hello and welcome to Dualistic Unity season 6 episode 35 we I have no idea where this is going to go but I have just thought about exploding fruit trees and like that it came out of nowhere so we're GNA find out which direction this tree is going to grow and thank you for joining along as we find out today amen it is exciting to almost like surprise yourself in ways like having some curated idea of like how your day should go or how you should be doing or what the next thing should be it's like
there's there's a lot of life that gets cut down there's almost like a dulling of your experience the less you're willing to allow yourself to surprise yourself but there's and it's not to say you got to let go of a lot of things but there is a sort of rigidity that sense of control to like keep not just keep your environment under control but keep yourself under control and there there can feel like there's like almost something in the way from doing that but
a lot of it is just your own assumptions your own sense of comfort that like you staying in control is what's best because then you feel like you know things a little bit more but it's it's you still don't like you still don't know what you're expressing you still don't know what you're showing or sharing or doing so keeping yourself under control is just as much an illusion as you know quote unquote not being under control is just just their idea of like kind of being tense and
rigid like if I'm tense I'm under control because I'm aware of myself but like not necessarily aware almost at all of my environment I like where this is going because it kind of ties in with this secret topic that I wanted to explore today because it's very interesting that so much of what we're talking about is that willingness to move forward despite uncertainty to actually discount all of the assumptions of how it could go all of the assumptions of what the benefits
or or Consequences of it might be and to actually just move forward without all of that and I find it fascinating because my daughter brought this up to me the other day my daughter is homeschooled for anybody who's a new listener um and recently she has decided there's a lot of stuff I don't know Dad and so she has been out there learning all kinds of stuff and what she brought up to me the the other day because she's been um really interested in the brain lately she brought up and I want to
pronounce this correctly I give me a second here the anterior mid singulate cortex now I thought this was fascinating because this is a part of our brain that is essentially in charge of processing the cost benefit of any Act of will right so basically and this is the study uh you can find this on the tenacious brain how the anterior mid singulate contributes to achieving goals you will find it at uh the National Library of Medicine so what's interesting about this is
that uh basically it can help predict energy requirements that are needed for attention allocation encoding of new information and physical movement all in the service of goal attainment so basically like any other part of our body any other part of our brain it is something that can be built upon but the most common response to going through something difficult is to pull back to try and maintain that sense of control that that sense of The Familiar of the comfortable but just like not going to
the gym or going to the gym and never lifting a weight that's uncomfortable for you you're not actually developing that brain or that part of the brain which means it's harder for you to face things moving forward to actually decide organically that it's worth it to do it and so this study I'm just going to read it here uh when faced with a difficult challenge such as mastering complex equations or training for a marathon many individuals will find effort too
costly and withdraw others however will Marshall their resources and persist in their effort efforts against the same challenges even in the absence of immediate reward this individual difference is received a great deal of attention in recent years as growing Research indicates that individuals who persevere in the face of challenging situations show better life outcomes in the domains of Health academic achievement and Career Success what they're saying is that
there's a direct correlation in the same way that you were able to lift more when you train your muscles you are able to lift more in a holistic kind of Life sense when you train this particular part of your brain which means going out of your way to go through the discomfort that's the only way to train this part of you is to actually go out of your way to go through something that is uncomfortable okay so that way your brain can reassess that whole cost benefit allocation making it more and
more worthwhile to go well yeah let's just throw down and see what happens yeah rather than taking the safe path which trains your brain to continue to take that safe safe same safe path just in the same way you would always go for the the lighter weight if you never trained your muscles you can just understanding that there is a component of the brain that is doing that and and focusing on that and it sounds like a component is the goal in mind like it's it's very much the the goal is there and
then the brain kind of works one way or the other to allocate that energy towards the existing goal and so like the sensitivity can almost be to like what is my underlying goal you know like do I have a an external goal like I mentioned the marathon for example like that's sort of an external goal but we can have internal goals of like safety too even running a marathon isn't necessarily an external goal if you're doing it for a greater sense of what you can do for yourself of what you can
achieve pushing past your limitations doing something you've never done that's all more than just running a marathon very true it's still pushing beyond what you've done previously and doing another thing and adding to and you can kind of get on a track of like needing to do like people can almost become addicted to like marathons or ultra running and then you see someone who does a bunch of marathons and then they do ultra running and then it's like 100 miles and then
it's like you know then you get to eventually kind of like David gogins and it's just like kind of anytime he's I don't know really what's in there for him but it seems like he almost it's like necessary to stay on his feet and be running and he'll just at the drop of a hack go run like 300 miles as his feet are breaking and shifting and so like that part of his brain is probably super developed and shifted and changed because he purposely just like runs through to difficult things yeah
