Jonathan Robinson on How to Explore Awareness

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Robinson, a psychotherapist, best selling author of many books, and a professional speaker. His work has been translated into forty seven languages. Jonathan has made numerous appearances on the Oprah Show, and CNN, as well as other national TV talk shows. He's spent over thirty five years studying the most practical and powerful methods for personal and professional development, and in addition, Jonathan is known for his

popular podcast Awareness Explorers. Hi, Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. I am excited to talk with you. You and I talked recently on your podcast, the wonderful podcast Awareness Explorers. So we'll be talking about a lot of the topics there, as well as some of the stuff that comes up in many of the books that you've written. But before we do any of that, will start like we always do

with the Parable. In the Parable, there is a grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents as well. Which wolf wins,

and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do well. I hope to give a slightly unusual answer. Imagine Yoda saying the one you feed like, He might say, impatient you are. You know, we look at the world in terms of good and bad, but if you go beyond mind stuff, it's all one. There's no good and bad other than in our mind. So I think the grandpa is saying to his grandson, feed

the one. Feed, not good or bad. Feed the fact that everything's interconnected, that we're all one, that there's something beyond like and dislike, good, bad, up and down, called reality. And our job is to get back to the oneness of reality, because that's where true piece is. I love it feeding the one, feeding the unity, paying attention to the unity. Let's start by talking a little bit about enlightenment.

Your podcast Awareness Explores, You've interviewed a number of people who at least make claims in that direction towards enlightenment. You've in reviewed people like rom Doss, the Doli Lama in the past, who are certainly very esteemed spiritual leaders. What does that word enlightenment mean to you? Is it a useful word. Is it a confusing word? Do you

use it? Well? Like any word that refers to a big thing, love, God, enlightenment, you always have to define the term because they mean totally different things to different people. So I'll say that enlightenment is when you shift your identity from your ego personality to just simple open presence and awareness in this moment, and a lot of people have done that. It's not as hard as we tend to think. We tend to think you have to practice

for fifty years to do that. But there are a bunch of people that I've interviewed, and I think all of us experience that for moments in our life, and that when we live beyond our ego and into the state of compassionate, loving awareness, life is a totally different experience, right. I think when I think about this question of enlightenment,

I agree a lot with what you said. It's sort of this going beyond this small sense of self, and we tend to think of it as a state that we arrive at and that's it, And it seems much more that people sort of dip in and out of it. You know, we're we're there, We're not there. We have

degrees of it, it's along a continuum. And and the other thing about the traditional enlightenment experience that's often described, particularly in the Zen tradition, where we talk a lot about satory or can show these moments boom, you know,

I think those are all real. I've also sometimes joked that I think some of what makes an enlightenment experience seem like an enlightenment experience is you you cover a lot of ground really fast, whereas if you have been more gradually seeing more and more degrees of truth, it's not so sudden. So I I've joked before that if you were to take the twenty two year old heroin addicted me and put him in my brain, he might

think he was enlightened. He might really be like, oh my God, like this is so different, this is so peaceful, right, And I'm not claiming I'm enlightened. I'm just saying that the contrast, yea, often times I think makes those really sudden moments uh seemed like they're so special because there's just a strong contrast. Quite true, and a lot of the most enlightened people I've interviewed, whether it be the

Dalai Lama or mother Teresa or whoever. Once you it becomes more of your normal state after a while, you know, let's just call it peace and presents. It's not necessarily fireworks going off. It's not necessarily that you have all

knowledge of the universe. You can be a pretty screwed up human being and experience not a screwed up human being, but have a it up life and still be rather enlightened because it doesn't give you any special power other than you're in touch with the peace of this moment, and your mind is not so much playing tricks on you.

You're just open, compassionate awareness. Well, sometimes you can get used to that, and sometimes if you haven't had that for a while, it's like, oh my god, that's incredible. But really it's our natural state. Yeah, it is amazing. I often reflect that it's one of the best and most challenging parts of being human is our ability to habituate. Right. The fact that we can habituate to anything is really

it's a great survival skill. You know, it's a really important thing, and you know, it means we can deal with lots of challenges and upsets, but it also means that we do get used to positive states, and they do seem ordinary, and we often our brains tend to be drawn towards change, difference, novelty. It's part of the wiring of the brain to look for difference. Change. That's

