October 31, 2025 • 53 mins
What if the path to a meaningful life had nothing to do with fame or success and everything to do with service and soul?
In this captivating conversation, Rainn Wilson opens up about his transformation from Hollywood ego to spiritual seeker, sharing how faith, meditation, and humility helped him rediscover purpose beyond the spotlight. Together with Chip Conley, he explores why midlife can be a sacred turning point when the soul finally takes the lead.
👉 Watch now to learn how Rainn’s journey can help you reconnect with your own soul.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:55 What Is a Soul?
05:52 Chip‘s Definition of Soul
08:18 Humans on a Spiritual Journey
09:32 Growing Up Baha’i
13:58 The 1960s Spiritual Revolution
17:31 Hollywood, Faith & the Dark Night of the Soul
21:01 Becoming Dwight Schrute
22:50 Famous in Midlife
29:01 The Ego and Hollywood
31:38 Letting the Soul Lead
34:08 Devotion & Daily Practice
40:03 The Soul Boom Workbook
42:24 How the Workbook Came to Be
44:41 Wisdom Bumper Sticker
49:24 Chip’s Reflections and Takeaways
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#RainnWilson #SoulBoom #MidlifeChrysalis #ChipConley #SpiritualRevolution #Bahaifaith #SoulJourney #ModernSpirituality #EgoAndSoul #Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #MentalHealthAwareness #ServiceAndPurpose #ConsciousLiving #SpiritualAwakening
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What's the meaning of life? It's service.
It's service to others. Because when you give service to
others, that actually makes you happier.
So it actually helps you and it helps them.
And if everyone is living in a service mindset, you are keeping
your ego, the insistent self or Satan in check.
(00:21):
And if everyone was living in a service oriented mindset, the
world would transform. So that's what I would say to a
young tractor student, someone just like how can you take what
you do well, what you love, whatignites your heart and turn it
into service? Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
(00:42):
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, if you're a regular listener or watcher of the
Midlife Christmas, you know thatwe have disrupted our pattern.
(01:04):
Our pattern had been every week on Wednesday, we had an
interview that we released and now we're doing those on Monday
and Friday. And so this is our first Friday
episode. And on Wednesdays soon, we'll be
doing a Wisdom Wednesday episode, all dedicated to me.
And Derek Gale are CEO of MEA, talking about a particular topic
(01:28):
around wisdom with me doing my best to spout wisdom.
But who knows? You know, I'll do my best to
make an interesting Wednesday for you.
But Monday. So you'll look for those
interviews on Monday and Friday.And, and Rainn Wilson is the
person who's our Friday interview.
And I, I wish I could invite himto my birthday party because
(01:49):
today's my birthday. It's my 65th birthday.
I'm having a party at the Phoenix Hotel, my very first
hotel I started 39 years ago. It's on a long term land lease.
It's the end of the lease. And so it's a retirement party,
not for me, but for my hotel. But rain is somebody that I love
to converse with my, you know, there aren't that many people.
(02:09):
Famous stars Dwight on the you know, from the office who have
gone from being the the fool to the philosopher.
His podcast and book Soul Boom and his new book, which comes
out next week, Soul Boom Workbook are all about how we
explore soul in our life, a topic that we love at MEA.
(02:31):
So I think you're going to enjoythis episode.
Wish me happy birthday. And if you're in the Bay Area,
maybe even come to the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin at the
gateway to the Tenderloin for a party there starting at 7:00
tonight. Thanks so much.
See ya on the other side of thisepisode when I do the outro and
tell you what I learned from rain, Rain Wilson.
(02:56):
Welcome to the midlife chrysalis.
Thanks Chip, I love the title ofyour podcast and empire, it's
really cool. Yeah, you know it's in it.
It's an honor to have you here. I even wore my favorite sweater,
my soul sweater, just. For you, look at that.
Yeah, for those of you on YouTube, you can see that I'm
wearing a sweater that says soulon it.
(03:18):
So let's talk about soul. Let's go.
Right, Let's go to the deep end of the pool to start with, you
know, in reading your new book, which has just launched this
week, I I noticed that you talked about Paisley starships
when you were talking about soul.
So how do you define soul and and what is a soul and and how
did Dwight from the Office become such a philosopher?
(03:40):
That's my favorite introductory question I've ever had on a
podcast. Thank you.
So I have this podcast called Soul Boom, based on the book
Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
And every episode I asked the guests, what is soul?
What is your definition of soul?And it's I have such a specific
(04:00):
idea of what soul is, but you'd be surprised at the range,
depth, complexity and nuance of people defining the word soul.
It is really jaw-dropping to some people.
It's like artistic expression, almost like soul music.
You know, other people. It's like it's a feeling other
(04:24):
people. It's like a connection of you
get to nature or the world or something that you love.
For me, the soul is the human part of us, the eternally human
part of us, the the kind of miracle of consciousness that
(04:45):
continues after our, you know, physical stint on this world
draws to an end. And the reason that there's a
Paisley Starship included in that question is I remember as a
kid, I was, I grew up a member of the Baha'i Faith.
And, you know, asking my parents, like, what is a soul?
(05:07):
What does this mean? Like this idea, like the soul
continues after the, after the death of the body.
And they're like, well, you can't really describe it and
blah, blah. And we had these towels from the
70s and of course, everything inthe, in the early 70s had
Paisley's on it and it had thesePaisley's.
And I kind of looked at the Paisley's like that.
I bet that's what a soul looks like.
(05:28):
And I for some reason that really stuck in my head every
time I see a Paisley to me it equates to a soul.
I'm not exactly sure why there'ssomething psychedelic.
You can kind of picture it having to do with consciousness
or attached to the body or, or or or something like that.
So that's that's my so do you have an idea chip a soul?
(05:50):
When you what would? What would your definition be?
Well, I love you, you know, in your book, so that the book is
called this is the new book, which is Soul Book, Soul Boom
Workshop or Soul Boom Workbook, spiritual tools for modern
living. So it's really taking your soul
boom book and concept and, and making it more, even more
practically applicable. You have a quote from George
(06:12):
MacDonald, which is also attributed to CS Lewis, which is
something to the effect of you don't have a soul, you are a
soul, you have a body. So let's like unpack that for a
moment. You are a soul, you have a body.
So my, my definition of soul speaks to this idea that we are
(06:33):
a humble steward for and really the physical delivery vehicle
for the soul through this lifetime.
Our, our, our, our job is to help steward the soul that has
incarnated in, in our body so that it can make it to its next
body. We're just like a taxi vehicle.
(06:55):
We're a taxi, We're, we're an Uber.
I, you know, my, my body is an Uber and my, my job is to really
recognize that in my soul I havethe history of many other beings
that have lived over the course of a long period of time, over
(07:16):
maybe hundreds, thousands of years.
So the soul is the thing that actually connects me to all of
my lineage. And I don't mean blood lineage
like family necessarily, I just mean the lineage almost on a
more deeper spiritual level. And so soul for me is is the
(07:37):
idea of something that is actually human, but beyond
human. It is the thing that actually
connects us to all of the oneness of mankind, going back
to the history of mankind and into the future.
So in some ways we don't have a soul.
(07:58):
We're being had by a soul. The the soul has us in this
lifetime and our job is to steward that soul and learn from
the soul because that there's a lot of soul wisdom in there.
So that's that's my long winded answer.
What do you think? Is that sort of stupid?
(08:18):
That's the most idiotic definition I've ever heard in my
entire life. Get Me Out of this podcast.
No, it was that's, that's great.I mean, I, that's beautiful.
I was riveted by everything you were saying.
It, it just sparked so many thoughts.
I mean, the first thing that it brought up for me was a, a, a
quote that I, that many people say and is one of my favorite
quotes of all time, which is from Father Teharte Chardin,
(08:41):
who's a Jesuit priest and philosopher and what not, that
we are not human beings having aspiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having ahuman experience.
And I love that idea. And that goes hand in hand with
what you're saying. And I was, there's been a lot of
work recently about like the difference between the brain and
(09:03):
the mind. And I would even go one further
and like, say, what's the difference between the brain,
the mind, consciousness, which is even kind of greater than the
mind and the soul, which is maybe even greater than
consciousness? Like how do you, where do you
(09:24):
differentiate? You know, those levels of
literally being, you know, as the being consciousness bliss.
So let's go, let's go back a fewyears.
You grew up in a Baha'i family, actually, by the way, I, I once
helped create a Baha'i wedding at my first hotel, the Phoenix
(09:45):
in San Francisco with Michael, Michael Franti, the musician and
his wife, who's Persian and fromthe Baha'i Faith.
For those who don't understand or don't have history with the
by the high Faith, you grew up in a family and with parents who
were Baha'i. Were they, did they become
Baha'i or did they, were they, were they born into the Baha'i
(10:06):
Faith? And what is the Baha'i Faith
like? What what distinguishes it
versus Christianity or any of the other religions?
So my parents became Bahais in the 60s, a lot of people and
they were, they were pseudo hippie, they were faux hippies.
They weren't like LSD tripping hippies, but they were bohemian
(10:29):
hippies. In Seattle, where you're you're,
you're in Seattle. Is that right?
Yeah, in Seattle, and a lot of people don't understand about
that time, is that there wasn't like one thing about like a
hippie. It was a counterculture.
Like they were political hippiesand Marxist revolutionaries and
they were druggie hippies. And there were people just
trying to get laid at concerts, and they were rock'n'roll
(10:50):
hippies. And they were spiritual seekers
and people on communes. And like, it was a, the
counterculture ran the gamut. And my parents, my dad was a
painter. They lived on a houseboat in
Seattle. And they were spiritual seekers
and became members of the Baha'iFaith.
And this was during a time of great spiritual curiosity
(11:11):
throughout the world that frankly, I really miss.
Cat Stevens became a Muslim. The guy from Apple lived on a
Buddhist ashram. Yeah.
Steve Jobs. Steve.
Jobs. I was like blanking on his name.