specific context right like he he pushes himself in the same Lane it's all specific goal and so like that underlying goal matters a lot too and so he's been able to direct it like in that way but then it's like if he were to shift that a bit like what is would it still apply to like something else like if his shifted goal became something totally different like I don't know just like helping people in a given country and like instead of anything physical it was like that was it like I wonder if
his brain would transfer Poss it took from there or if he could challenge uh an assumption that he has about himself that you know that he lives in a way that's not a little [ __ ] right because he he very much you know when I see a lot of his videos is like stop being a little [ __ ] push through and it's like you know what if you could let go of that idea that you aren't a little [ __ ] or that you or or being okay with sometimes being a little [ __ ] and and I
wonder how how difficult that would be for him to to be okay with feeling like a little [ __ ] because a lot of what I see is anti that it's very much he's settled on a point he is a strong person he perseveres he is that is his identity and so he does push himself a lot physically and mentally but it's still it still feels like a bit of a crutch and so that you know would be an opportunity for him to develop that that portion of his brain that doesn't need to hold on to this identity of being
strong in order to physically be able to push past limits well that's kind of the thing like if there were no con ccept of little [ __ ] would he still do the things that he does right yeah and that's really the measure right there you know I I like to live my life that way like if none of you [ __ ] were here would I still be doing this you know because it's really it's really for me but that's that's in itself a challenge right like to let go of even the idea of measuring yourself so that
way you can live for you right like for him the concept of little [ __ ] becomes a source of comfort right he knows what to do to not be that and that gives him an idea of what to do but that becomes a box in itself what's going to happen What would happen of all of a sudden he injured himself something out outside of his control he wasn't able to do these things anymore what kind of mental frustration what kind of psycholog he couldn't run 25 miles in a morning if he
couldn't do that oh my God I think it's happened to him a couple times because he's always he's always kind of injured he runs but for how long are you gonna do that right at what point does your body go hey I'm still organic yeah you know like I I still have feelings [ __ ] it's like beat it's like he's trying to beat it up almost and like his his backstory specifically you know with being overweight and just he talks about how he was just like super lazy had no motivation period and then
shifted and he was like I'm not gonna be a little [ __ ] anymore he trated laziness for Obsession exactly well that's the thing is underneath that it's like is still still the Assumption like I am a little [ __ ] and I got to do everything in my life to prove that I'm not to himself and so he's always yelling at himself when I had this conversation with a client at one point where they had kind of the same backstory they they considered themselves to be unmotivated and all of
a sudden they discovered something that lit them on fire and they just changed their life and they got super motivated now they're afraid not to keep up that momentum because then they're going to go back to who they were like that person didn't already organically change into the person that they are now like you can't go back that was just an idea you were never actually that idea maybe that was a description of what you were doing but that wasn't you right but we
feel like we're going to regress to into like the [ __ ] monster from the Lagoon you know like I'm just GNA turn back into 2005 Amanda like reverse that [ __ ] I get my hair back all a sudden yeah goate that's it goatee vanishes my face hair comes back see the more it just straight up goes in and then out out the other side out the God we need that animated there's to be a point where we could but it can feel like like imagine if all of a sudden we all Mor into being
15 but there can be that thought like as you even you know go through or expand your comfort zone or go through like this assumption that oh I'm I'm feeling like I did the only time I remember feeling this way was you know in high school or in this situation and so straight up we can assume like oh I just lost I regressed I lost all my progress the last you know 15 years of my life like just completely gone as opposed to no there was there was an assumption of you like the high school you the
15-year-old you like that is the you like you're a development of that person there's no way it's impossible to go back to that but because then it was just presumptive ideas of how you're doing and like it still wasn't that or how you acted as if like how you acted like 247 was this thing that you could box into like this little way it's like that's how I acted in high school I was this and that and we're cherry-picking ideas and cherry-picking ways that active and
certain specific memories that maybe maybe hit but like even those specific ones we don't remember them in the way that they actually happened and then there's like an infinite number of other things that happen throughout our life that we have no memory of and a lot of times it's the ones we remember are the ones that validate the story we're telling ourselves and if we were to remember every side of our life every component remember every situation we've ever been in every person we've
interacted with it would be way harder to validate some sort of story like in order to validate that minuscule perspective that very specific like no this is this is who I am this is the type of person I am we have to cherry pick like like very much situations to the point that we can actually narrow down like trillions billions infinite number of quote unquote moments or situations into like you know five or 10 or 20 that we remember and think that those defined us
somehow despite it just being like pointing at a drop in Drop in the Ocean essentially but it doesn't doesn't always feel like that but again it's just a just to validate validate your personal story right like one drop of food coloring doesn't change the color of the ocean exactly right that's that's what I was getting from your analogy it's like but we act as though one drop changes the entire color and it changes the entire ocean oh my God it is now an ocean of Despair Chang forever I see no
