Transcript
00:00:00What's happening, people? Before we get into the episode, I wanted to give you a disclaimer.
00:00:03David didn't show his face when we were recording. David's a pretty esoteric guy,
00:00:07decided that he's going to retreat from the world. He's living in a house in the middle
00:00:10of nowhere in Florida, I think. And even though it might have been nice to have seen his face,
00:00:15it's completely on brand. So we've tried to make it as engaging as possible.
00:00:19I hope you enjoy the episode. What is a man of zero?
00:00:24Well, to me, a man of zero is somebody who has come to the point in their life
00:00:31where their motivation has evaporated or isn't there. They feel they still may be very active.
00:00:41They may be married. They may have children. They may have businesses. They might be creative.
00:00:48But under it all, there's just a feeling like, why am I doing this? And part of me would rather
00:00:55not do anything kind of feeling. And I noticed a lot of men feeling that that I was interacting
00:01:03with over the years. And so I wanted to address that.
00:01:08Is this the next stage after the superior man? Is this a spiritual sequel to the way of the superior man?
00:01:17It's a kind of sequel, but it's not necessarily a stage progression. So somebody might go into the
00:01:25phase, I'll use the word phase, of a man of zero. And then after a month, a year, a decade, whatever,
00:01:34they may come back to being the superior man. To me, what a superior man is, is a man who is motivated
00:01:40by a deep sense of purpose. And that sense of purpose might be to discover their purpose. But
00:01:47they're motivated by a sense of purpose, often to serve the world or to give their gift or to make
00:01:55things right. And when that evaporates, or when they no longer feel that, that's the beginning of the
00:02:04phase of the man of zero. Now, it may last a very short time, may last a long time, the man of zero
00:02:10phase. So they may eventually go back to, oh, a new purpose. For instance, for myself, this book emerged
00:02:18out of nowhere as a kind of, oh, I should write this book, I need to write this book. So it just came out
00:02:24of nowhere. And then, you know, the discipline of writing a book, of working with publishers and all
00:02:30of that, that takes effort. So that came up, you know, I was working as kind of a superior man phase
00:02:37for a while. And we'll see if I could get through this interview without resting back.
00:02:44Okay, if you, if you degenerate into total apathy, we'll know that you've gone back into man of zero
00:02:48phase. It's not exactly apathy. I'm glad you said that. It's a kind of, it's a clarity. It's pure
00:02:56presence. It's pure awareness. It's being absolutely present with the moment, but just not having an urge
00:03:01to push and change things. Like you're deeply content with the way things are, but that doesn't
00:03:10stop you from changing things. It just means you're not stressed. You know, most men have a kind of
00:03:15kernel of stress in their gut or their heart or their solar plexus that moves them to do something. Well,
00:03:22the man of zero is what happens when that stress isn't there? What are you moved to do? Like,
00:03:27how does the universe use you? How does, you know, that deeper thing that's beyond you move through
00:03:34you? Because in the superior man phase, one is motivated mostly by their personal sense of purpose,
00:03:42rather than being kind of used by something or much larger, if shape, if size even has meaning.
00:03:50I think it doesn't exactly paint a very flattering picture of where most people's striving comes from,
00:03:59you know? What doesn't paint a flattering picture?
00:04:03The fact that when you get to this restful, um, no longer needing to prove yourself,
00:04:10you notice how much of your ambition and your pushing seems to fall away. What that would suggest
00:04:15is that without some of the drives, uh, needs for validation and recognition, uh, past patterns that
00:04:23are puppeting you, maybe you wouldn't be pushing quite so much. Definitely. But I don't think that's
00:04:30a negative thing. That's just, uh, an evolution, a way of growth. I mean, some of the, some of my
00:04:36favorite music say was probably created by artists who were doing it so they could get laid. You know,
00:04:44like there some, sometimes people do something for money, but it's really a work of art. It's really
00:04:48a beautiful thing that they're creating. Some people have a sense of lack of self-worth, let's say,
00:04:54that they inherited from their childhood. And yet that lack of self-worth motivates them to create
00:05:00real art, really beauty on earth, real beauty on earth. So it's not necessarily a negative thing
00:05:06that people are motivated. It's just at some point I wanted to account for what happens
00:05:11when those motivations are no longer sufficient to move you. Oh, I agree. Uh, the, the world is
00:05:16shaped by people trying to prove themselves to themselves and others. And much of that motivation
00:05:22is running away from something that you fear, not just towards something that you want. It's trying to
00:05:27disprove your doubters or critics or alchemize that chip on your shoulder. Uh, and the world will become
00:05:34fundamentally a better place. But I think when you start to look at it from the perspective of the
00:05:39individual, the one person, it starts to look a little bit different and it does look like a kind of
00:05:46evolution, uh, internally. Well, I guess, I guess what are the indicators that you've reached this stage?
00:05:53Let's say that you were to explain to the avatar of the person that's going through it.
00:05:59How would they know? What, what are the indicators that you're becoming a man of zero or become one?
00:06:05Well, the first part of the book, the man of zero is several chapters dedicated to this. Um,
00:06:16basically you're just no longer motivated like you used to be. You might look at your friends say, and
00:06:25they seem motivated. They seem okay. They seem like they have a reason to get up in the morning and
00:06:32go forward. Why don't you? Um, there's a kind of,
00:06:39well, you could either call it peace or you could call it lack of stress in your heart or in your depth.
00:06:46Um, and many people then, many men then assume that's an issue. That's a problem because they've
00:06:55been motivated, like you say, for many reasons. And suddenly they're just not,
00:07:03there's doesn't move. It's not sufficient to move them anymore. It feels false. It feels like a false
00:07:11life. It feels like they're not living true to their deepest self and temporarily their deepest self
00:07:20wants to do nothing, which to me is a portal. Like if men learned how to do nothing impeccably,
00:07:28so not get on their phone or look at pornography or watch movies or whatever people might do when they
00:07:39don't want to do anything. If instead men just took a moment and really were present, totally aware,
00:07:47like crystal clear, not pulling away, not pushing anything, something emerges from that. So when you're
00:07:55able to just sit or, or you could do walking or it doesn't matter at all, but if you could just be,
00:08:02that being then begins to unfold through your life, through your body and mind.
00:08:09So, and your body and mind are conditioned, like your body and mind are trained a certain way. So when
00:08:14that being flows through your body and mind, it'll look different than when that being flows through my
00:08:20body and mind. Um, I'm not sure if that's any sort of your question.
00:08:25It certainly does. It's a kind of stillness indicator would be you're comfortable with peace,
00:08:32but it seems to me that it's almost like a, it feels like a deceleration in striving is one of the
00:08:38sort of core components here. The need to do, the need to be busy.
00:08:42That's a core component to the, the sense of seeking for something, whether it's self-validation
00:08:50or peace on earth, whatever you're seeking, just somehow dissolves and you're left, you're left with
00:08:58just being. So again, most men, they get to that place of just being and they think it's negative. Like,
00:09:05uh, well, you know, I need to take testosterone or, you know, I need to drink more caffeine or, uh,
00:09:13whatever. They, they feel like they need to do something to get their mojo back. Or in fact,
00:09:18that is their mojo. Their mojo is leading them to relax their body and mind to become transparent
00:09:25to their being, their deepest being. And it take, it could take time. It might not take time. It's not
00:09:31predictable, but once you're living from that place of being, there's a through and through sense of
00:09:37authenticity. There's not a sense like something's lacking that you're trying to fill, uh, or stress
00:09:44that you're trying to release. It's just a fullness of being that's living your life. It's the same,
00:09:50you, you experience it. It's the same force. Let's say that's growing, growing trees and moving your
00:09:58blood. You know, your thoughts are just appearing out of nowhere. Nobody knows what they're about to
00:10:04think. Nobody's actually planning on it. It just, their thoughts come out of nowhere. Their body
00:10:11comes out of nowhere. Their experience of everything, what they hear, what they see,
00:10:15is just appearing. And when they could stay there because they have no motive to move,
00:10:21then that appearance, you know, you begin to see some principles of those appearances, but you're
00:10:27free. Things are appearing. You may act on them, but the essential feeling is one of freedom.
