The Fundamentals Of Meditation | Cory Allen

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. Follow Cory Online: www.cory-allen.com - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

• 0:06Speaker 1

  Good morning. This week I am joined by none other than Corey Allen. He is an author, uh meditation teacher and host of the Astral Hustle Podcast. He's also the creator of my favorite 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 caliber as a meditation expert that I could find and get them to explain the absolute basics on a podcast. 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.

• 0:51Speaker 1

  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, Corey 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. So here we go. Corey Allen.

• 1:49Speaker 1

  Corey 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,

• 2:03Speaker 0

  I could put some on if you'd like.

• 2:06Speaker 1

  That'll 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 Corey Allen impression and actually give it back to you.

• 2:25Speaker 0

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

• 2:35Speaker 1

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. So uh 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 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 which is from the outside looking in very complex.

• 3:35Speaker 1

  I don't know whether in your circles now whether you know whether you um regular 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.

• 4:01Speaker 0

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

• 4:08Speaker 1

  Is that true? Wow.

• 4:10Speaker 0

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

• 4:19Speaker 1

  Okay.

• 4:20Speaker 0

  And um let me just 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 it 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 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.

• 5:07Speaker 0

  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 uh you you need as connective tissue to create that narrative in your imagination. But the problem with uh meditation is is that so now take this same uh situation,

• 5:44Speaker 1

  yes,

• 5:45Speaker 0

  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 the sensory and putting all of the contents into the consciousness of someone who's doing that to express that experience to another person is so impossible that uh it's it's really you know uh ultimately can it be done. It would be an

• 6:20Speaker 1

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

• 6:24Speaker 0

  Exactly. So take a take a hundred years of people who aren't great writers, even all trying to get at in writing about the thing, the experience, yeah, including all of the fat and all of the metaphysical uh nonsense and uh you know all you know, all the stuff that they can go along with that. Everyone's trying to describe an intangible experience. And so there are just mountains and mountains of descriptions about and this intangible experience,

• 6:55Speaker 1

  yeah,

• 6:56Speaker 0

  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 uh an individual who is perhaps only hearing about the idea or in 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.

• 7:26Speaker 1

  You know, it

• 7:27Speaker 0

  would be off-putting to me as well. So I think that the idea, you know, the best that's that's the problem. I think the solution to break that barrier of injury 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.

• 7:48Speaker 1

  The path, not the destination, right? Sure, yeah. Yeah, I think uh 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 uh their particular brain setup where they go to when their thoughts begin to quiet and 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 the 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 in getting people to buy into the process, so to speak.

• 8:39Speaker 0

  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 am talking about something more um 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 yeah, for sure. But especially within things that are that are intangible and transient.

• 9:08Speaker 1

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

• 9:26Speaker 0

  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.

• 9:39Speaker 1

  Yeah,

• 9:40Speaker 0

  you know, and uh now I think there have been people who have a lot of visibility who are uh promoting it and what have you. And I do think it's becoming a much more mainstream uh type of idea in practice because it works, yeah, and I think people are figuring. Figuring it out. And also I think there is a uh you know, enough of the badly translated Eastern wisdom from the 60s and 70s in America anyway, has 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.

• 10:26Speaker 0

  You don't need the

• 10:27Speaker 1

  theology or the the ideology behind it, right?

• 10:31Speaker 0

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

• 11:13Speaker 1

  Yeah,

• 11:13Speaker 0

  and unless you are looking to your own mind as you're a 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 uh you know approach to and path to mindfulness and meditation, I think is has been is been laid out more and more clearly, and that's what people are responding to it. I think

• 11:37Speaker 1

  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 if mindfulness practice is going to be widely adopted, the 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 uh a particular uh religious background or a particular um strata of society that that's not very helpful, is it? And I think you're right, exporting for a secular society is a a much more inclusive way of getting people started.

• 12:17Speaker 0

  Interestingly, I'm 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. Um do you find or do you think that from what you observed that societies in general are becoming more secular? I'd definitely say so in the UK. I think I

• 12:38Speaker 1

  think so. Uh I can't speak for anywhere else, that's the bulk of my experience. Um, I think a lot of people are becoming very disenchanted with what would have been the old guard mainstay of uh um what communities are built around a lot of uh 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 uh 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 I certainly think people are being more forward thinking and less less um spiritually minded in the traditional sense of the word.

