How To Handle Toxic Thoughts | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

What to do when the voice in your head is an asshole. Sebene Selassie https://www.sebeneselassie.com/ is 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 https://jeffwarren.org/ is an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular newsletter Home Base https://www.homebasewithjeff.com/ and is the coauthor, along with Dan, 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 https://www.mindbodpod.com/. Aaron Schultz aka DJ DRM https://soundcloud.com/aaron-drm has crisscrossed the globe for decades playing his own unique brand of dance music. Aaron is also a longtime meditator and Dharma practitioner in the Dharma Drum lineage of Chan Buddhism, and is a passionate devotee of GuanYin Bodhisattva. In this episode we talk about: How to relate to sticky stories and emotions How to face unpleasant feelings The 5 hindrances (that's a Buddhist list of the main problems that arise in meditation) and how sneaky they can be The potential pitfalls of a "good sit" The role of right effort in meditation How expectations make us suffer Neurodivergence Working with shame (and how it differs from wise remorse) The connection between dancing and the Dharma (and why Dan is too self-conscious to dance) Join Dan's online community 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 On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025 http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Sponsors: Liquid IV: Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid I. V. Tear. Pour. Live More. Go to LiquidIV.com http://liquidiv.com/ and get 20% off your first order with code HAPPIER at checkout. AT&T: Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. Visit att.com/guarantee http://att.com/guarantee for details.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Dan Harris?

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

• 0:47Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today, we're going to talk about how to handle it when the voice in your head is an asshole. The ego can be a hatchery of all sorts of nasty beasts: self-criticism, self-aggrandizement, shame, desire, distraction, rage. I could go on. But the real question is, what do you do about it? My guests today are meditation teachers, also close friends personally, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. Seb is the author of a book called You Belong. Jeff and I co-authored a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Jeff is also the co-host of a podcast called The Mind Bod Adventure Pod. In this conversation, we talk about how to handle the voice in your head,

• 1:30Dan Harris?

  how to relate to sticky stories and emotions, how to face unpleasant feelings. We talk about a Buddhist list called the Five Hindrances. Those are the five main problems that tend to arise in meditation and how to deal with them. We talk about the potential pitfalls of a good sit, the role of what's called right effort in meditation, how hard should you try? How expectations make us suffer? Neurodivergence, working with shame, and how shame differs from wise remorse? And the connection between dancing... And the Dharma, and why I am often too self-conscious to dance. This conversation was recorded live at the annual meditation party retreat that Jeff, Seven, I co-host.

• 2:13Dan Harris?

  We've got another one coming up at the end of October, October 24th through 26th, at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. You can sign up at EOmega.org. I will put a link in the show notes. Two other things to say before we jump in. As you may know, paying subscribers over at Dan Harris get guided meditations that come along with every episode. Today's companion meditation is all about the value of spiritual friendship, having friends who also meditate, how powerful it is to do this stuff in the HOV lane. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, the wonderful Kyra Jewell-Lingo. If you sign up, you will get it in your inbox. Second thing to say, starting next week on September 2nd, all of our paid subscribers

• 2:58Dan Harris?

  will be able to meditate live on video with me and/or with the Teacher of the Month on Tuesday afternoons at 4:00 Eastern. We've been doing live guided meditations for a while, but now we're going to do them weekly and at a set time, Tuesday afternoon at 4:00 Eastern. That's the plan indefinitely. Our Teacher of the Month in September is going to be Vinnie Ferraro, who's amazing. The September 2nd event, which again is at 4:00 Eastern, will be both me and Vinnie. As you can see, a big theme that's emerging from all of the words coming out of my face during this introduction is community and the power of doing things together. It can sound like an empty cliche, but there's a ton of science to show that when you do

• 3:40Dan Harris?

  something like meditation as a group, either meditate together or just have friends who are also doing this stuff and take this shit seriously, it's incredibly powerful. So that's the theme running through today's episode, running through these live guided meditations that we're now do weekly. So join the party. Would love to have you part of this thing. DanHarris.com. Okay, we'll get started with Seven A and Jeff right after this.

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• 5:29Dan Harris?

  So thoughts and emotions, my friends, where are your thoughts and emotions at right now?

• 5:36Speaker 05

  I was thinking about, you know, I know some people can be really plagued by thoughts and have a lot of pernicious thoughts, and I've been there. But thoughts are such like a subtle layer that they're sneaky.

• 5:47Dan Harris?

  Very sneaky.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Like pernicious little like gnats or something that... I find it much easier to work with emotions because they're just so much more pronounced for me. And I can feel them in my body and have a relationship to them in a way. Thoughts feel much more ephemeral.

• 6:06Dan Harris?

  Slippery little fuckers.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, they are.

• 6:09Dan Harris?

  There's a nice little practice that Joseph Goldstein talks about. When you notice in meditation, thinking is happening, just kind of go...

• 6:19Dan Harris?

  Usually it for me, at least I catch it after the fact. Go looking for the thought. Just look, look, see where is it now? And that for me, like helps me kind of get my arms around what these things are and are not. And that to use his little phrase, they're little more than nothing. And there are these quantum bursts of energy in the mind and they pass through. And then if you go looking for it, that's a little bit liberating to look and realize that I had this thought. It was a very compelling thought about murdering somebody. And now it's not here anymore, you know, and I'm not re-upping it. I can see the insubstantiality of it and that is really freeing.

• 6:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the, the power of thoughts that you, you don't do that with.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  That keep coming back and that, you know, some people take those murderous thoughts to extremes.

• 7:10Dan Harris?

  I was filming a session recently with Joseph and our mutual friend Sam Harris for Sam's app. And Sam said this thing, I thought was perfect. I'm going to mangle it a little bit, but it was like unexamined thoughts are everything.

• 7:27Speaker 06

  Everything.

• 7:27Dan Harris?

  Examined, they're little more than nothing. And that is just such a powerful.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, that is it.

• 7:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I mean, this is constantly, so this is my, my way into actually thinking about working with this is. Have you, you know, the term from neuroscience affective realism? Anyone know affective? It's like affective realism is, it's the phenomenon of when you're in a particular emotional state and you see everything through this, through the prism of that state. But that is the, you're in like a kind of mood tunnel. This is how the world is. Anyone relate to that? Like you're in a slightly bad mood, for example, and then it's like everyone just seems a little bit aggressive. They're a little bit not on your side, you know, things are a little bit crappy and in every way up and down the line.

• 8:08Dan Harris?

  Shit colored glasses.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  Shit colored glasses, yes. The famous saying goes, the shit you're wearing, yeah.

• 8:15Dan Harris?

  Shakespeare, yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  Shakespeare, from the old Saxon.

• 8:20Speaker 06

  So for me, I'm constantly in my life. And of course, it's the relationship between the thought and the feeling, right? Like you have a feeling and the feeling of just like, I don't know, being trapped in your life. And then you have these thoughts that go with that feeling of being trapped. And like, and then those thoughts reinforce that feeling of being trapped. It's like, all of a sudden, you're, this is the sort of cycle in which you're going through your days, your weeks, your months. And you never, other things can happen in your life, but you never really totally come out of the tunnel. And so for me, the practice is being able to actually be patient enough to begin to see what is the thing, the thing that I'm in. And I find that very, very, very hard, like, because it's not, often it's not obvious. It's like a whale that comes up from underneath and like, you think you're swimming on the open ocean.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  And then all of a sudden, this whale comes up and then swallows you up. And you're swimming and you're inside the belly of the whale. And you think you're in the present, but the whale's swimming off this way to like, you know, Panama or something. And you're gone that way. And like, what takes you away?

