Discomfortable

Whiteness   A few weeks ago, I did a leadership training program in LA which helped me realize that what I really want to do when I grow up is become what I call a “shame educator”. I imagine it sort of like a “sex educator”, except about shame (which admittedly isn’t quite as sexy). Part of what made me realize this was a dramatic encounter with shame that I had while attending the leadership program itself, specifically during their daylong seminar on “embodying justice”.  It was all sparked by the word “Whiteness”. Here’s the definition of “Whiteness” that they used in the seminar: “A global ideology and theory that proselytizes white culture, ideas, standards, and values as the norm. It is the basis for worldwide colonization and violence against people of color, past and present.” Though most white people I’ve talked to have no problem with this definition, it immediately rubbed me the wrong way, but I was too emotional to understand exactly why at first. The source of the emotion was actually less about “Whiteness”, and more to do with the fact that with this one disagreement from what I saw as the “orthodoxy” of the group, I felt like I was suddenly different, bad, and alone (which is, of course, my definition of shame). I feared that if I spoke up, I would be judged and ostracized from this community of young leaders and new friends who I so admired. And it even went against my own sense of “wokeness”. Am I really the white guy who needs to defend the word “Whiteness”?? Though I was eventually able to work up the courage to admit in front of everyone that this definition of “Whiteness” made me feel shame, it led to a days-long shame spiral in which several fascinating things occurred, not the least of which was that my shame actually seemed to make me more racist. Shame sparks our fight or flight reflex, which is our limbic system, one of the oldest, most basic parts of the brain (what Buddhists would call our “monkey brain”). That means our higher rational functions in the prefrontal cortex actually go offline so we can invest all of our energy into dealing with this immediate “threat” to the integrity of our identity. As a result, shame literally* turns you into an illogical caveman, run by your most basic instincts, like your innate bias towards simplistic “in groups” and “out groups” (arguably the instinctual basis for racism). I literally saw this exact process unfolding within my own shame-filled brain during and after the seminar. All this to say, our culture’s go-to strategy of shaming racists is a terribly misguided idea. It actually just reinforces the problem! We need to find ways to encourage people caught in racist views (or any other views we disagree with) to get connected to their prefrontal cortex again by draining the shame and emotion clouding the issue. And I think the best strategy to do this is always through empathy. Empathy is inherently about equality. It says, we are the same. And it can calm people down and make them feel accepted, such that they are willing to open up, and be vulnerable and thoughtful. And empathy spreads. It builds empathy in others too, so they can start to relate to, understand, and see the point of view of the “other” they were afraid of, judging, and demonizing. As for my own journey, I came away thinking about how I can better embody this quote by Nelson Mandela: “…to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” None of us will be truly free until the most marginalized members of our society are raised up to a level of equality. By the same token, none of us will be truly free until we stop implicitly and explicitly shaming other members of our society, and that includes those people who we strongly disagree with. Corrections: *I literally use the word “literally” figuratively like literally a thousand times. I mistakenly call Nelson Mandela the “prime minister” of South Africa, when in fact he was the president. And I say he was in prison for 28 years, when in fact it was 27. I actually did just finish his autobiography, I swear!

Simulation This week’s episode was inspired by a talk I saw at SXSW a few weeks ago by hacker George Hotz, notorious for being the first person to “jailbreak” the iPhone in 2007 when he was just a teenager. But the theme of the talk was about jailbreaking something a lot more ambitious than just a phone, it was about jailbreaking the simulation that we all live in. You can watch a slightly edited version of George’s talk on YouTube if you want: The theory that we live in a simulation has been floating around on the internet and in even in scientific papers and discussions with Elon Musk over the last few years (I mentioned it briefly in one of my episodes on Subjectivity). https://youtu.be/xBKRuI2zHp0 The idea is that if technology ever gets to the point where we can simulate our entire universe (which seems very plausible in the not so distant future), then it is statistically rather unlikely that we live in the real world, or “prime reality”. This is because there is bound to be many more simulations, even simulations within simulations, vastly outnumbering the single “prime reality” (even if you believe in the multiverse theory, simulations would still probably outnumber analog realities).  Though at first blush this simulation theory seems like a rather ludicrous fantasy, I find the more I think about the logic of it, the more compelling it becomes. In fact, when I reflect on how “serious” things can feel in my life sometimes, the idea that this all might be a simulation brings a smile to my face. It adds a welcome sense of lightness to my perspective. And it encourages me to take more risks! If I was, hypothetically, afraid to go up and talk to a cute guy at SXSW, George’s talk would pop into my head and suddenly I would think, If this is all just a simulation, what do I have to lose? And even if it’s not a simulation, what’s the difference? Why is being a bunch of particles and matter and energy inside a universe molded by the arbitrary laws of physics any more “real” or “important” or “serious” than being a bunch of electricity and zeroes and ones inside a hard drive molded by the programming “laws” of some arbitrary software? I think it’s just our peculiar human emotions and our negativity bias (both of which evolved for survival), that make everything feel so damned heavy and intense all the time. But when you think about it, none of our emotional reactions have any real bearing on whatever outer reality we live in. The universe — or simulation — is ultimately neutral.  And if we do live in a simulation, what kind of simulation is it? Are we humans caught in a virtual reality, like in The Matrix? Or is this a kind of video game in which some people are controlled by players on the outside and others are just there to push the game forward? And if we are being controlled from the outside, would we know it? Does Mario from Mario Bros. know he has no free will? Or are we all just a part of the simulation — digital consciousnesses created entirely inside the machine?  But more than just this what if? scenario, George actually had an idea for how we might escape the simulation! If you watch the video of George’s talk, SXSW has conspicuously edited out the key proof of concept, but I’ve included a link below of what he had in mind. This video demonstrates how a player can actually inject new code into the “reality” of a video game from within the game itself: https://youtu.be/hB6eY73sLV0 So while playing Super Mario World, this gamer was able to exploit certain glitches in the gameplay which allowed him to manually add new code into empty areas of the game’s memory by making Mario perform a repetitive series of bizzare moves. The code he entered was that of a different game or “reality” altogether with new physical laws or “rules” that basically changed Mario’s world completely.  This proof of concept suggests that we may be able to alter the code of our own reality from within, thereby changing our world or even executing new software in order to control the computer in which our simulation is housed, allowing us to communicate with our “God” or even potentially escape through the internet of that upper world. “Every bad thing that happens in the world today… Happens because the laws of nature allow these things. If we could hack into the computer running nature, we could change the rules.” – George Hotz Transcript 00:00:00 – 00:05:18 At SXSW this year, I saw an interesting presentation by a hacker by the name of George Hotz. George’s claim to fame is being one of the first people to jailbreak the iPhone. He also attempted to hack into the PlayStation and was eventually sued by Sony. But his talk at SXSW this year had a much loftier goal. It was about jailbreaking the simulation that we all live in. If you’re not familiar with this theory, it’s been going around for the last couple years, the notion that it’s very possible that we are all living in a simulation, like in The Matrix. The theory goes like this, looking at video games that currently exist, they are getting increasingly realistic and increasingly powerful at world building. The assumption is that if technology continues to advance at the pace it has been, it is inevitable that we will eventually have computers strong enough that we will be able to simulate an entire universe. And once we have the technology to do that, we will probably do it multiple times. So there will be numerous different simulations of reality that seem completely indistinguishable from actual reality, or what they call “prime reality”. And therefore the chances that we are living in “prime reality” are quite small, and it’s actually much more likely that we are living in one of many simulations that will be almost certainly technologically possible in the very near future. If there are 100 different universes –– 100 different realities that are all pretty much identical –– what are the odds