April 10, 2024 • 62 mins
In this episode, Rainn Wilson delves into the conversation tackling many topics including mental health, spirituality across traditions, and the importance of connection. He also explores the universal struggle between our lower and higher selves, shedding light on the battle within. You’ll also hear Rainn’s interesting personal anecdotes and spiritual insights that emphasize the significance of practices like meditation and connecting with nature.
Every Tuesday starting April 9th, Rainn Wilson is releasing the Soul Boom podcast! Tune in each week to a series of intimate conversations that tickle the mind, heart and soul. Never too precious, yet unafraid to touch on the profound, Soul Boom digs into the core of the human experience: creativity, spirituality and psychology. Bringing to the conversation some of the most brilliant and heart-felt artists, thinkers and doers, Soul Boom guides the listener toward transformation on both a personal and societal level. Also, laughs.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Uncover the benefits of meditation for enhancing mental well-being
- Explore the sacred in everyday life for a deeper sense of fulfillment
- Embrace the transformative impact of nature on wellness and spirituality
- Discover how spirituality and connection can lead to improved mental health
- Understand the role of spirituality in overcoming addiction for lasting recovery
To learn more, click here!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and devotion does not have
to be to an entity with a will and a beard,
but connection to the greatest possible love and unity that
binds us all and gives us our common humanity. Welcome
(00:24):
to the One You Feed.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
you are what you think, ring true, and yet for
many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
see what we don't have instead of what we do.
(00:48):
We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
(01:22):
episode is a guest that has been on two previous times.
He's closing in on the record of most appearances on
The One You Feed. It is Rain Wilson, an American actor, comedian, podcaster, producer, writer, director,
and the list goes on and on. You guys probably
know him best as Dwight from the TV show The Office,
(01:43):
but his accomplishments are so many I can't even begin
to list them all. But most importantly for this episode
is to mention his new book called Soul Boom, Why
We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hi, Rain, welcome to the show, Eric.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Thanks for having me back thirds of Charm.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I'm really glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Rain.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's a pleasure to talk to you every time we
get to do it. And today we're going to be
discussing your latest book, which is called Soul Boom, Why
we Need a Spiritual Revolution. But before we get into that,
we will start like we always do with the Parable.
In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their
grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
inside of us that are always at battle. One is
a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
(02:24):
and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Eric. As you know, I'm a huge fan of your
podcast and you are og old school. You've been doing
this for a long time. You've been in that kind
of recovery mental health wellness space since the talkies were invented, right,
wasn't it? And I love how you frame the conversation
around that really exquisite story, and to me, it reminds
(03:07):
me of a story from my faith, which is the
Baha'i faith, and that is the son of the founder
of the Bahai faith, who went by the title Abdul Baha,
which means servant of Glory. He came to the United
States a little over one hundred years ago and he
was interviewed when he landed at the docks in New
(03:28):
York City and there was a journalist there and they said,
do Bahais do members of the Bahai faith believe in Satan?
And Abdul Baha said, yes, Bahais believe in Satan. And
the guy seemed a little surprised, and he said, oh,
to a Bahai, what is Satan? And abdul Baha said,
Satan is the insistent self. I love it, and I
(03:51):
love that idea of the insistent self, because Satan not
being some creature with a tale and red skin and
who lives in an evil place. But Satan is inside
all of us. It is the insistent self side of
all of us, and we all have that insistent self,
(04:14):
that ego that is a veil between us and God.
To quote Rumy, the ego is a veil between us
and God and keeps us in the mud. You know,
it keeps us with those qualities that you described, you know,
greed and avarice, comparison, envy, aggression, fear and lust. And
(04:40):
so to me, the parable that you put at the
centerpiece of your show is the number one most important
spiritual path, spiritual battle that any and every human being walks.
It's in every spiritual tradition, and it's the battle between
us and our lower selves and our higher selves. And
(05:03):
battle is a tough word. Almost feel bad about using
the word battle because conflict is so inherent and baked
into that word. But a balance between these two sides
of ourselves and the spiritual path for anyone, and no
matter what your background, if you're spiritual not religious, and
you struggle with God, if you're a Christian, if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim,
(05:27):
Bahai is always how do we keep the insistent self
at bay? Recognize it as an important part of the
human experience. We wouldn't be here as human beings if
we didn't have greed, lust, avarice, aggression. Right one hundred
thousand years ago, we probably need those qualities to keep
(05:48):
our tribes alive in our caves. They don't serve us
as much anymore. The stakes are much higher and much
more insidious. So the spiritual path and all of these
different faith traditions is feeding the wolf that isn't the
insistent self.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I love that answer. There's a few things in there
to touch on. The insistent self is a great phrase.
And I know you, like me, did some recovery work
in twelve step programs, and I remember reading it was
the AA Big Book. I wasn't sober very long. I
was twenty five years old and had been a homeless
(06:24):
heroin addict and I remember reading there's a section in
there that talks about and it says it a little
bit bluntly maybe for today's world, but it says selfishness,
self centeredness that we think is the root of our problem.
I really got it, and like in a moment, I
remember that moment of like, instead of that being something
that made me defend myself, I just suddenly went like, oh, yeah, Like,
(06:48):
all I do is think about myself. All I do
is think about like how I feel and how I'm
going to modify how I feel by whatever chemical I
can get my hands on. But it is an entirely
self centered pursuit. And so right, that phrase, the insistent self,
I love because I do think that you know, we
all know we need some degree of self and desire
(07:12):
and will to function in the world. But that phrase
insistent talks to me about that being out of the
other word you use there, which is balance. Right. I
don't love the word battle either, you know, I think
these things are a balance, but the insistent self gives
me a very clear like, Oh, it's the self that
just keeps carrying on beyond when it's useful and beyond
(07:34):
when it's helpful. And so thanks for sharing that phrase.
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Thanks Thanks Eric.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
One of the things that you talk a lot about
in the book is the importance of finding a spiritual
path that resonates with us individually. This is a big
piece of your work in general, I would say, and
I would be curious if somebody is coming to this
and wants to develop a spiritual life of some sort,
(08:01):
but they've either come out of a tradition that no
longer makes sense to them, or they don't really know
what they believe in or feel like, how do you
think about people getting started on this path?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's a great question. I wish I had an easy answer,
and I wish I had kind of had more time
to formulate this. It feels like that could be a
book just on itself, just answering.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
That really could it Probably could, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That question. I think the Twelve Steps do it very
well by first kind of defining what a higher power
looks like, and that can be tricky for a lot
of people in recovery and a lot of people on
a spiritual path. One of the things we explore on
the New Soul Boom podcast is the concept that for
(08:47):
a lot of people, their religion or faith journey is
the most inspiring, uplifting thing they'll ever encounter, and the
most meaningful thing they'll ever encounter. And for a lot
of people, their faith and spirituality journey is the most
traumatic thing that has scarred them the most, So we
have to be very conscious of that. There can be
(09:09):
a great deal of religious trauma. But that's one way
I think. You know, meditation is super important to my recovery,
my mental health journey, and that's a pretty easy thing
to undertake. That doesn't require a lot of belief and
a lot of knowledge, and you can just sit quietly,
preferably you know, maybe outside, maybe in under a tree
(09:31):
or something like that, and even just take five or
ten minutes to just quiet the mind and breathe and
be in the moment. You don't have to do anything
fancy around that. And then I have a chapter in
the book about sacred pilgrimages, the sacred Pilgrims I call it,
and the idea of finding what is sacred in daily
life in our modern world with our phones buzzing and
(09:57):
emails that need returning and cost co parking lots, and
how do you find the sacred in that world? The
main thing for me is to consider the idea. The
quote I often go to is from Father Tehart de Chardin,
who says we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
(10:19):
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And when
I am reminded of my spiritual reality, that's where I begin,
and that's where I begin every day, Like, yes, I
have this insistent self, I have Rain Wilson. I've got
this big, middle aged, fleshy body from suburban Seattle. My
(10:41):
body has certain needs. It likes to overeat, you know.
And I have an ego, you know, And I'm in
Hollywood and I'm like, oh, why did so and so
get that part and I didn't? And why didn't I
get considered for this role? And why am I not
getting paid that? And you know, it's really really difficult
to sidestep that in show business and release that. But
(11:06):
when I remember that I am a spiritual being having
a human experience, that can inform the choices that I
make and the path that I walk. Wherever that takes you.
You know, that can take you to indigenous Native American
spiritual beliefs. It can take you to transcendental meditation. It
can take you to mystical Catholicism. You know, the Vedas
(11:27):
and Upanishads, the Buddha. But it is a universal in
all religious traditions that we have a spiritual higher component,
a spirit, a soul, whatever you want to call it.
And how then do we step by step clear space
in our lives to feed, nourish, contemplate, and embrace the
(11:50):
spiritual side of ourselves.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind?
If the thing that came to your mind was more
time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
a quick tip that might make.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It better for you.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
of the time, every three seconds, failed again, failed again.
(12:34):
We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
it relaxing. Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
dot me slash calm. In it, I walk you through
my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
and a lot of people have found it really helpful.
That's good Wolf dot me slash calm. As far as
(12:56):
your life and the things that you know you get
caught up in, I don't wish anybody getting caught up
in anything, But what I like about that is there's
this real tendency of a lot of people to look
up right, and we think, well, so and so their
life must be just fine, it must be great because
it has these things in it that I want. Right,
and you're a person that you know, the vast majority
(13:18):
of the actors on the planet would look up at right.
There's a lot of actors on the planet and go, God,
if I could have a career like that, right, if
I could just I love those examples because I think
it shows that for all of us as humans, regardless
of where we're situated in different places, that there are
ways to be unhappy where we are, and there are
ways to be happier where we are, Like right, where
(13:41):
we sit. And this is not to say, you know,
like that if somebody is living on three dollars a
day that like they should just be able to be
as happy as everybody else. That's not what I'm trying
to say. But I'm saying that speaking to that general
sense we all have of I would just be happy
if I got X, right, I know, and I look
at my own life, I'm like, I got a lot
of X that I wanted, and I am happier. But
(14:02):
I don't think it's because of that, right, I think
it's because I've continued to try and develop along as
you would say, spiritual lines.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
One hundred percent. So all of contemporary society in Western
civilization wires us and motivates us to seek happiness outside
of ourselves. So we just keep reaching for more. We
want to make more money, we want to have a
better relationship, we want to live longer, we want to
look more youthful, we want to own more stuff. And
(14:34):
you know, going back to our caveman ancestors, it makes
total sense. You know, if you had a lot of
deer jerky and a lot of you know, beaver pelts,
you know, and berries in your cave and you had
a lot of like eligible mates, you know, in your cave,
you would thrive. So the acquiring of stuff and the
(14:55):
need for stuff is hardwired into our brain stems, but
it doesn't help us so much in the modern world.
