Sebene Selassie & Jeff Warren On: How Friendship Helps Your Meditation; Vulnerability vs Oversharing; And Advice for People Pleasers

An often overlooked secret to improving your meditation practice. Sebene Selassie https://www.sebeneselassie.com/, an author and meditation teacher. She writes the popular newsletter remind me to love https://sebeneselassie.substack.com/about and her first book is called, You Belong https://www.sebeneselassie.com/mybook. Jeff Warren is also an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular Substack newsletter Home Base and is the coauthor, along with me, of a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics https://jeffwarren.org/books/meditation-fidgety-skeptics/. And he is the co-host of the mind/bod adventure pod. Register for Meditation Party at the Omega Institute https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025, Oct 24–26, 2025. In this episode we talk about: The perks of meditating with friends The importance of friendship in chaotic times How to have difficult conversations Authenticity vs wanton oversharing Working with the thorny stuff that can come up in relationships Advice for people pleasers Building meaningful relationships in the age of social media Sign up for Dan's newsletter here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Ten Percent Happier online bookstore https://bit.ly/46TZglY Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? You may have heard me make the point before that friendship is often the missing piece in advancing your meditation practice. This thing was never meant to be done alone. It's much easier in the carpool lane, surrounded by other people who take the practice seriously. That said, while friendships can make life magical, they can also be complex. I sometimes joke that we need other people, but other people can be a Titanic pain in the ass. So today, I'm in conversation with two of my very close friends and meditation buddies, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren, about the perks of meditating with friends, the importance

• 0:59Dan Harris?

  of friendship in chaotic times generally, how to have difficult conversations, authenticity or vulnerability versus wanton oversharing, working with the thorny stuff that can come up in relationships, advice for people pleasers, and how to build meaningful relationships in the age of social media. A little bit more about my guests before we dive in. I suspect many of you know Seb and Jeff, but here we go. Anyway, Sebene Selassie is an author and meditation teacher. She writes the popular Substack newsletter, Ancestors to Elements, and she wrote a book called You Belong. Jeff Warren is also an author and a meditation teacher. He has a Substack called Homebase, and he is the co-author, along with me, of a book

• 1:42Dan Harris?

  called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He's also the co-host of his own podcast called The Mindbod Adventure Pod. Two more things to say before we dive in. First, we recorded this conversation live in front of an audience in New York City as part of a fundraiser for the New York Insight Meditation Center, an organization I highly recommend. And Seb, Jeff, and I are going to be co-hosting another in-person event, a meditation retreat, a weekend-long retreat called Meditation Party. We've been doing this for a couple of years now. Tickets just went on sale for the next one, which is coming up in October at the Omega Institute, which is north of New York City. I will put a link in the show notes. Before we get into all of that, though, I just want to give you a heads up about a

• 2:24Dan Harris?

  big project we're launching right here in June. As you may know, we run an occasional series on the pod called Get Fit Sanely. It's all about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. This is now our third year of producing this series, and this time in June, we're going to go bigger than we've ever gone before. We're spending a whole month on the topic, and we have a great lineup, including a Dharma teacher who's an ultra marathoner, a doctor who specializes in gut health without all the snake oil, and a science journalist who's become an expert on the subject of rest. We're going to cover everything from motivation and habit change to the connection between your muscles and your mental health. And we will have a special kickoff episode coming up at the end of the week, this Friday, May 30. And that will lead us into a full slate of programming

• 3:09Dan Harris?

  during the month of June. And this is the extra cool part. For subscribers at danharris.com, every episode in the month of June will come with a companion guided meditation from the great Carl Lai, a meditation teacher who's a friend of the show and a friend of mine. You can get all the details on that over at danharris.com. All right, we'll get started with Seb and Jeff right after this. We talk a lot on this show about the quiet things that shape the way your home feels. Here's one that is very easy to overlook, the air in your house. If you wake up congested or your place feels dusty, no matter how much you clean, the air itself may be part of the problem. That's where today's sponsor, Air Doctor, comes in. Over 93% of Air Doctor

• 3:54Dan Harris?

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• 4:31Dan Harris?

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• 5:16Dan Harris?

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• 5:57Dan Harris?

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• 6:34Dan Harris?

  Okay, so the theme of this evening is spiritual friendship. What does that even mean?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  So, many of you are probably familiar with this story. Some of you may not be. Of the Buddha and his faithful attendant, Ananda, his cousin, who asked him, "Is it true that spiritual friendship is half of the holy life?" And it's really interesting because the Buddha, when you look at the translation of this text, it has a lot of exclamation points. Because the Buddha says, "No, not so, Ananda, not so. Not so, Ananda, not so." Spiritual friendship is the whole of holy life.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  So it's a really powerful statement and idea. And we're going to explore maybe why the Buddha might have said that, and also what that means for us, like what is spiritual friendship? So we'll start with that emphasis, and maybe explore like what does that mean for us?

• 7:48Dan Harris?

  Why do you think, when you start on the question of the Buddha, why do you think he made that point and so emphatically?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  You know, I think like pointing back to the indigenous wisdom, I think it is all relationship. You know, our whole entire existence is relational. And that's relationship with ourselves, with other humans, but also with other than human. If we go to the heart of that indigenous teaching, which these teachings are as well. And it's how are we relating? You know, how are we in the world? It's not just this solipsistic practice internally. It's really this practice with everything.

• 8:33Dan Harris?

  Sometimes think about how we're kind of stuck in one region of the brain most of our lives, the default mode network, which is the chattering, self-oriented areas of the brain. And that blocks us from relating to aspects of our personality that may be difficult. It stifles aspects of our personality that may be helpful. It blocks us in our relationships with other people and the world at large. And what's needed is a kind of escape from what David Foster Wallace calls the skull-sized kingdom. And spiritual friendship is a root to that.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I know the term narcissism gets thrown around a lot and used too loosely in terms of its real clinical definitions. But it is a pretty good term for our general state of being for many of us, that we sort of think that our world is this, just what relates to us, ourself.

• 9:34Dan Harris?

  So friendship, spiritual friendship in this regard doesn't mean necessarily you have to hang out with more Buddhists. It can be that you're just relating to other humans or other beings or the world at large as a matter of habit, as a matter of practice.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, maybe we can, you know, I know that we're going to explore kind of all the elements of this, but there is the spiritual part of spiritual friendship. So I think that we can, or let me speak for myself. I can be a spiritual friend to any and all. But spiritual friendship, I think, for me with other humans, requires that we are engaged spiritually together as well. Like, I maybe have a spiritual orientation to all my friends, but I don't know if I would call every single one of my friends a spiritual friend. Does that make sense?

• 10:31Dan Harris?

  It does. I kind of bump a little bit on the word spiritual, which I love.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Tell me about that, Dan.

• 10:39Dan Harris?

  I knew it was gonna start backfiring. I didn't know how early to do it.

• 10:45Dan Harris?