00:10:32Yeah. I think what's really interesting here is it feels like the moment when your success stops
00:10:37feeling meaningful and your striving is no longer rewarding you in the same way. And what you're
00:10:43saying is that some men kind of get to there, they get to this escape velocity where they are in this
00:10:49phase of zero, this man of zero moment. And what they do is because for almost all of their life,
00:10:56where they have taken meaning from has been progress, difficulty, hard charging, driving forward,
00:11:02doing things, making shit happen, fulfilling their ambition. And when it's gone, they don't think,
00:11:08oh, wow, I've completed that video game. They think I need to change my conditions with
00:11:14caffeine or imagined or real enemies or higher testosterone level or a divorce or whatever it
00:11:20might be in an attempt to reignite this, the heart of this dead star that is supposed to kind of be let
00:11:28to cool for a little while. Yes, exactly. It's healthy and appropriate for the motivations of your body and
00:11:40mind that it may be in the past to come to stillness and then to discover the truth of what's left.
00:11:47That's so good. So question on this. Why does success eventually feel empty?
00:11:54Well, it only felt full because you had these thoughts and, you know, feelings of lack and goals
00:12:00that you described. Um, there's never anyone who's succeeded any at anything knows that it's,
00:12:07you know, the first thing you discover when you succeed at anything is, uh, uh, okay, you know,
00:12:15I've made zillion dollars. I've got the beautiful woman or whatever their thing is. And there they are.
00:12:21They're the same one. They're the same being. Was that it?
00:12:25That they were before. The question, was that it?
00:12:27Well, it wasn't. I mean, you had to do it. You had, there's no reason to not, like,
00:12:34if you're motivated to make a lot of money or you're motivated to find a partner or to
00:12:41have sex with a lot of people or whatever one's motivation is, you can explore that. I mean,
00:12:46that's what human birth is for to, to explore all the possibilities of being human. But there comes a
00:12:53point if you, if you mature and it could be at any age, a lot of people due to psychedelics and all
00:13:00kinds of things are coming to this point early in their life, but there comes a point where they're
00:13:04just, it's just empty. It feels empty. The tone is emptiness, meaninglessness. They're just, they're
00:13:13there in their mansion, you know, whatever their situation is. And it's like, nothing really has
00:13:20changed essentially. Things have changed externally, bigger house, whatever, but essentially they're the
00:13:26same one. And that's disappointing to people. They think there should be some feel differently.
00:13:34What does that mean, therefore, that becoming a man of zero is more common among people, guys,
00:13:39who have achieved that in order to realize that success is empty, you need to have achieved some
00:13:46success. If you're lower down the sort of ladder, still striving with more unfulfilled desires and
00:13:55goals and accomplishments that as yet you haven't reached, you're more likely to keep playing that game
00:14:00as opposed to arriving at this position of stillness. I think a large percentage of these men have
00:14:08achieved a modicum of success and have come to that point of meaninglessness. However, I think more and
00:14:15more younger men, before they've flexed their muscles in the world, before they've achieved success,
00:14:23often due to a meditative experience or, I mean, people can have these deep experiences now
00:14:28cheaply. So they could have an unearned glimpse of infinity. And they could come to a place of
00:14:37why do anything very early in life before success? And their practice would be the same as the
00:14:44successful person's practices outlined in the Man of Zero book.
00:14:48Yeah, it's referred to as spiritual bypass by some of my friends that sort of do a lot of psychedelics.
00:14:56People go away to the Amazon rainforest, they sit with the shaman, they have this transcendent experience,
00:15:03they touch the divine, they feel the infinite, and then they come back and they're the same
00:15:06prick that they were two weeks ago. There's no integration, nothing changes. They've just had,
00:15:13like visited this peak moment, kind of like a tourist going on holiday to come back and go back to their
00:15:18normal day-to-day life.
00:15:19Yes. And the key insight in that, and psychedelics altogether, is that you said like you're the same,
00:15:30I don't remember what you said, you're the same prick you were beforehand, something like that.
00:15:35The thing to recognize is you are the same one. Whatever that is, you don't have to call it a prick,
00:15:40but you actually are the same one. So, no experience changes yourself, your being, as like, let's just
00:15:50call, you know, it doesn't matter what we could call our deepest being, being, or aware being. It's
00:15:56what's always there. It's what they were when we were five, or ten years old, or it's what's there now,
00:16:01and this moment, and this moment, and this moment. Things keep changing, our experience changes, but that
00:16:06sense of I, or being, is continuous. So, if you could really recognize that, if you could use, say,
00:16:13psychedelics, and go, I'm the same being before I took psychedelics, during the trip, and afterwards,
00:16:21then the practice is to rest as that being. So, the psychedelics themselves may afford healing of
00:16:29different kinds of the body and mind. It may give you visions of kind of parallel worlds to the one
00:16:36our waking state is used to. Those can be interesting, they could be useful, but the one who's having those
00:16:42visions is the same one who, you know, eats lunch and takes a shit.
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00:17:49What's the psychological experience of hitting zero? I imagine this gets confused for depression a lot.
00:17:56Definitely. So there are some cases of true clinical depression, for instance, biochemical imbalances
00:18:05that could be addressed through pharmacological means. Or you can go into a kind of depression
00:18:12because you lose someone you love, or fail at something that you've spent years trying to succeed.
00:18:22Sometimes those are what I would call true depression, but what most people experience in what I'm trying
00:18:31to describe is that they come to a point where their actual life is meaningless. There's no more
00:18:40meaning anymore. And so they feel, what do I do now? And then what they add is a sense of collapse. So
00:18:53being, being, just being your deepest self without collapse is the man of zero. Being, being,
00:19:04and then collapsing, literally collapsing, contracting in your solar plexus, punching over,
00:19:10kind of getting in that dark, you know, what am I doing, mulling things over. That's depression.
00:19:16So if you subtract the doing, if you go to true zero, so you're not even doing contraction,
00:19:23you're not doing slouching, you're not doing the mulling of the thoughts, then what's left is being
00:19:30without collapse. And that's the man of zero.
00:19:33How do people distinguish that in the moment? Because I think the fear that's going to come
00:19:39up, it sounds great. We can rationally identify, well, the main difference is the collapse,
00:19:44the stillness, the deceleration, becoming comfortable with it. But in the moment,
00:19:50you're not going to be thinking rationally at all. You're going to think,
00:19:53where did all of my drive and ambition go? And you're going to look around at all of your friends
00:19:57who you used to work with or compete with or have a rivalry or a friendship with and go,
00:20:04they're still congruent. They're still aligned. Their thoughts, words, actions, beliefs,
00:20:08direction in life is all moving in the same direction. And I don't even know what I'm supposed
00:20:15to do. I don't want to get up. I'm not driven by the same things anymore. This feels like depression.
00:20:19This must be what depression is. So how would you advise someone in the moment
00:20:24to have faith that this is an evolution, not a devolution, progress, not regression?
00:20:32One way, there are several ways, but one way would be to, so let's take this moment now.
00:20:40If you're thinking thoughts in this moment, let's say those thoughts were,
00:20:45my friends are succeeding or my friends, you know, everything that you just said, those are thoughts
00:20:49that are going by. If you can see those thoughts or witness those thoughts, you see them come and go.
00:20:58Like there's a beginning of a thought, there's a thought, it's over, now is another thought.