I was really lucky to do this television show I
was on the Peacock Network last year called Rain Wilson
and the Geography of Bliss. And it was traveling around
(15:15):
the world looking at happiness in other cultures and what
brings people joy and bliss and what we can learn
from other cultures and bring back home to America. And
you know, the thing that I found is really quite simple,
and it was so revelatory, and it's connection. We really
(15:38):
thrive in connection, and we really waste away in isolation.
And this is also how we're wired. So you know
what wolf are we feeding. We're putting away the you know,
the materialist pursuits of seeking happiness outside of ourselves and
finding connection. And that is certainly human connection and finding
(16:00):
tribes and communities and like minded people or different minded people,
but it's also connection with nature. It's connection with the
higher power. We long to be connected. That would be
the only other than turning inward and seeking, you know,
peace from the kind of agitated unquiet that we walk
the world. It's connection and I got to experience that
(16:22):
in Iceland and Thailand and in Ghana, West Africa, and
it's helped me bring it home to my life here
in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I agree. I mean, to me the words spiritual, You
and I have slightly different definitions, and maybe we can
go into that in a second. Right, for me, spiritual
is all about To me, it just means connecting with
the things that really matter. That's kind of it for me.
I'd love to ask you what it means to you
in a second, but I don't want to miss this
discussion of your TV show, which sounds delightful. I'm going
to need to figure out how I can get National
(16:52):
Geographic to watch it. Peacock, Peacock, Peacock, Okay, all right,
that's easier to figure out.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, you just get the free month on the Peacock
and just watch.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
It and then and then forget to cancel, forget to cantnam. Kidding.
You've done a lot of studying of different cultures, particularly
in the spiritual dimension, for a long time now, right,
you're really well read in the spiritual literature. I'm curious though,
as you went out and traveled, it sounds like there
was this overarching thing that you sort of got, which
(17:21):
was connection. But were there any other things in that
that surprised you or that was like a new angle
on something you were like, Wow, I never thought of
it that way before. I'm just kind of curious for
another takeaway out of that experience.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, boy, I mean there's so much. One of the
big disconnects we have in the modern world is our
connection with nature. I was reading recently and it's an
easy thing to google, Like how much time people spend
outdoors is astonishingly low. You know, usually less than an
hour a day, and that's amazing when we used to
(17:56):
spend twenty four hours a day outdoors, or at least
twelve hours a day outdoors. Take the people of Iceland,
for instance. You know a lot of times they're forced
inside during the very cold winters, but their relationship, their
connection to nature is incredibly profound. Their love, the Icelandic
love of the glaciers and the volcanoes and the hot
(18:20):
springs and the waterfalls and the geysers that populate their island.
They really worship that aspect of being Icelandic, an intensely
burning love for nature and for their island. I found
the same thing to be in Ghana and in Thailand
as well, and it's something that I realized was very
(18:45):
much missing in my life. I mean, I try and
take a big camping trip every summer, and you know,
I like to take dog walks and you know, go
down to the beach sometimes. But to really prioritize nature
time is a big part of a spiritual pathntal health path,
a wellness path. And it sounds good, yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
more trees, more nature, It sounds good. But you know
(19:06):
what would it take to really prioritize, like to measure
like how much time do you spend outside? How do
you increase that? Can you take being vaguely outside to
being committedly outside and can you get out two or
three times in the year into the wilderness and where
there's not a phone and there's just trees, and how
(19:27):
does that feed yourself? It's very common sense, but I
think it has had a profound effect on the mental
health crisis that we've been undergoing over the last twenty
or thirty years.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, it's really hard like I prioritize being in nature,
and I bet I'm under an hour a day average,
And that's with me even trying, you know, just given
you know the nature of a lot of the way
my life is structured. And yet I know for me
it is a really valuable thing. There's something about it.
I think it's helpful on many levels for me. One
(19:59):
of the levels is like I can just walk outside
and it's beautiful and I can be like, you know what,
this costs absolutely nothing, and this is always available. It's
like this resource is here. It's how I feel about
libraries too. I walk into a library, I just feel happy,
you know, it's like this is amazing, Like, you know,
look at this repository of hope and possibility that like
(20:20):
I can just walk into nature has that similar. Obviously
it's working on different mechanisms, but there's a correlation to
me about something about this resource that's always there.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Another aspect around Bliss is very simply
doing things for other people, being of service, and they've
done countless studies in the field of positive psychology around this.
That again, contemporary Western society says, you know, me, me me,
(20:51):
you know it's me time to take care of yourself,
get stuff for yourself, acquire stuff, putting yourself first and foremost.
But in actuality, when we are of service to others,
when we prioritize others and sacrificing of our time, of
our attention, of our status, of our resources for others,
(21:13):
it gives us a great, deep sense of fulfillment. I'll
never forget meeting this woman in Thailand, and this is
a common practice in Thailand that every year for her
birthday she goes and hands out food and is of
service to the monks that live in very impoverished state
in the monasteries and hands out food to the poor.
(21:35):
So her birthday is a service day to others. And
I thought that is really beautiful and one ady opposite
of America where it's all about celebrating ourselves and getting
cake and presents for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, that's a great story. So I mentioned what spirituality
means to me about just being connected to the things
that matter most. What is a working definition for you?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, the Oxford Dictiontionary talks about spirituality as being being
concerned with the non material aspects of life, So that
goes hand in hand with what you're saying. In my
faith tradition, there is a metaphor that I love to
look at that helps elucidate this idea, and that is
the baby in the womb. I believe, and Bahais believe
(22:23):
in many other faith traditions, believe that there is a
divine eternal aspect to myself. That is, my consciousness is
not just a random assortment of molecules and neurons firing
in a brain that has given me a personality and perspective,
(22:43):
and I'm not just an elevated ape or monkey, but
that my consciousness is partially connected to my corporeal existence,
and it's part juices and electricity and gray matter, and
it is also my consciousness the part of me that
weeps at a poem, the part of me that longs
(23:03):
for connection, that beams when I hold a baby that
size when I see a sunset, That this part of
myself is of this world and yet not of this world.
The metaphor is the babies in the womb. So a
baby in a womb. We were all in a womb,
(23:24):
and when we were in that womb, we had no
idea you and I eric that we would be on
riverside dot FM, looking at each other having a profound
conversation about health and wellness and love and God and
spirit over microphones and the Internet and podcasting, etc. We
(23:45):
had no idea that that existed. We were just floating
in amniotic fluid, growing our arms and legs and toes
and elbows and eyelashes that we were going to need
in the physical world. And you know, if you were
to ask a baby, hey, why are you growing these
elbows and eyelashes and fingers, the baby will be like,
(24:07):
I don't know, leave me alone. I'm just I'm fine
right here floating around. It has no idea of the
miraculous infinity that lies outside of the womb. It has
no idea about radio Head and Miles Davis and the
poetry of Ee Cummings and what the Grand Canyon looks like.
(24:30):
And in the same regard, that's what we're doing in
this physical realm. In this physical realm, we are growing
our spiritual arms and legs, our spiritual toes, our spiritual
eyelashes and elbows that we will need once this material
body falls aside in Nirvana, in the happy hunting grounds
(24:51):
in heaven, the next plane of existence, and what are
we taking with us? You know, maybe not so much
our personalities, but those qualities that we've grown in this
world are qualities of kindness and humility and compassion and
love and honesty. Those are our spiritual arms and legs
(25:12):
and elbows and toes that we are taking with us
on our infinite journey into the beyond. So it's really
beyond heaven and hell. There's not like that kind of
concept in my faith tradition of like, oh, believers are
going here and non believers are going here. We're all
on this journey. You know, eight billion of us are
on this journey. And the journey begins in the womb,
(25:32):
and it comes here to the physical realm and continues.
So what is spirituality. It's being concerned with that journey,
you know, with the accruing of those spiritual virtues of
seeking like sunflowers turning to the sun, seeking to turn
toward the divine impulse, and understanding that our lives are
(25:56):
infinite and miraculous and and in incredibly short and precious
while we're in our bodies. You know, I'm dealing right now.
I lost two friends to cancer in the last couple
of years, I've got like four friends with cancer right now.
And this happens when you're in your fifties. And the
comedian Neil Brennan talks about Sniper's Alley. It's like, when
(26:17):
you get to a certain age, it's called sniper's alley
because all of a sudden, the people around you start
getting picked off. Boo boo boo. And it's true and
it's sad, and it's heartbreaking, and it's reality, and it's
part of the journey.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I'm sorry to hear about all of your friends. Thank
you every year getting older, I'm in my fifties. Also,
is this fragility of life becomes ever more clear, which
can be a positive and is all so deeply unsettling?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, thank you. Indeed.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So I'd like to turn our attention for a minute
and talk about mental health, although it's going to lead
us right back into soul boom here in a second.
You talk about in the book about you've dealt with
many mental health issues, you know, depression, anxiety, addiction. And
I did an interview recently with a woman named doctor
(27:24):
Lisa Miller. I don't know if you're familiar with her work.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
I love Lisa Miller. She's amazing and we just had
her as one of the first people on our soul
Boom podcast that's coming out in a few weeks, so perfect.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yes, she's wonderful. The thing in her book that really
blew me away was, you know, when she began studying
spirituality and she found the protective effect that it has
against depression was a higher protective effect than they had
seen in nearly anything else. Now it's slightly more nuanced
because what she over time sort of found out was
(27:58):
that people who suffered depression often have turned to spirituality
because it's a path out. But there does seem to
be a correlation between mental health and spirituality. And I
would love to hear your thoughts on what things do
you find most helpful you know, for your mental health overall,
(28:21):
So if you want to talk to how spirituality informs
that and then anything else that feels alive for you
right now in that area.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Thanks. It's really one of my very favorite topics. The Buddha,
as we know, has principal teaching. He says, I teach
one thing and one thing only suffering and the elimination
of suffering. Life is suffering or there is suffering or
the world has suffering, however you translate it. And the
word suffering that was used at the time in the
(28:51):
Sanskrit or Pali was duka, and from what I've read
and understand, duka is most expertly translated as anxious discontent.
And I think any addict understands anxious discontent. And I
wake up with it most every day, and I'm just like,
(29:11):
I got a little headache or my back hurts, or
why didn't this work out? And I'm resentful at this
person and I wish I had that, and why didn't
this come? And even if it's not specific, it's just
that feeling, it's that vibration of things aren't right. So
I have to adjust myself away from anxious discontent toward
(29:36):
radiant acquiescence, toward acceptance, towards gratitude. And I use tools
from both the Twelve Steps and psychology and spiritual practice
to help realign myself. And that's a different wolf that
I feed, right, I don't feed the anxious discontent, you know,
(29:56):
I feed gratitude and connection right empt to some days
I'm better at it, some I'm not. Frankly, a lot
of the time I just fail totally and get too
busy to meditate, and all of a sudden it's four
o'clock and I'm a dick to my wife and I
think my life is shit, and I don't look around
and go, you know, wow, I've actually got it really good.