• 9:18Dan Harris?

  I mean, I've heard you use that whale analogy and it comes up in my own practice a lot. I think about this whale analogy where I do a lot of walking meditation. And, you know, I'll be reasonably mindful of what I'm seeing and the sensations in the body and sounds in the environment. And then a thought, I get on some train of thought. And then I wake up for a minute, I realize, yes, for the last five minutes, the whale swallowed reality. You know, I was just, I'm not here anymore. And it's, that's never going to stop. Like, you're always going to get carried away. So it's taken me ten or so years to not get upset about carrying it away.

• 9:55Dan Harris?

  And to instead get interested, like, wow, it's so interesting that thoughts, the whale can come along and hijack you so thoroughly. So you are no longer here.

• 10:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say in a lot of ways, the more intense moments in my life have provided kind of that focus in that makes practice easier. And it's the more mundane, just being carried, carried away in the busyness of life. That's my, my challenge, actually. I've sort of.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  Hone the skill to work with the challenges more, or the intensity more. And I get caught up in the busyness of my life and, you know, friends and community and family.

• 10:40Speaker 06

  Which is its own whale.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  It is its own whale.

• 10:42Speaker 06

  The compulsive busyness, the urgency to do, do, do.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  So it's not as distressing in some ways. It's not the distress of the emotional challenges, but it has a pernicious quality to it because it's almost like thoughts that just kind of take you away into the nothingness.

• 11:00Dan Harris?

  Let's do a little open mic, and this includes folks joining us online and in the room.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, we'd love to know what you shared, what's up for you now. We'll open up, open up the floor.

• 11:13Dan Harris?

  Okay, well, yeah, we've got somebody online. Let's do it. Hey, what's your name?

• 11:18Speaker 07

  My name's Amy.

• 11:19Dan Harris?

  Hey, Amy.

• 11:20Speaker 07

  So it's amazing the stories we tell ourselves.

• 11:24Speaker 07

  And when you've had these stories, thoughts, feelings for a long time, they take up root and they can be pretty sticky. And so I was just wondering if there's any guidance or direction for working with those bigger trauma pieces, which I know you pendulate. I know you go in, you go out. Is there guidance around that? A little more guidance?

• 11:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:51Dan Harris?

  It's a great question.

• 11:51Speaker 06

  A really good question. Working with the particularly sticky stories that feel like they're just like these core narratives in your life, often connected to core wounds and challenges. And how do you get away from those stories? How do you get space around those stories?

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know,

• 12:10Speaker 05

  thank you for that question. And I'm sure all of us can relate to some degree. And it's hard to know exactly what each of us are talking about when we're saying kind of stories and trauma. But to me, that points to the fact that meditation is not the only tool.

• 12:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  And this is where we bring in therapy.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  Community, other healing modalities and practices to understand what's going on for us. Because we, we all hold stories and trauma and challenges differently. And for some of us, they, they show up as panic attacks. For some of us, they show up as re-traumatizing energies or events. For some of us, they're, they're just kind of patterns that aren't necessarily really acute in our lives, but keep sort of these waves that take us off course, or the whale that kind of is constantly turning us. And so depending on what's showing up, we, we have to kind of understand which tool. So we're not going to use a hammer on a screw.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  And we're not going to, you know, try and cut grass, a field of grass with scissors. Like, we, we really need to understand what, what's needed in that moment. I'm curious if you're working with really strong feelings, or if you were working with stories that were more like thoughts that keep coming up and going away.

• 13:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's more thoughts. There, it's, it's like the patterning of these thoughts that just keep coming up. Oh, you, you know, also I'll say to myself, okay, so don't go so close. You know, because it almost feels like this wall just comes up again.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:48Speaker 07

  And I am, I am working, you know, with, with a therapist and have been for a while, which is helpful. And I know that it, it needs to be done slowly. Um, and so, you know, leaning into yourself and providing that, that, that's, that friend that you would like to be for, for yourself, is something that really resonates. And at the same times, it's really hard to do that.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. Hmm. Do you find that there are certain practices or techniques that have helped with that? Like, some people use IFS, which uses parts work, internal family systems. Some people do journaling, dialogic journaling with themselves, or talk therapy versus somatic therapy. What have you tried?

• 14:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, talk therapy, that's been what I've gone to. Now... I feel like it would be helpful to be in a group where there are people that are sharing similar stories. That's not something I've done before.

• 14:46Speaker 05

  And do you feel like there's a group in terms of like similar experiences or a meditation group that you?

• 14:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think a meditation group. Because I'm curious, you know, I'm at that point where I can say, yes, I'm ready to dip more than just a little baby toe, you know?

• 15:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's great.

• 15:05Speaker 07

  Put a little more, a little green there.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  I mean, I definitely find that the skills of meditation really, really help with this. You know, and they help in different kinds of ways. They help like the compassion part of meditation is just such a, you know, when I'm in a story that I, that's an old, old story, like to be able to draw on that tool, which I didn't have for a long time is incredible. Like it can really settle me and stop me from the story from going deeper. It's like, I haven't gotten rid of some stories, but I can see when they're, when they, I can prevent them from kind of going off the rails. Just through the act of noticing it's happening and, and putting, bringing in some compassion and not needing to change it and realizing that everyone's got stories. I've got stories, of course they're there. So that, that framing.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  And then I feel like the trickling down, you know, just the equanimity of just the constant accepting yourself, accepting what's here, can soften and loosen that sometimes too. So, I have really benefited from specific targeted therapy around certain things, but other times I've just noticed that certain stories, like stories about alienation around my family of origin, for example, it's just kind of, I never did any specific therapy around it, just through practice, just through accepting, just through compassion, it just got less authoritative. And that just happened organically through the, the long, you know, act I've been practicing for 20 years and, meditation. So I, I really think that that it is very supportive for that too, but it's about being patient for that process.

• 16:35Speaker 07

  I think for the type A personalities.

• 16:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 07

  Than that. Kind of thing on your own and you're, you know, that patience piece is.

• 16:44Speaker 06

  It's hard. Yeah. But you said it too, like chatting, having people to talk about it with, like community, that's one of these I find so great about, oh my gosh, you realize everyone's got their story, everyone's got their thing. And it's, it's like, I get so isolated as a parent, imagining that my kids, our problems are, no one's ever had the problem of challenging toddlers before. Like, I'm like, I really, I'm a pioneer in this problem. And then I get my, I like, look around and to talk to some parent friends and I'm like, oh, oh, you're really, you're a much worse parent than me, thank God.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I mean, just the human connection of like, oh man, okay, we can do this together. And that, that is healing too.

• 17:26Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, thank you.

• 17:29Speaker 06

  No, thank you. It's a great, who can relate to that question? The stories are good. I mean, everybody. Thank you.

• 17:36Dan Harris?

  Do we have a question in the room? Okay, that's somebody right there.

• 17:40Speaker 08

  It's not really a question. I was just gonna share, I did something a little different. I'm Kelly.

• 17:44Dan Harris?

  Hi Kelly.

• 17:45Speaker 08

  Hi. After the morning session, I pretty much spent like the entire break like bawling my head off in my room. And I was like, mm, I think, I don't know what's going on. Who knew coming to a weekend meditation party, there'd be so much meditation?

• 18:04Dan Harris?

  Wait, is this you guys telling us to change our programming?

• 18:10Speaker 08

  I mean, I, I thought I was doing pretty well over the past few years, but like, wow, this is a lot of meditation.