hope we think one thought it change but it's because we're so zoomed in on that drop on that thought that all you see all you experience all you are it feels like is that drop is that emotion is that zoomed in and and that's just because that has our full attention but that doesn't mean that it has all attention yeah absolutely that's the thing I think about attend is in the same way that as we grow and our awareness expands our attention expands that's really what it is you
stop paying attention to such small simplistic Concepts and ideas and you start taking in more as a result in the same way that when you're a baby you're really just aware of the room you're in and then all of a sudden you're aware of the house that that room is within and then you become aware of the neighborhood that that house is within the room within it and then you become aware of the town that the neighborhood is within and then you know this the state and the country and the world
starts to expand over and over and over again but each and every time our awareness expands and our attention has to expand with that but instead we go that's too much out of fear and we grasp again for a simplistic idea of the world we grasp for some sense of comfort to not do that to just continue to just go okay well I still don't know but that's a lot of extra considerations like that's a lot more within the whole context of my life within everything that's currently part
of the story that's a lot and I still don't know well the brain and particularly that part of of the brain that we were talking about in terms of of tenacity would always be in use because tenacity is really just being willing to face the unknown relentlessly that's what tenacity is like we're like a it's very tenacious no it's just not gripping for Comfort yeah but we're so used to gripping for comfort that we give it some special name yeah like it's tenacity rather than
just no that's living that's life that's living right there yeah oh yeah it's like and and that's when from there it's it's almost it's not to say it's like tenacity and Madness go hand in hand but just like the continued Pursuit like it can feel feel like oh crazy to just keep pushing in the uncertainty keep pushing past those points where it's like well I don't know what's next like we're still doing that like we're doing that all the time whether it feels familiar or
unfamiliar and I think a lot of times that uncertainty like it almost gets passed from the external to the internal like we're trying to maintain some certainty or some familiarity to the environment it's like we're we can't escape the attempt to escape change you know like will change internally and just try and curate our environment to be under control but like we'll feel it more inside and then it's like the more willing you are to not you know maintain some perspective of like how things
should be or or opinions and preferences that then you can expand into your environment and kind of create create an environment that you have you know certain opinions of and try and curate things like that like the less that you're doing that on the external trying to control it it's like there is a sense of more ability to relax internally like I think that tenacity like it it almost it's like one way or the other if it's tenacity in pushing through uncertainty
like it it that's almost it being expelled from yourself versus if they isn't the tenacity it's like and you're trying to stay here it's like it all goes back into yourself and then you feel that in the sense of you know tension discomfort things like that versus just pushing through and like it's not to say it's going to feel great pushing through but at least there's it's like there is the self-honest ability to relax because you know that you're doing it versus avoiding you know
because you really can't escape yourself so this brings us to kind of another topic because we're talking about a part of the brain that assesses cost and benefit in terms of any undertaking right but that that process of of integrating information really changes in terms of what we think about right like if you weren't so obsessed with your idea of yourself for example the brain would be processing cost benefit in terms of like how much does this fulfill your life how
much does this have an impact on the whole versus how much does it build up your ID of yourself so I found this to be fascinating because there was this study that was done in the early 2000s on a group of capuchin monkeys and what they did through a long period of training it took a long time for them to train this group to understand money the concept of money of value the concept of value more importantly external value and so over the year they taught them the that money had value and
they introduced different fruits different types of food and Jello-O cups which were the priciest of the food okay and what the monkeys learned to do was act responsibly at first in terms of oh well okay it costs that much I got to reserve my money you know or oh [ __ ] the jello just went down in price I should go and buy a bunch of jello so they made choices like that really absolutely okay but then what went with that was suddenly the fear of losing their money
and the desire to hoard more money so all of a sudden the monkeys themselves started to trade money for things that they wanted for other other people's food for example or they would try to steal money from the other monkeys right they would start to gamble with their money right but all of a sudden there became a fear of losing something that ultimately had no real value the monkeys could have just continued existing without this concept entirely and it would have changed everything but all of
a sudden now they're going through that cost benefit analysis right with this concept of money and it got to the point where the monkeys themselves were like trading money for prostitution and they were gambling and basically all of these things just got introduced with the concept of value of value itself so it makes you wonder what would be our process of cost benefit analysis if we weren't so obsessed with the idea of our own value being something that can be increased or
diminished yeah like where that focus goes in the world definitely is reflected where it goes in ourself and like the being willing to look at the reality of your experience versus the protection of some idea that's so personal like that protective thing when that attention goes towards your personal IDE of yourself and like that whole cost benefit analysis like that's a lot of brain power being used and targeted in a very like futile Direction like an entirely futile Direction self
defined yeah no less so you can be at it all day and still kick yourself down oh yeah oh for sure like I've I've had situations where it's like I can go through something feeling fine about it pretty much the whole time and then it ends and I'll like beat myself the other night was having a conversation with someone at the bar went great for the most part towards the end thought I said something dumb and then woke up the next morning totally forgot the conversation
