The Funniest Conversation You'll Ever Hear About Achieving Inner Peace | Pete Holmes

The comedian on: connecting instead of separating, feeling whole, and the upside of being an affirmation addict. Pete Holmes https://peteholmes.com/ is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. He created and starred in HBO's Crashing https://www.hbo.com/crashing and hosted The Pete Holmes Show on TBS. He has released stand-up specials on HBO, Netflix, and Comedy Central, hosts the popular You Made It Weird https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/you-made-it-weird-with-pete-holmes/id475878118 podcast, and is the author of Comedy Sex God https://bookshop.org/p/books/comedy-sex-god-pete-holmes/cfc6a92fd45cf1a0. This episode is a live conversation recorded in NYC as part of a benefit for the amazing organization New York Insight Meditation Center https://www.nyimc.org/. In this episode we talk about: How Pete Holmes's evangelical upbringing shaped his early ideas about fear, morality, and God Psychedelics, awareness, identity and consciousness Mysticism and metaphor versus literal belief Meditation and different paths of practice What meditation reveals about awareness, forgetting, and remembering Being an affirmation addict Service and helping others Happiness versus peace of mind Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD 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.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. I have to be diplomatic with what I'm about to say, because I love all of our episodes, but some episodes are extra special, and this is one of them. This is genuinely one of my favorite interviews that I've done in a long time. I came into this conversation with high expectations, and those expectations were exceeded. Let me say what I mean by that. I knew that my guest, the comedian Pete Holmes, would be hilarious. What I did not expect was how wise and useful he would also be. Some of you probably know Pete Holmes as the creator and star of Crashing on HBO or The Pete Holmes Show on TBS. You may also know him from his many, many stand-up specials on HBO,

• 1:01Dan Harris?

  Netflix, Comedy Central, et cetera, et cetera. Or you may be aware that he's the host of a big podcast called You Made It Weird, or that he wrote a book called Comedy Sex God. Long way of saying this is a dude who's done a lot in the world, and that's why we wanted to have him on. In this conversation, we talk about how his upbringing in an evangelical household shaped his early ideas about fear, morality, and God. Then we move on to psychedelics, awareness, identity, and consciousness. We talk about mysticism, and we also talk about his meditation practice and the various forms of meditation he's done. We talk about the fact that he's an affirmation addict, the role of service and helping other people,

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  the difference between happiness and peace of mind, and much more. Real quick, two things to say before we dive in. First, this is a live conversation that we did in New York City as part of a benefit for an amazing organization that you should check out. It's called the New York Insight Meditation Center. You can get more information on them by going to NYIMC.org. Second, if you want to meditate with me, please check out my app, 10% with Dan Harris. We've got meditations from many of the world's greatest teachers. We also do these weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions on video, because there's all this evidence that shows it's much easier to form and maintain habits when you've got what the psychologists call "social support."

• 2:26Dan Harris?

  So join the party. You can sign up at danharris.com. I'd love to see you over there. Okay, buckle up. We'll get started with Pete Holmes right after this.

• 2:38Dan Harris?

  If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team

• 3:21Dan Harris?

  and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share

• 4:03Dan Harris?

  your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

• 4:33Dan Harris?

  Hello, how we doing?

• 4:37Dan Harris?

  That was not meant as a call and response. You should not talk for the rest of the evening. I just want to be clear about that. But say hello to Pete Holmes, everybody.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Is this on? Yeah, okay. Nice to see you. We haven't seen the space, so we're just taking it in. It feels weird.

• 4:56Dan Harris?

  I was telling you backstage that every time I do an event here with Joseph Goldstein, we call it "Two Jews in a Church", and this is not going to be that at all.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm not Jewish, but I know what you mean.

• 5:08Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I wouldn't do my act in here.

• 5:12Dan Harris?

  For fear of lightning bolts?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. It's just a little too... Diarrhea, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't feel...

• 5:21Speaker 01

  See?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Feel that? You can't scroll past it. We're in the room. We're all locked in.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  I am very happy to be here.

• 5:32Dan Harris?

  I'm very happy you're here. Now, you're gonna see how the sausage is made on my podcast, because I always have a nerdy list of questions. And Pete, I want to tell you what I always tell my guests. Occasionally, you'll see me looking down, but I'm not checking my phone. I'm just looking at my questions.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  I'm honored.

• 5:50Dan Harris?

  Do you do that with your podcast guests? Do you have a list of questions?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  No, and you can tell.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  It's a different flavor. It's more of a hose, you know, on the ground that somebody turned up real high. And if I find somebody that is also that way, although I'd love to have you on, I think we would find that energy. But it's more of an experiment of like... It's more jazz, I guess. I feel like this is gonna be...

• 6:16Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's more math.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 6:18Dan Harris?

  It's more math class.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Math?

• 6:19Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sort of have math face.

• 6:22Dan Harris?

  Yeah. I was not good at math, just to be clear. Not... still not good at math. I have math face.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  They weren't sure if they could laugh at that. This is your show, and I said you have math face. And you guys are... You've never been this exact assemblage of an audience before, but you nailed... We should play it back. The laugh that you gave that, which was like, "We want to support Pete, but we love Dan. I don't know." And you were like, hypervigilant. You were like, "How does he feel? Is he laughing?" Some of you started to laugh and then saw he wasn't laughing, and then were like, "Ah." It was brilliant. And even that, you faded it out perfectly. Don't overthink it. You're doing great. How did you do that?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  That was perfect. That was perfect. I'm not even kidding. I don't think you have math face.

• 7:05Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  But it is.

• 7:06Dan Harris?

  Thank you?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. You don't want math face.

• 7:09Dan Harris?

  I just do want to encourage you to stay on my side for the rest of the evening.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Valerie, my wife, said, "You're gonna love it because Dan is a really good interviewer."

• 7:22Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And so I'm excited for your questions.

• 7:26Dan Harris?

  Well, I don't claim to have any brilliant questions. I just have a list of questions.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you use ChatGPT?

• 7:34Dan Harris?

  I did not. I did not. I do use it a lot.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were talking about it backstage.

• 7:40Dan Harris?

  Yes. I was saying that I've had this like health journey recently around insomnia and ChatGPT is better than my doctors.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. At helping you fall back asleep?

• 7:51Dan Harris?

  No, no, no, no. No. My doctors are terrible at that.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Dan Harris?

  Although I live with a doctor who's my wife and she also is terrible at that.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Helping you fall asleep?

• 8:01Dan Harris?

  When I was a little boy, I used to go to my dad sometimes to say I was having trouble sleeping and he would say, "Bend over and run as fast as you can into the wall."

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:11Dan Harris?

  Yeah. And he was a doctor.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Not a head doctor.

• 8:18Dan Harris?

  No.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  No. Internal medicine. Yeah. That's crazy. What did ChatGPT tell you about insomnia that helped you?

• 8:26Dan Harris?

  I have the dumbest sounding syndrome in the world.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:30Dan Harris?

  Restless leg syndrome.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 8:32Dan Harris?

