Podcasts about waking up a guide

Bright on Buddhism Episode 79 - How ought we evaluate the agenda of secular Buddhism and other sources in English about Buddhism? Could one not argue that upon encountering a more secularly inclined audience, it would make sense for Buddhism to be syncretized to a more secular slant? How did/do people in Asia feel about secular Buddhism? Resources: Batchelor, Stephen (1998), Buddhism without Beliefs, Riverhead Books, ISBN 1-57322-656-4; Batchelor, Stephen (2015), After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300205183; Harris, Sam (2014), Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1451636017; Payne, Richard (2021), Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808896; Stuart, Daniel M. (2020), S.N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808186; Ward, Tim (1995), What the Buddha Never Taught, Celestial Arts, ISBN 0-89087-687-8; Wright, Robert (2017), Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781439195468; https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/can-someone-be-a-secular-buddhist/; https://secularbuddhism.com/; https://secularbuddhism.org/; https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/an-introduction-to-secular-buddhism/; Cliteur, Paul (2010). The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism. ISBN 978-1-4443-3521-7; Taylor, Charles (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02676-6; Kosmin, Barry A. and Ariela Keysar (2007). Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives. Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. ISBN 978-0-9794816-0-4, 0-9794816-0-0; Martin, David (2005). On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-5322-6; Benson, Iain (2004). Considering Secularism in Farrows, Douglas(ed.). Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society McGill-Queens Press. ISBN 0-7735-2812-1; Berlinerblau, Jacques (2012) "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom" ISBN 978-0-547-47334-5; Kyrlezhev, Aleksandr. “The Postsecular Age: Religion and Culture Today.” Trans. Joera Mulders and Philip Walters. Religion, State and Society 36.1 (2008): 21-31. Print.; McLennan, Gregor. “The Postsecular Turn.” Theory, Culture & Society 27.4 (2010): 3-20. Print.; King, Mike. “Art and the Postsecular.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 4.1 (2005): 3-17. Print.; Kaufmann, Michael. “Locating the Postsecular.” Religion & Literature 41.3 (2009): 67-73. Print.; Hadden, Jeffrey K. “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory.” Social Forces 65.3 (1987): 587-611. Print.; The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics by Peter L. Berger, Editor, David Martin, Contribution by, Grace Davie, Contribution by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, (143p) ISBN 978-0-8028-4691-4; Hjelm, Titus (September 20, 2019). "Rethinking the theoretical base of Peter L. Berger's sociology of religion: Social construction, power, and discourse". Sage Journals. Do you have a question about Buddhism that you'd like us to discuss? Let us know by tweeting to us @BrightBuddhism, emailing us at Bright.On.Buddhism@gmail.com, or joining us on our discord server, Hidden Sangha https://discord.gg/tEwcVpu! Credits: Nick Bright: Script, Cover Art, Music, Voice of Hearer, Co-Host Proven Paradox: Editing, mixing and mastering, social media, Voice of Hermit, Co-Host --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/brightonbuddhism/message

Bright on Buddhism Episode 77 - What is secular Buddhism? What are its origins and principles? What are some of its strengths and weaknesses? Resources: Batchelor, Stephen (1998), Buddhism without Beliefs, Riverhead Books, ISBN 1-57322-656-4; Batchelor, Stephen (2015), After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300205183; Harris, Sam (2014), Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1451636017; Payne, Richard (2021), Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808896; Stuart, Daniel M. (2020), S.N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 9781611808186; Ward, Tim (1995), What the Buddha Never Taught, Celestial Arts, ISBN 0-89087-687-8; Wright, Robert (2017), Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781439195468; https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/can-someone-be-a-secular-buddhist/; https://secularbuddhism.com/; https://secularbuddhism.org/; https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/an-introduction-to-secular-buddhism/; Cliteur, Paul (2010). The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism. ISBN 978-1-4443-3521-7; Taylor, Charles (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02676-6; Kosmin, Barry A. and Ariela Keysar (2007). Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives. Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. ISBN 978-0-9794816-0-4, 0-9794816-0-0; Martin, David (2005). On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-5322-6; Benson, Iain (2004). Considering Secularism in Farrows, Douglas(ed.). Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society McGill-Queens Press. ISBN 0-7735-2812-1; Berlinerblau, Jacques (2012) "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom" ISBN 978-0-547-47334-5; Kyrlezhev, Aleksandr. “The Postsecular Age: Religion and Culture Today.” Trans. Joera Mulders and Philip Walters. Religion, State and Society 36.1 (2008): 21-31. Print.; McLennan, Gregor. “The Postsecular Turn.” Theory, Culture & Society 27.4 (2010): 3-20. Print.; King, Mike. “Art and the Postsecular.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 4.1 (2005): 3-17. Print.; Kaufmann, Michael. “Locating the Postsecular.” Religion & Literature 41.3 (2009): 67-73. Print.; Hadden, Jeffrey K. “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory.” Social Forces 65.3 (1987): 587-611. Print.; The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics by Peter L. Berger, Editor, David Martin, Contribution by, Grace Davie, Contribution by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, (143p) ISBN 978-0-8028-4691-4; Hjelm, Titus (September 20, 2019). "Rethinking the theoretical base of Peter L. Berger's sociology of religion: Social construction, power, and discourse". Sage Journals. Do you have a question about Buddhism that you'd like us to discuss? Let us know by tweeting to us @BrightBuddhism, emailing us at Bright.On.Buddhism@gmail.com, or joining us on our discord server, Hidden Sangha https://discord.gg/tEwcVpu! Credits: Nick Bright: Script, Cover Art, Music, Voice of Hearer, Co-Host Proven Paradox: Editing, mixing and mastering, social media, Voice of Hermit, Co-Host --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/brightonbuddhism/message

Brought to you by Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company—Lane Shackleton is CPO of Coda, where he's been leading the product and design team for over eight years. Lane started his career as an Alaskan climbing guide and then as a manual reviewer of AdWords ads before becoming a product specialist at Google and later a Group PM at YouTube. He also writes a weekly newsletter with insights and rituals for PMs, product teams, and startups. In today's conversation, we discuss:• Principles that set great PMs apart• Rituals of great product teams• The fine line between OKRs and strategy, and why it matters• “Two-way write-up”• The story of how skippable YouTube ads were born and lessons learned• How to gauge personal career growth• “Tim Ferriss Day” and its impact on Coda's history• How Lane bootstrapped his way to CPO from the bottom of the tech ladder—Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-sets-great-teams-apart-lane-shackleton-cpo-of-coda/ —Where to find Lane Shackleton:• X: https://twitter.com/lshackleton• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laneshackleton• Substack: https://lane.substack.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Lane's background(04:03) Working as a guide in Alaska(07:32) Parallels between guiding and building software(09:12) Why Lane started studying and writing about product teams(12:49) How Lane came up with the career ladder and guiding principles(14:10) The five levels Coda's career ladder(16:30) Principles of great product managers(21:06) The beginner's-mind ritual at Coda(24:05) Two rituals: “cathedrals not bricks” and “proactive not reactive”(27:46) How to develop your own guiding principles(31:17) Learning from your “oh s**t” moments(36:03) Rituals from great product teams: HubSpot's FlashTags(42:15) Rituals from great product teams: Coda's Catalyst(47:01) Implementing rituals from other companies(49:48) How to navigate changing vs. sticking with current rituals(53:02) “Tag up” and why one-on-one meetings are harmful (55:27) Lane's handbook on strategy and rituals(57:10) How skippable ads came about on YouTube   (1:01:46) Lane's path to CPO(1:07:02) Advice for aspiring PMs(1:10:53) Tim Ferriss Day at Coda(1:13:24) Using two-way write-ups (1:19:30) The fine line between OKRs and strategy, and why it matters(1:21:41) Lightning round—Referenced:• Endurance: https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881• Bret Victor's talk “Inventing on Principle”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGqwXt90ZqA• Jeremy Britton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremybritton/• Comedian on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/60024976• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472• The Creative Act: A Way of Being: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Act-Way-Being/dp/0593652886• AlphaZero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry• Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling: https://www.amazon.com/Storyworthy-Engage-Persuade-through-Storytelling/dp/1608685489• The Moth: https://themoth.org/events• Seth Godin's website: https://www.sethgodin.com/• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph: https://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph/dp/1591846358• Tony Fadell's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uOMectkCCs• FlashTags: A Simple Hack for Conveying Context Without Confusion: https://www.onstartups.com/flashtags-a-simple-hack-for-conveying-context-without-confusion• How Coda builds product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-coda-builds-product• 100-dollar voting ritual: https://coda.io/@lshackleton/100-dollar-voting-exercise• Pixar's Brain Trust: https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Trust• Lane's product handbook: coda.io/producthandbook• The rituals of great teams | Shishir Mehrotra of Coda, YouTube, Microsoft: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-rituals-of-great-teams-shishir-mehrotra-coda-youtube-microsoft/• Principle #4: Learn by making, not talking: https://lane.substack.com/p/principle-4-learn-by-making-not-talking• Phil Farhi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philfarhi/• How to ask the right questions, project confidence, and win over skeptics | Paige Costello (Asana, Intercom, Intuit): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-ask-the-right-questions-project-confidence-and-win-over-skeptics-paige-costello-asana-intercom-intuit/• Chip Conley's website: https://chipconley.com/• Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint in Meetings. His Replacement Is Brilliant: https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/jeff-bezos-bans-powerpoint-in-meetings-his-replacement-is-brilliant.html• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595• Dory and Pulse: https://coda.io/@codatemplates/dory-and-pulse• Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great: https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Flywheel-Monograph-Accompany-Great/dp/0062933795/• Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion: https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636024• The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance: https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314• Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239• The Last Dance on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80203144• Full Swing on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81483353• Stephen Curry: Underrated on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/stephen-curry-underrated/umc.cmc.23v0wxaiwz60bjy1w4vg7npun• Arrested Development on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70140358• Shishir's interview question clip on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lennyrachitsky/video/7160779872296652078• The Ultimate Reference Check Template: https://coda.io/@startup-hiring/reference-checks-template• SwingVision: https://swing.tennis/• Waking Up app: https://www.wakingup.com/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Ryan speaks with Sam Harris about the overlap between eastern and western philosophy, how mindfulness practices like meditation help us become better Stoics, why he is so dedicated to providing his content for free, and more.Sam Harris is a philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and host of the Making Sense Podcast. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. He has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Economist, London Times, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, and he has authored five five New York Times bestselling books, including The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Check out wakingup.com/dailystoic to try Sam's hugely popular meditation app.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail

This week we meet Registered Nurse Elliott Ventress who talks about his passion for Indigenous health and comprehensive primary health care. We discuss opportunities to push yourself further to experience all the weird, wild and wonderful situations both professionally and personally rewarding in the rural and remote context. If you would like to look into the meditation app discussed in this episode, go to: Waking Up - A New Operating System for Your Mind or check out Sam Harris' book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion : Harris, Sam: Amazon.com.au: Books.  If you are interested in the works of Richard Trudgen; following link for the book "Why Warriors Lie Down and Die" by Richard Trudgen. https://www.whywarriors.com.au/services/why-warriors-lie-down-and-die/ Please note I am in no way affiliated with Sam Harris or Richard Trudgen, their book, the app or Amazon.com.au and suggest if you are interested to explore for yourself. If you are interested in more information or sharing your story and being a guest on future podcasts, contact me anurseoutwhere@outlook.com Don't forget to follow for more episodes and updates on social media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/anurseoutwhere Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anurseoutwhere Website: https://anurseoutwhere.com.au

To watch this as a video Download it and play it from the Downloads section in the Castbox app on your device.A rapid summary of the seminal passages from Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. This book is less anti-religious than you might guess from its title. So this book is not like 250 pages just beating up on religion. It's really about meditation practice which is the solution to spirituality without religion. I suspect many religious people could read this book and will be better religious people for it.

In this episode, John and I discuss his transition from the world of finance and cannabis investing into his current role as a health and wellness coach. We discuss how John's early career spent in the subprime mortgage lending market led to his introduction to Peter Schiff, an early financial commentator on the impending 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and why people have a tendency to trust groupthink over fundamentals and personal truth. From there, we discuss fundamental flaws in the structure of capitalism and why this has led to corporatism. Next we talk about decentralized autonomous organizations (“DAOs”) and the history of the failed War on Drugs, which could be more accurately considered a War on People and a War on Consciousness. We then discuss the stigma associated with psychedelics in society today, the study of flow states, and the similarities in brain physiology associated with different modalities for experiencing holotropic states of consciousness. Next, we discuss John's move from the corporate sector into wellness coaching, his experience studying at the Flow Research Collective, and how the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi helped him bridge the “mystical” elements of spiritual texts with a modern scientific understanding of psychology. We then discuss the importance of purpose in achieving flow states and the process of transforming the outward facing image you present to the world. We end the discussion on the idea of masculine and feminine energies and why toxic masculinity remains so pervasive within our culture. Please enjoy! Music: Intro/Outro: Ben Fox - The Vibe; End credits: Young Rich Pixies - A Good Mood Outro: Toxic Masculinity in a Toxic Society (starts at 1:24:24) Interview: 02/22/22 Published: 03/07/22 Check out the resources referenced: John's Website: https://www.johnrobertdowns.com/ Crash Proof: How to Survive the Coming Economic Collapse by Peter Schiff: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22127.Crash_Proof The Big Short by Michael Lewis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26889576-the-big-short Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow The Flow Research Collective: https://www.flowresearchcollective.com/ Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion by Sam Harris: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774981-waking-up Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Meaning Fit for Service: https://www.aubreymarcus.com/pages/fit-for-service-academy

Do you believe in God? Contemplating your relationship to spirit can feel supercharged with triggering emotions, especially if we've had negative or uninspiring interactions with religion in the past.  In this episode, K + L reflect on their spiritual evolution and relationship with God. From traditional rituals of childhood conditioning to the framework they feel aligned with today. They discuss how they navigated resistance around what it means to believe in God, and how the process of unlearning conventions has helped them cultivate a connection with God that feels unconditional, authentic, and life-affirming.  We also talk about: Individual journeys with religion  Coming back to a relationship with God  Spectrums of religion Judgements in religion and consequences  How to make spirituality your own Sponsors: Athletic Greens | Get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D + five FREE travel packs with your first purchase at http://www.athleticgreens.com/almost30 (athleticgreens.com/almost30) Bev | Get 20% off your first purchase + free shipping at https://drinkbev.com/pages/almost30?utm_campaign=almost_30_november_2021&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=almost_30 (drinkbev.com/almost30) or use code “ALMOST30” at checkout Elavi | Get 15% off when you use the code ALMOST30 + free shipping on 2 pouches or more at https://www.elavi.co/ (elavi.co ) Open | Get 30 days free with the code ALMOST30 at https://o-p-e-n.com/community?code=ALMOST30&utm_soure=manual&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ALMOST30 (open-together.com/almost30) Daily Harvest | Use code ALMOST30 to get up to $40 off your first box athttp://www.daily-harvest.com/almost30 ( www.daily-harvest.com/almost30) Resources: https://www.samharris.org/books/waking-up (“Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”) by Sam Harris https://www.amazon.com/Untethered-Soul-Journey-Beyond-Yourself/dp/1572245379 ( “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself” )by Michael A. Singer https://www.amazon.com/Law-One-Book-4/dp/0924608102 (“The Law of One”)  https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-God-Uncommon-Dialogue-Book-ebook/dp/B00AYJIJ2S (“Conversations with God”) by Neale Donald Walsh  Join our community: http://almost30.com/membership (almost30.com/membership) https://www.facebook.com/Almost30podcast/groups (facebook.com/Almost30podcast/groups) Podcast disclaimer can be found by visiting: https://almost30.com/disclaimer (almost30.com/disclaimer).  Find more to love at http://almost30.com/ (almost30.com)! Almost 30 is edited by http://crate.media (Crate Media).

In this episode we discuss Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris. Next time we'll discuss The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by Adrian Woolridge.

In this episode we discuss The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher. Next time we'll discuss Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris.

Episode #46: How much courage would it take to completely challenge your belief system, be shunned from your family and ask for help because it's all too much? That is exactly what was facing Michael Gallagher when he decided to find happiness and start his personal transformation journey. Hear Michael share his story and be inspired by how simple the process really can be! If you are looking for a change and want to get better, make sure to check it out!Bio:Michael has spent a lifetime studying what causes some people to adapt and transform to match their circumstances while others struggle to find their way. In his research on transformation, Michael realized there were only a few big blocks that everyone needed to build upon to create lasting change. He is the author of Waking Up: A Guide to Transformation, and has a passion for sharing these life changing tools with others. Michael has successfully built several businesses, overcoming challenges that should have left him a statistic. When Michael is not speaking at conferences, coaching or writing, you'll most likely find him traveling with his family, learning about something new or telling one of his four daughters a Dad joke.Contact Michael:Buy his bookWebsiteLinkedIn

Michael has spent a lifetime studying what causes some people to adapt and transform to match their circumstances while others struggle to find their way. In his research on transformation, Michael realized there were only a few big blocks that everyone needed to build upon to create lasting change. He is the author of Waking Up: A Guide for Transformation and has a passion for sharing these life-changing tools with others. Michael Gallagher has successfully built several businesses, overcoming challenges that should have left him a statistic.Go to www.wakingupthebook.com for his book and got to https://michaelgallagherspeaks.com/ to see more of his work.Support the show (https://www.linkedin.com/company/playing-injured-pod/, https://www.instagram.com/playinginjuredpod/)

World Without Wine - Your guide to alcohol-free living! After running WWW for 5 years and helping hundreds of people to ditch the drink and embrace alcohol-free living I've learned a thing or two. My biggest insight has been that sharing our stories around alcohol is the most powerful way we can help others - that's why the heart of this podcast is recovery stories. This week I'm chatting to Michael Gallagher - an author, a speaker and a coach. In this Episode Michael talks about his hectic childhood - with a mother who was a Jehovah's Witness and a father who was a career criminal Looking back on his years as an addict Michael realises he "mistook pleasure for happiness" He built a successful career in sales but was still drinking heavily - mostly vodka During his last stay in rehab he attempted suicide and cried out for help - and something shifted for him We talked about the importance of living in line with your values - creativity and loyalty are important values for Michael We need to know what's driving us so that we can stop drinking and change our lives We talked about how corporates promote the "work hard, play hard" culture - and that the "play hard" always involves alcohol Michael is trying to change this by promoting mindfulness and meditation programs within companies Michael has written a book called "Waking Up - A Guide for Transformation - available on Kindle and at Amazon For more information on Michael and his work check out his website:- https://michaelgallagherspeaks.com/ More info Subscription membership for World Without Wine is only R75 (£4/$5) a month - you can join up HERE To access our website click HERE To join our Dry January Annual Fundraiser click HERE - a small donation will provide you with community and online support during January Episode Sponsor This episode is sponsored by the WWW Membership Program. If you want to change your relationship with alcohol then sign up today. Read more about our 8-step program and subscribe HERE. Help us to spread the word! We made this podcast so that we can reach more people who need our help. Please subscribe and share. We release a podcast episode every Saturday morning. You can follow World Without Wine on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can catch our FB live on Saturday mornings (11am SAST) and you can join our private Facebook group HERE Thank you for listening! Till Next Week Janet x