00:21:02So there's these thoughts that are moving and it's not that difficult to see that you're still there.
00:21:11The thoughts are changing, you are not. You are experiencing those thoughts. The experience changes,
00:21:16the thoughts change, but you are not. And so you, it's hard to put words on, but you sink into that
00:21:24being, or you rest as that being, or you relax as that being, and then you, those thoughts may or may not
00:21:32continue. But if you buy into those thoughts, that's what contracts you. So if you start getting lost in the
00:21:42thoughts or lost in anything, lost in a sexual relationship, lost in your work, but when you get
00:21:49lost in those thoughts, you feel suffering because you're not yourself, true self. You're lost in the
00:21:57stream of thoughts. So the checking is, are you free? Even if thoughts are moving, are you free as they move?
00:22:06Are you the awareness or the space of awareness, however you want to say it, in which those thoughts
00:22:12are moving? And if you can stay there, just rest, relax there. It's effortless. It's just what you always
00:22:19are. So if you feel that effort coming up, you know you're missing the mark.
00:22:23It's interesting that so much of what I think a lot of men do is hide away from the fleeting thoughts,
00:22:36the scary fleeting thoughts, and the patterns that only come up in moments of stillness and quiet by
00:22:44staying busy. So this must be, it's almost like a perfect storm. The drive that kept you busy
00:22:53is no longer there. And as the busyness falls away because you're less driven, the quiet fleeting
00:23:00thoughts come up, which you've been hiding away from for a long time, which is even scarier.
00:23:05And that then gives you more to contend with, which incentivizes you even more to push away
00:23:10the phase of zero, and go back into the drive and the pursuit.
00:23:16It's kind of worse than that.
00:23:17Brilliant.
00:23:19Because we've suppressed a lot. So let's say you told a lie to somebody. This is just one example.
00:23:27Let's say you told a lie to a business partner, or to your wife, or whoever, or maybe just to
00:23:33yourself, but you've told a lie. And then for some gain, personal gain, you know, so you told a lie,
00:23:40and now that moment has passed, but you know, you've told the lie that creates a kind of contraction
00:23:46or tension in your body and mind. And when you come to this place of zero, all of those tensions
00:23:56from your entire life, all the ways you've lied to yourself and others, come back to the surface.
00:24:04So you'll be sitting there and a memory of this person you lied to will come up. It could even be
00:24:13deeper than that. So we have a genetic past and an epigenetic past and an ancestral past. And so just
00:24:21even at the mammalian level, we have mammalian, you know, mammals, we're mammals. So, and mammals
00:24:28fight and fuck and run. And so you'll be sitting there and mammalian urges to kill and fuck and they'll
00:24:36arise. And the moments you've lied to people and hurt them, those moments will arise. And they're arising to your
00:24:45awareness to be released. It's a kind of purification. Like you said, they've been stuffing them down.
00:24:52So it is, it's a, it's quite the ride, you know, it's not like a vanilla, you know, so you have to be,
00:25:02that's why I wrote the book because I want men to understand that and be able to tolerate that unfolding.
00:25:11Does real world effectiveness become less for a while?
00:25:18I would say the interest becomes less, but if you've become effective, that stays there,
00:25:24your skills are diminished. So, so your, your skills, what's, what's the judgment by which we're
00:25:30saying effective is or is not here. If it's playing a game that you've now liberated yourself from, then
00:25:36yeah, you're less effective at playing the game, but you've also transcended it.
00:25:40I'm not even sure you're less effective at playing the game. You're just less moved to. But if the game
00:25:44is kind of put on you, you, you might even be more skilled because you're less wound up in your own issues.
00:25:52Yeah, that's fun. That is fun. So, I, I mean, what's so cool about this? I've been doing this live show.
00:25:58Um, I went to Australia, New Zealand and Bali. I just got back from that. And on stage, I was trying to
00:26:04thread a needle that was, uh, potentially really unpopular and also really hard to do. And it was
00:26:10basically warning people of the hollowness of arriving. And it really feels like there's something
00:26:18there in the ether that you're, you've definitely touched with this. And I think I was trying to get
00:26:22to as well. One of the challenges, I think, when it comes to people learning this stuff is
00:26:30if you haven't yet got there, if you haven't yet got to the point where you've felt enough success and
00:26:37achievement to peer over the top of it and see that it might not be all that you thought or you hoped that
00:26:43it was going to be. If someone who appears to have already made it to the top of the mountain is telling
00:26:49you that the view from the top is not that good. What it feels like to you is someone sucking the
00:26:53oxygen out of your fuel tank. And people respond to this with an awful lot of, of distaste. Oh,
00:27:00like what a luxurious position to be in or some other version of, well, if, if I'd got there,
00:27:06that would fix my internal need, my desire for validation that would be solved by the 10,000
00:27:12square foot home or the supermodel girlfriend or the Ferrari or the thousand monthly paying subscribers
00:27:18on my app or whatever it might be. And, um, I think it's, it's a rare person who is able to face this
00:27:27and go, huh, maybe the things that I'm pursuing at some point in future will be hollow
00:27:33as opposed to just, uh, they just need to push harder. They just need to man up and go through it.
00:27:40If they feel they need to man up and go through it, they should. I mean, that's a true phase. So,
00:27:45if somebody really feels that, I would recommend that they man up and go through it. Um, to others,
00:27:52I would say, it's not so much like when you reach the top, like you arrive and then you see it's empty.
00:28:00Right now, in this moment, whoever's listening, I mean, this very moment, feel what's happening.
00:28:07Notice what's happening. There's something happening. You're, you're hearing my voice and your voice.
00:28:12Uh, there's a visual perception they're having, but none of that is changing them. They're the same one
00:28:19listening that they were yesterday or 10 years ago or 10 years from now. And so in this very moment,
00:28:28they can relax or notice that one. And instantly in that noticing,
00:28:35all the stuff they're doing and thinking becomes empty. Not, not in a negative way. It's just
00:28:42stuff that's happening. It's like watching a river, watching the clouds. Um, it's still happening,
00:28:49but it's flowing through you. There's so, so there's no need to feel like when I achieve or when I'm on
00:29:00have arrived right now, you're in that condition, but you may also have motivation. So right now,
00:29:08everyone is in the condition of being aware to some people that is sufficient to other people.
00:29:16They need to add stress and seeking in that way. Do you think self-improvement and the pursuit of
00:29:24self-improvement can sort of delay real freedom, making us believe that we're the unfinished article
00:29:30until even if that's not true, the belief in it means that we put off asking the deeper questions or
00:29:36sitting with the stillness? Um, I don't think, if somebody wants to self-improve,
00:29:44they should. As we said earlier, I mean, that's what makes the world go round. So people,
00:29:49people who are moved to self-improve or improve the world, which tend to go hand in hand, um,
00:29:55they should. There's no reason not to. I don't see it as a block to this. I think
00:30:02sooner or later, most men come to a point of whether, however active they are or however improved
00:30:11they are or not, of feeling its emptiness. Like in, again, in this moment, most men would be able to
00:30:18feel that spacious emptiness, that awareness. It's aware. It's got a, there's an is-ness. It's hard to
00:30:26put words on this, obviously, but a lot of men have experienced it. What changes around sex?