  Yeah. So I can't even get a dignified syndrome. And it's, I've been complaining about this to my doctors for over a decade, as I mentioned to you backstage, and nobody picked up on it. But complaining about it to ChatGPT, it was like, dude, you got restless leg syndrome.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:49Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And is there a cure for that?

• 8:51Dan Harris?

  Iron supplementation.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  It's always iron.

• 8:54Dan Harris?

  Yeah. Is this helpful to you guys in any way?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  There's one person out there with kooky old lady syndrome. That's what it used to be known. And they're very happy to know that all they have to do is cook on an iron skillet. It'll go away.

• 9:10Dan Harris?

  You know, any failed artistic endeavor, the thing they say to themselves is, "If it helps just one person."

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 9:17Dan Harris?

  And that's basically the theme of the conversation up until now, when I actually start being a good interviewer.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  That's what we're going for.

• 9:25Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Does anyone have restless leg syndrome? Clap. Okay, yeah.

• 9:30Dan Harris?

  Really?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Several. David Dickturn's got it.

• 9:33Dan Harris?

  You have it?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Get you some iron.

• 9:35Dan Harris?

  No, you were humoring him. Okay, fine.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  That's called a mensch.

• 9:39Dan Harris?

  Yeah, he's a mensch. All right, I know you've told it before, but I think it would be good level-setting if you would just tell a little bit of your personal story. You were raised, the next town over from me, you were raised in Lexington. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 9:53Dan Harris?

  And you grew up in a, as I understand it, a Bible-believing family, an evangelical family, which I didn't know they had in Massachusetts at all. Seriously, I was surprised to hear that that's where you were from. Can you say a little bit about your upbringing?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that. My mother was more churchy. My father went, "Because it's good to be normal." That was his quote. "We went to church because he wanted to fit in and not be a weirdo." That's what he said.

• 10:24Dan Harris?

  Did he have that bad of a boss?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I go, "Dad, why do we go to church?" He goes, "You don't want to be a weirdo, Peter." I could call my father's bank and get money. "Mr. Holmes, I just want to send $500 to 444-8911." And they'd do it. "Yes, Mr. Holmes." So my dad was not super... No, not... He would cry at the music, which I thought was really sweet. But my mother wanted us to go to church, and then I really took to it. Because I wrote about this in my book, just in case the people with restless leg have read it. I just was a kid that I believed grown-ups.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Like, if you had a wallet and keys and khakis, and you're... You know, when the world was just legs? You know, everybody's so big? And they're like, "This is what it is." Why would they lie? They know all the things. So I bought into it even more than my mother did. So that's what ended up happening. I thought I was going to be a youth pastor, because this is my head.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I went to a Christian college, um, like technically Harvard was a Christian college, but you know what I mean, like a, like a, like a lame one.

• 11:42Dan Harris?

  I thought you were gonna say, "I went to the Harvard of Christian colleges."

• 11:44Speaker 01

  No, that's Wheaton. If you're laughing, I can't believe it. Uh, but Wheaton is the Harvard of Christian colleges. I went to the, uh, Swathmore of Christian colleges, uh, called Gordon College. I haven't heard of it either. But they had like, you had to take Bible classes and you could major in youth ministry. This is just a long way to say, "No one's ever asked me for my degree," and thank God. Because it was, it was kinda like a summer camp school. I, I enjoyed my time there. But that's where a lot of people got married. They called it the MRS degree. Um, because you'll never be there with as many Christian people. That's the thinking. You're gonna get out in the world and it's gonna be Sodom and Gomorrah, so marry someone

• 12:28Speaker 01

  here. And I thought that was really dumb, and then I really wanted to have sex.

• 12:35Dan Harris?

  And that's what it required?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta get married if you're gonna have sex. So that's what I did.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a lot of people. You should know about this. There's a lot of people that are like, "You can't, don't do premarital sex." So you get married, uh, in large part to have sex.

• 12:54Dan Harris?

  Divorce rates in that cohort must be unusually high, would you say?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. Although I know a lot of people that are still together that did that. Um, and I'm, I'm sort of joking. Obviously, I, my first wife and I had a connection. We loved each other. I got married when I was 22, though. And then when I was, everything was just fine. I, we moved here to Park Slope, um, because we were lesbians. And...

• 13:22Speaker 01

  My brain was so fast. It was like, "Do we do it?" I was like, "Go, go for it. Go for it."

• 13:27Dan Harris?

  You don't feel like you broke the ice with diarrhea?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 13:30Dan Harris?

  Like, I think it's all...

• 13:31Speaker 01

  We talked about sonar pings. That was a sonar ping to see where are we? What are we? And then I was like, we're ready for the Park Slope humor. And then when I was 28, I'll really do the broad strokes. When I was 28, my wife left me. She was having an affair. Only person I had ever been with. And my understanding of the divine was if you don't smoke and don't drink and don't swear and you get married and you don't have premarital sex. I felt like I had done everything right. And then it was like I was paying into a protection service. And the mafia still burned down my bakery. So it caused this crisis of faith. And I was like, I dabbled in atheism. I was just sort of like, I started by being like, well, maybe it's not.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  All my friends are comedians, all my friends are atheists. So they were all like, you should listen to this one woman show, Letting Go of God. You should read The God Delusion, all this stuff. So I looked into it. And honestly, my first takeaway was what a relief it was to not think that everyone who wasn't in my church was going to hell. That was actually, it was a, the chapter in my book is called Heratheist. Because it was a relief of a burden. It wasn't, oh no, I'm alone. It was like, thank God, we're not all on the brink of being tortured. For real. That weighed on me so heavy. I studied in Israel. I went one of the semesters in college specifically to study hell.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I just didn't understand how this religion had gotten so with us, against us, in, out, heaven, hell, all that. But I didn't really get the answer. Anyway, then my wife leaves me. And I started thinking, maybe it's not how I thought it was. And then I met really beautiful atheists, which was really confusing to me.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I know. I was sheltered. I was just like, why would you be good? We, there was a story, it was me and... I know. You should know that there are people wondering that. Like, if it's not the lifeguard god, why wouldn't... The example was, we were in a Holiday Inn, me and these comedians, and there was an unmanned little minibar. And it was just, like, no one was working it. And it was like 2:00 in the morning. We were probably drinking. And I wasn't gonna steal it, but I was like, why not just take it if it doesn't matter? And they were beautiful. I just wasn't ready for it. They were like, because somebody is working this shift. And maybe they'll get in trouble because things were stolen. Maybe they'll get fired. We're not doing it to avoid punishment. We're doing it because we have to take care of each other.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  And I was just like, blown away. Yeah, you can clap, but that is not my line.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  But it was beautiful, and it was important. I'd grown up thinking like, the good people believed in my religion. And so I was getting surprised. And then, and I'm only a little embarrassed what a cliche this is. I did Bonnaroo and I took mushrooms. And it wasn't that I had a religious experience. It's that mushrooms showed me... It wasn't what I saw. It's that I saw that with which I was seeing, if that makes sense. You wanna do some mushrooms?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 16:47Dan Harris?

