, the love for one's pet that she invented, trademark, Anne Lamott. Brilliant, love that.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Devotion to one's pet.

• 18:23Rainn Wilson?

  Devotion to one's pet. How did this recent kind of romantic love transitioning into marital love in this phase in your life, what has that opened up for you?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Let me go back a little bit, okay?

• 18:38Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  So we go back to my early 60s, 62, and I'd always had, I'd always already known who the next hostage was, right? There was someone there that was, had a nice accent, or was smart, or well-known, or cute, or we kind of grogged each other, and I would just be with them. But I knew, I had a secret, which was that if they were a woman, I knew they wouldn't be my best girlfriend. And that was what I wondered if I might find in the world, a man who, if he were a woman, would be my best girlfriend, because he was so

• 19:13Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  ...rich in spirit and in a listener. Now, I mean, no offense to your gender, but there, I have been with men who had tiny listening issues. They like to talk more, right? And they like to, yeah, and so I

• 19:31Rainn Wilson?

  Some men have a micro penis, some men have a micro listening.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Tiny, tiny listening issues, hardly worth mentioning.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And so I went on Match because I'd been single for a while. And I had a year, you can, we can save your listeners the price of buying any of my books because they can just go to annlamottomatch.com. And there's an essay from Salon that is probably everything you need to know about me and how I met Neil. Because what I did was a year of dating. Every week I went out with a different man who seemed like he might be nice, not knowing he had a Beavis and Butthead laugh. Three of them, and I'm not making this up, you know, I'm a believer, I'm a Sunday school teacher, would not lie to you, Rain. Three of them brought me manuscripts, right?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  But what I learned to do was to date. And my son, Sam, has on his forearm the tattoo, "We never give up." And I just didn't give up. And I kept thinking, maybe there's a man out there.

• 20:34Rainn Wilson?

  What did you learn about dating? What is dating?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I learned how to say no. I learned that no is a complete sentence. I learned that I could show up. You know, before I turned on Woody Allen, he used to say 80% of life was just showing up. And I learned to show up, you know, instantly, you know, three to four seconds whether it's gonna go well.

• 20:53Rainn Wilson?

  Isn't that a problem if you have a coffee date or even a dinner date?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  No, I never would have a dinner date. No, I don't even have dinner dates with Neil, and I've known him for eight years. I don't really like to eat with people, except on the couch with the animals and like TV on, like Below Deck or something. So I would never have a, ever, I wouldn't have a coffee, a dinner date with him for two weeks, and we saw each other every single day.

• 21:16Rainn Wilson?

  This episode brought to you by Match.com and Below Decks. Back to Ann Lamott.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  So anyway, I learned to say no. I learned to be, you know, bhai, and the Dalai Lama saying, "My only religion is kindness." I thought, I'll show up, 80% of life, never gonna give up, I'm gonna be kind. There's a story we tell our Sunday school kids, and this fits in, of a little girl who's scared to death to sleep, and her mother keeps coming in, you know the drill, just more and more irritated, but the mother keeps saying, "God is right here, Jesus is here on the bed with you, just go to sleep, you're not alone." Goes on and on, and finally she comes in for the last time, "I need someone with skin on." And I believe, my faith tells me that that's who I'm called to be, is I'm... God's love in expression. I'm God's love with skin on, right?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna show up for these people, these men on match, and I'm just gonna be God's love, you know? And I'm gonna get out of there if I need to. And I'm gonna say, you know what? I'm really glad we got to have a cup of coffee. I know that we're not a good match, but you take care. You know, and so I did that for a year.

• 22:27Rainn Wilson?

  Were some of them disappointed with the like?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  A few, the ones with the manuscript. And the guy who wonders... Can you still read my manuscript? Well, one of them, who was so handsome, he had an English accent. At the end, he said, "I'm gonna confess that I really just wanted to get a selfie with you." And I was like, "Well, thanks for sharing. You know, I hope that you're bitten and killed by snakes." But I mean that in a warm, Christian Sunday School way. But...

• 22:55Rainn Wilson?

  And then maybe devoured by your pets, because that happens.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but after you get... After the hemorrhoids, and this is the Christian way. And then one guy asked, after a great two dates, if it was too soon to bring a plot treatment. Right, so that's what I did for a year.

• 23:12Rainn Wilson?

  Wow.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  So then I took a little time off, because I'm into radical self-care. And I took some time off. And I started to feel my feelings, which has been part of the path of recovery for me. And I realized I felt really sad and empty. And I was pouring my life into my son and my grandchild, who was young at the time, who was six or seven, six, I guess, and into my church community, into my recovery, and into the neighborhood. I just am this way. I'm God's love with skin on. I'm blessed. I just came this way. I was way more anxious than the average bear and really loving. That's just how God made me. And I longed for a partner. And so one day, I expressed this to my older brother,

• 23:57Speaker 02

  who was staying with me, who's a fundamentalist Christian. I adore him, but he used to be. We've kind of ruined him. But... And he kind of handed me this Christian bumper sticker BS crock of shit. Well, God never gives you more than you can handle. It's like, bore me later, you know? But it was, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and I had to leave the house. I got in the car, started crying, started hitting the steering wheel saying, God, I'm so sick of you. Sam and Jackson and my, both of my brothers and my, and Mom and Dad, I can't believe you gave me such a crippling, pretzelizing idea of love is pouring all my life force into the entire world,

• 24:42Speaker 02

  trying to get a sense that I'm of value. I did this for 40 minutes. I'm not kidding. Right there to the woods and back. Then I have had a mentor since I got sober. So for like 37 years, her name is Horrible Bunny and I pulled over by the side of the road and I called her. And I said, I hate everyone. All they just, they're users. They just are takers. I'm sucked dry. And there was this, one of the silences, the reason I call her Horrible Bunny. And she said, dearest, this is what we paid for. And she said, you're no one's priority. Do you know why? I knew what she was gonna say. She said, you're no, you're not your own priority.

• 25:19Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  And what you're gonna do for three months is you're gonna do this radical caring self-love of being your own priority, beginning with going to the health food store on your way home and getting the overpriced homemade tamales.

• 25:34Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, they're so delicious.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  And that, the tamales are where it began.

• 25:37Rainn Wilson?

  The Ewan is right down the street. Have you been to the Ewan?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  No, but we will. And Neil has your car and he may be there as we speak.

• 25:44Rainn Wilson?