00:30:32Well, a third of the book is about sex, um, of the, the book, The Man of Zero, because a lot could
00:30:39change because a lot of our sex is based on, uh, our past, our mammalian past, as I said, um, our
00:30:49psychological past, the way our parents treated us, our first sexual relationships. Um, as we rest at
00:30:57zero more and more, more stably, more frequently, those no longer motivate you. So what men often feel
00:31:06as they approach this phase of The Man of Zero is less actual desire for sex, but more sexual fantasies
00:31:16coming out of those depths that I described earlier, like that we stuffed down. So they might be sitting
00:31:22there and they may have all kinds of weird sexual fantasies and thoughts, but when it comes to
00:31:28actually having sex and having a relationship, all they know is what they see in their friends or what
00:31:35they did in the past, which is based on these conditionings from their past, their mammalian
00:31:40conditioning, their personal past, their childhood traumas. And those just are no longer an interesting
00:31:46way to have sex. So a lot of men go, you know, I'm, I'm losing my sexual desire. I need to get it
00:31:53back. Whereas, as I describe in the book, there's what turns you on now is not as much,
00:32:03you know, what turned you on before, lingerie and porn or whatever. But a partner, I'll say woman,
00:32:10it could be any sex, but a partner's actual love, her devotion, her surrender. So when you feel
00:32:16someone's devotion to love or surrender, opening their body to love, that brings a part of you to the
00:32:25four that could become sex from zero. Like you're rested at zero. You're, you're not pushing,
00:32:33but from that place comes a polarity or sexual attraction. There's a lot in the book about that.
00:32:39We can unpack it more now if you want. Absolutely. Yeah. I think, uh, the role of
00:32:44sexual polarity, obviously massive part of your first book. And then to see it,
00:32:48you might think that the amount of stillness would kill the polarity, but you're suggesting that that's
00:32:55not the case. Stillness is one side of the polarity. The other side is fullness or energy. And that's,
00:33:04you know, I use the word masculine and feminine. It's problematic for some people, but
00:33:09the way I'm using that word is that the masculine is that unchanging stillness that we can all experience.
00:33:15And the feminine is everything that moves, is life force, is energy, is the fullness to the emptiness.
00:33:24And so as you rest in emptiness through polarity, you tend to attract fullness. So if in a heterosexual
00:33:31relationship, you will tend to attract to you women who are, you know, very active. They like to talk.
00:33:38They like to socialize. Just as you're feeling, I don't want to talk, I don't want to socialize.
00:33:46And so it's important to learn to embrace that polarity, but it's still a polarity. And ultimately,
00:33:51the polarity is being the fullness of your depth, of your awareness and attracting to you a woman who's
00:34:01in her fullness of devotion. That is, her heart is open and full of love that she also wants to share.
00:34:09But she's not driven by a sense of lack. So she loves you, but doesn't need you and vice versa.
00:34:17And that's a very strong polarity. Your depth of stillness is in polarity with her radiance, her power.
00:34:25I see it even coming out as more and more women. I'm sure you know this. You know, there are more girls who
00:34:32graduate high school than boys. There are more women in law school and medical school than men.
00:34:38And I think it's going to keep going in that direction. I think that over time, women will be
00:34:47much and already are. There'll be more women leaders than men. There'll be more successful women than men.
00:34:55The pendulum will swing. And then men will need to learn how to rest as this man of zero in depth,
00:35:02because then they still have polarity. It's very valuable when a woman is very strong and powerful,
00:35:08kind of comes home from work, if we want to use that metaphor, like she comes home from
00:35:12a day of being in the world. And there you are, completely present, rooted in the deepest sense of
00:35:19being, absolutely attentive to her without being clinging, because your awareness is free. She feels
00:35:26that is the greatest gift on earth. So she moves from being attracted to a man who, whatever, makes a lot
00:35:32of money and is socially charismatic, to a man whose polarity matches her at the level of being and doing,
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00:36:46Interesting to think about the masculine essence of, I guess, holding frame would be one way to put it,
00:36:55but just being you, just being. And that even if you're not doing as much doing as the woman in your
00:37:03life, the fact that you're able to be so still and so comfortable with it commands a kind of masculine
00:37:10power and respect that kind of means that no matter what happens in the outside world, the protector
00:37:18provider, the socioeconomic balance or imbalance, it's always still you in a position of masculine
00:37:29frame holding. Yes, because awareness is where everything happens. You wouldn't be aware of
00:37:36something unless it happened in awareness, and you're that awareness. So you are the ultimate frame,
00:37:42if you will. And this could even apply sexually. So let's say you're laying in bed with a lover.
00:37:48In the past, you might initiate sex and, you know, you might be kissing and touching and foreplay and
00:37:57building up tension, maybe spanking, you know, lovingly being together in all kinds of playful ways.
00:38:02But for a man of zero, he might be laying there feeling like, I don't want to do anything. I don't
00:38:06want to move. I love her. I love being here with her. I don't want to do anything, no. And I would say
00:38:12to that man, okay, don't do anything. You just lay there in bed, hold her in your arms, but completely
00:38:18feel her. Feel her body. Notice the tensions moving through her body. Feel her emotions. Feel the ongoing
00:38:26yearning in her heart. And in the book, I give details. But you learn how to feel into her effortlessly,
00:38:33just in a completely relaxed way. And then she feels your presence. She feels you feeling her.
00:38:40She feels you knowing her. And that is incredibly valuable, even sexually. So now, you're just laying
00:38:48there holding her with her. But she feels you deeply knowing her, probably deeper than if you were
00:38:54pumping her, you know. So she's feeling this deep sense of you being inside of her. You're still
00:39:00penetrating her, but you're penetrating her with your love, with your feeling awareness. And so sexually,
00:39:08the less you do, the more she feels fucked by you. You said before about how sort of the previous things
00:39:17that men were, would be turned on by in sex. Maybe you could categorize them as a bit more obvious,
00:39:26a little bit more shallow. I can't think of a better word, a little bit more shallow. When you're then
00:39:31talking about sex at zero is much more intimate. Why do you think talking about intimacy when it
00:39:41comes to sex is hard for men? Talking about sleeping with women is pretty easy, almost sort of bragging
00:39:47about what you got up to last night if you're in your twenties. But talking about true physical intimacy
00:39:54as a man, a lot of the time, I think, makes men uncomfortable. Women have a not horrendous
00:40:01archetype for this, you know, the transcendent, deeply desired. It's making love, not having sex.
00:40:08But for men, true physical intimacy and making love is, I don't know, I don't hear many men talking
00:40:16about it. And when they do, I think that there's a kind of uncomfortableness around it.
00:40:20Well, that's a, as you know, a lot of my work in the past has been on sexuality and spirituality.
00:40:26So we could spend, you know, months unpacking this, but Hey, it's your first one. It's your
00:40:32first podcast in 10 years. I don't know whether you knew David, but this actually does last for months.
00:40:36So I hope that you've locked in.
00:40:42That's fantastic. Because of the way evolution works, I'm sure you know this.
00:40:48For male bodies, all they need to do is ejaculate in order to create the next generation.
00:40:55So men are built to be aroused sexually. So sexual arousal, you know, men are almost always able to
00:41:04be sexually, you know, they're fantasizing about sex a lot. A sexual arousal is easy.
00:41:09So it's easy for them to talk about that part, sex. It's easy for them to say what they like sexually.
00:41:30Intimacy often involves emotional sensitivity, feeling the other person, obviously. And most men
00:41:45during sex, because of their evolutionary past gets so wrapped up in the physical sensations.