  I don't know. What does that even mean? What is spirituality? It's just, it's, uh... I think there are a number of words that get used in our world a lot that irritate me. And this is one of them. In part because maybe sometimes it gets used in ways that I find annoying. And then also there's the lack of specificity around it.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Well, I know for me, like, I don't think that it's about, as you were saying, like, it has to be a Buddhist conversation or a Buddhist relationship in terms of, you know, talking, quoting from scripture about what spiritual friends... I would say one of my dearest spiritual friends is my best friend, Peter, who you've met in Toronto. And he is not a Buddhist. He doesn't meditate regularly, although he's been on retreats. And I find him to be, I know him, to be deeply wise, to really have an orientation to the world that is holistic in terms of not just thinking about the world and not just having an action-oriented relationship to the world,

• 11:53Speaker 01

  but really being deeply invested in friendship and relationship and spirit in the sense of, like, we are more than just this meat suit and having a relationship to the elements and to nature. And so I would consider Peter one of my best spiritual friends. And he's not religious. And he's certainly not a Buddhist, so...

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's what's so interesting about meditating with friends and being explicit about your practice and talking about the experiences that happen in your practice is that... First thing is that it's deeper, in the sense, potentially. I mean, in the sense of more depth, more material from the subconscious is coming up to the consciousness that you're sharing. So more of your whole being is being shared in that relationship. But of course, the direction it leads you to, and I think about so many... The text messages that you and I send each other, Seb, and like the different random memes and things, they're all about, they're all things that are pointing us to something that's outside of us, that's situating us in this bigger picture. And in that sense, like a spiritual friend is someone who's like, "Yeah, yeah, get over yourself."

• 13:03Speaker 02

  "Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna support you, I'm gonna encourage you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hear the things and we're gonna, we can be real and human together, but there's this bigger context here that is kind of explicit in so many of the interactions and the way that you're proceeding." I mean, not just intellectually, ideally, over time, through practice, experientially, like you're living more and more that way. I would say that's a, that's a kind of friendship that I, I appreciate. And I want more of, yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I love that you're pointing to all the ways it manifests. It's, it's an embodied thing. Like spiritual friendship sometimes can just be sort of this idea that we have of, you know, the type of person that we want to be friends with, but it's, it's also messy and lived and it is all the things that we're gonna explore in terms of what, what relationship entails. So, does that give a kind of a, a, a good enough outline of spiritual friendship?

• 14:05Dan Harris?

  I, I would just, I don't know if this is following the prescribed plan, so I'm a little nervous, but I just have this sense, I sometimes joke about how I have this supernatural ability to guess what my audience is thinking, not necessarily these folks, but the audience that are listening on the podcast. And I just could imagine people would have the question, "Well, how do I make friends like that?" We live in a time when meeting other people is incredibly difficult. Loneliness, depression, anxiety is all skyrocketing.

• 14:43Dan Harris?

  I often say, like, we, we know that the most important variable for human flourishing is the quality of our relationship. Relationships and yet everything about modern life militates against that. And so, we're talking about spiritual friendship. It sounds great, I'm sure everybody's bought in. But like, I don't know of anybody who's interested in this stuff. And I barely know anybody at all. So practically...

• 15:06Speaker 02

  But you know yourself, you stand in the mirror and go, "I am a spiritual friend." "I'm a spiritual friend to you, and to you." That doesn't happen, really, does it?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I mean, that gets to our first, kind of, point. That relationships starts with relating to ourselves. So there is a spiritual befriending of ourselves that has to happen. Also because most of our wounds are relational wounds. So, we want to know what our, you know, what our challenges are, what our patterns are. So that we're not entering into relationships with all of that mess. We will be entering with that mess, but at least we'll know what our mess is.

• 15:54Dan Harris?

  Right, so if we just rush out looking for, quote-unquote, "spiritual friends," willy-nilly, without doing any preliminary work or self-inquiry, it's unlikely to be successful.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I've experienced that.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the spiritual friend thing was not even one that we were the one that started. Like, let's talk about spiritual friendship. I don't think I've ever framed it that way. I think about friendship. And I think friendship is about, you know, that's an inquiry. It's an inquiry into like, how are you in relationship with people? How do you, you know, how do you relate to... Are you willing to see someone for who they are? Are you willing to have a kind of unconditional acceptance? Not saying you wouldn't be critical. Do you, are you interested in the character in their faces? Are you making contact with them? Are you noticing what's in the way of yourself doing that? And then, so what makes it spiritual is more like, how you're showing up for yourself and your capacity to show up for them in that way.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  But, I mean, is that that different than, and is there kind of just friendship? I don't know, I mean, that's why I think pointing to the bigger picture. I think it almost is more like a... A special interest. You know, it's like you could be football friends. You're really into football and you're really into good friendship, but you've got this peripheral culture of football that you're really into. Well, part of the spiritual friendship maybe is just that you're interested in this bigger picture. Other people may live a bigger picture, but you're interested in explicitly thinking about it and talking about it and pointing towards it. And it's kind of like a special interest without having to put too, make it too precious or anything.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, I think it starts with ourselves though. Because if, again, if we're showing up, even if it's a special interest with all of our relational wounds unchecked, you know, maybe we'll never fully heal them, but we have to at least be able to know what they are.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Otherwise, you're just a rolling train wreck of a friend.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which I have been, yes. And, you know, there's a lot in there. There's sort of what kind of energies are we showing up to friendship with? You know, these neediness or maybe walled offness.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  That there are all of these aspects to relating to others that we can first start to identify in how we relate to our own challenges.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And which is why I like communities of meditation practice can be so interesting and so promising. Because you're a part of those communities is bringing that, is like being honest about that material when it's coming up. You know, having that, being vulnerable enough to, I mean, in communities that I've been part of, there is often an invitation at the end of a sit to talk about, well, what was that experience like? To kind of try to grope towards some words or some honest representation of what's happening. And often it's things that you don't, you wouldn't normally talk about in regular conversation, but now you're primed, you're open, you've had a certain amount of insight and there's a space that that feels safe to do that. So the bound, the expanse of who you can be gets, is bigger in those spaces.

• 19:00Dan Harris?

  You keep bringing us back to starting with, you know, wrestling with some of our own stuff. When you say that, what do you have in mind for us to do?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  I mean, this is where, obviously, all of this is practice, but this is where the practice is so powerful. Because a lot of times, especially when we first come to practice, we don't even really know ourselves. Like, we're just sort of acting out of habit. And just sitting and being with our own minds and hearts, we start to realize, like, all of these compulsions, all of these thoughts, all of these worries, all of this nattering that's going on. And again, it's mostly relational. Like, most of what's going on in our hearts and minds have to do with our relationships, whether it's our families, our friends, or work dynamics. So, right there, we start to understand, well, what kind of spiritual friend am I? If this is what's showing up.

• 19:55Dan Harris?