The answer to whether or not the self is an illusion is tricky—it really depends on what you mean by both self and illusion. In this episode, we challenge the sense of self that we all feel from the first-person subjective experience. We all feel like we are riding around inside of our heads looking out at the world. We don't feel like we are identical to our bodies, but instead that we have bodies—we look down at them from up here inside of our heads. Nondualism:Most people would say that they are behind their eyes in the center of consciousness. But neuroscientifically there is no place in the brain for such a self to exist. And we know from optical illusions that the brain can be easily fooled. It is in this sense that the self can be shown to be an illusion because like all illusions, it disappears when you examine it more closely. This experience is known as nondualism or non-dual awareness, and it is when the sense of subject and object—of you in your head and the world out there—merge into one unified experience. But this is not to say that you aren't real or even that the self isn't real. Illusions can be like any emergent phenomena—on one level of analysis they don't exist but on another level, it makes perfect sense to talk about them. Temperature, for example, is an emergent phenomenon. Temperature is the average kinetic energy of the particles in a system. So it does not make sense to talk about the temperature of one atom, but that does not mean that it never makes sense to talk about temperature. I think of the self—the concept of being an "I" or a subject—in the same emergent way. There are times when you can look closely and realize that you are not a separate subject. This experience of nondualism is beautiful and worth exploring. Sometimes it happens on accident—you've probably even had such a self-transcending moment without realizing it—and sometimes you can induce it through the practice of specific techniques (linked below). But the fact that the self is an illusion doesn't mean that you have to experience the non-dual emptiness of consciousness all of the time. And it doesn't mean that you have to completely dispense with the concept of self. Most of the time it is perfectly valid to be a separate subject who has a name and an identity. What's the point?For me, the point of nondualism and of practicing non-dual awareness is just to be able to see this deeper reality whenever I want. Because it is the sense of being a separate self that creates most of our suffering in life, and it can be an immense relief to let go of it—to realize that there is nobody inside of your head to experience the suffering. Suffering doesn't go away, but the sufferer can. So with a meditation practice to give you some concentration, you can get underneath the many layers of the mind to realize that there is nobody inside of your head—there's no experiencer having the experience. There's just consciousness and its contents. Timestamps:coming soon! Links:https://samharris.org/taming-the-mind/ (Taming the Mind: A conversation with Dan Harris) https://youtu.be/fajfkO_X0l0 (Sam Harris: The Self is an Illusion) https://www.livescience.com/55999-is-your-self-just-an-illusion.html (Is Your 'Self' Just an Illusion?) by Robert Lawrence Kuhn https://samharris.org/podcasts/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/ (Drugs and the Meaning of Life) by Sam Harris https://samharris.org/books/waking-up/ (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion) by Sam Harris https://www.amazon.com/Having-No-Head-Rediscovery-Obvious/dp/1878019198 (On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious) by Douglas E. Harding Related Exploring Kodawari Articles:https://exploringkodawari.blog/what-is-consciousness/ (What is Consciousness?) https://exploringkodawari.blog/what-is-meditation/ (What is Meditation?) https://exploringkodawari.blog/modular-theory-of-mind/ (The Modular Theory of Mind)... Support this podcast

Evolved idiots welcomes Michael Gallagher, a nationally recognized expert who has spent half a lifetime studying the subject of transformation. He is the author of the book, Waking Up : A Guide for Transformation. Find the book @ WakingUpTheBook.com Connect with Michael Gallagher @ MichaelGallagherSpeaks.com 0:00 - Opening 1:20 - Group Think 8:45 - The Importance of Critical Thinking 17:01 - Maintaining Curiosity 21:41 - Spiritual Experience of Rehab 26:37 - Psychedelics as Therapeutics 30:04 - The Energy that Connects Us All 37:41 - Practicing Meditation 42:33 - Pursuing Never-ending Goals 48:29 - Expressing Gratitude 50:51 - Bridging the Division 52:10 - Public Speaking 55:00 - Advice for the Future 57:09 - Wrap Up

Michael Gallagher is an author, speaker and coach, whose recovery has involved peeling back layers of childhood trauma and family instability while examining the effects of highly controlling religious teachings. His book, Waking Up: A Guide for Transformation, is part memoir and part self-help guide. In it, Michael details dramatic events that shaped his early life and how being disfellowed and shunned from his mother's religion fuelled his mental and physical decline into addiction.  For more information, visit www.michaelgallagherspeaks.com  * Host Jean McCarthy's blog is UnPickled, and her latest books are available at www.jeanmccarthy.ca/books  

Getting Unstuck, 11/23/20, Ep. 21: "Waking Up", Michael J. Gallagher's book, Waking Up: A Guide for Transformation, is a beautifully written story about Michael's life as he grew up in a cult. In addition to a dysfunctional upbringing, Michael talks about his years of alcohol and drug addiction and what he did to get unstuck, what our biggest blocks are and how we can transform our lives. His book is available on Amazon and othe retailers. You can find Michael here: https://michaelgallagherspeaks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.gallagher.3139 Instagram; https://www.instagram.com/michaelgallagherspeaks/?hl=en Edited by: Joe Fenton - instagram: @felony_fenton Music by: Russ Linder - russell_2386@yahoo.com Contact Sharon: gettingunstuck123@gmail.com

Michael Gallagher's childhood was the antithesis of the All American Family. With a mother completely ensconced in being a Jehovah's Witness and his addicted father in and out of prison, Michael quickly learned to escape using alcohol and cocaine. In his book, Waking Up: A Guide for Transformation, Michael tells his story of how he finally woke up and began using tools that transformed his life. Join Rich as he chats with Michael and hear first hand how he came back from addiction to live a life full of love and gratitude.Michael has spent a lifetime studying what causessome people to adapt and transform to matchtheir circumstances while others struggle to findtheir way. In his research on transformation,Michael realized there were only a few big blocksthat everyone needed to build upon to createlasting change. He is the author of Waking Up: AGuide for Transformation, and has a passion forsharing these life-changing tools with others.Michael Gallagher has successfully built severalbusinesses, overcoming challenges that shouldhave left him a statistic.When Michael is not speaking at conferences, coaching or writing you ‘llmost likely find him traveling with his family, learning about something new or telling one of his four daughters a dad joke.Email- michael@michaelgallagherspeaks.comwww.wakingupthebook.comhttps://michaelgallagherspeaks.com/

In, episode 005 - LESSON LEARNED - Breaking up with the imaginary success checklist, we deep dive the following: • I share a new 'grow through the hard stuff' lesson • I define what the success checklist looks like in my world • We look at how to identify if you are living by your own version of the imaginary success checklist • 5 steps to breaking up with the imaginary success checklist and living life on your terms Resources: 'Everything is Figureoutable' by Marie Forleo 'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion' by Sam Harris Waking Up App - Sam Harris' meditation app Quotes: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better” Marie Forleo - 'Everything is Figureoutable' “There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion—a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one's mind or body—thoughts, sensations, moods—without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant.” - Sam Harris - 'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion' "All beliefs are a choice and choices can be changed." Marie Forleo - 'Everything is Figureoutable' Let's connect on Instagram! @but.whatifyoudid.thepodcast Be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode, and leave a review! I LOVE hearing from you!Leave us a 5 star review, screenshot and send to @butwhatifyoudidpod on IG and Alyson will gift you a free one to one Breathwork session as a thank you for being apart of our amazing community. Offer good until end of 2024. **This is an affiliate link - I do receive a small commission when you use my link to shop. This helps to offset the costs of the show. Check out GutPersonal! - Use code 'Butwhatifyoudid' to save 10%Connect with AlysonConnect with Khloe1:1 Life Coaching with Alyson Follow along with the Podcast on Social!Check out our Community Newsletter--> Subscribe here!

Training your mind is one way to boost your chances of success in any endeavor, including running your law practice. Meditation is a learnable skill that can help you improve focus and clarity, as well as increase the number of practical insights you have. I've blogged about the origins and development of my meditation practice. I started out by using a free iPhone app called Headspace, and that helped me gain momentum and stay on track for over 4 years. More recently, after listening to this podcast interview of Sam Harris I decided to try his Waking Up app. I've gone past the 5-day free trial and started using the paid lessons and am finding it very helpful. I also recommend Harris's excellent book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. But, however you initiate your meditation practice the key is consistency. If you practice every day, even if some days it's only for 2 minutes, that's better than an inconsistent practice. The results you'll see from doing meditation consistently are powerful and will change your life in many positive ways.