00:41:50Yeah. Have an erection. I'm going to ejaculate. Look at her breasts. Look at her ass. Like they're
00:41:55they're in this evolutionary churn that most men know. We all know that. So it makes it easy for
00:42:03them to talk about sexuality, but because they're deeply identified with nothingness. So, you know,
00:42:10at the depth of men of the masculine is this emptiness, this nothingness, and the emotions are
00:42:16anything but empty. They're what fill the emptiness. Most men, because they don't really realize how much
00:42:24they love the nothingness, they don't like filling it with emotion. So often a woman will ask a man,
00:42:30like, what are you feeling? And he'll go, well, nothing. And he's not lying. Or, you know, what do you
00:42:38feel about this? And he might say, I don't have any feelings about it. Often they're not lying. They're
00:42:44really feeling this kind of sense of emptiness or not in a negative way. Just it's a nothing. It's a
00:42:51aware nothingness. And they're not feeling an emotion. And so the woman will feel like he's not
00:42:57sharing with me. And the man will feel like, why is she doing, you know, why is she creating a problem
00:43:04when there is none? So there's a big difference between the way in typically the masculine feminine
00:43:11that she can communicate and why that difference is. What is your advice for a guy who wants to move from
00:43:16just having sex to proper intimacy? When one is in the man of zero phase,
00:43:24one of the obvious things is that that beingness or awareness, being aware, is in all beings. Like,
00:43:33you could look into a dog's eye and see their awareness. You could look into, you know,
00:43:41you're feeling that awareness in all beings, including your lover. So feeling like loving the
00:43:50love in your lover or being aware of the awareness in your lover. So she's aware of you, you're aware of
00:43:56her, you're aware of her being aware of you. That mutual awareness is love. Or that mutual,
00:44:02we are the same being. It's not a thought like that. It's just a feeling. Again, you could feel it
00:44:08with an animal. You could feel it with a plant. But that being that I am the same as you at depth,
00:44:15we're different at our surface. Our minds are different. Our bodies are different. But at depth,
00:44:22when you look and say, look into the eyes of a dog even, you can feel love. You could feel them
00:44:28connecting with you. There's a being there. And that recognition of shared being, which
00:44:36we could call love, might manifest as, you know, wanting to be physically intimate in the case of
00:44:43polarity. Unless, you know, you don't necessarily have polarity with a dog, but if you're with a human
00:44:50or a plant, although some people do, you know. But if you have that polarity with a human,
00:44:58and you're in your nothingness, that means you will attract somebody in their fullness. And
00:45:06that connection is love, even though you're playing the opposite poles. So one feels that love and is still
00:45:15and silent, and is not in the mood to communicate emotions. They're not in any mood. There is no mood.
00:45:22And the other is flowing with feeling, bursting with emotions, and highly responsive to life.
00:45:30And those tend to make, you know, a good pair in terms of polarity. So you recognize the unity of heart,
00:45:38I am you. But then you recognize the reciprocity in body and mind. She's radiant. I'm still, you know,
00:45:48she loves to dance. I love to watch her dance.
00:45:53Let's say that there's someone, let's say that there's a man who hasn't yet hit the man of zero thing,
00:46:00that sex at zero also not there. Are there some practices that you think help to push someone who
00:46:13isn't already in stillness, a man that isn't already in stillness, toward sex being a vehicle for
00:46:21experiencing deeper intimacy, and then also perhaps moving through some of the patterns that
00:46:29he has to work through in order to get to that man of zero point?
00:46:34Yes. Um, again, my previous 10 books were focused on this.
00:46:39Congratulations on 11, by the way.
00:46:45You know, men shouldn't push their stage or phase. Like you, you should live it fully. The best way
00:46:56to grow out of it is to grow through it.
00:46:58Yeah, I agree.
00:46:59Like, and so if you really are motivated to just have physical sex, you know,
00:47:07wham, bam, thank you, man, just quick, you know, then if that's where you're at,
00:47:12do it until it becomes obsolete for you. Um, when a man begins to become ready,
00:47:18there are all kinds of practices he could do. One, I mean, I'll say some of them, but again,
00:47:23there's a lot of them. Um, one thing is for him to learn to take his attention off himself,
00:47:30off his own body and onto his partner's body, even in sex and not in sex. So let's talk about sex.
00:47:38So to feel your partner's body more than you feel your own, to feel the tensions and relaxations in
00:47:46your partner's body, to feel the breath moving in and out of your partner's body, to feel the emotions
00:47:51moving through your partner, rather than your attention locked into your own sexual sensations.
00:48:00So one would just be to learn to liberate their attention to at least feel her more than yourself.
00:48:08Um, another thing to do is to create a kind of resonance. So often breathing with your partner
00:48:15sexually. So when she inhales, you inhale and she exhales, you exhale. And then of course,
00:48:20you might need to take catch up breaths because you don't have the same metabolism as your partner,
00:48:25but creating a kind of resonance of breath helps deepen sex beyond the merely physical.
00:48:34Going deeper in the body. So, uh, you know, some men only play on the surface of the woman's
00:48:42body. They kiss her lips. David, I'm going as deep as I can. I'm really trying. I've been
00:48:46trying for my entire sexual life to go as deep as I can. Congratulations. Sorry. Sorry. I had, I had to go
00:48:54on. Was that, do you want me to comment on that? No, no, no, no, no, no. That was just, I'm sorry.
00:49:00I just, the thought arose in my mind and I couldn't not make a deep joke. So, uh, you, you were saying,
00:49:08yeah. Well, well, that's actually true. I mean, a lot of men just at the physical level have an impulse
00:49:16to go deep. They want to press, you know, in terms of actual sex, they want to press their sexual organ
00:49:23deep inside of a woman. The feeling of going deep is the essential masculine urge, going deep into
00:49:31her, going deep into self, going deep into being. So that sense of wanting to go deep is a kind of
00:49:38native expression of the masculine. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem?
00:49:44I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night.
00:49:50But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man. I just kept chugging
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00:50:40Bottoms up.
00:50:48So, things change and drop away. Ambitions, drives that we used to have may, they're just not there in
00:50:59the same way anymore. They feel hollow. You're not driven to do the same things. You may be more
00:51:04skillful because you're not pushing in the same sort of a way, but the drive to do the thing that you're
00:51:10skillful at may be diminished or entirely absent. There's not a collapse because the collapse would be
00:51:18depression, but there is a kind of emptiness and sitting with that in stillness is important. Also,
00:51:26the way that you show up and the way that you feel around sex may go from shallow to deep. It may
00:51:32feel significantly more intimate, less physical, more bound together. How does this get integrated?
00:51:41What do you do next?
00:51:45Over, it takes quite a while for the stability of your being to infiltrate through the patterns
00:51:53of your body-mind. So, we have all kinds of patterns in our body-mind. We have traumas.
00:52:00We might feel aggressive because of the way whatever our father treated us. We might feel aggressive
00:52:04because we're mammals and we've inherited a certain degree of aggression. Well, as we rest as being
00:52:12more and more as we become stable as recognizing ourselves as that
00:52:17simple awareness or presence, those patterns become integrated
00:52:24naturally, if you will, because tension isn't being added to them. You're not rewinding them tighter and
00:52:30tighter. You're letting them uncoil in the space of your awareness. Now, some people
00:52:38might have such a tight knot in their body or mind that they need a form of therapy. So, they may need
00:52:45a form of somatic therapy to unknot their body. Or they may need a form of cognitive therapy
00:52:54to help them unknot their mind or release a trauma. They might want to do trauma therapy.
00:53:00But all of that is just for to help loosen that relaxation in the openness of their presence.
00:53:09So, over time, it slowly becomes integrated and it's slow. Another thing that people don't really
00:53:15understand is, you know, you could have this kind of recognition of being and yet your body and mind
00:53:22continue with the patterns they have before, and your body is the last to change. Your mind may change
00:53:29first, but you find your body doing things your mind doesn't want to anymore. So, you have to have
00:53:36patience and compassion for yourself and others as these patterns in your body-mind continue to unfold.
00:53:44You might find yourself lying even though you don't want to lie. You might find yourself
00:53:48hurting someone even though you don't want to hurt them. So, you compassionately allow these past
00:53:55contractions that you stored in your body and mind to open in the spaciousness of your present being.
00:54:02And that takes years. I mean, there are all kinds of stories, as you know, of people of supposed
00:54:08spiritual depths who act in, you know, not integrous ways.