  I am terrified of mushrooms.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  You don't have to. And I'm glad you said that because that is not my message.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I'm not here... I think a lot of people are advocating that Ram Dass was one of my first teachers, and that was a huge part of that path. And I loved it. And I've done my share, but I don't think it's essential. I'm not against them, but I'm certainly not telling people to do them. And we're learning more about them, even though they're miraculous. There are certain neurotypes that do not do well with them. And you might be one of them. So, listen to your intuition, but...

• 17:20Dan Harris?

  I think that neurotype is Jewish.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Now I think you should do though.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  But you know, I didn't even take that much. It wasn't a Jesus trip, it wasn't a God trip. It just, it felt like, I mean, I can't really put it any better than that. It wasn't what I was seeing. I saw myself as a witnessing presence. So, I got a break from Pete. You ta- this is it, man. We're jumping right in. When you take away everything that can be taken away, what's left? And that's what happened on mushrooms. And I went to that place, and then I was kicked out for wearing the wrong garments. It's a Jesus reference, I know where you are. It's the same people with restless legs. So I had to come back.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And then, I didn't go to Ram Dass right away, I went to Joseph Campbell, because the takeaway was, it's ineffable. I had a moment, I don't remember much from that trip that I can tell you about specifically, but there was a moment, tears are streaming down my face, I'm looking, I mean, I'm emotional, remembering, I'm looking at a tree, I'm feeling no separation, all of these things, just crying in a field at a music festival. And I thought, I'm gonna have to talk about this and ruin it. So I came back with this real desire to find a way to talk about things you can't talk about.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And it softened me, not just to the tradition I was raised with, which is Christianity, but all of them. And once I found Joseph Campbell, I started to discover that the mystics were way ahead of us. And they were saying, literalism is missing the point. It's good to build a bridge, it's not good to talk about the ineffable. It's good for a doctor, it's not good for a clergyman necessarily. Is that metaphor is the only language we have to speak of the mystery. You could say God, let's just say the mystery, reality, awareness, you can't talk about it directly. So then when I started looking at things like a virgin birth, or a death and a resurrection

• 19:38Speaker 01

  through a mystical lens, I was like, oh, they're trying to evoke something. It's not trying to be accurate. I'm not saying it's not accurate, there's a possibility that that's just literal. That's not my understanding, but I'm saying, it's trying to evoke something. It's not to be right, or to be in, or to win a debate, or to convert the most people. It's a personal experience, and whatever gets you there evokes that experience in you. And that there were ways without mushrooms of, and meditation is one of them, but storytelling is another one, contemplation, study, chanting. These types of things would take you to that place. But I had the pathway because I had had the psychedelic experience.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  There were footprints in the snow and I could go back.

• 20:26Dan Harris?

  I don't know that much about Christianity, but is it possible to do a rereading for you of the life and utterances of Jesus and view him as a mystic as opposed to the way he's often portrayed now, which is a little bit more encrusted with dogma?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's honestly one of the greatest thrills in my life. And I'm assuming some of you were probably raised in that tradition. And that's, it's been really intoxicating to realize that there were, not everything. It's Father Greg Boyle, who's a hero of mine, says you call, he calls it the mystic lens. You have to go into these things and look at, you know, what, what do you want? What are you gonna take and what are you gonna leave? And I think you have to be careful. But sorry, I, people have probably heard me say this before, but it's something that I feel very passionate about. I think all of Christianity can be summarized in the prodigal son. And I jokingly say that it's Jesus's closer. That's comedians talk for their best bit.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Also, if this is interesting to you, historically speaking, it's the most, um, what's the word? Verifiable, meaning non-religious scholars are like, this was Jesus. Jesus said, "The prodigal son." Now, to answer your question, I'll do this really quick. What Christ has become, it's called atonement theory. It's this idea that you're a wicked little boy and Jesus died to change God's mind about you. Richard Rohr, my spiritual father, said, "Jesus didn't die to change God's mind." Listen to those words, "change God's mind."

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Jesus didn't die to change God's mind about you. He died to change our mind about God.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  That He's in it with us. God suffers in and through and with and as you. That He's involved, that it matters. It's beautiful. So, the prodigal son. There's no Jesus character in the prodigal son. You've been told, I'm sure. Believe in Jesus, He died for you. He's gonna wash away your sins and now you can finally go back to God. That's the main narrative. The prodigal son tells a different story. And I'll tell it real quick. It's not a king. People often say it's a king and he has two sons. One of them says, "Give me my inheritance." You know the story. Gives it to him. Loving father gives him his inheritance. He goes off into a far-off land. I would argue that's where we are right now. We're in a far-off land using our inheritance. Life!

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Give me life. Give me independence from you. Life, incarnation. What do we do? We do what we all do. We squander it. We end up broken, destitute with the pigs. For a Jew, I'm not trying to be funny. For a Jewish person, that's a joke. He was working with the pigs. It's a way of saying he's down and out. He has no money. He has no prospects. He blew it. He blew it. What does he do? He remembers who his father is. It's a recognition. It's a repent, it's a turning around and going, "Wait, I forgot. My father's a loving father. He'll take me back in as a servant." He goes back. And the father before the son has even reached the house from quite a distance, sees him, runs out, greets him.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Doesn't make him a servant. Throws a party. Fat and calf, all those Bible terms. Rings on his fingers, special robe. Because what is lost has been found. And then the father says to the son, "You are always with me and everything I have is yours." That sounds like what can't be taken from you. Awareness, me, life, the ground of being. I was with you there. You can't become what you already are.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You were my son here, you were my son there. All he did was remember. Now, what we've turned Christianity into, and I say this with love for my tradition, there needs to be a Jesus figure. So, somebody finds the guy with the pigs broken down and says, "I'll walk you back to your father. Now, your father is a vengeful man. Someone needs to be killed for this, for your sins, you wicked boy. We know he won't listen to reason, but I'll let him kill me, so he'll take you back." Because he knows, somebody's heads need to roll, but it'll be me. That would be the Jesus figures we've come to understand it. That's not what it is. He just remembers who his father is. Now, I'm not saying you need to use those languages like, "I'm God's son." That's a little too religious, I understand.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  But you go, "You can't become what you already are." It's a metaphor. Jesus uses the idea of sons and fathers to say, "No matter what you do, you'll always be your parents' child. You can't become what you already are." And to quote Richard Rohr, "The whole Christian message is to accept that you are accepted." That's what the prodigal son does. He accepts that he's accepted, that he can go home. That's Christianity to me.

• 25:19Dan Harris?

  I think this is a compliment. You have a preacher's style. You do.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Well, I watch preachers every Sunday, yeah.

• 25:27Dan Harris?

  Yeah, you come by it honestly.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:28Dan Harris?

  For sure. It's great.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I come by it honestly.

• 25:30Dan Harris?

  You do.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Good turn of phrase.