but remembered the last dumb thing I said on the way out that could have just like been completely unnoticed but I was wondering with the you know discussion of the brain and like the capacity of our brain like how much say like with the hypothetical for anyone who hasn't seen the movie Lucy highly recommend that thing but there's the thing that where it's like oh only use 10% of our brain like for this specific like how much is that you know cost benefit analysis and the power of that being
just dumped is that like another 5% that because we're focusing on our idea of our s trying to control that that like is futile and personal and like everyone else has a different idea so it's like kind of absurd like ve absurd is yeah an understatement but like how much is that cutting down on our mental capacity our ability to like process reality even I would even use the term uh conscious bandwidth because it really is that like when you think of bandwidth and just how
much information can come in at one time like this part of our brain really is access to opening that up and if we're not willing to it remains very small we actually have to train it in order to take in more information that it's blocking out out of discomfort but what's interesting about that is again there's more information there suddenly we're in that that process of uncertainty all the time it's why I think it's funny because we use the Expression going through uncertainty but
it's not really going through there's no end to it right like there there's no other side of uncertainty uncertainty it's also like you're in uncert like you're in uncertainty now it's not even like you're moving to it or through it you're maintaining stuff to convince yourself that you're not uncertain right now too so the brain or that part of the brain which is again or rather they theorize is allocating energy according to how tenacious you're willing to be yeah what is the limitation there
like because we don't necessarily understand what it is we're clinging to we like all of a sudden we're understanding this like yeah if we train this part of our brain we're going to be more tenacious and they said it in health academic achievement and Career Success yeah it's like but those are all things that we take comfort in like all of those identities are another wall to developing that part of the brain if you think about it they're yet another place
that you're like NOP that's that's good it's like what what exists outside of defining yourself with those things what kind of Life exists outside of clinging to some concept or structure or path right and so that like even that like we recognize it but then we're like immediately that fits into the known immediately fit that into the known and we're just like hold on stop look at what you're saying there but we have to look at it through again that immediate
tendency towards bias that the monkeys were showing as soon as there is the idea of value soon as there's the idea of value we don't want to push certain walls we need to protect that value and that value is at the moment invested in our idea of our s so as much as we're like yes this part of the brain is the key to unlocking our potential but within this framework don't go outside that framework and nobody sees the bias because their value is determined by that framework they're
not willing to give it up the idea of thems is as much as the as much unnecessary as the money was to the monkeys but we've convinced ourselves it's now necessary it's part of our environment and therefore we have to use it we can't just move Beyond it yeah yeah so what do what exists beyond that you know like because even with the you know getting a good job living a good life buying this thing like whatever it's like we'll use that part of the brain to get to those things but then
it's like it's got that sort of cap right like it it's it's this like uh I don't know like a dome like a perspective like all the things that like make you successful accomplished whatever are like those self-defining things and that's kind of that's kind of the extent like how well can I define myself like how many things can I achieve or accomplish that mean something about me in the best way and it's like you know the the tree we were referring to in another recent episode
like that's all focused on you know yourself and feeling good about yourself and how you fit in to the world as opposed to like being the world and like what that opens up like when you push past or it's not at all about you like being a certain way or achieving certain things personally and it's just like you kind of be become a a tool for yourself to have experience but not make it so much about you because it is very reflective like you know you're making
it about you you're making it about like how you're doing it's like that's what you feel you feel the tension from like that Focus it's very much like reflecting you know our experience and our our push our Focus as opposed to if it's not about me so much if it's not about how I'm doing then there's a lot more space to like things open up and it's like well I can I can choose to do this because it's an option and if it doesn't mean so much about me then all
of a sudden that side of the brain with the cost benefit analysis like that starts working in a different direction for the whole for the whole exactly like it's it's another and so there's actually a part of our brain we're like What do I do if I'm not Guided by how I'm doing and my sense of self and blah blah blah and it's like you kind of have to let that go to find out because the brain there is a side of the brain like you know we've been talking about that
will adapt to a new goal a new Focus but it's like that's maybe some of our influence is like you know putting that in a in a direction yeah well the brain is is gonna get better at what it keeps doing you know it's like any tool it's shaped by the tasks it's it will be doing you know and and so um it makes sense that the brain is is just going in the direction where it's pointed to and that money like like our identity is just a tool that we can use and it's just supposed to represent the value
that's already there but we seem to think that the money is the value and it's not the money is just a tool of trade in the way that we used to trade our skills and that was a way that we traded the value that we were that we are and now when we think of money it's like that that is where all the value is that's that needs to be the priority and so that's why I need to hoard it because it it's feeling it's feeling the lack that I'm that I'm feeling and creating but the but the money is just