  I have this vivid memory of being on my first meditation retreat quite a while ago and hearing somebody, one of the teachers, say something like, "Until you do this practice of meditation, you don't know what your life's about." Because you think your life's about, you know, I don't know, loyalty, professional success, family. But mostly, your life's about what's for lunch. You know? And I fucking hate that person and whatever. You know, it's like, that's most of... You're muttering under your breath all the time. And you don't know it until you do this, then.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And also, a lot of comparison. Like, in terms of spiritual friendship, you know, a lot of us have this idea of what spiritual friendship should look like or what friendship should look like. But we don't even know ourselves to know. Like, I didn't really understand that I'm really introverted until pretty late, I mean, in adulthood, you know?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  That I need a lot of time by myself. I'm very social. I like to be with people. I have a lot of friends. But I need massive amounts of time by myself. That's not how my life was constructed for my twenties or thirties. Like, I had to learn that later. And I probably turned to meditation retreats just because I needed that time and was finding ways to give it to myself. So even those simple things of understanding, whether we're introverted or extroverted or a combination, like, we start to know, okay, what are my needs then? Like, what are my relational needs based on who I am and how I am?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why I'm so, I love the neurodiversity paradigm so much with its emphasis on unmasking. Because it's all about, that paradigm basically says that, look, we're all, we're all, we all have unique brains. We're all neurodiverse in our own ways. But we don't realize it, that we have this sort of, there's a sort of social idea of what normal is that you inherit from your family and your culture and you're trying to always hold to it. And so, when I think about some of my early friendships, so much of it was just about, like, basically, like, robots trying to relate to robots behind these performances. That was like performing being a human. And they were performing being a human. And that's still friendship. It was still dementedly fun in its own way. But it wasn't really, could I say that I really knew who these people were?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  They really knew who I was? I was just kind of performing what idea I thought about how you were supposed to be, as were they. And then through the practice, it's been like, oh, this process of getting more and more real about yourself means that you can then communicate that, means that that can be met in someone else. And now you're talking about, you know, the space of real, you know, authentic connection and, I guess, friendship, you know?

• 22:38Dan Harris?

  Yes, I mean, so much, I think so much of the time in human relationships, it's persona relating to projection.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 22:46Dan Harris?

  And, and what this practice can do is chip away at some of the bullshit. And this is an overused term, but authenticity is what can come out sometimes.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 22:59Dan Harris?

  Yeah. And that is, I think, what you're saying to precondition for what we're using the term spiritual friendship you might call like a real friendship.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Or what comes out is the mask of the spiritual friend. I am a spiritual friend. Wandering around in your flowing robe and like, hair of the Vidal Assassin commercial.

• 23:18Dan Harris?

  I feel so seen.

• 23:22Dan Harris?

  Just being real. Relational wounds, though, is that's another term that's been thrown out. We talked a little bit about relational needs, which can be seen through doing the practice. Oh, I'm actually an introvert. That will help me understand about what I need in a relationship and communicate what my edges are. But relational wounds, is that something you recommend we probe through practice? Or is that more of a therapy thing?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I think both, yeah. That's in my experience, that I kind of need many tools to tend to myself. And let's say, we're not talking about shaming ourselves in any way, that these wounds and these patterns come from our families ancestrally, from society. I always say, start with blaming the system first. The systems stink. And, you know, we don't, we don't need to kind of beat ourselves up for these things, but we do need to take responsibility for, for how they're showing up, because they will spill out into our relationships.

• 24:27Dan Harris?

  I know, Jeff, you had, if I'm understanding you correctly, your thesis is that...

• 24:34Speaker 02

  There's no thesis here, Dan.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  But you can try.

• 24:42Dan Harris?

  That if we, through this practice, we could develop, as you call it, like an unconditional positive regard, which comes out of the therapy world. It's just the state in which a therapist is ideally in when working with a client or a patient. Can we develop some sort of nonjudgmental remove mindfulness toward all of the contents of consciousness, which allows us to see our patterns with some friendliness, and therefore hopefully not be so owned by it? This is a really helpful state from which to relate to other people, because we're less owned by all of our patterns.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to show every part of yourself to every kind of person, because that just wouldn't be practical or intelligent. And there's such a thing as boundaries. But at least you're aware of what you're showing and what you're not. You know what I mean? You're just in a place of more, being more aware, until you have more choice.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then we can be clear about what our needs are and what our boundaries are, what our likes and dislikes are in terms of relating. Because, you know, as you said, there are many people who have a lot of challenges with finding friends and making friends. And so with that self-awareness, then it's easier to be vulnerable and ask someone out for a coffee date and know that we might get a rejection, but that won't wreck us and have us, you know, under the covers for the next two weeks.

• 26:07Dan Harris?

  Very practically, I think, one of the pieces of advice that I've often heard is to volunteer. You can volunteer for a great organization like New York Insight, or, shout out to New York Insight, that was a blatant attempt at crowd-pleasing on my part. Or it could be an animal shelter, a food pantry. That is a great way to meet other people, and the act of volunteering is in itself ennobling.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  And then, we're still going to have to be vulnerable to opening ourselves to other people and taking the risks of getting to know someone and maybe having them not really connect fully and then trying, you know, someone else. And that's as true for platonic friendships and spiritual friendships as dating. And so these are things that, you know, all of us have experienced as adults. But when we're talking about these deeper space of spiritual friendship, the stakes can seem even higher. And so it does take that sort of inner knowing and inner strength to do that, to be vulnerable and brave.

• 27:23Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Seb and Jeff talk about vulnerability slash authenticity versus sloppy oversharing and the upside of what is sometimes called spiritual friendship. Don't love that phrase, but do love the reality of it.

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• 28:42Dan Harris?

  Do you have a view on how you walk the line between vulnerabilities become something of a buzzword and we're all aborted to be more vulnerable, more open, more honest, more real, authentic, et cetera, et cetera? How do you walk the line between that as a goal and wanton oversharing?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we've all talked about this before as teachers and that's something I at first heard from someone you know, Nadia Bolz-Weber, pastor, who talked about when she preaches in the pulpit, she always shares from scars, not wounds.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Or tries to.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Or tries to, right. And so I think that's true of, you know, I do share my wounds with you two and with other close friends, but I don't share my wounds with just anyone, you know? And we probably shouldn't be sort of pissing all over other people.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  I guess you have a, it's like in AA, you know, the term two-steppers. You know, the term two-stepper from the world of Alcoholics Anonymous. So there's 12 steps. You, you know, you go, you're an alcoholic, you visit Alcoholics Anonymous, and you go through a process of learning to face your alcoholism and the various stages of kind of healing from that. And at the end, there's sort of, you feel confident enough to be able to maybe support other people in that journey. The two-stepper is someone who shows up for the first meeting. It's like, totally on board with the whole thing. They're like, now I'm gonna save everybody else. And then runs around trying to heal everyone from their alcoholism without ever having done the work of really working it out themselves. That's like teaching from your wound, not your scar. You're still inside the thing. You don't even know what you've learned about this thing yet.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  You're just getting slammed by life. And now you're gonna try to, what, make a sermon about it? But you don't even know what's happening.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in the realm of what you're talking about, of trying to make friends, there can be that quality of just like oversharing, overextending. And so that, it takes some balance. But, um, yeah, that's, that's part of, I guess, the spiritual maturity in spiritual friendship.