Fantasists and zealots can be found on both sides of the debate over guns in America. On the one hand, many gun-rights advocates reject even the most sensible restrictions on the sale of weapons to the public. On the other, proponents of stricter gun laws often seem unable to understand why a good person would ever want ready access to a loaded firearm. Between these two extremes we must find grounds for a rational discussion about the problem of gun violence. In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and I discuss The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris. In this blogpost, Harris weighs arguments and anti arguments for and against gun ownership control. We still have more guns and more gun violence than any other developed country, but the correlation between guns and violence in the United States is far from straightforward. Thirty percent of urban households have at least one firearm. This figure increases to 42 percent in the suburbs and 60 percent in the countryside. As one moves away from cities, therefore, the rate of gun ownership doubles. And yet gun violence is primarily a problem in cities. It is the people of Detroit, Oakland, Memphis, Little Rock, and Stockton who are at the greatest risk of being killed by guns. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Motivations behind shootings in America Why the US situation cannot be compared to other countries and the need of a unique solution The difficulties our brains have processing statistics, and the skewed importance we give to events School guards and gun use training and licensing Why it’s very unlikely that we will talk with aliens one day And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to read The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris! A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book that discuss our brain limitations, as well as our episode on Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb, on the topic of the importance of having personal experience and true knowledge when talking about hot topics. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show National Rifle Association – NRA [14:18] AR 15 [15:13] Parkland High School’s shooting [14:15] Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting [22:15] Aurora Cinema in Colorado shooting [22:58] Orlando Nightclub shooting [22:58] Virginia Tech shooting [28:48] UT Austin shooting [28:59] Revolver Speed Reload video [37:23] Warrior Gene [45:47] I gave you power - Nas [56:40] Vegas shooting questions of investigation [1:03:48] Unabomber [1:04:55] DC sniper attack [1:05:41] Columbine killers [1:17:36] Books mentioned The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris Godel Escher Bach [29:41] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [2:19] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician by Michihiko Hachiya [08:40] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death [15:37] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris [01:33:20] People mentioned Sam Harris Kid Rock [12:18] Jocko [20:50] Elon Musk [45:18] (on this podcast) Pepper the Poochon [48:49] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [46:21] (Antifragile episode) Chris Rock [57:48] Barack Obama [1:01:02] Show Topics 0:00 – Escalation of gun violence and controversy about the definition of mass shooting. The lack and the need of rational arguments in favor or against gun control. 4:48 – Two ways of talking about guns and regulation. The perfect world scenario, where guns do not exist. The current world, where they do. Reasons to why America may not be able to copy and paste regulations from other countries which have a completely different contexts. DNA of countries: starting with the individual freedom vs starting with the collective and scaling down to individual. 9:57 – Hedge against tyranny. It's not about the individual right to have arms, but the State's right to have militia. An armed country makes it more threatening to be invaded. 13:06 – Safe and unsafe gun use. Most of people have a very skewed opinion about guns but lacks deep knowledge about them. Campaigns for and against resort in fear rather than education. Sides attack the weakest argument of the other, instead of dismantling the strongest one. Story behind the AR15 name. 17:56 – Arguments in favor of gun ownership. Police will never arrive on time in a home invasion situation. In a world without guns, the bully wins over the others. Guns even the physical playfield. A weak person could defend itself from a physically strong one. Limitations of Martial Arts in real life. Escaping a dangerous situation as a better strategy than engaging in it. 22:15 – Comparing gun deaths to car accidents and medical errors. According to statistics, gun problems are a problem of population density and not a problem of guns ownership: there are more weapons in rural America, but mass shootings occur in cities. Murder rate going down after assault weapon federal ban expiration coincidence and possible causes. 29:4 – Why Media and people would care more about the life o a kid in New Talents Life than the life of gangsters in Detroit. Different reactions for 9/11 and what happens everyday in Middle East. Difficulties to process statistics and emotional attachment in 1-to-1 relationships. Mass shooting deaths represent just 0.1% 37:42 – Original meaning vs evolved meaning of the American Constitution. Different ban treatment for assault weapons and handguns. Drawing the line in which weapons to ban and which not. 41:33 – California and New York banning 17 rounds magazines. Arming Mars' colonizers. 47:48 – Logistics of breaking ins would be easier with a ban law. Dogs as deterrents to break ins. Civilians shouldn't intervene in dangerous situations. When speaking about gun ownership, we should always include training. The Japanese case, where to own a weapon you have to be trained and your license renewed as for driving cars. For cars and certain businesses training is mandatory. How to circumvent the Second Amendment requiring infinite training. 53:27 – Mental health issues and buying guns. Suicide and domestic violence may be reduced without weapons. Abortion sucitates such much discussion and viewpoints as guns. Cause vs magnitude of events. Knife problems in Chinese schools. Guns do enable to kill people faster. 58:58 – Putting guards for schools instead of arming teachers. Politicians against school guards lacking skin in the game, because they have personal guards. Coincidence of mass shootings happening in gun-free places. 1:03:56 – Motivations behind mass shootings. Armed teachers may introduce more "variability". Deterrent effect is difficult to measure. 1:09:51 Idea: giving guns to kids! Training kids how to behavior in dangerous situations. Many schools do have cops around, but probably not because of terrorist events. 1:13:47 – Imperfect Justice system may be corrected by private justice. Some countries may not have guns problems because of a "barbaric" Justice system. Physical punishment as a deterrent. Mass attention as a motivator for shooting. 1:17:47 – Symbolic steps towards more gun control. Veterans could be re-included as school guards and would be better experienced in fire situations. Guns training and licenses would be a billion dollars/year business. 1:23:29 – Considerations for a Constitutional Amendment modification? 1:24:25 – Shift in attitudes and shared responsibility is the way to solve a unique US problem. Tweet to us and share your inputs! 1:27:34 – Sponsors time! Four Sigmatic has a new Adaptogen Mushroom Coffee, which has Tulsi and Astragalus. A special one to make you go on tangents! Use the Chaga one, perfect for brainstorming, and Adaptogen for execution. You get 15% off with our link. Check out Perfecto Keto for all your keto related needs. Check the Peaches & Cream, and Chocolate & Vanilla Exogenous Ketones. They also have a Keto Pre-Workout for a boost before exercising. Use the coupon code revealed in the episode to get a discount. Kettle & Fire are the purveyors of artisanal bone broth, with all the collageny ancestral goodness. You can keep it in your cabinet, perfect for a warm treat during a snowstorm. 1:31:24 Leave a review on iTunes, but not a bad one! :) Support the show by using our Amazon sponsored link. Subscribe to the Mailing List and tell your friends! Tell Evernote to listen to our bonus material.

Waking Up is a podcast by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, philosopher and best-selling author. The podcast aligns itself with one of his five books called, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion. In his podcast, Sam explores some of the most critical questions about the human mind, society, and current events. Sam is publicly positioned as an expert in the fields of neuroscience, philosophy, religion and spiritual practice. His conversations with his guests are broad, controversial and insightful. Enjoy my review here!

“Skin in the Game is about four topics in one: a) uncertainty and the reliability of knowledge (both practical and scientific, assuming there is a difference), or in less polite words bullshit detection, b) symmetry in human affairs, that is, fairness, justice, responsibility, and reciprocity, c) information sharing in transactions, and d) rationality in complex systems and in the real world. That these four cannot be disentangled is something that is obvious when one has…skin in the game.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and I discuss Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Taleb. In this book, Taleb touches in many of the topics he’s covered in his previous work, such as virtue signaling and probability, and most of all, true risk taking. "[...] what people resent—or should resent—is the person at the top who has no skin in the game [...]" We cover a wide range of topics, including: Academia and its capability —or lack of it— of predicting real life. Having skin in the game and how it affects your behavior. How minorities impose their preferences to majorities. Judging a complex system by its elements. Sam Harris’ scalding opinion of Nassim Taleb. Virtue signaling. And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb. "Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason." If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Antifragile by Nassim Taleb to dive deeper into Taleb’s work, and our episode on 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, so you too can imagine the awesome podcast Jordan and Taleb could create together. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Nassim Taleb on Medium [01:45] Nat Chat [01:04] (Antifragile episode) Twitter [03:48] Uber [13:04] Venture Capital [15:30] Y Combinator [15:37] Startup Company [15:37] Hedge Fund [17:09] Cryptocurrency [18:16] Gilgamesh coin [19:00] Lindy Effect  [21:40] Virtue Signaling [24:32] Middlebury College [24:43] Statin [28:25] American Heart Association [31:30] Coca-Cola [35:20] Confirmation Bias [38:47] The Placebo Effect [38:50] The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority by Nassim Taleb [40:29] Kosher Food [40:29] New Atheism [45:16] Reddit [45:26] Facebook [45:27] Starbucks [45:30] Dick’s Sporting Goods [46:00] Box Company [46:52] Google [56:42] Mutual Assured Destruction [01:02:04] JPMorgan Chase [01:09:00] Apple Inc. [01:09:30] Amazon [01:09:30] Uber [01:09:33] Instacart [01:09:33] Fat Tony [01:09:52] The National Football League (NFL) [01:18:36] Tesla [01:12:54] In-n-Out Burger [1:23:33] Chipotle [1:23:33] D'Souza rips apart smug leftist student over "white privilege" [1:27:30] Humanitarians of Tinder [01:33:17] Toms Shoes [01:33:45] Malaria nets [1:34:33] Sam Harris on Nassim Taleb “insufferable” quotation [1:43:10] The best podcast ever by Sam Harris [1:49:10] Russell Brand Podcast’s Under the Skin [1:49:10] Books mentioned 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [00:39] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb [01:04] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb [02:00] The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb [02:00] The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Taleb [02:00] Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs by Morton A. Meyers [14:05] Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin [26:30] Merchants of Doubt: by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [34:54] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter [39:34] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows [52:13] (book episode) Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician by Michihiko Hachiya [01:01:28] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford [01:37:03] A History of Private Life by Paul Veyne [01:40:39] Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris [01:47:35] Lying by Sam Harris [01:47:35] People mentioned: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile episode) Hillary Clinton [06:58] Steven Pinker [06:58] [1:35:59] Ayn Rand [07:54] Anne Hearst [24:52] Charles Murray [24:57] Aaron Levie [46:51] Donald Trump [01:06:40] Marco Rubio [01:07:22] Chris Christie [01:07:31] Jeff Bezos [01:11:58] Bill Gates [01:12:05] Mark Zuckerberg [01:12:14] J.K. Rowling [01:33:00] Alexander The Great [01:36:39] Jordan B. Peterson [01:41:32] (on this podcast) Sam Harris [01:41:32] Scott Adams [01:49:26] Russell Brand [01:49:47] Jocko [01:53:40] Show Topics 01:30 – Taleb's bibliography, his previous releases. Contrasts and relations between his previous works and Skin in the Game. A greater focus in philosophy and morals, rather than the mathematical focus of his other books. Skin in the game concept for business and non-business people. 06:38 – Taleb's use of criticism of other people, perhaps partially for publicity reasons. Criticizing people at your own weight vs needless harassment. The Ayn Rand effect. 08:50 – The books’ introduction. Academia vs real life. You can’t predict the behavior of a system by studying the behavior of individual elements within the system. Emerging qualities of complex systems. Academia back-explaining knowledge that’s created practically. Skin in the game for Roman architects and medicine scientists. 14:57 – True progress is only possible when you actually stand to lose something should you fail. Defining “rent-seeking” as opposite for “skin in the game”. Different types sorts of investments and whether they constitute rent-seeking. 19:25 – The contents of the book can become a lens through which you see the world. 20:03 – Sponsors. Get a shot of Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee mixed with MCT oil powder from Perfecto Keto. Follow our advice, we have skin in the coff… in the game. 20:59 – You can’t judge whether something is robust, if it can survive stressors, if you’re not at risk in case it can’t. The test of time. 23:30 – Business plans and their usefulness, or usefulness for procrastination. 24:54 – Book 2: A First Look at Agency. Advice, and knowing when to listen to it. Advice that’s helpful to the person offering it, rather than who’s being advised. Incentives and metrics under judgement. 26:50 – Judging actions by their intentions, rather than their effects. Nazism vs Communism. Diets, cholesterol, weight, and its effects on health as single elements of a complex system. 35:36 – Avoiding doctors when you have low-risks health issues. Prayer and religion developing related to health, and the high risk of medical procedures. The Placebo Effect. 39:20 – Book 3: That Great Asymmetry. Ant and ant colony metaphor. Predicting a complex system’s behavior through the behavior of singular elements. A small vocal minority affecting the behavior of large groups. The minority effect on holiday greetings and restaurant choices. 45:56 – Gun regulation, and changes in policy meant for advertising. Virtue signaling and what you do out of your beliefs, versus what’s done for public recognition. Standing up for your opinions even if, or specially if, it has social consequences. 50:57 – The free market, bottom-up or top-down models. Changing the parameters of individuals will not change the parameters of the emerging system. 52:57 – Book 4: Wolves Among Dogs. The trade off between security and freedom. Working as a dog, comfortably but restrained, versus working as a wolf, with much more freedom, but less safety. Tactics big companies use domesticating their employees. English manners as a way to domesticate lower classes. 00:59:39 – Suicide bombers and Mutual Assured Destruction. Reasoning and incentives in terrorists perspective, and how to discourage them to commit suicide. Sacrificing oneself and sacrificing the whole nation. 01:02:26 – Freedom and social media. Voluntarily adopting habits of the lower class as a signal of freedom. Nassim Taleb and Twitter. 01:05:53 – Book 5: Being Alive Means Taking Certain Risks. Politicians and relatability. Feeling like a politician is a real person, or simply a scripted facade. The case for Trump and his relatability. 01:08:36 – Resentment against people at the top who don’t have skin in the game, who are not really risking anything. Economic equality and what it truly means. Unfair barriers put up to keep people in the 1% when they might not really be earning their spot anymore. Florence example, where a handful of  families has kept the power for more than 5 centuries. 01:14:38 – Peer approval, the minority effect, and real freedom. 01:17:06 – Book 6: Being Alive Means Taking Certain Risks. Between two people who are equally qualified, the person who looks less “the part” is a wiser choice, as they have had to overcome more challenges to get to where they are. Quarterbacks vs common sense. Elitism and food: steaks, fast-food, and wine. Big mansions and living away from everything. 01:27:38 – Virtue signaling. Protesting or complaining without putting action behind your beliefs. Charity that’s mostly for show and its negative consequences. 01:35:12 – History and violent events: decreasing in frequency, but increasing rapidly in intensity. War, urban violence, and the magnitude of violence. Life that isn’t covered in history outside of big, dramatic events. 01:41:26 – Book 7: Deeper Into Agency. Religion, Beliefs, and Skin in the Game. Sam Harris, Nassim Taleb, and Jordan Peterson. Religion, science, and scientism. 01:49:22 – Sam Harris’ podcast and its infamous guests. 01:50:38 – Book 8: Risk and Rationality. The last section of the book, and concepts in it that are being explored in-depth by Taleb for the first time. “Skin in the Game” as an entry point for Taleb’s work. 01:52:26 – You don’t necessarily need to know what is the reason for something, even if you know that there is a reason. 01:54:31 – Ergodicity and non-ergodicity, or assembled probability vs individual probability. Paranoia and risk reversion. Risk taking and relative risk rather than objective risk. Bathtubs’ and bullets’ potential to scale to kill people. Terrorism, gun violence and non-multiplicative risks. 02:01:35 – Ties back to Taleb’s previous work. Static and dynamics probabilities and life expectancy. 02:05:37 – Wrapping up and sponsor time! Make sure to grab your own copy of “Skin in the Game” through our Amazon sponsored link. To help the podcast maintain the freedom of the market, check out as well our sponsors: Kettle & Fire for all your delicious bone broth needs, with up to 30% OFF! We recommend Perfecto Keto’s coffee-flavored exogenous ketones. Four Sigmatic: for your mushroom coffee and all your other mushroom needs. And as always, don’t forget to check out our Support page. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com    