• 13:37Speaker 1

  But yeah, I I'm would you would you say that it's different in your experience?

• 13:42Speaker 0

  Well, it's just hard to tell, you know, like I can see the sample sizes uh right. It's like I can observe my subjective take on it from the input and the things I receive. Uh of course, you know, like I wouldn't have thought that Trump would be the president of America either. So,

• 13:59Speaker 1

  you know,

• 14:00Speaker 0

  I mean I that that really collapsed my paradigm of speculative uh trust for myself. So it is hard to

• 14:08Speaker 1

  Corey Allen can never trust me, Corey Allen ever again. That's for sure, man. So you

• 14:13Speaker 0

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

• 15:09Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 0

  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 the your world views and experiences and and themes of what these people thought around you, and that was sort of the scope of your own. Kind of nicely nicely insulated, right? Right, right, and just simply unaware of the complexities and the just for the amount of people in the rest of the world. But I really believe that that complexity is a certain degree, it becomes a real frustration for humans. Like whenever there's too many things out there that uh 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.

• 15:55Speaker 0

  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 if it's if it's gridlock 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 social media kicked off, that all these voices, everyone has this voice that they can spit out into the ether and have you know causal reflection. And so you look out into 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 you know, if you ever thought that you were significant, well, just go on the internet.

• 16:47Speaker 1

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

• 16:50Speaker 0

  Right, right, right. Exactly. So that causes a lot of tension, man. And uh I 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 of uh the sea of humanity of the of the entire world is there apparent in speaking at them directly. Yeah, you cannot shut it down. And so it begs the question of like one's own existence, you know, one's own uh the you know, the meaning within their life. I wonder if there's been an

• 17:29Speaker 1

  increase in existential crises from this 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 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.

• 18:01Speaker 0

  Yeah. Now

• 18:02Speaker 1

  rolling it a little bit further down the line, there's uh that's kind of uh that 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 um such a profound change day to day in how you deal with situations. I think you're right. If if there was a little bit more mindfulness, only a little bit more mindfulness worldwide, there would be an awful lot less and uh antagonistic problems, a lot less aggression between people, a lot less m a misunderstanding as well,

• 18:40Speaker 0

  because

• 18:40Speaker 1

  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.

• 18:51Speaker 0

  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. Yeah. 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 onto someone else. You know, and that person holds that, and then they're tossing it up in the air, and then they're putting it in.

• 19:28Speaker 1

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

• 19:30Speaker 0

  Exactly. And it's literally like I don't 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? Yeah,

• 19:43Speaker 1

  it's just moving through.

• 19:45Speaker 0

  Yeah, like did when I get a cold, you know, a couple of months ago, and I was thinking like, did like Napoleon have this cold, yeah. Where did this start? Yeah, exactly.

• 19:53Speaker 1

  How long is this getting passed around? And I mean the anger

• 19:56Speaker 0

  thing, the the negative emotion thing is the same thing, and that I'm A big fan of not repression, but of a thing I call uh or I have heard called and just end up calling, I'm not sure where, but um you know, uh turning poison into medicine, or they also another term for it is stopping the wheel of of karma. Uh and that'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.

• 20:28Speaker 1

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

• 20:34Speaker 0

  Right. Um so can you give us a little bit of background to your

• 20:38Speaker 1

  mindfulness practice, what you've started doing and um where you're at now.

• 20:45Speaker 0

  Yeah, sure. Um let's see. I started really uh really young. Um I'm 36. I started, you know, in my mid teenage years. Essentially in the 90s, 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 uh an immense amount of suffering and anxiety, you know, and emotional suffering w within myself and the environment that I you know was in was only compounding that, and I had a lot of energy, and not in the metaphysical sense, but just in a sense of vitality at the time, and uh I've gotten older, so that's gone away now I had a lot of energy,

• 21:44Speaker 1

  man,

• 21:44Speaker 0

  and 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 and 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, 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 realized, oh, this is more of what I think and how I think in some ways, you know, much more themes of equanimity and peacefulness and kind of a universality, and also a lack of emphasis on the individual.