that we live in the very first one and not one of the other 99 simulations that grew out of the first reality? In fact, we might even be living in a simulation within a simulation. If “prime reality” creates 100 simulations identical to prime reality, it makes sense that each of those 100 simulations will have 100 simulations within them of their own. So it’s this sort of branching tree that gets bigger and bigger. And it’s entirely plausible, if you believe that technology will continue to advance (which I do), that it’s actually completely possible. George used the metaphor of a tiger living in a game park. The park being big enough and natural looking enough, and the tiger being not intelligent enough would create an environment where the tiger didn’t realize that it wasn’t living out in nature. Nor would it recognize that the landscaping, the plants, the other animals, the roads had all been created or placed or designed. That could be us. The boundaries of the simulation could be beyond our intelligence or could be designed in such a way that we never encounter them. In his presentation, George talked about the “arrogance” of being an atheist. Given the plausibility of this simulation theory, it’s quite possible that we all have a God. But it isn’t the God that we’re expecting from a religious standpoint, it’s some programmer or organization that has created the particular simulation that we happen to live in. Why did this God create us? I don’t know, they were testing some kind of theory? They were creating some kind of video game? They were modelling evolution or climate change theory or testing out different types of physical laws and properties to see what they might create? And I have to admit that I found it rather convincing. I was surprised to discover that I am more willing to believe that there is a God if it is a person or corporation or machine in the near future creating a simulation, than I am to believe in the Christian style God. But is there really even a difference? If there really is a Christian style God, then if you think about it, we are essentially just a simulation inside that God’s brain or computer. 00:05:18 – 00:10:03 There’s many different possibilities for what this simulation could be like. One possibility would be straight out of The Matrix — the idea that we are all still humans and our bodies or our brains are somewhere (or perhaps they’ve been downloaded onto a computer) and all of our consciousnesses are interconnected in a simulated reality. Another possibility is that none of us are real people. That our brains are entirely fabricated, our consciousness is just itself a simulation within a machine — a machine powerful enough to generate billions or trillions of consciousnesses (if you take into account the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe). That would mean that none of us are necessarily real. Another possibility is that it’s sort of like the “Holodeck” on Star Trek. So a bunch of us are consciousnesses that have been created by the machine, by the simulation, but that there are players within the simulation who are actually humans. Or it could be a video game, for example. Which raises an interesting question: if this is a simulation, am I a character that’s being controlled from the outside? If I was being controlled from the outside, would I not be aware of it? Or would I know that I was a character from the outside? And given that I am not aware of being a consciousness outside of the game, does that mean that I am not a player character? Does that mean that I am completely simulated? That I am just bits of code in a machine? And even if I am bits of code in a machine, would that really be any different than being bits of matter and atoms and energy inside a universe? If you’ve been spending any time on Twitter, you may have discovered that there’s a whole meme going around about “non-player characters”. The idea is that if we live in a simulation, and it’s some kind of video game, are you a character that is being controlled from the outside (you know, like the hero of the game)? Or are you a non-player character, just a creation of the game itself used to push forward the story of the actual player characters? The diss embedded in these non-player character memes is that most people are “NPCs” (non-player characters) and therefore not as cool, or active, or interesting, or affecting the reality of the video game or the world as much as the so-called “player characters”. It kind of boils down to this idea of how active are you in the world? Or how self-aware are you? Are you able to transcend bland reality and be a hero? And even if you are one of these player characters, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know that you are a player character. You could be a creation of the simulation that is then being controlled by a conscious entity outside of the game, but you aren’t aware that they are controlling you. It feels like you have free will. It feels like you have decided to do the things that they are controlling you and telling you to do, but that’s really just built into your consciousness so that the game feels more and more realistic. It’s also possible that there are no player characters at all. It might just be a simulation being run to prove some kind of scientific point or as some kind of entertainment perhaps. This whole thing may sound kind of absurd, and you might be like, So what if we are simulation? Like, what’s the point in even thinking about it? There’s nothing we can do about it. There’s no way we can affect it, so we might as well just assume that reality is real. But to me, I find it kind of exciting and liberating that it’s at least possible that we are in a simulation. It makes me look at life with less seriousness. It makes me more relaxed. It makes me a little bit more carefree. It makes me willing to take a few more risks. Because ultimately, I’m just like, what is “real”? What is “serious”? What is “important”? Why does everything have to be so intense? Maybe I’m just a simulation inside a computer! Or maybe I’m not a simulation, but I’m still just a bunch of particles that randomly came together. And while I think either way it’s kind of amazing and I’m happy to be experiencing it, it just makes me feel lighter, it makes me feel better to take the pressure off. 00:10:03 – 00:15:06 Instead of walking around feeling like I’m living in a court of law, it feels more like I’m walking around living in one big playground. Our perspective that everything is really “serious”, or really “real”, or really “important”, is just that — a perspective. One of many possible perspectives. It’s just an opinion. It’s a belief. It’s an ideology that is probably reinforced by the fact that we have all these emotions. And the emotions inside us make things feel really “important” and really “serious” sometimes. Or really “scary”, really intense. Or really “sacred” or really “special”. But those are just emotions that don’t in any way reflect reality. Our emotions are real in the sense that we are really feeling them, but there’s no actual correlation between the vast neutral universe and the emotions that we are feeling at any given time, be they positive, light, or negative and heavy. So given that my emotional reactions are basically equal in the grand scheme of things, as always I am want to choose the most enjoyable ones! George’s discussion of the simulation went even further than just the theory that it is possible. George actually had a scheme by which we might be able to break free! George showed that within modern computing, there are situations where what is happening inside the digital world is actually affecting the analog reality of the machine itself. Everything that happens within a computer, within a video game, is connected to a physical reaction in an actual, physical computer. So everything that is happening in this simulation, if it is a simulation, has some kind of real world counterpart in the physical states of the machine, of the hard drive. And George showed a fascinating example where a player was playing a game, a video game (in fact it was one of the Super Mario games), and the player discovered that there were certain moves you could make within Super Mario Bros that actually changed the code of the game. And when he figured out which moves created which changes in the code, he did a series of moves that encoded a new game inside the world of Super Mario Bros. And he was actually then able to play that new game that he had encoded inside of another game by moving in certain ways. I’ll leave a clip of what he did on Discomfortable.net so you can watch it, or you can look in the show notes, but it was essentially a way to rewrite reality by figuring out the ways in which reality interacts with the code that creates the sense of reality. So George’s premise was that if we could get familiar with the code of our reality, there actually are theoretically exploits from within the code itself in which you could behave or move or try or do certain bizarre things in order to cause the code itself to change. And by changing the code, we could not only change our reality, but we could potentially cause the machine itself that contains the simulation to change its functioning such that we are able to control things outside of our reality, outside of our simulation. If, for example, the machine controlling our simulation could be controlled from within the simulation, then we could potentially use that machine to operate a different program on that machine to get on the internet in this other reality, this upper reality, and affect real-world changes from there. So in theory, we could actually meet and interact with our God by taking over his computer. And not only that, we could in a way become our own gods and rewrite our own reality. We could become the masters of nature and create new code telling nature to do different things!