That's crazy. But he lived on an ashram.
Like, you know, Shirley MacLainewas like channeling ancient
(11:32):
aliens and past lives and. Shirley Maclaine's guru
literally lives about 3 ranches down from us here at our ranch
in Santa Fe. So, Chris Griscom, but keep
going. Any sentence that starts with
Shirley Maclaine's guru is is one of my favorite sentences of
all time. So people were exploring is what
(11:56):
I'm saying they were and even Christianity, even there were
there were new ways of experiencing, you know, the
Bible, hence, you know, Jesus Christ Superstar in God's spell,
you know, and out of that milieu, my parents became Bahais
and the Baha'i faith became verywidespread in the in the West
during that time. It originated in 19th century
(12:18):
Persia. The Prophet, founder of the
Baha'i Faith, who went by the title of Baha'u'llah, which
means the glory of God, proclaimed himself to be the
latest divine teacher in a long line of divine teachers.
So Baha'is believe that there isone God and that essentially all
(12:39):
of the great spiritual religiousleaders from going way, way back
to Abraham and Krishna and Mosesand the Buddha and Jesus and
Muhammad, that they're all revealing chapters of one book.
There is only one religion. This is the religion of God,
(12:59):
Baahaa. Allah says eternal in the past,
eternal in the future. And chapters are being revealed
to humanity as we have the spiritual maturity to receive
them. And it's all about, you know,
faith works on 2 levels, right? It works in your heart and it's
to give you meaning, hope, peace, you know, serenity,
(13:25):
increase compassion and kindnessin our in our behavior.
But religion, slash faith and spiritual teaching also has an
effect on on humanity in its totality to help move humanity
forward in an ever greater spiritual maturation.
(13:45):
So Bahawa's teaching center a lot about on how humanity needs
to find unity in this day and age.
And we're seeing that now more than ever, that need for unity.
And you've talked about spiritual revolution and, and do
you think there was a spiritual revolution in the 60s?
Because you and you have you have some nostalgia for that
(14:06):
period. What would a spiritual
revolution look like today? That was a kind of spiritual
revolution that happened in the 60s and early 70s.
I think it got muddied with a lot of like sex and drugs and
rock'n'roll, frankly. And what started as a very pure
spiritual revolution of, you know, civil rights and war,
protest and seeking social justice and seeking greater
(14:28):
meaning and kind of abandoning the constraints of a church that
was too restraining and and hypocritical, kind of became
just hedonistic. So, and humans do that.
We've done that from time immemorial, you know?
And what would a spiritual revolution look like?
(14:50):
It's getting back to these eternal truths that have been
with humanity from the beginning, that we are not
separate from nature. We are connected to nature, that
we are all one. We are connected to each other.
That the divine courses through US, courses through nature,
courses through our hearts, binds us all.
(15:13):
That there's more to the world than just the material.
And that compassion is key. You know, there's more
components, prayer and meditation.
There's, you know, virtues and morality, but these tools can
help us kind of create a society, a richer, deeper, more
(15:34):
meaningful society, like literally to socialize us with
these spiritual tools to make a more just kind and loving world.
And I'll go back to the 60s again, like, and you know, I
was, I was born in 66, so I was only a little kid like, but in
(15:55):
the 70s, I remember us talking about World Peace.
And now if you talk about World Peace, Oh my God, you're laughed
at, scorned, reviled eye roll. Humans will never have peace.
We're too aggressive. And you know, I do believe that
not peace is not chip is not just an end to war.
(16:16):
Peace is a transformation on howwe interact with ourselves and
Mother Earth and, and with each other.
It's loving, compassionate service one to another in
building community. And I think we can get there.
I think we will get there and maybe a painful process of birth
(16:36):
to get there. But I, I don't think you need to
be a Baha'i to be a part of a spiritual revolution.
I think we include Christians and agnostics and, and the
Hindus and spiritual but not religious folk all working
together. But it's raising up this kind of
consciousness. I'm a thoughtful list.
That's my religion. I'm I'm I'm a thoughtful ISM is
(16:59):
my religion. I really believe in the idea of
thinking is a good thing as opposed to just belief alone.
I think you have to think these two, but most importantly, I
think just being thoughtful to other people.
So my religion has become thoughtful ISM.
I will just say the following you in your 20s, I think you
(17:19):
went through maybe a dark night of the soul or a period of time
where you got reacquainted maybewith what was important in your
life. Can you tell us a little bit
about your early adulthood and how your Baha'i faith became
reignited And and then how can you be both Dwight and you know
(17:43):
this behind believer I Obviouslyyou can.
I talk about this in the in the in the preceding book, Soul
Boom, which is like the the fundamental question, why the
hell is the guy who played Dwight talking to us about
spirituality 'cause it is a strange disconnect.
(18:05):
And it's funny. I did a podcast recently in the
I was talking to the woman in her about her raising a family
and I was like, well, do you pray with your children?
And she was like, why I did not see this on my dance card that
Dwight Schrute would be asking me to pray with my kids.
So I, I grew up a high, which was a wonderful foundation of
(18:26):
kind of peace, love, unity, cohesion, mission, life,
purpose, awe, wonder, service and left it in my 20s, you know,
and I wanted to be an actor in New York City.
I wanted to be a bohemian. And I didn't want morality in my
life. I didn't want to be thinking
(18:47):
about like not having sex, drugsand rock'n'roll in my life.
And, and that was great until itwasn't.
And I had a lot of mental healthissues in my 20s, a lot of
anxiety, depression, disconnection, addiction.
And because it was the 90s, there weren't, there wasn't
(19:09):
therapy, you know, I didn't knowanyone who went to therapy.
That's that's for like rich people on the Upper East Side,
you know, And the only thing I knew to do to get out of kind of
this kind of misery that I was in was to read spiritual texts.
And you know, Julia Cameron, whowrote The Artist's Way, which is
(19:34):
one of the most important books,I think, ever written, she had a
quote somewhere that said, I come to spirituality not out of
virtue, but out of necessity. And for me, my spiritual path
was kind of grounded on the necessity that I needed a
handhold. I needed something to ground my
(19:56):
life in, in meaning and stuff todo like meditation, like prayer,
like reading holy texts, like deep contemplation and thinking
about kind of the, the totality of my life in terms of, of
meaning. So it's not like, oh, I got, I
found God and then my life got better.
It just it's been a long slow process from my mid 20s to now
(20:22):
in my late 50s to. Explore this stuff and it's it,
it was necessary for me and thenit's also just been really, it's
just been really interesting as well.
I love to study other faith traditions and I read Buddhism
pretty much every day and, you know, go to meditation retreats
(20:46):
and, and I love studying the world faith.
I love reading the Bible and this is just kind of part of my
journey. And along the way I did a lot of
acting and I stumbled into playing this character, Dwight
Shrewd, and and that was pretty awesome.
How? How did you stumble into that
particular role at which, in many ways, was the role that
(21:08):
made you a household word? I went to theater school and I
spent 10 years doing theater, and in theater you just play
different characters. It's like, oh, and now I'm doing
a farce. Oh, now I'm doing a Eugene
O'Neill family tragedy. Oh, now I'm doing Shakespeare in
the Park. Now I'm doing an improv show,
you know, and I spent 10 years just playing characters.
That's what you trained to do inthe theater.
(21:28):
It wasn't like, oh, I'm a sitcomactor or I'm a stand up comic or
I'm a, you know, a dramatic actor or something like that.
And then I went out to LA and I started playing different kinds
of roles. And of course, I always had a
little more success in comedy 'cause I have a fat weird face
and, you know, a weird mind and,and I could improvise pretty
(21:54):
well. I was pretty quick on my feet.
So, you know, doors opened in comedy.
But I was on a show called 6 Feet Under before I did The
Office. That was, had some quirky comedy
in it, but it was not a comedy by any means.
And and then I, because of the success of that show, I got to
(22:15):
be on The Office. I auditioned and the showrunner,
Greg Daniels had seen me in 6 Feet Under and liked me on that
show. And I, you know, I have a bunch
of kind of crazy, white trash, weirdo relatives from Washington
State and Wisconsin and in Minnesota.
(22:37):
And I kind of, I knew the world of the shoots pretty damn well.
And I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and my friends drove
muscle cars and it's just was inmy DNA.
What was it like? And so, so you took on that role
at what age, how long ago was this when you started the
Office? That's what's crazy is I started
(22:59):
playing Dwight at like 39. 20 years ago.
Fame came to me in my 40s quite late, which is a little weird,
and I'm grateful. I don't know that I could have
handled it in my 20s. I think it would have made my
head explode. How was that in your 40s?
And, and again, 40s are sort of like the, the early part of
(23:20):
midlife. What, what, what were, what were
your 40s like? Because we call this show the
midlife chrysalis, partly because we believe that midlife
doesn't have to be a crisis. It can actually be this
transformative time where we liquefy part of who we are, in
the spirit of saying, my God, the second-half of my adult life
(23:42):
might be better than the first. So what were your 40s like all
of a sudden? Becoming famous while also being
a tribute. You know, it's hard as an actor
when people see you only as thatcharacter.
And if you're out having dinner in LA and people come up to you
and ask for an autograph and a photo, you know, you feel like
(24:04):
you have to play the character. What what's, what's that?
What is that life like? I'd love to hear it.
Those are two different but connected questions.
I mean before I would did 6 feetunder right before the office.
We were so broke I was paying myrent on my credit card.
That's me at like 37 and I student loans still not paid off
(24:32):
and just trying to make it as anactor in Lai was getting some
film and TV work, which is a little more lucrative.
And I kind of thought, oh, keep rolling the dice.
Maybe it's going to hit one of these days.
But I kind of feel like all of the work that I did as an actor
in the theater in the previous decade and decade and a half
(24:53):
prepared me to play Dwight. You know, I could create
characters. I had done a bunch of clowning.