  He might be there. But talk about like, you know, they're like $27 tamales and they're the most delicious you've ever had.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And that's what she said. She said, you're gonna get the homemade overpriced tamales. And I did, and I did this. Look, I was putting lotion on the flabby situations. I was putting tattoos on my thighs. I was having only food I love. I was having only spiritual people. I was saying no to people that were a little toxic for me, that I'd always sort of sucked up to because maybe they had something on. Wanted or you know, could further my career and whatever. And I just said, no. And, and about three or four months after I had that conversation, Neil came up on the, the match thing that's for older people, which is called Our Time.

• 26:29Rainn Wilson?

  Our Time.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  And I met him and it was funny.

• 26:32Rainn Wilson?

  I could have come up with a better name for a senior dating, like Golden Decades.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Golden Decades.

• 26:39Rainn Wilson?

  How's that?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Right, I know.

• 26:40Rainn Wilson?

  Final Chapter.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:43Rainn Wilson?

  Hello, death.

• 26:46Rainn Wilson?

  What do you think?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  So anyway, it was, so anyway, but I'd already rejected him because he was, he's overly educated and he was allergic to cats. That was like really the main thing.

• 26:58Rainn Wilson?

  That's a deal breaker.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Right, for me. And we, because I sleep with my cats. The only reason I'm semi okay most days is because of my cats and my dog.

• 27:06Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  And I thought.

• 27:07Rainn Wilson?

  You just shave them.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  I know, right? Or get those bizarre Mr. Bigglesworth cats, you know, that are.

• 27:13Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, the hairless.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  That kind of cats in the loosest sense of the word.

• 27:16Rainn Wilson?

  Do they make little hazmat suits for cats? Because you could put a cat in a hat.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  You could do that.

• 27:19Rainn Wilson?

  A cat mat, hazmat suit, and then they would be not toxic to Neil. Anyway, so you had tried to.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  So I had, and he was like, I don't know. And I also, by then, because I was doing this radical, romantic self-love with myself, I didn't feel like a lot of urgency. And I kind of let it go. On Our Time, I see this guy, you've seen him, he's tall, he's great looking, he's dear, he's smarter than shit.

• 27:45Rainn Wilson?

  I liked Neil.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  I liked Neil too.

• 27:47Rainn Wilson?

  Immediately.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  He's smarter than I am. Like he's, we have a dog, very smart dog, who's smarter than I am, but not smarter than Neil. Like he's got this kind of crystalline intelligence. But anyway, I saw him, I liked the profile and I wrote to him, I said, oh, I wonder if you might want to have coffee? I like your profile. And he said, you've already rejected me. I think it's because I'm not Jesus-y enough. Well, I could care less whether someone's Jesus-y or not. It's just my thing. It's like.

• 28:14Rainn Wilson?

  He's way too tall for Jesus.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Right.

• 28:17Rainn Wilson?

  Jesus was probably like 5'1".

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Probably. And he's got like size 14 shoes, right? And Jesus got like little sandals, little tennis, size 9.

• 28:26Rainn Wilson?

  Jesus would have a hard time washing Neil's feet. They're so big.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Correct, exactly.

• 28:30Rainn Wilson?

  He might have drawn a line right there. It's like, I'm going to wash Judas's feet. Neil, I'm sorry, they're just too big.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I draw a line.

• 28:36Rainn Wilson?

  Like Peter, Paul, Matthew, Tim, Scotty, come over here, wash Neil's feet.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Then we got together. And for coffee, because I don't have meals with people. And we just grok each other. We wanted to

• 28:48Rainn Wilson?

  That's great.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  keep the conversation going. That was the thing.

• 28:51Rainn Wilson?

  That's beautiful.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 28:52Rainn Wilson?

  That's so exciting.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And it's real life. And it gets very life-y some days.

• 28:56Rainn Wilson?

  Can I read a quote that I read of yours this morning? You said in an article, "If you're paying attention and making your own life as beautiful and rich and fun as it can be, you might just attract someone who's doing the same thing."

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:14Rainn Wilson?

  "You can give up on tracking someone down with your butterfly net."

• 29:18Speaker 02

  That's right. You do the work. You do the healing. Like, people come, a lot of people ask, "What do you do for your teenagers?" My son got very, very lost in drugs and alcohol. And grace of God, the sober men in San Francisco fished him out almost 14 years ago. But he got very, very lost. And people say, "What do you do? My kid's lost. My kid's furious. My kid's..." And so you do the healing. You do your own work. You know, you become a person of wholeness. You become a person who's not projecting your own shame onto your kid, your own desperation to achieve in the world onto your own kid. Our teenage... And I'm a Sunday School teacher. I have, and I had a failing church.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  So I might have two nine-year-olds and two teenagers in the same class. But, you know, the teenagers, in so many cases, they look at their parents. And their parents are racing along, around, all day, every day, with these meaningless to-do lists, getting more and more done, trying to achieve, trying to keep their weight down, trying to get to the gym. And the kids just grieve. They think, "I don't want to be like that. I don't want... Is that what life is like?" And you go, "No, you know, I'm clean and sober. I have a spiritual path. I have a... I live to get back outdoors every day, you know? I have my pets."

• 30:39Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  And I love my life. And it gets very life-y. And there are some tools I can share for you for when it gets tough.

• 30:49Rainn Wilson?

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  That's what I teach my Sunday School kids. And so with the parents that come out, you know, to talks or lectures or something, I say, "Do your own healing. Get yourself back. Get yourself back."

• 31:12Rainn Wilson?

  I love this idea, love this idea because your ode to love is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. I recently had the incredible bounty of meeting His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in northern India with Arthur Brooks. And Arthur Brooks was asking all these probing questions about the meaning of life and transcendence and modern society and what humans need. And every single answer, the Dalai Lama, just, it's almost like he didn't hear the question and he just unfolded a different chapter about love. Just profound, deep, searing, all encompassing, that there really is no, that existence is love, God is

• 31:56Rainn Wilson?

  love, the hippies were right about that, so was Jesus, God is love, love is in the scintillating molecules between us. I'm wondering about those barriers to love, because it's something I think about with myself a lot. I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly loving person. And even in the 30 some years I've been with my wife, like, I kind of learned how to love her about 10 years ago. You know, it was, it was rocky, to say the least. And because my love, those barriers to love for myself, had to be unpacked, not bird by bird,

• 32:35Rainn Wilson?

  but brick by brick, from the destructive circumstances of my traumatic childhood, and terrible love being modeled for me by my dysfunctional parents. And I really was like, in my late 40s, that I learned really what love is. And therapy was a very valuable process. I'm also in recovery, 12 steps, a very valuable process for, for unpacking that as well. But I still wonder to this day, like, Why am I, what would it be like to just live in a total love vibration? Like, just, can we do that? Can we be Saint Francis of Assisi? Can we be the Dalai Lama?

