Creating The Mindfulness Gap, The Fundamentals Of Meditation and How To Deepen Your Practise - Cory Allen - #012

Cory Allen is an author, meditation teacher and host of The Astral Hustle Podcast. He is also the creator of my favourite Guided Meditation Course www. ReleaseIntoNow.com and has completed thousands and thousands of hours of mindfulness practise during his life. Meditation is a little bit like a stretching routine; it's something most people know they probably should do, but due to a lack of information, fear of feeling silly or misconceptions about what it entails, the barriers to entry can be prohibitive to starting. In this episode I ask Cory to explain the fundamental components of mindfulness practise, from sitting posture to mindset, optimal session frequency to expected benefits, plus a great background to his own journey. If you are new to meditation, hopefully this breaks down some barriers and gives you the steps needed to begin a routine of mindfulness training. If you are already a meditator, allow yourself to deepen your practise through Cory's fantastically experienced insight. He's also got a glorious voice. Extra Stuff Follow Cory Online - www.cory-allen.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Episodes You Might Enjoy: This Is How To Master Your Life - David Goggins - #577: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠⁠ How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs - Dr Jordan Peterson - #712: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠⁠ The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain - Dr Andrew Huberman - #700: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberma Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Good morning. This week, I am joined by none other than Cory Allen. He is an author, a meditation teacher and host of the Astral Hustle podcast. He's also the creator of my favourite guided meditation course, Release Into Now, and has completed, literally thousands and thousands of hours of mindfulness practice during his life. My intention was to get someone who is of the highest calibre as a meditation expert that I could find and get them to explain the absolute basics on a podcast.

• 0:42Chris Williamson?

  The thinking behind that was kind of like if you wanted to learn how to throw a jab and you got taught by Floyd Mayweather, you might actually think, well, his body of knowledge is significantly wider than this, but if he can distill down all of that knowledge into the fundamentals, I'm going to get the best start within this discipline that I can. Hopefully, going to break down some of the barriers and preconceptions that you may have about meditation if you've never done it before. And if you have done it before, Cory is going to be able to explain how to deepen your practice and focusing on the fundamentals, irrelevant of how many hours you've put in, is never a bad thing to do.

• 1:27Chris Williamson?

  So here we go. Cory Allen.

• 1:44Chris Williamson?

  Cory Allen, welcome to Modern Wisdom. Thank you. Thanks for having me, man. Very good to hear from you. It's really strange to hear your voice for once without there being binaural beats in the background. Well, I could put some on if you'd like. That would be funny. Yeah, the um, the meditation course releasing to now that you did through Aubrey Marcus has been, um, I think I can pretty much recite it now, verbatim. I could, I could probably do it back and give my best Cory Allen impression and actually, actually give it back to you.

• 2:19Cory Allen?

  That's funny is that I would probably barely recognize that. I, I have vague memories of what's in it at this point, but um, you know how that goes.

• 2:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure, for sure. So a lot of listeners will have heard me dance around the topic of mindfulness practice and, and meditation over the last few months. And I think what I, what I really wanted to do was get someone like yourself who has a wealth of experience with practice and understands it from the ground floor up and really just start to unpackage it. I think meditation for a lot of people is like, kind of like maybe a stretching routine. It's something that they know that they probably should be doing, but that it sounds like there's maybe quite a lot of barriers to entry. It's maybe a little bit complicated. They're not sure if they can complete the practice on their

• 3:12Chris Williamson?

  own. And for a common person who hasn't ever been exposed to mindfulness or meditation before, I do think that it can be, um, it can be a daunting prospect to go into something which is, she's from the outside looking in, very complex. I don't know whether in your circles now, whether you know, whether you um, regularly interact with anyone who doesn't do mindfulness practice anymore, but certainly on my side, there is, there's a lot of people who I think would really benefit from it. So hopefully today we can um, we can explain and we can unpack just what mindfulness practice is and, and how everybody can benefit from it.

• 3:55Cory Allen?

  Sure. Yeah. And firstly, I mean, most people I know, I would say do not have a meditation practice.

• 4:02Chris Williamson?

  Is that true? Wow.

• 4:04Cory Allen?

  Yeah, yeah. Just because, um, you know, I don't know, maybe 10 to 15% max of the people I know do.

• 4:13Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 4:14Cory Allen?

  And um, let me just.

• 4:17Cory Allen?

  Identify the problem from the outset. You know, there's a lot of confusion and people have resistance towards getting into meditation because, as you said, it might seem intimidating or confusing or something unreachable or unattainable. The reason for that, in my opinion, is, and I wrote about this a bit in my book, was that meditation is an experience. It's an experiential thing. It's a, you know, internal thing of the mind, right? It's not something you can describe. And so the example I use in my book is that

• 4:54Cory Allen?

  if you were to, from a, from like, as if you were looking out of a camera, describe the narrative of someone standing up in their room, going into the kitchen, getting a cup of coffee. One could write that description and then another person could read that description and get the general notion that there's a person in a room and they're getting up and they're going into their kitchen, whatever that may look like, and they're getting a coffee. Now, that's an easy picture to paint in one's mind and your brain will fill in all of the gaps and pieces of the story that you need as connective tissue to create that narrative in your imagination. But the problem with meditation is, is that, so now, take this same situation.

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 5:39Cory Allen?

  And now, write out what the experience of a person standing up in their room and going into their kitchen and making a cup of coffee is so clearly that you, as the reader, can know the first person point of view feeling with all of the sensory input and all of the contents that enter the consciousness of someone who's doing that. To express that experience to another person is so impossible that it's really, you know, ultimately can't even be done.

• 6:13Chris Williamson?

  It would be an infinite amount of information, right? It would be an overwhelming read.

• 6:18Cory Allen?

  Exactly. So, take a, take a hundred years of

• 6:23Cory Allen?

  People who aren't great writers even, all trying to get at in writing about the thing, the experience.

• 6:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Cory Allen?

  Including all of the fat and all of the metaphysical nonsense and, you know, all the stuff that can go along with that. Everyone's trying to describe an intangible experience. And so there are just mountains and mountains of descriptions about this intangible experience.

• 6:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Cory Allen?

  Which have no meaning inherently, because they are relative only to the person that wrote them, because they're writing about their experience. So whenever an individual who is perhaps only hearing about the idea, or only become interested in meditation, goes to read a book about it, or goes to look for some type of instruction, and they find 500 words on some, you know, bozo trying to describe an experience, it is inherently very confusing. And it's off-putting.

• 7:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Cory Allen?

  Would be off-putting to me as well. So I think that the idea, you know, the best, that's the problem. I think the solution, you know, to break that barrier of entry, is to not write or necessarily talk as much about the experience, but to talk about methods that can lead people to have that experience themselves.

• 7:42Chris Williamson?

  The path, not the destination, right?

• 7:44Cory Allen?

  Sure, yeah.

• 7:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's very prohibitive, because, as you say, everyone's experience, especially of mindfulness, which is inherently so unique and individual to the person, their brain, their particular brain setup, where they go to when their thoughts begin to quieten. There's more, I think I'm right in saying, there's more connections in one square centimeter of human brain matter than there are stars in a galaxy. And when you're trying to describe an experience, manifesting from something as complex as that, it's, um, yeah, you're right, it leads to... A lot of information, a lot of disinformation as well, and neither of that's really helpful

• 8:28Chris Williamson?

  in in getting people to buy into the process, so to speak.

• 8:34Cory Allen?

  Yeah, and you've hit it right there. I mean, what is helpful? That's what I always look at, man, is like, whether I'm talking about something more ordinary, or I'm talking about something more experimental or theoretical, like, I I don't really talk about it unless it's useful, because why just add fat to the conversation in general, it's just in life, really, but

• 8:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 8:57Cory Allen?

  Especially within things that are that are intangible and transient.

• 9:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Would you say that there's a shift at the moment towards meditation and mindfulness becoming a little bit more sort of newsworthy, a little bit more prevalent in day to day discourse? It's been been covered more commercially, I suppose.

• 9:20Cory Allen?

  It certainly seems like it. I mean, particularly over the last five years, I think there's been a real awareness. And over the last, I think, two or three years, I started seeing meditation and mindfulness on the cover of magazines at the checkout at the grocery store.

• 9:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:34Cory Allen?