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. His latest book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion" is available now.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. His latest book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion" is available now.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. His latest book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion" is available now.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. His latest book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion" is available now.

This is the complete first chapter of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris. To purchase the audiobook: http://amzn.to/1v1NEIK To purchase the print edition: http://amzn.to/1mqiAKL You can support the Making Sense Podcast and receive subscriber-only content at samharris.org/subscribe.

I once participated in a twenty-three-day wilderness program in the mountains of Colorado. If the purpose of this course was to expose students to dangerous lightning and half the world’s mosquitoes, it was fulfilled on the first day. What was in essence a forced march through hundreds of miles of backcountry culminated in a ritual known as “the solo,” where we were finally permitted to rest—alone, on the outskirts of a gorgeous alpine lake—for three days of fasting and contemplation. I had just turned sixteen, and this was my first taste of true solitude since exiting my mother’s womb. It proved a sufficient provocation. After a long nap and a glance at the icy waters of the lake, the promising young man I imagined myself to be was quickly cut down by loneliness and boredom. I filled the pages of my journal not with the insights of a budding naturalist, philosopher, or mystic but with a list of the foods on which I intended to gorge myself the instant I returned to civilization. Judging from the state of my consciousness at the time, millions of years of hominid evolution had produced nothing more transcendent than a craving for a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. I found the experience of sitting undisturbed for three days amid pristine breezes and starlight, with nothing to do but contemplate the mystery of my existence, to be a source of perfect misery—for which I could see not so much as a glimmer of my own contribution. My letters home, in their plaintiveness and self-pity, rivaled any written at Shiloh or Gallipoli. So I was more than a little surprised when several members of our party, most of whom were a decade older than I, described their days and nights of solitude in positive, even transformational terms. I simply didn’t know what to make of their claims to happiness. How could someone’s happiness increase when all the material sources of pleasure and distraction had been removed? At that age, the nature of my own mind did not interest me—only my life did. And I was utterly oblivious to how different life would be if the quality of my mind were to change. Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvement—when your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But it’s the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life—you won’t enjoy any of it. Most of us could easily compile a list of goals we want to achieve or personal problems that need to be solved. But what is the real significance of every item on such a list? Everything we want to accomplish—to paint the house, learn a new language, find a better job—is something that promises that, if done, it would allow us to finally relax and enjoy our lives in the present. Generally speaking, this is a false hope. I’m not denying the importance of achieving one’s goals, maintaining one’s health, or keeping one’s children clothed and fed—but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out. A few years after my first painful encounter with solitude, in the winter of 1987, I took the drug 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as Ecstasy, and my sense of the human mind’s potential shifted profoundly. Although MDMA would become ubiquitous at dance clubs and “raves” in the 1990s, at that time I didn’t know anyone of my generation who had tried it. One evening, a few months before my twentieth birthday, a close friend and I decided to take the drug. The setting of our experiment bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a house, seated across from each other on opposite ends of a couch, and engaged in quiet conversation as the chemical worked its way into our heads. Unlike other drugs with which we were by then familiar (marijuana and alcohol), MDMA produced no feeling of distortion in our senses. Our minds seemed completely clear. In the midst of this ordinariness, however, I was suddenly struck by the knowledge that I loved my friend. This shouldn’t have surprised me—he was, after all, one of my best friends. However, at that age I was not in the habit of dwelling on how much I loved the men in my life. Now I could feel that I loved him, and this feeling had ethical implications that suddenly seemed as profound as they now sound pedestrian on the page: I wanted him to be happy. That conviction came crashing down with such force that something seemed to give way inside me. In fact, the insight appeared to restructure my mind. My capacity for envy, for instance—the sense of being diminished by the happiness or success of another person—seemed like a symptom of mental illness that had vanished without a trace. I could no more have felt envy at that moment than I could have wanted to poke out my own eyes. What did I care if my friend was better looking or a better athlete than I was? If I could have bestowed those gifts on him, I would have. Truly wanting him to be happy made his happiness my own. A certain euphoria was creeping into these reflections, perhaps, but the general feeling remained one of absolute sobriety—and of moral and emotional clarity unlike any I had ever known. It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life. And yet the change in my consciousness seemed entirely straightforward. I was simply talking to my friend—about what, I don’t recall—and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes. And then came the insight that irrevocably transformed my sense of how good human life could be. I was feeling boundless love for one of my best friends, and I suddenly realized that if a stranger had walked through the door at that moment, he or she would have been fully included in this love. Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because…—now made no sense at all. The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective was that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all. The moment I could find a voice with which to speak, I discovered that this epiphany about the universality of love could be readily communicated. My friend got the point at once: All I had to do was ask him how he would feel in the presence of a total stranger at that moment, and the same door opened in his mind. It was simply obvious that love, compassion, and joy in the joy of others extended without limit. The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured. Love was—as advertised by mystics and crackpots through the ages—a state of being. How had we not seen this before? And how could we overlook it ever again? It would take me many years to put this experience into context. Until that moment, I had viewed organized religion as merely a monument to the ignorance and superstition of our ancestors. But I now knew that Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and the other saints and sages of history had not all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble. Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is to assert two important truths simultaneously: Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit. One purpose of this book is to give both these convictions intellectual and empirical support. Before going any further, I should address the animosity that many readers feel toward the term spiritual. Whenever I use the word, as in referring to meditation as a “spiritual practice,” I hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error.The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which is a translation of the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.” Around the thirteenth century, the term became entangled with beliefs about immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, and so forth. It acquired other meanings as well: We speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many nonbelievers now consider all things “spiritual” to be contaminated by medieval superstition. I do not share their semantic concerns.[1] Yes, to walk the aisles of any “spiritual” bookstore is to confront the yearning and credulity of our species by the yard, but there is no other term—apart from the even more problematic mystical or the more restrictive contemplative—with which to discuss the efforts people make, through meditation, psychedelics, or other means, to fully bring their minds into the present or to induce nonordinary states of consciousness. And no other word links this spectrum of experience to our ethical lives. Throughout this book, I discuss certain classically spiritual phenomena, concepts, and practices in the context of our modern understanding of the human mind—and I cannot do this while restricting myself to the terminology of ordinary experience. So I will use spiritual, mystical, contemplative, and transcendent without further apology. However, I will be precise in describing the experiences and methods that merit these terms. For many years, I have been a vocal critic of religion, and I won’t ride the same hobbyhorse here. I hope that I have been sufficiently energetic on this front that even my most skeptical readers will trust that my bullshit detector remains well calibrated as we advance over this new terrain. Perhaps the following assurance can suffice for the moment: Nothing in this book needs to be accepted on faith. Although my focus is on human subjectivity—I am, after all, talking about the nature of experience itself—all my assertions can be tested in the laboratory of your own life. In fact, my goal is to encourage you to do just that. Authors who attempt to build a bridge between science and spirituality tend to make one of two mistakes: Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience, assuming that it must be a grandiose way of describing ordinary states of mind—parental love, artistic inspiration, awe at the beauty of the night sky. In this vein, one finds Einstein’s amazement at the intelligibility of Nature’s laws described as though it were a kind of mystical insight. New Age thinkers usually enter the ditch on the other side of the road: They idealize altered states of consciousness and draw specious connections between subjective experience and the spookier theories at the frontiers of physics. Here we are told that the Buddha and other contemplatives anticipated modern cosmology or quantum mechanics and that by transcending the sense of self, a person can realize his identity with the One Mind that gave birth to the cosmos. In the end, we are left to choose between pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-science. Few scientists and philosophers have developed strong skills of introspection—in fact, most doubt that such abilities even exist. Conversely, many of the greatest contemplatives know nothing about science. But there is a connection between scientific fact and spiritual wisdom, and it is more direct than most people suppose. Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world. There is now a large literature on the psychological benefits of meditation. Different techniques produce long-lasting changes in attention, emotion, cognition, and pain perception, and these correlate with both structural and functional changes in the brain. This field of research is quickly growing, as is our understanding of self-awareness and related mental phenomena. Given recent advances in neuroimaging technology, we no longer face a practical impediment to investigating spiritual insights in the context of science. Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences. While these states of mind are usually interpreted through the lens of one or another religious doctrine, we know that this is a mistake. Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience—self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light—constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work. That principle is the subject of this book: The feeling that we call “I” is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of “self-transcendence” are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by “spirituality” in the context of this book. Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available. The landscape of human experience includes deeply transformative insights about the nature of one’s own consciousness, and yet it is obvious that these psychological states must be understood in the context of neuroscience, psychology, and related fields. I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer, I believe, is nothing and everything. Nothing need replace its ludicrous and divisive doctrines—such as the idea that Jesus will return to earth and hurl unbelievers into a lake of fire, or that death in defense of Islam is the highest good. These are terrifying and debasing fictions. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is. This book is by turns a seeker’s memoir, an introduction to the brain, a manual of contemplative instruction, and a philosophical unraveling of what most people consider to be the center of their inner lives: the feeling of self we call “I.” I have not set out to describe all the traditional approaches to spirituality and to weigh their strengths and weaknesses. Rather, my goal is to pluck the diamond from the dunghill of esoteric religion. There is a diamond there, and I have devoted a fair amount of my life to contemplating it, but getting it in hand requires that we remain true to the deepest principles of scientific skepticism and make no obeisance to tradition. Where I do discuss specific teachings, such as those of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta, it isn’t my purpose to provide anything like a comprehensive account. Readers who are loyal to any one spiritual tradition or who specialize in the academic study of religion, may view my approach as the quintessence of arrogance. I consider it, rather, a symptom of impatience. There is barely time enough in a book—or in a life—to get to the point. Just as a modern treatise on weaponry would omit the casting of spells and would very likely ignore the slingshot and the boomerang, I will focus on what I consider the most promising lines of spiritual inquiry. My hope is that my personal experience will help readers to see the nature of their own minds in a new light. A rational approach to spirituality seems to be what is missing from secularism and from the lives of most of the people I meet. The purpose of this book is to offer readers a clear view of the problem, along with some tools to help them solve it for themselves. THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS One day, you will find yourself outside this world which is like a mother’s womb. You will leave this earth to enter, while you are yet in the body, a vast expanse, and know that the words, “God’s earth is vast,” name this region from which the saints have come. Jalal-ud-Din Rumi I share the concern, expressed by many atheists, that the terms spiritual and mystical are often used to make claims not merely about the quality of certain experiences but about reality at large. Far too often, these words are invoked in support of religious beliefs that are morally and intellectually grotesque. Consequently, many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of spirituality to be a sign of mental illness, conscious imposture, or self-deception. This is a problem, because millions of people have had experiences for which spiritual and mystical seem the only terms available. Many of the beliefs people form on the basis of these experiences are false. But the fact that most atheists will view a statement like Rumi’s above as a symptom of the man’s derangement grants a kernel of truth to the rantings of even our least rational opponents. The human mind does, in fact, contain vast expanses that few of us ever discover. And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave. Perhaps I should speak only for myself here: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time. Most cultures have produced men and women who have found that certain deliberate uses of attention—meditation, yoga, prayer—can transform their perception of the world. Their efforts generally begin with the realization that even in the best of circumstances, happiness is elusive. We seek pleasant sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, and moods. We satisfy our intellectual curiosity. We surround ourselves with friends and loved ones. We become connoisseurs of art, music, or food. But our pleasures are, by their very nature, fleeting. If we enjoy some great professional success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and intoxicating for an hour, or perhaps a day, but then they subside. And the search goes on. The effort required to keep boredom and other unpleasantness at bay must continue, moment to moment. Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? We are all, in some sense, living our answer to this question—and most of us are living as though the answer were “no.” No, nothing is more profound than repeating one’s pleasures and avoiding one’s pains; nothing is more profound than seeking satisfaction—sensory, emotional, and intellectual—moment after moment. Just keep your foot on the gas until you run out of road. Certain people, however, come to suspect that human existence might encompass more than this. Many of them are led to suspect this by religion—by the claims of the Buddha or Jesus or some other celebrated figure. And such people often begin to practice various disciplines of attention as a means of examining their experience closely enough to see whether a deeper source of well-being exists. They may even sequester themselves in caves or monasteries for months or years at a time to facilitate this process. Why would a person do this? No doubt there are many motives for retreating from the world, and some of them are psychologically unhealthy. In its wisest form, however, the exercise amounts to a very simple experiment. Here is its logic: If there exists a source of psychological well-being that does not depend upon merely gratifying one’s desires, then it should be present even when all the usual sources of pleasure have been removed. Such happiness should be available to a person who has declined to marry her high school sweetheart, renounced her career and material possessions, and gone off to a cave or some other spot that is inhospitable to ordinary aspirations. One clue to how daunting most people would find such a project is the fact that solitary confinement—which is essentially what we are talking about—is considered a punishment inside a maximum-security prison. Even when forced to live among murderers and rapists, most people still prefer the company of others to spending any significant amount of time alone in a room. And yet contemplatives in many traditions claim to experience extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while living in isolation for vast stretches of time. How should we interpret this? Either the contemplative literature is a catalogue of religious delusion, psychopathology, and deliberate fraud, or people have been having liberating insights under the name of “spirituality” and “mysticism” for millennia. Unlike many atheists, I have spent much of my life seeking experiences of the kind that gave rise to the world’s religions. Despite the painful results of my first few days alone in the mountains of Colorado, I later studied with a wide range of monks, lamas, yogis, and other contemplatives, some of whom had lived for decades in seclusion doing nothing but meditating. In the process, I spent two years on silent retreat myself (in increments of one week to three months), practicing various techniques of meditation for twelve to eighteen hours a day. I can attest that when one goes into silence and meditates for weeks or months at a time, doing nothing else—not speaking, reading, or writing, just making a moment-to-moment effort to observe the contents of consciousness—one has experiences that are generally unavailable to people who have not undertaken a similar practice. I believe that such states of mind have a lot to say about the nature of consciousness and the possibilities of human well-being. Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self. Most traditions of spirituality also suggest a connection between self-transcendence and living ethically. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, and pathological forms of ecstasy surely exist. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before they detonate themselves in a crowd. But there are also forms of mental pleasure that are intrinsically ethical. As I indicated earlier, for some states of consciousness, a phrase like “boundless love” does not seem overblown. It is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of reason and secularism that if someone wakes up tomorrow feeling boundless love for all sentient beings, the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another Iron Age religion or New Age cult. Most of us are far wiser than we may appear to be. We know how to keep our relationships in order, to use our time well, to improve our health, to lose weight, to learn valuable skills, and to solve many other riddles of existence. But following even the straight and open path to happiness is hard. If your best friend were to ask how she could live a better life, you would probably find many useful things to say, and yet you might not live that way yourself. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice. However, there are deeper insights to be had about the nature of our minds. Unfortunately, they have been discussed entirely in the context of religion and, therefore, have been shrouded in fallacy and superstition for all of human history. The problem of finding happiness in this world arrives with our first breath—and our needs and desires seem to multiply by the hour. To spend any time in the presence of a young child is to witness a mind ceaselessly buffeted by joy and sorrow. As we grow older, our laughter and tears become less gratuitous, perhaps, but the same process of change continues: One roiling complex of thought and emotion is followed by the next, like waves in the ocean. Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding our well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure or the easiest possible life. Many things require extraordinary effort to accomplish, and some of us learn to enjoy the struggle. Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable. Here we see that cognition and emotion are not separate. The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it. And we always face tensions and trade-offs. In some moments we crave excitement and in others rest. We might love the taste of wine and chocolate, but rarely for breakfast. Whatever the context, our minds are perpetually moving—generally toward pleasure (or its imagined source) and away from pain. I am not the first person to have noticed this. Our struggle to navigate the space of possible pains and pleasures produces most of human culture. Medical science attempts to prolong our health and to reduce the suffering associated with illness, aging, and death. All forms of media cater to our thirst for information and entertainment. Political and economic institutions seek to ensure our peaceful collaboration with one another—and the police or the military is summoned when they fail. Beyond ensuring our survival, civilization is a vast machine invented by the human mind to regulate its states. We are ever in the process of creating and repairing a world that our minds want to be in. And wherever we look, we see the evidence of our successes and our failures. Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph—not merely in the end but in every moment. Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes. We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change? Spiritual life begins with a suspicion that the answer to such questions could well be “yes.” And a true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self. Those who have never tasted such peace of mind might view these assertions as highly suspect. Nevertheless, it is a fact that a condition of selfless well-being is there to be glimpsed in each moment. Of course, I’m not claiming to have experienced all such states, but I meet many people who appear to have experienced none of them—and these people often profess to have no interest in spiritual life. This is not surprising. The phenomenon of self-transcendence is generally sought and interpreted in a religious context, and it is precisely the sort of experience that tends to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians, having once felt their hearts grow as wide as the world, will decide to ditch Christianity and proclaim their atheism? Not many, I suspect. How many people who have never felt anything of the kind become atheists? I don’t know, but there is little doubt that these mental states act as a kind of filter: The faithful count them in support of ancient dogma, and their absence gives nonbelievers further reason to reject religion. This is a difficult problem for me to address in the context of a book, because many readers will have no idea what I’m talking about when I describe certain spiritual experiences and might assume that the assertions I’m making must be accepted on faith. Religious readers present a different challenge: They may think they know exactly what I’m describing, but only insofar as it aligns with one or another religious doctrine. It seems to me that both these attitudes present impressive obstacles to understanding spirituality in the way that I intend. I can only hope that, whatever your background, you will approach the exercises presented in this book with an open mind. RELIGION, EAST AND WEST We are often encouraged to believe that all religions are the same: All teach the same ethical principles; all urge their followers to contemplate the same divine reality; all are equally wise, compassionate, and true within their sphere—or equally divisive and false, depending on one’s view. No serious adherents of any faith can believe these things, because most religions make claims about reality that are mutually incompatible. Exceptions to this rule exist, but they provide little relief from what is essentially a zero-sum contest of all against all. The polytheism of Hinduism allows