00:54:14Pretty much every leader of some spiritual movement or yoga cult for the last, like,
00:54:22three decades has basically, like, 50 decades perhaps has done that.
00:54:26Well, pretty much because it's universal. I mean, it just doesn't change. People,
00:54:32it's a false hope, I guess, for it to change. So, there are some highly integrated people
00:54:41who are not that deep. Some are deep, some are not that deep. But there are also very deep people who
00:54:48are not very integrated. They may have, they may be alcoholics, they may be, you know, cheating,
00:54:55you know, they may have sex with all of their students or, and those, that doesn't mean they're not,
00:55:04they don't recognize the nature of their being. It just means that their pattern has yet to unfold.
00:55:09And you need to be careful. I mean, you could put structure so that pattern doesn't hurt people,
00:55:14or you could make amends as those patterns inevitably hurt people. But that's the usual,
00:55:20that's not the exception, as you say. People have a kind of recognition that they could share with
00:55:25others. And yet, it's just like being an artist. How many artists can essentially create,
00:55:30let's take a musician, they could make divine music, and yet they themselves in their personal
00:55:35life are pretty messed up. I wonder, this is why I said about real world effectiveness,
00:55:42right? That so much of the best analyses, the best philosophy, there's this great line,
00:55:50if you marry well, you will become happy. But if you marry wrong, you will become a philosopher.
00:55:55And I think what that's sort of speaking to is, when you're pushing up against the grain of life,
00:56:04when it feels like you're swimming into the stream, when stuff's just not quite cohesing in the right
00:56:11way, or you still have these patterns to work against, these resentments from your past,
00:56:16this bitterness, this sort of unalchemized, untranscended and included problem. Because
00:56:24things aren't going easily, because things aren't going well, you tend to look at your world and
00:56:30yourself with so much more dexterity and resolution and obsession. That's where the art seems to come from.
00:56:38You know, how many songs have been made that are wonderful and unbelievably deep about everything's
00:56:46going well, and my wife's happy and healthy, and I've got these new kids, and the field outside is
00:56:51really bright today, and the weather's going, it's like, no. So much of what births great creative insight,
00:56:58and that desire to make things at a level that would be unreasonable otherwise, is the fact that you're
00:57:05brushing up against the grain of life. And that's, I think, what I was trying to get at. That as this
00:57:09stuff drops away, maybe your, if your ability to be effective includes your drive to do the thing,
00:57:19your output may change. The outputs that you get may diminish.
00:57:28First of all, I agree with you that suffering is the trigger for a lot of depth and a lot of art,
00:57:34which to me are the same thing. Good art comes from depth. So I agree with you, and that's why I don't
00:57:41think people should rush through these phases, and also why I don't think people should assume
00:57:47someone has depth. It means they're an integrated character. I would say that a lack of integration
00:57:53often creates art more than an integrated human. Can you highlight the difference between somebody who is,
00:58:00how do we identify somebody that is integrated and isn't?
00:58:05The way I'm using that word is that they're socially skilled, they act with deep morality.
00:58:14people who are good people, a man, you know, someone who you could trust. And a lot of these teachers you
00:58:22wouldn't trust, or a lot of these musicians or artists or whatever form they take, you might trust their
00:58:29art, but you wouldn't trust them, whatever, with your wife or with your bank account or with, you know,
00:58:35you have to use your discrimination. And luckily, that doesn't stop. As I said, even when you're
00:58:42rested at zero, those patterns continue, and they continue to cause trouble. And so the source of art
00:58:49that you're referring to doesn't cease. Your access to depth becomes more stable.
00:58:58What role does discipline play after purpose ends?
00:59:06Well, the body and mind continue to require discipline. You know, if you want to
00:59:12become stronger, you lift weights regularly. If you want to think about something more clearly, you may
00:59:20read books. So you may say that X hours a day, I'm going to lift weights or read books.
00:59:27So there's still a sense for your body and mind to train, you know, to learn to golf takes
00:59:35discipline, repetition. So your body and mind still require discipline. But the discipline is no longer
00:59:45to be what you are, you recognize you are what you are. So it's effortless. So the being depth
00:59:55is effortless. If you're doing something, you're missing it. So in this moment, if you're trying to be
01:00:03being, then you're trying, you're not being. So effortlessness is the key to knowing that in this
01:00:13moment, you're just being. But that doesn't mean that within that effortless being, you might still
01:00:19decide, you know, I want to paint something, or my kid needs to be picked up from school, or
01:00:27you know, I want to build a business. And all of those things require repetitive action or discipline.
01:00:33It's a very different sort of drive to get there though, right?
01:00:39Different from what? What's different?
01:00:40Well, in order to do this, it seems like there's kind of bottom-up motivation, which is
01:00:48less conscious, and it's driven by need for recognition. It's driven by past patterns. This is
01:00:54much more dictated. Like I don't need to paint, but I'm going to, I want to paint. I don't need to go to
01:01:01the gym and need to go to the gym is because if my body is better than I will look good to the person
01:01:06that I love and she will find me attracted. As opposed to just, I'm doing this because I want to.
01:01:13Yes. No, I agree with that. Yes. You've been thinking about, how long have you been writing
01:01:19about men and women? 40 some years. Okay. We are, you mentioned it earlier on,
01:01:29at least at what feels like a bit of a transitionary period, especially for men, for women too, but
01:01:34especially for men. I think women had a big transitionary period about 50, 60 years ago.
01:01:41What do you see or what are you hopeful for and worried about with the current culture around men?
01:01:50I wouldn't say I'm worried about anything, but I would say that as women take over the functions that
01:01:59men once had, men will have to find the deeper reason for being. And that deeper reason is what
01:02:07we've been talking about this whole time to frame everything, to hold everything, to be presence,
01:02:13to be depth. So whatever somebody's doing, your presence deepens them. So their doing becomes deeper.
01:02:21And that involves a different form of self-worth, if you will. You're not measuring yourself on how much
01:02:29money you have or how much weight you could lift. You're kind of measuring yourself on, if you want
01:02:34to use that word, on your stability, be what you are, and rather than getting lost in thoughts or in activities.
01:02:43What's the core of masculine essence, in your opinion?
01:02:48Well, the way I use that term is identifying more with the emptiness aspect of being than the fullness
01:02:57aspect of being. So the feminine is all into growth and change and flowering and fullness
01:03:10and eyeing. And the masculine is more oriented to timelessness and peace and being. So there are two
01:03:21different orientations, emptiness and fullness or presence and radiance. There's different ways of saying it.
01:03:31Yeah. It feels to me like you've lived 30 different lives. I did a little bit of research. Apparently,
01:03:38you instructed in artificial intelligence, research neuroscience, developed yoga techniques
01:03:43for intimate relationships, wrote PhDs that got an award from the French government, published academic
01:03:52papers, studied spirituality, and then wrote 11 books as well. I'm sure I'm missing an awful lot.
01:03:59But what's the through line with this? You're kind of, especially now with not showing your video,
01:04:07living in the middle of nowhere, in God knows where, with trees that are blocking your internet
01:04:11signal. You're almost sort of this esoteric masculinity wizard working on this stuff for so long.
01:04:22Like what, what's the through line? What do you want your career to be about and be remembered about?
01:04:33I don't really think of it in those terms, but there's definitely a through line.
01:04:40For whatever reasons, these things, this desire to understand reality or who I am or who we are,
01:04:47has started very, very early in my life. Very early. I mean, I remember being in the
01:04:53crib. I remember being diapered and feeling like, ooh, you know, like there's, I remember learning what
01:05:00perspective is or crawling on the carpet at my grandparents' house and realizing what size meant,
01:05:08like some things were bigger than others. Like I, it's just something I've been interested in
01:05:14all of my life. And so at some point in my life that led me to mathematics. I, I developed the
01:05:21Indicational Calculus, which is a calculus of distinctions, how distinctions arise in consciousness,
01:05:28published papers and that. That also, that became biology and immunology.