• 22:39Speaker 0

  Like I don't think we're special, and I appreciate the the and like take that, you know, the grain of salt, but

• 22:46Speaker 1

  yeah,

• 22:47Speaker 0

  I I I mean I don't mean that like that in the nihilistic way, I mean that in the sense that like we're all just these momentary little uh wiggly fleshy, you know, worms 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 it's a beautiful thing. It's like reality is as you know in human existence is equally beautiful as it is bleak. Yes and people clinch up with that because they think no, no, life sh should be seen as this like happy ending Disney type

• 23:21Speaker 1

  period.

• 23:22Speaker 0

  Yeah, and it's like, yeah, it it is, man, but it's also like you gotta acknowledge the the the sour and the sweet and sour, or else the sauce doesn't have the twang, like the the reason for life is the twang, right?

• 23:33Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 0

  Anyway, so yeah, man. Uh I appreciate the idea of in you know in Buddhism of there not really being a soul or anything like that. That's an it resonates well with me. Right, right. And so uh another thing, you know, as a side note, the in my book I I write about the upside of impermanence because people think of impermanence and they're always like, well, what a bummer, you know, everything rots and everything just dissolves. And so I uh I point out there that in for there for 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. Without the yang without the

• 24:15Speaker 1

  yang, there is no yin, right?

• 24:17Speaker 0

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

• 24:35Speaker 1

  gonna guess

• 24:35Speaker 0

  I'm gonna guess

• 24:36Speaker 1

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

• 24:54Speaker 0

  Yeah, yeah, there definitely wasn't a lot of like process based things, but you know, anything from Alan Watts to uh Robert Anton Wilson and you know Tim Leary and some stuff like that, but then uh also at the same time I was reading things like Suzuki and like extreme hardcore zen, like where they Zenstick 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, don't there's the moment, there's the moment, and don't break your concentration. You know, so I definitely was getting uh two sides. But really uh being kind of auto-diadact 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.

• 25:40Speaker 0

  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 just the the pain and suffering that I was feeling in that time, like none of that has a place within my my mind. Yeah, my mind became my sanctuary. Have you read um Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel?

• 26:28Speaker 1

  I

• 26:28Speaker 0

  have, yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 1

  Yeah, so man's final bastion is his ability to choose his response in any given situation, right? It's that it's the the thought that your ability to respond and your thoughts within your mind are yours and they'll always be yours.

• 26:48Speaker 0

  Mm-hmm. I except for uh I I love that idea, but I also kind of believe in d determinism as far as free focus. So, you know, you know, when it's different, it's

• 26:58Speaker 1

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

• 27:02Speaker 0

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

• 27:09Speaker 1

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

• 27:13Speaker 0

  So right, man. So I was doing uh you know, into meditation like that, and it eventually just uh became this very fundamental aspect of my existence and carried on. So even wherever my life began to balance, probably much because of meditation in a lot of ways, um, it uh just continued on with the practice, and I just continued exploring. I'm very inquisitive little critter, and I uh I'm always spent a lot of time, especially my early 20s, 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 uh and in a lot of different realms, trying to understand that. And what's interesting from my point of view now was in that time, you know, especially in my late teens and you know, doing a lot of uh psychedelics and meditation, just going as far deep as I could uh 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.

• 28:18Speaker 0

  I played in the middle of the street, I was able to see what was going in on in the yard across the street.

• 28:26Speaker 1

  Yeah,

• 28:26Speaker 0

  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 and psychedelics and and consciousness and all this stuff really kicked up. So it was a really curious uh 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 uh

• 29:06Speaker 1

  known for so long, right? You were fairly. Yeah, I

• 29:08Speaker 0

  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. You know, it's good timing a lot of people getting into that uh set of interests and then being able to arrive with a reflected point of view whenever it was needed.

• 29:28Speaker 1

  Do you feel the 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 uh big uptake in um in mindfulness practice and a big interest in it?

• 29:44Speaker 0

  Well, man, I mean I don't really like put myself in my own image of the greater picture 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're interested in meditation. And I was like, oh, cool, man. And we could talk about it for a little while. And I would tell you whatever I thought. And 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.

• 30:15Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 0

  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 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 it's not a

• 30:35Speaker 1

  self-brand, it's not steaming in as Corey Allen meditation master third degree, third third degree black black belt sort of thing. I think I think well again, that speaks to the practice, right? That speaks to the detachment from the ego and so on and so forth.