  You know, and now I think there have been people who have a lot of visibility, who are

• 9:43Cory Allen?

  promoting it and what have you. And I do think it's becoming a much more mainstream type of idea and practice because it works.

• 9:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Cory Allen?

  And I think people are figuring it out. And also, I think there is a you know, enough of the badly translated eastern wisdom from the sixties and seventies in America, anyway. It's kind of, it's had time to kind of fall away and age and die, whether it be a generational thing, or just that people finally shook it off. And there's a real nice, reasonable, secular approach to mindfulness and meditation, because it doesn't need any religious context.

• 10:21Chris Williamson?

  You don't need the theology or the ideology behind it, right?

• 10:25Cory Allen?

  Yeah, and also, I mean, that also presupposes that there was any to begin with

• 10:30Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 10:31Cory Allen?

  In a lot of these schools, you know, some schools of of Eastern thought contain meditation as a practice and those philosophies contain spirituality. But if you look at some, you know, aspect, there are certainly unquestionably a lot of other schools which have zero, you know, quote unquote, spiritual aspect to them at all. And I think one doesn't, you know, need or really shouldn't seek, I think, what a person would think of when they hear the word spirituality through meditation, because really, you're just seeking your own mind.

• 11:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Cory Allen?

  And unless you are looking to your own mind as your spiritual master, which, I mean, I actually have no problem with that, but, you know, but just be clear about what's happening. So anyway, the point is that having a secular, you know, approach to and path to mindfulness and meditation, I think, is has been has been laid out more and more clearly, and that's what people are responding to it.

• 11:30Chris Williamson?

  I think it makes it a lot more inclusive by doing it in that way. It permits a much wider, you say we're in an increasingly secular society. We need to, if mindfulness practice is going to be widely adopted, there there needs to be some principles which everyone can follow, and it can't be, these are principles if you're from the West, these are principles if you're from a particular religious background or a particular strata of society. That that's not very helpful, is it? And I think you're right, exporting for a secular society is a much more inclusive way of getting people started.

• 12:11Cory Allen?

  Interestingly, I'm not so sure that we're in an increasingly secular society. I think that, you know, the practice of mindfulness and meditation has become more secular within its own, within itself. Do you find or do you think that, from what you observe, that societies in general are becoming more secular?

• 12:29Chris Williamson?

  I'd definitely say so in the UK. I think I think so. I can't speak for anywhere else, that's the bulk of my experience.

• 12:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people are becoming very disenchanted with what would have been the old guard mainstay of what communities are built around. A lot of, there was a really interesting point that came up on a Joe Rogan podcast not long ago, where he said that he thinks one of the reasons that team sports and community sports like CrossFit are getting such prevalence at the moment is that previously, the community that people would have had on a Sunday when they go to church and that sense of belonging to a group, that group identity is falling away more increasingly. Now, again, I can't speak for the UK, for the USA or anywhere else, but in the UK, I certainly think people are being more forward

• 13:23Chris Williamson?

  thinking and less spiritually minded in the traditional sense of the word. But yeah, would you, would you say that it's different in your experience?

• 13:37Cory Allen?

  Well, it's just hard to tell, you know, like I can

• 13:39Chris Williamson?

  The sample sizes.

• 13:40Cory Allen?

  Right. It's like I can observe my subjective take on it from the input and the things I receive. Of course, you know, like I wouldn't have thought that Trump would be the president of America either. So, so, you know, I mean, that, that really collapsed my paradigm of speculative trust for myself. So it is hard to tell.

• 14:02Chris Williamson?

  I, Cory Allen, can never trust me, Cory Allen, ever again.

• 14:06Cory Allen?

  That's for sure, man.

• 14:07Chris Williamson?

  Officially know nothing.

• 14:07Cory Allen?

  So, you know, I don't, I don't really know. I feel like at the very least, conversations about, you know, the human condition without any spirituality or, you know, monotheistic spirituality anyway, have become more public. That seems to be the case. And I don't, you know, this is, we could get into a whole different conversation about, you know, Middle East and Islam and things like that. I don't, you know, because the change, and I think that a lot of this Tension that is being caused with world, you know, religions of the world and in society

• 14:49Cory Allen?

  right now is because largely to do with the internet because the internet is creating, and this also feeds the meditation, is that, man, it's like this mirror of the collective consciousness that people weren't ready for. Yeah. So, a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, you were on your small area of town, or whatever, doing your thing, minding your own business, and you knew the people around you, and you knew the worldviews and experiences and themes of what these people thought around you, and that was sort of the scope of your own. Kind of nicely insulated, right? Right, right, and just simply unaware of the complexities and just with the amount of people in the rest of the world.

• 15:32Cory Allen?

  But I really believe that the complexity, in a certain degree, it becomes a real frustration for humans. Like, whenever there's too many things out there that, whenever there are more things out there in the experiential world than an individual can keep in their mind at this way at once, they get really frustrated, like an angry ape or something. Definitely. Because they're like, "Ah, I'm being overwhelmed by the chaos of nature, and I don't want to submit to it." Yes. Although, once you do, you'll be much happier. But just look at traffic, you know, it's like, if you're on a highway and there's one car, you're all good, but if it's gridlocked and people are cutting you off, you get pissed off. Yeah. It's a complexity issue, right? And so I think that people naively took to the internet, and as, particularly whenever

• 16:15Cory Allen?

  social media kicked off, that all these voices, everyone has this voice that they can spit out into the ether and have, you know, cause a reflection. And so, you look onto the internet, and you just see thousands and thousands and thousands of people every day, and I think it has really done something to the connective subconscious of all people, because now...

• 16:36Cory Allen?

  You know, if you ever thought that you were significant, well, just go on the internet.

• 16:41Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna feel very, very small, very, very fast.

• 16:44Cory Allen?

  Right, right, right. Exactly. So that causes a lot of tension, man. And that's one of the reasons I think meditation has become more popular is because that awareness of all the other people creates the void and oblivion that an individual has a very hard time ignoring whenever it's literally talking to them. The oblivion, the sea of humanity of the entire world is there apparent in speaking at them directly.

• 17:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Cory Allen?

  You cannot shut it down. And so it begs the question of like one's own existence, you know, one's own, you know, the meaning within their life.

• 17:23Chris Williamson?

  I wonder if there's been an increase in existential crises.

• 17:26Cory Allen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:29Cory Allen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:30Chris Williamson?

  Overwhelming amount of information coming in. Yeah, I think you're right. A lot of the time, especially when I started, so I started my meditation practice and the state and trait changes, which we'll get into in a second. For me, the most noticeable thing was just being able to create that second moment breath between something occurring or me having a thought and me reacting to it.

• 17:56Cory Allen?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Chris Williamson?

  Now, rolling it a little bit further down the line, there's, that's kind of, that's definitely not the end point. But even just having that little bit of a second extra to consider what has happened and notice it and interject makes such a

• 18:14Chris Williamson?

  such a profound change day to day in how you deal with situations. I think you're right. If there was a little bit more mindfulness, only a little bit more mindfulness worldwide, there would be an awful lot less.

• 18:27Chris Williamson?

  And antagonistic problems, a lot less aggression between people, a lot less misunderstanding as well, because the narratives that people are attaching to my experience, his experience, their story, my story, I think a lot of that would be viewed with a much, a much more open set of eyes.

• 18:45Cory Allen?

  Yeah, and just the causality of one person's short sighted reflexive expression of momentary negativity or frustration is so immense that I think it's hard for people to really conceive of.

• 19:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Cory Allen?

  Because, you know, one person has some dumb response to something and they put out some, you know, a nasty comment or they treat someone else negatively in the moment, then it's literally like passing the hot potato of suffering on to someone else. You know, and that person holds that and then they're tossing it up in the air and then they're.

• 19:22Chris Williamson?

  Who's gonna, who's gonna be on the receiving end next?

• 19:24Cory Allen?

  Exactly, and it's literally like, I've thought about this with illnesses too, but like, it's the same thing with anger or some, you know, negative emotion like that, is that how long has that shockwave been going on?

• 19:37Chris Williamson?

  It's a pathogen, yeah, it's just moving through.

• 19:39Cory Allen?

  Yeah, like, I got a cold, you know, a couple of months ago and I was thinking, like, did, like, Napoleon have this cold?

• 19:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, where did this start?

• 19:46Cory Allen?