Fantasies This is perhaps the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever talked about on the show. Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly aware of something that my ego does to inflate itself on an almost daily basis. It engages in a kind of semi-conscious psychological masturbation by dreaming up all kinds of elaborate fantasies in which I am some kind of hero, or success, or celebrity, or even just the center of attention and praise at any given moment. It can take the form of imagining myself in the leading role of a film I’m watching, or making myself the protagonist of a book I’m reading, or inventing something completely new and dramatic and extraordinary as my own form of personal mythmaking. Probably the best example I can think of to illustrate this kind of self-aggrandizing fantasy comes from the opening scene of the film Rushmore by Wes Anderson: I don’t know if other people engage in these kinds of fantasies, because I’ve never talked about it with anyone (for obvious reasons), nor does anyone else seem to bring it up, but it’s such a common trope in film and TV that I suspect it’s much more prevalent than people let on. It’s a strategy our egos employ to fight inherent feelings of inferiority and shame, but a misguided a strategy at that. I’m starting to believe that all feelings of “superiority” are in fact just a product of inferiority and shame. That is to say, there is no such thing as someone who actually, genuinely feels superior. Deep down, it’s always inextricably tied to feelings and fears of their own potential worthlessness. This is because I think the only way to truly overcome inferiority is through a sense of equality. So these ego fantasies, as pleasurable and well-meaning as they may be, are actually exacerbating our feelings of inferiority by trapping us in a cycle of “hustling for worthiness” (as Brené Brown would call it), as well as people pleasing and hierarchical thinking. If you believe that you can be inherently “better” than another person, then you know that someone else could also be “better” than you. It creates an endless cycle of trying to climb to the non-existent top of the fictional hierarchy of human value, all of which is shame. That being said, I also realize that the way to overcome this bad habit of ego fantasizing is probably not by judging and fighting against it. Just like with unpleasant emotions, I think the best way to deal with these fantasies and move past them is to accept them wholly. So I’m trying to acknowledge and enjoy my fantasies as humorous and adorably misguided products of my ego that don’t actually define me. I actually plan to keep track of them and record them as an ongoing segment of the show for the amusement and empowerment of anyone else who may be drawn to similar flights of fancy as well. “Another threat to the inner balance comes from excessive daydreaming, which in a secret way usually circles around particular complexes.” – Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols Transcript: 00:00:00 – 00:05:13 I think this is perhaps the most embarrassing topic I have ever talked about on this show. At any given moment, my brain, or perhaps more accurately my ego, is engaging in a kind of self aggrandizing fantasy in which I am the hero in some kind of movie in my brain. Probably the best way I could describe it is if you watch the opening scene of the film Rushmore, by Wes Anderson. It’s a high school — actually a private school math class and the hero or anti-hero of the film, Max Fischer, is reading a newspaper while his math teacher puts the quote-unquote, “hardest math question of all time” up on the chalkboard and says if anyone can solve it he will pass the entire class, or something like that. And then the whole glass turns and looks at Max, and he gets up… and he solves the problem! And they all cheer and they hoist him over their shoulders, and then Max snaps out of it and he’s back in reality. That is exactly what my brain does almost every day. Not all the time, but so often that I almost don’t even notice it. It’s just a thing that my brain does to pass the time. It’s a kind of psychological masturbation in which I see myself in all of these heroic, or impressive, dramatic, larger than life center of attention situations. And a key factor of these fantasies is that they’re in the third person. Like a movie, I am picturing myself moving through the space from someone else’s viewpoint. And I think that that is an extremely important detail because these fantasies are all about avoiding shame. They are a way for me to almost build up my ego by imagining the potential ways in which I am special, in which I am amazing, in which I am at the top of the fictional hierarchy of human value. It’s a way to constantly stave off feelings of inferiority, feelings of unworthiness, feelings of unlovability, feelings of shame. The fantasies have to be in the third person because shame is all about the opinions and perspectives of other people. So I am picturing other people watching me engage in these incredible fantastic actions and heroic events so that they can see how much value I supposedly have as a person. What’s interesting about them is that it’s not like I snap out of them like people do in movies and discover, “Oh, I live this mundane life”. These fantasies almost kind of serve as a “what if?” Or maybe more profound than “what if”, they’re kind of like a “would be true”. It’s like, “Well, if this scenario was happening, it would be true that I would be heroic, or it would be true that I would do something impressive, or it would be true that I would say something really profound, or it would be true that people would be thinking these amazing things about me or praising me or admiring me. So it’s almost like my brain trying to convince itself that I already am these great, amazing, valuable, worthy, loveable things, it’s just that I haven’t had the opportunity to enact them yet. It’s been happening my whole life, and I never really questioned it. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s a normal thing or not because it’s not something I’ve literally ever talked about with anyone else. Why? Because it’s so embarrassing! Nor have I really heard anyone else talk about it either. However, I have seen many films that humorously dramatize this kind of thing, Rushmore, for example. And we always kind of laugh at that character and how pathetic they are. But it happens so much in films that it makes me think that it is probably a fairly universal human experience for our egos to create fantasies that make us feel better — that the ego uses to prop itself up. 00:05:14 – 00:10:03 But once I started going to therapy and investigating my dreams and kind of demystifying shame, I started to recognize these fantasies for what they are. And I found them really problematic. I found them deluded. I found them grandiose. And I found them to be actually maybe stopping me from going out into the world and actually trying to do interesting, amazing, incredible things because I was like, “Oh, whatever. I already know I can do that. I’ve seen it in my fantasies”. Not only that, but I started to see how completely unreal they were. They just they weren’t accurate. I’m not that heroic person. I am not admired by everyone. They were creating this kind of fictional world that I would have rather existed in which people always like me. And they were stopping me from confronting my own limitations, my own imperfections, and from confronting the reality that there are always going to be people who will not approve of you. And it’s not about trying to get to some perfect situation where everyone approves of you. That’s impossible. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about getting comfortable with the discomfort of knowing that all kinds of people don’t like you. All kinds of people are judging you. All kinds of people think you’re an idiot, or reject you — don’t want anything to do with you. The sooner that I can get comfortable with that reality, the happier I will be. As opposed to trying to create this impossible reality where I’m so great everyone in the world loves me. * * * The fantasies have all kinds of different genres. When I was younger, I would often be inspired by comic books and movies. And I would imagine myself in completely unrealistic scenarios where I have superpowers or I am the “chosen one”, like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. I mean, we have this narrative in so many cultures and in so much media of the “hero’s journey”. And I think it’s universal because all of us kind of have these fantasies in which we imagine ourselves at the center of some kind of movie, or some kind of tale, or some kind of myth in which we are the hero. And I think in the perspective of our own life, we all kind of do have to be our own hero. We have to go through a kind of self-awakening, battling our own demons and becoming our own hero. Our own leader. Our own parent. I think that’s a very, very natural part of the human psychological evolution. And I think it taps into Carl Jung’s individuation theory, which I’ve talked about before. And it taps directly into what I would call a “shame