• 30:50Speaker 0

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 1

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

• 30:55Speaker 0

  tricked yourself because it's not like you just realized tricked everyone, yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 1

  Um 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 uh and take it from that?

• 31:18Speaker 0

  Yeah, sure, man. So you you touched on something that was 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 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 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 there 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. The point is to doing as much of the practice that you need to feel a balance and a change that works for you.

• 32:08Speaker 0

  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 uh flow of consciousness, your own flow of thoughts enough to not get into a a chain of reactive behavior and just be able to respond to your own life as opposed to being carried away uh in your reactive programmed. You

• 32:41Speaker 1

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

• 32:47Speaker 0

  Yeah, in the dance is of course when you do it enough to where that all becomes uh synchronous. Yes. 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 gonna try and do it while you're awake a little bit, right? So you just sit in a chair, maybe on your couch or lay down, whatever's the most comfortable for you, and just close your eyes, put on your phone and all that stuff away, and just relax your body and take ten deep breaths, nothing unnatural, just allow your chest to expand and and uh and exhale.

• 33:38Speaker 0

  And uh when you're doing that, you know, with your eyes close, just kind of point your attention to your chest. No big deal, just rising and falling. And just you just try ten 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 ten and see if you can count ten breaths. And most people can't. Most people get distracted at three. Right. Right. Right. What's the breakfast?

• 34:11Speaker 1

  I wonder, I wonder if the cat's been let out yet. Right to do for breakfast. Yeah, there's

• 34:16Speaker 0

  nothing you know, thoughts get weird, but there's nothing wrong with that at all. And if uh if one becomes distracted whenever you realize that you're just acted, 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 ten 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. Yep. Because the antsiness 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 you're just always doing something that to not do something, you almost feel like phantom limb syndrome, where you're like, uh, my hands, right?

• 35:16Speaker 0

  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 and begins to happen, is that whenever you're you know the the mind is reflected in the body and vice versa. And so the chatter of the brain begins to calm down, the chatter of the body begins to calm down, and whenever 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.

• 35:55Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 0

  And it should not be a feeling of like where you're you're shrink wrapped and you're claustrophobic within your own skin. It's not being tight, right?

• 36:02Speaker 1

  It's yeah,

• 36:03Speaker 0

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

• 36:08Speaker 1

  Yeah. I think it's a really really good analogy, what you said about uh not trying to steam in 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. Right. Right. You you start off and it's progressive overload, right?

• 36:27Speaker 0

  Right.

• 36:27Speaker 1

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

• 36:46Speaker 0

  So from there, then you'll you'll want to try and make that uh consecutive. So you want to make sure you know you can try that a couple of times here and there when it appeals to you, or most people 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 trying, 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, uh, 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 in for a job interview or an important conversation, or you know, a first date or something like that.

• 37:37Speaker 0

  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.

• 37:47Speaker 1

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

• 37:53Speaker 0

  Exactly, exactly. And so the beautiful thing in the real deep uh result that one will find for meditation is doing it consecutively. So after you, you know, 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 I you feel a little little high or something afterwards. And uh I I used to back, you know, just 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 that like a runner? Is that

• 38:28Speaker 1

  like a run as high, but for academics? So I

• 38:32Speaker 0

  knew that my brain was stretching. It's like if I read like enough of this idea or this concept until I feel stoned, I know that like synapses are popping, right? Yeah, yeah. So but you you will feel uh a bit of or often a person will feel a bit of uh difference in their consciousness after meditation, and that's really a awareness of your own awareness.

• 38:57Speaker 1

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

• 39:02Speaker 0

  Yeah, yeah, you'll 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. 100% and that becomes a orientation, a permanent orientation once you practice meditation consecutively. Just as the analogy you use with stretching, if you stretch, you know, I I like to run a lot, and if you were to to to never stretch, that would be bad, obviously you hurt yourself. Um but it would be total if you stretch once a week and you're running 20 miles a week, you're going to not feel well.

• 39:51Speaker 0

  But if you stretch every day, it becomes easier and easier to stretch each time. Yes. 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 uh then if you do it every day, you're just going to feel this inherent flexibility that becomes a part of your daily experience.

• 40:18Speaker 1

  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 uh 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, which I'm 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.

• 41:18Speaker 1

  I felt very, very calm quite quickly after spending 10 to 15 minutes calming the mind. 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?