• 18:17Speaker 08

  This time, I decided to try doing it without closing my eyes. And I looked at the little sliver of trees out there and kept my eyes open the whole time, which I always thought, oh, that's not the real way, or that's not correct, or whatever. But I found I could stay instead of having to titrate back out so often by doing that. And I thought that was odd. I actually counted the breath, which I never do, but I tried the one to 10 and then again. And I found I could stay longer just with the concentration point without wanting to crawl out of my skin like I do a lot of times. So I don't know if that's helpful. That's not a question. But anyway.

• 19:02Speaker 06

  That is helpful. It's good to, because actually having eyes open is a great way to work with thinking. That's why in a lot of Tibetan practices is gaze open, soft gaze, just sense of space and like the visual world crowds out as opposed to your eyes closed. It's so much easier to go off into your thinking. So for that exact reason, that's a way in which a lot of people practice and it's super legit to understand that that it works for you.

• 19:25Dan Harris?

  Yeah, also just to say, Kelly, you could have had the emotions in your room and then bailed, but you stayed. So.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  I just want to say that's also why walking practice and standing practice can be helpful too. You know, just to, we have this idea that practice has to be full Lotus, eyes closed, you know, perfectly still. And that, that's really just, that's a made up idea and it's, it's not the truth. So, so please try all these practices and see how they, they work for you.

• 20:01Dan Harris?

  Just to build on that, I know I talk about Joseph Goldstein a lot. In doing annual retreats with him, you know, he is really increasingly focused on the walking meditation and not even necessarily the super slow walking, just kind of like a slow-ish walking. And as Jeff said, that is actually a really great place as your body is moving through space for, at least for me, to, to see the, to catch thinking in the act. So yeah, play with all this stuff and, and keep coming back. I know we have, we have a gentleman with a mic right there. Yeah. What's your name?

• 20:36Speaker 09

  Hi, my name is Greg.

• 20:37Dan Harris?

  Hey Greg.

• 20:38Speaker 09

  I have a question about home base and then looking at traumatic things, unpleasant things and coming back. And, um, you know, sometimes I wonder if I'm not just trying to push the things away, if I'm trying to stuff unpleasant feelings. And I wanted to just ask how is a good way to know the difference here? Experience the difference and how to work with that.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Do you mean by coming back that you're trying to push them away? Or?

• 21:11Speaker 09

  Yeah, maybe by coming back, I'm trying to push them away. Like, I'm trying to shrug off stuff that it may be worth looking at more.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  So I offer the going back for when it gets challenging. You know, if it, when, if it, if there's a lot of emotion coming up and it's like, oh, gosh, I don't, I need to, like, then, then it's like, that's the time it's like, okay, maybe I'll just move over to here. And that might be, you're not trying to wash it down. It's more like you're just shifting the, your real estate of your attention over to this other thing, trying to let yourself sink into that a little bit, like, and then when you're feeling a little bit more resource coming back, if it's coming up, but it's, if it's manageable, then you're right. The move, how do you know the movement of what it feels like? I mean, I always say, welcome. It's like, welcome to the party, welcoming it like, welcome, like, as if, like, Lily has a great saying with her,

• 22:02Speaker 06

  when she gets bummed out, depressed, she's like, welcome, queen, my queen, come, can I make you a space here on this, in this lounge, lay down, make yourself at home, like, this really, like, really inviting, like, really, and inviting by being curious, like, like, like, what are you, where is it, where is the sensation? Like, where, where is it, how's it changing? Like, really, um, kind of investigating, and the act of investigating is a kind of allowing of it. So there's a quality of, of kind of turning towards, and, and often it will expand. It could be like a thing where it expands and then kind of goes down again. But I'm aware of your point, like, you know, there is a subtlety there.

• 22:43Speaker 06

  And sometimes, like, sometimes we think, oh, I'm opening to this thing that I really hate. You're like, oh, here I am, irritation, I'm, I'm so open to you, I love you, irritation, you crappy little irritation thing. I really love you, pain, like, I really want to welcome you into this pain, which you've been, has been plaguing me for months. Come on, pain, I love you plaguing me for months, pain. So we're like, in other words, we're a little bit resisting what's here and we're not really letting it, we're not really welcoming, and then we get into this whole fight with it. So that's a good, I mean, that's kind of the practice is like noticing, like, being curious about exactly that line. Like, where is that line for me and am I doing this? And this might be a, a good opportunity to hand it over to Sebene, who have something.

• 23:30Speaker 06

  Else to say.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  Well, it's, it's, it points to what we wanted to talk about now, which was the hindrances. So there are considered to be five hindrances, right? Craving, aversion, restlessness, sloth, sleepiness, and doubt. And so we can have like a multiple hindrance attack and use all of them to try and manage and control our situation. So, yeah, we could have what Jeff was describing, sort of like, I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you. Or we could be thinking that we're being sneaky, like, I'll love you, so you'll go away. You know, I'll be with this back pain, so it'll stop. And so it's about understanding our own system and seeing what kind of tension or reactivity

• 24:17Speaker 05

  is there and softening that. So it's not about managing it or controlling it or bringing any more tightness to it, but really softening and seeing how much we can let things be and really allow. And so slowing down helps a lot. You know, this idea of like, oh, something's up, I'm not with it, let's go back to the breath, let's go back to home base. If there's any sort of reactivity, quickness happening, if I can just slow things down and be, as Jeff was saying earlier, get a little closer to what's happening, become even a little more intimate with it. You know, if it's not excruciatingly painful, physically or emotionally, can, can I just be with this? Can I be with it a little longer? Can I allow this?

• 25:02Speaker 05

  So bringing that kindness, I, I sometimes use two phrases, what's happening right now? And can I allow this? What's happening right now? Oh, okay, there's fear. Can I, can I allow it? Can I have a little bit more space? So that ease, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, peace is not the destination, peace is the way. So bringing that peacefulness, that allowing attitude to exactly what we're looking at is, is the practice. I was, I don't know if I said this, and I said it to you, Jeff, that many, many years ago, I noticed that creative and reactive are the same word, the C just moves.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  And I was like, oh, what's the C? And there's so many C words, you know, connection, calm, consciousness, clarity, compassion. We're kind of employing all of those, courage. But I never noticed until the ride up here that the R moves. You know, I hadn't thought of it that way. And the R, it's not like reactivity at the front. It's really relaxed, you know, and receptive. So that's really the move we're making. Instead of this reactive, like, let me fix it, let me do something. It's this relaxing, sitting back and allowing what's happening. And then making the choice to bring our attention back to home base or stay with whatever is difficult from that place

• 26:24Speaker 05

  that's less speedy and sort of amped up, you know, with vigilance.

• 26:30Dan Harris?

  Just to say, embedded in your question is a lot of mindfulness, that you're even aware that you may be threading aversion into your alleged mindfulness. That is a lot of interest, the opposite of delusion. So I think you deserve more credit than you might be giving yourself. If somebody over here, yeah, Gillian.

• 26:50Speaker 10

  Hi, I guess I would just like you to comment on what I'm going to share that I was very curious about. I was sharing with Jeff at the break that this morning I had a lot of, and yesterday, a lot of the message of I'm not good enough and tears and a lot of crap. And then this afternoon, I had a, what? Somebody talked about labeling and I had a beautiful meditation. I didn't have any of that. In fact, I had memories of two beloved people. One in 1995 and 2015, both died in my arms.