it's it's not an issue it it's just the way that we attach to it the way that we think about it that that creates it and so when I hear people saying money is the root of all evil it's like no it's not it's it's just a tool of trade and and the way that we use it impacts the way that we experience it but we could change the way that we use it we could get rid of it it's like we draw we drew a line in the sand thinking that that there needs to be a Line in the Sand
forgetting that there never used to be a line and so as much as you could move the line as much as you could overcome the line as much as you could go around the line you could just also not draw the line or when you do draw the line remember that it's optional yeah yeah the line is absolutely optional is not something that you have to necessarily you know follow even but yeah it's like those shifts the those ideas that sense of control that sense of certainty that sense of security it's
like we we're so focused on certain sides of that that we don't even realize how much that's getting in the way of our experience and I just wanted to say how appreciative I am for people from all over tuning in to this episode hello we got uh Kelly hello from Denmark London Felix Africa Africa oh my goodness this is great hello everyone I know Levi is from Norway and a number of people are from United States and otherwise thank you all for being here and uh giving us a shout out in the
comments it's nice to know you're here um and joining us as we talk about the brain and how easy it is to forget that it's just a passenger in the car and it doesn't necessarily have to be the driver and the car being your life your experience your moment to moment and you know it's it is it is a it is a muscle it is a tool it's the way that we can we can shape it by what we prioritize I like that I I like the fact that it adapts to us we tend to think our brain
is limited and that we are limited by it we were having a conversation yesterday actually you were having a conversation somebody at the mar and they were talking about uh weed just like no I I can't I can't smoke weed I have anxiety and you're like well you know that's something that you can always face and they're like nope I have anxiety I've been medicated because I have anxiety that's beyond me that's my brain my brain just creates anxiety that's it's it's so very different and
rare because it just just pumps out this anxiety [ __ ] in [ __ ] is crazy how much my brain specifically pumps out more anxiety than anyone else and and it's just like okay but your brain is adapting to what you're investing in yeah so if you're investing in the habit of always bowing down to that anxiety you're going to continue to bow down to that anxiety it's going to get harder and harder and harder in the same way it becomes more and more difficult to open a lid on a jar if you never do
it yourself yeah right if you never do it yourself you're always like can you open this can you open this and you don't take the time just [ __ ] struggle fight the [ __ ] grab your T-shirt wrap it around you know tap it with a goddamn knife do anything just and I want to say if you're doing this a quick tip would be to take a very small spoon put it under the lid of the jar and then pry it open until you hear that the air go and then it opens no problem but it's got to be a very small thing
you could tap on it which is really just trying to to bend the metal lid so there's a little bit of air released when you tap on it with a knife or you can just open it with a very small teaspoon but you know that that trick was found after a thousand attempts corre that it wasn't someone I feel bad even sharing it because I was just saying do it the hard way do it the hard way because you will gain strength from it and then you will appreciate the spoon thing later right in fact do it
the hard way until you're like [ __ ] I can't do it and then go find a spoon absolutely because at least then you got some some of the resistance because there's something to isolated uh strength training as well you know even if it's on a lid from time to time but even like you know yeah you build strength as you're opening it but that difference between like oh I can't open this and then oh I can like it kind of opens up that even as a potential like if you tried a 100 times and never open
the lid before like and then you do it and then the next time around like it could be way tougher to open it but you're G to be able to like just because you know it can even happen like we see this in the world all the time I have no idea idea what we would get restricted Tik Tok doesn't like the talking about authenticity being yourself you all and and again I think I think it's really important that we recognize that this is very much the the basis of this
conversation this is why I brought this up is because we can recognize very easily like right right you know facing the hard [ __ ] that that's good for me you know we can recognize that cerebrally and then we can get in there and go yeah so what hard [ __ ] do I need face not realizing that that's actually the easy way to actually project a hard way is sticking to the known to walk forward into uncertainty is to recognize you don't know what the hard way is that's
the hard way yeah is to go forward without it like immediately you want to superimpose something that you're biased about you're biased which means that you can't project into the future what you need you can't project the next step in becoming enlightened because that's enlightenment is to just be here right that's it it's to recognize there's nowhere to go there's no Enlightenment right that's the [ __ ] I like the way that you said it before was like not Enlightenment but
Al lightening exactly you know like the weight of your thoughts the weight of your assumptions lifts and so it's not like you're without weight it's that it doesn't feel so unbearably heavy anymore because it go and that goes with uncertainty like lightening of your own experience goes with uncertainty but you don't get the false certainty you don't get that sense of control so much but that's where the weight comes from is like the investment in the false certainty in that sense of control and
so to think like oh I want to feel lighter and I want to know what's next and I want to know how it's going to go and I want to know what it means about me and I want to know what the hard thing is like you don't get both you don't get to have both but you know if you're convinced that control can work that like no I I know what I want and once I get there that'll be the case like you can kind of I don't know it's not to say that you can create a lighter experience but like it's never really