breakthrough“. It’s sort of just like our unconscious mind discovering how it can best self actualize. So for me, the true hero’s journey is actually quite an internal one. But we have now projected it in so many myths, so many stories, so much media, so many films, so many video games into a kind of external heroism where it’s not enough for each of us internally to go on our own hero’s journey and self actualize, we have to kind of socially actualize. We have to become a hero to other people, which inherently would make us “better than” other people. So this natural human psychological evolution myth has actually gotten intertwined in an unhealthy way with our cultural ideas of achievement, and success, and attention, and respect from other people. All of these external validators that, if you’ve been listening to my shame episodes, aren’t really that healthy for us to discover our own internal sense of worthiness. Our own sense of self-love. So as a kid, every time I would watch a movie I would put myself in the role of the hero of that film. Or in some cases, the villain. Because the villain had their own kind of reverse form of specialness. Their own reverse strength, their own reverse coolness, their own reverse attention. A kind of anti-hero, if you will. And I would basically just imagine the whole film over again, except with me in the lead. 00:10:04 – 00:15:10 I’m sure many many many people do this if not ever. Everyone. We take these powerful stories and we put ourselves at the center. So I would literally imagine myself being able to move things with my mind or read people’s brains or turn invisible or fly, and I would fight evil, and I would save the world, and everyone would look up to me, and I would be special and worthy and lovable and better than everyone else. But there were other types of indices to I would often imagine situations where I wasn’t even there. But other people were talking about me and saying good things. So for example, if I were to like hand in essay in some course, I would then imagine the teacher like reading it and turning to their colleague and being like, wow, I just read the most perhaps the most incredible essay that I have ever received in thirty years of teaching and their colleague was like, wow will who wrote it and the teacher would be like this young man named AJ and the other teacher would be like AJ bond and the teacher would be like, yes. And the other colleague would be like, oh my goodness. I had AJ last year. And he truly was a genius. This. I’m not exaggerating. I am not exaggerating. This is the kind of fantasy that my brain would just spontaneously dream up as I was sending in an essay. It’s so embarrassing. But it’s true. And then of course, I would get the essay back, and I would get like a b plus and I would be like, oh, well, obviously, they just don’t understand me. It’s your classic delusion of grandeur based of course, on the fear of its exact opposite. The deep-seated worry that you are in fact, inferior that you are incapable that you are pathetic that you are bad all of those shame worries rooted in this this sense that there’s something potentially inherently wrong with me. And what was interesting about these fantasies is that they weren’t exactly conscious. They weren’t unconscious in the sense that I wasn’t aware of them. You know, like, I was watching them like a movie, but I wasn’t consciously deciding to have them it wasn’t like, okay. I just emailed that essay in now. Let’s closer is. And take a moment to imagine. How much that teacher is going to fucking love my amazing essay. And how brilliant I am each just was something that would happen very spontaneously. I would send it in. And I would imagine the teacher getting the Email. And then reading it. And then, you know, would just my brain which is naturally fill in the details of all of the amazing things that were potentially going to happen. And it wasn’t even necessarily that. I one hundred percent believed that that was actually what was going to happen. It really was a kind of masturbation it really just it felt good to just go down that ego path and let my ego rub itself. So that it felt all kinds of goods, psychological feelings, and I think I really knew that I knew that. It wasn’t true probably wasn’t going to happen. But it was just a kind of like pleasant thing to do a pleasant little secret between me and my ego. There were also be kind of a dark version of these fantasies where I would imagine that I had died, and people were very very very, very sad. Even people that I didn’t even think really knew me or there were scenarios where something really awful happened to me, and everyone was really worried. Read or I was like sick. And everyone wanted me to get better or you know, any kind of situation where there was a lot of drama and a lot of seriousness and a lot of people were paying attention. And they’re like, wow, look at what age as going through what a trooper what a what a serious respectable strong individual, basically any ways in which our culture looked up to people or aggrandize them. I would have fantasies in which I was those things. As I think I’ve said before I had this incredible fascination as a child with all things Macab monsters villains. I always I always really connected more with the monster and the villain Frankenstein’s. Monster was my favorite of all the monsters followed closely by Dracula because I think I knowing deep down that I was different that I was gay always kind of related to these monstrosities. I’ve talked about this before. But there was something respectable about being feared and actually Dr James Gilligan, who’s violence expert that I talk a lot about in my shame series. He says that when you are looking for ways to feel self esteem and to feel respected by other people fear seems like one of the best methods to immediately feel respected. 00:15:10 – 00:20:00 That’s why he attributes all violence to shame. He thinks that all vie. Silence is caused by people trying to create a sense of external respect, and therefore internal respect. And I can completely relate to that. In the way that I realized villains and monsters and scaring people gave me this kind of respect this kind of power over them that they they looked up to me not in a positive way. But in a negative way and that to me still fulfilled. My need for feeling important for feeling special for feeling better in kind of perverse way feeling like I was a terrifying monster that had power over people was an anti shame fantasy. So as a result as a kid. I was constantly crawling around the house like some kind of loss raptor, or some kind of alien my favorite movie has a child as a twelve year old my favorite movie was aliens by James Cameron in which I looked up to the Zeno morph this disc-. Gusting monstrous killing machine I thought that was the coolest creature in the world. I did essays about it in my elementary school because I just looked up to that as as a kind of anti shame to be the source of power and fear, and monstrosity and evil seemed like a better thing to be nothing or no-one or worthless or useless or forgotten. At one point. And I still think this would be a good thing to do. I thought that I should actually write down every time. I have a fantasy. And maybe I’ll start doing that now, and it can be like a little segment that pops into the series every now, and then ego fantasies that I have actually had in which I tell you what the scenario was. And I tell you what my ego came up with to try to assuage potential shame or inferiority because they really are whole areas -ly transparent. They are always about me doing something ridiculously extrordinary and all of the people talking about how amazing it was. But as I’ve become increasingly aware of these fantasies. I’ve been trying to stop them from happening for a while when I really connected them to shame. I’ve found upsetting. I was so embarrassed by them. I saw how counter intuitive. They really were. They weren’t helping me really. They were keeping me out of. -ality? And when I did come back to reality. I felt worse because I knew that I wasn’t actually that amazing thing that I had just dreamt up. And what’s what’s more? I recognize that the path to not feeling inferior wasn’t about self aggrandizing. Even if I could achieve those things it wouldn’t actually stop me from feeling shame. Because what I now know at least in theory is that the key to overcoming inferiority is through equality not through superiority. So these fantasies were just adding to my desperation, my my misguided desire to be superior. I wasn’t having any fantasies about how amazingly equal. I was. But that would have been a lot more healthy. One technique. I did discover to kind of deflate these fantasies was when I recognize that I was inefficient Assy to shift the perspective. So instead of being a third person perspective where people are looking at me. I would put myself in my own head in the fantasy and look out of my own eyes. And that really undermined the anti shame appeal of the fantasies instead of all these people admiring me. I was looking out at all these people, and I suddenly realized I have no idea what these people think I don’t know if these people are actually admiring me in this fantasy scenario or they’re judging me or they don’t like me it basically just brings the fantasy back to reality. And shows that it’s impossible to create a situation where everyone approves of you. And that shouldn’t be the point the difficulty about this is that it requires this fantasy which really is only. Semi-conscious I have to then become consciously aware I’m in fantasy and I have to consciously wrestle control away from my subconscious and put myself into my own head and at that point the fantasy just kind of falls apart, which is which is good. It’s probably better than staying in that fantasy and self aggrandizing longer and longer, but it doesn’t really stop the root of the fantasy. 