• 27:33Speaker 10

  I had no pain, I had no tears. And I wasn't avoiding it either. I was with it, I was. And so what I'm, what I'm curious about is the juxtaposition between this morning and this afternoon. One of my people outside wondered if it was because we had meditated a long time this morning. But like, how can I conjure that up? Because I would rather have this afternoon.

• 28:08Dan Harris?

  The first hindrance is craving, right? So the fucked up thing about meditation is it's like a video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. So you have to be in this open receptive mode. And so, yeah, you can be in bliss and then you could be, as my friend Sam says, on the top of Mount Shame within an afternoon. And I think the only sane way to view it is they're all just passing mind states. You know, it's meteorology. It's not something you want to strive for or cling to. I sometimes say to myself on meditation retreats, if I'm suffering, there's something I'm not mindful of.

• 28:52Dan Harris?

  And if you can be mindful of even the shitty morning sit and all the stories, there's actually not much pain in it. I don't know, where did I go wrong in that?

• 29:02Speaker 06

  No, no, it's awesome. I was just thinking that, you know, progress in meditation is, it's very mysterious. It's kind of nonlinear. It's like two steps forward, one step back, three steps to the side, and then this weird detour over here, and then something, you know, it's like watching the Northern Lights, you know, the way they move. And but having said that, there is a tendency over time for more healing. And I feel like that's, you're touching on that experience is something that is a core, very important part of why we practice, which, and there's different words for it. And sometimes in the contemplation, they talk about purification. It always sounds kind of creepy and religious to me, like whoosh involves like chains or something, but it's real.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  It's the more, and it has to do with the equanimity. My teachers talk about having a complete experience. If you can have a complete experience with something, so an experience of some, of deep sadness, an experience of your breath, but you're fully, you're present, you're settled, you're concentrated, you're clear, and you're fully equanimous with it, then it's like, there's, it's like the neurons fire, but they don't wire. Like, there's no buildup. There's in fact the opposite, like not only do you not create a new reactivity around it, you start to like metabolize old patterns and there's a sense of things clearing out and and all of a sudden, there's this real sense of kind of peace or sacredness or

• 30:28Speaker 06

  this big, open intimate space of that allows us to be with more and more. And that is the direction that practice takes us. That's very real. So that's a very, and it's just that you can't, it can't be bottled on and, and you know, chugged on command. You don't get a choice in when it's gonna, when those experiences are happening or when, but practice makes you, it's like the old adage, like, uh, awakening is always an accident and meditation makes you accident prone, you know? The, the, the more you are, the more you practice, the more those things are part, I mean, I have those experiences quite often.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  And can I just say, again, it's our relationship to what's happening. So the emotions can be arising.

• 31:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  The grief, grief is not bad. Grief is a sign that we've loved, you know?

• 31:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  And so the, you can go to a wake or sit shiva or in Hamaric, we call it lakso, and have these amazing experiences of deep, deep sadness and then deep joy because everybody's telling jokes about the dead person, you know? And it's, it's amazing to have that kind of like extremes and not even an afternoon in the space of 10 minutes. And it's the, it's the breadth of human experience and all of it is human. But our relationship to it is we can make it problematic. And the hindrances, I love what you said, Dan, like if you're suffering, then you're not mindful. Because the hindrances are unconscious reactivity to our life.

• 31:57Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  But it's not that, so craving is basically like a reactive grabbing at. It's not like we don't choose in our life. We choose things. We choose them consciously and creatively without reactivity. Aversion is an unconscious, like, turning away from something. But we can turn away from things in our lives, consciously and creatively. So all of the hindrances have their intelligence to them. Doubt has skepticism. We can be discerning without just dismissing everything that we don't understand or don't like. And restlessness, we can be excited about things, but not in a way that is not conscious and just agitated all the time.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  And we can get rest. But we don't need to numb out because we don't want to pay attention. There's something that we don't want to see. So there's sort of a conscious way we can relate to our life. And then there's an unconscious reactive way that we just sort of have habituated.

• 33:00Dan Harris?

  I can't remember if I told this story last time, but apropos of Aquiline's enjoyment of pleasant sit in the afternoon, that I was on a retreat with just a couple of friends a couple of years ago, maybe four years ago, me and two friends. And we had a teacher with us. It was during the pandemic, so the retreat centers weren't open. And one of my friends is a very experienced meditator. And he's this tall German guy with a booming Darth Vader kind of voice. And the other is a little bit newer to meditation. And we had a teacher with us, and at some point, we're all talking about our practice. And the newer meditator, Josh, was rhapsodizing about had this incredible sit in the morning.

• 33:42Dan Harris?

  And the German guy out of nowhere, just didn't even lift his head, just said, "You will never experience that again."

• 33:55Speaker 11

  But you might.

• 33:57Dan Harris?

  It's a verbal version of slamming somebody with a stick. We have a question online. Let's go there.

• 34:06Speaker 12

  Hey. Hi guys, I'm Ben. Hey Ben. I'm from New York City. I really appreciate the time this weekend and especially this container has felt very potent. I appreciate the invitation to welcome such gripping and sneaky and elusive objects of meditation like emotions and thoughts. I think for a long time I would use meditation as a way to bypass, as has been said quite a bit. I would bypass negative feelings. And I wanted to ask you guys about thoughts because emotions feel far more accessible, right? You can welcome irritability, the energetic wash of irritability and you can feel, you can neutralize it, it can turn to pleasure.

• 34:49Speaker 12

  When you stop labeling it as negative, the resistance, when that subsides, it's, you kind of can dive into an ocean of a different color of experience, which I find very hopeful, I guess. But with thoughts, the mechanics don't make sense to me because I oftentimes get lost in them. I don't know how to explore a thought without the whale swallowing me. I don't know how to explore a thought without just another thought.

• 35:20Speaker 12

  And then you're in that fun house. And I was just curious how, I can certainly bypass my thoughts with the practice, but I was curious how you use it to actually explore them.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  We were talking about this, Jeff and I, you know, I, as I mentioned before, I find it hard to work with thoughts in a way exactly as you described Ben, and that was really eloquent, the way you laid that out. And so I often just kind of label them and drop them if it's possible, if they're not pernicious, kind of returning things. But then they're usually attached to an emotion or something that's bubbling up. And so I just ask, you know, is this useful? Like I'm here again. And it is, sometimes it's just the seesaw in the most gentle way I can without like rejecting them, you know, just kind of drop the thought. And I don't know how else to say it, except the classical teachings use the language

• 36:18Speaker 05

  of is this wholesome or unwholesome? You're basically just categorizing your thoughts over and over again. That language doesn't really work for me wholesome and unwholesome. It feels antiquated and sort of religiously judgmental, but useful and not useful is helpful for me. And that categorization, I'm not a, I'm not a big noter, labeler, but with thoughts that just keep coming, that seems like the, the best way besides just watching them pass. You know, if the same thought is going, coming up, then I'm like, this is not useful. Like, let me change the channel, let me go to my breath. How to do that without the reactivity we were just describing is just this subtle practice of knowing your own system.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  But I'd love to hear what Jeff and Jan have to say.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  I mean, I love all of that. And I, I mean, I find it's just, it's very hard working with thoughts and it's easier when you're more settled. Your things are just a little more still, more settled, then you're more likely to see it. But for me, what's made the difference is my teacher Shinzen has a way to work with thoughts where see in, feel in, hear in. It's very specific and very targeted. And you literally start by, and often I teach this, start by, you know, closing your eyes and like visualizing a teddy bear. Like where do you see, you can try this all right now. Let's close our eyes for a moment and like visualize a teddy bear. Like where do you quote, see the teddy bear? Is there a teddy bear more on the right side of your visual space, more on the left, the center? Is there, is it very clear or is it super washed out?