• 33:19Rainn Wilson?

  Can we be Father Greg Boyle? Can we be these people that just vibrate loving joy? In the Baha'i faith, it's Abdul Baha, who's the perfect embodiment of a loving way of being in the world. So many great Hindu gurus and swamis and thinkers have been able to tiptoe toward that. But what are the barriers for us for love? And how can we be total vibrating love machines?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not positive that this side of the grave, I'm going to be a total vibrating love machine. But I think you exude love.

• 34:00Rainn Wilson?

  Stop.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  You exude love. I mean, I can see you just being brought to tears by people being tender hearted with you and letting you be really vulnerable. I can see who you were at six. I can see who you were at three. And I can see who you are at this age, that you're love with skin on. And I feel like, you know, this horrible Bonnie said to me 37 years ago, Annie, watch the self-talk. You know, because my self-talk, I harsh myself. And I wouldn't harsh you. If you handed me something to read, I wouldn't go, God, rain. You know, put it away and let's revisit it in 2025.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I would be so amazed that you had produced something and that it was your heart and soul. If you're handing me something to read, it's the very best you've got of your heart and soul and your brain, your experience, your strength, your hope. And you hand it to me and I would receive it that way. But we're not that way with ourselves and I'm not that way with myself. But one thing that has helped me a lot is something I heard in recovery, which I'm sure you're familiar with, which is Chuck C.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Telling the story of the priest who helped Bill Wilson get the AA off the ground in the 30s, who said to Bill, "Sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses." And I was on the road for three weeks, just until a couple of days ago, and I'm on a book tour, and I brought two pairs of glasses that are the same prescription, so that when I was being a certain judgmental way, or having shame, because of like a review, or anything, I just changed glasses. I would physically change glasses. Wow. And I'd think, "Let's put the good glasses, let's just see the love everywhere." And it's like another love person besides the Bob, and you know, the people that we've

• 35:54Speaker 02

  mentioned, that are just seem to be the embodiment of love, was Brother Lawrence. And he talks about practicing the presence of God. And that was his path, that you practice the presence of God. And that what I'm normally practicing are, is, you know, who's to blame is something I'm good at, and whose fault this is, that things aren't going better, and how I have got to get away from this or that, or the other, or a person, or whatever. Or I'm thinking about, because I have, you know, the two things, I think, that you started this part of the conversation off on are, what are the impediments? And I would say, one, is just, for me, I think you're fine.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  You really do exude love. You're like a child. Thank you. It's that endless judgment. Hmm. This is good, this is bad, this I need, this I don't need, this I gotta go, this, I'm out of here, this I have two to three minutes for, this I could, you could, I know you and I could talk for the rest of the day, right? If we wanted to. Let's do it. Yeah. And that endless snap judgment. This is good, this is bad, he's a bad guy, he's a bad guy. Yeah. Grace is spiritual WD-40. Grace is unearned love. Grace meets you exactly where you are, but grace doesn't leave you where it found you.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Marjorie Taylor Greene is loved exactly as much as the grandchildren you'll have someday. Go figure, right? But "figure it out" is not a good slogan in the spiritual world. Father Gregory Boyle, sorry to interrupt, Father Gregory Boyle, who is one of my... Your people.

• 37:34Rainn Wilson?

  Top three heroes of all time. He said, "God is enamored of everything you are doing all the time."

• 37:42Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 37:43Rainn Wilson?

  And he says that to the gang bangers in his program.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:47Rainn Wilson?

  And just like that, that idea of like being watched and someone watching you with delight and adoration. Every choice you're making, good or bad, like, oh, they did that? Oh, that's okay, they're doing that. Oh, my goodness.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  I know. No matter what.

• 38:03Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. I mean, when my son was out there on meth and alcohol, there was literally, I mean, it was a nightmare. There wasn't a moment when I didn't feel this unconditional love. He was my child.

• 38:14Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  And that's how God feels about us. It's unfathomable love.

• 38:19Rainn Wilson?

  On that, I always think about people who, you know, part of the book in Soul Boom is, I have a chapter called "The Notorious G O D," which is kind of a reimagining of God from the ground up or from the sky down. But this idea of a judgmental, what I call "sky daddy,"

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:38Rainn Wilson?

  which is so pervasive. There was a, I think it was a Michelangelo painting, and it was Jesus and the Father, and the Father was embracing Jesus, and the Father was, and God was like larger than Jesus, had his kind of arms around him, and God was balding.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 38:57Rainn Wilson?

  And I thought, that's an odd choice. Why, God can have any hair that he wants.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:03Rainn Wilson?

  Um, why would he, why would God choose to be balding or someone choose to, if I was, I was, I would have, I'm losing my hair, I would have a magnificent head of hair, a little more Zeus hair, the Odin hair.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:16Rainn Wilson?

  Rather than the Michelangelo God hair.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:19Rainn Wilson?

  But I guess the point is that, that idea of judgmentalism, like, I think about my son.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  That's the first thing. But go ahead, tell me about that.

• 39:26Rainn Wilson?

  So, my son, Walter, uh, and you know, like, when you have a child, it, it opens up a new door to love. Like, you, you think you know what love is, and then you have a kid, and it's like, oh. There's a whole new world of love. I had, I had no idea. It's like Alice peeking through a little door. There's a, there's a whole other garden back there. You're like, oh, I thought I was just falling down this rabbit hole and there's a beautiful garden. I want to get to that garden, to quote the hippies. And my adoration for Walter, even when he's making mistakes, just my love for him is so vast. Can you imagine God's love for us as his children in that sense? Because it is, it's times a bazillion. So how could

• 40:09Rainn Wilson?

  there be judgment? How could there be kind of like a snarky condemnation from Sky Daddy in that kind of paradigm?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not possible. Guys, I wrote about, and somehow God doesn't have an app for not love. No, we would feel, I would express that not love is killing us, right? And so the crazy experiment might be in love, right? In practicing the presence of love, of putting a good pair of glasses on, which are loving, which see that people are, everyone are, is engaged in an invisible struggle that we have, no matter how arrogant or destructive they appear on the surface, are engaged in a struggle that is just devastating to them. But that endless judgment of he's an asshole, he's, she's a, she's a this, that's like

• 41:00Speaker 02

  us projecting out the endless judgment of ourselves, that we've squandered our time, that we didn't pursue this or that, that we've wasted so much of our life on what other people think about us, trying to get certain critics to adore us and give us the FDA stamp of approval. Well, it's an inside job. You know that as well as I do. The self-respect and the delight that we know God feels towards us because we feel it towards our kids. But so that endless judgment, and you practice catching yourself. You go, oh, I'm doing that again. Like, my husband's work is with the inner critic, and he teaches you when this voice is telling you that you shouldn't try that, it's too scary. The New York City critics won't like it. The Hollywood critics won't like it, blah, blah, blah. That you

• 41:43Speaker 02

  just say to it, oh, it's you again. You've had it since you were a little child. And you do the practice of saying, oh, it's you again. But with the judgment, you just go, oh, it's you again. This is what my parents did. This is how they taught us to feel that we were of value, even though they were, they couldn't stand each other. There was alcoholism, there was-

• 42:02Rainn Wilson?