• 41:36Speaker 0

  Yes, I would say you know, typically the the word on that is around two weeks is where 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 uh framework of the brain and the mind and what have you. And uh it does seem to be around that time that people will notice that. However, 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 gonna feel angry again. You know, it's like this is gonna be cool. I'm I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be a

• 42:20Speaker 1

  Zen master.

• 42:28Speaker 1

  Like Brandon Stark in Game of Thrones at the moment, just like this turnip in the corner of the room.

• 42:35Speaker 0

  By the way, that's one of my favorite uh you know, UK sayings is turnip is close to my I I'm glad you said it. I I like uh tennis a lot, and whenever I hear Andy Murray yell calling himself a turnip, it always makes me laugh.

• 42:50Speaker 1

  I didn't even know that he does that. That's that's such a Scottish thing to call yourself as well. Like 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 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 uh 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. But it's uh it was it was so funny when he uh when when that started to come up in the in the game of thrones thing, and a couple of my friends who do uh yoga meditation as well mentioned the same thing.

• 43:45Speaker 1

  They said, Do you think that Brandon's actually got any uh green sight or whatever it's called, or has he just been absolutely pounding the meditation for the last row while he's been in the wheelchair.

• 43:57Speaker 0

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

• 44:18Speaker 1

  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 would I wouldn't say that that's my that that marries with my experience, not yet. I

• 44:30Speaker 0

  wouldn't I'm I wouldn't have to be a good one. I'm reflecting back here. I'm thinking, you know, I've I think I've been meditating about 20 years.

• 44:36Speaker 1

  Yep.

• 44:37Speaker 0

  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. That's like

• 44:54Speaker 1

  that's like taking the taking the dip down before getting on the roller coaster right to the top, right? Right, it's like a slingshot,

• 45:01Speaker 0

  right?

• 45:01Speaker 1

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:02Speaker 0

  But no, I'm now thinking back, yeah. I do I do think uh I recall there being a long stretch uh uh 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 uh, you know, that's a that's a tricky one. Yeah. But I think that these days, not to fast forward too much, but these days my meditation is very much um just watching and in my meditation, and I described this kind of recently uh is that I think that a 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, yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 0

  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. Wow.

• 46:14Speaker 1

  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's so quiet, you know, as you as you slowly come round to back back into the physical realm, so to speak.

• 46:44Speaker 0

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

• 46:47Speaker 1

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

• 46:58Speaker 0

  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 be able to pass it up if it becomes a thing they they feel like they have to do. Yes. People just don't like being told what to do, even by themselves.

• 47:21Speaker 1

  We're not our own slaves, right? Yeah, one of my one of one of the uh 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.

• 47:31Speaker 0

  Absolutely.

• 47:32Speaker 1

  Absolutely.

• 47:33Speaker 0

  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, or 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,

• 47:50Speaker 1

  it's like it's like

• 47:51Speaker 0

  it's a good thing, you know, and helps helps you stay fresh and and and uh crispy clean and the meditation is no different.

• 47:58Speaker 1

  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?

• 48:09Speaker 0

  Yeah, man, I think that once you've become more accustomed to meditating something longer than five or ten minutes. I would say uh twenty to thirty 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.

• 48:38Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 0

  And I know is that may even sound a little weird, but just the nature of human time management and psychology and all that stuff. I I think it's sort of an important thing to keep in mind. And um, you know, to me, I generally there's something magical about the 20-minute zone, 20 minute mark to me, and I've spoken with other people who were 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 in kind of embrace that watching period for a while and experience just consciousness, just awareness, man.

• 49:23Speaker 1

  I think I think there's certainly I bought my mum uh listeners will know what I'm gonna say. I bought my mum 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, head space. Um she likes doing five and ten 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 ten minute meditation, for me personally, the first 50% or more, the first five minutes to ten minutes is just quietening the mind. When you're doing the there's a kind of like an overhead that needs to be paid.

• 50:12Speaker 1

  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 um states of meditation more quickly? Kind of like dropping into REM sleep more quickly, I suppose.

• 50:30Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, in my experience, yes. Yes. And I think that it's uh the the analogy of 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 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 uh quite sharp. And so you know, it just whatever the day calls for, it's 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.