I kind of had a confidence in mylate 30s, early 40s that I
didn't have previous. So it's like my whole life
prepared me for that. And but not only did I get to
(25:16):
play Dwight, like then the doorsopen for for movies and
appearances and talk shows and commercial campaigns and, and
then all of a sudden we had a lot of money.
And as you know, there are, if you look in the list of like the
biggest stressors in life there,you know, death in the family,
(25:41):
divorce, moving, but coming intomoney is top five.
And we had a we moved, had a baby and came into a lot of
money at the same time. And this was all around 2004
five six. And it was incredibly
(26:01):
challenging time. And from a spiritual
perspective, you know, it was incredible test of the ego too,
and certainly a test of our marriage.
And 'cause I've been married 3030 years now to my wonderful
wife, Holiday Reinhorn, shout out, who's a, a fiction writer,
(26:24):
a brilliant fiction writer. And it was a crazy time.
But then I was also starring in movies, you know, and getting to
travel the world and, and, and so here's this kind of broke
theater actor, you know, who just a few years previous was
doing Eugene O'Neill for $700.00a week, making millions of
(26:45):
dollars. And that was its own test.
In a way, it was its own test. And then, yeah, post the Office,
the last 10-11 years, let's say last 15 years, it's a, it's a
real challenge to just be known as one character.
You know, I'll go down the street and people will be like,
hey, Dwight, as if, like, as if I am Dwight Schrute, like, like
(27:08):
do not understand. That's a character that I play.
It's, it's the strangest thing to me that someone would ever
like see a see a, you know, see a character.
And Julia Louis Dreyfus is walking on the street and you're
like, hey, Elaine, you know, like it's.
But I'm grateful for it. And it's a challenge.
(27:30):
You know, I'm grateful for all the doors that it's opened.
I get to, you know, let's be real, Chip.
I don't know if folks would havewanted to, if a publishing
company would have want to publish a book on spirituality
unless it was written by a celebrity who could promote it.
And people would be kind of interested because a celebrity
(27:52):
wrote it. It's hard to get books on
spirituality published even by top spiritual thought leaders.
So it's opened so many doors to travel to other work.
But it's, I wish that folks would see me a little bit more
as the totality of my work as anactor, from from theater to all
(28:14):
the film and television that I've done before The Office,
after The Office. But at the end of the day, it'll
probably on my tombstone. It'll be like the guy who played
Dwight, you know? And that's OK too.
If you're enjoying the conversations we've been having
on the midlife chrysalis, I havea valuable offer for you to
consider. My book, Learning to Love
Midlife, 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, is a
(28:36):
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opportunity to flourish. Claim your copy today at
meawisdom.com/midlife Book. So did did it deepen your faith
(29:04):
as a result? I mean, you could, you could
make an argument that maybe the Hollywood life, which can be
very superficial and very egocentric might actually, you
might actually need the balance of this investment in Seoul and
the and your faith and your devotion in order to have
(29:26):
harmony. Is that accurate?
It is absolutely accurate. There are many corrupt
industries. I worked for a short time in New
York City in the insurance brokerage industry and boy, that
was a a crazy corrupt world. But Hollywood trades on ego, and
(29:49):
ego is very dangerous for all ofus.
In fact, in the Baha'i Faith, the leader of the Baha'i Faith
was asked if the Baha'is believed in Satan, and he said
yes. And that person was really
surprised, like, oh, you do you believe in Satan?
He said, yes, Satan is the insistent self and I love that
(30:11):
idea. And that's, that's the battle of
ego. That's in every faith tradition,
right? That's a, that's a key component
of Hindu and, and, and Buddhism and Hollywood feeds on ego.
It's like who likes me? Who doesn't picture what it's
like Chip for an insecure, offbeat, you know, actor who
(30:33):
hasn't had a whole lot of success but has barely been
getting his bills paid. And then you play Dwight for a
year or two and you're walking down the street and people come
up to you all the time and they're like, I love you.
I love you. It's like, they don't love me.
They don't know me. They respond positively to a
(30:54):
character that I play on ATV show.
But you get you. It's so easy to get it confused,
like, oh, you, it's like the Sally Fields.
You love me, you really love me.But that's the whole business
works on that. Like how much are you loved and
how much is that worth you owe This movie star Leonardo
DiCaprio is both loved and talented, and he's worth X at
(31:17):
the box office. So I'm I'm going to stick a
dollar amount on how much you'reloved.
And if you're fading, if your star is fading, you're not worth
any dollars, but you're moderately loved.
Like there's this weird like commerce, love, ego, narcissism
dance in Hollywood that is really toxic.
(31:38):
One of my metaphors to think about the ego and the soul and
I, I described this at MEA Modern Elder Academy our, our
two campuses in Baja in Santa Feis the idea that when you're
young, the, it's like ballroom dancing and the egos leading the
(31:59):
dance. So in 6th grade I went to
ballroom dancing and as the boy,I learned how to, to lead the
girl and she was in heels and going backwards and the egos
leading the dance. But around midlife the dance
shifts and the soul is leading the dance.
If you really are living a fullyactualized life, you know,
(32:24):
Richard Rohr, who's AMEA facultymember, famous Christian Mystic,
Catholic priest, says that the primary operating operating
system for the first half of thelife is, is our ego.
And then for the second-half it's our soul.
But nobody gave us any operatinginstructions of how to drive the
soul. So in the second-half of our
life, the soul is leading the dance and the ego is having to
(32:47):
learn how to go backwards and heels.
And to my mind, the humor in that, the humor in, in sort of
seeing that the ego has to have humility.
It has to actually be able to laugh at oneself.
It has to be able to do something that's awkward and a
beginner. And that is, it's not that the
ego goes away. It's not like we're trying to
(33:07):
actually say it's like more. No, the ego still is there.
We are an individuated person. That's that's what the ego does
for us. But it is time for us to let the
soul lead the dance and surrender, which is not easy to
actually seeing where this soul's going to take us.
You know, I, as someone who likes to be in control, I know
(33:28):
that that's a tough one. And does that resonate with you
at all? I think that's really
staggeringly brilliant. I love that.
I'm really deeply pondering thatidea and it's, it's beautiful
for me. Every once in a while, the ego
wants to take the dance back, you know, and, and it's kind of
(33:50):
like, fuck you, I've got this. And like, and it just doesn't
work as well when you're older. It might work when you're when
you're 27 or 34, but it doesn't at 59.
So that it really resonates. And I'm going to and I'm going
to steal that, frankly. So let's talk about devotion.
(34:10):
I mean, your faith is something that we, I mean, over the course
of our life, we have devotion toall kinds of things.
The devotion could be to use sports betting.
The devotion could be to alcohol.
The devotion could be to watching Netflix and being, you
know, very steeped in, in the entertainment industry as a, as
(34:31):
a, as a viewer. But I also think one of the
things that is interesting as weget older is this idea of being
devoted to something beyond yourself.
I've been really fortunate in mylife to go out and go to all
kinds of devotional ceremonies. The Mevlana Whirling Dervish
festival devoted to Rumi, who isthe 1st whirling dervish in
(34:54):
Konya, Turkey and Islamic festival, the Maha Kumamela, the
100 million people at the GangesRiver for the Hindus and all
kinds of other devotional festivals.
Is there a devotional festival for Bahais and have you ever
what? How do you how does your
devotion to your faith express itself in a collective way as
(35:17):
opposed to just an individual way in that sort of collective
effervescence? I love what you're saying.
You know, I would go very, very similar to what you how you
started. I would say we all have our
forms of devotion, but I would say that we all worship
(35:39):
something humans are wired to worship and you may and they're
made by an atheist listening right now.
It's like, well, I don't. It's like, well, but if you
don't worship a higher power, then you worship yourself or
your own thought process. Or perhaps you just worship your
family, or worship your culture,or worship your political party.
(36:02):
Worship the mind. I mean a lot.
A lot of atheists and agnostics are are pretty intellectual.
And there's nothing wrong with science, it's obviously a a
beautiful expression of the of reality and.
But yeah, devotion is interesting 'cause then I don't
know what the root word is, But as you were saying that, I was
(36:22):
thinking about like devout, likepeople who are devout have
devotions or a devoted husband. You're devoted to something.
For me, to quote MC Hammer, you got to pray just to make it
today. I, I think that one of the
disconnects we have in the modern world is between prayer
(36:47):
and meditation. So you have a lot of people in
blue states that meditate and don't pray because for them
prayer is like daddy God, patriarchal God, old white man
with a beard. What I had to do when I was a
kid. They have religious trauma.
Like I'm not going to say, oh, father who art in heaven, like
that's, that's bullshit. I don't want anything to do with
(37:09):
that. But I find great solace in
meditation, which can be have its own kind of devotional
aspect to it. And then you have a lot of
Americans who pray and don't meditate.
You know, they have no problem saying, oh Father or oh Jesus
or, or or whatever, but they don't kind of take the time for
(37:33):
deep contemplation. So in the Baha'i faith, you
know, we say a prayer every day,kind of like the Muslims pray
five times a day. We pray once a day, and it's a
very short, simple prayer, and it goes.
I bear witness, O my God, that Thou has created me to know Thee
and to worship Thee. I testify at this moment to my
(37:53):
powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth,
that there is none other God butThee, the help and peril, the
self subsisting. So Baha'is say that prayer every
day facing where the Baha'i HolyLand is in Israel, Palestine,
and Haifa, Israel, where the Prophet founder is buried.
(38:15):
And one of the reasons I love this prayer is it's got the
meaning of life baked into it. We have been created to know and
worship God. Now before you gasp and clutch
your pearls, listeners, and go, you know, what does that mean?
That doesn't mean that we get down on our knees and we
genuflect to to to sky daddy God, bearded man in the sky.
(38:39):
What is it to know and worship God.
To know and worship God is to know science because science is
an expression of how physical reality works.
To worship God is to be of service to others is to live in
in kindness and humility and andin making the world a better
place and improving ourselves. To know God is to to know
(39:00):
thyself. That's in the Quran.