  So getting rid of that judgmental, that incessant judgmental voice, and as you know, in the- You know, in recovery, we do character defects. And top of my list of especially my like top five is judgmentalism.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 42:15Rainn Wilson?

  I can be very judgmental.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  But the judgment and that endless judgmental voice I've recognized because of the path I've been on, it's like a toxic comfort zone because you know what it is? It's home. You know, mom and dad might be nearby and this time they got help, you know? I had OCD. I was turning off my light switch 17 times, off and on, every night before I went to bed. I had migraines at five years old. They didn't notice something was wrong with their, what they were doing to their children? They didn't notice what they were doing to their children or they let it go.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  And so for me to be in this energy that is toxic, that is judgmental, that is total separation from me, you, God, from everything, from all of life, it's home, right? And you have to find a new home. You have to find a home within yourself, this glade inside of you where for me, it's me and Jesus and my little one, and that's my glade. And then right outside that, like outside the bullseye circle is Neil and my son and my three best friends and my younger brother. And they're my, the first ring of the bullseye, right? The second ring is like a bunch more friends I really love and trust.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  About six rings out is standing at a podium and saying, I think you all have this. I think you all have probably equal proportions of grandiosity and raging ego and self doubt or even self loathing. And so you begin to say it and it breaks the trance, you know? But that's how you wear down the judgment is you stop doing it to yourself so much. You know, you put the, you notice that you're...

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Projecting it out onto other people, the fact that you, I never looked right. I had this frizzy hair. I didn't look, I weighed zero pounds. I weighed like thirty pounds in seventh grade, which is, you know, in operating instructions, I go into this existential despair because I've given birth to someone who's gonna have to go through seventh and eighth grade, which is like the sixth ring of the, right?

• 44:29Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, Dante's Infernal.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  I didn't ever really bounce back from that. And I've, and I'm, I've made-

• 44:36Rainn Wilson?

  And now, and add to social media to that.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  And add social media to that, yeah.

• 44:39Rainn Wilson?

  People are not liking your photos and posting all of their sexy photos.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Right, right. And their bikini photos. But so, one tool is that you, you start doing Neil's work of just saying, "Oh, it's you. It's how I survived a really terrifying childhood", was by thinking I was the problem, right? If I'm the problem, then there's, I have some control over this situation because I can do better. If I think I'm the reason mom and dad aren't happy, there's a solution. And it's for me to do better. It's for me to need less. It's for me not to cry. We got sent to our, I had an English mother, I had a father raised in, you know, Imperial Japan in the twenties by Christian missionaries. And so, you don't cry and you don't get angry. And all children of alcoholics agree at

• 45:29Speaker 02

  a very early age not to see what's going on. So, some of the work is that you learn to cry. You learn to do your anger with someone healthy. And you agree, if you're gonna be a writer, you have to do this to start to respect yourself as the narrator of your life. You un-sign that contract where you didn't see it because it made your parents, your dad, feel so bad about his life, so that you took, you take it on. You put it in your own backpack. You do the work with a mentor, or a therapist, or a whoever, to start taking that stuff out of your backpack, that was your dad's and your mom's, the endless, endless judgment. Is the person I'm loathing, or judging, or rejecting, some kind of funhouse

• 46:13Speaker 02

  mirror for me?

• 46:15Rainn Wilson?

  Right.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Right. And in the last book I wrote, I used that wonderful line of Martin Luther King's, "I don't let them get you to hate them." Because if you let them- Get you to hate them, you've lost that glade of love and the sweetness that you can see through the glasses that they're a child of God. Trump, for instance, is a man who was never loved, not even once, until he had a daughter. Never once before or since. I don't think he knows his grandchildren's name, but that's just me. That's judgmental, but I, but I wonder.

• 46:49Rainn Wilson?

  Well, I can say that, you know, I think Trump is a textbook-walking definition of narcissism, and I can say that I also am a narcissist.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  And so am I.

• 47:05Rainn Wilson?

  And a narcissist is not, as my therapist pointed out to me, it's not someone who is grandiose. It's someone who is either at the top level of grandiose, or else the biggest piece of worm shit on the planet.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:20Rainn Wilson?

  And you're in those two extremes, like, I'm greater than everyone, or I'm less than everyone.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:27Rainn Wilson?

  And the hardest thing for a narcissist is to just be another bozo on the bus.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 47:31Rainn Wilson?

  And to just be, I'm just a regular old person, man.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 47:35Rainn Wilson?

  And I can recognize myself in, in Donald Trump, and if I was, grew up, you know, with a gold-plated toilet and nanny and never saw my father, and I was never hugged, and my only kind of self-worth came through sexual conquest and wealth, then I could see, you know, I could see me being exactly in his shoes.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. In that book where I wrote about the Dr. King line, I thought, I'm a narcissist, I'm a blowhard, I'm, I can be bombastic, I'm sure I'm right. My friend Tom W., the Jesuit priest, says, I never, ever noticed I was angry, just that I was right, you know? And that's me, and that's Trump. And I am, you know, and I have more sympathy towards him than most people I know, and because all truth is paradox, I'm going to work for the next six months to cut off the head of the snake, because that is going to destroy democracy if people are going to support the policies and what he has said about what he will do.

• 48:43Rainn Wilson?

  You know what? Democracy has been destroyed for a very, very long time.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. No, it's, it's, it's limping along, it's...

• 48:53Rainn Wilson?

  It's so corroded and filled with hundreds of millions of dollars. And a passel of politicians all tearing at each other's faces and stabbing each other in the back. That's been going on for a good 50 years.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Okay, that's right.

• 49:10Rainn Wilson?