• 30:48Dan Harris?

  I think also you have to be willing to try and screw it up. Um, I've sometimes heard about, uh, there's an analogy people use when talking about right effort in meditation. Right effort is, I'm sure a lot of you Buddhists already know this, but right effort is, for me at least, one of the trickiest parts of meditation. You know, it requires some medita-, uh, some effort, meditation does. But if you push too hard, which many of us type A people do, that can be very, very frustrating. And the analogy I sometimes heard is, it's like walking into a dark, empty room and trying to find the middle. So you gotta bump into the far wall, and you gotta bump into the close wall, and then over time you figure it out. And I think that learning how to be open and real with other people

• 31:30Dan Harris?

  is gonna require some experimentation, which is hard to do.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, in the Zen tradition, they talk about it as rough stones rubbing up against each other and smoothing each other in the process. So you're going to encounter difficulty. It's people. The nature of people is messy at best.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  There's a line, "Community is the art form of diversity," which I really like. A real community, not necessarily the friends you chose, the people who show up in your community, they're not necessarily the people you would have chosen. So there's a whole learning around how to begin to relate to that real human variety that you're seeing. And just one other thing I just want to mention again from the kind of neurodiversity way of thinking about it, you're allowed to choose the kind of friends that work with the kind of style for you. I like the idea of parallel play a lot in autism circles, and sometimes you hear it in ADHD circles as well, where it's too intense, maybe, for certain people to have one-on-one

• 32:33Speaker 02

  eye contact, hangout conversations, instead they can just be in this parallel stream of play. Like, my son likes to play next to someone else playing. He likes to interact a little bit, but it gets a little overwhelming. He wants to be in this stream here. That's fine, that's a way in which friendship can happen. But you have to be clear about what it is, what kind of mode you're comfortable in, and you're allowed to do that, to articulate that.

• 32:58Dan Harris?

  What is the, for you, what's the upside of spiritual friendship? What have you gotten out of it?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. The upside is that you get to consider yourself as part of this giant magical mystery tour called reality, and who knows how the hell we got here, that seems to be teeming with different energies and mysteries, that has certain cultural patterns and biological patterns, but many more patterns inside them. You get to talk about that, you get to express it, you get to play with it. I mean, it's life. And if you're doing it all alone, you're kind of probably going to go crazy. So at least you need friends to kind of keep you, you know, a little bit in the center, as you put it, not on the side of the wall going bang, bang, bang. But yeah, you get to inherit all that. And instead, what happens most of the time is you're in some kind of droid, narrow, cultural context where you're just allowed to be in your cubicle, and you're just going to talk

• 33:50Speaker 02

  to each other about sports and real estate, and it's like, bang, bang. And that's fine, that's your thing, but fuck that. That's it. Yeah. That would be my sales pitch for the spiritual friendship.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  It was also kind of a sales pitch for the Canadian weed.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I think you can get it in New York now.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  I learned so much about myself through friendship and not just the easy parts of actually mostly not through the easy parts of friendship. There's, you know, sometimes in Buddhist circles, I know many of you appreciate this, people use skillful to basically just mean not messy, you know, and they don't really want to go towards the mess. I love the mess.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  You do.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Like, I learned. You do.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  You do. You do. You are a mess. You like mess.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Because that's where the richness is, you know. Dan and I famously had a conflict challenge in our relationship that we've talked about.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Tell us about that. Oh, do you have that?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Let's hear more about that.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Wait, there's a whole podcast section about it in an episode that we did, so you can go back and listen to it. But, you know, you very bravely called me in about something that was, you know, really hard for me to hear and it was hard for you to tell me. And that took bravery. It took a lot of, I think, patience on my part to like listen to it and not just like hang up the phone, you know. It was hard because I realized I'd been a bad friend and...

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I think that's overstating.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  No, I had, yeah. I mean, that's basically you were calling me in about something that I had done that hurt you. And so that, I learned so much that experience and that conversation and we have to be willing to be vulnerable in those ways, to have those hard conversations and to grow from them, right? And that deepened our friendship greatly.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, I've seen that over and over again, if you're willing to talk to people and I'm, I say this to somebody who's constitutionally quite a frosty New Englander and, you know, I prefer to, you know, stew in my signature mix of self pity and resentment.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  And yet, if you can do the hard work of like bringing it up with somebody, that conflict, hopefully it's healthy conflict, can change for the better the nature of the relationship over the long term. That happened with you and me too, actually. Yeah, this was more me.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Dan is the common denominator.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  It's never happens that way, eh?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  You want to tell the story now that you've brought it up? Uh, yeah, well, what was her, uh, what happened again? Uh, well, we were writing the book together, Meditation for Fidjies Khipis, and we had a really fun time going back and forth, you know, across the US or at least one direction across and met lots of interesting people. And then you had to do all the work of turning it into an actual book, and Carly. And I was just given these little miniature assignments of like writing kind of snappy meditations and talking about, you know, a particular area of practice. But instead, I would submit these 80-page-long inquisitions, disquisitions on the nature of reality and consciousness. And Dan would just send these helpless comments and getting increasingly aggrieved and upset. And I thought I was, we were having a fabulous time.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  And then meanwhile, the clock was ticking and the book had to be in in like one month. And I was like writing page 120 of my bullet points of how, you know, anyway. And then, and Dan finally exploded in patience. And didn't realize it was my ADHD kind of going. I didn't, I mean, I was doing the best I could. I had my own way of doing it. And there were some good little bits there, but, uh, anyway, I think it was actually Bianca who said, "Dan, you should make this part of the story, uh, because this is the truth of what's happening." And as soon as that, as you had that insight, you stopped being so crusty. And I stopped, and I stopped being so, um, you know,

• 38:11Speaker 02

  feeling guilty or whatever. Not that I was really not guilty, but... And then things got better and it became part of the book. And I've been happier ever after. Now I can't stop getting this stream of heart emojis from Dan. It's like every day I wake up and like, "Heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji."

• 38:27Speaker 02

  He's never sent a heart emoji, people.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  I don't think he sends heart emojis to Bianca.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Well, I'm curious, because I remember that part in the book and I was really impressed that you guys kind of made that public and explained the process. But I think when you approached me, you had already started doing your work with your communications coaches. And I have, I've started reading that book because I've been so impressed because I-

• 38:53Dan Harris?

  Let's Talk.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, the book is called Let's Talk by-

• 38:57Dan Harris?