To know God is to know thyself because we are all divine
beings. We're filled with the stuff of
the divine. You know, the spiritual
qualities. So one, this is a way that this
devotion anchors me is in sayingthat prayer, I'm reminded of why
(39:23):
I'm I'm here. I get lost, my rudder gets
confused. Oh, I'm here to know and worship
God. What does that mean?
How do I move that forward? And by the way, knowing and
worship God, worshiping God may mean being on ATV sitcom and it
may mean being an accountant andproviding for your family and
providing great accounting services, you know, and it it
(39:45):
might mean staying at home and raising children.
Like this is not some grandiose thing.
This is like it. It's finding your your true,
your truest and most honest and humble purpose.
I've two last questions. One, just go, let's go back to
the workbook. The Soul Boom Workbook came out
(40:08):
this week. It's available, you know,
wherever you buy books. If there was a basic summary for
why this book is valuable right now for people, how would you
summarize it? Well, I referenced The Artist's
Way, which is a workbook for finding your path as an artist
and tapping into the the artist within all of us.
(40:32):
You know, accountants can use that book and have a richer,
more meaningful life and the sold one workbook.
Oh, look, I happen to have a copyright here.
Spiritual tools for modern living.
This I'm going to sound arroganthere.
Forgive me. I'm sorry, everyone, but I think
there there's not a more important book right now for the
way the world is in because thisbook, and it's not like my
(40:56):
writing or anything like that, but what the book does is it
takes you through a spiritual journey.
Like what is sacred? What is the soul?
How can we use spiritual tools for mental health and anxiety?
How can we deeply connect with nature?
How can we build community? How do we deal with tests and
(41:19):
difficulties? How do we frame death and dying
from a spiritual perspective? And there's it's, you know,
writing exercises, drawing inspirational quotes, activities
to just help one along. It would be great to do with the
family. It'd be great to do with a book
club, be great to do in a churchbasement.
(41:39):
It'd be great to do at an MEA workshop someday, my friend.
I mean, honestly, this workbook is made for workshop.
It is so I, you know, I got a early copy and I was able to
read it and I was struck by how similar what you're doing today
is to what I'm doing. And I, I love this.
(42:00):
And, and the fact that part of what we're really trying to do
is one of the things I say I do,I, I say I Make Love for a
living. My, my job is to really help
people to understand how to feellove, the universality of love
in the context of a time where it's easy to not feel loved.
(42:23):
And this book is so it's, it's a, it's, it's so simple and so
profound at the same time. So thank you.
I mean, it's a, it's a spectacular book.
And, and did your publisher say,you know, Soul Boom was a great
book? You got a great podcast name
Soul Boom, It's time for a workbook.
Or was this your idea or your Coauthor's idea?
One thing that happens when you write a book is there's all of
(42:47):
these like cheap imitation workbooks that pop up on Amazon.
So true. What the hell is that?
I know it's true. That's where I got the idea is
from these jackasses who are trying to like ride on my
coattails because I worked my butt off on the Soul Boom
original book. And then immediately, like
within a month, there were like 5 Soul Boom workbooks and, and
(43:12):
people were writing and they're like, hey, I ordered this
workbook, but it wasn't very good.
It just had a bunch of Xeroxed pages in it.
And I was like, but I was like, but that is a great idea.
This is, this is a book that could use a companion book.
And there was a cry from people for like, OK, these are great
ideas in your book, but how do we put them into practice?
How do I put it into practice inmy life?
(43:35):
And I was hearing that from bornagain Christians and from
agnostics. And so that's where it came out
of it. And then, you know, I, you know,
I have to write another book next year, Chip.
And you, I need your help. Will you help me on my next
book? Yeah, I will.
What what's what's it going to be about?
Can I interview you for it? Yes, please interview me for
(43:58):
your podcast. I'll come on your podcast,
you're on my. Podcast, I would love to have
you on the podcast and I would love to.
It's my next book is on the meaning of Life.
Just to just a little. Just yeah, just a little.
But you know, our mutual friend Arthur Brooks, and I'm going to
be hopefully I can interview Father Richard Rohr and some
(44:19):
other folks. It's going to be interviews and
activities and and some essays and a little comedy along the
way. But so.
Our mutual friend, our mutual friend Rich Roll, who had his
his birthday yesterday or today,I think 59th birthday.
You guys are the same age. I just Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(44:39):
Interesting. Yeah, he's such a such a great
guy. OK, so last question is let's
talk about wisdom for a moment. You've learned, you know, often
the school of Hard Knocks is what leads to our wisdom and our
painful life lessons are the rawmaterial for our future wisdom.
Let's say a young person came toyou, doesn't have to be an
(44:59):
actor, could be anybody. And they came to you and said,
like, hey, rain, I would love tohave some coffee or tea with you
next week. And I'd love to have you come to
to our meeting and come with a bumper sticker, not a physical
one, but just a mental 1A bumpersticker that defines the a piece
of wisdom you've learned along the way.
(45:20):
And what's the origin story behind that bumper sticker?
How did you learn that lesson? And So what would you say might
be just, you know, I know it's hard to have just one, but back
in the 60s and 70s, there were alot of bumper stickers, remember
a lot of bumper stickers. So what would be the Rainn
Wilson bumper sticker that comesfrom the School of Hard Knocks?
(45:44):
This may sound a little simplistic, but I got to go with
the Arthur Brooks to go meet theDalai Lama last year and Rich
Roll was there was really a a beautiful meeting and and Doctor
Lisa Miller, do you know her? Yeah, I do, yeah.
(46:05):
I got to interview a a monk thathad lived his entire life in the
monastery and and studied Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.
And I was thinking about this book that I had to write, and I
was like, what's the meaning of life?
Like pretend this is a similar question you're asking.
I'm like, pretend I'm a guy. You've you've been sitting up in
a cave for 20 years and I'm clamoring up the mountain, you
(46:28):
know, like one of those New Yorker cartoons.
And I'm just at your feet. And I'm like, oh, master, what
is the meaning of life? Like, what would you say is the
meaning of life? And he thought for a minute and
he was like, it's very simple. It's service.
It's service to others because when you give service to others,
that actually makes you happier.So it actually helps you and it
(46:51):
helps them. And if everyone is living in a
service mindset, you're keeping your ego, the insistent self, or
Satan in check. And if everyone was living in a
service oriented mindset, the world would transform.
(47:13):
If everyone was thinking, how can I take what I have and use
it to help others and help make the world a better place?
This is this would be a viral transformation of the planet.
So that's what I would say to a young actor student, someone
just like, how can you take whatyou do well, what you love, what
(47:34):
ignites your heart and turn it into service in in some way,
shape or form. Even if you're, you know, an
insurance agent and you want to just provide the best insurance
for for people possible. But to to truly believe that and
live in in, in that kind of on that kind of path.
(47:57):
What a beautiful answer. And I'm going to quote Robin
Dranath Tagore, who said I sleptand dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
That was a quote I would use within my boutique hotel company
(48:19):
that I ran for 24 years because the name of the company was
called Joao Aviv. And it was about joy.
And really, if we can get to theplace where we see service is
joy, that's miraculous and magical.
You have been miraculous and magical.
I look forward to hanging out with you, whether it's on your
podcast or doing a workshop withyou or like listen, helping you
(48:41):
with your book. Thank you for being who you are,
Rain. I mean, it really is you.
You help us to see that we as humans are a lot more complex
and we have many more layers to ourselves.
Then then you know, then what isobvious.
You know you can't judge a book by its cover.
Indeed, I love what you're doing, the service you're
(49:03):
providing, and I'm a modern elder.
I need to get my ass over to that Academy and I would love to
have you on the soul boom podcast really.
And I'll, I'll connect you with our producers and get that and
make that happen and, and hopefully we can, we can hang
out sometime in person and high 5.
We'll do that. We'll do that.
Thank you so much. Well, that was a nourishing
(49:26):
conversation. I don't know about you.
I I really appreciated the depthof our friend Rainn Wilson.
He's so different than the Dwight character he's played on
The Office. And that's probably my first
take away from this session is that, you know, we're a lot more
(49:48):
layered than we necessarily comeacross.
And Rain is an exceptional example of that.
Number 2 is, I think the the discussion about what it was
like to be in his 40s and all ofa sudden be an overnight
success, you know, having toiledaway to prepare for it.
And all of a sudden it happened for him.
(50:08):
And the fact that people would, you know, see him on the street
and call him Dwight and, and howhe could have sort of spun out
of control. I mean, there are, you know,
people like Whitney Houston and Anthony Anthony Bourdain and a
variety of other well known actors and celebrities who at
some point end up taking their own lives or doing a lot of
(50:29):
drugs because in some ways they are trying to divorce themselves
from the identity the world sees.
There's a beautiful poem by Rudyard Rudyard Kipling called
if. And I'm going to just quote a a
portion of it here because it really reminded me of what I was
hearing from Rain on our interview.
(50:51):
This is just a portion of if. If you can dream and not make
your dreams your master. If you can think and not make
thoughts your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two imposters just the same.
So this idea that you know you could have triumph, you could
(51:13):
have disaster, neither one should define you.
And in in I think Rain's case, what it it spoke to was this
idea that the more fame he he was finding in his life, the
more he needed to devote himselfto his soulful spiritual
journey, which ultimately has led to soul boom, the book, the
(51:35):
podcast, and now the workbook. I think my final take away is
just the quoting. He seems to be a big fan of
Julia Cameron, who is, you know,based here in Santa Fe, NM and
the Artist's way. And he talked about the
importance of spirituality not just being a virtue, but it
being a necessity. And for him in his 20s, when he
(51:57):
was sort of spinning out of control, having a challenging
time, the fact that that spirituality, his, his Baha'i
Faith from his childhood came back into his life and started
to become a foundational part ofhis 30s.