• 51:17Speaker 0

  Um and I think that meditation, you know, as far as that time of getting into the the actual target zone is the same. To me, like I think I spend uh two or three minutes just kind of getting comfortable, like getting physically getting just how I want to be. Yeah. And uh that should be for any, I suppose for any people person who might be listening that is interested. That would be if you're 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 uh 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.

• 52:06Speaker 0

  It's uh it's like um

• 52:11Speaker 0

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

• 52:17Speaker 1

  Yeah, and

• 52:17Speaker 0

  then the head just floats on top, like you literally just your head's like a cherry on top of the Sunday. 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 of that's all my lines, yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 1

  Well, I mean I I'm I'm hearing I'm hearing snippets from release in the now just coming back at me, just done uh on live here instead of uh instead of hearing them on a recording. Yeah, that's cool. So you touched on this earlier, and it's uh 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 I don't know if I've taken that out of context, but that uh 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.

• 53:19Speaker 1

  Would you be able to elaborate on that?

• 53:23Speaker 0

  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 and to simplify and to make that more easy to understand to someone who has not had that experience.

• 54:09Speaker 0

  If you're 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, you know, 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 at 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, uh, or it can as the potential to. Meditation is the same thing. It's just a different pathway and a different uh, you know, um method of getting to that place, and I would say a much more stable and agreeable and long beneficial one.

• 54:55Speaker 1

  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.

• 55:10Speaker 0

  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 you know, 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 uh and then trying to pick up the pieces and put it all back together.

• 55:50Speaker 1

  Such a

• 55:50Speaker 0

  destructive uh image

• 55:55Speaker 1

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

• 56:02Speaker 0

  Always have extra pieces when he puts them back together, man. Yeah, where did this come from? This

• 56:06Speaker 1

  wasn't a part of me, yeah, exactly.

• 56:08Speaker 0

  Yeah, and so um, but but you know, in 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, ten years later. It's like, oh, that's what I was experiencing at that moment, and now I had the time to understand it. And 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 the game.

• 56:56Speaker 0

  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 interested in it's actually even curious to me. Like I'm not even interested in consciousness state changes of many uh in in of many regards these days. Like, you know, I'm not really interested in psychedelics or hardly even alcohol, even though I do drink my wine uh several kind of a lot several nights a week and stuff like that, but I don't really even want to. I just kind of do 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. Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 0

  I don't crave or desire state changes. Why do you think

• 57:44Speaker 1

  that

• 57:45Speaker 0

  is? I think it's because I am so uh 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 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. 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 b boring or confusing or like sort of just murky.

• 58:41Speaker 0

  But my resting awareness is just really pleasurable. Like I just like it. It's like it's so much it's really fun and deep and rich, and there's never an end to the things to be thought about or the experiences to be uh enjoyed and and taken in. And I, you know, there's uh could be a lot of reasons for that, but uh it just is what it is. I think it's a good thing that I just enjoy my my own experience. 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 because at the same time I was going through this that shift I was just describing.

• 59:34Speaker 0

  Yeah. And what I realized if I really put away pretty much everything, and then 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 to me with these type of things. And I found I the one of the reasons why interest me so much. 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.

• 1:00:15Speaker 1

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 0

  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.

• 1:00:30Speaker 1

  One step forward, one step back.

• 1:00:31Speaker 0

  Right, right.

• 1:00:32Speaker 1

  And I think 20 steps forward, 20 steps back.

• 1:00:36Speaker 0

  Yeah. Right. 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.

• 1:00:52Speaker 1

  Yes. And

• 1:00:52Speaker 0

  it's so it gives you even more steps back. 100%. 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. Becoming attached to the narrative,

• 1:01:09Speaker 1

  aren't they? Of this is my experience, this is where I am going. I'd said something uh a little bit less um a little bit less mindful, but similarly appropriate, I think, where I was discussing with Dominic McGregor, who is um 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 very common. And one of the things that I said was how overwhelming the experiences of having a lot of alcohol, and then when you add in stronger drugs, MDMA, party drugs and pills and stuff like that.

• 1:01:55Speaker 1

  What blows my mind is that people travel to the other side of the planet, they'll go on a stagdo or a birthday party or whatever, they'll travel to Thailand or Vegas or Mabea or 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 uh difference in their experience from them going to their local pub and taking the taking the exact same substances. And I said that when you go away and you do this to yourself, 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.