• 37:51Speaker 06

  Is it more the idea of a teddy bear? Is it not even spatial? Is it that you're, you know, so that's like, you, you can begin to kind of get clear about image space, like how images appear to you, which is one form of thinking. And then, and so there's a practice around getting clear with that. And then the next thing is the same with inner talk. You say to yourself in your head, you say teddy bear. You can try it right now. You can, this sounds ridiculous, you close your eyes, you say, don't just say it, yell teddy bear inside your own head. There, wherever you heard, could heard teddy bear is at least one place. Try it again. Where you hear a thought. And so often in that exact space, there is talking. Talking you don't even realize is there until you tune into the frequency. It's not just there, other places too.

• 38:35Speaker 06

  But you can actually, and then feel is just sort of like a body's emotional body sensation. And so those three are constantly pinging off each other. They're, they're, they're in relationship going around and responding, they're reactive, they're responding to sounds and things happening in the world. So you can close your eyes and you could track image, talk, feel, and just track that. You can develop, I've felt so much clarity around my thinking process through that. So that's a specific way in. It's not a traditional kind of, it's a more, a good example of a more contemporary technique from a really ingenious Buddhist teacher. So that would be another suggestion. If you like working with thoughts, yeah, thank you.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  And Dan, you said something earlier about how to...

• 39:14Dan Harris?

  Yeah, there's a trio of, of things that came to mind from, from Joseph. I'll continue to steal from him. One is, just as I said earlier, just this move of just investigating, what is a thought? You had the thought, you're now awake. And so you have this decision, which of course is a little bit thought-based. So it's a, it's sticky, but to look for that, that last thought. And there's nothing to find. And that, it's again, another case of in the not finding is the finding. Two other little Josephisms that are helpful for me at least, and you should just play with it and see what works for you is, one is especially with repetitive intrusive thoughts, dead end. And it doesn't, you really want to make sure it's not coming from a hostile place.

• 39:59Dan Harris?

  But just like, it, it's a, it's a version of, is this useful? Dead end. And then another is up and out, up and out. You know, just I don't need to get entangled with this. It's up and out. So yeah, our job is to make a menu for you and then you can pick what you want to order.

• 40:17Speaker 06

  Oh, that's very helpful. Thank you.

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 40:22Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Seb and Jeff talk about how to be with your thoughts as opposed to bypassing them. We talk about some of my favorite Josephisms, expressions I got from Joseph Goldstein. We introduce a new teacher into the mix, a guy who's super, super interesting, Aaron Schultz. And we talk about dancing as a practice and we drill down into why dancing is so uncomfortable for me.

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• 42:17Speaker 05

  So we should shift gears now?

• 42:19Speaker 11

  Yeah, because we have a special guest we're going to introduce.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  Yes, we want to bring up Aaron Schultz.

• 42:24Speaker 11

  Hey, Aaron, welcome. Hey, buddy.

• 42:29Speaker 11

  This is for you. Good to see you.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  So I don't know how many of you saw that Aaron got added to this party. He's a longtime friend of mine. I've known him for about 12, 12 years.

• 42:42Speaker 11

  12, 13 years, yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  And a deep Dharma practitioner, that's how I met him. When I met him, he was doing deep Jhana studies, concentration practice. He's been a devoted student of devotional practices. He's a devotee of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Has done multiple pilgrimages to Taiwan, China.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Nepal, India, so just a really, really deep practitioner. But in his day life, in his day job, he is one of the most popular and active DJs in Brooklyn and also the co-owner of two record labels, legendary record labels, Bastard Jazz and Wonder Wheel, and plays a really incredible eclectic variety of music, funk, jazz, acid jazz, house, soul, R&B, world music. He's the producer of one of my favorite bands, Al Sarr and the New Batones, which he took me to go see live. And yeah, we're just really, really honored and delighted to have him here. Thank you for being here.

• 43:53Speaker 15

  Yeah, thank you.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  He's also, he's also, for this party and the last party, lent us some of his music. So the music that you hear in between sessions is all from Aaron's two record labels.

• 44:06Speaker 15

  Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here with you, Seb and Dan and Jeff.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you.

• 44:12Speaker 15

  It's a great pleasure.

• 44:13Speaker 05

  And as a DJ for over 25 years?

• 44:17Speaker 15

  Yeah, maybe more.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  Wow. DJing around the world, every time I ask Aaron, you know, hey, how's it going? Oh, I'm in Japan, I'm in Ibiza, I'm in, he's DJed in some amazing places. And you've witnessed a lot of people dancing or not dancing.

• 44:35Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  So we wanted to bring him up for this conversation around, you know, what does it mean to dance as a practice, dance as part of life? And why so many of us are uncomfortable with it? Why it brings up a lot of the hindrances, you know, aversion, doubt, immediate sloth and torpor, restlessness, like to get out of here and get away.

• 45:03Speaker 15

  Totally.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 15

  Well, you know, I'll start just by saying this was a conversation you and I had said recently that was just kind of like when, when we talked about this, I was like, whoa, all of our ancestors, no matter who we are, where we come from, I'm somehow half Saudi and half Polish, which I don't know, like, I might be the only one. But both sides of my, my background use dance. Everybody in this room. Your ancestors used dance to to connect to freedom.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  And not even that long ago, like in the 50s, everybody danced.

• 45:35Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  You know, it's pretty recent that people have become so uncomfortable with dance. Why, what do you, have you noticed that, you guys?

• 45:43Speaker 06

  Well, I noticed that people are uncomfortable with dance, yeah. I mean, I know, I think it's, I always, this is one thing we want to kind of get at, like, I find it to be such a fertile ground for for tracking and noticing self-consciousness, you know, about feeling safe in groups and the norms that we put on ourselves. And because I I was like that, you know, when I first started going out to dance parties and things, I was very self-conscious, you know, and I would just, uh, you know, I'd prefer to kind of more be in the background and see what was going on. And if I had to put my finger on what it was, I guess I just felt like I would be judged or like I wasn't good at it and I was gonna be, because I wasn't good at it, I was gonna be judged. And it was also in a self-conscious space.

• 46:25Speaker 06

  It wasn't like a space of like, it was all young people, it was a particular, there was a kind of energy of like, you know, being cool or something like that. And those were the things that I was carrying with me. And I didn't have an experience growing up of of being with family dancing and having some tradition that made it okay, you know? Um, so I don't know, I'm just curious for other people too, like, why is it that, you know, eventually I got over it because I just started spending more and more time there and I would do my, and eventually now I really love dancing. But, I mean, what about you? What's your experience?

• 46:55Dan Harris?

  I'm self-conscious.

• 46:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so you want to drill into that a little bit?

• 46:59Dan Harris?

  Great.

• 47:00Speaker 06

  Like, maybe, like, maybe, just maybe do a stand-up and just give us a dance performance.

• 47:04Dan Harris?

  Yeah, slow dance, yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 06

  We'll be very, very quiet, we'll just be like.

• 47:08Dan Harris?

  Every time I dance around my son, he's like, Daddy, stop, you're embarrassing.

• 47:14Dan Harris?

  Uh, which, I get it.

• 47:18Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I, I, it's a lifelong thing, like, I, I, I envy people who have that. Can unlock and dance. I think it's awesome.

• 47:27Speaker 06

  What are you self-conscious about?

• 47:28Dan Harris?