  The mourning of like the possibility that if the Republicans win the election, that's going to destroy democracy. Democracy is already pretty much destroyed. They would just kind of tear down the remaining kind of termite-infested foundations.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Well, you get to think that. That's not my belief. So now let's go to the second impediment in my experience with being in love and just looking around the way God might. But the other second impediment is the shame, the toxic shame of having grown up. And I know many, many of your listeners are just fine. I wasn't. I grew up in a really frightening situation of parents who couldn't stand each other. And I internalized their shame. And so what the natural reaction to that is to figure out who I can project this onto to carry. That's what the whole Southern white racist is about, is that gays or black or somebody

• 50:08Speaker 02

  is, at least they're not gay, you know? Or at least they're not people of color. They're white American patriots, right? You've got to find somebody to project it onto. And the shame is the most excruciating feeling I ever have. I make a small mistake, got a terrible review a week ago in the New York Times, the worst review of my life, that actually mentioned my hair and referred to some of my work as embroidered throw pillows. I so went into the shame spiral as if I'd never gotten sober or had 30 years of therapy and love. And you know my friend Tom, who I just mentioned, Tom Weston? He told me the shame secret.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Thirty-some years ago, he said there are five rules of being an American adult. First, you must not have anything wrong with you or different about you. You just need to pass in any circumstance, right?

• 51:06Rainn Wilson?

  Wow.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Rule two is if you do have something wrong with you or different about you, you just have to correct it. I mean, you just do, okay? The third rule is if you can't even correct it, or fix it, or change it, you just should pretend you have. It's like a silly old thing that is from the past. You don't do it, it's not a problem anymore. The fourth rule is if you can't even pretend that it's not an issue anymore, you should just not show up because it's really painful for the rest of us when you do.

• 51:34Rainn Wilson?

  Wow, that's great.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And the fifth rule is if you're going to insist on the right to show up, you should have the decency to be ashamed. And that is what we internalized by kindergarten. You know? Don't have anything different or be wrong. Fit in. Be, look like Betsy Steiger, who had soft blond hair. I didn't have soft hair. Be like that we didn't have enough...

• 51:57Rainn Wilson?

  We've got Betsy on the podcast next week, actually.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Ask her about me.

• 52:01Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:03Rainn Wilson?

  Narcissistic question, right there.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Right, right. And, you know, if you were different, if you looked wrong, if you were too big or too heavy, too tall or too short or too whatever, you didn't have enough money or you had... You know, there was a girl in my seventh grade class whose dad was mafia, big mafia king in the city. Tremendous shame. We didn't have enough money. Tremendous shame, you know? And it takes a commitment to that, the healing of your soul, the restoration, to become the child you were born to be before they, in the paranoid sense of the word "they", and the world, the culture, got its mitts on you. But that is the impediment, is that internalized shame about who we even are.

• 52:50Rainn Wilson?

  Mm, that's beautiful.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  And so, that's my understanding.

• 53:04Rainn Wilson?

  One of the things I struggle with, with the kind of Western world, with the liberal world, with the secular world and with the kind of like moss-chomping, yoga-chakra-embracing West Coast, is you've talked a lot about heal yourself, forgive yourself, self-care, you know, stopping the judgmental voice against yourself. And these are all healing your internal trauma. All of these are the barriers to love, and you've talked about them in great length.

• 53:46Rainn Wilson?

  And they're super, super important. But I think for a lot of people that I know in this particular cultural milieu that I find myself here in suburban Los Angeles, is it stops there. It ends there. They do that work and like, I want to feel better. So I'm going to heal my trauma. I'm going to stop the self-judgmental voice. I'm going to open myself up to love. And like, ah, I'm feeling a little better. Mission accomplished.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Right, pull up the ladder. I got mine.

• 54:19Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, and what I love about you and your work and what you do is you never end it there. And it is, you don't write about this very much, but it is very clear as a thread through your texts that you are of great service to others and that you heal yourself so that you can teach Sunday School and bring a macaroni to the potluck at the church and feed the homeless and clean up and register voters and be a part of your community and help heal the woods and... Be a vibrant and necessary servant among servants.

• 55:03Rainn Wilson?

  So how do we help folks bridge that? Because I get pretty darn frustrated that spirituality, therapy, trauma work and healing kind of just ends once some of the anxiety has lifted.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I'd say a third of the book is about community. And it goes with Duncan's thing about when you first meet him, you're meeting his bodyguard. But a lot of the book is just about finding a group out there that moves you, that touches you, the beginning bird watchers, the people who clean up litter, the people at the food kitchen, the people at the food pantry, the soup kitchen, the hikers. You know, there's this old guy where Neil and I live named Jesse, and he is so frail. He's 93 and he walks down the street every single day to be outside, to hear the birds,

• 56:02Speaker 02

  to be underneath the sky, to see his neighbors, because that's his path of love. And you always see him with different people because people swing by to be his walker that day, you know? And that's one way to go on to next door and to find somebody who needs somebody to help them walk every day.

• 56:20Rainn Wilson?

  Right, but there's a piece missing in what you're saying.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 56:22Rainn Wilson?

  Which is you have knowledge, you have volition, and you have action.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:27Rainn Wilson?

  So you're talking about knowledge and action. But how do you find that volition? How do you find that will?

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:32Rainn Wilson?

  The will to walk, Neil, the will to clean up the trees, the will to go to the soup kitchen?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:38Rainn Wilson?

  That missing piece of like, ah, I have soothed this anxiety through these therapeutic and spiritual tools. How do you then find that internal mechanism that goes like, now I need to do something else outside of myself?

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you the answers.

• 56:55Rainn Wilson?

  I love answers.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Young man.

• 56:57Rainn Wilson?

  Yes.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  I bet you have heard in your years in recovery, the most basic step zero, step zero is this shit has got to stop, whether it's with your drinking, your... Gambling, your black belt codependence, or whatever. This shit has got to stop. And the willingness comes from the pain. We don't have the willingness if everything's floating along and we're just feeling really fulfilled and that we found our purpose as a tribal person. But the willingness to come into community will arrive most of the time from feeling that Swiss cheese inside of your soul, that you are, you know, you're doing your three hours of hot yoga every day and you're with your therapist, you're with, that you're doing

• 57:43Speaker 02

  this, and you just feel, you're gonna feel, if you're not in service, you're gonna feel empty, you're gonna feel, you know, a guy told me, I got sober in 1986, he said, "I came into this as a hot shot, and the guys helped me work my way up to servant." And the Swiss cheese holes in your soul are not going to be healed by, by kind of fine tuning your own life and getting a much more attractive and enviable life. They're gonna be, you know, I heard someone say, or maybe I read this, maybe you said this, that we think, we always like to say that we have a God-shaped hole inside of us, but that maybe God has an Annie-shaped hole inside of God, instead of him or, inside

• 58:26Speaker 02

  of him or her, and that the way that we are gonna fill that hole is by finding other people, because everyone's got those holes inside of them, and we're gonna find other people who are conscious of it, who've hit that bottom, and who are willing. If the willingness comes from the pain, where does the solution comes from? Comes from, you know, the courage to try to knock on a door and to go on into a group. You know, courage is fear that has said its prayers, right? You're gonna do it afraid, you're gonna go to where the birders meet, you're gonna go to where the, where you've heard that people, that the sober people, the recovering Catholics meet, you're gonna go to where the...