Such that when he did get that fame that came 20 years ago at
(52:17):
around 39 years old, he was prepared for it because he had
something to undergird it with, like a foundation.
His spirituality was his foundation.
And the necessity of, you know, maybe a little bit of intuition
or his soul seeing this is whereyou're going to be going.
We be we need to re equate you with some some foundational
(52:37):
spiritual practice so that you can go through this time and
have that kind of balance might have been an essential part of
why he's at a stage in his life where he's, you know, profoundly
happy and and feels really good about his life and is devoting
his life to the meaning of life,which is his next book, which
I'm excited to collaborate with him on.
(52:59):
I hope this was, you know, a nutritious and fun swim in the
deep end of the pool. We'll look forward to seeing you
on the next episode. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. The show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
(53:20):
on your favorite platform.
What's the meaning of life? It's service.
It's service to others. Because when you give service to
others, that actually makes you happier.
So it actually helps you and it helps them.
And if everyone is living in a service mindset, you are keeping
your ego, the insistent self or Satan in check.
(00:21):
And if everyone was living in a service oriented mindset, the
world would transform. So that's what I would say to a
young tractor student, someone just like how can you take what
you do well, what you love, whatignites your heart and turn it
into service? Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
(00:42):
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, if you're a regular listener or watcher of the
Midlife Christmas, you know thatwe have disrupted our pattern.
(01:04):
Our pattern had been every week on Wednesday, we had an
interview that we released and now we're doing those on Monday
and Friday. And so this is our first Friday
episode. And on Wednesdays soon, we'll be
doing a Wisdom Wednesday episode, all dedicated to me.
And Derek Gale are CEO of MEA, talking about a particular topic
(01:28):
around wisdom with me doing my best to spout wisdom.
But who knows? You know, I'll do my best to
make an interesting Wednesday for you.
But Monday. So you'll look for those
interviews on Monday and Friday.And, and Rainn Wilson is the
person who's our Friday interview.
And I, I wish I could invite himto my birthday party because
(01:49):
today's my birthday. It's my 65th birthday.
I'm having a party at the Phoenix Hotel, my very first
hotel I started 39 years ago. It's on a long term land lease.
It's the end of the lease. And so it's a retirement party,
not for me, but for my hotel. But rain is somebody that I love
to converse with my, you know, there aren't that many people.
(02:09):
Famous stars Dwight on the you know, from the office who have
gone from being the the fool to the philosopher.
His podcast and book Soul Boom and his new book, which comes
out next week, Soul Boom Workbook are all about how we
explore soul in our life, a topic that we love at MEA.
(02:31):
So I think you're going to enjoythis episode.
Wish me happy birthday. And if you're in the Bay Area,
maybe even come to the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin at the
gateway to the Tenderloin for a party there starting at 7:00
tonight. Thanks so much.
See ya on the other side of thisepisode when I do the outro and
tell you what I learned from rain, Rain Wilson.
(02:56):
Welcome to the midlife chrysalis.
Thanks Chip, I love the title ofyour podcast and empire, it's
really cool. Yeah, you know it's in it.
It's an honor to have you here. I even wore my favorite sweater,
my soul sweater, just. For you, look at that.
Yeah, for those of you on YouTube, you can see that I'm
wearing a sweater that says soulon it.
(03:18):
So let's talk about soul. Let's go.
Right, Let's go to the deep end of the pool to start with, you
know, in reading your new book, which has just launched this
week, I I noticed that you talked about Paisley starships
when you were talking about soul.
So how do you define soul and and what is a soul and and how
did Dwight from the Office become such a philosopher?
(03:40):
That's my favorite introductory question I've ever had on a
podcast. Thank you.
So I have this podcast called Soul Boom, based on the book
Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
And every episode I asked the guests, what is soul?
What is your definition of soul?And it's I have such a specific
(04:00):
idea of what soul is, but you'd be surprised at the range,
depth, complexity and nuance of people defining the word soul.
It is really jaw-dropping to some people.
It's like artistic expression, almost like soul music.
You know, other people. It's like it's a feeling other
(04:24):
people. It's like a connection of you
get to nature or the world or something that you love.
For me, the soul is the human part of us, the eternally human
part of us, the the kind of miracle of consciousness that
(04:45):
continues after our, you know, physical stint on this world
draws to an end. And the reason that there's a
Paisley Starship included in that question is I remember as a
kid, I was, I grew up a member of the Baha'i Faith.
And, you know, asking my parents, like, what is a soul?
(05:07):
What does this mean? Like this idea, like the soul
continues after the, after the death of the body.
And they're like, well, you can't really describe it and
blah, blah. And we had these towels from the
70s and of course, everything inthe, in the early 70s had
Paisley's on it and it had thesePaisley's.
And I kind of looked at the Paisley's like that.
I bet that's what a soul looks like.
(05:28):
And I for some reason that really stuck in my head every
time I see a Paisley to me it equates to a soul.
I'm not exactly sure why there'ssomething psychedelic.
You can kind of picture it having to do with consciousness
or attached to the body or, or or or something like that.
So that's that's my so do you have an idea chip a soul?
(05:50):
When you what would? What would your definition be?
Well, I love you, you know, in your book, so that the book is
called this is the new book, which is Soul Book, Soul Boom
Workshop or Soul Boom Workbook, spiritual tools for modern
living. So it's really taking your soul
boom book and concept and, and making it more, even more
practically applicable. You have a quote from George
(06:12):
MacDonald, which is also attributed to CS Lewis, which is
something to the effect of you don't have a soul, you are a
soul, you have a body. So let's like unpack that for a
moment. You are a soul, you have a body.
So my, my definition of soul speaks to this idea that we are
(06:33):
a humble steward for and really the physical delivery vehicle
for the soul through this lifetime.
Our, our, our, our job is to help steward the soul that has
incarnated in, in our body so that it can make it to its next
body. We're just like a taxi vehicle.
(06:55):
We're a taxi, We're, we're an Uber.
I, you know, my, my body is an Uber and my, my job is to really
recognize that in my soul I havethe history of many other beings
that have lived over the course of a long period of time, over
(07:16):
maybe hundreds, thousands of years.
So the soul is the thing that actually connects me to all of
my lineage. And I don't mean blood lineage
like family necessarily, I just mean the lineage almost on a
more deeper spiritual level. And so soul for me is is the
(07:37):
idea of something that is actually human, but beyond
human. It is the thing that actually
connects us to all of the oneness of mankind, going back
to the history of mankind and into the future.
So in some ways we don't have a soul.
(07:58):
We're being had by a soul. The the soul has us in this
lifetime and our job is to steward that soul and learn from
the soul because that there's a lot of soul wisdom in there.
So that's that's my long winded answer.
What do you think? Is that sort of stupid?
(08:18):
That's the most idiotic definition I've ever heard in my
entire life. Get Me Out of this podcast.
No, it was that's, that's great.I mean, I, that's beautiful.
I was riveted by everything you were saying.
It, it just sparked so many thoughts.
I mean, the first thing that it brought up for me was a, a, a
quote that I, that many people say and is one of my favorite
quotes of all time, which is from Father Teharte Chardin,
(08:41):
who's a Jesuit priest and philosopher and what not, that
we are not human beings having aspiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having ahuman experience.
And I love that idea. And that goes hand in hand with
what you're saying. And I was, there's been a lot of
work recently about like the difference between the brain and
(09:03):
the mind. And I would even go one further
and like, say, what's the difference between the brain,
the mind, consciousness, which is even kind of greater than the
mind and the soul, which is maybe even greater than
consciousness? Like how do you, where do you
(09:24):
differentiate? You know, those levels of
literally being, you know, as the being consciousness bliss.
So let's go, let's go back a fewyears.
You grew up in a Baha'i family, actually, by the way, I, I once
helped create a Baha'i wedding at my first hotel, the Phoenix
(09:45):
in San Francisco with Michael, Michael Franti, the musician and
his wife, who's Persian and fromthe Baha'i Faith.
For those who don't understand or don't have history with the
by the high Faith, you grew up in a family and with parents who
were Baha'i. Were they, did they become
Baha'i or did they, were they, were they born into the Baha'i
(10:06):
Faith? And what is the Baha'i Faith
like? What what distinguishes it
versus Christianity or any of the other religions?
So my parents became Bahais in the 60s, a lot of people and
they were, they were pseudo hippie, they were faux hippies.
They weren't like LSD tripping hippies, but they were bohemian
(10:29):
hippies. In Seattle, where you're you're,
you're in Seattle. Is that right?
Yeah, in Seattle, and a lot of people don't understand about
that time, is that there wasn't like one thing about like a
hippie. It was a counterculture.
Like they were political hippiesand Marxist revolutionaries and
they were druggie hippies. And there were people just
trying to get laid at concerts, and they were rock'n'roll
(10:50):
hippies. And they were spiritual seekers
and people on communes. And like, it was a, the
counterculture ran the gamut. And my parents, my dad was a
painter. They lived on a houseboat in
Seattle. And they were spiritual seekers
and became members of the Baha'iFaith.
And this was during a time of great spiritual curiosity
(11:11):
throughout the world that frankly, I really miss.
Cat Stevens became a Muslim. The guy from Apple lived on a
Buddhist ashram. Yeah.
Steve Jobs. Steve.
Jobs. I was like blanking on his name.
That's crazy. But he lived on an ashram.
Like, you know, Shirley MacLainewas like channeling ancient
(11:32):
aliens and past lives and. Shirley Maclaine's guru
literally lives about 3 ranches down from us here at our ranch
in Santa Fe. So, Chris Griscom, but keep
going. Any sentence that starts with
Shirley Maclaine's guru is is one of my favorite sentences of
all time. So people were exploring is what
(11:56):
I'm saying they were and even Christianity, even there were
there were new ways of experiencing, you know, the
Bible, hence, you know, Jesus Christ Superstar in God's spell,
you know, and out of that milieu, my parents became Bahais
and the Baha'i faith became verywidespread in the in the West
during that time. It originated in 19th century
(12:18):
Persia. The Prophet, founder of the
Baha'i Faith, who went by the title of Baha'u'llah, which
means the glory of God, proclaimed himself to be the
latest divine teacher in a long line of divine teachers.