00:20:00 – 00:23:53 It doesn’t stop the fantasy from happening. It’s basically just a way to forge it while it’s in progress. And I’m starting to realize that it may not be possible for me to stop my ego from van Cise ING, I mean, it might ego has built up this technique over almost four decades as a self protective mechanism against inferior Oreta. So it will be very difficult to rewire my brain. I I guess it is possible. I do think it’s possible. But I don’t think being hard on myself is the way to go about it. I don’t think it’s going to happen through. Just pure willpower or sheer, desire or logic. It’s gonna take a lot of reprogramming. And I think that in the meantime, I might actually be better off to just accept these fantasies for what they are to to look at them with a degree of love and say, oh, that’s Doral. Look at what my ego thinks it needs to do in order to be meaningful in order to be useful in order to protect me in order to keep me alive. Essentially, I can accept them and look at them with a degree of lightness and with a degree of humor. And I think that is a lot more likely to take away their power than to fight against them. And I’m finding as you may have already noticed in this podcast that one of the best ways for me to accept them is to recognize that they aren’t really me. It’s just one of many aspects of my personality, and it doesn’t define me. I’m basically learning not to identify so much with those fantasies. Sure, they’re happening and they’re going to keep happening for the foreseeable future. And they may not be the most healthy means of dealing with shame. But I recognize that there’s so much more to me than just these ridiculous fantasies, and by creating that space, and that that perspective, I’m able to see them as a lot less powerful. I’m able to kind of undermine them Mabel to kind of laugh at them. I mean, we’ll talk about them with you right now. I obviously didn’t have the courage to talk about them like this in the past. I mean, in fact, I wasn’t even. Quite conscious enough of them to really do. So except in the last few years, but I’ve clearly already done a good enough job of disassociating myself from them enough that I can have joke about them. I can I can speak the truth of them. And that is such a powerful change when we can name something when we can be honest about it when we can speak our truth, it no longer controls us as Brunei Brown would say it allows us to write the end of the story. So I’m happy that I’ve gotten to a point where I can see these antitheses as an aspect of my ego. You know, trying its best its own adorable misguided way to basically keep me alive to to keep my psychological sense of AJ strong through these fantasies and just appreciate them for what they are. And to. Talk about them and to integrate them into my life, hopefully in an ongoing amusing series that being said, I am now imagining this podcast coming to an end and the music starts to play. And you the listener think to yourself. Wow. This AJ guys such a brave genius. Really? I also have these fantasies, but I never talked about. Oh, my. And he’s really. actually a private school math class and the hero or anti hero of the film, Max Fischer, is reading a newspaper while his math teacher puts the quote unquote, “hardest math question of all time” up on the chalkboard and says if anyone can solve it he will pass the entire class, or something like that. And then the whole glass turns and looks at Max, and he gets up… and he solves the problem! And they all cheer and they hoist him over their shoulders, and then Max snaps out of it and he’s back in reality. That is exactly what my brain does almost every day. Not all the time, but so often that I almost don’t even notice it. It’s just a thing that my brain does to pass the time. It’s a kind of psychological masturbation in which I see myself in all of these heroic, or impressive, dramatic, larger than life center of attention situations. And a key factor of these fantasies is that there in the third person. Like a movie, I am picturing myself moving through the space from someone else’s viewpoint. And I think that that is an extremely important detail because these fantasies are all about avoiding shame. They are away for me to. Almost build up. My ego by imagining the potential ways in which I am special in which I am amazing in which I am at the top of the fictional hierarchy of human value. It’s a way to constantly stave off feelings of inferiority feelings of unworthiness feelings of unlovable –bility feelings of shame. So the fantasies have to be in the third person because shame is all about the opinions and perspectives of other people. So I am picturing other people watching me engage in these incredible fantastic actions are her roic events. So that they can see how much value. I supposedly have as a person. What’s interesting about them is that it’s not like I snap out of them. Like people do in movies and discover, oh, I live this mundane life, these fantasies almost kind of serve as a what if or maybe more profound than what if they’re kind of like, a a would be true. It’s like, well if this scenario was happening. It would be true. The I would be heroic or it would be true that I would do something impressive or. Would be true that I would say something really profound or it would be true that people would be thinking these amazing things about me or praising me or admiring me. So it’s almost like my brain trying to convince itself that I already am these great amazing valuable worthy loveable things. It’s just that. I haven’t had the opportunity to enact them yet. It’s been happening my whole life, and I never really questioned it. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s a normal thing or not because it’s not something I’ve literally ever talked about with anyone else. Why? Because it’s so embarrassing nor have I really heard anyone else talk about it either. However, I have seen many films that humorously dramatize this kind of thing Rushmore, for example. And we always kind of laugh at that character. And how pathetic they are. But it happens so much in films that it makes me think that it is probably fairly universal human experience for our egos to create fantasies that make us feel better that the ego uses to prop itself up. 00:05:14 – 00:10:03 But once I started going to therapy and investigating my dreams and kind of demystifying shame. I started to recognize these fantasies for what they are. And I found them really problematic. I found them deluded. I found them grandiose. And I found them to be actually may be stopping me from going out into the world and actually trying to do interesting amazing incredible things because I was like, oh, whatever Ardy. No. I can do that. I’ve seen in my fantasies. Not only that. But I started to see how completely unreal they were. They just they weren’t accurate. I m not that Harav person. I am not admired by everyone. They were creating this kind of fictional world that I would have rather existed in where people always like me, and they were stopping me from confronting my own limitations, my own imperfections and from confronting the reality that there are always going to be people who will not approve of you. And it’s not about trying to get to some perfect situation where everyone approves of you. That’s impossible. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about getting comfortable with the discomfort of knowing that all kinds of people don’t like, you all kinds of people are judging you all kinds of people think you’re an idiot or reject you don’t wanna needing to do with you the sooner that I can get comfortable with that reality. The happier. I will be as opposed to trying to create this impossible reality where I’m so great everyone in the world loves me. The fantasies have all kinds of different genres when I was younger. I would often be inspired by comic books and movies. And I would imagine myself in completely unrealistic scenarios where I have superpowers or I am the chosen one like, Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. I mean, we have this narrative in so many cultures and in so much media of the hero’s journey, and I think it’s universal because all of us kind of have these fantasies in which we imagine ourselves at the center of some kind of movie or some kind of tail or some kind of myth in which we are the hero. And I think in the perspective of our own life. We all kind of do have to be our own hero. We have to go through a kind of self awakening battling our own demons and becoming our own hero. Our our own leader our own parent. I think that’s a very. Very natural part of the human, psychological. Evolution. And I think it taps into Carl Jung’s individuation theory, which I’ve talked about before, and it it it taps directly into what I would call a shame breakthrough. It’s sort of just like our unconscious mind discovering how it can best self actualize. So for me, the true heroes journey is actually quite an internal one. But we have now projected it in so many myths so many stories so much media so many films so many video games into a kind of external hero ISM where it’s not enough for each of us internally to go on our own hero’s journey and self actualize. We have to kind of socially actualize, we have to become a hero to other people which inherently would make us better than other people. So this natural, human, psychological. Evolution instinctual myth. If has actually gotten injure twined in an unhealthy way with our cultural ideas of achievement and success and attention and respect from other people all of these external validates that. If you’ve been listening to my shame episodes aren’t really that healthy for us to discover our own internal sense of worthiness our own sense of self love. So as a kid every time, I would watch a movie I would put myself in the role of the hero of that film. Or in some cases, the villain because the villain had their own kind of reverse form of specialness their own reverse strength, their own reverse coolness, their own reverse attention, a kind of anti hero. If you will. And I would basically just imagine the whole film over again, except with me in the lead. 00:10:04 – 00:15:10 I’m sure many many many people do this if not ever. Everyone. We take these powerful stories and we put ourselves at the center. So I would literally imagine myself being able to move things with my mind or read people’s brains or turn invisible or fly, and I would fight evil, and I would save the world, and everyone would look up to me, and I would be special and worthy and lovable and better than everyone else. But there were other types of indices to I would often imagine situations where I wasn’t even there. But other people were talking about me and saying good things. So for example, if I were to like hand in essay in some course, I would then imagine the teacher like reading it and turning to their colleague and being like, wow, I just read the most perhaps the most incredible essay that I have ever received in thirty years of teaching and their colleague was like, wow will who wrote it and the teacher would be like this young man named AJ and the other teacher would be like AJ bond and the teacher would be like, yes. And the other colleague would be like, oh my goodness. I had AJ last year. And he truly was a genius. This. I’m not exaggerating. I am not exaggerating. This is the kind of fantasy that my brain would just spontaneously dream up as I was sending in an essay. It’s so embarrassing. But it’s true. And then of course, I would get the essay back, and I would get like a b plus and I would be like, oh, well, obviously, they just don’t understand me. It’s your classic delusion of grandeur based of course, on the fear of its exact opposite. The deep-seated worry that you are in fact, inferior that you are incapable that you are pathetic that you are bad all of those shame worries rooted in this this sense that there’s something potentially inherently wrong with me. And what was interesting about these fantasies is that they weren’t exactly conscious. They weren’t unconscious in the sense that I wasn’t aware of them. You know, like, I was watching them like a movie, but I wasn’t consciously deciding to have them it wasn’t like, okay. I just emailed that essay in now. Let’s closer is. And take a moment to imagine. How much that teacher is going to fucking love my amazing essay. And how brilliant I am each just was something that would happen very spontaneously. I would send it in. And I would imagine the teacher getting the Email. And then reading it. And then, you know, would just my brain which is naturally fill in the details of all of the amazing things that were potentially going to happen. And it wasn’t even necessarily that. I one hundred percent believed that that was actually what was going to happen. It really was a kind of masturbation it really just it felt good to just go down that ego path and let my ego rub itself. So that it felt all kinds of goods, psychological feelings, and I think I really knew that I knew that. It wasn’t true probably wasn’t going to happen. But it was just a kind of like pleasant thing to do a pleasant little secret between me and my ego. There were also be kind of a dark version of these fantasies where I would imagine that I had died, and people were very very very, very sad. Even people that I didn’t even think really knew me or there were scenarios where something really awful happened to me, and everyone was really worried. Read or I was like sick. And everyone wanted me to get better or you know, any kind of situation where there was a lot of drama and a lot of seriousness and a lot of people were paying attention. And they’re like, wow, look at what age as going through what a trooper what a what a serious respectable strong individual, basically any ways in which our culture looked up to people or aggrandize them. I would have fantasies in which I was those things. As I think I’ve said before I had this incredible fascination as a child with all things Macab monsters villains. I always I always really connected more with the monster and the villain Frankenstein’s. Monster was my favorite of all the monsters followed closely by Dracula because I think I knowing deep down that I was different that I was gay always kind of related to these monstrosities. I’ve talked about this before. But there was something respectable about being feared and actually Dr James Gilligan, who’s violence expert that I talk a lot about in my shame series. He says that when you are looking for ways to feel self esteem and to feel respected by other people fear seems like one of the best methods to immediately feel respected. 00:15:10 – 00:20:00 That’s why he attributes all violence to shame. He thinks that all vie. Silence is caused by people trying to create a sense of external respect, and therefore internal respect. And I can completely relate to that. In the way that I realized villains and monsters and scaring people gave me this kind of respect this kind of power over them that they they looked up to me not in a positive way. But in a negative way and that to me still fulfilled. My need for feeling important for feeling special for feeling better in kind of perverse way feeling like I was a terrifying monster that had power over people was an anti shame fantasy. So as a result as a kid. I was constantly crawling around the house like some kind of loss raptor, or some kind of alien my favorite movie has a child as a twelve year old my favorite movie was aliens by James Cameron in which I looked up to the Zeno morph this disc-. Gusting monstrous killing machine I thought that was the coolest creature in the world. I did essays about it in my elementary school because I just looked up to that as as a kind of anti shame to be the source of power and fear, and monstrosity and evil seemed like a better thing to be nothing or no-one or worthless or useless or forgotten. At one point. And I still think this would be a good thing to do. I thought that I should actually write down every time. I have a fantasy. And maybe I’ll start doing that now, and it can be like a little segment that pops into the series every now, and then ego fantasies that I have actually had in which I tell you what the scenario was. And I tell you what my ego came up with to try to assuage potential shame or inferiority because they really are whole areas -ly transparent. They are always about me doing something ridiculously extrordinary and all of the people talking about how amazing it was. But as I’ve become increasingly aware of these fantasies. I’ve been trying to stop them from happening for a while when I really connected them to shame. I’ve found upsetting. I was so embarrassed by them. I saw how counter intuitive. They really were. They weren’t helping me really. They were keeping me out of. -ality? And when I did come back to reality. I felt worse because I knew that I wasn’t actually that amazing thing that I had just dreamt up. And what’s what’s more? I recognize that the path to not feeling inferior wasn’t about self aggrandizing. Even if I could achieve those things it wouldn’t actually stop me from feeling shame. Because what I now know at least in theory is that the key to overcoming inferiority is through equality not through superiority. So these fantasies were just adding to my desperation, my my misguided desire to be superior. I wasn’t having any fantasies about how amazingly equal. I was. But that would have been a lot more healthy. One technique. I did discover to kind of deflate these fantasies was when I recognize that I was inefficient Assy to shift the perspective. So instead of being a third person perspective where people are looking at me. I would put myself in my own head in the fantasy and look out of my own eyes. And that really undermined the anti shame appeal of the fantasies instead of all these people admiring me. I was looking out at all these people, and I suddenly realized I have no idea what these people think I don’t know if these people are actually admiring me in this fantasy scenario or they’re judging me or they don’t like me it basically just brings the fantasy back to reality. And shows that it’s impossible to create a situation where everyone approves of you. And that shouldn’t be the point the difficulty about this is that it requires this fantasy which really is only. Semi-conscious I have to then become consciously aware I’m in fantasy and I have to consciously wrestle control away from my subconscious and put myself into my own head and at that point the fantasy just kind of falls apart, which is which is good. It’s probably better than staying in that fantasy and self aggrandizing longer and longer, but it doesn’t really stop the root of the fantasy. 