(30:20):
So the spiritual life has helped me a great deal
with understanding anxious discontent. And you know, meditation certainly grounds me.
But prayer is an important part of this for me
because I believe that there is a power that's greater
than myself, and that surrender to that power asking for help.
(30:43):
You know, Anne LaMotte has that great book Help Thanks Wow.
You know the three forms of prayer, and I can
connect with this creative presence, this force, this force of
beauty and light and warmth and knowledge, and that it
helps me. I think that on my mental health journey,
(31:04):
something I've always really responded to Eric is transcendence. And
I think that humans have a longing for transcendence. We
long to transcend out of our bodies. We don't want
to just sit in our bodies. Jack off, eat a sandwich,
watch some Netflix Poppo is it, take a poop and
(31:27):
just be in our bodies. That's an important part of
being a human being, but we also long for what,
for love, for understanding, for beauty. We have that transcendent
impulse for something to reach out beyond the mirror material.
And I know that I've always had that. Maybe I'm
(31:48):
just wired that way, but I feel like most everyone
has that to a certain degree. And that's what spirituality
is all about. It's all about like life is precious,
life is short. The experience continues, embrace the transcendent, and
in the doing we find kind of meaning and purpose.
(32:09):
We can give the transcendent to others. It's a gift. Again.
We're spiritual beings having a human experience. The list goes
on and on. I mean, there's so many things I
could talk about the positive benefits of spirituality, and especially
for young people and the mental health epidemic that's going
on right now. I know I'm rambling a little bit,
but I'll just say another one that's really important is suffering.
(32:32):
So the Buddha teaches about suffering, but the idea of
suffering comes up in every faith tradition as well. And
one of the things that you know, psychologists all kind
of universally agree is that the younger generation does not
have much resilience. There's a setback and it causes a
big breakdown. There's a difficulty and they don't know what
(32:55):
to do. There's a fear of an obstacle, and so
that shuts them down. It's a big generality for those
you know under twenty eight or thirty right now, but
this is a big tendency. And I think that spirituality
provides a context for suffering, Like what is suffering? What
is the purpose of suffering? Suffering exists, There's ways to
detach from suffering, there's ways to overcome suffering, there's ways
(33:19):
to develop determination to pierce through suffering. But suffering is
a necessary part of the spiritual struggle. And we feel
pain so that we can feel joy and we have
something to compare it with. And it is through suffering
that we grow our resilience. You know, when you go
to the gym, you're lifting weights, what are you doing?
(33:41):
You're breaking down the muscle fibers. You're literally tearing them
so that they grow back stronger. And this is part
of what it is to be a spiritual being in
having a human experience. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
For me, I love where you started with. You know,
Buddha teaching suffering and the end of suffering, and you
kind of came all the way back to it at
the end. And you know, I know what drew me
to spirituality. I was probably seventeen eighteen years old, and
I'd been around the Christian faith, but it just never
really resonated with me. It never made sense to me.
(34:15):
I'd been pointed into Zen Buddhism by my teacher I
had in high school, and that sort of led me
to the Doud aching. But I know what it was
about those two works that resonated with me and sort
of set me on this journey, And it was that
idea that there was a way to be okay in
the world, even as difficult as the world is. I
(34:37):
was an over serious seventeen year old, but it was
pretty clear to me even by then that the world
could be a really difficult place and that there was
an enormous amount of suffering in the world, and the
thought that there was a way to not have to
solve that problem by making it all go away, but
instead there was a way to be okay in the
midst of it. That to me was like that was
(34:59):
the beacon, was the thing that sort of really drew
me in, and that did not stop me from descending
into addiction. And I often think of my addictions as
you were talking about, as a search for transcendence, Right,
that's what That's a lot of what that energy was, Right. Yes,
I think by the end of my addiction there was
probably a fair amount of hiding from pain. But in
(35:21):
the beginning it was about connecting to joy and beauty
and the insistent self being quiet long enough that I
could appreciate the world in its beauty.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I just want to piggyback on what you're saying, like
whether for me it was drugs, whether it was alcohol,
whether it was porn, whether it was kind of like
love addiction and romance codependence. You know, it was a
search for several other things we've been talking about, connection
and transcendence and meaning and seeking joy, seeking a way
(35:53):
out of the insistent self to try and kind of
obliterate that anxious discontent. And you know, like they say,
it works until it doesn't work anymore, and then you
find yourself even you know, further down in a hole.
But that is that same impulse, It is that essential human,
transcendent spiritual seeking impulse and I'll also say that some
(36:15):
people have a hard time, and mostly because of how
they've been raised with a certain idea of God. They
have a hard time like worshiping something greater than themselves.
And I think that humans always worship something greater than themselves.
Everyone worships something. It's just true. There might be a
couple of people listening right now. Oh that's bullshit. I
(36:36):
don't know, but I believe it's true. It might be
your career, it might be money. It might even be
making your family or your spouse your higher power. It
can be you know, your political party. It can be
status at work. It can be workoholism. Workoholism is in
contemporary America, is given a free pass. You know, if
(36:57):
you work sixty seventy hours a week and have a
couple divorces because of it, Like God bless you. You're
a job creator, entrepreneur and you know, just trying to
provide for their family. And I would rather substitute something
more like love or beauty than that.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
All right, now, let's pause for a quick good Wolf reminder,
and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
as a moment of failure, like, ough, my mind wandered again.
But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
moment of celebration because in that moment, your mind actually
(37:36):
woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
a our brain is going to do it more often
because we're training it, and b that we're going to
enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
(38:00):
Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. So you've multiple times used the word divine.
You've used the word god, which again for many people
is a real turn off. And a little game that
I love to play is what are other ways of
(38:20):
saying that concept that are more welcoming and open to
people who have a problem with them. And you've got
a couple great ones in the book, so I thought
I would read a couple that you reference, and then
you can feel free to add anything else you want.
To add to it, one is you reference I'm not
sure how to say this person's name, but Nicholas of Kusa,
a fifteenth century philosopher who said divinity is in all
(38:43):
things in such a way that all things are in divinity.
He spoke of a God who's this is the part
I love, whose center, so to speak, is everywhere and
whose circumference is nowhere. That is such a great line.
And you know you then also go on to talk
about the idea of the Doo. And I just got
done doing a really deep dive teaching for this AI
(39:06):
type program that's going to be created around the doo.
And you know, the dow that can be told is
not the eternal Tao, but this idea that whatever we're
trying to describe, when we use the word God or divine,
our words are always going to fall short. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Amen, this is such a tricky one. You know. In
the book Soul Boom, I have a chapter called the
Notorious Good, which is all an examination of what God
is and what God isn't. And I would say the
conversation needs to begin with like what is God not judgmental, male, patriarchal, damning, contemptuous,
(39:44):
those are a couple of the humanoid, you know, on
a cloud. You know, to start with a list of
what God is not, you know, and and.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Really we missed beard, bearded beard.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You know, I have a beard, and I know O
god like certainly, but don't let that confuse your listeners.
But you know, start with what God isn't. Oftentimes when
people say I don't believe in God, I'll say, you know,
I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in.
So I went on this search. It was kind of
before I was even in recovery. I was just an
(40:19):
abject misery of mental health with anxiety and depression. And
I thought because I grew up a member of the
Bahai faith, and I had jettisoned the religion and spirituality
to just essentially like go crazy and party in my
twenties in New York and be an actor. And so
I started tiptoeing back towards spiritual ideas and religious ideas.
(40:40):
But the God thing was a big hang up. I
had spent a while as an atheist and tried to
have that make sense. It didn't really make sense to me.
And then I was reading about Native American spirituality and
in the Lakota Sioux tradition, the idea of God is
known as Wakantung, the Great Mystery. And so you're asking
(41:04):
for names of God that could allow people into a
path of seeking the divine. There's one right there, the
Great Mystery. I knew at the time, and I was
in my late twenties, maybe twenty eight. I don't believe
in God, and I don't believe in some guy patriarchal
in my book, I call him sky Daddy. I don't
believe in sky Daddy, but I can get behind the
(41:27):
Great Mystery. And that was very exciting to me. And
the more I kind of read about this Lakota idea,
the Great Mystery, there's no personification whatsoever. This is not
a guy. It's not a dude. It's not a being.
It's not a demi God, it's not a demiurge. It's
simply a radiant force contained in nature, and it's beyond
(41:49):
time and space. It's in the wind, it's in the
beauty of the trees, it's in the sunlight and the flowers.
It's known through the majesty of mountains, it's known through
all of the metaphor beauty and power contained in nature,
and it also courses through our ancestors and our consciousness.
(42:10):
And as an artist, I could get behind the Great Mystery.
So that's where I started. My kind of God journey
was like and I remember saying to friends of mine, like,
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Wakantanka.
I believe in the Great Mystery. And so I've tried
to stay there. And I talk in the book Soul
Boom and also on the podcast that's coming up a
lot about God as being more akin to love or
(42:37):
art or beauty than any kind of conscious being. And
when I am able to sit in that reality, I
feel much closer to God. When I worship a God
that is love and beauty and art and music and
transcendence incarnate, then I feel most heart connected to that
(43:00):
rather than any kind of like someone or something that
has opinions and thoughts and has superpowers.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah. I think Saint Augustine said, if you understand God,
what you understand isn't God. Ah, You've got another line
in there where you call it the essence of essences.
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Also.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
The Great Mystery has been sort of my fallback for
a long long time. Is because I'm just like, well,
ultimately all this is a mystery, and so that is
something that I can towards and that I can both
want to figure out and also be okay not figuring out,
you know, doing both those things.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
The God of the Christian Church, by and large is
often far too similar to Zeus, and people get really
hung up on that and they get angry, I don't
believe in God, And what they're really saying is I
don't believe in Zeus, you know. And the theologian Paul
Tillic and philosopher kind of redefine God as the ground
(43:57):
of all being and again trying to get got out
of the sky and more into the ground and like
being itself, interconnectedness and life itself. You know. I think
there's a lot of different ways to look at this,
but I think what's important is to understand that we
are wired to worship, We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and
(44:23):
devotion does not have to be to you know, an
entity with a will and a beard, but connection to
the greatest possible love and unity that binds us all
and gives us our common humanity. And then what's even
more important than that, more than any kind of belief
(44:43):
is like what you do, who cares ultimately what you believe.
Some of the best people I've ever known have been
diehard atheists, serving their fellow humans, sacrificing of their time
and energy and status and attention and bank accounts for
other And it really is it's in what you do.
(45:03):
It's not so much what you believe, but hopefully what
you believe can guide you to be ever more altruistic.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
A friend of your, Stephen Phelps, talks about that a
little bit you say in the book. He reminded me
that the discussion of God has unfortunately been far less
focused on God as a goal, a destination away of life,
a rich garden of qualities to emulate, or an energy
to both draw from and align with. Right, So instead
of thinking of God as this thing to be worshiped,
(45:31):
it's really about this way of being and way of
engaging in the world.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah, James, And the Bible says faith without works is dead,
and God is in what you do. And we see
God revealed in what people do and how they are
and how they travel through the world.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
There's been something that it's happened to me for years,
but I haven't really known how to think about it before.