• 1:02:47Speaker 1

  But you're in Vegas, or you're in Male, or you're in wherever, and you wake up the next day and you suffer the hangover in a different in a different location.

• 1:02:58Speaker 0

  Totally. I think you just came up with a really good business idea. It's like

• 1:03:02Speaker 1

  have

• 1:03:03Speaker 0

  really like faux international exotic destinations, like in your local area that you can go there and you know it's like a bar. Out of your mind,

• 1:03:11Speaker 1

  yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 0

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

• 1:03:17Speaker 1

  close.

• 1:03:17Speaker 0

  Yeah,

• 1:03:17Speaker 1

  for the price. Yeah, exactly. It's taking a lot less time to get that.

• 1:03:21Speaker 0

  But I I totally agree, man. And to me, more of 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 of themselves or whatever, and I just think it's it's really unfortunate. And I mean, man, I was I was a uh soldier in with alcohol for a long, long time. We've all

• 1:03:45Speaker 1

  served our time, right?

• 1:03:47Speaker 0

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

• 1:03:53Speaker 1

  Conscription.

• 1:03:54Speaker 0

  Yeah, uh, but um it just yeah, man, just it looks like suffering to me, anyway, and it's uh yeah, it's I I think that it's it's just uh unfortunate, but it is what it is, man.

• 1:04:07Speaker 1

  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 I can't usually um 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 the suffering thing, it's it's really difficult at the moment, if I'm honest, for me to hold in um holding the same world that I'm trying to encourage mindfulness practice.

• 1:04:57Speaker 1

  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 business across multiple cities in the UK, 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 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, I'm I I feel a little bit sick.

• 1:05:50Speaker 1

  It becomes self-referential, it becomes anxiety-inducing, it becomes labeling, and it 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. 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 can sometimes bring up some quite ugly answers, actually.

• 1:06:37Speaker 1

  One of the one of the guys who I mentioned mindfulness to uh about a year ago said something to the effect of I really don't want to quiet in 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 interesting idea to think about that.

• 1:06:58Speaker 0

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

• 1:07:36Speaker 1

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

• 1:07:44Speaker 0

  Well, not even detachment, but just like acknowledgement and then being able to actually um you know I heard Thomas Met Metzinger, the German philosopher uh said it well, where he's like thoughts are like a bunch of little kids in a line. They're always gonna 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 then give the next one attention and it'll move on. And every once in a while, those kids will sort of uh be doing their own thing, and there'll be a gap in that line. And that's where you can you'll you'll have a moment of

• 1:08:20Speaker 1

  have a little bit of peace.

• 1:08:21Speaker 0

  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 um 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, no, you're just a person. You and we all think horrible things. You know, I put there's a chapter or a section of my book, I put judgment is in our DNA. That's like the title. It's this whole thing on like a kind of an evolutionary psychology approach to why I think that we all have judgment. And it's just recognizing that that's a a part of the expression of the human mind, and then like not taking it personally, just knowing what to do with it.

• 1:09:08Speaker 1

  Yeah. It's like it's like saying like, oh,

• 1:09:10Speaker 0

  I sorry to be gross, but it's like saying, like, oh, I I take a shit every day, and

• 1:09:16Speaker 1

  that

• 1:09:17Speaker 0

  makes me disgusting

• 1:09:18Speaker 1

  because shit's disgusting. Yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 0

  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 in the living room, then yeah, that'd be gross. But you know you put it where it goes, yeah, and

• 1:09:33Speaker 1

  then

• 1:09:33Speaker 0

  move on.

• 1:09:34Speaker 1

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

• 1:09:44Speaker 0

  Yes. So can you

• 1:09:45Speaker 1

  what what can you tell us so far?

• 1:09:48Speaker 0

  Yeah, so uh it's right now it's called Now Is the Way, and uh it's basically it 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 uh inherently has uh a lot of kinks and a lot of uh 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, um, but also a lot of uh you know themes of consciousness are touched on, and and even accepting oneself, you know, accepting other people uh goes kind of deep into the self and identity and and how to allow yourself to evolve and become the person that you'd like to be.

• 1:10:48Speaker 0

  And uh a couple of chapters on meditation, you know. So uh yeah, it it's I it's also very 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 uh it's also light and kind of uh silly in a lot of places as well. So I'm very excited about it, and uh you know early 2019 is when it should be available.