• 25:35Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Pete Holmes talks about what he means when he uses the word "God" these days, how awareness differs from thoughts, how meditation works, and why forgetting and remembering is all just part of the practice.

• 25:54Speaker 02

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• 26:52Dan Harris?

  So when you say "God," because you're not in the same situation now as you were in your childhood in your twenties, if you're a Christian at all, you're a different kind of Christian. But you still use the word "God." What do you mean by that word?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Awareness.

• 27:09Dan Harris?

  And let's unpack awareness.

• 27:15Dan Harris?

  Hostile witness.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Awareness, consciousness, knowing.

• 27:21Dan Harris?

  So I think maybe you gave a pretty comprehensible, like, "I got it," description when you were talking about your first mushroom trip where you said

• 27:32Dan Harris?

  you took away everything except...

• 27:34Speaker 01

  That's right. The koan that I like the most, Buddhists, my Buddhists, "What is but does not exist?" I don't want to say it's the best one, I think it's the best one.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  What is but doesn't exist? Now, we're supposed to go sit with that for a month. So to "exist" means to stand out from. I'm getting all of this from my teacher Rupert Spira, who explains it way better than me. But it's to stand out from. So the awareness is the background. You are aware of your experience. I stand out from it, and I seem to exist. So to not exist, it is, but we can't... It's nothing. We can't find it. So it doesn't exist, doesn't stand out from the background, because it is the background. We're like characters in a movie. And awareness, or knowing, knowing might be better, is the screen. It's what makes our experience knowable.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  So, clearly, when we were meditating, if you look at your mind, you're aware of your thoughts. But a thought isn't aware. There's something aware that's looking at your thoughts. We hear the car horn. It appears in awareness. Mind adds, did you hear the car horn? Mind adds the interpretation far away. But it couldn't be closer to you. It's made of you. It happened in you. That's why we say the nature of existence is love. It let it in. It gave it support. It was there. And we go, "Car horn, far away." But it's the background

• 29:12Speaker 01

  in which and out of which everything is made.

• 29:15Dan Harris?

  So the nature of existence is love because love is acceptance?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  I get, yeah, this might be a little out of my depth to explain, but I see it as a yes.

• 29:28Dan Harris?

  I was just gonna say, this is a safe place to be a bullshit artist, because of like,

• 29:33Dan Harris?

  bro.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Well, even if you're resisting it, what you're resisting has already been welcomed into awareness. So meditation is trying to not conjure up this thing that doesn't exist. You're trying to mimic your own nature. You know what I'm saying? Like, you are this fresh allowing. Again, Rupert uses the metaphor, "The space of this room." We could be fighting, we could be dancing. It doesn't change the nature of this room. And to me, meditation has a lot to do with knowing yourself to be that. And what's better than being spacious? I spent the first half of my spiritual life wanting to be right, or persuasive, or impressive.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And now, my heroes are like the space in this room, accommodating, fresh, clear.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  And it's not just a thought experiment to go like, okay, I'm like the space in this room. Once you recognize that you are like a field of knowing, which is a little bit easier to know when your eyes are closed, but you can still know when your eyes are open. It is field of knowing. The second step is to ask, what is the nature of that knowing? Because it's, again Rupert, without agitation, so we call that peaceful. You know, it's happy, it's joyful. I don't mean the kind of joy you get when you eat ice cream. I'm not talking about oxytocin or whatever. Talking about without agitation. So when I wake up at four in the morning, as I inevitably will tonight, replaying moments from our dinner.

• 31:06Dan Harris?

  You will.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 31:08Dan Harris?

  Restless legs.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you know anything for that?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  No, I'll get up to pee and then I'll get back in the bed and I'll be like, oh, what did I say to Dan? Did I embarrass myself? And I'll just have to go, who or what is aware of my experience? And then, if you want to get tantric with it, let's say I do, it's emotional, you feel humiliation. So the Vedantic approach is to step aside from it and go, I am not humiliation, I am aware of my humiliation. But the tantric approach is to go, let's get as close as we can to that. And let it in for tea. Beyond no resistance welcoming, and you see this thing that you called humiliation

• 31:58Speaker 01

  is actually kind of a grab bag of 75 different feelings. And in my experience, 62 of them are bliss. And there are some ones that you don't know what to do with, but they're like children. They wanted you to pat them on the head, you know? And so you go into it, but then you go like, there's this experience and then there's the knowing of it. That's kind of Ram Dass's approach. Rupert would go, there's no distance between the knowing of it and the experiencing of it. It's made of the knowing of it. And then you just kind of fall into that.

• 32:37Dan Harris?

  I have, I think, two ways of understanding it from my standpoint, so I want to say them to you and then just get a sense of whether what I just said makes any sense.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:46Dan Harris?

  So, on the example you gave about humiliation, from my, like, basic, old-school Buddhist mindfulness approach, well, anything you're feeling with the microscope of mindfulness can be investigated and broken apart into, what'd you say, sixty constituent parts. You know, it's buzzing in the chest, it's a starburst of thoughts, it's rumbling in the tummy, it's a bunch of stuff. And in this way, I believe, I love this phrase, I believe it's seeing by dividing is the way they describe insight meditation or vipassana. And so you see that this thing that feels monolithic,

• 33:28Dan Harris?

  personally monogrammed, is actually made up of these fluxing parts.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:33Dan Harris?

  And it kind of loses its power in that way. So that's one way in, I have another way in, but how does that land with you, what I just said?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 33:42Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing. I get a little bit like, what is this experience made of? And there's a comfort to going, it's me, it's a modulation of myself. And there's no distance between, there is, I don't find a knower and an experience, I find experiencing. And it's very intimate and it's very close. And that helps me release it a little bit. You know, it's like, if you close your eyes and go to the experience of your body right now, you know, you feel your butt on the seat, maybe your elbows on the armrest. You see that there isn't really a body per se,

• 34:25Speaker 01

  there's just the knowing of these different clusters of sensation. And this either does it for you or it doesn't. So if we stick with that, we have body, we drop that and we just go, okay, there's a tingling at the bottom of our feet,

• 34:39Speaker 01

  our face, our hands. And then there's my voice. And then there's your thought, "I like this, I don't like this." Is there a distance between where my voice is appearing in this field, this knowing field, and the thought? Now picture Michael Jordan. Isn't he emerging out of the same place that the knowing of my voice is emerging? The knowing of the image of Michael Jordan? This is what Rupert says, he says, "Put out an imaginary hand and pass through your mind's eye image of Michael Jordan and say, 'What is this made of? Do that with my voice, what is this made of?'" And really, I don't want to answer that for you. Like, what is it made of?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  The thought, the feeling, the sensation of my feet? What is it made of? Where is it happening? The sound of a distant thing? Your thought, now a feeling comes up, an emotion. There's something really liberating about going, "It's me, it's a modulation of me. It's the knowing of it. Is it?" And then, do we find a boundary? Can you go somewhere here where it ends? Is there a wall, a divider where you find an, on the other side of it, there isn't knowing? Now we kind of start to cozy into the dimensionless quality.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  You could call that infinite, but it's, I kind of like dimensionless. It's just kind of spaceless, but it's without boundary. And this is where you get compassion. When we were all meditating, when all our thoughts, let's all say we all got to that thoughtless place, were we different? When you're deeply asleep, everybody's enya. Everybody's enya on the inside. Nobody's Metallica. I like Metallica, I'm just saying, if you could calm anybody to zero, same. So when I'm struggling with somebody...