00:20:00 – 00:23:53 It doesn’t stop the fantasy from happening. It’s basically just a way to forge it while it’s in progress. And I’m starting to realize that it may not be possible for me to stop my ego from van Cise ING, I mean, it might ego has built up this technique over almost four decades as a self protective mechanism against inferior Oreta. So it will be very difficult to rewire my brain. I I guess it is possible. I do think it’s possible. But I don’t think being hard on myself is the way to go about it. I don’t think it’s going to happen through. Just pure willpower or sheer, desire or logic. It’s gonna take a lot of reprogramming. And I think that in the meantime, I might actually be better off to just accept these fantasies for what they are to to look at them with a degree of love and say, oh, that’s Doral. Look at what my ego thinks it needs to do in order to be meaningful in order to be useful in order to protect me in order to keep me alive. Essentially, I can accept them and look at them with a degree of lightness and with a degree of humor. And I think that is a lot more likely to take away their power than to fight against them. And I’m finding as you may have already noticed in this podcast that one of the best ways for me to accept them is to recognize that they aren’t really me. It’s just one of many aspects of my personality, and it doesn’t define me. I’m basically learning not to identify so much with those fantasies. Sure, they’re happening and they’re going to keep happening for the foreseeable future. And they may not be the most healthy means of dealing with shame. But I recognize that there’s so much more to me than just these ridiculous fantasies, and by creating that space, and that that perspective, I’m able to see them as a lot less powerful. I’m able to kind of undermine them Mabel to kind of laugh at them. I mean, we’ll talk about them with you right now. I obviously didn’t have the courage to talk about them like this in the past. I mean, in fact, I wasn’t even. Quite conscious enough of them to really do. So except in the last few years, but I’ve clearly already done a good enough job of disassociating myself from them enough that I can have joke about them. I can I can speak the truth of them. And that is such a powerful change when we can name something when we can be honest about it when we can speak our truth, it no longer controls us as Brunei Brown would say it allows us to write the end of the story. So I’m happy that I’ve gotten to a point where I can see these antitheses as an aspect of my ego. You know, trying its best its own adorable misguided way to basically keep me alive to to keep my psychological sense of A.J. strong through these fantasies and just appreciate them for what they are. And to. Talk about them and to integrate them into my life, hopefully in an ongoing amusing series that being said, I am now imagining this podcast coming to an end and the music starts to play and you the listener think to yourself, “Wow, this A.J. guy is such a brave genius…”

Remote Year One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “How was that travel program you did?” This refers to Remote Year, a working travel program designed for remote workers or “digital nomads” that I did in 2017-2018. This episode answers that question in depth and even includes some thoughts from two of my travel mates, editor and vlogger Justin Poore and insight researcher Deborah Simmons. Remote Year was like summer camp for adults. Summer camp that lasts all year. It was the most travel, tourism, learning, partying, writing, drinking, volunteering, socializing, and working I have ever done. It was easily the most fun I’ve had in a single year in my adult life, and that is especially impressive given that I was going through a serious breakup at the same time.  What makes Remote Year so amazing is the community. I discovered that if you get to know anyone well enough, you learn to love them. 50 strangers from around the world who I probably never would have connected with under any other circumstances became my travel family by the end of the year and I expect that I will stay in touch with almost all of them to varying degrees for the foreseeable future. One of Justin’s vlogs from the end of our year together perfectly encapsulates the experience and the people, and if you look carefully I appear in it at least twice:  The program isn’t without its downsides, of course, but I should note that pretty much everything I’ve taken part in since my shame breakthrough has been positive and insightful in one way or another, so it’s probably a matter of mindset and expectations as much as anything else. For more on my experiences during Remote Year, check out the episodes on Spontaneity and The A.J. Tax.

Circumcision To celebrate my 40th episode (and the fact that I had no time to record this week), I present a special bonus micro-edition of the podcast reliving in embarrassing detail the story of my circumcision at the innocent age of 9 and how it led to me accidentally engaging in bestiality (well, sort of). I actually recorded this episode months ago but worried it was too risque to post. Desperate times call for desperate measures though! And anyway, in true Discomfortable fashion, the fact that I don’t want to post it is proof enough that I need to. Consider this fair warning that if you don’t want to hear me talk in depth about foreskin and masturbation then this episode is not for you.  One of my mandates with Discomfortable is to embrace radical honesty, as secrecy is one of the breeding grounds for shame. So humour me as I periodically weave some TMI themes into my usual programming of deep thoughts and psychedelic adventures (not all orgasms can be in the heart, after all). Sometimes the shame angle is just posting the episode itself! Also, apologies if this episode isn’t risque enough, my prudish conditioning means talking about anything remotely sexual is super taboo. To each their own discomfort 😉

Silence 3 On the third and final day of my silent meditation retreat at the Hridaya Yoga Centre, I made it my mission to experience one of these “heart orgasms” I’d heard so much about. It turns out that thinking about sex while meditating leads to embarrassment, not an orgasm in your heart, so I needed another strategy. I focussed instead on a method they called “blowing on the embers of the heart”, which is a breathing and visualization exercise that concentrates love and attention on the heart centre. And it worked… During the lecture that day, they tried to link their philosophy with science by pointing out that there was an anatomical basis for Ramana Maharshi’s assertion that the gateway to the heart centre (not to mention “reality/God/everything”) was on the right-hand side of the chest and not the left where your heart resides. Presumably unbeknownst to Maharshi at the time, there actually is something on the very right edge of the heart called the Sinoatrial node. This tiny cluster of cells is the pacemaker of the heart, stimulating it into beating with rapid electrical pulses. As I sunk into the most peaceful and focused meditation of my life, I was surprised to find that there really was a tiny fluttering sensation in the centre of my chest, to the right of my heartbeat (which I could also feel vividly) that really did feel like some kind of profound electrical sensation. It kind of blew my mind. Is it really possible that one could get so focused on their body that they could actually feel the Sinoatrial node in action? I wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it felt amazing! I spent the rest of the day experimenting with this fluttering rhythm, which at one point I started to visualize more as the flickering flame of life keeping me alive. I discovered that it reacts strongly to emotion, or perhaps more accurately, it felt like its reactions are what we call emotion. This flickering flame of life took me down an internal rabbit hole that led not only to a possible heart orgasm but even potentially to the “feeling” of God that I spoke about in last week’s episode. 