  Dan Clerman and Mudita Nisker.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And it's fabulous. And I've seen you use that method over and over again on us. And, you know, I think your way of dealing with conflict has changed so much. Or just communication in general has changed so much since you started working with them. And that seems like integral to relationship. Good communication, of course. But could you say a little bit about the methodology?

• 39:28Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I would say Jeff kind of let me off easy. I would, I look back at that chapter in our friendship and in my, you know, behavioral repertoire with a certain amount of, well, if I want to be Buddhist, I'll say wise remorse, but it's more like shame. Where I just have a, you know, it's in my characterological makeup to be a frosty New Englander, crusty New Englander. I can be irritable. And also, not incidentally, I had several decades as a network news anchor and we aren't necessarily trained to have small egos. You don't get into that line of work because you don't like attention or to meet the boss

• 40:10Dan Harris?

  or to have other people shut up and listen to you. So that all was in my marrow and I think in some really unhelpful ways. And actually, you know, that experience where I, of writing a book under intense pressure and Jeff, again, you were too hard on yourself. Yeah, you have, you get excited and have all these ideas and I was just under too intense a deadline and also just didn't have the skills to communicate clearly and was irritable and I think really- Unproductive ways. And then I met Dan Klerman and Mudita Nisker, who are two longtime Dharma practitioners,

• 40:52Dan Harris?

  who have this very simple protocol for communicating with other humans. And I think it's so interesting that we know that we are, and I say this all the time, I just find it so interesting that we are this intensely social species. We didn't get to the top of the food chain because we have wings or fangs or size. We got there because of our capacity to cooperate, communicate, and collaborate. And yet, we're almost never taught how to actually do that. We just walk out into the world being taught by our parents and the culture, how to communicate and how to interact with other people.

• 41:36Dan Harris?

  And usually, the lessons that have been imparted to us are unskillful, to use a Buddhist phrase that is often deployed somewhat abusively.

• 41:49Dan Harris?

  And to meet these brilliant Dharma practitioners who break down how to communicate very, very simply. I'll just give you a few examples of their little rules that you can take out into the world and use. One of them is chunking instead of flooding. Most of the time, when you talk to people, I don't know if this is true for you specifically, but for many of us, when we communicate, we just flood people with paragraphs. And on the other side, they're just waiting for you to shut up so they can say the thing they want to say. So the fact that we can ever get words out of this skull-sized kingdom, out of this cranium, into, across this unimaginable chasm,

• 42:34Dan Harris?

  into the brain of the world, the cosmos of somebody else, is a fucking miracle, right? And yet, most of the time, we're doing this maladroitly, ineptly. We're flooding them with information too much for them to remember. We're framing it in a way that fires off the stress centers of their brain instead of engaging the rational part of the brain, and it goes haywire. I mean, we can just see it on a macro level and the way this culture is interacting with its different constituent parts. And we see it in our relationships all over the world. And to have skills to say, okay, I know when I go into this conversation, instead of flooding you with information, I'm gonna chunk it. I'm only gonna give you a couple sentences at a time.

• 43:19Dan Harris?

  And then make sure at the end, "Does that make sense? Are you with me?" Just that little... It's not rocket science, but very few people do it. Another example is something I talk about all the time, which is reflective listening. You heard me use it as interpersonal manipulation with these guys throughout this conversation. They say a thing, and then I say, "Oh, if I heard you correctly," or "Here's what I heard," or you're gonna have to use that kind of little bit technique-y language at the top. You can just say, "Oh, so you're saying X." But briefly, and in my own language, reflecting back to them what it is they've tried to communicate to me. And I kind of tongue-in-cheek all of this manipulation.

• 44:01Dan Harris?

  But it is manipulation, but of the most benevolent kind. Because what do we want? What does everybody want, whether they're aware of it or not? We wanna be seen and heard. That is the fundamental human desire. And you can give that to people all day long. I play a little game where I try to see how many times I can get people to say this word in conversation. Exactly. It's an awesome game. And it will change the complexion of your entire day if you bring this into it. And so I probably needed these tools more than most people, but I recommend them to everybody. And it can be part of your spiritual friendships or regular friendships or your parenting. I use it a lot as a boss.

• 44:46Dan Harris?

  It's massively, massively helpful.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  It's vital to conflict.

• 44:52Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  For sure. But I've seen you evolve to use it all the time.

• 44:57Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Like...

• 44:58Dan Harris?

  One of the things Mudita says is that... And she's trained as a therapist. That you can do all of this work in meditation and therapy to change who you are. And that's great. But you can also start at the tip of the spear, which is how you communicate. And as you change that, it reverse-engineers the whole thing. And so you could say I evolved, but I don't feel... Like, in some ways, it doesn't even feel like that deep a work. I just learned... How to be like 75% less schmucky in my utterances. And that had a huge kind of reverse engineering effect.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, okay, yes, and I think that there's also this capacity for, you know, the classical teachings on mindfulness have this refrain over and over again that we're aware in all these ways, you know, of our bodies, of our thoughts, of our emotions, of our reactions to things, but we're aware internally, we're aware externally, we're aware both internally and externally, but we mostly focus on the internally in our meditation practice. But what I see you done is actually pay a lot of attention to the externally and both internally and externally. And that's really what's happening with that kind of listening practice is really about

• 46:16Speaker 01

  attunement, you know, and so much of relationship is about attuning to others, you know.

• 46:22Dan Harris?

  I think the point I was trying to make is that you can talk about, you know, changing your heart, changing, you know, having a, finding yourself, having a fun, all these spiritual cliches. Or you can just learn some very simple practices, do that, and it has this profound effect. Because if you had talked to me about attunement a while ago, I probably, I wouldn't have known what that meant. But if you just teach me how to do reflective listening, which is basically interpersonal journalism, right? Somebody says something, I repeat back the headline. It doesn't, it doesn't require some massive amount of internal work on my part. That happens as a consequence.

• 47:05Dan Harris?

  The attunement comes, but if you just give somebody a simple tool, you're almost gamifying it.

• 47:13Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Seb, Jeff and I talk about the importance of friendship in insane times. And then we take some questions from the audience on tough topics such as what to do if you're a people pleaser, how to have difficult conversations, and how to build meaningful relationships in a digital age.

• 47:31Dan Harris?

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• 48:16Dan Harris?

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• 49:01Dan Harris?

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• 49:43Dan Harris?

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• 50:15Dan Harris?