  Right, right. How long is this getting passed around? And I mean, the anger thing, the, the negative emotion thing is the same thing. I'm a big fan of not repression, but of a thing I call, or I have heard called and just end up calling, I'm not sure where, but, you know, turning poison into medicine, or they also, another term for it is stopping the wheel of, of karma. And it's just like, where if you get something from somebody being able to be high minded enough to not pass it on, and that's like snuffing out those.

• 20:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's, there's, the forest, the forest fire has kind of been burned out ahead of it and it doesn't go any further, so to speak.

• 20:28Cory Allen?

  Right, right.

• 20:29Chris Williamson?

  So can you give us a little bit of background to your mindfulness practice? What you've started doing and, and where you're at now?

• 20:39Cory Allen?

  Yeah, sure. Um, let's see. I started really, uh, really young. Um, I'm thirty six. I started, you know, in my mid teenage years. Essentially, in the nineties, there wasn't a lot of information around, around as far as really available. The internet was sort of just, uh, sizzling as opposed to being a raging fire as it is now. And man, you know, just my environmental experience and also the happenstance or bad luck or good luck of how I saw the world, however you'd like to look at it, created an immense amount of suffering and anxiety, you know, and emotional suffering within myself. And the environment that I was in was only compounding that.

• 21:25Cory Allen?

  And I had a lot of energy and not in the metaphysical sense, but just in a sense of vitality at the time. And I've gotten older, so that's gone away. I had a lot of energy, man. And I realized that if I, you know, I needed to find a way to put that in a direction or else it had the potential to be bad, you know? And so, since I, I don't know, I just had an intuition about that. And I got very much into philosophy, you know, Western, Eastern philosophy at a young age, kind of by chance, really. And I began, after I was reading about, um, you know, began reading Nietzsche a lot whenever I was in my mid teen years.

• 22:08Cory Allen?

  And I recognized it, you know, for the first time, I thought, oh, this is like, this is how I think. It's not what I think per se, but it's how, it's the way that my mind, you know, conduits of my mind kind of connect. And then I moved over to Eastern philosophy and I was, oh, this is more of what I think and how I think in some ways. You know, much more themes of equanimity and, and peacefulness and kind of a universality. And also a lack of emphasis on the individual. Like, I don't think we're special. And I appreciate the, and like, take that, you know, with a grain of salt. But I, I mean, I don't mean that like that in a nihilistic way. I mean that in a sense that like, we're all just these momentary, little wiggly, fleshy, you know,

• 22:51Cory Allen?

  worms of, of conscious awareness that are here and then are not here. And like, there's nothing wrong with that. The fact that that's the case, it's a beautiful thing. It's like, reality is, you know, in human existence is equally beautiful as it is bleak.

• 23:07Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 23:07Cory Allen?

  And people clinch up with that because they think, no, no, life should be seen as this like, happy ending Disney type fairy tale. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it is, man, but it's also, it's like, you gotta acknowledge the sour and the sweet and sour, or else the sauce doesn't have the twang. Like, the reason for life is the twang, right?

• 23:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Cory Allen?

  Anyway, so, yeah, man, I appreciate the idea of, in Buddhism, of there not really being a soul or anything like that. It resonates well with me.

• 23:37Chris Williamson?

  Impermanence.

• 23:38Cory Allen?

  Right, right. And so, another thing, you know, as a side note, in my book, I write about the upside of impermanence, because people think of impermanence and they're always like, what a bummer, you know, everything rots and everything dissolves. And so, I point out there that in, for there, I call it the upside of impermanence, I'm like, for there to be things to always rot, there must always be things coming into existence. That's, that's the, you know, if you just take a few steps back and see both sides of that polarity, then you can catch your breath a little bit.

• 24:08Chris Williamson?

  Without the yang, without the yang, there is no yin, right?

• 24:11Cory Allen?

  Right, right. So, anyway, man, I, you know, just began

• 24:18Cory Allen?

  reading these eastern philosophies and what have you, and found meditation within those and began practicing it myself. There was no instruction books or anything like that.

• 24:29Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess that at this stage, it was a much more, as you said before, the wishy-washy, sort of difficult to follow, reported experience books of meditation as opposed to some more of the laid out, formative process-based ones that we've got today.

• 24:48Cory Allen?

  Yeah, yeah, there definitely wasn't a lot of like, process-based things, but, you know, anything from Alan Watts to Robert Anton Wilson and, you know, Tim Leary and some stuff like that. But then, also, at the same time, I was reading things like Suzuki and like, extreme hardcore Zen, like, where they Zen stick style, where you sit there and meditate and they whack you on the back with a stick, just like, this is now, this is happening now. Why, you know, there's the moment, there's the moment, and don't break your concentration. You know, so I definitely was getting two sides. But really, being kind of autodidact by nature, I went to it just thinking, okay, here's some ideas and I'm going to go experiment with these and see what happens.

• 25:30Cory Allen?

  And so it became, you know, meditation became my fortress. You know, I realized that during that period of of suffering and being feeling like I was not interlocking with the world and my environment and surroundings, the inner world, my inner life, became very rich because I was able to meditate and feel, you know, and really consciously, intellectually, separate my experience with, okay, no matter what's happening outside of my body, outside of my skin, internally, none of that stuff can affect me here. And none of the, you know, whatever you'd like to call it, the, the, the pain and suffering

• 26:11Cory Allen?

  that I was feeling in that time, like, none of that has a place within my, my mind.

• 26:16Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 26:16Cory Allen?

  My mind became my sanctuary.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Have you read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl?

• 26:22Cory Allen?

  I have, yeah.

• 26:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so man's final bastion is his ability to choose his response in any given situation, right?

• 26:32Cory Allen?

  Right.

• 26:32Chris Williamson?

  It's the, the, the thought that your ability to respond and your thoughts within your mind are yours and they'll always be yours.

• 26:42Cory Allen?

  Mm hmm. Except for I, I love that idea, but I also can believe in determinism.

• 26:50Cory Allen?

  So, you know.

• 26:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Cory Allen?

  You know.

• 26:51Chris Williamson?

  It's difficult. It's, it's, it's kind of, it's interesting, isn't it, to hold both of those things at the same time?

• 26:56Cory Allen?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, I think that my, you know, ability to choose my choices is really beautiful.

• 27:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's a very, very good way to put it.

• 27:07Cory Allen?

  So, right, man. So I was doing the, you know, into meditation like that and it eventually just became this very fundamental aspect of my, my existence and carried on. So even whenever my life began to balance, probably much because of meditation in a lot of ways, it just continued on with the practice and I just continued exploring. I'm a very inquisitive little critter and I, I'm always, spent a lot of time, especially in my early twenties, like trying to find the edges of reality in my own perception and like what my consciousness was. And I did a lot of experimentation in, in a lot of different realms, trying to understand that.

• 27:50Cory Allen?

  And what's interesting from my point of view now was in that time, especially my late teens and, you know, doing a lot of psychedelics and meditation, just going as far deep as I could with these things and, you know, thought experiments, is that I went through all of that and then really calmed down with that because I found the edges. I played in the middle of the street. I was able to see what was going in on in the yard across the street.

• 28:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Cory Allen?

  And I was able to sit back and then begin to reflect on what I had experienced. And so I had 10 years of reflecting on my experience and continuing to unpack and contemplate those things. And then within the last five years, the, the new wave of interest in psychedelics and, and consciousness and all this stuff really kicked up. So it was a really curious unfolding in society for me because I was like watching all of these people who were just getting into this way of thinking that I had kind of.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  Known for so long, right?

• 29:01Cory Allen?

  Yeah, I had known and I, I'd felt comfortable with my comprehension of it for so long and had time to reflect on. So it was very interesting. So it was good timing. It was good timing. A lot of people getting into that set of interests and then being able to arrive with a reflected point of view whenever it was needed.

• 29:22Chris Williamson?

  Do you feel that, do you feel fortunate to be in a position where you can assist people at the, you know, riding the crest of this wave, so to speak, as there's a, a big uptake in, um, in mindfulness practice and a big interest in it?

• 29:39Cory Allen?

  Well, man, I mean, I don't really like put myself in my own image of the greater picture.

• 29:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Cory Allen?

  A lot of times. I look at it all as if you and I were sitting in a bar or something talking and you said you were interested in meditation and I was like, oh, cool, man. And we could talk about it for a little while and I'd tell you whatever I thought. Essentially, I would be telling you my experiences, not answers, but just ideas and thoughts and things I experienced and what I thought about them and how they were helpful to me.