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Course in miracles, people meet. You're gonna meet, you're gonna go where the people that pick up litter every day meet. And you're gonna at first think, "Well, this is ridiculous. I'm very, very busy. I'm important. I have all this stuff to do." And then you're gonna go in anyway because of maybe the Holy Spirit nudge on your shoulder and you go in and you feel shy and arrogant at the same time. And someone comes over and they say, "Hi, my name's Rain. Can I get you a glass of water? Who are you? Come on in." And you go in and the miracle is if you get back a second time.

• 59:43Rainn Wilson?

  I just thought of something for your next book.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 59:46Rainn Wilson?

  You said the Holy Spirit and you're talking about the God-shaped hole. The God-shaped Holy Spirit.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  The God-shaped Holy Spirit.

• 59:51Rainn Wilson?

  Like Holy Spirit. Get it? Like Swiss cheese?

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that tug on your sleeve.

• 59:55Rainn Wilson?

  You can use that.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you.

• 59:57Rainn Wilson?

  Okay. Do you write every day?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Well, I don't write every day. Yeah, I write five days a week. My dad was a writer and he taught me. He sat down at his desk at 5:30 every morning and he wrote till 7:00. And you heard tap, tap, tap. This is the 50s, you know, in the early 60s. Tap, tap, tap, tap. And then he got us three up. There were three of us. He got us up for breakfast and made breakfast for us. And he taught me that you don't wait for inspiration, that no one's ever really very inspired and that you do it by habit. You do it as a debt of honor because you have this thing inside of you that wants to write, that wants to share some stuff that you thought was worth passing along, that might be illuminating, cast a tiny bit of light in this cold, weird, dark world, or

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  that was funny, that would make people laugh. Laughter being carbonated holiness, or that might be a story you just wanted to remember because you don't want to lose it, because you want to give it to your grandchildren. When you lived in Olympia and you knew the name of every single dog in your neighborhood, right? And so he just taught me, you know, like the Nike ad, six years later, you just do it. So I sit down. I sit down at the same time.

• 1:01:08Rainn Wilson?

  What time do you sit down?

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  I sit down at nine.

• 1:01:10Rainn Wilson?

  How much caffeine do you have?

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  I have very, I have two cups first thing in the morning. I wake up, I have, I wake up, I say my prayers, I fish around for my glasses, I let the dogs out to pee, I have a cup of coffee. That's my writing system.

• 1:01:24Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Rainn Wilson?

  Um, nine is a little late.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Well, it is, but I have a grandchild at home. He's almost 15, but they're usually in, he needs food, he's getting ready to go to school, he needs breakfast, and we've got the animals and...

• 1:01:38Rainn Wilson?

  He needs screen time.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  He needs screen time, and I also, I'm not in a hurry anymore, you know, and nine works for me, yeah.

• 1:01:47Rainn Wilson?

  That's great.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get up early, but if I'm in the middle of something, I'm up very early, a lot, and I write really late. Like, when you are really young, you know, and you get it, you get a, the solution late in the...

• 1:02:01Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, second wind, at like, 10 at night or something like that.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  At 10 at night, and you step, I just finished a piece, you know, I'm writing these pieces on getting older for the Washington Post.

• 1:02:10Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've written eight of them, and the other day, I, I, I was actually on the road, and at about nine, I was wasted, I was on California time, but I was on the East Coast, and I got, it's like this solution floated into my head like a goldfish, that was a structural change that I could do, and that was actually fun. I rarely, very rarely say those words, and I worked till midnight, you know, and I just was caffeinated on...

• 1:02:38Rainn Wilson?

  Ideas.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  On ideas, yeah, and I, and I nailed it, right?

• 1:02:43Rainn Wilson?

  That's awesome.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  And then, yeah, so that happens, but in a regular day-to-day, I work from about nine until two, but see, and then I saw for lunch, and I, I do the same thing I did while raising my child, which is I operate on bribes and threats, you know, which is really the only thing that's ever worked, I'm sure you'll agree, so, um, I'll say to myself, Annie... If you finish this passage, we'll stop and we'll have a peanut butter sandwich, the food of the gods, right?

• 1:03:11Rainn Wilson?

  Sure.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  The bread of heaven.

• 1:03:12Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  And/or I'll say, if you figure out the end, this last graph, then we're gonna watch MSNBC for half an hour. And I-

• 1:03:22Rainn Wilson?

  I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  No, I do, I know. It's a sickness, but it's my sickness, right?

• 1:03:28Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, or I'll say, if you finish this draft, this unbelievably shitty first draft-

• 1:03:35Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Then we're gonna go for a walk.

• 1:03:37Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  With a dog.

• 1:03:38Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Rainn Wilson?

  I love carrot and stick, but that's a lot of carrots.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:43Rainn Wilson?

  Delicious carrots.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:45Rainn Wilson?

  Um-

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  What time do you start?

• 1:03:47Rainn Wilson?

  I found that I was really only good from around nine or nine thirty till about twelve or twelve thirty.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, here's the thing, nine to, say, twelve, three hours, that will buy you, I happen to know these things, that'll buy you just over two hours of real writing, because there'll be fifty minutes of-

• 1:04:06Rainn Wilson?

  Of course.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Tort, of like, squirm.

• 1:04:09Rainn Wilson?

  I would, I would say less than two hours. I would say an hour and twenty minutes.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  No, I say an hour and forty-five. You're gonna squirm-

• 1:04:16Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  And you're gonna be eight years old again-

• 1:04:18Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  And wriggling and feeling bitter because you'd rather be outside and whatever. And, um, but so that's the grid. That's what I teach at a writing room, that you give me three hours by pre-arrangement with yourself. You don't say to yourself, well, I hope I get some work done tomorrow, right? You won't. But you say, I'm going to get some work done tomorrow. I can put in two hours. You know, anyone can watch the ten PM news, right? So, ten o'clock news, you start at nine, you go through ten, you're done at ten thirty. Say, an hour and a half, that's gonna buy you fifty minutes of writing. That, you might get two pages done.