  I think exactly what you said.

• 47:31Dan Harris?

  People are gonna judge me. I'm judging myself. I'm doing it bad, doing it wrong.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  You know, I think everyone has the capacity to dance, but it's really interesting with you, Dan, because you're a drummer.

• 47:40Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  I know, and you have an excellent sense of rhythm. And you're a good dancer. I've seen you dance. So it's not coming from like, you know, I'm not, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to find the beat, which can, can be a challenge, right? So it's something else that's happening for you.

• 48:05Speaker 06

  Is it you're afraid to unleash your raw masculinity on the floor?

• 48:10Speaker 06

  Is it too powerful?

• 48:11Dan Harris?

  Right. So masculine, I can't even take a pill.

• 48:16Dan Harris?

  That's virility. You know, maybe there's stuff around really getting the role, the mask of Anchorman in my molecules in some way. That's 30 years of doing that.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  Eyes on you, kinda.

• 48:30Dan Harris?

  I think there's probably some of that. But I, but I've played drums and, I mean, and around people and been totally comfortable. I feel a mastery of that, like, not that I'm that good, but like, I, I've been doing it since I was 10. And so I, I really do feel like I know what I'm doing. Dancing, I don't do that often.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  Aaron, what have you noticed, like, also culturally, because you, you DJ in so many different cultures and spaces?

• 48:56Dan Harris?

  Yeah. Probably not Saudi Arabia.

• 48:58Speaker 15

  No, no, although the Saudi Arabia thing is happening, but I'm not participating in it.

• 49:02Dan Harris?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 15

  You know, one of the things that I was just gonna point out is, you know, so many of us have such inhibitions to dance. Like, we're so self-conscious. We think the whole room is watching us.

• 49:13Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 15

  You know, but we can actually pay attention when we're on the dance floor and we can use our practice to really be in that moment. What are we paying attention to when we're on the dance floor? Are we looking at everybody else and being like, they're a bad dancer? No, we're thinking that everybody else is looking at us.

• 49:30Speaker 15

  You know, so if we can kind of, you know, my, my, my Dharma teacher, Guo Guo, he, he says this all the time. He says, your brain has never stepped one millimeter outside of your skull. So it's a great reminder that all of these inhibitions, all of these, all this self-consciousness that's going on, we're on the dance floor. That's just coming up because of causes and conditions inside our own minds. This is, this is our minds that are creating this. This isn't, isn't how reality actually is.

• 49:55Speaker 06

  Totally.

• 49:56Speaker 15

  So we can notice that.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. I do the daily trip on calm and one of the, my favorite ones is this one, slow dance. And I got this idea from years of doing parties, like we'd merge meditation and dance parties. And what was happening very naturally is people were coming in like myself, who were feeling very self-conscious around dance. And slow dance is an invitation basically to try to notice your own self-consciousness and actually dance with it. And, and so I want to kind of unpack what I meant by that because it's something I think we might try to play around with tonight. For those who are interested in exploring. When I say notice your self-consciousness, like you can kind of do this right now. You can imagine if you like, if you like, you can close your eyes for this for a second. And you can imagine that everyone is looking at you.

• 50:44Speaker 06

  Imagine, or maybe that's a little overwhelming, just imagine like someone nearby is kind of looking at you. And what do you notice about your experience when that happens? Imagine somebody's looking at you or you're imagining yourself in a, in a, giving a public talk suddenly and everyone's looking at you. For me, there's a sudden sense of more fullness in my face. I feel my face more, I feel more sensation in my face like flushed. I often have a visual of myself. If I think I'm being looked at, I'm actually looking at myself, imagining what I think they're seeing.

• 51:18Speaker 06

  You know, I have sensation in my body, maybe a feeling of a little bit of excitability or nervousness in my chest, maybe. So you let that go for a second, I don't want to make people uncomfortable. But when I say "dance with your own self-consciousness," what I mean is you can become aware of where in your experience you're experiencing self-consciousness. Where is the feeling around the face? Is it here? And you can actually begin to kind of like play with that, because that's the locus of what's self-conscious. You can decide to kind of move around it and kind of play with it, or notice it, or that's what I mean by kind of dance with it. Because what we're doing in the meditation practice is we're continually backing out

• 52:00Speaker 06

  of whatever tunnel or thing that we've collapsed into in order to find a bit more space. So there's a practice around moving with or dancing with the actual feeling of self-consciousness itself that is worth exploring. Do you see what I mean? Is that, are you able to connect to any of that? Absolutely. And there are other ways to make it okay. So there's that way. But another way is just like, you just go up there and act like an idiot. And you do it so fearlessly, and so that everyone else around you is suddenly feels like they have permission to do that themselves.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  What's the name for that? It's like the Jeff Warren method?

• 52:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what Warren has. Basically, you create the bar so low that absolutely everyone is able to limbo and just step right over it. That's a service. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. Absolutely. But it does do something. It's like, there's something about that in this teaching here, about there's something about that that makes it okay, you know?

• 52:58Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Seb, Jeff, Aaron, and I talk about the role of right effort in meditation. How hard should you try in meditation? We talk about the suffering that comes with expectations, neurodivergence, a helpful piece of feedback that we got from the audience for future meditation parties, and how to work with shame, and the difference between shame and wise remorse.

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• 53:58Speaker 05

  What, as a DJ, what have you noticed, like, helps that? Self-consciousness or?

• 54:05Speaker 15

  Um.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm sure you've... Substances, yeah. Okay, besides substances.

• 54:16Speaker 15

  I got you right away. I just wanted you to know. All I had to say was, um.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  But from your end, like, what are you doing exactly to?

• 54:27Speaker 15

  Um, well, you know, I'm not a big talker when I DJ. It's not something I normally do. But I think kind of just getting people into a groove, like, you know, it helps when the lights are low, it helps when there's a smoke machine, you know? It helps when, like, people, you know, have this kind of cloud around them that they think that nobody else is watching them. So like, and I think just, just getting into a groove with the music and, you know, people kind of dropping their inhibitions, you know? And then, for me, dance is freedom. It's, it's, it's an expression of freedom, right? And just to connect it to the Dharma, in the lineage I practice in, we believe that... What lineage is that? I practice in Chan. Chan, oh, cool. Yeah, which is the Chinese precursor to Zen. Oh, interesting. Um, in the lineage I practice in, um, we believe that everybody is inherently free. There's, there's nothing out there to get.

• 55:12Speaker 15

  You're, you're already enlightened, you know? And, and we meditate to uncover that. We meditate to get in touch with that. And for me, dance is an expression of that freedom that we all have inside of us. That, that, dance is an expression of that Buddha nature, that, that freedom, that freeness. I totally agree. And then, you know, I'm, I'm, I've been thinking a lot about connecting dance and Dharma, so I'm, I'm, you know? Yeah, that, that really kind of does it for me. It's totally fascinating to hear you talk about that connection. And I'm thinking a little bit about my wife.

• 55:40Dan Harris?

  She had gone through a tough period in her life and was just starting to like, she was leaving her job as a doctor and was had gone through some tough family stuff and was just trying to get into some version of self-care. I don't love that term, but and I dragged her one day to SoulCycle, which is, you know, like you can say what you want about SoulCycle, but what they do really well is turn the lights down. And she was in the back, I remember I was in the second row and she was like, I'm going in the back row, nobody can see me. And she had a big experience and started doing it every day, sometimes twice a day, you know, until she blew out her knees, you know, but that that that being in a dark space where you can't be judged,

• 56:23Dan Harris?

  but you also have the freedom to move your body and to cry and with music. Yeah. We've done it with you. Yeah. Yeah, and so there's a lot here.