It tends to happen when I'm watching TV or a movie.
It sometimes will happen in reading, and it happens in
real life if I see it. It doesn't occur with
the regularity. But if I'm watching something and someone just
sort of does something, it's not like a huge thing,
(46:32):
but it's a moment of just real kindness. I always
tear up. And I think I just sort of realized
there's actually a term for it. I think it's like
moral elevation or something. It's something like that, But it
also has something in common with me about kind of
what you were just saying. It feels like something if
(46:53):
we were going to use the word worship, right, it's
something that is worth worshiping.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
It does for me feel transcend.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. And there is
a word in every faith tradition that essentially translates to
loving kindness. It's different than kindness, and it's different than love.
It's loving kindness and it's how we serve one another.
And I hear you in responding to that, and I
feel the same way, and how and why are we
(47:23):
so disconnected from acts of true loving kindness. One of
the things I get into in Soul Boom, one of
the least popular parts of my book that a lot
of people, I think, frankly, I just lose a lot
of people, is talking about the latter half of the book.
I start talking about systems and how broken contemporary modern
(47:44):
systems are. An average listener is listening to you right now.
Maybe they're a school teacher and they can tell you
about how broken the education system is in the United States.
Maybe they are a nurse and they can talk the
same way about healthcare, transportation, agriculture. It's completely broken. How
we do agriculture from top to bottom is completely skewed,
(48:06):
you know, with monolithic monofarming and greed and government subsidies
for you know, soybeans to feed cattle and contribute to
climate change, and it just goes the list goes on
and on. And the most toxic of all of them,
of course, is our political system. And we're about to
engage in probably the most toxic election known to man.
(48:27):
And we've been through some doozies, and so I talk
a lot about how do we take spiritual ideas like
this one of loving kindness and put it into our
systems because the problem is is our systems are built
on that old cave man way of doing things. It's
one upsmanship. It's backstabbing, it's every man for himself, it's
accruing things. It's greed, it's envy, it's don't tread on me,
(48:52):
it's live free or die. It's some of the worst
impulses of being a human being is the engine healthcare.
Healthcare should not be based on greed and one upsmanship
and every man for himself and survival of the fittest.
But it is. But we are not having that conversation
(49:14):
as a culture to say, okay, put aside Christian versus Jew,
versus Muslim versus Buddhist. Put all that aside the differences.
What are the universalities? Because those universalities are at the
core of human wisdom for tens of thousands of years.
Can we recalibrate systems to be based on these ideas
(49:39):
Easier said than done. I don't know exactly how to
do it. I have some glimpses. Sometimes we see some
glimpses of that, you know, profit sharing, super easy example
of you know, a more just capitalism, where workers have
a larger share in what they're creating. And so it's
instead of CEOs getting paid millions and workers getting paid
(50:02):
minimum wage, that there is a more active ownership. That
is a spiritual idea. You might say, well, no, it's not.
It's a communist idea and it's a social justice idea,
and it's like, well, God is just. We seek just.
We seek fair mindedness and justice as part of our
spiritual impulse, and we know that it is moral and right.
(50:24):
And how do we seek that? How does that strike you, Eric?
Because I know that there's a lot of people that
I'm not putting you with them, but there's a lot
of people that simply view spirituality as something that you
do on a bench under a tree, and then it
makes you slightly better, more serene, less anxious, and then
if you're going to spread that love day by day
(50:45):
going about your work and your job, then that's how
it works. And that's the extent. But do you think
it's possible to kind of extend these concepts into how
us humans do things?
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah? I think I have a few different responses. I mean,
one is, you know, certainly I agree, and you talk
about this in the book that like, our spirituality can't
be just about our own interior, you know, well being
right to me, a spiritual life has to have an
inflow and an outflow to it, and then what that
outflow looks like, I think is different. I think about
this a lot because I tend to focus on this
(51:22):
show more on the individual things that people can do
in their lives versus systematic because I feel like that's
where my experience and strength lies. That said, I do
think that these ideas can be applied more broadly, and
I think they have been to some degree. Now. I
(51:43):
know that there are natural ups and downs in everything,
but I think we are a more humane species than
we used to be, you know, in many ways. You know,
I think our circle of concern extends further than just
our tribe. I'm not saying everybody is that way by
any stretch of the imagination, but I think more and
more people, as we look globally, are that way. So yes,
(52:07):
but I don't know enough again, like playing to my
strengths about how we do that, Like if you mentioned
this upcoming election, Like I feel a little flum mixed
right now about the political situation because on one hand, I
absolutely believe that the path forward has to be some
sort of mutual discussion where we can find what's in
(52:27):
common and be able to talk to each other. And
yet it's very hard to engage in that when it
feels like and I will say this for both sides
of the aisle. I happen to live on one of them,
but I see it in both sides. We don't tend
to be listening to each other. We don't tend to
have the attention span to process nuanced and complex ideas. So, yes,
(52:53):
I do think that our spiritual life can inform us politically.
I think that's a dangerous idea taken too far, though,
because I think we've got a problem where you know,
religion can get too far into government, right, And I
know you're not talking about religion, right, So I think
it's tricky. But yes, I feel like if we could
be having more discussions about common values, that would be
(53:16):
a place that we could then move on to strategy. Right,
We could move on to tactic, and we could move
on to strategy if we could agree to some common
things that we all believe that there are virtuous. So
I don't know if that was a cop out answer.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
And that's exactly right. And I think that, you know,
I went to the FDR Museum in New York not
long ago, and it was so interesting what arose out
of the Great Depression and out of the social programs
of the Great Depression, the idea of like a five
day work week and a you know, eight hour work
day and no children working. And we collectively kind of said, hey,
(53:57):
we don't want old people to be starving and the
way they used to in the old world. Will create
social security and everyone will put aside a little bit
and it'll sit in a fund and it'll crew interest,
and then we'll just make sure that old people aren't
starving the way they used to be in the eighteen nineties.
If there was an old person without anyone to take
care of them, they would just sit on a street
corner and starve to death. So, you know, collectively we said, hey,
(54:21):
this is important, and we addressed it.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I think what's interesting is I'm not sure how I
think FDR was a deeply polarizing figure at the time.
Like I mean, I think collectively we can all look
back and go, it's probably good not to a lot
of old people starve to death. But at the time,
I think he was deeply, deeply divisive, right, And it's
interesting how some of these things that are deeply divisive
(54:44):
at the time we look back on and go, oh, yeah,
well that really was a more enlightened policy.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Yeah. Well, and I think social security was more from
LBJ and I'm not a historian. I think it was
more from that realm. But you're absolutely right, it was
very divisive, and it was like this is communism, you know.
And you know, Medicare and Medicaid came up around the
same time, so super divisive, but ultimately embraced by our
(55:09):
culture and now you could never take it away, which
is always a good sign. But one of the examples
I bring up in my book is Bahai elections. So
to underline, the Bahaigh faith has no clergy. There's no gurus,
there's no priests, there's no mullahs or rabbis or pastors
or anything like that. So every Bahai community has nine
(55:32):
people in it governing the affairs of that Bahai community,
and that can be from Akron, Ohio, to Santa Barbara, California,
to and then there's national spiritual assemblies, you know, the
Bahais of Ecuador or Brazil or Mongolia, and the elections
are done completely different than elections in the western world.
(55:55):
They are prayerful. They come out of meditation and you
meet and gather. There's no yard signs, there's no campaigning,
there's no money that goes to elections. You prayerfully and
on a silent ballot, on a secret ballot, put the
nine names of the people you think have the most
spiritual wisdom and maturity for the job, and those nine
(56:19):
people then govern the affairs of the community. Those nine
people don't have any power over anyone else. So someone
who's on you know, the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahy's of Ecuador, let's say they can't go into a
room of o their behinds and say, hey, you do this,
and you do this. That's not how it works. When
they're assembled and they come to an agreement together, they
can pass you know, kind of like agendas and whatnot.
(56:43):
But this might sound too pigh in the sky, like oh,
we could never do that, and a lot of people
have that response, But I don't know that that's true.
You know, what if there was place, what if you're
in you know, Clearwood Springs, Ohio, and people in Clearwood Springs,
Ohio are sick of politics as usual and corruption and
campaign donations totally millions of dollars. And they say, let's
(57:06):
meet at the local football stadium and all two thousand
people in the town, We're going to do a silent ballot,
secret ballot vote for nine people or seven people or
five people that are going to govern the town. There's
not going to be a mayor. They only have power
when they're together in collection, in collectiveness, and they consult
on the issues at hand, and people can meet with
them collectively and you know, let's have some music and
(57:32):
some hot dogs and some moores and meditate and write
it down. And if someone, let's say, you know, the
family doctor in town is too busy, well he's got
to sacrifice some of his business. Because part of it
is like contemporary politics, the people who want positions are
power seekers, you know, And why are we always voting
(57:54):
for the people who want power? Like it makes more
sense that to get someone that's who's the guy, the
shark tank guy owns the Maverick Mark Cuban Like he's said,
I'm not gonna run, I'm not gonna run. But obviously
super people are like, oh, you should run, like we
should elect Mark Cuban. Maybe he'd do a better.
Speaker 3 (58:12):
Job precisely because he doesn't want.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Precisely for the reason because he doesn't want it. Yes,
but couldn't couldn't we see where you know, Clearwood Springs,
Ohio might benefit from something like that. Then that's the
idea of taking like a spiritual idea of a true
public service and putting it into practice systemically. That's great.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
So listener and thinking about all of that and the
other great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going
to isolate just one top insight or thing to do
that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember that,
little by little, a little becomes a lot, and a
habit for me that has accrude and benefit over time
is meditation. However, one of the things that gets in
(58:55):
our way of building a steady meditation practice is that
very striving.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
let striving go and focus on just being there and
experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
We want to let go of that. So if you
want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
(59:23):
check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. I think I would recommend that you try
that in Clearwood Springs, California first. I think you're gonna
have a better reception then in some rural part of Ohio.
I'm just guessing that's all right, But no, I mean
(59:43):
I totally agree. I mean, I love that idea of
like it's not even like you decide you're on the ballot,
you just are sort of like everybody gathers and says
like these are the people.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (59:53):
Well, I think that is a great place to wrap
up Rain. You and I are going to talk more
in the post show conversation about some of your pills
for using these spiritual ideas to change our society, and
so we'll talk about some of those in the post
show conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that ad
free episodes and the pleasure that comes from supporting something
(01:00:15):
that matters to you, go to oneufeed dot net slash
join and we'd love to have you as part of
the community. Rain, thank you. Your new podcast, Soul Boom
is out and it's a great listen and we'll have
links in the show notes to that, as well as
your book and all other things. Rain Wilson, thank you
so much for coming on again.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Always a pleasure. Eric, thanks for having me back again.