• 30:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Cory Allen?

  And if, you know, if you find any of that helpful, then that's fantastic. And you can take that with you and add that to your map. I look at doing it on a large scale, the exact same way, you know, I don't look at like, oh, I am able to, and I totally take your point and I appreciate what you're saying, but just as far as the way that I interact with it all, it's not like-

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  It's not a self-brand, it's not steaming in as Cory Allen meditation master, third degree, third degree black belt.

• 30:36Cory Allen?

  Right, right, right.

• 30:38Chris Williamson?

  I think, I think, again, that speaks to the practice, right? That speaks to the detachment from the ego and so on and so forth.

• 30:44Cory Allen?

  Yes.

• 30:45Chris Williamson?

  So that was probably a bit of a trick question, actually.

• 30:49Cory Allen?

  You've tricked yourself because it sounded like you just realized-

• 30:51Chris Williamson?

  Tricked everyone, yeah. So I want to try and start from the absolute basics, the most important principles that you think that you can explain to someone for when undertaking a mindfulness practice. Can you start at the bottom and, and, and take it from there?

• 31:12Cory Allen?

  Yeah, sure, man. So you, you touched on something that's very valuable up at the, the front of our conversation, which was, you know, not everything in life has to be this pursuit where you, you become a master. You think about how many things in life, like, how many things are you a master at in life? Probably maybe zero. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There, there might be, you know, a couple of things that you're really good at. Most people have things that they're naturally really good at. But this is another part of the confusion of meditation is that people think, I've got to do this and become a master of it. And it's like, no, that's not really the point.

• 31:52Cory Allen?

  The point is to doing as much of the practice that you need to feel a balance and a change that works for you. And so I stress for people, like, you don't need to be meditating on the side of a mountain for 10 hours a day for the rest of your life. What you need to do is just enough to create that extra little space, that mindfulness gap, to where you can recognize your own flow of consciousness, your own flow of thoughts enough to not get into a chain of reactive behavior and just be able to respond to your own life as opposed to being carried away in your reactive programmed response.

• 32:35Chris Williamson?

  You observe, not attach, right? You watch it happen rather than attaching yourself to it.

• 32:41Cory Allen?

  Yeah, and the dance is of course, when you do it enough to where that all becomes synchronous.

• 32:47Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 32:48Cory Allen?

  And so, the, you know, the, the best thing, man, for someone who's just starting is, don't make it a big deal. That's super important is don't make it a big deal because it's not a big deal. You know, you, you meditate every night while you're sleeping. The only difference is you're just going to try and do it while you're awake a little bit, right? So you just sit in a chair, maybe on, on your couch or lay down, whatever's the most comfortable for you, and just close your eyes and put your phone and all that stuff away and just relax your body and take 10 deep breaths. Nothing unnatural, just allow your chest to expand and, and, and exhale.

• 33:33Cory Allen?

  And when you're doing that, you know, with your eyes closed, just kind of point your attention to your chest. No big deal, just rising and falling. And just, you just try 10 breaths and then perhaps you'll try and count them. So if you count one breath in and one exhale and two breaths in and two exhales and just try and get to 10 and see if you can count 10 breaths and most people can't, most people.

• 34:00Chris Williamson?

  Get distracted at three or four.

• 34:02Cory Allen?

  Right, right.

• 34:04Chris Williamson?

  What's for breakfast? I wonder, I wonder if the cat's been let out yet.

• 34:08Cory Allen?

  Right, is the cat for breakfast? Yeah, there's nothing, you know, thoughts get weird, but there's nothing wrong with that at all. And if, if one becomes distracted, whenever you realize that you're distracted, just start at one again with this breath counting. And if you can sit there and do that for five minutes in the morning or in the evening before you go to bed, you'll notice a difference in your daily life. If you can do that for 10 minutes, you'll notice a bigger difference and so on and so on. And I think that it's important for one, not to try and sit and meditate for half an hour for the first time.

• 34:43Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 34:44Cory Allen?

  Because the antsy is going to be, you know, pretty unbearable. If you think about your hands on a biological level, you're so used to just messing with things constantly, always with your phone, on a keyboard, with your TV remote, you're making food, you're just always doing something that to not do something, you almost feel like phantom limb syndrome. You're like, ah, my hands, right? So I think that, you know, after five minutes or so, you try it a couple of times, you get over the fidgets. And an interesting thing happens, begins to happen, is that whenever you're, you know, the, the mind is reflected in the body and vice versa.

• 35:28Cory Allen?

  And so the chatter of the brain begins to calm down, the chatter of the body begins to calm down. And wherever you can get to where you can just rest your hands on yourself while you're breathing, or just wherever you'd like to rest them, then you'll notice that like there's this connection between the clarity of mind and your ability to let go and just release your body and relax it.

• 35:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Cory Allen?

  And it should not be a feeling of like where you're, you're shrink wrapped and you're claustrophobic within your own skin.

• 35:55Chris Williamson?

  It's not being tight, right?

• 35:57Cory Allen?

  Yeah, just literally like letting go and allowing your body to just be there.

• 36:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I think it's a really, really good analogy, what you said about not trying to steam it at half an hour to begin with. The analogy for those people who go to the gym, you wouldn't walk into the gym and try and pick up, try and deadlift 250 kilos.

• 36:16Cory Allen?

  Right, right.

• 36:18Chris Williamson?

  You, you start off and it's progressive overload, right?

• 36:21Cory Allen?

  Right, right.

• 36:22Chris Williamson?

  Where can I go today? Can, can it go six? Can it go seven? Can it go 10? Can we go? So yeah, so you're you're you're sitting, you're hopefully now starting to develop a practice where the movement in the body and the anxiousness and agitation in the body has started to calm. And then where are we going from there?

• 36:40Cory Allen?

  So from there, then you'll you'll want to try and make that consecutive. So you want to make sure you can try that a couple of times here and there when it appeals to you or most people will reach for that practice whenever they're feeling extreme amounts of stress and looking for some type of solution to it or anxiety or whatever it might be. I will tell you is that people often look for optimizing solutions whenever they're in negative circumstances. You know, if you're feeling sick, people try and oh, I better eat right and you know, not, you know, hit the bar or something like that because I don't want to get myself even more ill or if I'm really stressed, I want to meditate. But this is the net gain aspect of meditation is is very, very valuable. If you're going

• 37:23Cory Allen?

  in for a job interview or an important conversation or, you know, a first date or something like that, meditating beforehand is very valuable because you'll if you're feeling fine and you meditate anyway, you'll be that much more calm and focused and present for the interaction.

• 37:41Chris Williamson?

  It shouldn't be hitting it shouldn't be hitting the antidote button. It's the it's the the multivitamin button, right?

• 37:47Cory Allen?

  Exactly, exactly. And so the beautiful thing in the real, real deep result that one will find from meditation is doing it consecutively. So after you perhaps someone tries meditating here and there whenever they need it and they realize, oh, this is kind of helping me. This is I noticed a little shift in my brain. Maybe you feel a little little high or something afterwards. And I I used to back, you know, was looping back around to my teenage years, I used to read until I felt high. Like that was the that was how I knew I could stop is whenever I read.

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  Is that like a runner is that like a runner's high but for?

• 38:24Cory Allen?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Chris Williamson?

  For academics like yourself.

• 38:26Cory Allen?

  That's how I knew that my brain was stretching. It's like if I read like enough of this idea of this concept until I feel stoned, I know that synapses are popping, right?

• 38:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:39Cory Allen?

  So but you will feel a bit of or often a person will feel a bit of difference in their consciousness. After meditation, and that's really a awareness of your own awareness.

• 38:52Chris Williamson?

  You're talking immediately after a practice or around a practice there, right?

• 38:56Cory Allen?

  Yeah, yeah, you'll find this right after a practice or even during, you can feel this like, oh, I feel a bit different, you know, and it's it's this awareness of your awareness. You're more present and so there's more information that your nervous system is taking in because it's more aware and there's more detail and nuance in your experience of life.

• 39:17Chris Williamson?

  One hundred percent.

• 39:18Cory Allen?

  And that becomes a orientation, a permanent orientation, once you practice meditation consecutively. Just as the analogy you used with stretching, if you stretch, you know, I like to run a lot. And if you were to to never stretch, that would be bad, obviously, you heard yourself, but.

• 39:41Chris Williamson?