• 56:33Speaker 15

  Yeah, I mean, we've all heard the old adage, dance like no one's watching, right? But do we actually embody that when we're dancing? Do we actually kind of have that top of mind? You know, that's so important. And there's, there's a movement out, out in the world right now called ecstatic dance. And it's just, and you'll notice, yeah, and it's just, it's just that. It's about being in a comfortable space and really dropping your inhibitions and allowing that freedom to flow through your movements.

• 56:57Speaker 06

  Totally. And that's a way to work with practice, too. It's like, that's the kind of the externalized, expressive, cathartic side. Like, the internal equivalent of welcoming your emotions and having equanimity and letting it pass is expressing your emotions, you know? Not acting them out on someone, but just letting it out, like screaming for glee. That's the kind of release that you get. But, you know, I mean, just also to say, we're talking about dancing, but we're also not talking about dancing. We're talking about our sense of limitations, the sense, the ideas of what we think we can do and what we can't do and what it really, what the fruit of this practice really is, which is more freedom. It is more liberation, more sense of possibility and being able to move in more areas of our life and more kinds of contexts and more kinds of situations.

• 57:40Speaker 06

  So, I mean, I think that's the real story of what we're talking about here. And, and so I feel like dance is just one example or one place. Coming to pushing yourself to come to a meditation retreat is pushing your limits, you know? Pushing yourself to be in a conversation in a pod of free when that's not necessarily your jam is like, you know, it's about exploring what it might be like to be in this new place and feel the edges of where that contraction is and can I dance with that, you know?

• 58:04Speaker 05

  And you know, to also acknowledge that it's not for everyone, just like we

• 58:09Speaker 15

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:10Speaker 05

  We also haven't touched in the power of music and sound, which doesn't play a lot into this form of meditation, but is happening a lot out in the world, a bigger understanding of the power of sound. You know, sound healing, sound meditations, and there's more and more research, a lot of scientific research on the healing power, the vibratory power of sound.

• 58:34Speaker 15

  I mean, one of my favorite meditation practices is contemplation of sound. And this is where you sit and you just listen without naming things. And that's entirely possible to do with music too, to not conceptualize what this music actually is. Just be with what's happening, just to listen, not name it, don't put a concept on it.

• 58:57Dan Harris?

  Beautiful.

• 58:58Speaker 15

  It's music, it's the universal connector.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, are there any questions or comments? Anyone scared off?

• 59:07Dan Harris?

  What's your name?

• 59:09Speaker 16

  Hey there, I'm Caitlin.

• 59:10Dan Harris?

  Hey Caitlin.

• 59:10Speaker 16

  I'm curious about right effort.

• 59:13Dan Harris?

  It's a big one.

• 59:14Speaker 16

  It's been my question like for each meditation, actually, because I've found myself super disappointed in how I'm feeling in these meditations. I feel like I'm just starting to feel the positive impact of like three years of practice. And I just found the forms of practice that are way more wiggly and adaptive to how fucking ADHD I am. And I now am like finding like I put down these practices where I have to be more still.

• 59:42Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 16

  And I came back and they're not where I put them.

• 59:44Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 16

  I'm like sitting in this space like, oh no, I'm too feral now. And I hear like friends of mine who are way further along in their practices. They're like teachers and awesome and they're kind of in like the branches of their trees, like doing all these weirder wiggly ways. And I'm feeling really good out there, but I kind of feel like I don't have the trunk. And I can't tell if it's the voice of like, you have to be less to be enough. That's been so much part of my like. ADHD experience that I can't really tell which voice I'm supposed to listen to when it comes to right effort, because it's also in the military. So like, all the fucking

• 1:00:30Speaker 16

  effort is the right effort.

• 1:00:31Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 1:00:32Speaker 16

  And so like, that experience of like, when do you know when you're coming up to your edge and you're being intellectually honest with yourself about, here's where I can like, pull back and preserve, or like, here's my invitation to learn more. Because I feel like at my vibration, there's probably so much more growth and learning in the stillness than there is in being the feral bitch I am. There's like, the actual learning of like, the medicine and adapting. Anyway, so it's the same question. And then the same thing now with dancing is like, how do you learn when you're being self-protective well, where

• 1:01:14Speaker 16

  you're kind of like, copping out a little bit? Yeah, that, that, that, it's like, right effort and judgment of self, I guess, kind of like, in one.

• 1:01:23Dan Harris?

  Well, I'm going to defer a little bit to Jeff as our resident expert in ADHD. But the, the one thing I just hear right off the top, and I, I'm not in your head, so I'm just guessing, but I'm, and I'm projecting, honestly. The one thing I hear is the, potentially, the suffering that can come from expectations, which are the worst thing you can bring to the meditation party. Because, and it's not your fault, we all do it. It's very natural. But if, if you're expecting a certain flavor of sit or some sort of performance on the cushion, it's just fucked from the jump, right? Because you're, you wanting to control reality instead of being settled back and receiving whatever's happening. So the measure

• 1:02:07Dan Harris?

  of a quality sit is not the experience, it's, are you awake for whatever the experience is? So if you can just reframe it, and believe me, I mean, I've not even, I haven't even been meditating that long, maybe 15 years, but 15 years in, I'm still messing this up all the time. I need to be reminded over and over again. So I think I'm hearing that in what you're saying. So I want to maybe offer you that reminder if it's useful.

• 1:02:31Speaker 16

  Yeah, that's useful.

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was, actually, I think that's a really great point. And I think I can build on that a tiny bit, just because of the ADHD, because I have ADHD and the trunk... Of practice is not sitting in stillness. The trunk is whether you're being present. It's the it's the accepting that this is what's happening, bringing renunciating the thought and coming back to this chosen thing to be with. And in life, there's always going to be something that's going to overwhelm your capacity to stay still. You know, there's going to be physical pain, discomfort, in the case of ADHD, just this incredible buoyancy and amount of energy coming through. And so there's a place to sit in that and accept that that's happening. And then there's a place to decide, OK, that's enough. Now I need to move.

• 1:03:16Speaker 06

  So often for ADHD folks, I suggest more of a movement practice anyway. You know, I do more, I spend more time doing a movement practice than I do doing practice in stillness, whether it's yoga, swimming, whether it's qigong, whether it's, you know, I love, and it's like the principle is move at the speed of awareness, like tracking the, and I'm being present with what's happening in my body, and I need to move and I like to move. Or I'm dancing. And I think that's perfectly fine because the skills, we're not building up a capacity to sit in stillness, we're building a capacity to be present with what's here. So you got to work with how you're wired. So I say, go hang out on the edges of the trees there, you know, and make some monkey sounds because that sounds pretty fun to me.

• 1:03:59Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I saw a hand go up. What's your name?

• 1:04:02Speaker 17

  Uh, Maran.

• 1:04:03Dan Harris?

  Hey, Maran.

• 1:04:04Speaker 17

  Hi, it's great to be here.

• 1:04:05Dan Harris?

  Thanks for coming.

• 1:04:06Speaker 17

  Two things, just building on the person who was speaking before, I was, when we were outside, I was saying, this is the first time I've been meditating for, I could tell you, like, January 2, 2023. Like, I remember the day I started with your app. But I have never meditated sitting down. I lie down, I walk, I do the dishes. I'm very ADHD, so I really love Jeff. But I've never, you know, meditated just sitting down and I was really nervous about that coming here. I do still have to stand up and it helps me. It doesn't, I feel like it helps me, you know, stay with it.