So Baha'is believe that there isone God and that essentially all
(12:39):
of the great spiritual religiousleaders from going way, way back
to Abraham and Krishna and Mosesand the Buddha and Jesus and
Muhammad, that they're all revealing chapters of one book.
There is only one religion. This is the religion of God,
(12:59):
Baahaa. Allah says eternal in the past,
eternal in the future. And chapters are being revealed
to humanity as we have the spiritual maturity to receive
them. And it's all about, you know,
faith works on 2 levels, right? It works in your heart and it's
to give you meaning, hope, peace, you know, serenity,
(13:25):
increase compassion and kindnessin our in our behavior.
But religion, slash faith and spiritual teaching also has an
effect on on humanity in its totality to help move humanity
forward in an ever greater spiritual maturation.
(13:45):
So Bahawa's teaching center a lot about on how humanity needs
to find unity in this day and age.
And we're seeing that now more than ever, that need for unity.
And you've talked about spiritual revolution and, and do
you think there was a spiritual revolution in the 60s?
Because you and you have you have some nostalgia for that
(14:06):
period. What would a spiritual
revolution look like today? That was a kind of spiritual
revolution that happened in the 60s and early 70s.
I think it got muddied with a lot of like sex and drugs and
rock'n'roll, frankly. And what started as a very pure
spiritual revolution of, you know, civil rights and war,
protest and seeking social justice and seeking greater
(14:28):
meaning and kind of abandoning the constraints of a church that
was too restraining and and hypocritical, kind of became
just hedonistic. So, and humans do that.
We've done that from time immemorial, you know?
And what would a spiritual revolution look like?
(14:50):
It's getting back to these eternal truths that have been
with humanity from the beginning, that we are not
separate from nature. We are connected to nature, that
we are all one. We are connected to each other.
That the divine courses through US, courses through nature,
courses through our hearts, binds us all.
(15:13):
That there's more to the world than just the material.
And that compassion is key. You know, there's more
components, prayer and meditation.
There's, you know, virtues and morality, but these tools can
help us kind of create a society, a richer, deeper, more
(15:34):
meaningful society, like literally to socialize us with
these spiritual tools to make a more just kind and loving world.
And I'll go back to the 60s again, like, and you know, I
was, I was born in 66, so I was only a little kid like, but in
(15:55):
the 70s, I remember us talking about World Peace.
And now if you talk about World Peace, Oh my God, you're laughed
at, scorned, reviled eye roll. Humans will never have peace.
We're too aggressive. And you know, I do believe that
not peace is not chip is not just an end to war.
(16:16):
Peace is a transformation on howwe interact with ourselves and
Mother Earth and, and with each other.
It's loving, compassionate service one to another in
building community. And I think we can get there.
I think we will get there and maybe a painful process of birth
(16:36):
to get there. But I, I don't think you need to
be a Baha'i to be a part of a spiritual revolution.
I think we include Christians and agnostics and, and the
Hindus and spiritual but not religious folk all working
together. But it's raising up this kind of
consciousness. I'm a thoughtful list.
That's my religion. I'm I'm I'm a thoughtful ISM is
(16:59):
my religion. I really believe in the idea of
thinking is a good thing as opposed to just belief alone.
I think you have to think these two, but most importantly, I
think just being thoughtful to other people.
So my religion has become thoughtful ISM.
I will just say the following you in your 20s, I think you
(17:19):
went through maybe a dark night of the soul or a period of time
where you got reacquainted maybewith what was important in your
life. Can you tell us a little bit
about your early adulthood and how your Baha'i faith became
reignited And and then how can you be both Dwight and you know
(17:43):
this behind believer I Obviouslyyou can.
I talk about this in the in the in the preceding book, Soul
Boom, which is like the the fundamental question, why the
hell is the guy who played Dwight talking to us about
spirituality 'cause it is a strange disconnect.
(18:05):
And it's funny. I did a podcast recently in the
I was talking to the woman in her about her raising a family
and I was like, well, do you pray with your children?
And she was like, why I did not see this on my dance card that
Dwight Schrute would be asking me to pray with my kids.
So I, I grew up a high, which was a wonderful foundation of
(18:26):
kind of peace, love, unity, cohesion, mission, life,
purpose, awe, wonder, service and left it in my 20s, you know,
and I wanted to be an actor in New York City.
I wanted to be a bohemian. And I didn't want morality in my
life. I didn't want to be thinking
(18:47):
about like not having sex, drugsand rock'n'roll in my life.
And, and that was great until itwasn't.
And I had a lot of mental healthissues in my 20s, a lot of
anxiety, depression, disconnection, addiction.
And because it was the 90s, there weren't, there wasn't
(19:09):
therapy, you know, I didn't knowanyone who went to therapy.
That's that's for like rich people on the Upper East Side,
you know, And the only thing I knew to do to get out of kind of
this kind of misery that I was in was to read spiritual texts.
And you know, Julia Cameron, whowrote The Artist's Way, which is
(19:34):
one of the most important books,I think, ever written, she had a
quote somewhere that said, I come to spirituality not out of
virtue, but out of necessity. And for me, my spiritual path
was kind of grounded on the necessity that I needed a
handhold. I needed something to ground my
(19:56):
life in, in meaning and stuff todo like meditation, like prayer,
like reading holy texts, like deep contemplation and thinking
about kind of the, the totality of my life in terms of, of
meaning. So it's not like, oh, I got, I
found God and then my life got better.
It just it's been a long slow process from my mid 20s to now
(20:22):
in my late 50s to. Explore this stuff and it's it,
it was necessary for me and thenit's also just been really, it's
just been really interesting as well.
I love to study other faith traditions and I read Buddhism
pretty much every day and, you know, go to meditation retreats
(20:46):
and, and I love studying the world faith.
I love reading the Bible and this is just kind of part of my
journey. And along the way I did a lot of
acting and I stumbled into playing this character, Dwight
Shrewd, and and that was pretty awesome.
How? How did you stumble into that
particular role at which, in many ways, was the role that
(21:08):
made you a household word? I went to theater school and I
spent 10 years doing theater, and in theater you just play
different characters. It's like, oh, and now I'm doing
a farce. Oh, now I'm doing a Eugene
O'Neill family tragedy. Oh, now I'm doing Shakespeare in
the Park. Now I'm doing an improv show,
you know, and I spent 10 years just playing characters.
That's what you trained to do inthe theater.
(21:28):
It wasn't like, oh, I'm a sitcomactor or I'm a stand up comic or
I'm a, you know, a dramatic actor or something like that.
And then I went out to LA and I started playing different kinds
of roles. And of course, I always had a
little more success in comedy 'cause I have a fat weird face
and, you know, a weird mind and,and I could improvise pretty
(21:54):
well. I was pretty quick on my feet.
So, you know, doors opened in comedy.
But I was on a show called 6 Feet Under before I did The
Office. That was, had some quirky comedy
in it, but it was not a comedy by any means.
And and then I, because of the success of that show, I got to
(22:15):
be on The Office. I auditioned and the showrunner,
Greg Daniels had seen me in 6 Feet Under and liked me on that
show. And I, you know, I have a bunch
of kind of crazy, white trash, weirdo relatives from Washington
State and Wisconsin and in Minnesota.
(22:37):
And I kind of, I knew the world of the shoots pretty damn well.
And I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and my friends drove
muscle cars and it's just was inmy DNA.
What was it like? And so, so you took on that role
at what age, how long ago was this when you started the
Office? That's what's crazy is I started
(22:59):
playing Dwight at like 39. 20 years ago.
Fame came to me in my 40s quite late, which is a little weird,
and I'm grateful. I don't know that I could have
handled it in my 20s. I think it would have made my
head explode. How was that in your 40s?
And, and again, 40s are sort of like the, the early part of
(23:20):
midlife. What, what, what were, what were
your 40s like? Because we call this show the
midlife chrysalis, partly because we believe that midlife
doesn't have to be a crisis. It can actually be this
transformative time where we liquefy part of who we are, in
the spirit of saying, my God, the second-half of my adult life
(23:42):
might be better than the first. So what were your 40s like all
of a sudden? Becoming famous while also being
a tribute. You know, it's hard as an actor
when people see you only as thatcharacter.
And if you're out having dinner in LA and people come up to you
and ask for an autograph and a photo, you know, you feel like
(24:04):
you have to play the character. What what's, what's that?
What is that life like? I'd love to hear it.
Those are two different but connected questions.
I mean before I would did 6 feetunder right before the office.
We were so broke I was paying myrent on my credit card.
That's me at like 37 and I student loans still not paid off
(24:32):
and just trying to make it as anactor in Lai was getting some
film and TV work, which is a little more lucrative.
And I kind of thought, oh, keep rolling the dice.
Maybe it's going to hit one of these days.
But I kind of feel like all of the work that I did as an actor
in the theater in the previous decade and decade and a half
(24:53):
prepared me to play Dwight. You know, I could create
characters. I had done a bunch of clowning.
I kind of had a confidence in mylate 30s, early 40s that I
didn't have previous. So it's like my whole life
prepared me for that. And but not only did I get to
(25:16):
play Dwight, like then the doorsopen for for movies and
appearances and talk shows and commercial campaigns and, and
then all of a sudden we had a lot of money.
And as you know, there are, if you look in the list of like the
biggest stressors in life there,you know, death in the family,
(25:41):
divorce, moving, but coming intomoney is top five.
And we had a we moved, had a baby and came into a lot of
money at the same time. And this was all around 2004
five six. And it was incredibly
(26:01):
challenging time. And from a spiritual
perspective, you know, it was incredible test of the ego too,
and certainly a test of our marriage.