  It'd be terrible.

• 39:43Cory Allen?

  If you stretch once a week and you're running twenty miles a week, you're going to not feel well. But if you stretch every day, it becomes easier and easier to stretch each time.

• 39:52Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 39:52Cory Allen?

  And then it becomes vital and crucial. This is the same thing with meditation, you know, if you meditate once, it is helpful for the moment, but you're going to find yourself back in the place that you were. And then if you do it every day, you're just going to feel this inherent flexibility that becomes a part of your daily experience.

• 40:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think one of the things that you touched on was a point I really wanted to try and get across to people, which is state versus trait changes in your experience. So state changes would be those which you experience during and immediately around doing some meditation practice, whether it be five or twenty minutes or half an hour. And trait changes are the ones which you would notice throughout your day to day experience away from the practice, a significant period of time away from the practice. I think a lot of the time, people expect and they look for the trait changes first,

• 40:54Chris Williamson?

  which I've meditated for five days in a row, but I still got angry because my husband was late for dinner or whatever it might be. Whereas the the state changes for me occurred very quickly. I felt very, very calm quite quickly after spending ten to fifteen minutes calming the mind.

• 41:16Chris Williamson?

  Is there, is there a, um, is there a level of time or amount of time under tension that where people will begin to notice trait changes?

• 41:30Cory Allen?

  Yes, I would say typically the, the word on that is around two weeks is when you really begin to feel those, those deeper changes. And that could have something to do with neuroplasticity shifts and kind of retraining the actual framework of the brain and the mind and what have you. And it does seem to be around that time that people will notice that. I would like to make just clarification in that, you know, we're still like, everyone's still human, right? And so to begin a meditation practice with thinking that like, all right, here's what's cool is I'm never going to feel angry again. You know, it's like, this is going to be cool. I'm going to do this and I'm going to be a Zen master.

• 42:15Chris Williamson?

  Can it be completely immune to all emotions, both negative and positive? And just turn into like Brandon Stark in Game of Thrones at the moment, just like this turnip in the corner of the room.

• 42:29Cory Allen?

  By the way, that's one of my favorite, uh, you know, UK sayings is turnip.

• 42:37Cory Allen?

  I'm glad you said it. I, I like tennis a lot and whenever I hear Andy Murray yell, call himself a turnip, it always makes me laugh.

• 42:44Chris Williamson?

  Didn't even know that he does that. That's, that's such a Scottish thing to call yourself as well. Of all of the things that you could have called yourself, Andy, because there's lots of people in the crowd calling you other things and it's not, it's not a turnip. But that's hilarious. But yeah, like that Brandon Stark thing, for anyone who's watching Game of Thrones at the moment, it makes me laugh because that, that kind of complete detachment from everything that's going on is kind of like the 30 seconds. If someone was to walk in after I've done a, a half an hour meditation practice, within 30 seconds of me finishing, that's how I feel like I would respond. Like just completely like, I don't know, just. Detached and out of it and slowly trying to bring myself back to reality.

• 43:29Chris Williamson?

  But it was it was so funny when he when when that started to come up in the in the Game of Thrones thing and a couple of my friends who do yoga meditation as well mentioned the same thing. They said, do you think that Brandon's actually got any green sight or whatever it's called? Or has he just been absolutely pounding the meditation for the last year while he's been in the wheelchair?

• 43:51Cory Allen?

  Now, see, this is funny to me because I actually don't find, I suppose I did for a while, but I don't find to feel more removed and internal after my meditations. I actually feel more interwoven with the external world afterwards.

• 44:10Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. I'd definitely say as someone who's done a consistent practice for about two to two and a half years now. Maybe, yeah, maybe two years. I wouldn't say that that's my that that marries with my experience, not yet.

• 44:25Cory Allen?

  I'm reflecting back here. I'm thinking, you know, I think I've been meditating about 20 years.

• 44:30Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 44:31Cory Allen?

  And reflecting back, I think that there was a long period of time where I would feel, yeah, I've always been a big coffee drinker. So my routine for for years was like meditating and then drinking a giant, you know, pounding a giant coffee.

• 44:48Chris Williamson?

  That's like that's like taking the taking the dip down before getting on the roller coaster right to the top, right?

• 44:54Cory Allen?

  Right. It's like a slingshot, right?

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 44:56Cory Allen?

  But no, I'm now thinking back. Yeah, I do. I do think I recall there being a long stretch like that. And eventually, I think my interest after my, you know, a decade or whatever, or 15 years, my body seemed to finally calm down. And I was able to just accept my own existence a bit more. And, you know, that's a that's a tricky one.

• 45:21Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 45:22Cory Allen?

  But I think that these days, not to fast forward too much, but these days, my meditation is very much.

• 45:32Cory Allen?

  Just watching and in my meditation, and I described this recently, is that I think that observing the outer world and the inner world, while also simultaneously observing that from a bird's eye view above, all three at the same time.

• 45:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Cory Allen?

  That to me is what my meditation is like. It's an, it's an interlocking of looking at what's out there, looking what's inside, and then watching those two things meet.

• 46:07Chris Williamson?

  Wow. I think, I think there's definitely a lot to be said for early on in your practice. There's a lot of unexplored territory internally. And I can imagine, I can imagine that that may be some of the carryover immediately after your practice, that where have I just been, what was I just thinking about, how can my mind so quiet? You know, as you, as you slowly come around to back, back into the physical realm, so to speak.

• 46:37Cory Allen?

  No, I think that's a wonderful distinction, man. Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  So what would you say in terms of, once, once people have begun to build up a, a practice, hopefully consistency, so optimal frequency daily?

• 46:52Cory Allen?

  Yeah, you know, daily, and I would say I probably meditate five days a week. And it's just really important to not make it a chore. You know, because people will find a way to resent it and find a way to, to be able to pass it up. If it becomes a thing, they, they feel like they have to do.

• 47:11Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 47:11Cory Allen?

  Because people just don't like being told what to do, even by themselves.

• 47:15Chris Williamson?

  We're not our own slaves, right? Yeah, one of, one of, one of the, the guys who's on the podcast all the time, Yusuf says meditation isn't something we have to do, it's something we get to do.

• 47:25Cory Allen?

  Absolutely, absolutely. But I think eventually it becomes, to me anyway, it becomes like brushing your teeth. You know, it's like you don't even think about, oh, I hope not. You know, you don't even think about it. You just do it as a part of your, your daily experience. And it's not a, I don't know many people that are like, oh, God, I gotta go brush my teeth again. You know, it's like, it's like, it's a good thing, you know, and helps, helps you stay fresh and, and crispy clean. And meditation is no different.

• 47:52Chris Williamson?

  So we've got optimal frequency at between daily to five times a week. And what about optimal session length, once you've worked up your tolerance?

• 48:03Cory Allen?

  Yeah, man, I think that once you've become more accustomed to meditating something longer than five or 10 minutes, I would say 20 to 30 is really a great target zone. Because that way, you're not hacking away an hour of your day, or 45 minutes of your day. You're not becoming bored to the experience. It's enough to really have a deep effect, yet not make one psychologically feel like they're devoting too much time to it. And I know is that may even sound a little weird, but just the nature of human time management and psychology and all this stuff. I think it's sort of an important thing to keep in mind. And to me, I generally, there's something magical

• 48:47Cory Allen?

  about the 20 minute zone, 20 minute mark to me. And I've spoke with other people who are deep meditators, and they've reciprocated that idea. So I think the 20 to 30 minute timeline is nice because, or time zone, rather, because you can get to that spot where you're just like a tree blowing in the breeze, without a name or identity. And then, you know, then embrace that watching period for a while, and experience just consciousness, just awareness, man.

• 49:17Chris Williamson?

  I think, I think there's certainly, I bought my mom, listeners will know what I'm gonna say, I bought my mom Headspace at the start of the year, because I wanted, she's a Reiki master of 10 years, and has done a lot on the esoteric side, big in Pilates, big in yoga, but never actually done any formal mindfulness practice. So I thought, right, okay, Headspace. And

• 49:39Chris Williamson?

  She likes doing five and 10 minute meditations. And I sat down and had a chat with her. And said, one of the things that I brought up was that in a five or a 10 minute meditation, for me personally, the first 50% or more, the first five minutes to 10 minutes is just quietening the mind.

• 50:00Chris Williamson?