Silence 2 On the second day of my 3-day silent meditation retreat at the quirky Hridaya Yoga Centre in Mazunte, Mexico, my inner adventures took a turn for the surreal. First of all, I finally caught the “glowing football” in my mind that is my consciousness, only to accidentally dissolve it in a fountain of love. Then I faced-off against the most pleasantly sadistic torturer, our yoga teacher, who metaphorically stabbed me in the gut and then asked me to appreciate how it felt. After lunch, I almost ended my vow of silence prematurely in a fit of uncontrollable laughter when I learned that it’s apparently possible to have an orgasm in your heart. Finally, I decided that the Hridaya Yoga philosophy is basically an entire religion founded on worshipping a feeling in your chest. I thought that was pretty absurd until I remembered that feelings are everything! When you think about it, emotions are the best part of life. They are what give our lives meaning and enjoyment, so worshipping them like a religion kind of makes sense. Then I had an epiphany: God is a feeling! What we call God is probably just an instinctual emotion of awe, mystery, and universal connection that we all have the natural capacity to feel. But there’s a catch! Since our feelings are mostly rooted in beliefs, what if you can only feel the profound feeling that is God if you actually believe that there really is a God? That must be what they call faith, the ideological leap you need to make in order to feel something transcendent that actually just originates in your own chest. My adventures in silence continue on Day 3.

Silence 1 When I started recording my reactions to the 3-day silent meditation retreat I finished last week, it took me a few hours just to get through the first day! So I decided to turn it into a trilogy, with one episode chronicling each day of this mind-expanding retreat. The retreat was actually a bit of an afterthought, a good way to kill a weekend in Mexico following my week of volunteering in rural Oaxaca. But it turned out to be a surprisingly profound inner adventure — one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had since doing Ayahuasca last year, and I was completely sober this time (unless they put something in the vegan slop they kept feeding us…). The retreat took place at the Hridaya Yoga Centre in sleepy but picturesque Mazunte, Mexico (just an hour away from popular beach paradise Puerto Escondido). I didn’t know anything about Hridaya going into it, but I have been meditating inconsistently over the last few years with good results. Meditation and mindfulness is one of the subjects I want to explore a lot more this year, and this was a great start, even though the Hridaya method is quite different — and decidedly more “woo woo” — than any meditation I’ve tried before. It is based on the teachings of Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Here’s a video of the founder, Sahajananda, explaining more about Hridaya Yoga:   In this episode, I’ve tried my best to explain the Hridaya philosophy as far as I understand it (which is not well), and detail all of the amusing and fascinating things I experienced over my first day of silence, meditation, and weird-ass yoga. There were moments of absurdity, moments of cultish creepiness, and moments of genuine insight. I started very openminded but grew increasingly skeptical of the Hridaya brand of new age spirituality, only to discover that there really was something special about their method after all… though I’m not convinced that their interpretation of that something is necessarily correct. My adventures in silence continue on Day 2.

Fear This week’s podcast is all about fear, or more specifically, the surprising amount of fear I felt two weeks ago after signing up for a week of volunteering in rural Oaxaca, Mexico with a charity called All Hands and Hearts. As someone who spends most of his days “working” behind a computer, the idea of a week of hard manual labour was intimidating to say the least, especially in a rural and dangerous area of Mexico.  But the upside is that it provided me with a rare and insightful opportunity to explore an emotion that I don’t get to feel that often, that intensely, or for that long: fear! It wasn’t the sudden jump scare of fear, it was the slow burn of impending doom. And as the logistics of my volunteering trip began to crystallize, I became increasingly unsure if I could actually go through with it.  As I stewed and agonized over it, my mother sent me the following quote about fear by Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa: “Going beyond fear begins when we examine our fear: our anxiety, nervousness, concern, and restlessness. If we look into our fear, if we look beneath the veneer, the first thing we find is sadness, beneath the nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up, vibrating all the time. When we slow down, when we relax with our fear, we find sadness, which is calm and gentle.  … You might think that, when you experience fearlessness you will hear the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or see a great explosion in the sky, but it doesn’t happen that way. Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.” As I thought about this quote, I realized that it really did feel like my fear was actually a form of sadness, but like sadness in fast forward. In fact, the more I reflected on the feelings I was having, the more it seemed like my fear had 3 distinct components: A negative interpretation of events My instinctual flight reflex  Sadness First of all, I realized that if I interpreted my impending volunteering trip in a more positive and optimistic way, I wouldn’t have any reason to be afraid. As I discovered in episode 33 (when I ate dinner in the dark and assumed the restaurant must be seedy just because I couldn’t see it), I have a bias that automatically interprets new experiences, lack of information, and the unknown as negative and dangerous. This bias was in full effect here and it’s something that I want to work on in the future, strengthening my sense of trust and optimism.  Secondly, when I realized that this whole experience of fear was really my instinctual flight reflex but in slow motion, I recognized that my panicked brain wasn’t actually trying to help me solve the problem, it was just trying to convince me not to go through with it, in order to “protect” itself from those negative assumptions noted above. Ultimately, I had to tune out those misguided impulses so that I could get to work figuring out the logistics of the trip.  And lastly, when I recognized that my fear was really a form of sadness, I was able to just sit with that feeling and accept it. I needed to grieve over the sense of safety and contentment that I had to sacrifice in order to go on this new adventure, which was a worthwhile trade-off once I saw it for what it was. This gentle introspection and acceptance of sadness is, as Chögyam pointed out, the true path to fearlessness. In the end, my experience with All Hands and Hearts was great and the video above proves that I actually made it (though you have to look very carefully to see me pouring concrete from a wheelbarrow). I highly recommend anyone interested in a volunteering adventure join one of their projects (it’s not that scary after all, I swear!) or you can just donate money. They are one of the few charities that will accept, house, and train unskilled volunteers without any charge (sometimes they even cover travel). I’ll definitely be going back, and probably for more than a week next time!

Tradition   I’m currently in rural Oaxaca, Mexico where I just finished a week of volunteering with All Hands and Hearts to rebuild an elementary school after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake destabilized the area in 2017.  There’s nothing like some hard manual labour to signal the definitive end of the holidays, and it got me thinking about the role holiday traditions like Christmas play in my life. So in this episode, I recount the stories of some of my favourite traditions, most of which actually began within my lifetime either by accident or conscious creation. It has become clear to me that traditions can be a powerful tool for connection, community, and comfort, as well as something to look forward to to break up the monotony of “normal” life. Some traditions, however, have lost their meanings altogether and may even trap us in outdated customs and ways of thinking. The classic musical Fiddler on the Roof comes to mind as an example of the way tradition can stifle younger generations and create unnecessary rifts between old and young. My view is that the real meaning of tradition is to create connection and community, so if an old tradition is tearing people apart then it is no longer serving its most useful function. These outdated or “dead” traditions need to either be retired or changed to revitalize them and recreate a tangible sense of purpose and importance for the people involved in them.  Christmas comes to mind as a perfect example of a tradition that in many ways has gone off the rails. We think we have to do Christmas in a certain pre-prescribed way, on a certain day, as if there were something inherently sacred about it. But it seems most of the traditions associated with Christmas have already been co-opted by corporations anyway, so why can’t we all change Christmas to make it more meaningful to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities? We can! Traditions were created by people no smarter than you, and so you have the power to change them, ignore them, or even create our own. This could mean inventing a whole new tradition completely using your imagination, or by taking inspiration from other cultures, or by turning a one-time, spontaneous communal experience into a kind of ritual and celebration that you repeat every year.  If you have your own unique or favourite traditions I’d love to hear about (and possibly steal) them!  The short film that I mention during the story of the birth of our Krampus tradition is called Hirsute, and you can watch it here:  Hirsute from A.J. Bond on Vimeo.