• 1:11:16Speaker 1

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

• 1:11:19Speaker 0

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

• 1:11:22Speaker 1

  Did you find it challenging to try and pull together so many fields? You mentioned uh 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 uh moderately insatiable desire for information? Um did you have to delve much deeper, or did you have a sort of a good framework already existing before you started?

• 1:11:50Speaker 0

  I had a good framework, and I think that any creative project takes on a life of its own once you get in the flow with it. And 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. Yeah, 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 um I had a a general idea and scaffolding, and then that evolved and and took its own form as I continued to uh actually flush it out and write it.

• 1:12:37Speaker 1

  That's fascinating. Uh I I've got um Johan Hari, the author of Lost Connections. I've got him coming on very soon, and he mentioned um in his in his book about some of the evolutionary bases for human suffering, one of them being loneliness, and uh 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 Connection? No, I'm not familiar with him at all. Johan 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.

• 1:13:28Speaker 1

  And in one of them he discusses about why loneliness exists, what's the reason for loneliness? And he said that 100,000 years ago, let's say uh human evolution where nomadic tribes were living living on planes, and we weren't stronger than animals, we weren't faster. We can 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 uh a horn on the top of your head, it wasn't your claws, it was the tribe. The tribe is 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, and it would try and issue all of these um physiological responses that make you yearn for contact because a human on his own is a human that's dead.

• 1:14:30Speaker 1

  And he talks about um some studies which have been done on tribes that still live in a a similar similar fashion to how we would have done. And he says that there is a um there's a metric that you can use for measuring loneliness, and during your sleep, you'll 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 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.

• 1:15:17Speaker 1

  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 uh coming and waking up and you can hear them coming from further off. And they've 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 um safe was so high that they didn't need they didn't need these. And I thought that was uh really interesting, eye-opening um explanation of why something that is so ubiquitous, so common for everyone to feel everyone knows what loneliness feels like, right?

• 1:16:09Speaker 1

  But it has its roots in our development. And for me to you know, you've mentioned the uh evolution human biology element that you'll be discussing. That for me is such a um it's such a liberating fact to find out. Do you know what I mean? That this isn't my soul 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 that's a a really um a really grounding way to think about things.

• 1:16:45Speaker 0

  I agree, man. I and I feel that uh in the book anyway, I call that the evolutionary hangover. Is it's like we're w 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 hundred thousand, two hundred thousand year old imperatives, biological imperatives, while at the same time we have iPhones and the internet and all 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 address 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 it is a strange fact is that you know there are still am 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.

• 1:17:46Speaker 1

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

• 1:17:54Speaker 0

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 1

  Yeah. Indeed. 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?

• 1:18:09Speaker 0

  Oh man. Um let me just take let me take a wild guess. Let me bust out the calculator real quick and think about it. Let's see. Um I'll be real uh

• 1:18:23Speaker 1

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

• 1:18:26Speaker 0

  Well, I

• 1:18:27Speaker 1

  I'd like to

• 1:18:28Speaker 0

  know

• 1:18:28Speaker 1

  uh

• 1:18:28Speaker 0

  you know, I'd like to know a real answer here. Yeah. Let's see, I'll be very conservative. Let's see, 20 divided by

• 1:18:46Speaker 0

  just conservatively say at least thousands of and thousands of hours. Let's just leave it at

• 1:18:51Speaker 1

  that. 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, a hundred hours, five hundred, a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand hours of meditation, anecdotal um anecdotal stories about what someone's uh 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 say is the one to 5,000 hours says, I think you're living uh a little bit of a uh a different experience than I am. Um but so to round off, where can the listeners find

• 1:19:34Speaker 0

  you online?

• 1:19:36Speaker 1

  They

• 1:19:36Speaker 0

  can just go to Corey Dash Allen.com. There is uh links to my podcast, the Astral Hustle, there are articles I've written on various topics and some of my music, some of my binaural beats for meditation, uh, all sorts of things are available there.

• 1:19:51Speaker 1

  Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Corey. 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 uh I think that we've spent an hour, it's been an hour very well spent.

• 1:20:12Speaker 0

  Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Thank you, Chris. And like I uh said earlier, I there should be no there there's nothing to fear. There is nothing 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?

• 1:20:32Speaker 1

  Absolutely. Corey, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Cheers, man.