  When you're doing, there's a kind of like an overhead that needs to be paid. There's a price, there's an entry fee that you need to pay to get to the state. I suppose that over time, would you say that you are able to drop into deeper, deeper states of meditation more quickly? Kind of like dropping into REM sleep more quickly, I suppose?

• 50:24Cory Allen?

  Yeah, I mean, in my experience, yes, yes. And I think that it's a, the analogy you're drawing is a good one. It's essentially like warming up. You know, you're like, you've got all this stuff going on and God knows what's happening in your day and in your life and in your mind at that time. Or even just where the neurobiology of your brain is at, at that moment. I mean, there's some days where I feel more fragmented and there's some days where I feel quite sharp. And so, you know, it just, whatever the day calls for, is kind of what, in my opinion, the meditation calls for. Just look at it like a meal, you know? If you're really hungry, you're gonna probably want to eat a little bit more. But if you're not that hungry, then the snack will do.

• 51:09Cory Allen?

  And I think that meditation, you know, as far as that time of getting into the actual target zone is the same. To me, like, I think I spend two or three minutes just kind of getting comfortable, like getting physically, getting just how I want to be.

• 51:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:26Cory Allen?

  And that should be for any, I suppose, for any person might be listening that's interested, that would be, if you were in a sitting meditation position, I would suggest that you look at your legs and hips as a foundation. Think of it as like the foundation of a building. And then the spine growing up and expressing outwards, almost like a, like a tree or a flower or something growing upwards. Then the body hangs, you know, the shoulders are back, chest is forward. You're firm, but, but not tight. It's, uh, it's like.

• 52:05Cory Allen?

  Being proud but not being arrogant, you know, it's that type of thing.

• 52:10Chris Williamson?

  That's a good distinction.

• 52:11Cory Allen?

  And then, then the head just floats on top, like you literally just, your head's like a cherry on top of the sundae. That's, it's a good way to have a foundation because you don't want to be tight, but you just want to be firm. That's what, that's one, that's one of my lines, yeah.

• 52:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, I'm, I'm, I'm hearing, I'm hearing snippets from releasing an hour just coming back at me, just done on live here instead of, instead of hearing them.

• 52:33Cory Allen?

  That's cool, man.

• 52:35Chris Williamson?

  On a recording. Yeah, that's cool. So you touched on this earlier and it's something that I really wanted to bring up with you. So you've mentioned that starting a meditation practice with a psychedelic experience in advance can change the nature of your practice by, I may be putting words in your mouth, but by giving you something to aim for. Or I, I don't know if I've taken that out of context, but that meditation practice after having psychedelic experiences can take on a, a different kind of, a different kind of role and can be viewed in a different way. Would you be able to elaborate on that?

• 53:16Cory Allen?

  Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, whether it be meditation or a psychedelic experience, these are really just ways to manipulate one's own consciousness. And I think that if you were to take a psychedelic, what often will happen is a person becomes more aware of their own mind, not necessarily in a good way, but they become aware of their own consciousness, aware of their awareness and their experience more. And their perception begins to become a bit more modular in that the locked in programmed ways that they saw the world and their subjective perception of it begins to. Shift and become malleable in such that they begin perceiving things differently.

• 54:00Cory Allen?

  And to simplify and to make that more easy to understand to someone who has not had that experience. If you were to look at the classic picture of is that a vase? Or is that two faces facing each other? And you look at the two faces and oh, it's two faces. And then you focus on the vase and you think, oh, no, it's a vase. Well, truly, of course, it's both at the same time. But it really is in accord to how you're perceiving it to that moment. Well, under a psychedelic experience, you know, the world becomes that way in a lot of ways. And so that truly is just the nature of your perception becomes more clear to you. Or it can as a potential to. Meditation is the same thing. It's just a different pathway and a different, you know, method of getting to that place.

• 54:45Cory Allen?

  And I would say much more stable and agreeable and long beneficial.

• 54:49Chris Williamson?

  I think that's a good, a very good analogy and a good thing to mention as well that the the stable, secure route to the top of the mountain, rather than strapping yourself into a cannon and getting fired, fired directly to the top.

• 55:04Cory Allen?

  And so, you know, getting to the top of the mountain with no context or knowledge or wisdom is kind of a wasted ticket to the top of the mountain in a lot of cases, in most cases. Because, you know, you really just need experience and time and time to understand what you're even thinking and understand what you're experiencing and reflecting on those experiences before you can have, you know, a lot of benefit from those places, you know. I personally, I did it the other way. I did against the way I'm talking about. Is it really just like smearing my brain across the, you know, top of the cosmos and then trying to pick up the pieces and put all back together?

• 55:44Chris Williamson?

  Such a destructive image.

• 55:48Cory Allen?

  Yes.

• 55:49Chris Williamson?

  Chasing, chasing the fragments of my consciousness around the galaxy and then hoping that I haven't missed any other way.

• 55:55Cory Allen?

  Right, yeah, they always have extra pieces when you put them back together, man.

• 55:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, where did this come from? This wasn't a part of me. Yeah, exactly.

• 56:02Cory Allen?

  Yeah, and so, um, but, but you know, and that, this is why earlier I was mentioning how I had a long time to reflect on those experiences and things dawned on me, you know, 10 years later. Say, oh, that's what I was experiencing at that moment. Now I have the time to understand it and.

• 56:23Cory Allen?

  You know, I think that meditation is really valuable in the sense that, well, just to answer your previous question, like, yes, if you have a psychedelic experience and then go to meditate, it can frame and give you context for what you already experienced. And then also, you will be a bit familiar with the simple state of consciousness change, regardless of the method. If, once you go to meditate, you can recognize, you know, as they say, game recognizes game. You can recognize the game a little bit. You're like, oh, okay, I know this feeling. I know that this is consciousness shifting. So, but I will say, man, is that I, I have gotten to where I'm so, I'm just not really

• 57:02Cory Allen?

  interested in, it's actually even curious to me, like, I'm not even interested in consciousness state changes of many, of many regards these days. Like, you know, I'm not really interested in psychedelics, or hardly even alcohol, even though I do drink wine several nights a week and stuff like that. But I don't really even want to. I just gotta do it because it's sort of like a nice, social, fun thing to do. And it's tasty, but I'm not looking for state changes. I don't crave or desire state. Why do you think that is?

• 57:40Cory Allen?

  I think it's because I am so into my natural flow of thinking. And I enjoy my natural resting state of my consciousness more than an altered state. It's richer and more full to me than an altered state is now. Like, one could, you know, smoke weed and like, they would get stoned. And they would get giggly because things change and shift and become different and whatever to them. And then they come back down to the regular state. Or one could take a psychedelic and have these far out thoughts and all this stuff and then come back.

• 58:25Cory Allen?

  I think to me, like, my resting state of awareness is more interesting to me than one of those, those other skewed states feel like a downer, or like they're just boring or confusing, or like, sort of just murky. But my resting awareness is just really pleasurable, like, I just like it. It's like, it's so much, it's really fun. Yeah. And deep and rich, and there's never an end to, you know, the things to be thought about, or the experiences to be enjoyed and taken in. And I, you know, there's, could be a lot of reasons for that, but it is what it is. I think it's a good thing that I just enjoy. A hundred percent. My, my own experience.

• 59:09Cory Allen?

  And I will say is that, especially five, about four or five years ago, I'm, was then surrounded by a lot of people who were almost marketing consciousness change a lot to others, and I never agreed with that. And, um, and because at the same time, I was going through this, that shift I was just describing. Yeah. And what I realized, when I really put away pretty much everything, and I'm not saying that I'm like a straight edge dude type of now. Yeah. But I find that a bite is much more satisfying than a meal. Yeah. To me, with these type of things.

• 59:50Cory Allen?

  And I found, one of the reasons why it interested me so much, and I really began to seek that path, was because I realized what I was just talking about as far as getting into a consciousness shifting type of space and then coming down to normal. And this could be, you know, what, name, pick your poison. Yeah. But I realized always coming back down was just like, well, what is the point? What is, what, what do you, I just don't, I didn't see the utility in that, because what I'm interested in is long-term, permanent shifting change. One step forward, one step back. Right, right.

• 1:00:26Chris Williamson?

  Or twenty, twenty steps forward, twenty steps back.

• 1:00:30Cory Allen?

  Yeah, well, even or even more, because if you go into an illusory state with no context or or no mind to observe and absorb the potential learning in that state, then it actually adds to one's delusion.