• 36:53Speaker 01

  We share the same nature. You and I share the same nature. And we can go there. That's what's beautiful about things like this. We can actually go there together. How many boundaryless, borderless, infinite spaces could there be? You know, your house is over there, my house is over there. The empty space inside is the same. It's like the Tao. The vase has a shape, but it's the empty space inside that makes it useful. These are people trying to evoke the importance of the nothing. Does that make sense?

• 37:31Dan Harris?

  That's a tough question. Let me, let me give you the second way in.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Dan Harris?

  Because you use the phrase, "we can go there, we can go there together." And I, in my experience, sometimes these conversations can be beautiful, but also a little frustrating for people because it's like, ah, I can't get there. I don't, you know, like, I can't fully grok it or experience it for myself. And so the one technique for me that's been very helpful, and I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on it, is it comes from Joseph Goldstein, who is a great meditation teacher and a great friend. And he has this practice called the passive voice practice. So in your beautiful sort of impromptu meditation you were guiding us in, you were having us tune into the fluxing sensations that we're calling body.

• 38:18Dan Harris?

  So one little linguistic trick you can do is, oh, tightness or pressure is being known. Instead of, oh, I'm knowing or I'm aware of these sensations. Oh, these sensations are being known. And then, known by what?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 38:36Dan Harris?

  Then you're just like turning the camera back at itself in a way and like, oh, what? Who's taking delivery of these sensory packages? What is knowing it? And there's, there's nothing to find.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Dan Harris?

  And that's the finding.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I never understood those, like Alan Watts would talk about, can a knife cut itself? Or can a flashlight point at itself? And that's kind of the space that we're in. And that's why we want metaphor and we want evocative things. But if our awareness is like the sun, and it shines on the earth and it makes things knowable, even, not even, but science would agree with that. There's consciousness and it makes things knowable. To me, what we're talking about, and I think we are doing the same thing, is the sun does illumine itself. It is self-luminous. Again, this is Rupert. We are self-knowing. Something that's very useful to me is like, am I aware?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And if you all ask yourself, am I aware? And you go, you go, and you go, yeah, I'm aware. Where did you go? To what experience? And again, this is all Rupert Spira. To what experience are you referring when you come back definitively with a yes? What was that? And don't say, I have this written on my mirror. Don't say, I don't know. Because you're having the experience right now. That's the issue. Is what we're talking about, when this starts sounding, and I'm with you, can start sounding a little too out there, a little too weird or whatever, confusing, conceptual. We're talking about the most intimate, familiar experience. And not just to get familiar with it,

• 40:18Speaker 01

  but to align ourselves with its qualities. It's fulfilled. It's at peace. And when you talk about 10% happier, obviously I was thinking about happiness. There's different altitudes to answer that question at. And don't get me wrong, I'm all about finding your purpose. I'm all about sharing art, connection, helping all, family, love. We can have that chat. The most lasting one is getting familiar with who you are. Because that's their, take it from me, take it from an affirmation addict. I did town hall on Friday, it's gone. It's gone. You know what I mean? That's, I did a comedy show, went great. Show it to me. I don't buy into the idea.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Tony Robbins, who I like, talks about living his life for rocking chair moments. When he's old, he'll sit in a rocking chair and remember all the things he did. With respect, I don't buy it. I don't think that's how it goes. I think what we should be going for is peace of mind, self-abiding, self-remembrance, all of these things, because that's a lasting peace. That doesn't even need to be conceptualized. If we're old and falling completely apart, it's still with you.

• 41:29Dan Harris?

  What are the modalities for you that help you get peace of mind?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, conversations like this, meditation, obviously. I mean, obviously, meaning I think we have that in common. And then, sort of strangely, service, getting, this is fun, but my wife, when she left, she was like, you're gonna love it, you're gonna talk about your favorite thing to talk about. So this is indulgent. And then, when I'm with my daughter, I'm not thinking, oh, we're in God's dream. I'm just loving my daughter. And that is worth a thousand live podcast, that's 10,000, a million, you know what I mean? So, we can come at it lots of different ways.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  I'm not quite fully baked yet that I could say there's nothing to the seeming, my, or whatever you wanna call it. I think it matters that we had a nice dinner. I think it matters that we were joking backstage. I think it matters that you're smiling. I think it matters that my wife kissed me before she left. I think it matters that I'm excited that I'm gonna see my daughter tomorrow. I think it matters that I did a show, that I did what's written in my bones to give to other people. And I can still recall the faces of the people laughing and the thrill of that connection and that merging. I'll talk out the other side of my face as well. I'm just also very interested in what Jesus called the peace that passeth, understanding

• 42:56Speaker 01

  that one too. King James.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Both. I'm interested in both.

• 43:03Dan Harris?

  You called yourself an affirmation addict.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:06Dan Harris?

  I felt seen when you said it.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Good boy.

• 43:10Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 43:24Dan Harris?

  So say more about that.

• 43:28Dan Harris?

  I meant specifically that how good a boy I am.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Just fabulous. Great, great stuff.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  You want to talk about that, though?

• 43:47Dan Harris?

  I want to talk about addiction to affirmation.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think everybody's trying to feel safe.

• 43:53Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And I think people are using outdated modalities. You like IFS, I like IFS. I don't think there's any... I say that with no shame. I learned getting laughs and being a golden boy meant less fighting, more safety, more quiet for everybody. So it's a wound, but it's not... I don't begrudge it. And it's useful. We were talking backstage. I was like, yeah, there are days where I'm depressed or anxious, and then I'm driven into the hands of other people. When I'm broken, this Pete is only so useful. "We're like a screen in the movie." That's fine. But Broken Pete is actually one of my favorite Peets, because he needs you.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  And God, that's... We talked about this at the pre-thing. Holy and wholeness, it's the same root, right? We need each other. We belong to each other. Ram Dass would say, "We're walking each other home." So the Pete that's an affirmation addict, it is like, "Thank God." You know, how much closer to me do you feel to knowing we have the same thing? I think this whole ruse is an excuse to love each other. It's all an elaborate hoax. And I've had experiences, this undulating, overflowing, gratuitous, almost obscene yes of,

• 45:25Speaker 01

  ah, wah, can't help. It's its nature to erupt and expand and clash. And we're all gonna go backstage and take off our masks and laugh to tears. And I'll say, thank God I was that guy that just needed people to laugh, or he felt like a wicked boy. You're, ah, we wouldn't be talking if we weren't affirmation addicts. This wouldn't be happening. Great. It's all an excuse. It's a hoax. It's a hoax. If we were fine, we'd be at home.