it to digest parts of many other faiths: If Christians insist that Jesus Christ is the son of God, for instance, Hindus can make him yet another avatar of Vishnu without losing any sleep. But this spirit of inclusiveness points in one direction only, and even it has its limits. Hindus are committed to specific metaphysical ideas—the law of karma and rebirth, a multiplicity of gods—that almost every other major religion decries. It is impossible for any faith, no matter how elastic, to fully honor the truth claims of another. Devout Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that theirs is the one true and complete revelation—because that is what their holy books say of themselves. Only secularists and New Age dabblers can mistake the modern tactic of “interfaith dialogue” for an underlying unity of all religions. I have long argued that confusion about the unity of religions is an artifact of language. Religion is a term like sports: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing); some are safer but synonymous with violence (mixed martial arts); and some entail little more risk of injury than standing in the shower (bowling). To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful. The same could be said of spirituality. The esoteric doctrines found within every religious tradition are not all derived from the same insights. Nor are they equally empirical, logical, parsimonious, or wise. They don’t always point to the same underlying reality—and when they do, they don’t do it equally well. Nor are all these teachings equally suited for export beyond the cultures that first conceived them. Making distinctions of this kind, however, is deeply unfashionable in intellectual circles. In my experience, people do not want to hear that Islam supports violence in a way that Jainism doesn’t, or that Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. In many circles, to make invidious comparisons of this kind is to stand convicted of bigotry. In one sense, all religions and spiritual practices must address the same reality—because people of all faiths have glimpsed many of the same truths. Any view of consciousness and the cosmos that is available to the human mind can, in principle, be appreciated by anyone. It is not surprising, therefore, that individual Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists have given voice to some of the same insights and intuitions. This merely indicates that human cognition and emotion run deeper than religion. (But we knew that, didn’t we?) It does not suggest that all religions understand our spiritual possibilities equally well. One way of missing this point is to declare that all spiritual teachings are inflections of the same “Perennial Philosophy.” The writer Aldous Huxley brought this idea into prominence by publishing an anthology by that title. Here is how he justified the idea: Philosophia perennis—the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing—the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe.[2] Although Huxley was being reasonably cautious in his wording, this notion of a “highest common factor” uniting all religions begins to break apart the moment one presses for details. For instance, the Abrahamic religions are incorrigibly dualistic and faith-based: In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the human soul is conceived as genuinely separate from the divine reality of God. The appropriate attitude for a creature that finds itself in this circumstance is some combination of terror, shame, and awe. In the best case, notions of God’s love and grace provide some relief—but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy. The Eastern tradition presents a very different picture of reality. And its highest teachings—found within the various schools of Buddhism and the nominally Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta—explicitly transcend dualism. By their lights, consciousness itself is identical to the very reality that one might otherwise mistake for God. While these teachings make metaphysical claims that any serious student of science should find incredible, they center on a range of experiences that the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam rule out-of-bounds. Of course, it is true that specific Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics have had experiences similar to those that motivate Buddhism and Advaita, but these contemplative insights are not exemplary of their faith. Rather, they are anomalies that Western mystics have always struggled to understand and to honor, often at considerable personal risk. Given their proper weight, these experiences produce heterodoxies for which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been regularly exiled or killed. Like Huxley, anyone determined to find a happy synthesis among spiritual traditions will notice that the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. 1327) often sounded very much like a Buddhist: “The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” But he also sounded like a man bound to be excommunicated by his church—as he was. Had Eckhart lived a little longer, it seems certain that he would have been dragged into the street and burned alive for these expansive ideas. That is a telling difference between Christianity and Buddhism. In the same vein, it is misleading to hold up the Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj (858–922) as a representative of Islam. He was a Muslim, yes, but he suffered the most grisly death imaginable at the hands of his coreligionists for presuming to be one with God. Both Eckhart and Al-Hallaj gave voice to an experience of self-transcendence that any human being can, in principle, enjoy. However, their views were not consistent with the central teachings of their faiths. The Indian tradition is comparatively free of problems of this kind. Although the teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are embedded in more or less conventional religions, they contain empirical insights about the nature of consciousness that do not depend upon faith. One can practice most techniques of Buddhist meditation or the method of self-inquiry of Advaita and experience the advertised changes in one’s consciousness without ever believing in the law of karma or in the miracles attributed to Indian mystics. To get started as a Christian, however, one must first accept a dozen implausible things about the life of Jesus and the origins of the Bible—and the same can be said, minus a few unimportant details, about Judaism and Islam. If one should happen to discover that the sense of being an individual soul is an illusion, one will be guilty of blasphemy everywhere west of the Indus. There is no question that many religious disciplines can produce interesting experiences in suitable minds. It should be clear, however, that engaging a faith-based (and probably delusional) practice, whatever its effects, isn’t the same as investigating the nature of one’s mind absent any doctrinal assumptions. Statements of this kind may seem starkly antagonistic toward Abrahamic religions, but they are nonetheless true: One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam.[3] Western engagement with Eastern spirituality dates back at least as far as Alexander’s campaign in India, where the young conqueror and his pet philosophers encountered naked ascetics whom they called “gymnosophists.” It is often said that the thinking of these yogis greatly influenced the philosopher Pyrrho, the father of Greek skepticism. This seems a credible claim, because Pyrrho’s teachings had much in common with Buddhism. But his contemplative insights and methods never became part of any system of thought in the West. Serious study of Eastern thought by outsiders did not begin until the late eighteenth century. The first translation of a Sanskrit text into a Western language appears to have been Sir Charles Wilkins’s rendering of the Bhagavad Gita, a cornerstone text of Hinduism, in 1785. The Buddhist canon would not attract the attention of Western scholars for another hundred years.[4] The conversation between East and West started in earnest, albeit inauspiciously, with the birth of the Theosophical Society, that golem of spiritual hunger and self-deception brought into this world almost single-handedly by the incomparable Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875. Everything about Blavatsky seemed to defy earthly logic: She was an enormously fat woman who was said to have wandered alone and undetected for seven years in the mountains of Tibet. She was also thought to have survived shipwrecks, gunshot wounds, and sword fights. Even less persuasively, she claimed to be in psychic contact with members of the “Great White Brotherhood” of ascended masters—a collection of immortals responsible for the evolution and maintenance of the entire cosmos. Their leader hailed from the planet Venus but lived in the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, which Blavatsky placed somewhere in the vicinity of the Gobi Desert. With the suspiciously bureaucratic name “the Lord of the World,” he supervised the work of other adepts, including the Buddha, Maitreya, Maha Chohan, and one Koot Hoomi, who appears to have had nothing better to do on behalf of the cosmos than to impart its secrets to Blavatsky. [5] It is always surprising when a person attracts legions of followers and builds a large organization on their largesse while peddling penny-arcade mythology of this kind. But perhaps this was less remarkable in a time when even the best-educated people were still struggling to come to terms with electricity, evolution, and the existence of other planets. We can easily forget how suddenly the world had shrunk and the cosmos expanded as the nineteenth century came to a close. The geographical barriers between distant cultures had been stripped away by trade and conquest (one could now order a gin and tonic almost everywhere on earth), and yet the reality of unseen forces and alien worlds was a daily focus of the most careful scientific research. Inevitably, cross-cultural and scientific discoveries were mingled in the popular imagination with religious dogma and traditional occultism. In fact, this had been happening at the highest level of human thought for more than a century: It is always instructive to recall that the father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, squandered a considerable portion of his genius on the study of theology, biblical prophecy, and alchemy. The inability to distinguish the strange but true from the merely strange was common enough in Blavatsky’s time—as it is in our own. Blavatsky’s contemporary Joseph Smith, a libidinous con man and crackpot, was able to found a new religion on the claim that he had unearthed the final revelations of God in the hallowed precincts of Manchester, New York, written in “reformed Egyptian” on golden plates. He decoded this text with the aid of magical “seer stones,” which, whether by magic or not, allowed Smith to produce an English version of God’s Word that was an embarrassing pastiche of plagiarisms from the Bible and silly lies about Jesus’s life in America. And yet the resulting edifice of nonsense and taboo survives to this day. A more modern cult, Scientology, leverages human credulity to an even greater degree: Adherents believe that human beings are possessed by the souls of extraterrestrials who were condemned to planet Earth 75 million years ago by the galactic overlord Xenu. How was their exile accomplished? The old-fashioned way: These aliens were shuttled by the billions to our humble planet aboard a spacecraft that resembled a DC-8. They were then imprisoned in a volcano and blasted to bits with hydrogen bombs. Their souls survived, however, and disentangling them from our own can be the work of a lifetime. It is also expensive.[6] Despite the imponderables in her philosophy, Blavatsky was among the first people to announce in Western circles that there was such a thing as the “wisdom of the East.” This wisdom began to trickle westward once Swami Vivekananda introduced the teachings of Vedanta at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. Again, Buddhism lagged behind: A few Western monks living on the island of Sri Lanka were beginning to translate the Pali Canon, which remains the most authoritative record of the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. However, the practice of Buddhist meditation wouldn’t actually be taught in the West for another half century. It is easy enough to find fault with romantic ideas about Eastern wisdom, and a tradition of such criticism sprang up almost the instant the first Western seeker sat cross-legged and attempted to meditate. In the late 1950s, the author and journalist Arthur Koestler traveled to India and Japan in search of wisdom and summarized his pilgrimage thus: “I started my journey in sackcloth and ashes, and came back rather proud of being a European.”