• 1:00:46Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:00:46Cory Allen?

  And so it gives you even more steps back.

• 1:00:49Chris Williamson?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:00:49Cory Allen?

  Yet, there's the romanticized idea of evolution of your consciousness in that state. So people think that they're evolving, however, they're actually devolving and becoming really religious.

• 1:01:02Chris Williamson?

  Becoming attached to the narrative, aren't they, of this is my experience, this is where I am going. I'd said something a little bit less, a little bit less mindful, but similarly appropriate, I think, where I was discussing with Dominic McGregor, who is a recovering alcoholic COO of the UK's largest social media agency. And we were talking about the common culture amongst young people that going out every weekend and getting smashed, drunk on alcohol and partying and leaving on a Friday and getting home on a Sunday night is is very, very common. And one of the things that I said was how overwhelming the experiences

• 1:01:46Chris Williamson?

  of having a lot of alcohol. And then when you add in stronger drugs, MDMA, party drugs and pills and stuff like that. What blows my mind is that people travel to the other side of the planet. They'll go on a stag do or a birthday party or whatever. They'll travel to Thailand or Vegas or Marbella in Europe or wherever it might be. And they will put themselves into a chemically induced state that is so overwhelming that they have no discernible difference in their experience from them going to their local pub and taking the exact same substances. And I said that when you go away and you do this to yourself,

• 1:02:29Chris Williamson?

  all that you're doing is electing to have a hangover or a come down in a slightly different location. And then once the hangover, the come down's gone away, you get back on it, you get transported right back to the same place, which might as well be anywhere in the world. But you're in Vegas or you're in Marbella or you're in wherever and you wake up the next day and you suffer the hangover in a different in a different location.

• 1:02:52Cory Allen?

  Totally. I think you just came up with a really good business idea because I have have really like faux international exotic destinations like in your local area that you can go there. And you know, it's like a bar.

• 1:03:05Chris Williamson?

  Out of your mind. Yeah.

• 1:03:06Cory Allen?

  But it feels like Thailand or something. And so then people are like, yeah, it's pretty close.

• 1:03:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it might as might as well be. Yeah, exactly. It's taking a lot less time to get there.

• 1:03:15Cory Allen?

  But I I totally agree, man. And to me, whenever I see someone who's smashed or whatever, it just looks like suffering to me. It looks makes me sad. I see someone that's, you know, passed out and spilled their drink all themselves or whatever. And I just think it's it's really important. I mean, man, I was I was a soldier and with alcohol for a long, long.

• 1:03:39Chris Williamson?

  We've all served our time, right?

• 1:03:41Cory Allen?

  Yeah. Yeah, for a very long, never missed a day of work, you know.

• 1:03:46Chris Williamson?

  Conscription.

• 1:03:48Cory Allen?

  Yeah, but it just, yeah, man, I just, it looks like suffering to me, you know, and it's.

• 1:03:56Cory Allen?

  Yeah, it's I think that it's it's just unfortunate, but it is what it is, man.

• 1:04:01Chris Williamson?

  My my job I've done for 11 years now, I run club nights. That's my job. I'm a club promoter. We run. A number of events in Newcastle and Manchester in the UK and Dom asked me a really interesting question on the podcast and he said, can you see the people that are suffering? When they're on a night out? And I said, no, I I I can't usually. It's the people who are the most outgoing and the ones that are appearing to have the best time, who often are the ones that really probably shouldn't be there. And really probably should put that next drink down. But yeah, you're right. The the suffering thing, it's it's really difficult at the moment, if I'm honest, for me to.

• 1:04:41Chris Williamson?

  Hold in, um, hold in the same world that I'm trying to encourage mindfulness practice. I'm currently doing six months sober, um, because I wanted to challenge myself last year and see if I could. And I really enjoyed what happened when I did. And I'm doing it again this year and I'm encouraging other people to do it. But that my livelihood is still built around a, a business across multiple cities in the UK. Right. Which requires people to get drunk. And we market the drinks prices and I write the social media and I, I push the narrative. And I think for some people, it's absolutely fine. And the listeners will know what I'm going to say, that for, for some people going

• 1:05:24Chris Williamson?

  out and partying every weekend and going hard is absolutely fine. But for some people, it's not. For some people, when they wake up the next day, the thoughts that come into their head are more than just, oh God, um, I, I feel a little bit sick. It becomes self referential. It becomes anxiety inducing. It becomes labelling. And after a little while, it becomes so much a part of you, the hangover becomes so much a part of you that it's difficult to actually separate yourself from it, even when you're fine.

• 1:05:56Chris Williamson?

  And I think that, I think that, um, mindfulness practice again helps to break down some of the, some of the little white lies and some of the fibs that you've told yourself about why you're doing certain things. And I think you start to, you start to assess and ask questions of yourself about what you're spending your time doing and about why you're doing it that you wouldn't have done usually. I think that, that can sometimes bring up some quite ugly answers, actually. One of the, one of the guys who I mentioned mindfulness to about a year ago, said something to the effect of, I really don't want to quieten

• 1:06:38Chris Williamson?

  my mind because I don't know, uh, I, I don't think I'd like what I'd hear. And I think that that's, um, that's an interesting.

• 1:06:48Chris Williamson?

  An interesting idea to think about that.

• 1:06:52Cory Allen?

  Well, it is, man. I would tell that person, well, join the club, you know, you like,

• 1:06:59Cory Allen?

  join the club, man. We all have negative thoughts, but I think the, the lesson or the thing to understand there is that like, you aren't your thoughts, you're what thoughts you put into action. You are not even your emotions. Emotions are things that pass through you. And so there's nothing wrong with having, you know, the negative thoughts or crazy insane thoughts. I have them all the time. It's just a matter of if you recognize them and let them go, or if you put them into action, because you are what you act out, not what you think, right?

• 1:07:30Chris Williamson?

  So meditation, would you say it's not about stopping the thoughts, it's about a detachment from them?

• 1:07:38Cory Allen?

  Well, not even detachment, but just like acknowledgement and then being able to actually,

• 1:07:45Cory Allen?

  you know, I heard Thomas Metzinger, the German philosopher, said it well, where he's like, thoughts are like a bunch of little kids in a line. They're always going to be there in your mind, but they'll always kind of walk up to you and want your attention. And you just need to give them attention for a minute and then they'll move on and they give the next one attention and then they'll move on. And every once in a while, those kids will sort of be doing their own thing and there'll be a gap in that line. And that's where you can, you'll have a moment of pure awareness.

• 1:08:14Chris Williamson?

  Have a little bit of peace.

• 1:08:15Cory Allen?

  Yeah, but you know, regardless of if that thing that's coming to your attention is good or bad, not getting wrapped up in it is key. And recognizing that you have the ability to, to control that and that you're also can allow yourself to let go of any potential guilt or feelings of negativity. Because I hear people say, oh, I'm an awful person. I just thought this. It's like, no, you're just a person. You know, we all think horrible things. You know, I put, there's a chapter or a section in my book, I put judgment is in our DNA. That's like the title. It's this whole thing on like a kind of evolutionary psychology approach to why I think that we all have judgment. And it's just recognizing that that's a part of the expression of the human

• 1:08:58Cory Allen?

  mind. And then like not taking it personally, just knowing what to do with it.

• 1:09:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Cory Allen?

  It's like, it's like saying like, oh, I, sorry to be gross, but it's like saying like, oh, I take a shit every day. And that makes me disgusting because shit's disgusting.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Cory Allen?

  So no, it's just a part of being the biological expression of being human. You just know what to do with it. If you left it in the living room, then yeah, that'd be gross. But you put it where it goes and then move on.

• 1:09:28Chris Williamson?

  And then it's fine.

• 1:09:29Cory Allen?

  Fine. Yeah.

• 1:09:30Chris Williamson?

  So you've touched on it a couple of times about the book. Am I right in saying that first, first draft's gone off?

• 1:09:38Cory Allen?

  Yes.

• 1:09:39Chris Williamson?

  So what, what can you tell us so far?

• 1:09:42Cory Allen?

  Yeah. So that's right now it's called Now Is The Way. And it's basically turned into an argument against the acceptance of a given amount of human suffering. You know, there are these, the, the way in which we perceive and approach our world. I think inherently has a lot of kinks and a lot of assumed qualities to it. And to reexamine your own perspective from a different point of view can really alleviate and relieve a lot of the pressure and suffering that we feel as, as humans. And so it deals with a lot of evolutionary psychology here and there.