01:05:33Um, I worked in labs. I worked in a sleep lab to study sleep and dreams. Um, they, these were all
01:05:39unfoldings to me of the same thing. And during all of that, my main interest is just like, what is
01:05:46this? Like, what is the nature of being, of reality, of me, of the world? Like, why are we here? What is
01:05:52the meaning? And not in an intellectual sense, but to, to be able to do it, to, to write a computer that
01:05:58could think back then I was working on early artificial intelligence or, uh, you know, in the immune
01:06:03system I was working as, how does the immune system recognize self from other, you know? So I was always
01:06:09motivated by that. And through that, I was also meditating and doing yoga. Like you said, I had a yoga
01:06:15school, um, but all of those to me were the same thing. They were different ways just that my personality
01:06:25manifested this discovery, manifested this, uh, exploration and still is. So for the last couple
01:06:32of decades, I've been, it just naturally came. I've been living in mostly silence and a kind of retreat
01:06:39like life, but, uh, not because I'm avoiding anything. It's just, I succeeded at everything.
01:06:44You know, I accomplished what I needed to accomplish. And it came to a point of
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01:07:51What is it that you attribute your ability to stay in touch with what you're truly interested in to?
01:07:59I never had an option. I don't know how to say it. It hurt me too much. For instance,
01:08:13when I went to college at 16 years old, I entered a program that was a combination of medical school
01:08:18and undergraduate school at a very young age. So I was going to medical school very early and studying
01:08:25science and all of these things. And at one point, I remember just sitting there in the library studying.
01:08:30You know, I was dissecting brains and labs. I was in it deep. And suddenly, it was just like,
01:08:36I can't do this anymore. Like, I've outgrown this or it's become obsolete for me. As much as I loved it
01:08:45until yesterday, today, it's done. And I, for some reason, I was able, I mean, I didn't just quit,
01:08:52you know, I let things go in an easy way, in a responsible way, but it became clear to me
01:08:58that that phase had ended. And usually, I don't know what the next phase is. I spent
01:09:05a year living under a tarp on a beach on a deserted part of Hawaii with no money at all. And
01:09:14that out of that year came my first book. So I didn't know that. I just thought I'm done. I'm
01:09:20going to just live under a tarp cheap as possible. So I did. And then I just started writing. I didn't
01:09:27plan on it. And I began to realize that if I could surrender to that process and not be lazy to really
01:09:35put in the work as things arose for me, that what I created from that place of depth was worth something
01:09:43to people. So I learned to make a living doing what I love.
01:09:46Hmm. I don't know if that's answering your question. It does. I think it might be difficult
01:09:55for you to, to see why waking up one day and feeling like your work in the lab is no longer fulfilling you
01:10:05in the way that it used to, but not continuing because of sunk cost fallacy or loss aversion or
01:10:13fear of what people will say or not being able to beat your previous career or whatever. It seems like
01:10:19that comes pretty naturally to you because the pain of being out of alignment is greater than the pain of
01:10:28change. But I don't think that that's the case. I don't think that's the case for most people.
01:10:32I think, I think most people are pretty ridden, riven by that stuff.
01:10:38Yes. I would say that the pain of living an untrue life for me exceeded the fear of what might
01:10:46happen if I do. Yes. Yes. So, so, you know, I was willing to risk everything because I just didn't
01:10:53have a choice. Like it hurt so much, literally hurt. Like my body hurt every, you know, going to do these
01:11:02things, hurt to do. I don't know how to describe it, just the pain itself. Suffering, like you say,
01:11:12is the root of a lot of exploration and creation and art. And the suffering just became so intense that,
01:11:19you know, when I ended a phase that I had no choice but to allow the new authenticity to find a way to
01:11:26express itself. I, uh, I did a retreat. Do you know who Joe Hudson is by any chance? Are you familiar
01:11:32with him? I don't. So Joe is a
01:11:38spiritual teacher makes him sound. It's far too, too dimensional for what he does, but, uh, Eastern,
01:11:43Western, lots of therapeutic modalities does retreats. He's also, uh, head of human culture,
01:11:49open AI. He's Sam Altman's coach. He's also my coach. And, um, he is, he's a wonderful,
01:11:54wonderful, wonderful man. And I did a retreat. It was my first sort of deep emotions bootcamp retreat.
01:12:01And I did it on a flower farm in, uh, Santa Rosa in California last year. I did it in,
01:12:07I did it in September and I haven't done Hoffman process. I haven't done IFS. This is the first
01:12:12thing of its kind that, that I've done. And, you know, by day four of seven, you're pretty cracked
01:12:20open by day three of seven. You're getting them by day four of seven. You're pretty cracked open 12
01:12:24hours a day, working on anger, working on grief, working on sadness, working on upright communication
01:12:30and apologies. And it's what you said earlier on about the pain of when you tell a lie, sort of,
01:12:35it comes back to get you when you get to this, this phase of zero, because that was kind of like speed
01:12:43running to zero, uh, without the psychedelics. And what I found when I got out was all of the ways
01:12:52that my patterns and incongruence, and like just all of the things that I did in the world,
01:12:59the conversations that I would have with, with my staff and the small ways that I might,
01:13:03I might lie because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. Um, I, I didn't want to say something that
01:13:08might make them uncomfortable. So I didn't say what was just true or my truth, uh, or the way that I
01:13:15might deal with a friend who was late for dinner or, or, uh, an interaction with somebody that I just met
01:13:22or whatever, all of these different ways, there was this, and you use the word constriction,
01:13:27which is the perfect word for it. There was this sort of tightening and it feels like,
01:13:32it feels like a wet rag. If you imagine a wet rag, that sort of goes from the back of your mouth to the
01:13:38middle of your stomach. And it, it feels like some, it feels like someone sort of twisting like this.
01:13:44And, um, I'd never had, I mean, I always, I try not to lie as best I can. And I'd always known that
01:13:53it was something that didn't make me feel great. I'm a horrendous lie. I'm a really, really
01:13:58unsophisticated liar. And this extra level of sensitivity, you know, this attunement that I had
01:14:07from stripping away, opening my heart, doing all of this work for, you know, a full week just meant
01:14:14that that, that level of sensitivity to the, the, the rag being, being squeezed inside of me was so,
01:14:23it was so fucking hypersensitized. It was insane. And, um, I kind of imagine, I just have to assume that
01:14:29this is, this is maybe what it's like to be David Data, that that level of sensitivity to the pain,
01:14:37the pain of misalignment. I was having a conversation yesterday about why, why I'm glad that I get such
01:14:42bad hangovers, which is, uh, the cost benefit analysis or the, the, uh, reward punishment balance
01:14:51for me for drinking alcohol is just way off. It was never great. And now I'm in my thirties and, and
01:14:57it's, it's gotten even worse. I'm kind of glad because what that means is the likelihood of me
01:15:03ever becoming an alcoholic is super low because the pain, I wouldn't even be able to get to the
01:15:06point of dependency because I'd be so miserable after day three or four. I mean, I can't,
01:15:10I cannot fucking do this anymore. Um, this, what you have here is maybe, and if you do the work,
01:15:18the opening, the freeing, uh, the, the attunement, that's kind of the same thing.
01:15:25It's a very high level of pain when you do something that you shouldn't be doing.
01:15:31And that whether it's through, uh, training or just a, a, a, you know, fortune gift that you've
01:15:37been given, uh, means that when you start to do stuff that's out of alignment,
01:15:40you feel it very harshly. And that has pushed you through what to, to me from the outside looks like
01:15:47again, 30 different lives that you've lived, but to you just feels like, well, I was just,
01:15:52I was following what I was interested in. I wanted to understand myself and the world around me.