[7] In The Lotus and the Robot, Koestler gives some of his reasons for being less than awed by his journey to the East. Consider, for example, the ancient discipline of hatha yoga. While now generally viewed as a system of physical exercises designed to increase a person’s strength and flexibility, in its traditional context hatha yoga is part of a larger effort to manipulate “subtle” features of the body unknown to anatomists. No doubt much of this subtlety corresponds to experiences that yogis actually have—but many of the beliefs formed on the basis of these experiences are patently absurd, and certain of the associated practices are both silly and injurious. Koestler reports that the aspiring yogi is traditionally encouraged to lengthen his tongue—even going so far as to cut the frenulum (the membrane that anchors the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and stretch the soft palate. What is the purpose of these modifications? They enable our hero to insert his tongue into his nasopharynx, thereby blocking the flow of air through the nostrils. His anatomy thus improved, a yogi can then imbibe subtle liquors believed to emanate directly from his brain. These substances—imagined, by recourse to further subtleties, to be connected to the retention of semen—are said to confer not only spiritual wisdom but immortality. This technique of drinking mucus is known as khechari mudra, and it is thought to be one of the crowning achievements of yoga. I’m more than happy to score a point for Koestler here. Needless to say, no defense of such practices will be found in this book. Criticism of Eastern wisdom can seem especially pertinent when coming from Easterners themselves. There is indeed something preposterous about well-educated Westerners racing East in search of spiritual enlightenment while Easterners make the opposite pilgrimage seeking education and economic opportunities. I have a friend whose own adventures may have marked a high point in this global comedy. He made his first trip to India immediately after graduating from college, having already acquired several yogic affectations: He had the requisite beads and long hair, but he was also in the habit of writing the name of the Hindu god Ram in Devanagari script over and over in a journal. On the flight to the motherland, he had the good fortune to be seated next to an Indian businessman. This weary traveler thought he had witnessed every species of human folly—until he caught sight of my friend’s scribbling. The spectacle of a Western-born Stanford graduate, of working age, holding degrees in both economics and history, devoting himself to the graphomaniacal worship of an imaginary deity in a language he could neither read nor understand was more than this man could abide in a confined space at 30,000 feet. After a testy exchange, the two travelers could only stare at each other in mutual incomprehension and pity—and they had ten hours yet to fly. There really are two sides to such a conversation, but I concede that only one of them can be made to look ridiculous. We can also grant that Eastern wisdom has not produced societies or political institutions that are any better than their Western counterparts; in fact, one could argue that India has survived as the world’s largest democracy only because of institutions that were built under British rule. Nor has the East led the world in scientific discovery. Nevertheless, there is something to the notion of uniquely Eastern wisdom, and most of it has been concentrated in or derived from the tradition of Buddhism. Buddhism has been of special interest to Western scientists for reasons already hinted at. It isn’t primarily a faith-based religion, and its central teachings are entirely empirical. Despite the superstitions that many Buddhists cherish, the doctrine has a practical and logical core that does not require any unwarranted assumptions. Many Westerners have recognized this and have been relieved to find a spiritual alternative to faith-based worship. It is no accident that most of the scientific research now done on meditation focuses primarily on Buddhist techniques. Another reason for Buddhism’s prominence among scientists has been the intellectual engagement of one of its most visible representatives: Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Of course, the Dalai Lama is not without his critics. My late friend Christopher Hitchens meted out justice to “his holiness” on several occasions. He also castigated Western students of Buddhism for the “widely and lazily held belief that ‘Oriental’ religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more contemplative, more . . . Transcendental,” and for the “blissful, thoughtless exceptionalism” with which Buddhism is regarded by many.[8] Hitch did have a point. In his capacity as the head of one of the four branches of Tibetan Buddhism and as the former leader of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama has made some questionable claims and formed some embarrassing alliances. Although his engagement with science is far-reaching and surely sincere, the man is not above consulting an astrologer or “oracle” when making important decisions. I will have something to say in this book about many of the things that might have justified Hitch’s opprobrium, but the general thrust of his commentary here was all wrong. Several Eastern traditions are exceptionally empirical and exceptionally wise, and therefore merit the exceptionalism claimed by their adherents. Buddhism in particular possesses a literature on the nature of the mind that has no peer in Western religion or Western science. Some of these teachings are cluttered with metaphysical assumptions that should provoke our doubts, but many aren’t. And when engaged as a set of hypotheses by which to investigate the mind and deepen one’s ethical life, Buddhism can be an entirely rational enterprise. Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y. Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind. Buddha means “awakened one”—and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition. The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind. There are dangers in this way of viewing the world, to be sure. Focusing on training the mind to the exclusion of all else can lead to political quietism and hive-like conformity. The fact that your mind is all you have and that it is possible to be at peace even in difficult circumstances can become an argument for ignoring obvious societal problems. But it is not a compelling one. The world is in desperate need of improvement—in global terms, freedom and prosperity remain the exception—and yet this doesn’t mean we need to be miserable while we work for the common good. In fact, the teachings of Buddhism emphasize a connection between ethical and spiritual life. Making progress in one domain lays a foundation for progress in the other. One can, for instance, spend long periods of time in contemplative solitude for the purpose of becoming a better person in the world—having better relationships, being more honest and compassionate and, therefore, more helpful to one’s fellow human beings. Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. There are centuries of anecdotal testimony on this point—and, as we will see, the scientific study of the mind has begun to bear it out. There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them. Although the experience of self-transcendence is, in principle, available to everyone, this possibility is only weakly attested to in the religious and philosophical literature of the West. Only Buddhists and students of Advaita Vedanta (which appears to have been heavily influenced by Buddhism) have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.[9] As I wrote in my first book, The End of Faith, the disparity between Eastern and Western spirituality resembles that found between Eastern and Western medicine—with the arrow of embarrassment pointing in the opposite direction. Humanity did not understand the biology of cancer, develop antibiotics and vaccines, or sequence the human genome under an Eastern sun. Consequently, real medicine is almost entirely a product of Western science. Insofar as specific techniques of Eastern medicine actually work, they must conform, whether by design or by happenstance, to the principles of biology as we have come to know them in the West. This is not to say that Western medicine is complete. In a few decades, many of our current practices will seem barbaric. One need only ponder the list of side effects that accompany most medications to appreciate that these are terribly blunt instruments. Nevertheless, most of our knowledge about the human body—and about the physical universe generally—emerged in the West. The rest is instinct, folklore, bewilderment, and untimely death. An honest comparison of spiritual traditions, Eastern and Western, proves equally invidious. As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never best found there, and it is subverted, time and again, by ancient savagery and superstition. Again, one must deploy the necessary caveats: I am not saying that most Buddhists or Hindus have been sophisticated contemplatives. Their traditions have spawned many of the same pathologies we see elsewhere among the faithful: dogmatism, anti-intellectualism, tribalism, otherworldliness. However, the empirical difference between the central teachings of Buddhism and Advaita and those of Western monotheism is difficult to overstate. One can traverse the Eastern paths simply by becoming interested in the nature of one’s own mind—especially in the immediate causes of psychological suffering—and by paying closer attention to one’s experience in every present moment. There is, in truth, nothing one need believe. The teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are best viewed as lab manuals and explorers’ logs detailing the results of empirical research on the nature of human consciousness. Nearly every geographical or linguistic barrier to the free exchange of ideas has now fallen away. It seems to me, therefore, that educated people no longer have a right to any form of spiritual provincialism. The truths of Eastern spirituality are now no more Eastern than the truths of Western science are Western. We are merely talking about human consciousness and its possible states. My purpose in writing this book is to encourage you to investigate certain contemplative insights for yourself, without accepting the metaphysical ideas that they inspired in ignorant and isolated peoples of the past. A final word of caution: Nothing I say here is intended as a denial of the fact that psychological well-being requires a healthy “sense of self”—with all the capacities that this vague phrase implies. Children need to become autonomous, confident, and self-aware in order to form healthy relationships. And they must acquire a host of other cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal skills in the process of becoming sane and productive adults. Which is to say that there is a time and a place for everything—unless, of course, there isn’t. No doubt there are psychological conditions, such as schizophrenia, for which practices of the sort I recommend in this book might be inappropriate. Some people find the experience of an extended, silent retreat psychologically destabilizing.[10] Again, an analogy to physical training seems apropos: Not everyone is suited to running a six-minute mile or bench-pressing his own body weight. But many quite ordinary people are capable of these feats, and there are better and worse ways to accomplish them. What is more, the same principles of fitness generally apply even to people whose abilities are limited by illness or injury. So I want to make it clear that the instructions in this book are intended for readers who are adults (more or less) and free from any psychological or medical conditions that could be exacerbated by meditation or other techniques of sustained introspection. If paying attention to your breath, to bodily sensations, to the flow of thoughts, or to the nature of consciousness itself seems likely to cause you clinically significant anguish, please check with a psychologist or a psychiatrist before engaging in the practices I describe. MINDFULNESS It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth—overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. As a consequence, we spend our lives being far less content than we might otherwise be. We often fail to appreciate what we have until we have lost it. We crave experiences, objects, relationships, only to grow bored with them. And yet the craving persists. I speak from experience, of course. As a remedy for this predicament, many spiritual teachings ask us to entertain unfounded ideas about the nature of reality—or at the very least to develop a fondness for the iconography and rituals of one or another religion. But not all paths traverse the same rough ground. There are methods of meditation that do not require any artifice or unwarranted assumptions at all. For beginners, I usually recommend a technique called vipassana (Pali for “insight”), which comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, the Theravada. One of the advantages of vipassana is that it can be taught in an entirely secular way. Experts in this practice generally acquire their training in a Buddhist context, and most retreat centers in the United States and Europe teach its associated Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, this method of introspection can be brought into any secular or scientific context without embarrassment. (The same cannot be said for the practice of chanting to Lord Krishna while banging a drum.) That is why vipassana is now being widely studied and adopted by psychologists and neuroscientists. The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.[12] We will look more closely at the neurophysiology of mindfulness in a later chapter. Mindfulness is a translation of the Pali word sati. The term has several meanings in the Buddhist literature, but for our purposes the most important is “clear awareness.”