• 1:10:24Cory Allen?

  But also a lot of, you know, themes of consciousness are touched on. And, and even accepting oneself, you know, accepting other people goes kind of deep into the self and identity and how to allow yourself to evolve and become the person that you'd like to be. And a couple of chapters on meditation, you know, so, uh, yeah, it's, I, it's also very, also encapsulated humor into it too. It's, it's not dry, you know, there's definitely some moments of, uh, there's definitely a lot to think about, but it's also light and kind of silly in a lot of places as well.

• 1:11:05Cory Allen?

  So I'm very excited about it and, you know, early 2019 is when it should be available.

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome. Did you enjoy writing the book?

• 1:11:13Cory Allen?

  Oh yeah, I had a, I had a fantastic time. It was great.

• 1:11:17Chris Williamson?

  Did you find it challenging to try and pull together so many fields? You mentioned sort of evolutionary biology, anthropology, stuff like that. Did you, was there, um, was most of this stuff kind of floating around? Did you, obviously you've mentioned that you do a lot of reading and that you've got this sort of moderately insatiable desire for information. Did you have to delve much deeper or did you have a sort of a good framework already existing before you started?

• 1:11:45Cory Allen?

  I had a good framework and I think that any you know, creative project takes on a life of its own. Once you get in the flow with it.

• 1:11:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Cory Allen?

  So I had a general outline and I don't, I don't think if, if a person has everything planned out to a T, then they go create the thing and then nothing changes. I think that might be wise to reassess what you've done.

• 1:12:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Cory Allen?

  Because the thing needs to wake up and like if a piece of yourself doesn't come out of nowhere, out of, you know, out of the ether and arrive and come to life in the moment, then there's something missing. Right. But I had a general idea and scaffolding and then that evolved and, and took its own form as I continued to actually flesh it out and write it.

• 1:12:31Chris Williamson?

  That's fascinating. I, I've got Johann Hari, the author of Lost Connections. I've got him coming on very soon and he, he mentioned in his, in his book about some of the evolutionary bases for human suffering, one of them being loneliness. And the justification and the understanding for that for me was so eye opening. It was like, um, it was like having my worldview sort of smashed apart consistently, chapter after chapter. He'd, um, have you read, have you read the book? Have you read Lost Connections?

• 1:13:07Cory Allen?

  No, I'm not familiar with him at all.

• 1:13:09Chris Williamson?

  Johann is, uh, he's a British guy. He's, um, the book Lost Connections is focuses on depression and anxiety, the, the real causes of depression and their surprising solutions. And in one of them, he discusses about why loneliness exists. What's the reason for loneliness? And he said that a hundred thousand years ago, let's say, uh, human evolution, when nomadic tribes were living, living on plains and.

• 1:13:39Chris Williamson?

  We weren't stronger than animals, we weren't faster, we could run them down over long distances, but the real strategy, the real skill that humans have was their ability to coordinate, their teamwork, and that the tribe was your protection. It wasn't a horn on the top of your head, it wasn't you claws, it was the tribe, the tribe was your, your power. And that if you, as a human being, were left on your own, away from the tribe, your body needed to signal to you, get the fuck back there, as fast as possible.

• 1:14:17Chris Williamson?

  And it would try and issue all of these physiological responses that make you yearn for contact, because a human on his own is a human that's dead. And he talks about some studies which have been done on tribes that still live in a similar, a similar fashion to how we would have done. And he says that there is a, there's a metric that you can use for measuring loneliness. And during your sleep, you will have these micro awakenings. And you won't remember them when you wake up in the morning, but everybody has them. And they worked out that the more loneliness that someone feels, the more of these micro

• 1:15:02Chris Williamson?

  awakenings will occur. And the reason for that is that if you're on your own, sleeping in a cave, without the protection of the tribe around you, your body does not want to let you go absolutely to sleep. It wants you to be just on the cusp of waking up at all times as a protectionist strategy, right? So that you're, so that you're not too deep, so that you're not too far away from, from the animals coming and waking you up, and you can hear them coming from further off. And they'd done this study on this tribe, and the micro awakenings were almost non-existent throughout all of them. Because this sense of belonging and this sense of group identity that, that was safe, was so high, that they

• 1:15:43Chris Williamson?

  didn't need, they didn't need these. And I thought that was a, that was really interesting, eye-opening explanation of why something that is so ubiquitous, so common for everyone to feel, everyone knows what loneliness feels like, right? But

• 1:16:00Chris Williamson?

  It has its roots in our development. And for me to, you know, you've mentioned the evolution, human biology element that you'll be discussing, that for me is such a, it's such a liberating fact to find out, do you know what I mean? That this isn't my sole experience, this suffering hasn't just been bestowed on me. There's hundreds of thousands of years of people who've suffered it before me and there will be to come. I think, I think that's a really, a really grounding way to think about things.

• 1:16:39Cory Allen?

  I agree, man. And I feel that in the book, anyway, I call that the evolutionary hangover. Is this like where technology evolves so fast and humans evolve so slowly that we're fresh out of the jungle and we're still trying to deal with these, you know, 100,000, 200,000 year old imperatives, biological imperatives, while at the same time, we have iPhones and the internet and all of this type of thing cracking along. And so there's a tension between the lower brain and the upper brain, and we're still working that out. I think it's kind of being addressed right now. It's beginning to be addressed. And so I addressed that a lot throughout the entire book. One of the things I mentioned is that like, it's just as a joke, sort of, but

• 1:17:23Cory Allen?

  it is a strange fact is that there are still Amazonian hunter, or I'm sorry, there are still hunter and gather tribes in the Amazon. However, amazon.com will deliver your groceries to you in two hours.

• 1:17:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, having, again, having those two things exist in the same world seems, seems very strange, doesn't it?

• 1:17:48Cory Allen?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Cory Allen?

  Indeed.

• 1:17:49Chris Williamson?

  So I wanted to ask you one final question. Have you got, have you got any idea of the total amount of practice time that you've undergone? Do you reckon you'd be able to work out how much time you've spent meditating?

• 1:18:03Cory Allen?

  Oh, man.

• 1:18:06Cory Allen?

  Let me just take a wild guess and we bust out the calculator real quick and think about it. Let's see.

• 1:18:14Cory Allen?

  I'll be real.

• 1:18:17Chris Williamson?

  No one's gonna fact, no one's gonna fact check you.

• 1:18:20Cory Allen?

  Well, I'd like to know, you know, I'd like to know a real answer here.

• 1:18:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Cory Allen?

  Let's see, I'll be very conservative. Let's see, times 20 divided by.

• 1:18:39Cory Allen?

  I mean, I'll just conservatively say at least thousands of, and thousands of hours. Let's just leave it at that.

• 1:18:45Chris Williamson?

  We'll leave it there. That is, um, I've got a really interesting, I'll send you the link and I'll, I'll make sure the link is in the description. There's a really interesting observed change, uh, flow chart of what happens at 10 hours, 100 hours, 500, a thousand, 5,000, 10,000 hours of meditation. Anecdotal, um, anecdotal stories about what someone's experience is like, and also the observed changes in the brain. And I think if your experience of life is anything like what the 1,000 hours says, the one to 5,000 hours says, I think you're living a, a little bit of a, a different experience than I am. But so to round off, where can the listeners find you online?

• 1:19:30Cory Allen?

  They can just go to cory-allen.com. There is links to my podcast, The Astro Hustle. There are articles I've written on various topics and some of my music, some of my binaural beats for meditation. All sorts of things are available there.

• 1:19:45Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Cory. I really appreciate it. Hopefully we've managed to make meditation a little bit less daunting for some of the listeners. I've had a lot of messages already from people saying that they're keen to try. And if this is the push that gets them through the door, then I think that we've spent, and it's been an hour, very well spent.

• 1:20:06Cory Allen?

  Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Thank you, Chris. And like I said earlier, I, there should be no, there, there's nothing to fear. There is no thing to fear about meditation. It's, as I said, you're doing it every night. You're doing it all the time. You just have to realize you're doing it and then point it in the right direction. You know what I mean?

• 1:20:26Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Cory, thank you very much for your time.

• 1:20:29Cory Allen?

  Thank you.

• 1:20:30Chris Williamson?

  Cheers, mate.