• 1:04:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Speaker 17

  But what I was really wanting to talk about is dance and a totally different, I have a totally different take on how people can be comfortable dancing and why people oftentimes don't feel comfortable. And I think it's the pressure of exactly what you guys are talking about, like you are expressing yourself, it's freedom, it's like, these are very lofty ideas, but I think when we talk about all of our ancestors danced, and I'm just making this up now, but like, they weren't doing free expression. I think they were learning the steps and the moves of their traditions. So it was really about like collective movement, right? And so you're not out there on your own going like, ooh,

• 1:05:29Speaker 17

  I gotta come up with something original, you know, like I really gotta express my own uniqueness, you know? So I think for next time, maybe, what you could do is hire someone who gets up there and says, we're gonna do, put on Beyonce and we're gonna do like a line dance, we're all gonna learn it. Or like square dancing.

• 1:05:47Speaker 15

  Who says how I'm doing that?

• 1:05:49Speaker 17

  Right?

• 1:05:51Speaker 15

  Brilliant, by the way.

• 1:05:53Speaker 17

  So anyway, that's my idea.

• 1:05:54Dan Harris?

  All right.

• 1:05:55Speaker 05

  That is brilliant. That's such a good point. That is brilliant.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you. And we actually said exactly that, you know, that people learn their folk dances and...

• 1:06:07Speaker 15

  People are welcome to do a conga line tonight. Like, you are more than welcome to get a conga line going.

• 1:06:11Dan Harris?

  Can you play the Macarena?

• 1:06:13Speaker 15

  I don't have it, unfortunately, Dan.

• 1:06:19Dan Harris?

  We have somebody online now. Hello?

• 1:06:22Speaker 18

  Hey, this is Melissa.

• 1:06:24Dan Harris?

  Hey, Melissa.

• 1:06:25Speaker 18

  So I wanted to, this is something, Dan, you referenced, and Jeff, you referenced earlier. I also have, I have three boys and the eldest, who's 16, is neurodivergent. So you'll only think better than two boys is three boys. And what you, Jeff, specifically hit on something and you went past it, which is shame. And so, you know, you were talking about, you know, you're dealing with the kids and you sort of...

• 1:06:58Speaker 18

  Feel something and you're sort of okay and then, you know,

• 1:07:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 18

  React essentially, right? And then obviously it eventually dies down. And to me, the shame is excruciating.

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  Excruciating.

• 1:07:13Speaker 18

  And it's like, listen, these kids, they're like on to the next thing.

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:19Speaker 18

  You know, none of them are like, oh, my God, mom is horrible. She hates us. She's a whatever, right? They're on to the next thing and I am in the shame, right? And that, and you know, it's coming and you see it and it leaves scar tissue for me.

• 1:07:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 18

  And, you know, my, again, he's my eldest, who's Nordevergen is sixteen, almost seventeen. Like, I've been at this for a long time.

• 1:07:46Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:07:47Speaker 18

  And man, I know lots of hacks and lots of tricks and this is what has brought me here. But man, that shame is real and I don't know how to deal with it.

• 1:07:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. My trauma therapist says, if there's shame, there's trauma. That the worst things I feel there is to harm myself or to harm somebody else, you know, are the most shameful things I feel. And the most violent impulses, you know, bring up the most shame. So like, that's specifically what we work with in our trauma sessions. And in the moment, I, what I do is self compassion. And I, so I don't, so, because I had the same tendency, like I'd do something and, or I, I just act like an idiot and I'm just so, there it comes, you know, and I just do. Now I catch it earlier and earlier. It's like, okay, buddy. I try to treat myself exactly how I treat my boys.

• 1:08:39Speaker 06

  You know, I see that little guy in there who's just trying to do the best he can and had a lot of hardship when he was younger. And it's like, you know, I, I, I do that again, again, again. And I, and the more I've done it, the faster that response happens. And, and I do that with this, the shit, the shit, to sort of trying to understand the origins of the shame through the trauma work. And, um, I don't know a better answer than that. That's the, just, that's where I'm at. But I'd be curious what other people say or what you would say, but, um,

• 1:09:05Speaker 18

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Speaker 06

  I feel you.

• 1:09:06Speaker 18

  Yeah, it totally helped, Paul. Thank you.

• 1:09:09Dan Harris?

  I think it's useful sometimes to think about, I mean, I definitely ladled lots of shame into my own neural pathways over the years. And I think it's maybe useful sometimes, or at least for me, to think about the difference between shame slash guilt and what the Buddhists call wise remorse. So shame or guilt is kind of making it about yourself. And again, I'd say that with no judgment, because I do it, I've done plenty of that, and I'm sure will continue. But it wise remorse is like, all right, looking at what maybe you did wrong, and trying to make amends for it, trying to learn from it. But the shame is a kind

• 1:09:52Dan Harris?

  of psychic constipation that just like, nothing can happen. And, you know, playing with that, seeing if you can move from one state to the other, that's been, and I think self compassion is a great way to do that. Because self compassion isn't like babying yourself and pretending you didn't make a mistake. It's recognizing you made a mistake, but you're not holistically horrible for having made that mistake.

• 1:10:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, they say like, remorse is, I did something terrible, and shame is, I am terrible.

• 1:10:20Speaker 06

  Exactly. Shame is useless.

• 1:10:24Speaker 18

  Right, right. Thank you so much.

• 1:10:26Speaker 06

  Shame is not true. There is never a time, there's never a case, ever, in which you are bad, you're not allowed to be who you are, like that you don't, you don't, you don't deserve to exist. Shame has nothing useful in it. I'm sorry, it's like, it's toxic. Like, it's not like guilt where I did something wrong, and okay, I can make amends, I know that. Shame is I am someone wrong, fundamentally just by existing, you know, so it's a great signal to work with, because it's very persistent, and it can be healed.

• 1:10:59Speaker 18

  Yeah. Yeah. And the other piece of it, this is all really helpful, is modeling that self compassion for my boys.

• 1:11:07Dan Harris?

  Huge.

• 1:11:07Speaker 06

  Yes, big time.

• 1:11:08Speaker 18

  I mean, literally, my son just walked through, he's like, you're doing a meditation retreat? What are you talking about for six hours? And I was like, trust me, it is to your benefit that I'm doing this for six hours.

• 1:11:26Speaker 18

  Thank you all.

• 1:11:27Dan Harris?

  Yeah, great question. That was awesome. Thank you.

• 1:11:34Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Jeff and Seb and also Aaron. Awesome time with those guys. Don't forget, we've got another meditation party coming up at the end of October, so you can come and have that experience for yourself. You can sign up at eomega.org, or there's a link in the show notes if you want to click it and join us. Love to see you there. Also, don't forget, speaking of community and the power of the HOV lane for meditation practice, starting on September 2nd, I will be doing, or we will be doing, live guided meditations on video at 4 o'clock Eastern every Tuesday afternoon indefinitely. On September 2nd, in the kickoff of our now weekly sessions, I'll be with Vinnie Ferraro,

• 1:12:16Dan Harris?

  who's an amazing meditation teacher and will be our Teacher of the Month for September, meaning he will be crafting guided meditations that go along with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. All of this only available to paying subscribers at DanHarris.com. Great way to support me, great way to support our team, great way to support meditation teachers, who we like to pay generously, so would appreciate your support. And if you can't afford it, just send us a note and we'll give it to you for free. Finally, I just want to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Kara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. 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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