• 1:04:57Rainn Wilson?

  It's amazing.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  You might get five hundred words done, you know? And, um, and so- That's my system.

• 1:05:04Rainn Wilson?

  Are you a word counter? I was definitely, I'm definitely a word counter. Which is not, it's not a healthy, it's not a healthy habit. But I was kind of like.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  But it's your habit.

• 1:05:15Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, I got 350 words today. Or, oh hey, I got 900 today. I would run to my wife, like, I wrote 1,200 words today. But what my wife does, and I know you're also a fiction writer. She writes fiction, which is very different because you're just creating a whole other world. And you're listening and fishing for other voices. And you're waiting for those muses to let those voices talk. And you're seeing where, how this world unfolds.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Rainn Wilson?

  And that's much more challenging than writing like Soul Boom was like, here's what I think about the world today. Which is a little bit more of like, it's like what I'm doing right now. So I'm just transcribing thoughts, like, think, think, think, write, write, write. But it's much.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Novels are tough. Novels are three and four years because you've got to keep so many plates spinning in the air. You've got all your characters. And also, you don't know what the book is until you finish the first draft of it. That's three or 400 pages. There's no other way to know who these people are and what they do, what they're capable of, what they refuse to try, which would in your mind be the best possible thing for them to do. And they're not going to, you know, and you can't get them to. You've got that for at least a year. And then you end up with an incredibly shitty first draft. And then you feel despair and hopelessness. And you realize what a loser you are. And then you do that for about a week or two weeks. And then you push back your sleeves. And that's when the fun starts.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  And I know your wife would affirm this, is that when you have a first draft, you no longer have that unassaulted ice flow of blank paper. You know, it's more like, then it starts to be like Swiss watchmaking. You push back your sleeves. You're gonna have to take out a quarter of it. You know, there's that great. Jessica Mitford line that you have to kill your little darlings.

• 1:07:04Rainn Wilson?

  Right.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  You have to take out little passages and little moments that you just thought were so terming and funny, or erudite, in my case, made me look more educated than I am. And you just have to take out all the BS. You have to take out the lies. You have to take out the pyrotechnics and the showing off and stuff. And you have a second draft there and you get to work it. You know, it's fluid. It's like you've pulled this big armful of rich, black clay out of the river and you get to work it. You get to play with it. You get to take a lot of it back off the table.

• 1:07:38Rainn Wilson?

  Sure.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Use it somewhere else. That's what I tell myself and I'm throwing something away. But it's, a novel's really, really hard. What we do, what we've been doing is kind of like, how am I doing on any given day? Well, it's a little disappointing, or this, I'm having a kind of a small miracle. I'm okay again and I really wasn't yesterday. That's a good story. What happened?

• 1:08:02Rainn Wilson?

  You could start with that, yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yesterday you slipped on the cosmic banana peel and you landed on your butt and it hurt and people saw. That's what two of the stories and Somehow are about. Now what? It's a good story, but it's a lot easier than fiction.

• 1:08:19Rainn Wilson?

  And your book, Bird by Bird, is, you know, maybe with The Artist's Way, like the most important book on writing in the last 50 years?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Now, Julia Cameron, also, I teach at a writing room and Julia Cameron did a three-week workshop.

• 1:08:36Rainn Wilson?

  So what is this, a writer's room? What is this, a writing room?

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  A writer's room?

• 1:08:39Rainn Wilson?

  Is it a writer's room or a writing room?

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  No, it's called A Writing Room, but it's important.

• 1:08:43Rainn Wilson?

  A writing room?

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  It's not The Writing Room, who are our rivals and who suck. This is Awritingroom.com, lowercase, and it's a collective with teachers. And I did a book club, we can send it to you, where I took people through Bird by Bird 30 years later, you know, it came out 30 years ago.

• 1:09:02Rainn Wilson?

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  And I did, and I did think, something about a month ago called, I think it's called Unblock 101, and it's 90 minutes on everything that might help when you're stuck and when you've turned on yourself.

• 1:09:18Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and when it's all hopeless and doomed and, you know, usually right after your parent has come in to ask you if you've gotten an agent yet, you know, which they will do.

• 1:09:30Rainn Wilson?

  And Julia Cameron also taught there?

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  And she did, I think a three-week workshop, because she has a new book out. I forgot what it's called. It might be called A Writing, The Writer's Way, The Writer's Life.

• 1:09:42Rainn Wilson?

  Okay.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, but she's magic, right?

• 1:09:45Rainn Wilson?

  I really, the only reason I wanted you on this show is so you could connect me with Julia Cameron, so I could get her on.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Oh, you're in. I can do it right now.

• 1:09:53Rainn Wilson?

  Awritingroom.com, and your son is a part of this, and it's a collective, and there's also workshops and just a support structure for people who want to write.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:03Rainn Wilson?

  I love that. I'm in.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they support each other, and there's a prompt every day. Don't let me tell you the best prompt. I can save you some money.

• 1:10:10Rainn Wilson?

  Yes, I love a prompt for free writing.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  A prompt, okay?

• 1:10:14Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Okay. There was a tree. Okay, just get really quiet. There was a tree, Rain.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  So now, tell me about your tree.

• 1:10:24Rainn Wilson?

  That's it. There was a tree.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Right. Where was your tree?

• 1:10:26Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  Did you see it? Was it the tree that your little kid fell out of and broke his wrist? Was it a tree where you first fell in love? Was it a tree where there was shade on one of the worst days of your life, when you had just gotten rejected? But you know what? There was a tree. Tell me about it.

• 1:10:45Rainn Wilson?

  I have two trees that popped up from my childhood. One was, we used to live in Olympia, Washington, back when there were like woods.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Rainn Wilson?

  So, do you remember when there were woods?

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:10:58Rainn Wilson?

  So it wasn't all housing developments and cul-de-sacs? Like, we had a little rental house in the backyard, just went into wood. I don't know who owned the woods, or what they were doing there, but there were just trees and gullies and creeks. And so it was amazing, because I would just run around in the woods.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:15Rainn Wilson?

  And one time, I really had to poop. And I pooped under a tree.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Rainn Wilson?

  And then, I think the next day, I was walking with my dad back there, and he was like, he looked at it and immediately knew it was me, he's like, "Rain? Why did you poop under this tree?" And I, it might have been my first lie, it might have been my very first lie, and I was like,

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:11:38Rainn Wilson?

  "I think a dog did it." And he was like, "That's way too big for a dog. Now, clean that up."