And 'cause I've been married 3030 years now to my wonderful
wife, Holiday Reinhorn, shout out, who's a, a fiction writer,
(26:24):
a brilliant fiction writer. And it was a crazy time.
But then I was also starring in movies, you know, and getting to
travel the world and, and, and so here's this kind of broke
theater actor, you know, who just a few years previous was
doing Eugene O'Neill for $700.00a week, making millions of
(26:45):
dollars. And that was its own test.
In a way, it was its own test. And then, yeah, post the Office,
the last 10-11 years, let's say last 15 years, it's a, it's a
real challenge to just be known as one character.
You know, I'll go down the street and people will be like,
hey, Dwight, as if, like, as if I am Dwight Schrute, like, like
(27:08):
do not understand. That's a character that I play.
It's, it's the strangest thing to me that someone would ever
like see a see a, you know, see a character.
And Julia Louis Dreyfus is walking on the street and you're
like, hey, Elaine, you know, like it's.
But I'm grateful for it. And it's a challenge.
(27:30):
You know, I'm grateful for all the doors that it's opened.
I get to, you know, let's be real, Chip.
I don't know if folks would havewanted to, if a publishing
company would have want to publish a book on spirituality
unless it was written by a celebrity who could promote it.
And people would be kind of interested because a celebrity
(27:52):
wrote it. It's hard to get books on
spirituality published even by top spiritual thought leaders.
So it's opened so many doors to travel to other work.
But it's, I wish that folks would see me a little bit more
as the totality of my work as anactor, from from theater to all
(28:14):
the film and television that I've done before The Office,
after The Office. But at the end of the day, it'll
probably on my tombstone. It'll be like the guy who played
Dwight, you know? And that's OK too.
If you're enjoying the conversations we've been having
on the midlife chrysalis, I havea valuable offer for you to
consider. My book, Learning to Love
Midlife, 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, is a
(28:36):
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opportunity to flourish. Claim your copy today at
meawisdom.com/midlife Book. So did did it deepen your faith
(29:04):
as a result? I mean, you could, you could
make an argument that maybe the Hollywood life, which can be
very superficial and very egocentric might actually, you
might actually need the balance of this investment in Seoul and
the and your faith and your devotion in order to have
(29:26):
harmony. Is that accurate?
It is absolutely accurate. There are many corrupt
industries. I worked for a short time in New
York City in the insurance brokerage industry and boy, that
was a a crazy corrupt world. But Hollywood trades on ego, and
(29:49):
ego is very dangerous for all ofus.
In fact, in the Baha'i Faith, the leader of the Baha'i Faith
was asked if the Baha'is believed in Satan, and he said
yes. And that person was really
surprised, like, oh, you do you believe in Satan?
He said, yes, Satan is the insistent self and I love that
(30:11):
idea. And that's, that's the battle of
ego. That's in every faith tradition,
right? That's a, that's a key component
of Hindu and, and, and Buddhism and Hollywood feeds on ego.
It's like who likes me? Who doesn't picture what it's
like Chip for an insecure, offbeat, you know, actor who
(30:33):
hasn't had a whole lot of success but has barely been
getting his bills paid. And then you play Dwight for a
year or two and you're walking down the street and people come
up to you all the time and they're like, I love you.
I love you. It's like, they don't love me.
They don't know me. They respond positively to a
(30:54):
character that I play on ATV show.
But you get you. It's so easy to get it confused,
like, oh, you, it's like the Sally Fields.
You love me, you really love me.But that's the whole business
works on that. Like how much are you loved and
how much is that worth you owe This movie star Leonardo
DiCaprio is both loved and talented, and he's worth X at
(31:17):
the box office. So I'm I'm going to stick a
dollar amount on how much you'reloved.
And if you're fading, if your star is fading, you're not worth
any dollars, but you're moderately loved.
Like there's this weird like commerce, love, ego, narcissism
dance in Hollywood that is really toxic.
(31:38):
One of my metaphors to think about the ego and the soul and
I, I described this at MEA Modern Elder Academy our, our
two campuses in Baja in Santa Feis the idea that when you're
young, the, it's like ballroom dancing and the egos leading the
(31:59):
dance. So in 6th grade I went to
ballroom dancing and as the boy,I learned how to, to lead the
girl and she was in heels and going backwards and the egos
leading the dance. But around midlife the dance
shifts and the soul is leading the dance.
If you really are living a fullyactualized life, you know,
(32:24):
Richard Rohr, who's AMEA facultymember, famous Christian Mystic,
Catholic priest, says that the primary operating operating
system for the first half of thelife is, is our ego.
And then for the second-half it's our soul.
But nobody gave us any operatinginstructions of how to drive the
soul. So in the second-half of our
life, the soul is leading the dance and the ego is having to
(32:47):
learn how to go backwards and heels.
And to my mind, the humor in that, the humor in, in sort of
seeing that the ego has to have humility.
It has to actually be able to laugh at oneself.
It has to be able to do something that's awkward and a
beginner. And that is, it's not that the
ego goes away. It's not like we're trying to
(33:07):
actually say it's like more. No, the ego still is there.
We are an individuated person. That's that's what the ego does
for us. But it is time for us to let the
soul lead the dance and surrender, which is not easy to
actually seeing where this soul's going to take us.
You know, I, as someone who likes to be in control, I know
(33:28):
that that's a tough one. And does that resonate with you
at all? I think that's really
staggeringly brilliant. I love that.
I'm really deeply pondering thatidea and it's, it's beautiful
for me. Every once in a while, the ego
wants to take the dance back, you know, and, and it's kind of
(33:50):
like, fuck you, I've got this. And like, and it just doesn't
work as well when you're older. It might work when you're when
you're 27 or 34, but it doesn't at 59.
So that it really resonates. And I'm going to and I'm going
to steal that, frankly. So let's talk about devotion.
(34:10):
I mean, your faith is something that we, I mean, over the course
of our life, we have devotion toall kinds of things.
The devotion could be to use sports betting.
The devotion could be to alcohol.
The devotion could be to watching Netflix and being, you
know, very steeped in, in the entertainment industry as a, as
(34:31):
a, as a viewer. But I also think one of the
things that is interesting as weget older is this idea of being
devoted to something beyond yourself.
I've been really fortunate in mylife to go out and go to all
kinds of devotional ceremonies. The Mevlana Whirling Dervish
festival devoted to Rumi, who isthe 1st whirling dervish in
(34:54):
Konya, Turkey and Islamic festival, the Maha Kumamela, the
100 million people at the GangesRiver for the Hindus and all
kinds of other devotional festivals.
Is there a devotional festival for Bahais and have you ever
what? How do you how does your
devotion to your faith express itself in a collective way as
(35:17):
opposed to just an individual way in that sort of collective
effervescence? I love what you're saying.
You know, I would go very, very similar to what you how you
started. I would say we all have our
forms of devotion, but I would say that we all worship
(35:39):
something humans are wired to worship and you may and they're
made by an atheist listening right now.
It's like, well, I don't. It's like, well, but if you
don't worship a higher power, then you worship yourself or
your own thought process. Or perhaps you just worship your
family, or worship your culture,or worship your political party.
(36:02):
Worship the mind. I mean a lot.
A lot of atheists and agnostics are are pretty intellectual.
And there's nothing wrong with science, it's obviously a a
beautiful expression of the of reality and.
But yeah, devotion is interesting 'cause then I don't
know what the root word is, But as you were saying that, I was
(36:22):
thinking about like devout, likepeople who are devout have
devotions or a devoted husband. You're devoted to something.
For me, to quote MC Hammer, you got to pray just to make it
today. I, I think that one of the
disconnects we have in the modern world is between prayer
(36:47):
and meditation. So you have a lot of people in
blue states that meditate and don't pray because for them
prayer is like daddy God, patriarchal God, old white man
with a beard. What I had to do when I was a
kid. They have religious trauma.
Like I'm not going to say, oh, father who art in heaven, like
that's, that's bullshit. I don't want anything to do with
(37:09):
that. But I find great solace in
meditation, which can be have its own kind of devotional
aspect to it. And then you have a lot of
Americans who pray and don't meditate.
You know, they have no problem saying, oh Father or oh Jesus
or, or or whatever, but they don't kind of take the time for
(37:33):
deep contemplation. So in the Baha'i faith, you
know, we say a prayer every day,kind of like the Muslims pray
five times a day. We pray once a day, and it's a
very short, simple prayer, and it goes.
I bear witness, O my God, that Thou has created me to know Thee
and to worship Thee. I testify at this moment to my
(37:53):
powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth,
that there is none other God butThee, the help and peril, the
self subsisting. So Baha'is say that prayer every
day facing where the Baha'i HolyLand is in Israel, Palestine,
and Haifa, Israel, where the Prophet founder is buried.
(38:15):
And one of the reasons I love this prayer is it's got the
meaning of life baked into it. We have been created to know and
worship God. Now before you gasp and clutch
your pearls, listeners, and go, you know, what does that mean?
That doesn't mean that we get down on our knees and we
genuflect to to to sky daddy God, bearded man in the sky.
(38:39):
What is it to know and worship God.
To know and worship God is to know science because science is
an expression of how physical reality works.
To worship God is to be of service to others is to live in
in kindness and humility and andin making the world a better
place and improving ourselves. To know God is to to know
(39:00):
thyself. That's in the Quran.
To know God is to know thyself because we are all divine
beings. We're filled with the stuff of
the divine. You know, the spiritual
qualities. So one, this is a way that this
devotion anchors me is in sayingthat prayer, I'm reminded of why
(39:23):
I'm I'm here. I get lost, my rudder gets
confused. Oh, I'm here to know and worship
God. What does that mean?
How do I move that forward? And by the way, knowing and
worship God, worshiping God may mean being on ATV sitcom and it
may mean being an accountant andproviding for your family and
providing great accounting services, you know, and it it
(39:45):
might mean staying at home and raising children.
Like this is not some grandiose thing.
This is like it. It's finding your your true,
your truest and most honest and humble purpose.