• 46:10Dan Harris?

  Right, so our wives.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:13Dan Harris?

  Are not here tonight. Not by mistake. That, your wife's out of play, my wife's at home. And those people are fine.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Valerie is, you said it backstage, that she's just sunlight. Not everybody sees it, so I think, I'm not just saying this because you like it, but that's a credit to you. There's certain people that can see Valerie, and I just think she's incredible. It's funny, talk about happiness, relational happiness. We just uncovered this. I was like, we've been together for 13 years and we really are, I don't know. It's just one of the great loves, I really think it is. And sometimes people say, what's your secret? And we go, I say, find someone who thinks what's annoying about you is funny. And that's Valerie. I do a meditation event. I open by saying diarrhea.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  She would be like, that's my man.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  She would, and she wouldn't be faking it. She'd literally, she'd feel embarrassed and she'd be like a warm. I, she does, she says to me, the most loving thing she says is, because I'm quirky, I'm weird. She'll tell you, "I'm 75 people in a day." And she sees all of them. And I, and I say to her, "My first wife left me," and I'll be like, "Please don't leave me." You know, like, I know, it's so tender, right? And she goes, "I'd be bored with anyone else." Can you hea- ah, wow. It's incredible.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, she's not here, she's at Oh, Mary. And I'm proud of her because we both deal with codependence. So she, she loves being like a support, she wants to be there. I'd, I'd have checked in with her 12 times. She'd be smiling, you know. She went and I'm proud of her. I was like, "You really wanted to see that show, it's the last night, go see it." So she's doing good stuff, too.

• 48:18Dan Harris?

  Our wives are a little different because after one of my events, one of the rare ones that she came to, backstage, she said, "I like you so much better in public."

• 48:36Speaker 01

  It's fantastic.

• 48:37Dan Harris?

  It's a great line.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  It sounds like I'll enjoy her if I get to meet her.

• 48:41Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it still hurts a little, actually, when I tell the story.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Val is incredibly sweet, but I am sort of a, a little bit of a baby. I, again, I'm self-directing back to the topic of happiness. I think there's something about being unembarrassed, that that's how I am. I'm, I say this to Val all the time, I'm like, "I'm not resigned to being this way." You know, like, I am working on it. But, like, thank you for reassuring me here, all this sort of stuff. It's, we talked about it backstage, it's like, I'll go and entertain 1,000 people and really get them. And, and then I just need somebody to be like... You weren't embarrassing.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  You don't need to be afraid. It's this real, there's a pendulum swing. And again, thank God. Because if I came home, the guy that was on stage, I mean, I love that guy, but like, that's not, he's not a great partner or father. Like, you need a real person. That's the other thing about happiness is like, having outlets. We're one of the few tribes that don't do like, you know, American tribe. We don't do mask work. We don't, we don't, we do Halloween, but we don't have a lot of allowances for like, like New Year's. Oh, it's kind of wild on New Year's, you know? It's such a pathetic substitute for cultures that understood the nuance, the dreamlike,

• 50:11Speaker 01

  ethereal quality of all the different masks we wear. And that is one of the reasons I think I'm a very, like, a deeply happy person, is I have these, can grab this vine and swing to a pirate ship and be a comedian. I know it's not all of me, but it's this whole other thing. And then I also get that psychological need. I need to be heard, and I need to be understood, and people laugh. I like the laugh, but I like the connection more. I like the understanding more, and then I swing back. I tell Val after I do the show, I'm like, I won't tell that joke for a month. And those 30 days, I'll just be, you know, a boring dad. I love it. But it's because of that outlet.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  It could be karaoke. It doesn't have to be show business, but it could be that friend that, I'm so grateful for friends that love salty me. Because I like being, people know me as like, a sweet, positive guy. That's true. But, man, I love roasting things. Man, I love complaining. I love being a bitch. And when you find real friends that don't just allow that, but celebrate that, that's like, wearing masks. It's like, it's a drinking buddy, or it's your choir. These are the people that know this side of me. I find that to be really, and then you're not, I'm not burdening my wife.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Obviously, I don't think it's just a burden, but like...

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Comedy me is like, hot takes. That's great, but like, you don't wanna be with that guy all the time. So when I'm at dinner, I'm not doing hot takes. It's like I got it out of my system. So outlets could be your baseball team, but places where you can do it, you know?

• 52:01Dan Harris?

  As you're speaking, I'm thinking a little bit about RuPaul's brilliant stuff on drag.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:06Dan Harris?

  You know, that is, I mean, it's

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Mask work.

• 52:09Dan Harris?

  It's mask work.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:10Dan Harris?

  But most people aren't doing it.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  And I think that's a real loss. I always thought it was funny or interesting that in some of these tribes that do mask work, they put on the mask of like, the misfit, the devil. And they look in the mirror and they go, "Oh, I'm the devil." And then they get to act that way. And everyone knows, it's divine. Putting on a show is divine. I'm not Pete, you're not Dan, I don't know your names, but you're not that. You look in the mirror and go, "Oh, this." And you go around and people keep nudging you to be what they think you are and what you told them that you are.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  There's nothing wrong with it, but it's divine. I think one of the reasons why we sometimes way too much, but acclaim actors. When Meryl Streep transforms, we go, "I knew it." "I knew you weren't that last one, and you're not this one." We're not that. I think there's more understanding, so-called non-spiritual people. When a baseball player, Red Sox, is traded to the Yankees, like Johnny Damon was on the Red Sox, gets traded to the Yankees, go to Fenway Park, play the Yankees. Johnny Damon comes up and he's a Yankee. Everybody gives him a standing ovation. That's a divine moment. You're not the uniform. I remember you.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I know you. You're the guy's son. You can go home. It was just a game. It's my daughter's name, Lila. It's a dance. It's a play. It's the play of the universe. It's not wrong. I'll be someone you can be mad at. So you can learn how to forgive. I'll be somebody for you to love. It's just... It's all an excuse to clash up against each other and it's all uniforms and masks and play. And that's why I think comedy is so important. We laugh at it. Nothing essential to me is out there. Because it's the same. We're all the same.

• 54:23Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Pete talks about how these ideas we've been discussing in this conversation hold up in the real world. Why having a spiritual practice does not eliminate irritation, judgment, or reactivity. And why saying, "Yes, thank you", as a little mantra, can have immense power.

• 54:48Dan Harris?

  Not long ago, my wife had an interior design dilemma. She's been researching a book for a while and in order to do the research, she's been ordering a lot of books that she is then reading. But then the question became, "What do I do with all these books?" She didn't want to throw them away or give them away because she wants to be able to refer to them for her research. So she found a great solution via one of our sponsors today, Wayfair. Through Wayfair, she got these really beautiful translucent bookshelves. They're not even waist-high. And she has lined her office with them and filled them with books. And the net effect is, it looks quite beautiful. It's an elegant solution. And that is what Wayfair can do for you for many of your interior design

• 55:33Dan Harris?

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• 56:08Speaker 04

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• 56:42Dan Harris?