01:15:56And I kept going. I was trying to keep that rag on twisted. Yeah.
01:16:02That you described the wet rag. So, you know, you, you did a process a week long, whatever process to
01:16:09feel that which is great. Um, but you can also feel that at, at any time. So right now you can feel the
01:16:17extent to which, uh, area of your body from your throat down, or which is the typical place people
01:16:23feel it. I talk about that in the book a lot, the Man of Zero book. So that contraction in the front of
01:16:29the body from your throat down your solar plexus and down even deeper, that's the sig, that's a signal for
01:16:36you and many men that they're out of line. Now, if their mechanisms like their need for self-worth is so
01:16:44intense, it could push them to ignore that for years and years. And then you'd have to do it. You know,
01:16:50you have to go to a training and have it unpacked, which is very useful. I've done those kinds of
01:16:56things. So you, you could do it in an intensive kind of way, or you can, or, and you can learn to
01:17:02feel that tension, constriction, contraction as it's happening. And, and you're reading that it's like
01:17:10a meter. It's like flying an airplane by instruments. You're feeling the tightening of that and you're
01:17:15going, okay, you might not be aware of why it's happening, but right now I'm living off the mark.
01:17:21I'm not living on point. And then they accumulate less, but it doesn't matter how you come to that place.
01:17:30Like you said, I mean, you could do it through a process, which you did, which is great. You could
01:17:34do it through, some people feel it through psychedelics. Some people just feel it through
01:17:38the school of hard knocks, just the pain in their life. But yes, that contraction,
01:17:43specifically in that part of the body, the front, the solar plexus, the belly, the chest,
01:17:48is a sign that you're not relaxed as your depth. It's a sign that your depth is living you.
01:17:55Something's living you. That's not your depth.
01:17:57Yeah. That's the lead indicator. And the lagging indicator is that you end up in a life that you're
01:18:03not supposed to be in, but that I think it's going to be difficult for you to get to the life that
01:18:08you're not supposed to be in if you haven't denied the wet rag being twisted for quite a long time.
01:18:13Yeah. I don't know how long, but yes, they go hand in hand. If you ignore that twisted rag.
01:18:19That's just, it's the constriction, it's the tightening, it's the tensing. And it's different
01:18:25for different people, right? Mine sits right in my stomach, right at this sort of just below my solar
01:18:30plexus. It sits right there and it just feels like someone's twisting it, but sometimes it moves up to my
01:18:35throat and sometimes it moves down. And, um, yeah, I get it.
01:18:41Yeah. That, that contraction is the main sign and different men, as you say, not only feel it in
01:18:47different places in their body. Usually they feel it where you feel it in the front of their body,
01:18:54kind of near their solar plexus, but they may not feel it in their body. Some men have that contraction
01:18:59in their emotional body. So they become emotionally unwell, not just physically twisted or, but
01:19:08emotionally twisted. Some men experience it in their, if you will, mental body or intellectual body. So they
01:19:15start thinking strange thoughts are all twisted up intellectually, mentally. Um, so there's different
01:19:24dimensions that men can feel that contraction in and different men feel it primarily in different
01:19:32dimensions. And that's the dimension they should focus their work on.
01:19:36That's interesting. Speaking of that, I, I know, and I appreciate you, uh, not encouraging people to
01:19:44growth hack or speed run their way through phases that they're not yet in, right? That kind of you'll
01:19:49get there when you need to get there. And the dose that you need to take in order to get to your next
01:19:54level of development sort of arrives at the pace that you're moving through life. And maybe trying to
01:19:58speed run that is actually not, not a great, a great idea, but across all of the modalities
01:20:05that you've tried, all of the different techniques that you've employed, what are the ones that you
01:20:11attribute the most amount of, I don't want to use the word progress. Cause that sounds like more speed
01:20:18running, but the most amount of development to what are the ones that you come back to the most or the
01:20:23ones that looking back, you go, wow. Like those things that I did were, were very worthwhile and I'm glad
01:20:30that I did them. Well, again, this is different from man to man. So I wouldn't want any man to model me
01:20:37or you, or, you know, the, every man has to discover this for themselves. But for me, um, I would say one
01:20:43intimate relationship. So I've been in long intimate relationship and having a partner.
01:20:52So you described that part of your body twisting, but it could be your partner twisting, it could be
01:20:58your partner contracting as a reflection of you being off. And it's harder to bypass your partner's
01:21:08complaints, your partner's contractions. And so I would say that the wisdom of my intimate partners,
01:21:16just in their natural reflection and depth and love has probably informed me, uh, one of the most.
01:21:24And then together with that, I would say working with a teacher and, you know, I've worked with just
01:21:31a few teachers, long-term teachers. I don't mean just a learning guitar or something. I mean, so long-term
01:21:38teachers usually could reflect to me areas that I can't see myself or that I'm not willing to, um, and, and
01:21:46lovingly continue reflecting that to me until I pick it up. So I would say that my relationship with,
01:21:53you know, a loved one, a intimate partner and a relationship with a teacher more than a specific
01:22:00technique. Although, you know, I've, I, as I said, you know, I had a yoga, I've done a lot of things
01:22:07like Hatha yoga and Tai Chi and Qi Gong and moving energy through my body. You can also feel those contractions
01:22:12as you can. So feeling that contraction in the front of the body, learning how to open that feeling,
01:22:19what's forming that. Um, but in, for me, the love, my partner's love and my teacher's love would
01:22:27probably be the most effective ways that I, I know what you mean, using the word effective.
01:22:34But yes, those would be the modalities. Yeah. If you marry wrong, you'll become a philosopher,
01:22:38but if you marry well, you will become a yoga teacher. Is that your?
01:22:48David, uh, let's leave it there, mate. You're, you're wonderful. Your work over the last, you know,
01:22:53however many decades has just been so great. And, um, it's great to speak to you. You know,
01:22:58you didn't need to do this. I, uh, I really appreciate you giving me your time. If, if,
01:23:02if you give what's this an hour and a half, if you do 90 minutes, a decade of, uh, of podcasting,
01:23:08I, uh, I hope that this one was worthwhile.
01:23:12Well, you seem authentically and genuinely committed to truth. Um, that's pretty rare.
01:23:19You know, you're, you're good at what you do. You know, you have this podcast,
01:23:23you've been highly motivated to create this thing, but you're also, your heart is in it. And so I
01:23:29felt moved to connect with you like this, mostly because I agree with your heart. I, I resonate
01:23:34with your heart. I appreciate you. I appreciate you too. I, uh, this podcast is a thinly veiled
01:23:42autobiography masquerading as a conversation with, you'll be episode 1100, maybe over the last eight
01:23:51years. So, uh, yeah, this is the, this is the vehicle that I've chosen at least for now. And,
01:23:57um, I, I'm trying to find out what's true. I'm trying to understand myself and the world around me.
01:24:03And I'm asking people who I think have got at least a few of the answers. And if I can hold on to 1%
01:24:09of all of the stuff that I've learned, then I, you know, you said about teachers, I guess I'm just
01:24:14cycling through to, I'm serially monogamous with, uh, 1,000, 1,100 world experts on a variety of
01:24:21different topics. And we'll see what sort of horrendous Frankenstein's monster gets, uh,
01:24:26constructed out of this by the time that I finish. Fantastic. We'll trust your heart in the midst of
01:24:31all of it. And you'll go the right direction. Beautiful. David, you're wonderful. And, uh,
01:24:35let's keep in touch. I'd really love to keep in touch with you. Appreciate you, mate.
01:24:38Me too. Thanks, Chris. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode,
01:24:43another one that I know you love, it's just here.
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