  I was talking before about the kind of dysfunction in our larger culture. And I'm just wondering to you guys, what's the role of friendship for surviving insane times?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Everything. You need to surround yourself with your, you need your culture. You know, it's, I mean, I mean that in the best possible way. You need your people. You need where you can, you want to be able to move outside it to hear different views, absolutely, but you need to be able to feel safe. And friendship is fundamentally about safety too. I mean, real friendship. So I think you're going to need your, your group, you know, you just, it'll make you feel a lot less alone and, and also that generates energy for wanting to do something and to make change and, because you can't do it alone.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that the role of spiritual friendship is really important here because I'm going to forget his name, but Lama Darwin, I forget his last name. I heard him say once, you know, it's not about taking sides, it's about taking a stand. That there's, there are no sides, it's all one planet. And we're talking about real safety and connection and organizing that's going to have to be done. And to be able to do that with people who can hold the paradox and the complexity of... The awareness of our interbeing and our interconnection at the same time that we're going to have to draw really strong boundaries and have protective practices, that's a hard paradox to hold.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And a lot of people, including in activist communities, are not grappling with paradox. Right? So our spiritual spaces, our sacred activist spaces, are the places where we can do that work and be our true selves and be really authentic with understanding the magnitude of this without having to go into this diluted, separative consciousness space.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, can you work for justice without there being any enemies?

• 52:27Dan Harris?

  What I heard you say.

• 52:31Dan Harris?

  There's a little phrase that I love that I probably use too often, but I really love it. And I would just end this part of the conversation with this is never worry alone. And I think it's never been more relevant than right now, perhaps, in our lives. So don't do this tumultuous time as a solo endeavor. Make it a team sport.

• 52:56Dan Harris?

  Let's do some Q and A. I would love to hear from, we would love to hear from all of you guys. Raise your hand if you, ah, here we go. I'll get you.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Hi, thank you. My name is Leanne, and my question is, what advice would you have for people pleasers as they build spiritual friendships?

• 53:14Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 53:17Dan Harris?

  I think the people annoyer probably should not answer that question.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's so much we didn't get to. And, you know, I really, there's so much about intention that we didn't really touch on. And I've had to really look at intention and where my attention goes around people pleasing. Because it's often about me trying to fill some hole in myself. You know, that there's some way in which I'm trying, there's a grasping quality to it that's really not generous.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It may look like generosity, but it's not, you know, it's not attuned, right? It's not, it's not really in relation to what that person might need and what I might need in that moment. So there, there's so much we could have said about a real practice of knowing ourselves, knowing where our intentions are coming from, you know, what we may be missing, um, that we could give to ourselves first. Um, but there's, there's so much about fawning as a trauma response and that we could talk about, but it's, it's such a great question and a really important area of attention for many of us.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Can I make a comment on it too? Cause it's, it's funny. I remember, um, uh, in the early days of this friendship, uh, that I have now, the really good friend of mine, he, uh, we had dinner together and he said, he said normally, he, he just sort of made a comment that often people, he would get people's bills and he would, he would always pick up the bill and do this thing. And I realized, oh, he has this pleasing thing. And I remember, and he was, he felt comfortable enough to kind of talk about that with me. And so I said to him, I remember saying, you will never pick up my bill. I mean, and what I meant in that time was that I can see that you got this thing going on and like, I don't really want to be part of that. I like you just how you are. And it was cool to be like, talk about it right, early on in the friendship.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  This is like 15 years ago or something and we've been, we were even closer than, we've gotten to be really close and that paradigm never really, or that kind of habit never really got any traction between the two of us. Yeah. That's what I think is interesting about, you know, making your, your neuroses here, make it public, you know, like, I mean, in a safe way with your, the people that you, you feel comfortable with, but like, hey, this is the way I am. I'm wired in this weird way. You can help support me in this too.

• 55:50Dan Harris?

  Who else has got a question? I see somebody right back there.

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Hello, my name is Tamsin. One of the things that occurs to me as you were talking was this interplay between the internal work and then getting out and playing, the external manifestation of the internal work in your relationships. A few years ago, I was going through a really hard time. And I realized that the three groups of people who I had the best relationships with were Buddhists in communities, were my friends in ethical, non-monogamy relationships, and my friends who are in recovery. And I was thinking about this theme of the internal and then the external. And I like to look for patterns. And I was wondering if there was anything else that I was missing in terms of that

• 56:37Speaker 05

  the constant looking in, the looking out, the checking in, the consent, and then the back in and the back, and the interplay. That's what the... I could keep going, but I'm gonna stop.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  The other thing that comes to mind, Tamsin, from that, those groupings, is some relationship to ethics and ethical guidelines. Like, all of those communities work with that. And that's so important in kind of the way we're relating, you know, what is wise speech? What is wise action? What are real boundaries? And they seem to all address that.

• 57:15Dan Harris?

  We have a question right there. Yes, and we got a microphone right behind you.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  I'm Heather. My question is, for each of you, one or two or three guidelines or agreements you would advise to have a difficult conversation, but not the difficult conversation that the two of you had, more of out in the political realm around belief systems. What do you think are important guidelines to engage into those?

• 57:47Dan Harris?

  A couple of rules of thumb for talking about politics. One, never try to change anybody's mind. If somebody gets a sense that you're trying to convince them that they're stupid, it's unlikely to go well. That fires off the stress centers of the brain and fails to engage the prefrontal cortex, which is the reasonable part of the brain, and we want to stay here and not here. And so going at somebody in that way is unlikely to be successful. A second thing is to describe your own beliefs instead of characterizing theirs. You don't give a shit about anybody. You don't care if the planet burns, et cetera.

• 58:28Dan Harris?

  Again, unlikely to engage this part of the brain, which is where we want to stay. And then I would say that reflective listening is incredibly helpful in this regard, that you can actually give the other person what they want, which is to be heard, and then you're relaxing their nervous system enough so that you can be heard. And so a really useful goal, because I've been talking in the negative, a really useful goal, and I got this from this group, the Braver Angels. They bring together reds and blues across the country and have these remarkably successful dialogues. Their goal is accurate disagreement, and I really like that.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  It is also the principle of strong manning someone's position versus straw man.

• 59:10Dan Harris?

  Steel mailing.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Steel manning, yeah.

• 59:13Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's like, can you, in some ways, put yourself in the position of advocating for them? And reflective listening, actually, the ninja level of that is you're not only reflecting what they've said to you, but you're reflecting their implicit positive intention. This is a Dan Klerman, Uditan Nisker bit of lingo. There, what is it that they're not saying that is really what they want? And it's helpful to use words like maybe or perhaps. You're saying X. You put yourself in the position of advocating for them. It's delicate in a political disagreement, because you don't want to be advocating for things that you find horrendous.

• 59:52Dan Harris?

  But if you probe people's views, often their positive intention, like what they want, not in the negative, or I hate this person, I hate that person, I want this to go away, is they want safety, or they want belonging, or whatever. So you can suss people out in those ways that I think brings it to a much more constructive level. And... You are, if you're anything like me, likely to screw this up once in a while. And so I would recommend self-compassion on top of that. I'm like, alright, give yourself a break.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Hi, Lisa. This has been great. Sort of a question or a comment. So, I have a spiritual friend that I do sound bath meditation. And he was one, he didn't train me, but I've been knowing him for five years. And he just lost his job. And I was trained a year ago. And he came to my apartment recently, Saturday, and said, "Can I have your training manual?" Because he just got let go of his job. And I said, "Absolutely not. It's copyrighted and I paid money for it and it's not. It's against my ethics." And then he said to me, "It's for the better or good of everybody for you to give this to me." I'm like, "Huh?" It's like spiritual manipulation? I don't know, whatever it is. And then, because I'm a people pleaser, I'm like, "You want to come and do a sound bath?" Because I'd use different bowls than his.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  He uses Tibetan and I use crystal tones. So I just kind of, I'm really obviously upset about this. And I, you know, I've had conflicts where I've negotiated and it's been better for the friendships. But I really don't know if this is something that, I'm not, he's not coming over. I'm taking that back. But, I don't know, just a comment.