  What you're describing is beautiful. I'm interested to hear, how good are you at applying it to life? In particular, you exist and have thrived in a hyper-competitive and often quite toxic business.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Dan Harris?

  The entertainment business. How good are you at like?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  I'm in moonshine.

• 57:05Dan Harris?

  I mean, you may have a side hustle I'm unaware of. That ChatGPT did not alert me to.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a, something doesn't line up.

• 57:17Dan Harris?

  No, I'm, I think it could line up, but I'm curious to hear how, how well you think you line it up in, in your day-to-day life.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, to steal a line from Father Greg Boyle, who if you don't know who Greg Boyle is, I couldn't recommend his books more. He founded Homeboy Industries, a charity I really love. And I asked him the same question, because he, I mean, he'll make you weep talking about this sort of stuff. And I'm like, how, how, how do you keep yourself in that space? He's dealing with, he works with gang members, and people are literally dying, and people are, all these sorts of tragedies. And he just goes breath, breath by breath. He's like, with every damn breath. And I try to remember that. I asked Richard Rohr something similar. I was like, are you cooked? Are you converted? Do you just see everybody as God in drag? Talk about RuPaul. Or is it effort?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  And he's like, it's both. That's absolutely me. We were talking about this at the last thing. Take a couple meals away? Take away my coffee? I was telling you, I'll be on an airplane, I'm like, I hate this guy's head.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  I hate this guy's head. If we're deplaning and the row behind me tries to leave before me, I'll stand and face them

• 58:36Speaker 01

  to shame them, and then take my bag down while making eye contact with them, and then deliberately leave slowly.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  So absolutely, that's, that's...

• 58:52Speaker 01

  That's why it's so compelling to have a, a, a practice. Even as we're discovering it here together, talking about it, it's like, it feels like that. It feels like, oh, right. You know what I mean? I'm not just holding the diamond in my pocket all the time. And Valerie, my wife, again, is just so good at the everything belongs of it all, that it's not an error when I spend a week completely forgetting any of this stuff. And she's like,

• 59:25Speaker 01

  "It's not a, it's not a mistake. It's not a flaw. You weren't good when you remembered, and you weren't bad when you forgot, because you're always the guy's son. You can't become what you already are." And, yeah. But yeah, I lose it all the time, constantly. Every day.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  "After this, I'm gonna fight you."

• 59:51Dan Harris?

  I don't like my odds. You're like 6'6" and 10 years younger than me.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Ah, you'll be fine. Grab a bottle.

• 59:58Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Break it.

• 1:00:01Dan Harris?

  That was spoken like a guy from Boston.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:00:04Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  That was the most Boston thing I've ever said. Oh, but that's good. Ram Dass says if you think you're enlightened, I'm not, I'm not saying that. I don't think people are enlightened. I think awareness is enlightened. Only awareness is enlightened. Sometimes it wakes up in me. Sometimes it wakes up in you. Deep sleep, deep meditation, you're tasting your truth. That's why it feels so good, right? So I'm not claiming that, but Ram Dass said, "If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your parents."

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  F minus.

• 1:00:30Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  I've sat with my mother going, "I am loving awareness." It doesn't...

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  She has my number, man. She'll break me out of that spell so fast.

• 1:00:43Dan Harris?

  Actually, she'll put you into the spell.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. She'll pull me into it. When I visit home, it's like they give you a play that you thought closed in 1986.

• 1:00:53Dan Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  They're like, here's your script. And you're like, ha, Pop, you're the best. How do you do it? It's brutal. So, yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  I think remembering and forgetting, you know, so much of the, I'm not a physicist, obviously, but so much is the wave, right? And I think we're in that wave, and I don't think it's an error.

• 1:01:16Dan Harris?

  I love thinking about, and people, if anybody's ever listened to my show before, you've probably heard me say this a million times, but I think it bears repeating, like, one of the original translations of the word that we now translate as mindfulness.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Dan Harris?

  The word in Pali, which is the language in which the Buddha's teachings were written down, is sati, and the original translation is remembering.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Dan Harris?

  It's like, we're in this, and this is actually just really helpful to know while meditating. It's like the tide coming and going. Like, you're gonna get lost and then wake up again. And in your meditation and in your life. And so you'll be hating the back of somebody's head, and then you'll be loving awareness of 30 seconds later.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Okay, so I think you'll think this is interesting. The way that I've learned to meditate with Rupert is, they call, it's, it sounds a little pretentious, but it's the pathless path. So, a progressive path would be, let's focus our attention. The pathless path is sort of like recognizing that it's absurd to focus what you are. It's hard to explain, but it's, the image that I use is resting, self-abiding. It's like being out all day in the city, and then you take a hot bath. You, you just rest into it. He goes, he quote, somebody is saying, enlightenment belongs to the supremely lazy individual for whom even blinking is too much effort. And I just go...

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  You're always with me and everything I have is yours. Ramana Maharshi died. They said, "Don't die. Don't leave us." And he said, "Where could I go? Where could I go?" So, you're meditating. When we were meditating, I do get distracted. It's just, yeah, that too. It's just, it's just, I'm so unbearably lazy. It's the opposite. I'm not, I've done the focusing, but like, what eventually started to make sense for me was just, like, just, ugh! And it's, it's, it's hard to explain, and even as I'm saying it, I can't believe it works, but that's another self-abiding as a meditation.

• 1:03:34Dan Harris?

  Well, this is a big debate, and I don't want to take a side in this debate. I have two friends, the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein, and then my other friend, Sam Harris. They are old friends of each other and have been fighting about the pathless path versus the more directed progressive path. And I actually recently had them on my podcast, and it's the only time in the nearly 10 years of having a show where in the middle of it, I put my head on the table.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:09Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  I could imagine.

• 1:04:11Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  You know, there's a place for both, obviously.

• 1:04:15Dan Harris?

  Absolutely, yes.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  And again, Rupert would say, as long as, if you feel yourself to be a separate person, if you can't just rest in it, then do a mantra. Do breath. It's like, fine. Like, it's sort of whatever gets you there.

• 1:04:31Dan Harris?

  And, and there are different times in your meditation practice, different times in your life, different people for whom different things work, and it's, I mean, one of Joseph's little expressions is, you know, whatever works. You have to find what works for you. There isn't, I don't think, better or worse. There's what works.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you would be well versed in this. It's a tricky thing, all of this wondering about better and worse. You know what I mean? It's like, and then when you're there, you see that meditation being this like gratuitous yes. And this, the more you try, the worse you do. This surrendering and this melting and, and like we, I'm not saying I'm above it. I'm not saying it's bad, but it reminds me of the church I grew up in. It's like, was it a literal virgin birth or similar, was it a literal seven day creation? It's like, we might've lost the plot a little bit. If Dan's head is on the table, maybe we took a wrong turn.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  And I'm not throwing shade on those guys because I do it too.

• 1:05:36Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, when you're there, there's a lot of laughing.

• 1:05:40Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, it's a funny thing to try to be what you already are. It's very funny.