And if I come on a fourth time, will I
have the record of the most appearances.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
I think you will tie the record. I think you
will tie the record. You will tie it, so you'll
need to come on two more times. Once upon a time,
a two time guest was like, wow, but having done
this a decade, there's a bunch of those, right, three
time guests. Yeah, that's your rarefied.
Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
All right, I think four. I want to be the
record holder. I want to be like Alec Baldwin on
Saturday Night Live without the murder.
Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
Yes, yes we don't. I'm not going to make jokes
about as.
Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
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(01:01:48):
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the show.
We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and devotion does not have
to be to an entity with a will and a beard,
but connection to the greatest possible love and unity that
binds us all and gives us our common humanity. Welcome
(00:24):
to the One You Feed.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
you are what you think, ring true, and yet for
many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
see what we don't have instead of what we do.
(00:48):
We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
(01:22):
episode is a guest that has been on two previous times.
He's closing in on the record of most appearances on
The One You Feed. It is Rain Wilson, an American actor, comedian, podcaster, producer, writer, director,
and the list goes on and on. You guys probably
know him best as Dwight from the TV show The Office,
(01:43):
but his accomplishments are so many I can't even begin
to list them all. But most importantly for this episode
is to mention his new book called Soul Boom, Why
We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hi, Rain, welcome to the show, Eric.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Thanks for having me back thirds of Charm.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I'm really glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Rain.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's a pleasure to talk to you every time we
get to do it. And today we're going to be
discussing your latest book, which is called Soul Boom, Why
we Need a Spiritual Revolution. But before we get into that,
we will start like we always do with the Parable.
In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their
grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
inside of us that are always at battle. One is
a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
(02:24):
and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Eric. As you know, I'm a huge fan of your
podcast and you are og old school. You've been doing
this for a long time. You've been in that kind
of recovery mental health wellness space since the talkies were invented, right,
wasn't it? And I love how you frame the conversation
around that really exquisite story, and to me, it reminds
(03:07):
me of a story from my faith, which is the
Baha'i faith, and that is the son of the founder
of the Bahai faith, who went by the title Abdul Baha,
which means servant of Glory. He came to the United
States a little over one hundred years ago and he
was interviewed when he landed at the docks in New
(03:28):
York City and there was a journalist there and they said,
do Bahais do members of the Bahai faith believe in Satan?
And Abdul Baha said, yes, Bahais believe in Satan. And
the guy seemed a little surprised, and he said, oh,
to a Bahai, what is Satan? And abdul Baha said,
Satan is the insistent self. I love it, and I
(03:51):
love that idea of the insistent self, because Satan not
being some creature with a tale and red skin and
who lives in an evil place. But Satan is inside
all of us. It is the insistent self side of
all of us, and we all have that insistent self,
(04:14):
that ego that is a veil between us and God.
To quote Rumy, the ego is a veil between us
and God and keeps us in the mud. You know,
it keeps us with those qualities that you described, you know,
greed and avarice, comparison, envy, aggression, fear and lust. And
(04:40):
so to me, the parable that you put at the
centerpiece of your show is the number one most important
spiritual path, spiritual battle that any and every human being walks.
It's in every spiritual tradition, and it's the battle between
us and our lower selves and our higher selves. And
(05:03):
battle is a tough word. Almost feel bad about using
the word battle because conflict is so inherent and baked
into that word. But a balance between these two sides
of ourselves and the spiritual path for anyone, and no
matter what your background, if you're spiritual not religious, and
you struggle with God, if you're a Christian, if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim,
(05:27):
Bahai is always how do we keep the insistent self
at bay? Recognize it as an important part of the
human experience. We wouldn't be here as human beings if
we didn't have greed, lust, avarice, aggression. Right one hundred
thousand years ago, we probably need those qualities to keep
(05:48):
our tribes alive in our caves. They don't serve us
as much anymore. The stakes are much higher and much
more insidious. So the spiritual path and all of these
different faith traditions is feeding the wolf that isn't the
insistent self.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I love that answer. There's a few things in there
to touch on. The insistent self is a great phrase.
And I know you, like me, did some recovery work
in twelve step programs, and I remember reading it was
the AA Big Book. I wasn't sober very long. I
was twenty five years old and had been a homeless
(06:24):
heroin addict and I remember reading there's a section in
there that talks about and it says it a little
bit bluntly maybe for today's world, but it says selfishness,
self centeredness that we think is the root of our problem.
I really got it, and like in a moment, I
remember that moment of like, instead of that being something
that made me defend myself, I just suddenly went like, oh, yeah, Like,
(06:48):
all I do is think about myself. All I do
is think about like how I feel and how I'm
going to modify how I feel by whatever chemical I
can get my hands on. But it is an entirely
self centered pursuit. And so right, that phrase, the insistent self,
I love because I do think that you know, we
all know we need some degree of self and desire
(07:12):
and will to function in the world. But that phrase
insistent talks to me about that being out of the
other word you use there, which is balance. Right. I
don't love the word battle either, you know, I think
these things are a balance, but the insistent self gives
me a very clear like, Oh, it's the self that
just keeps carrying on beyond when it's useful and beyond
(07:34):
when it's helpful. And so thanks for sharing that phrase.
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Thanks Thanks Eric.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
One of the things that you talk a lot about
in the book is the importance of finding a spiritual
path that resonates with us individually. This is a big
piece of your work in general, I would say, and
I would be curious if somebody is coming to this
and wants to develop a spiritual life of some sort,
(08:01):
but they've either come out of a tradition that no
longer makes sense to them, or they don't really know
what they believe in or feel like, how do you
think about people getting started on this path?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's a great question. I wish I had an easy answer,
and I wish I had kind of had more time
to formulate this. It feels like that could be a
book just on itself, just answering.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
That really could it Probably could, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That question. I think the Twelve Steps do it very
well by first kind of defining what a higher power
looks like, and that can be tricky for a lot
of people in recovery and a lot of people on
a spiritual path. One of the things we explore on
the New Soul Boom podcast is the concept that for
(08:47):
a lot of people, their religion or faith journey is
the most inspiring, uplifting thing they'll ever encounter, and the
most meaningful thing they'll ever encounter. And for a lot
of people, their faith and spirituality journey is the most
traumatic thing that has scarred them the most, So we
have to be very conscious of that. There can be
(09:09):
a great deal of religious trauma. But that's one way
I think. You know, meditation is super important to my recovery,
my mental health journey, and that's a pretty easy thing
to undertake. That doesn't require a lot of belief and
a lot of knowledge, and you can just sit quietly,
preferably you know, maybe outside, maybe in under a tree
(09:31):
or something like that, and even just take five or
ten minutes to just quiet the mind and breathe and
be in the moment. You don't have to do anything
fancy around that. And then I have a chapter in
the book about sacred pilgrimages, the sacred Pilgrims I call it,
and the idea of finding what is sacred in daily
life in our modern world with our phones buzzing and
(09:57):
emails that need returning and cost co parking lots, and
how do you find the sacred in that world? The
main thing for me is to consider the idea. The
quote I often go to is from Father Tehart de Chardin,
who says we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
(10:19):
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And when
I am reminded of my spiritual reality, that's where I begin,
and that's where I begin every day, Like, yes, I
have this insistent self, I have Rain Wilson. I've got
this big, middle aged, fleshy body from suburban Seattle. My
(10:41):
body has certain needs. It likes to overeat, you know.
And I have an ego, you know, And I'm in
Hollywood and I'm like, oh, why did so and so
get that part and I didn't? And why didn't I
get considered for this role? And why am I not
getting paid that? And you know, it's really really difficult
to sidestep that in show business and release that. But
(11:06):
when I remember that I am a spiritual being having
a human experience, that can inform the choices that I
make and the path that I walk. Wherever that takes you.
You know, that can take you to indigenous Native American
spiritual beliefs. It can take you to transcendental meditation. It
can take you to mystical Catholicism. You know, the Vedas
(11:27):
and Upanishads, the Buddha. But it is a universal in
all religious traditions that we have a spiritual higher component,
a spirit, a soul, whatever you want to call it.
And how then do we step by step clear space
in our lives to feed, nourish, contemplate, and embrace the
(11:50):
spiritual side of ourselves.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind?
If the thing that came to your mind was more
time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
a quick tip that might make.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It better for you.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
of the time, every three seconds, failed again, failed again.
(12:34):
We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
it relaxing. Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
dot me slash calm. In it, I walk you through
my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
and a lot of people have found it really helpful.
That's good Wolf dot me slash calm. As far as
(12:56):
your life and the things that you know you get
caught up in, I don't wish anybody getting caught up
in anything, But what I like about that is there's
this real tendency of a lot of people to look
up right, and we think, well, so and so their
life must be just fine, it must be great because
it has these things in it that I want. Right,
and you're a person that you know, the vast majority
(13:18):
of the actors on the planet would look up at right.
There's a lot of actors on the planet and go, God,
if I could have a career like that, right, if
I could just I love those examples because I think
it shows that for all of us as humans, regardless
of where we're situated in different places, that there are
ways to be unhappy where we are, and there are
ways to be happier where we are, Like right, where
(13:41):
we sit. And this is not to say, you know,
like that if somebody is living on three dollars a
day that like they should just be able to be
as happy as everybody else. That's not what I'm trying
to say. But I'm saying that speaking to that general
sense we all have of I would just be happy
if I got X, right, I know, and I look
at my own life, I'm like, I got a lot
of X that I wanted, and I am happier. But
(14:02):
I don't think it's because of that, right, I think
it's because I've continued to try and develop along as
you would say, spiritual lines.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
One hundred percent. So all of contemporary society in Western
civilization wires us and motivates us to seek happiness outside
of ourselves. So we just keep reaching for more. We
want to make more money, we want to have a
better relationship, we want to live longer, we want to
look more youthful, we want to own more stuff. And
(14:34):
you know, going back to our caveman ancestors, it makes
total sense. You know, if you had a lot of
deer jerky and a lot of you know, beaver pelts,
you know, and berries in your cave and you had
a lot of like eligible mates, you know, in your cave,
you would thrive. So the acquiring of stuff and the
(14:55):
need for stuff is hardwired into our brain stems, but
it doesn't help us so much in the modern world.
I was really lucky to do this television show I
was on the Peacock Network last year called Rain Wilson
and the Geography of Bliss. And it was traveling around
(15:15):
the world looking at happiness in other cultures and what
brings people joy and bliss and what we can learn
from other cultures and bring back home to America. And
you know, the thing that I found is really quite simple,
and it was so revelatory, and it's connection. We really
(15:38):
thrive in connection, and we really waste away in isolation.