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:11:44Rainn Wilson?

  I was like, "Oh, no." So that's not a very inspiring story.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  What was the other tree that came up?

• 1:11:50Rainn Wilson?

  I had a, there was a plum tree in the back of our yard of our other rental house in suburban Seattle that I used to just climb and sit in a lot. And then it would produce, once or twice a year, I don't know how often plums bloom, like an insane amount of plums, like gobs.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  I know what you mean.

• 1:12:11Rainn Wilson?

  Like just like.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  No, I know. Chaos.

• 1:12:14Rainn Wilson?

  Chaos of plums.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. We have that too. They bloom in the spring typically, and then they turn into plums in the summer. Yeah.

• 1:12:22Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah. And we would just have bowls.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:25Rainn Wilson?

  Of plum, giving plums away. And I would just like gorge on plum.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Plum juices were running down your chest. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:31Rainn Wilson?

  But I had a relationship with that tree.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Rainn Wilson?

  And I'd sit in it and kind of ponder.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Rainn Wilson?

  The universe and my own existential dread, even at a young age.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, the nightmare of it all. But let me tell you another prompt you'll really love. Okay, um, tell me 10 things you've forgotten. You sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, or pencil, best. I see you have a pencil. Graphite, the sound of graphite connects us with antiquity, right? With 100 million thousand writers scribbling down their ideas, their memories, their visions.

• 1:13:03Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Their dreams, their hopes, their, the catastrophe of it all. Tell me 10 things you've forgotten. But you can think about it. You don't have to do it right now. I don't mean to put you on the spot.

• 1:13:13Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 1:13:15Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  But prompts every day.

• 1:13:17Rainn Wilson?

  That's a tricky one.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:13:19Rainn Wilson?

  So my wife is a, is a creative writer, fiction writer.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:21Rainn Wilson?

  And went to the Iowa Writers Workshop.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:13:23Rainn Wilson?

  And has a couple of books and stories out in lots of different magazines. She's finishing up a new book of short stories. And she, right on her shelf, since I've known her, is The Artist's Way and Bird by Bird, just boom, right there, writing down the bones. That's another great one.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  You've read the George Saunders book that came out, and the Rick Rubin, both of them.

• 1:13:45Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, Creative Circle. And the George Saunders, what's his book on writing?

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  It's gonna blow your mind. You're gonna forget you ever knew me.

• 1:13:51Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  I'm not, seriously.

• 1:13:53Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  It's called Something in the Pond in the Rain.

• 1:13:56Rainn Wilson?

  Oh, Swim in the Pond in the Rain.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:58Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah, about the Russian authors.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  It's gonna blow your mind. Because it's about the Russian authors, but he uses it as a way to teach his classes.

• 1:14:05Rainn Wilson?

  Oh.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  And so he teaches you through a Chekhov story, say, the power of an absence.

• 1:14:12Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  You know how the absence might be the most powerful character in the story.

• 1:14:16Rainn Wilson?

  Finally, I wanna end with, um... The, my favorite book of yours that I reference a few times in mine is Help, Thanks, Wow. And I really, it just put on a new pair of glasses for me.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 1:14:30Rainn Wilson?

  You know, and it was, sorry, I'm tearing up a little bit. I tend to do this sometimes. It meant a lot to me. It really showed me the necessity and purity of, of prayer and the asking for help and, and coupling that with both gratitude and awe and wonder. And I'm just wondering what your prayer practice is right now? And has it changed since you wrote that book? Would you, if you were writing version two, that's, that's like a 20 year old book?

• 1:15:13Rainn Wilson?

  Would you, would you add something, Help, Thanks, Wow? Would there be another instruction?

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Well, I love that. My prayer life is I wake up and I say my prayers and I pray to be relieved of the bondage of self and I pray for the people I know who are suffering. I pray for the children of the pariah nations because for them it's like a triple whammy of being hated as a whole nation. And, and then I, you know, all day, every day, I have this completely unsophisticated sense of Jesus, you know, I, it's like Casper the friendly ghost, you know? It's like, and I, and all day I'm just saying, hi. And I'm saying, um, thank you, because you get so many breaks in the course of a day if you notice it. And I say, oh God, thank you. Or I say, what I said to you a while ago, I'm in a hole that's too deep for me to get

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  my way out of. And then I just wait and I get my answer. The phone rings or the text comes, email comes. And then I say, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'll tell you, when I got sober, you know, there are these sort of flowery prayers in recovery and you say them in the morning and they're beautifully written out and you say them at night. And this old timer said, you know, I wake up in the morning and I say, whatever.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  And then he said, you know, I kind of thank God all day, and then I go to bed at night, and I say, oh, well. So I kind of thought the fourth great prayer would be whatever. Like Krishnamurti famously said, when asked what was the source of his peace of mind, he said, I don't mind whatever happened. He said, I don't mind anything. And I thought, God, I mind him saying that or feeling that, because I mind everything.

• 1:16:53Rainn Wilson?

  So his peace of mind, he said, how do you find a peace of mind?

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  He said, I don't mind. I don't mind anything.

• 1:16:58Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  And that's pretty much where Neil lives, is I don't mind anything. It's kind of theater, it's grist for the mill, it's what's going on right then, and my reaction is what's going to cause me to have pain.

• 1:17:11Rainn Wilson?

  You need to turn off MSNBC, because that's making you mind the wrong things, young lady. Do you hear me? Nothing against that particular network, but I think that that, the minute-by-minute kind of monitoring of the cycle of dysfunction.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  It's not helpful.

• 1:17:30Rainn Wilson?

  It's not going to help anyone with anything whatsoever. Anne, thank you so much for coming on The Soul Boom. You've brought extra boom to the soul.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Oh, Rain.

• 1:17:41Rainn Wilson?

  My wish for you, and my gratitude for you, is that you are an incredibly complicated person. And I mean that in the best possible way. And I said that to my wife the other week. I was like, Holly, you're a very, very complicated and interesting. She was like, fuck you. What? I'm like, no, that's my highest compliment.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:05Rainn Wilson?

  Because you get to share your complexity over 20 or 30 books, and interviews, and articles, and we all benefit from your delightful roller coaster of a life. And I've benefited so much. So, thank you, and thank God for baking you in a complicated oven of interesting complexity.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Thank you, Rain.

• 1:18:36Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:18:38Rainn Wilson?

  Like a pretzel.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Like a pretzel.

• 1:18:41Rainn Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:43Rich Roll?

  You're listening to Soul Boom.

• 1:18:57Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis. Thank you,

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Namaste.

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  So long, everybody.