• 1:01:29Dan Harris?

  I'll say something about it, I'm kind of interested in hearing from Seb on this. But not all relationships need to be continued.

• 1:01:37Dan Harris?

  There is, yeah, continue. You don't, you can, you don't have to stay in contact with people who you don't feel, I don't know if I love this word, but "safe" around. I think that word has been sometimes misused. But I think, nowhere is it written that you have to go to Thanksgiving dinner if you're going to be re-traumatized. Nowhere is it written that you have to stay in a relationship with somebody where you don't feel comfortable. I think it's great to the best of your ability and using your judgment to maintain relationships if you can. But, you know, boundaries are a thing too.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've had to, for the sake of my health, have very clear boundaries. And with family members, with certain friends. And had to end a spiritual friendship quite recently, actually. And, yeah, that, that...

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  That idea that everything is workable or every friendship has to be saved. It's just, it's not, it's not fair to us. It's not fair to ourselves.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's definitely sad. Sir, I got you.

• 1:02:46Speaker 06

  Hello, I'm Tho Ratt. Any commentary on modern friendships? So what I mean is about social media and everyone sort of having a bit of an inauthentic connection with people, you know, friends on social media, I mean, whilst meeting here in real life is obviously very nice, but any commentary on that specifically because we're in a unique situation, I think.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  I'm not on social media. I'm not on social media, so, but I'm on Substack now. And that's kind of like a social media thing and I'm, I've been enjoying kind of getting to know the community there and I do a YouTube and like over the years I've got to know all the people who leave comments and I also do Zoom, various Zoom things and I like Zoom realities because you can kind of turn off the camera if you want, you can go over here. I mean, I think it gives you a lot of leeway for lots of different kinds of nervous systems to begin to find their way into communities and connections. So, I mean, those are some examples of ways I think that's, it's positive, but I don't have enough insight maybe to speak specifically to the ways. Do you want to say something about the way, the messed up parts of social media of which?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm no longer on social media, so, I mean, I'm present there, but I'm not, yeah, really, like, get off.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  But I've actually made friends there. I have some friends in my life now who are, I've collaborated with and gotten to know who I met through Instagram, you know, so there are possibilities there. I think that we often mistake parasocial relationships and social media relationships for real relationships. Those relationships flourished because we ended up meeting in real life.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  And then deepening the friendship. So there, there's a true relationship there. And I will say, you know, it's not only about in real life. I mean, my three best friends have not lived in New York City in over 20 years and I'm still closer to them than I am to anyone else in my life. And so it's not, it's not necessarily distance or, or the fact of not being in real life, it's the quality of those relationships and, and how are we really sharing? You know, I speak to those people almost every week and they know what's going on in my life and we visit each other regularly and, and so what, what are we looking for in social media that?

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  That quality of friendship and how can we advance that if that's where we met someone or if that's where we've gotten to know someone, but not mistaking a social media relationship for a real relationship. There's no way.

• 1:05:17Dan Harris?

  I totally agree with everything you guys said. And how old are you? What's your name again?

• 1:05:21Speaker 06

  Fuat. It's hard to say.

• 1:05:22Dan Harris?

  Fuat?

• 1:05:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Dan Harris?

  And what's your, uh, sorry, that was your name. What is your age?

• 1:05:27Speaker 06

  I'm 33.

• 1:05:27Dan Harris?

  Okay, so he's young and he's grown up.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  What are you saying, Dan?

• 1:05:31Dan Harris?

  I'm saying we are old and He's telling us. We grew up in an era where we had no choice but to like, I remember calling my friends on a landline saying, can you play? And we, there was no, there was nothing else to do. Fuat.

• 1:05:46Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:05:47Dan Harris?

  Has lived in this digital morass his whole life and through no fault of his own because of the world we created for his generation and my son's generation and your children's generation, there has been this massive degradation of social fitness and social hygiene. And so I understand, or at least what I think your intention underneath the question was, like, your world and the people, your peers are, have been handicapped, not, not, not to mention that they lived at a very young age through

• 1:06:26Dan Harris?

  a global pandemic. And I think there's just a lot of distress and a lot of, a lot of the things that we take for granted because we were socialized in a pre-digital era is not, that, those aren't realities for younger people right now. And so, yeah, I do think it's possible to have a healthy relationship with social media, but it is difficult, especially when it's been your reality for most of your sentence. And, you know, when you look at your phone, it is you facing off against the most powerful supercomputers on earth designed by the most brilliant minds on earth, and you are unlikely to win. And so having

• 1:07:06Dan Harris?

  some set of tools that you can use to operate with this technology with some degree of sanity is really important. Not everybody can log off, you know, it would, at your age, it would probably cut you off from the larger culture and the, and people you know in ways that might be really difficult. I don't, I don't know all of your circumstances. So I think it's like little hacks, you know. Put your phone away two hours before bed if you can. Try to get into the habit of not bringing your phone to meals with other members of homeless apiens. Try, try, try to meditate with some regularity so that you have self-awareness enough that

• 1:07:49Dan Harris?

  you recognize, "Oh, I'm on hour eight of Twitter and I'm typing in all caps." It's a, you're in a difficult situation, I just want to validate that, and I think there are little tools you can bring in to turn the volume down on some of that distress, and also just to make it a real point to create IRL relationships.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  So, what I'm hearing you say is that we can have a better relationship to social media, and, what?

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Were you asking about that and also relationships in social media?

• 1:08:27Speaker 06

  I didn't know it was gonna go this long.

• 1:08:33Dan Harris?

  He's questioning not only his question, but whether he should have come here tonight. And he's realizing that sometimes interacting with live human beings is not all it's cracked up to be.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Especially old ones.

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  Hello. Yeah, so, I'm glad we're having this conversation, because I do think you made a very good point about younger. I still remember pre-social media, it was 2005, I remember when Facebook came in, but definitely people slightly younger than me, definitely, it's even harder for them. But I will say that it is a different world, and I think there is a big generational gap, and I think that we have to find other tools, maybe sessions like this. Literally why I'm here is one of the reasons I decided not to be online and be here instead. But I will note to other people that it is even awkward for younger people to meet in real life, because they're literally not used to it.

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  And the alternative to be at home and not go outside physically, plus things are very expensive, so it makes it very hard, and I'm just acknowledging that for this group, it is a different world. Sorry, I'll stop.

• 1:09:43Dan Harris?