And this is also how we're wired. So you know
what wolf are we feeding. We're putting away the you know,
the materialist pursuits of seeking happiness outside of ourselves and
finding connection. And that is certainly human connection and finding
(16:00):
tribes and communities and like minded people or different minded people,
but it's also connection with nature. It's connection with the
higher power. We long to be connected. That would be
the only other than turning inward and seeking, you know,
peace from the kind of agitated unquiet that we walk
the world. It's connection and I got to experience that
(16:22):
in Iceland and Thailand and in Ghana, West Africa, and
it's helped me bring it home to my life here
in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I agree. I mean, to me the words spiritual, You
and I have slightly different definitions, and maybe we can
go into that in a second. Right, for me, spiritual
is all about To me, it just means connecting with
the things that really matter. That's kind of it for me.
I'd love to ask you what it means to you
in a second, but I don't want to miss this
discussion of your TV show, which sounds delightful. I'm going
to need to figure out how I can get National
(16:52):
Geographic to watch it. Peacock, Peacock, Peacock, Okay, all right,
that's easier to figure out.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, you just get the free month on the Peacock
and just watch.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
It and then and then forget to cancel, forget to cantnam. Kidding.
You've done a lot of studying of different cultures, particularly
in the spiritual dimension, for a long time now, right,
you're really well read in the spiritual literature. I'm curious though,
as you went out and traveled, it sounds like there
was this overarching thing that you sort of got, which
(17:21):
was connection. But were there any other things in that
that surprised you or that was like a new angle
on something you were like, Wow, I never thought of
it that way before. I'm just kind of curious for
another takeaway out of that experience.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, boy, I mean there's so much. One of the
big disconnects we have in the modern world is our
connection with nature. I was reading recently and it's an
easy thing to google, Like how much time people spend
outdoors is astonishingly low. You know, usually less than an
hour a day, and that's amazing when we used to
(17:56):
spend twenty four hours a day outdoors, or at least
twelve hours a day outdoors. Take the people of Iceland,
for instance. You know a lot of times they're forced
inside during the very cold winters, but their relationship, their
connection to nature is incredibly profound. Their love, the Icelandic
love of the glaciers and the volcanoes and the hot
(18:20):
springs and the waterfalls and the geysers that populate their island.
They really worship that aspect of being Icelandic, an intensely
burning love for nature and for their island. I found
the same thing to be in Ghana and in Thailand
as well, and it's something that I realized was very
(18:45):
much missing in my life. I mean, I try and
take a big camping trip every summer, and you know,
I like to take dog walks and you know, go
down to the beach sometimes. But to really prioritize nature
time is a big part of a spiritual pathntal health path,
a wellness path. And it sounds good, yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
more trees, more nature, It sounds good. But you know
(19:06):
what would it take to really prioritize, like to measure
like how much time do you spend outside? How do
you increase that? Can you take being vaguely outside to
being committedly outside and can you get out two or
three times in the year into the wilderness and where
there's not a phone and there's just trees, and how
(19:27):
does that feed yourself? It's very common sense, but I
think it has had a profound effect on the mental
health crisis that we've been undergoing over the last twenty
or thirty years.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, it's really hard like I prioritize being in nature,
and I bet I'm under an hour a day average,
And that's with me even trying, you know, just given
you know the nature of a lot of the way
my life is structured. And yet I know for me
it is a really valuable thing. There's something about it.
I think it's helpful on many levels for me. One
(19:59):
of the levels is like I can just walk outside
and it's beautiful and I can be like, you know what,
this costs absolutely nothing, and this is always available. It's
like this resource is here. It's how I feel about
libraries too. I walk into a library, I just feel happy,
you know, it's like this is amazing, Like, you know,
look at this repository of hope and possibility that like
(20:20):
I can just walk into nature has that similar. Obviously
it's working on different mechanisms, but there's a correlation to
me about something about this resource that's always there.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Another aspect around Bliss is very simply
doing things for other people, being of service, and they've
done countless studies in the field of positive psychology around this.
That again, contemporary Western society says, you know, me, me me,
(20:51):
you know it's me time to take care of yourself,
get stuff for yourself, acquire stuff, putting yourself first and foremost.
But in actuality, when we are of service to others,
when we prioritize others and sacrificing of our time, of
our attention, of our status, of our resources for others,
(21:13):
it gives us a great, deep sense of fulfillment. I'll
never forget meeting this woman in Thailand, and this is
a common practice in Thailand that every year for her
birthday she goes and hands out food and is of
service to the monks that live in very impoverished state
in the monasteries and hands out food to the poor.
(21:35):
So her birthday is a service day to others. And
I thought that is really beautiful and one ady opposite
of America where it's all about celebrating ourselves and getting
cake and presents for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, that's a great story. So I mentioned what spirituality
means to me about just being connected to the things
that matter most. What is a working definition for you?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, the Oxford Dictiontionary talks about spirituality as being being
concerned with the non material aspects of life, So that
goes hand in hand with what you're saying. In my
faith tradition, there is a metaphor that I love to
look at that helps elucidate this idea, and that is
the baby in the womb. I believe, and Bahais believe
(22:23):
in many other faith traditions, believe that there is a
divine eternal aspect to myself. That is, my consciousness is
not just a random assortment of molecules and neurons firing
in a brain that has given me a personality and perspective,
(22:43):
and I'm not just an elevated ape or monkey, but
that my consciousness is partially connected to my corporeal existence,
and it's part juices and electricity and gray matter, and
it is also my consciousness the part of me that
weeps at a poem, the part of me that longs
(23:03):
for connection, that beams when I hold a baby that
size when I see a sunset, That this part of
myself is of this world and yet not of this world.
The metaphor is the babies in the womb. So a
baby in a womb. We were all in a womb,
(23:24):
and when we were in that womb, we had no
idea you and I eric that we would be on
riverside dot FM, looking at each other having a profound
conversation about health and wellness and love and God and
spirit over microphones and the Internet and podcasting, etc. We
(23:45):
had no idea that that existed. We were just floating
in amniotic fluid, growing our arms and legs and toes
and elbows and eyelashes that we were going to need
in the physical world. And you know, if you were
to ask a baby, hey, why are you growing these
elbows and eyelashes and fingers, the baby will be like,
(24:07):
I don't know, leave me alone. I'm just I'm fine
right here floating around. It has no idea of the
miraculous infinity that lies outside of the womb. It has
no idea about radio Head and Miles Davis and the
poetry of Ee Cummings and what the Grand Canyon looks like.
(24:30):
And in the same regard, that's what we're doing in
this physical realm. In this physical realm, we are growing
our spiritual arms and legs, our spiritual toes, our spiritual
eyelashes and elbows that we will need once this material
body falls aside in Nirvana, in the happy hunting grounds
(24:51):
in heaven, the next plane of existence, and what are
we taking with us? You know, maybe not so much
our personalities, but those qualities that we've grown in this
world are qualities of kindness and humility and compassion and
love and honesty. Those are our spiritual arms and legs
(25:12):
and elbows and toes that we are taking with us
on our infinite journey into the beyond. So it's really
beyond heaven and hell. There's not like that kind of
concept in my faith tradition of like, oh, believers are
going here and non believers are going here. We're all
on this journey. You know, eight billion of us are
on this journey. And the journey begins in the womb,
(25:32):
and it comes here to the physical realm and continues.
So what is spirituality. It's being concerned with that journey,
you know, with the accruing of those spiritual virtues of
seeking like sunflowers turning to the sun, seeking to turn
toward the divine impulse, and understanding that our lives are
(25:56):
infinite and miraculous and and in incredibly short and precious
while we're in our bodies. You know, I'm dealing right now.
I lost two friends to cancer in the last couple
of years, I've got like four friends with cancer right now.
And this happens when you're in your fifties. And the
comedian Neil Brennan talks about Sniper's Alley. It's like, when
(26:17):
you get to a certain age, it's called sniper's alley
because all of a sudden, the people around you start
getting picked off. Boo boo boo. And it's true and
it's sad, and it's heartbreaking, and it's reality, and it's
part of the journey.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I'm sorry to hear about all of your friends. Thank
you every year getting older, I'm in my fifties. Also,
is this fragility of life becomes ever more clear, which
can be a positive and is all so deeply unsettling?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, thank you. Indeed.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So I'd like to turn our attention for a minute
and talk about mental health, although it's going to lead
us right back into soul boom here in a second.
You talk about in the book about you've dealt with
many mental health issues, you know, depression, anxiety, addiction. And
I did an interview recently with a woman named doctor
(27:24):
Lisa Miller. I don't know if you're familiar with her work.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
I love Lisa Miller. She's amazing and we just had
her as one of the first people on our soul
Boom podcast that's coming out in a few weeks, so perfect.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yes, she's wonderful. The thing in her book that really
blew me away was, you know, when she began studying
spirituality and she found the protective effect that it has
against depression was a higher protective effect than they had
seen in nearly anything else. Now it's slightly more nuanced
because what she over time sort of found out was
(27:58):
that people who suffered depression often have turned to spirituality
because it's a path out. But there does seem to
be a correlation between mental health and spirituality. And I
would love to hear your thoughts on what things do
you find most helpful you know, for your mental health overall,
(28:21):
So if you want to talk to how spirituality informs
that and then anything else that feels alive for you
right now in that area.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Thanks. It's really one of my very favorite topics. The Buddha,
as we know, has principal teaching. He says, I teach
one thing and one thing only suffering and the elimination
of suffering. Life is suffering or there is suffering or
the world has suffering, however you translate it. And the
word suffering that was used at the time in the
(28:51):
Sanskrit or Pali was duka, and from what I've read
and understand, duka is most expertly translated as anxious discontent.
And I think any addict understands anxious discontent. And I
wake up with it most every day, and I'm just like,
(29:11):
I got a little headache or my back hurts, or
why didn't this work out? And I'm resentful at this
person and I wish I had that, and why didn't
this come? And even if it's not specific, it's just
that feeling, it's that vibration of things aren't right. So
I have to adjust myself away from anxious discontent toward
(29:36):
radiant acquiescence, toward acceptance, towards gratitude. And I use tools
from both the Twelve Steps and psychology and spiritual practice
to help realign myself. And that's a different wolf that
I feed, right, I don't feed the anxious discontent, you know,
(29:56):
I feed gratitude and connection right empt to some days
I'm better at it, some I'm not. Frankly, a lot
of the time I just fail totally and get too
busy to meditate, and all of a sudden it's four
o'clock and I'm a dick to my wife and I
think my life is shit, and I don't look around
and go, you know, wow, I've actually got it really good.
(30:20):
So the spiritual life has helped me a great deal
with understanding anxious discontent. And you know, meditation certainly grounds me.
But prayer is an important part of this for me
because I believe that there is a power that's greater
than myself, and that surrender to that power asking for help.
(30:43):
You know, Anne LaMotte has that great book Help Thanks Wow.