I've two last questions. One, just go, let's go back to
the workbook. The Soul Boom Workbook came out
(40:08):
this week. It's available, you know,
wherever you buy books. If there was a basic summary for
why this book is valuable right now for people, how would you
summarize it? Well, I referenced The Artist's
Way, which is a workbook for finding your path as an artist
and tapping into the the artist within all of us.
(40:32):
You know, accountants can use that book and have a richer,
more meaningful life and the sold one workbook.
Oh, look, I happen to have a copyright here.
Spiritual tools for modern living.
This I'm going to sound arroganthere.
Forgive me. I'm sorry, everyone, but I think
there there's not a more important book right now for the
way the world is in because thisbook, and it's not like my
(40:56):
writing or anything like that, but what the book does is it
takes you through a spiritual journey.
Like what is sacred? What is the soul?
How can we use spiritual tools for mental health and anxiety?
How can we deeply connect with nature?
How can we build community? How do we deal with tests and
(41:19):
difficulties? How do we frame death and dying
from a spiritual perspective? And there's it's, you know,
writing exercises, drawing inspirational quotes, activities
to just help one along. It would be great to do with the
family. It'd be great to do with a book
club, be great to do in a churchbasement.
(41:39):
It'd be great to do at an MEA workshop someday, my friend.
I mean, honestly, this workbook is made for workshop.
It is so I, you know, I got a early copy and I was able to
read it and I was struck by how similar what you're doing today
is to what I'm doing. And I, I love this.
(42:00):
And, and the fact that part of what we're really trying to do
is one of the things I say I do,I, I say I Make Love for a
living. My, my job is to really help
people to understand how to feellove, the universality of love
in the context of a time where it's easy to not feel loved.
(42:23):
And this book is so it's, it's a, it's, it's so simple and so
profound at the same time. So thank you.
I mean, it's a, it's a spectacular book.
And, and did your publisher say,you know, Soul Boom was a great
book? You got a great podcast name
Soul Boom, It's time for a workbook.
Or was this your idea or your Coauthor's idea?
One thing that happens when you write a book is there's all of
(42:47):
these like cheap imitation workbooks that pop up on Amazon.
So true. What the hell is that?
I know it's true. That's where I got the idea is
from these jackasses who are trying to like ride on my
coattails because I worked my butt off on the Soul Boom
original book. And then immediately, like
within a month, there were like 5 Soul Boom workbooks and, and
(43:12):
people were writing and they're like, hey, I ordered this
workbook, but it wasn't very good.
It just had a bunch of Xeroxed pages in it.
And I was like, but I was like, but that is a great idea.
This is, this is a book that could use a companion book.
And there was a cry from people for like, OK, these are great
ideas in your book, but how do we put them into practice?
How do I put it into practice inmy life?
(43:35):
And I was hearing that from bornagain Christians and from
agnostics. And so that's where it came out
of it. And then, you know, I, you know,
I have to write another book next year, Chip.
And you, I need your help. Will you help me on my next
book? Yeah, I will.
What what's what's it going to be about?
Can I interview you for it? Yes, please interview me for
(43:58):
your podcast. I'll come on your podcast,
you're on my. Podcast, I would love to have
you on the podcast and I would love to.
It's my next book is on the meaning of Life.
Just to just a little. Just yeah, just a little.
But you know, our mutual friend Arthur Brooks, and I'm going to
be hopefully I can interview Father Richard Rohr and some
(44:19):
other folks. It's going to be interviews and
activities and and some essays and a little comedy along the
way. But so.
Our mutual friend, our mutual friend Rich Roll, who had his
his birthday yesterday or today,I think 59th birthday.
You guys are the same age. I just Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(44:39):
Interesting. Yeah, he's such a such a great
guy. OK, so last question is let's
talk about wisdom for a moment. You've learned, you know, often
the school of Hard Knocks is what leads to our wisdom and our
painful life lessons are the rawmaterial for our future wisdom.
Let's say a young person came toyou, doesn't have to be an
(44:59):
actor, could be anybody. And they came to you and said,
like, hey, rain, I would love tohave some coffee or tea with you
next week. And I'd love to have you come to
to our meeting and come with a bumper sticker, not a physical
one, but just a mental 1A bumpersticker that defines the a piece
of wisdom you've learned along the way.
(45:20):
And what's the origin story behind that bumper sticker?
How did you learn that lesson? And So what would you say might
be just, you know, I know it's hard to have just one, but back
in the 60s and 70s, there were alot of bumper stickers, remember
a lot of bumper stickers. So what would be the Rainn
Wilson bumper sticker that comesfrom the School of Hard Knocks?
(45:44):
This may sound a little simplistic, but I got to go with
the Arthur Brooks to go meet theDalai Lama last year and Rich
Roll was there was really a a beautiful meeting and and Doctor
Lisa Miller, do you know her? Yeah, I do, yeah.
(46:05):
I got to interview a a monk thathad lived his entire life in the
monastery and and studied Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.
And I was thinking about this book that I had to write, and I
was like, what's the meaning of life?
Like pretend this is a similar question you're asking.
I'm like, pretend I'm a guy. You've you've been sitting up in
a cave for 20 years and I'm clamoring up the mountain, you
(46:28):
know, like one of those New Yorker cartoons.
And I'm just at your feet. And I'm like, oh, master, what
is the meaning of life? Like, what would you say is the
meaning of life? And he thought for a minute and
he was like, it's very simple. It's service.
It's service to others because when you give service to others,
that actually makes you happier.So it actually helps you and it
(46:51):
helps them. And if everyone is living in a
service mindset, you're keeping your ego, the insistent self, or
Satan in check. And if everyone was living in a
service oriented mindset, the world would transform.
(47:13):
If everyone was thinking, how can I take what I have and use
it to help others and help make the world a better place?
This is this would be a viral transformation of the planet.
So that's what I would say to a young actor student, someone
just like, how can you take whatyou do well, what you love, what
(47:34):
ignites your heart and turn it into service in in some way,
shape or form. Even if you're, you know, an
insurance agent and you want to just provide the best insurance
for for people possible. But to to truly believe that and
live in in, in that kind of on that kind of path.
(47:57):
What a beautiful answer. And I'm going to quote Robin
Dranath Tagore, who said I sleptand dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
That was a quote I would use within my boutique hotel company
(48:19):
that I ran for 24 years because the name of the company was
called Joao Aviv. And it was about joy.
And really, if we can get to theplace where we see service is
joy, that's miraculous and magical.
You have been miraculous and magical.
I look forward to hanging out with you, whether it's on your
podcast or doing a workshop withyou or like listen, helping you
(48:41):
with your book. Thank you for being who you are,
Rain. I mean, it really is you.
You help us to see that we as humans are a lot more complex
and we have many more layers to ourselves.
Then then you know, then what isobvious.
You know you can't judge a book by its cover.
Indeed, I love what you're doing, the service you're
(49:03):
providing, and I'm a modern elder.
I need to get my ass over to that Academy and I would love to
have you on the soul boom podcast really.
And I'll, I'll connect you with our producers and get that and
make that happen and, and hopefully we can, we can hang
out sometime in person and high 5.
We'll do that. We'll do that.
Thank you so much. Well, that was a nourishing
(49:26):
conversation. I don't know about you.
I I really appreciated the depthof our friend Rainn Wilson.
He's so different than the Dwight character he's played on
The Office. And that's probably my first
take away from this session is that, you know, we're a lot more
(49:48):
layered than we necessarily comeacross.
And Rain is an exceptional example of that.
Number 2 is, I think the the discussion about what it was
like to be in his 40s and all ofa sudden be an overnight
success, you know, having toiledaway to prepare for it.
And all of a sudden it happened for him.
(50:08):
And the fact that people would, you know, see him on the street
and call him Dwight and, and howhe could have sort of spun out
of control. I mean, there are, you know,
people like Whitney Houston and Anthony Anthony Bourdain and a
variety of other well known actors and celebrities who at
some point end up taking their own lives or doing a lot of
(50:29):
drugs because in some ways they are trying to divorce themselves
from the identity the world sees.
There's a beautiful poem by Rudyard Rudyard Kipling called
if. And I'm going to just quote a a
portion of it here because it really reminded me of what I was
hearing from Rain on our interview.
(50:51):
This is just a portion of if. If you can dream and not make
your dreams your master. If you can think and not make
thoughts your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two imposters just the same.
So this idea that you know you could have triumph, you could
(51:13):
have disaster, neither one should define you.
And in in I think Rain's case, what it it spoke to was this
idea that the more fame he he was finding in his life, the
more he needed to devote himselfto his soulful spiritual
journey, which ultimately has led to soul boom, the book, the
(51:35):
podcast, and now the workbook. I think my final take away is
just the quoting. He seems to be a big fan of
Julia Cameron, who is, you know,based here in Santa Fe, NM and
the Artist's way. And he talked about the
importance of spirituality not just being a virtue, but it
being a necessity. And for him in his 20s, when he
(51:57):
was sort of spinning out of control, having a challenging
time, the fact that that spirituality, his, his Baha'i
Faith from his childhood came back into his life and started
to become a foundational part ofhis 30s.
Such that when he did get that fame that came 20 years ago at
(52:17):
around 39 years old, he was prepared for it because he had
something to undergird it with, like a foundation.
His spirituality was his foundation.
And the necessity of, you know, maybe a little bit of intuition
or his soul seeing this is whereyou're going to be going.
We be we need to re equate you with some some foundational
(52:37):
spiritual practice so that you can go through this time and
have that kind of balance might have been an essential part of
why he's at a stage in his life where he's, you know, profoundly
happy and and feels really good about his life and is devoting
his life to the meaning of life,which is his next book, which
I'm excited to collaborate with him on.
(52:59):
I hope this was, you know, a nutritious and fun swim in the
deep end of the pool. We'll look forward to seeing you
on the next episode. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. The show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
(53:20):
on your favorite platform.
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