  No, you're totally right.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:09:45Dan Harris?

  To know, to, one of the, I think there are two... Wellspring, noxious wellsprings of this current anxiety epidemic. There are probably many, but the two that I think are most prominent. One is the lack of social connection for a social species. When you take that away from people through a pandemic or through addiction to technology, we are going to get anxious because our source of safety has always been other people. And we've taken that away in many meaningful ways. And then you add on top of that a growing intolerance and allergy to discomfort. So we've created, again, this is people our age and older creating this world for you.

• 1:10:30Dan Harris?

  So I'm not blaming you at all.

• 1:10:33Dan Harris?

  We've created a world for you where you want a date, you want a meal, you want a flight, you want a ride. It's all a swipe away. And as a consequence, people are just, can't handle discomfort. And so you combine these two things and it's really, I mean, we have a massive mental health epidemic in this country and in this world. So the only thing I would say to you is that actually I think you are well positioned, given your age and your interests, to do something about this. You should be organizing a fest.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  Meet the new head of New York Insight Meditation. We nominate you, no person. Hey, I say one quick thing about that too. That's like, you're like, oh, why did I have a...

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  We're made of other people and other people expand who we are as people. I have two young children at home, two and a half and five. And sometimes I feel like I'm in the narrowest little larval cycle of this like, I'm like poop eat, poop eat sleep, poop eat sleep, poop eat sleep. And my nose is down here and it's like I'm like I'm underground burrowing. And it's like, this is my whole world, you know? And once a month, I will, at first, I would, not even that, I would get out and I would see people. I would see my friend, I'd be, oh my God! I would remember who I was, I had a life. I would grow who appendages. You know, it's other people that show you that. That's why travel also is so liberating. You gotta get out of your larval pattern

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  of just being in the house and just being in the social media cycle. So, yeah, not that I have most of the passion.

• 1:12:11Dan Harris?

  We actually have a couple of questions from Zoom. Just get them in and then we'll do Zoom. Cool, Parv. So you had brought up a key point about your meditation habit, right? And I think that's a key point. So like, what do you guys do to ensure that you guys are doing a daily habit? Because you're not meditating daily, it doesn't compound, I feel that. Unless you go in there every day and sit down and actually do the practice daily, there's this loss. And you kind of go back to your original, you know, monster self. So what's your strategy?

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  Well, actually, I don't think you need to meditate every day in order for it to compound. I think you need to be interested in practicing every day. Whether that's on the cushion, whether that's in movement, whether that's in relationship. The way I do that is through, I have a kind of skills framework, you know? Or am I being a quantumist, you know? Am I going to go like this towards making this really intense point with you? Or am I just going to back up? Let the energy be there in a more measured way? Because I have more space around the impulses and the movements. Do I have more clarity? Can I practice clarity about what I want to say and take that pause? When I choose my focus, can I stay with that focus? Whatever it is, is it my work or my creativity? You know, those are ways to take the meditation practice. Those are the things.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  A seated meditation builds in you a capacity for that. But you could be practicing that in so many other kinds of contexts. I will say, though, a seated, simple practice of illness is pretty great medicine. Because it's the place where you won't fool. You're at least likely to fool yourself. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  I think in terms of strategy, you know, coming back again to knowing yourself, it's really helpful to know what helps you. Because some people are really disciplined. And, you know, if they decide they're going to do something, they do it. Those people are called annoying.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Poor Dan.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  And a lot of us need accountability. We need structures. We need meditation partners or take classes or workshops or find ways to build up those habits for ourselves. It's really knowing how you build habits can be really helpful.

• 1:14:25Dan Harris?

  Well, I know we're close to time, but let's please, if you'll indulge me, I just want to take a question or two from Zoom.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Thanks so much. This is Tashi. We have a question from the chat that I want to lead off with. She asked me to read it out. What if your main relationship is with someone who is not into meditation nor having these deeper conversations? Any advice?

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Thank God.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  I kind of have made that. I mean, you want to have diversity in your friendships as well. I think if I were only around people who like meditation, I would probably go completely insane. So I'm lucky enough in my life that I have friends that have known nothing about it and have very little interest in it, yet they're still self-aware in their own right. I mean, the issue in a relationship is are they interested in learning about themselves? Are they open to feedback? Are they willing to go into mystery with you? Are they, you know, is there a sense in which there could be growth together? Those seem to be the questions in a relationship. Whether or not that involves a spiritual practice or not is, I don't know, there's lots of ways to develop in that way.

• 1:15:36Dan Harris?

  There's some data to show that a happy marriage actually depends upon having platonic friendships that supplement it. If you're looking to one person for everything, it's a pretty good recipe for disappointment.

• 1:15:52Dan Harris?

  We'll bring in some Zoom questioners.

• 1:15:55Dan Harris?

  Hi.

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  Hello. So great to see all of you. I had a quick question about just the chemistry between the three of you. It's just magic. And I've noticed this both when I'm listening to just your voices and when I see you on stage. Why do you think that is? And what is it that makes the three of you such great spiritual friends?

• 1:16:17Dan Harris?

  Well, Jeff and I do what we're told. I think that's a really...

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  I really don't know. No, I know, I know I'm the boss, but. There, there is some kind of magic. I mean, Dan and I were friends, and then Jeff and Dan were, became friends around the same time separately, and Jeff and I have only known each other for about three or four years, maybe. Yeah. But we didn't meet in person until about two years ago. And then when the three of us decided to do something together, it just clicked. And, you know, I think that there is a, like, irreverence that is obviously seen and felt here by all of you, that, you know, we, this was called spiritual friendship.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Our title is like reckless conviviality, or something like that. So, maybe that's part of it. What do you guys think?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  I agree, Jeff. I, I mean, I just like these, these guys. I like hanging out with them. They make, they both make me laugh. And I learn from both of them. You know, it's that sweet spot of being able to be kind of irreverent and ridiculous together, but also really respecting them and who, who they are and what they've gone through. I learn a lot from, from both of you, and I love you both.

• 1:17:43Dan Harris?

  Love you, buddy. I want to put a pirate shirt on.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Heart emoji.

• 1:17:47Dan Harris?

  Let my hair billow in the wind. Well, there's an expression, we choose our friends by our ability to amuse them.

• 1:17:57Dan Harris?

  Everybody should support New York Insight Meditation Center as much as possible and be as generous as possible. They're amazing.

• 1:18:10Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Seven Jeff. Don't forget, the three of us will be co-hosting a weekend-long, in-person retreat called Meditation Party. Tickets just went on sale for the next one, which is coming up in October at the Omega Institute. You can buy tickets at the same link, which I will put in the show notes. It's always a good time. Don't forget, coming up in June, we've got this huge Get Fit Sanely series we're launching. And if you're a subscriber over at DanHarris.com, you will get guided meditations tailored to each of the episodes. You can get much more information on that over at DanHarris.com.

• 1:18:50Dan Harris?

  Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kajmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

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