You know the three forms of prayer, and I can
connect with this creative presence, this force, this force of
beauty and light and warmth and knowledge, and that it
helps me. I think that on my mental health journey,
(31:04):
something I've always really responded to Eric is transcendence. And
I think that humans have a longing for transcendence. We
long to transcend out of our bodies. We don't want
to just sit in our bodies. Jack off, eat a sandwich,
watch some Netflix Poppo is it, take a poop and
(31:27):
just be in our bodies. That's an important part of
being a human being, but we also long for what,
for love, for understanding, for beauty. We have that transcendent
impulse for something to reach out beyond the mirror material.
And I know that I've always had that. Maybe I'm
(31:48):
just wired that way, but I feel like most everyone
has that to a certain degree. And that's what spirituality
is all about. It's all about like life is precious,
life is short. The experience continues, embrace the transcendent, and
in the doing we find kind of meaning and purpose.
(32:09):
We can give the transcendent to others. It's a gift. Again.
We're spiritual beings having a human experience. The list goes
on and on. I mean, there's so many things I
could talk about the positive benefits of spirituality, and especially
for young people and the mental health epidemic that's going
on right now. I know I'm rambling a little bit,
but I'll just say another one that's really important is suffering.
(32:32):
So the Buddha teaches about suffering, but the idea of
suffering comes up in every faith tradition as well. And
one of the things that you know, psychologists all kind
of universally agree is that the younger generation does not
have much resilience. There's a setback and it causes a
big breakdown. There's a difficulty and they don't know what
(32:55):
to do. There's a fear of an obstacle, and so
that shuts them down. It's a big generality for those
you know under twenty eight or thirty right now, but
this is a big tendency. And I think that spirituality
provides a context for suffering, Like what is suffering? What
is the purpose of suffering? Suffering exists, There's ways to
detach from suffering, there's ways to overcome suffering, there's ways
(33:19):
to develop determination to pierce through suffering. But suffering is
a necessary part of the spiritual struggle. And we feel
pain so that we can feel joy and we have
something to compare it with. And it is through suffering
that we grow our resilience. You know, when you go
to the gym, you're lifting weights, what are you doing?
(33:41):
You're breaking down the muscle fibers. You're literally tearing them
so that they grow back stronger. And this is part
of what it is to be a spiritual being in
having a human experience. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
For me, I love where you started with. You know,
Buddha teaching suffering and the end of suffering, and you
kind of came all the way back to it at
the end. And you know, I know what drew me
to spirituality. I was probably seventeen eighteen years old, and
I'd been around the Christian faith, but it just never
really resonated with me. It never made sense to me.
(34:15):
I'd been pointed into Zen Buddhism by my teacher I
had in high school, and that sort of led me
to the Doud aching. But I know what it was
about those two works that resonated with me and sort
of set me on this journey, And it was that
idea that there was a way to be okay in
the world, even as difficult as the world is. I
(34:37):
was an over serious seventeen year old, but it was
pretty clear to me even by then that the world
could be a really difficult place and that there was
an enormous amount of suffering in the world, and the
thought that there was a way to not have to
solve that problem by making it all go away, but
instead there was a way to be okay in the
midst of it. That to me was like that was
(34:59):
the beacon, was the thing that sort of really drew
me in, and that did not stop me from descending
into addiction. And I often think of my addictions as
you were talking about, as a search for transcendence, Right,
that's what That's a lot of what that energy was, Right. Yes,
I think by the end of my addiction there was
probably a fair amount of hiding from pain. But in
(35:21):
the beginning it was about connecting to joy and beauty
and the insistent self being quiet long enough that I
could appreciate the world in its beauty.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I just want to piggyback on what you're saying, like
whether for me it was drugs, whether it was alcohol,
whether it was porn, whether it was kind of like
love addiction and romance codependence. You know, it was a
search for several other things we've been talking about, connection
and transcendence and meaning and seeking joy, seeking a way
(35:53):
out of the insistent self to try and kind of
obliterate that anxious discontent. And you know, like they say,
it works until it doesn't work anymore, and then you
find yourself even you know, further down in a hole.
But that is that same impulse, It is that essential human,
transcendent spiritual seeking impulse and I'll also say that some
(36:15):
people have a hard time, and mostly because of how
they've been raised with a certain idea of God. They
have a hard time like worshiping something greater than themselves.
And I think that humans always worship something greater than themselves.
Everyone worships something. It's just true. There might be a
couple of people listening right now. Oh that's bullshit. I
(36:36):
don't know, but I believe it's true. It might be
your career, it might be money. It might even be
making your family or your spouse your higher power. It
can be you know, your political party. It can be
status at work. It can be workoholism. Workoholism is in
contemporary America, is given a free pass. You know, if
(36:57):
you work sixty seventy hours a week and have a
couple divorces because of it, Like God bless you. You're
a job creator, entrepreneur and you know, just trying to
provide for their family. And I would rather substitute something
more like love or beauty than that.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
All right, now, let's pause for a quick good Wolf reminder,
and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
as a moment of failure, like, ough, my mind wandered again.
But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
moment of celebration because in that moment, your mind actually
(37:36):
woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
a our brain is going to do it more often
because we're training it, and b that we're going to
enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
(38:00):
Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. So you've multiple times used the word divine.
You've used the word god, which again for many people
is a real turn off. And a little game that
I love to play is what are other ways of
(38:20):
saying that concept that are more welcoming and open to
people who have a problem with them. And you've got
a couple great ones in the book, so I thought
I would read a couple that you reference, and then
you can feel free to add anything else you want.
To add to it, one is you reference I'm not
sure how to say this person's name, but Nicholas of Kusa,
a fifteenth century philosopher who said divinity is in all
(38:43):
things in such a way that all things are in divinity.
He spoke of a God who's this is the part
I love, whose center, so to speak, is everywhere and
whose circumference is nowhere. That is such a great line.
And you know you then also go on to talk
about the idea of the Doo. And I just got
done doing a really deep dive teaching for this AI
(39:06):
type program that's going to be created around the doo.
And you know, the dow that can be told is
not the eternal Tao, but this idea that whatever we're
trying to describe, when we use the word God or divine,
our words are always going to fall short. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Amen, this is such a tricky one. You know. In
the book Soul Boom, I have a chapter called the
Notorious Good, which is all an examination of what God
is and what God isn't. And I would say the
conversation needs to begin with like what is God not judgmental, male, patriarchal, damning, contemptuous,
(39:44):
those are a couple of the humanoid, you know, on
a cloud. You know, to start with a list of
what God is not, you know, and and.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Really we missed beard, bearded beard.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You know, I have a beard, and I know O
god like certainly, but don't let that confuse your listeners.
But you know, start with what God isn't. Oftentimes when
people say I don't believe in God, I'll say, you know,
I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in.
So I went on this search. It was kind of
before I was even in recovery. I was just an
(40:19):
abject misery of mental health with anxiety and depression. And
I thought because I grew up a member of the
Bahai faith, and I had jettisoned the religion and spirituality
to just essentially like go crazy and party in my
twenties in New York and be an actor. And so
I started tiptoeing back towards spiritual ideas and religious ideas.
(40:40):
But the God thing was a big hang up. I
had spent a while as an atheist and tried to
have that make sense. It didn't really make sense to me.
And then I was reading about Native American spirituality and
in the Lakota Sioux tradition, the idea of God is
known as Wakantung, the Great Mystery. And so you're asking
(41:04):
for names of God that could allow people into a
path of seeking the divine. There's one right there, the
Great Mystery. I knew at the time, and I was
in my late twenties, maybe twenty eight. I don't believe
in God, and I don't believe in some guy patriarchal
in my book, I call him sky Daddy. I don't
believe in sky Daddy, but I can get behind the
(41:27):
Great Mystery. And that was very exciting to me. And
the more I kind of read about this Lakota idea,
the Great Mystery, there's no personification whatsoever. This is not
a guy. It's not a dude. It's not a being.
It's not a demi God, it's not a demiurge. It's
simply a radiant force contained in nature, and it's beyond
(41:49):
time and space. It's in the wind, it's in the
beauty of the trees, it's in the sunlight and the flowers.
It's known through the majesty of mountains, it's known through
all of the metaphor beauty and power contained in nature,
and it also courses through our ancestors and our consciousness.
(42:10):
And as an artist, I could get behind the Great Mystery.
So that's where I started. My kind of God journey
was like and I remember saying to friends of mine, like,
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Wakantanka.
I believe in the Great Mystery. And so I've tried
to stay there. And I talk in the book Soul
Boom and also on the podcast that's coming up a
lot about God as being more akin to love or
(42:37):
art or beauty than any kind of conscious being. And
when I am able to sit in that reality, I
feel much closer to God. When I worship a God
that is love and beauty and art and music and
transcendence incarnate, then I feel most heart connected to that
(43:00):
rather than any kind of like someone or something that
has opinions and thoughts and has superpowers.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah. I think Saint Augustine said, if you understand God,
what you understand isn't God. Ah, You've got another line
in there where you call it the essence of essences.
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Also.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
The Great Mystery has been sort of my fallback for
a long long time. Is because I'm just like, well,
ultimately all this is a mystery, and so that is
something that I can towards and that I can both
want to figure out and also be okay not figuring out,
you know, doing both those things.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
The God of the Christian Church, by and large is
often far too similar to Zeus, and people get really
hung up on that and they get angry, I don't
believe in God, And what they're really saying is I
don't believe in Zeus, you know. And the theologian Paul
Tillic and philosopher kind of redefine God as the ground
(43:57):
of all being and again trying to get got out
of the sky and more into the ground and like
being itself, interconnectedness and life itself. You know. I think
there's a lot of different ways to look at this,
but I think what's important is to understand that we
are wired to worship, We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and
(44:23):
devotion does not have to be to you know, an
entity with a will and a beard, but connection to
the greatest possible love and unity that binds us all
and gives us our common humanity. And then what's even
more important than that, more than any kind of belief
(44:43):
is like what you do, who cares ultimately what you believe.
Some of the best people I've ever known have been
diehard atheists, serving their fellow humans, sacrificing of their time
and energy and status and attention and bank accounts for
other And it really is it's in what you do.
(45:03):
It's not so much what you believe, but hopefully what
you believe can guide you to be ever more altruistic.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
A friend of your, Stephen Phelps, talks about that a
little bit you say in the book. He reminded me
that the discussion of God has unfortunately been far less
focused on God as a goal, a destination away of life,
a rich garden of qualities to emulate, or an energy
to both draw from and align with. Right, So instead
of thinking of God as this thing to be worshiped,
(45:31):
it's really about this way of being and way of
engaging in the world.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah, James, And the Bible says faith without works is dead,
and God is in what you do. And we see
God revealed in what people do and how they are
and how they travel through the world.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
There's been something that it's happened to me for years,
but I haven't really known how to think about it before.
It tends to happen when I'm watching TV or a movie.
It sometimes will happen in reading, and it happens in
real life if I see it. It doesn't occur with
the regularity. But if I'm watching something and someone just
sort of does something, it's not like a huge thing,
(46:32):
but it's a moment of just real kindness. I always
tear up. And I think I just sort of realized
there's actually a term for it. I think it's like
moral elevation or something. It's something like that, But it
also has something in common with me about kind of
what you were just saying. It feels like something if
(46:53):
we were going to use the word worship, right, it's
something that is worth worshiping.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
It does for me feel transcend.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. And there is
a word in every faith tradition that essentially translates to
loving kindness. It's different than kindness, and it's different than love.