gonna be that and I was thinking about you know like doing the hard stuff and like going back to David goggin it's like for him his he's convinced like the hard stuff is going on the long runs it's all physical things mental whatever he probably does all sorts of really really hard things but there is a degree of of knowledge behind that like all the hard stuff you know we're convinced like oh I run a marathon oh I do like and I've seen examples of this in my own
life too like I went to a open mic comedy night one night and I was like it's not to say that that wasn't a tough thing that was like something to quote unquote overcome or whatever just getting up there and doing it but at the same time it was like I was in during that period that month whatever like I was looking for hard things to do because like I wanted to remain like have a sense of control instead of like deep down I know you know certain things that jumping in uncertainty facing the
unknown like that was really the thing I was avoiding looking at as I was trying to know tough things to do and so yeah because facing the uncertainty and even even for the hard stuff like that sounds way less comfortable way tougher but again it's like living in this spot where it's like no I I can find out there's all these things out there that are the hard things to do they're curated hard things ice bath you know long runs whatever all that all that facing your fears even even that
even that even facing your fears because those fears are kind of assumptions like I know I'm afraid of this because what you get comfortable when you think about it you don't and like maybe you've avoided it in your life but really even those it's like as they come up but you don't have to pursue them because you could come up with a million fears in a moment it's like you're really going to spend your whole life facing every single one and think that that's what
your life is about oh I just got to face all my fears it's like okay and then what as opposed to living and as you face certain things that maybe are less comfortable or you're a little bit less certain like even you know jumping into something that's very seems very basic and you just go in without so much preparation it's like that can feel less comfortable but there's strength in yourself that's built there there's faith in yourself that's built there when it isn't you know the prepped thing
or the the thing like oh I know once I do this once I overcome this then I'll feel better I'll feel more okay with myself instead of like oh I can feel okay with myself right now and do things and I'm mid sneez and I think it's going to go away you're dealing with it very well yeah kind of went right back into my head and now it's just kind of floating circulating inside your sinuses sound kind of funny the rest of the episode feel feel free if you'd like to
go and honk your schnaz I don't know if there's anything I can do right now it just kind of burrowed you see that's it you're developing that part of the brand you're you're like yeah I just gotta go through this right now that's pretty much it might as well Express what it's like to do so right and the sneeze will come out it's not like you decided I'm going to sneeze now yeah and then sneeze it's like that was that was something that was potentially happening and then
it didn't happen and uh it's so funny how often we'll describe things like oh this is so hard this is so difficult and it's like is it though you know uh you know I when I think about possibly starting an episode and doing the intro I was like oh that might be hard and I I was thinking that like beforehand like like a week ago and then I was like oh but I don't I don't introduce these episodes I don't introduce classic so I came in here all like I'm certain I know
what's gonna Happ I'm just gonna sit here and relax then you guys are like you want to intro I was like [ __ ] I thought I knew oh my God I and I was and I was almost thinking that that's how I was going to start it like I was GNA relax but this guy over here just drops an introduction in my lap and here I am introducing today's episode welcome to season 6 episode 35 you know so I thought about that I was like you know what scrap that exploding trees it is you know exploding fruit trees
exploding fruit trees exactly seeds that F thanks guys hundreds of miles per hour oh my goodness imagine though the first person who encountered that you know just going for a walk in the park or a walk in just just going for a stroll in my afternoon all of a sudden a tree is attacking me shooting its seeds and it's just the tree's like I'm just trying to live man see now that's funny because my brain actually just went straight to a fruit tree as a whole because what is an
explosion right it's just this huge outward projection right that's what a tree is it's just really slowed down right really slow down and then not just explosions but then like tiny explosions every year is the fruit goes and it just it appears then it drops and it appears and then it drops and then it appears and it drops and then finally the whole [ __ ] tree goes away boom explosion see so to me I was just like that's a really cool way of looking at it right if you yeah if you
were to watch a tree grow like in super speed it would look like a mushroom cloud yeah like and for anybody who's listening to this after the fact what I just did was an exploding upward motion followed by a falling over motion followed by an exploding upward motion followed by a falling over motion because on a fast enough timeline that's exactly what it would look like you know and that's one of the things I Love About Time as a whole like it comes down to scale right
but even even tree you know it doesn't have that part of the brain that we're talking about but it is doing exactly that consciously all the time it's pushing forward it's facing gravity consistently we have to lie down we have to actually take a break gravity beats us every [ __ ] day whereas a tree never relents it never gives up it just keeps going so what I find fascinating about this conversation about the anterior mid culic cortex is the fact that we're saying that it operates in
terms of energy allocation based on a cost benefit analysis in terms of what's the benefit of me pushing myself like this is this worth it right so it's very much the governor on our conscious bandwidth on how much awareness we're willing to take in and work with all the time in that state of uncertainty moving forward well what would be possible if one were to consciously Just Surrender the idea of cost benefit to actually move beyond the idea because ultimately