• 1:05:47Dan Harris?

  Okay, you, you brought us to laughter. We did do, for some of you who were there, we had a little event before this event. And so I'm going to ask you some of the same questions I've already asked you in the course of this evening. But it'll be due to these folks, the restless leg folks.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  RLF?

• 1:06:05Dan Harris?

  RLS. Oh, restless leg folks, okay, yes.

• 1:06:12Dan Harris?

  I'm slow.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:06:14Dan Harris?

  This is the reason why I ask the questions.

• 1:06:20Dan Harris?

  Laughter, in your view, and you've already kind of articulated it, is kind of an expression of, you didn't use these words, but, and so I'll check in with you. Kind of an expression of the enlightened mind. Is that, is that, is that your view?

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  I, I think it can help you taste, let's, let's say this, you don't go along with it. When you're really laughing, or when you're, you know, climbing a, a mountain with no harness, you go to zero. When you meditate, you go to zero. People dancing, people, line cooks in a flow state, they go to zero. And so I'm not saying it's unique to laughing, but I do think one of the reasons we love deep sleep. Why would you love something you can't remember? But you love it. It's not for how you feel, you love it. You loved it. I'm looking forward to it. You love being zero. Cause it was you.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  It was you with everything taken away that can be taken away, except that which cannot be taken away. So this isn't that exotic. You taste it every night. And when you laugh, I think you taste it. If you're, and I'm talking about my own experience. I can't imagine, uh, you know, I'm not gonna guess what my audience is going through, but one of the things that I experience when I'm really laughing is, is void. Is just nothing. And it's such a, it's like the eye of the needle. You can't bring, I, that girl didn't say yes when I asked her out. It can't go with you. It's, it was just you. You were naked. Felt good. Right?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  And I, I, I think that's why a lot of the things we do, flight suits, you know what I mean? People just want a break from all of this. All of our troubles. And it feels really, really, really good.

• 1:08:17Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's in our language. We wanna be blown away.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  We wanna be blown away. Exactly. And I killed them. I killed them.

• 1:08:23Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  I killed.

• 1:08:25Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I killed.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  I killed. Or I died. If I bombed, I say I died. But the, the funny thing, it's not adversarial, and I promise not to go on too much about this, but if you're curious what it feels like to do stand-up, it's, again, holy and whole. We wanna merge, right? We wanna merge. It feels better meditating together. Live comedy feels better than watching it. When we all are laughing at the same thing, it's like a drum circle. It's ancient. It's, it's shamanic. And I'm not the fancy boy, as much as I'd like to be. If I fall into it as well, we're all gone. That's when it's good. It can be co-opted, and then the, the guy's like, and I'm the king, and I'm the king,

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  and the, but the best ones, I, I say to audiences all the time, you're watching me, I'm watching you. Like you're grading me, I'm grading you. Like, what do you think? You think you're off the hook? I'm nervous for you.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  And it's real, and then we start. I could talk about this forever, so you're gonna have to moderate, but it's like, it's hyper attunement. It's, it's, it's, it's sexual. I don't mean that in like a, it doesn't have to do with literal sex, but it's the same thing as, I'm sorry, but as a good lover. It really is. Oh. Hairs on your neck when I, oh, right? I don't want to be too graphic, I'm just saying, the bad sex you've had. Somebody was doing a bad open mic, you know what I mean? Like it was, they weren't attuning. You could make it more church friendly and just say, a good conversation, a good date. Attunement.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Somebody saw your face fall when you said, "My dad." Something happened to you, what's going on with your dad? Holy sh, that's amazing. We love that feeling. When we can do it together, and when you're, I'm saying something, and let's say it's crazy, and we're all going with it. You're next to every, oh, it's, it's amazing. None of us were there.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Not, if it's done properly. And that's why a heckler is so offensive to me, because they're saying, I resist this merging, and I want to hinder their merging. That's why a bad comedian is offensive to me, because they're resisting merging with the crowd. They're not listening to the crowd, they're not attuning to the crowd. It's interrupting something far more special than a show. That's why a cellphone at a Broadway show is so, you snapped me out of it. I, I need to be away.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  And then I heard whatever sound.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Brings me back to all the stuff I'm trying to, just a little break.

• 1:11:18Dan Harris?

  Let's end on this, you have a little mantra that I really like, and I'd love to hear you talk about what it means and how you apply it. Yes, yes, thank you.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you might have added a yes, but I like it.

• 1:11:36Dan Harris?

  I didn't ask for notes.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  It is yes, thank you.

• 1:11:42Dan Harris?

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  I've, I've heard, uh, really good teachers saying, if you can just say yes to what is, that, that's all you need. I don't know how true that is, but I found, I wrote a book, which I mentioned, and, and they sent copies of it. Which is funny, the book is where I wrote about yes, thank you. And then they sent copies to all the reviewers. And then I, I looked through it and it was like three versions ago. As a writer, you can relate to this. It had notes to myself in it. It had a word I used to go, meaning come back to this, which is a silly word, flappy, just says flappy, throughout the whole book. There were chapters that I cut in the book.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  It was just, my first book, deeply disappointing. And you feel, yeah, you feel this like black cloud, you're just sad. Then you're embarrassed. To me, it's the feeling and then it's the embarrassment that you have the feeling. It's worse than the feeling. And I find that it really, we don't even have to spiritualize it or philosophize it. It just short circuits your brain. If you say yes, thank you, to it.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  And I mean, almost instantly, in my, in my experience. Flight is delayed. Yes, thank you. It's so weird. That's why it works. Everything, attraction and aversion, right? So aversion is just charging it with all of this push, like a, like a basketball underwater. So you're giving it all the energy, when you just, yeah, as if it's what you wanted.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  And then you realize you're in an airport.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  You realize you'll be in an hour later. And you know, the brain wants me to be like, and then you recognize somebody you haven't seen in 20 years. It doesn't have to be that.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  It can just be a clean breath and a recognition that you're alive. And maybe you see the sun coming through the window. And maybe you remember that people used to die in covered wagons on the journey you're about to take in four hours. But that's mind stuff. But it can really be way less than that. Really, not debating with the bad feeling, just saying yes, thank you to it. It's, that's been one of the most powerful things in my life, for sure. I'm glad you brought it up because it's been really, really helpful. So, yeah, with the, with the book, I laughed because I was like, it's in the book. And I was like, yes, thank you. And I mean, it, it just lifted. It just lifted. And travel stuff, I travel a lot, so I, I do it a lot

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  in traveling.

• 1:14:32Dan Harris?

  You might think that what I'm about to say is a bit, and I'm not fucking with you at all, as an affirmation junkie. I had high expectations for night, and you exceeded them. You were amazing. Thank you.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you, my friend.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  And thank you. Thank you very much.

• 1:14:56Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Pete Holmes. He's my friend now. I don't know if he knows that, but he's my friend now. Don't forget to check out my new app, 10% with Dan Harris. If you sign up, you and I can be friends. DanHarris.com, there's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. Last thing to say here, thank you so much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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