It's loving kindness and it's how we serve one another.
And I hear you in responding to that, and I
feel the same way, and how and why are we
(47:23):
so disconnected from acts of true loving kindness. One of
the things I get into in Soul Boom, one of
the least popular parts of my book that a lot
of people, I think, frankly, I just lose a lot
of people, is talking about the latter half of the book.
I start talking about systems and how broken contemporary modern
(47:44):
systems are. An average listener is listening to you right now.
Maybe they're a school teacher and they can tell you
about how broken the education system is in the United States.
Maybe they are a nurse and they can talk the
same way about healthcare, transportation, agriculture. It's completely broken. How
we do agriculture from top to bottom is completely skewed,
(48:06):
you know, with monolithic monofarming and greed and government subsidies
for you know, soybeans to feed cattle and contribute to
climate change, and it just goes the list goes on
and on. And the most toxic of all of them,
of course, is our political system. And we're about to
engage in probably the most toxic election known to man.
(48:27):
And we've been through some doozies, and so I talk
a lot about how do we take spiritual ideas like
this one of loving kindness and put it into our
systems because the problem is is our systems are built
on that old cave man way of doing things. It's
one upsmanship. It's backstabbing, it's every man for himself, it's
accruing things. It's greed, it's envy, it's don't tread on me,
(48:52):
it's live free or die. It's some of the worst
impulses of being a human being is the engine healthcare.
Healthcare should not be based on greed and one upsmanship
and every man for himself and survival of the fittest.
But it is. But we are not having that conversation
(49:14):
as a culture to say, okay, put aside Christian versus Jew,
versus Muslim versus Buddhist. Put all that aside the differences.
What are the universalities? Because those universalities are at the
core of human wisdom for tens of thousands of years.
Can we recalibrate systems to be based on these ideas
(49:39):
Easier said than done. I don't know exactly how to
do it. I have some glimpses. Sometimes we see some
glimpses of that, you know, profit sharing, super easy example
of you know, a more just capitalism, where workers have
a larger share in what they're creating. And so it's
instead of CEOs getting paid millions and workers getting paid
(50:02):
minimum wage, that there is a more active ownership. That
is a spiritual idea. You might say, well, no, it's not.
It's a communist idea and it's a social justice idea,
and it's like, well, God is just. We seek just.
We seek fair mindedness and justice as part of our
spiritual impulse, and we know that it is moral and right.
(50:24):
And how do we seek that? How does that strike you, Eric?
Because I know that there's a lot of people that
I'm not putting you with them, but there's a lot
of people that simply view spirituality as something that you
do on a bench under a tree, and then it
makes you slightly better, more serene, less anxious, and then
if you're going to spread that love day by day
(50:45):
going about your work and your job, then that's how
it works. And that's the extent. But do you think
it's possible to kind of extend these concepts into how
us humans do things?
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah? I think I have a few different responses. I mean,
one is, you know, certainly I agree, and you talk
about this in the book that like, our spirituality can't
be just about our own interior, you know, well being
right to me, a spiritual life has to have an
inflow and an outflow to it, and then what that
outflow looks like, I think is different. I think about
this a lot because I tend to focus on this
(51:22):
show more on the individual things that people can do
in their lives versus systematic because I feel like that's
where my experience and strength lies. That said, I do
think that these ideas can be applied more broadly, and
I think they have been to some degree. Now. I
(51:43):
know that there are natural ups and downs in everything,
but I think we are a more humane species than
we used to be, you know, in many ways. You know,
I think our circle of concern extends further than just
our tribe. I'm not saying everybody is that way by
any stretch of the imagination, but I think more and
more people, as we look globally, are that way. So yes,
(52:07):
but I don't know enough again, like playing to my
strengths about how we do that, Like if you mentioned
this upcoming election, Like I feel a little flum mixed
right now about the political situation because on one hand, I
absolutely believe that the path forward has to be some
sort of mutual discussion where we can find what's in
(52:27):
common and be able to talk to each other. And
yet it's very hard to engage in that when it
feels like and I will say this for both sides
of the aisle. I happen to live on one of them,
but I see it in both sides. We don't tend
to be listening to each other. We don't tend to
have the attention span to process nuanced and complex ideas. So, yes,
(52:53):
I do think that our spiritual life can inform us politically.
I think that's a dangerous idea taken too far, though,
because I think we've got a problem where you know,
religion can get too far into government, right, And I
know you're not talking about religion, right, So I think
it's tricky. But yes, I feel like if we could
be having more discussions about common values, that would be
(53:16):
a place that we could then move on to strategy. Right,
We could move on to tactic, and we could move
on to strategy if we could agree to some common
things that we all believe that there are virtuous. So
I don't know if that was a cop out answer.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
And that's exactly right. And I think that, you know,
I went to the FDR Museum in New York not
long ago, and it was so interesting what arose out
of the Great Depression and out of the social programs
of the Great Depression, the idea of like a five
day work week and a you know, eight hour work
day and no children working. And we collectively kind of said, hey,
(53:57):
we don't want old people to be starving and the
way they used to in the old world. Will create
social security and everyone will put aside a little bit
and it'll sit in a fund and it'll crew interest,
and then we'll just make sure that old people aren't
starving the way they used to be in the eighteen nineties.
If there was an old person without anyone to take
care of them, they would just sit on a street
corner and starve to death. So, you know, collectively we said, hey,
(54:21):
this is important, and we addressed it.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I think what's interesting is I'm not sure how I
think FDR was a deeply polarizing figure at the time.
Like I mean, I think collectively we can all look
back and go, it's probably good not to a lot
of old people starve to death. But at the time,
I think he was deeply, deeply divisive, right, And it's
interesting how some of these things that are deeply divisive
(54:44):
at the time we look back on and go, oh, yeah,
well that really was a more enlightened policy.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Yeah. Well, and I think social security was more from
LBJ and I'm not a historian. I think it was
more from that realm. But you're absolutely right, it was
very divisive, and it was like this is communism, you know.
And you know, Medicare and Medicaid came up around the
same time, so super divisive, but ultimately embraced by our
(55:09):
culture and now you could never take it away, which
is always a good sign. But one of the examples
I bring up in my book is Bahai elections. So
to underline, the Bahaigh faith has no clergy. There's no gurus,
there's no priests, there's no mullahs or rabbis or pastors
or anything like that. So every Bahai community has nine
(55:32):
people in it governing the affairs of that Bahai community,
and that can be from Akron, Ohio, to Santa Barbara, California,
to and then there's national spiritual assemblies, you know, the
Bahais of Ecuador or Brazil or Mongolia, and the elections
are done completely different than elections in the western world.
(55:55):
They are prayerful. They come out of meditation and you
meet and gather. There's no yard signs, there's no campaigning,
there's no money that goes to elections. You prayerfully and
on a silent ballot, on a secret ballot, put the
nine names of the people you think have the most
spiritual wisdom and maturity for the job, and those nine
(56:19):
people then govern the affairs of the community. Those nine
people don't have any power over anyone else. So someone
who's on you know, the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahy's of Ecuador, let's say they can't go into a
room of o their behinds and say, hey, you do this,
and you do this. That's not how it works. When
they're assembled and they come to an agreement together, they
can pass you know, kind of like agendas and whatnot.
(56:43):
But this might sound too pigh in the sky, like oh,
we could never do that, and a lot of people
have that response, But I don't know that that's true.
You know, what if there was place, what if you're
in you know, Clearwood Springs, Ohio, and people in Clearwood Springs,
Ohio are sick of politics as usual and corruption and
campaign donations totally millions of dollars. And they say, let's
(57:06):
meet at the local football stadium and all two thousand
people in the town, We're going to do a silent ballot,
secret ballot vote for nine people or seven people or
five people that are going to govern the town. There's
not going to be a mayor. They only have power
when they're together in collection, in collectiveness, and they consult
on the issues at hand, and people can meet with
them collectively and you know, let's have some music and
(57:32):
some hot dogs and some moores and meditate and write
it down. And if someone, let's say, you know, the
family doctor in town is too busy, well he's got
to sacrifice some of his business. Because part of it
is like contemporary politics, the people who want positions are
power seekers, you know, And why are we always voting
(57:54):
for the people who want power? Like it makes more
sense that to get someone that's who's the guy, the
shark tank guy owns the Maverick Mark Cuban Like he's said,
I'm not gonna run, I'm not gonna run. But obviously
super people are like, oh, you should run, like we
should elect Mark Cuban. Maybe he'd do a better.
Speaker 3 (58:12):
Job precisely because he doesn't want.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Precisely for the reason because he doesn't want it. Yes,
but couldn't couldn't we see where you know, Clearwood Springs,
Ohio might benefit from something like that. Then that's the
idea of taking like a spiritual idea of a true
public service and putting it into practice systemically. That's great.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
So listener and thinking about all of that and the
other great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going
to isolate just one top insight or thing to do
that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember that,
little by little, a little becomes a lot, and a
habit for me that has accrude and benefit over time
is meditation. However, one of the things that gets in
(58:55):
our way of building a steady meditation practice is that
very striving.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
let striving go and focus on just being there and
experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
We want to let go of that. So if you
want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
(59:23):
check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. I think I would recommend that you try
that in Clearwood Springs, California first. I think you're gonna
have a better reception then in some rural part of Ohio.
I'm just guessing that's all right, But no, I mean
(59:43):
I totally agree. I mean, I love that idea of
like it's not even like you decide you're on the ballot,
you just are sort of like everybody gathers and says
like these are the people.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (59:53):
Well, I think that is a great place to wrap
up Rain. You and I are going to talk more
in the post show conversation about some of your pills
for using these spiritual ideas to change our society, and
so we'll talk about some of those in the post
show conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that ad
free episodes and the pleasure that comes from supporting something
(01:00:15):
that matters to you, go to oneufeed dot net slash
join and we'd love to have you as part of
the community. Rain, thank you. Your new podcast, Soul Boom
is out and it's a great listen and we'll have
links in the show notes to that, as well as
your book and all other things. Rain Wilson, thank you
so much for coming on again.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Always a pleasure. Eric, thanks for having me back again.
And if I come on a fourth time, will I
have the record of the most appearances.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
I think you will tie the record. I think you
will tie the record. You will tie it, so you'll
need to come on two more times. Once upon a time,
a two time guest was like, wow, but having done
this a decade, there's a bunch of those, right, three
time guests. Yeah, that's your rarefied.
Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
All right, I think four. I want to be the
record holder. I want to be like Alec Baldwin on
Saturday Night Live without the murder.
Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
Yes, yes we don't. I'm not going to make jokes
about as.
Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
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(01:01:48):
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