what we're doing is we're telling our brain there's a benefit to letting go of cost benefit assume that we right there's a benefit to letting go of cost benefit right but there's also a cost to letting go of cost benefit what so that's the point they they don't really exist the cost is the way that you think right cost is the known right the benefit is the unknown but that's not a benefit because that's that's just what it is right so we're literally hacking a part of our brain by simply
changing the mentality that we operate on how much does that affect our Evolution as a species considering so much of our brain up until this point has been dictated and influenced by cost benefit as a thing by this fictional value that's so [ __ ] up a group of monkeys where for human beings or thousands of years our brain has adapted accordingly what are we doing for oursel in the amount of bandwidth or attention or awareness by simply abandoning the idea of cost benefit of abandoning the
idea of value of actually simply being here with as much attention as possible with full bandwidth available yeah that's all driven by fear you know the the the cost benefit is driven by the fear that you will you will miss out you won't get get enough that you won't be enough that there's a value to attain it's the the the value system the cost benefit system is still driven by fear and we could see that in our day-to-day that a lot of our choices are driven by
that fear that either this is too much or I can't handle it I won't do it well enough but that's all just fear you know it's not worth it to be authentic it's not worth it to show up it's not worth it to pay attention all of that is because I'm scared that I couldn't pay attention that I could didn't show up when every single moment I am like I am period we don't even have to continue it's like this everything is just existing and it's like of course we we don't need the cost benefit um template
but we made it and then used it over and over and then forgot why we me why we created it to begin with because we've been using it on auto autopilot but so I think that you know when when we're talking about like like bandwidth and like using 10% it's like when the [ __ ] do you use 10% of your brain because last time I checked you're using the whole thing the whole time yeah you're using the you're using all the parts of it you know it's just that we we want to
measure it like oh well we didn't use it like Einstein oh we didn't use it like this person and it's like um the whole brain your whole body every cell existence is always working existence is always moving and grooving you know it's but the conscious bandwidth I think is a better or is um it's another way that we could describe just the experience of attention being expressed is that it's not that you need to use more of your brain it's that you could that there is
more attention available and you could access it if you would stop zooming in into the how and just look you know be the what exactly and I think there's some evidence for that like in terms of the brain actually adapting according to how much attention you are willing to spend and how much you are willing to plunge through the unknown for example Einstein's brain glad you brought up Einstein Einstein's brain has been studied I think was also stolen it was stolen he not absolutely but uh it's
been studied and what they found was that he had an especially thick layer of kind of connective tissue on the out of his brain and they're like well that's that's why he was Einstein and I would say that he was Einstein and that's what made the brain [ __ ] happen was because over time just through not putting a governor on that bandwidth to the same degree which is why he was so keen on visualization on imagination on looking to other worldly things that people
wouldn't even want to look at like I wonder what light looks like when it travels it's like holy [ __ ] that's a great question and you're start immediately your brain's churning on [ __ ] that everybody else gets uncomfortable about well what are we doing all the time in this conversation every time we're like you know oh yeah this really sucks but does it really suck what is suck mean what do I mean by it sucks for me what who is me and then all of a sudden you're going wrong this
discomfort and you're dissecting everything like another layer what's under is there is there under something underneath that so simple right but all of that is part of the process of eventually letting it go and I think that that's what it is is that we're still dealing with remnants of just wanting to hold on to the end holding on to the edges you know not letting that bandwidth just be fully untapped lot not letting ourselves be in the flow as it's flowing all the time as the flow because
we keep going back to this idea of oursel and that idea can't possibly face that there are things on the line right there's value there's certainty there's security there's I could risk losing myself immediately there's this idea there's a self that can be lost like how can you do that without even realizing it that part of your brain has went oh hold up production slow that [ __ ] down you know that's not worth it there's a cost you know and I don't see a benefit
and there isn't a benefit to the ego there is no benefit to the idea yourself there is zero benefit of letting go but to the reality of you you know the benefit you feel the benefit that's why you're having this conversation that's why you take that time to go for a walk that's why those value those moments of Silence have so much value is because the real you the one that's experiencing this right now you know what the benefit of letting go is but the idea of you is going to
fight and struggle every step of the way because it is holding on the idea of you and holding on go hand in hand and so it really like anyone who like an Einstein or a person like that that shift where it's it's not that because we're so fixated on like learning more gaining more knowledge improving our self but like maybe someone like Einstein and as we've discussed in this episode just let more of that happen it's just not getting in your so much it's like the potential is all
there like the potential is all in you you know your highest self is like you as you are like it's it's very much and Einstein just didn't put so many blocks in his way so many assumption so many ways that like there's a quote that backs that up yeah a problem can't be solved from the same state of mind oh that created it that created it like that indicates him right off the bat he knew the value of letting go of state of mind he knew the value of questioning
what he thought to be real yeah and I like where he said also where he um people think that I'm smarter but I just take longer to answer a question he sits he he in his opinion he would sit with questions for a lot longer just chewing and and that was in his opinion why he would fi why he would find or um lead you know to answers that were so different and so unique it's just because he would sit with a question for longer he would he would just be space for instead of rushing to settle on a
point where you think you know the majority of a topic or all you know and so I I liked that that he was like it's not that I'm I'm not smarter I just sit with questions longer that's it that's it doesn't panic doesn't panic about it and like he it sounds like he just kind of never panicked in response and just let it be didn't assume like oh I gotta gotta get back to this person got to do this for them he's just like I'm GNA yeah take this in take my time let it
kind of percolate like knowing that there's something there like I'm curious how aware of you know Letting Go not facing like not putting things in his own way he was or if it was what do you mean when exactly which him are you talking about at which moment I need to be more specific in your questioning sir yeah yeah but that's that's exactly it how how aware can you be you are awareness that's not even a measure that exists outside of that Concept in your mind yeah you know
it's we had a conversation with somebody the other night who was having kind of a hard day and I'm like feel kind of heavy man he's like what I'm supposed to be at 100% all the time he's like you are at 100% right now it's just you're just 100% paying attention to something that's weighing you down like that that's that's all like you're you are awareness you can't not be awareness it's just what are you paying attention to where is your awareness going because
that's very much what it's again right indicating how much of that bandwidth you're accessing right it's just like in discover Transcendence where I talk about the more light bulbs you hook up to a battery the dimmer every bulb gets that is from discover absolutely it's exactly that whereas if you surrender a bunch of these things that you're invested in that you're holding on to as Concepts as a measure of your value as certainty then all of a sudden what you find is you have so much
more in terms of attention here and now and there's no way for you to measure that that's the [ __ ] about it but you can watch it over time as it impacts your life day by day Moment by moment year by year all of a sudden what you recognize is that your life has dramatically Changed by virtue of you just putting more of your attention into it as it's happening that's not a measurable change you can't be like and this on this day this changed in my life and everything absolutely but the is is
that over time your understanding of awareness your understanding of yourself your understanding of of the concepts that you hold on to grows it changes and that part of your brain continues to adapt right and that's why I love dualistic Unity I love these conversations because all of these conversations if somebody was to go into this go how am I supposed to apply this to my life though damn it right they wouldn't get anything out of this but to face that to go well they're not
actually telling me anything I have to process this myself I I have to look at where my discomfort lies and I have to look at where I would prefer to think my discomfort lies because that's the trick you know I need to look at what I I'm like no I need to deal with this immediately be suspicious of that immediately if your brain's like this is the solution to our problem don't trust that [ __ ] because the hard part is to not trust that [ __ ] and that's what you haven't trained yourself
to do that's the point is to let yourself be here and let what happens happen as you that it and that's that Act of Faith this has been a fun episode everyone this has been a blast I want to make a quick announcement before we wrap up today uh the port Al Bernie tickets they are not publicly available as yet and it's because we decided to give our patreon supporters a couple more weeks uh the reason being a few of them reached out and said hey I don't quite
have uh my plans together yet I'm still waiting for work uh to let me know if I can get the time off that kind of thing so we're gonna hold off for I don't know let's just say until yeah after after the 15 let's just say maybe the the weekend of the 20th let's say the Sunday the 20th I think Sunday's the 20 no that's Saturday Sunday the 21st 20ish yeah exactly somewhere in July we will let you uh we will let those tickets be publicly available if you don't know
about our Port Al Bernie Retreat it's dope it's going to be amazing you can check out the details on patreon at the moment or listen to previous episodes where I droned on and on about how awesome it is um but for now I think we're going to wrap up so that's it for me me I just wanted to say thank you uh for everybody shout out to my daughter who of course introduced the concept of this part of the brand to me and the importance of willpower uh and shout out
to everybody who is doing this in your everyday life because you may not see the impact I may not see the impact but it's known it's known that you're making one and it is appreciated very much so it's it's there it's playing out and you know we are each other's environment so when it's you know that ability to measure cost benefit isn't so fixated on on yourself that just keeps [ __ ] dumping things into the void that sort of investment in control it uh who knows how the world's
going to shift and change but you know it starts with us and I also don't even know what the world is right now beyond my assumption of what I conveniently like to think that it is which is far too simple but yeah this has been a lot of fun I've been enjoying doing the uh sub one hour episodes I know we discussed possibly in season seven keeping things like a little bit more more uh I don't know shorter but um yeah so I'm gonna stop now but Jay Mary Kate Marie appreciate you guys in the
comments and everyone else who is in here from all over the world it was great to see Felix I noticed uh some of your comments in there and we have lots of other episodes throughout the week where we're checking in on questions and do our call-in show and do our Q&A session so lots of opportunities to get uh get more questions in there as well but it's been great Amanda oh well thanks everybody it's been a blast and appreciate you all joining and um look forward to keeping this
conversation going and all the explorations outside of the chats take care everyone see you next time bye guys bye oh one more thing actually before we sign off we will be joined this Monday by Levi uh so check out that episode which should be recorded 4 pm eastern time this coming Monday we're gonna have Levi on for an episode we're gonna cover some dope [ __ ] that's it now I promise take care