true because that's what would have traditionally represented danger. Well, the good thing about enlightenment, or moments of enlightenment, will call it, is that in those moments things do seem new. You know, we always bring the past into the present, but enlightenment could be called moments where you're just really there and it's new. It's like a child. So what was it like to talk to Mother Teresa. I mean,

that's a pretty big one. Rom Dawson like, okay, yeah, Dali Lama all right, yeah, but like Mother Teresa, that seems like a big deal to me, right right. Well, any time I've talked to any of these people that you may have heard of Byron, Katie Ajashanti, Mother Teresa, whoever, it's very humbling, partly because they are very humble, and

they're very vulnerable and they're very human. So when I was talking to Mother Teresa, I felt like I was talking to the deepest, most vulnerable part of myself because she was kind and sweet and generous and human. You know, she said, after a while, do you have what you need? I'm really tired and I really need a nap. And I thought that was so sweet. Yeah, it's funny. I love Audio Shanti Dearly. We've talked to him like four times on the show. I think he and I have

a great connection. I'm not going to put him in the same sentence with Mother Teresa though, actually not from a wisdom perspective, but just from I mean, she is someone I so admire. These people who were so dedicated to serving other people with little or no reward always strike me as they feel almost like a different breed in some way to me. Since you brought her up. I was just looking at a letter she sent me

and I'll read it. I've never read this letter to basically anyone other than my wife, and you know it's handwritten. It's it's amazing that she took the time. I sent her my book in which I interviewed a lot of spiritual leaders, called The Experience of God. And she said, I received your copies of your book along with your letter. Thank you so much for sending them. God loves you

for your deep interests. In the things of God. I will pray for you that Jesus may fill you with his Holy Spirit, whom he has promised would lead us all into our truth. I'm sorry that I will not be able to appear on a TV talk show called Oprah with you. I am sure that you understand this. Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and spread that joy to all you meet, especially those closest to you. Happy and holy New Year. I pray for you and God bless you, Mother Teresa. That's amazing to me.

Even Oh can't get Mother Teresa. She's like, sorry, you got things to do. Well. She's not focused on the world, and we get very lost in the world. And that's part of the problem. You know, we think a thousand Facebook likes or a thousand Facebook friends equals one really good friend, but it really doesn't. And we're learning that spending so much time in social media or worry or you know, it's kind of like we have a victim Olympics. Now.

Everybody's trying to be the biggest victim, and yet pieces very much just in this moment in your heart, and it's available to all of us. And the good news is that it's never far away? So what would you say from having interviewed a lot of great spiritual teachers over time, and I think your approach with Awareness Explorers has been a little bit more focused on what we

would think of as awakening maybe than than everything. But what do you think are a couple of the key learnings that you've taken from the Awareness Explorers podcast that have meant something in your life that have caused you to live or do something differently. That's a great question. One thing I would say is that people who have progressed have usually done a lot of trial and error and found a few things that really work for them. And it may not have been in their tradition that

they brought up with. It may be that they just stumbled upon some technique or phrase or very simple thing

often that just made for exponential growth. And that's why in the Awareness Explorers podcast we often talk about very simple techniques and I tell people try different techniques, especially ones that you can use in daily life, so you don't have to spend all your life on meditation Christian, try techniques that take five seconds to do that see if they can propel you into a slightly different view to propel you into your heart, to propel you into compassion,

to help you find a place of peace even while you're walk into your car. If you can do that, your life changes, because then you have a friend for life. Yeah, so I think that's true. I think that idea and that spirit of experimentation is really important. I've been reflecting on this a little bit recently with a couple of coaching clients of mine, and we were reflecting on two things about that. One is that sometimes you find a technique that works for you and it helps you shift

your view. I like the way you said that. I think shifting a view is such a great way of describing all of this. You find a technique that helps you shift your view, and then it stops working. It was useful for a time, So sometimes something that was working stops working. And conversely, I think a lot of times the technique we may have tried before that didn't do much for us at a later stage in our growth or journey can be very beneficial because we've changed

and and shifted enough. And so I think that spirit of experimentation and being willing to try different things, he's really so important in a certain sense of playfulness about it is really helpful. I totally agree with you, and and you're right, some things that didn't work now work, and some things that work for you people have a hard time letting go. It worked for me for ten years and now it's not working, But they used it for ten more years and they could be using something

much better. When I interviewed a bunch of these spiritual leaders, one of the things that surprised me was how often people talked about gratitude. I thought people would talk more about love or consciousness or things like that, and I was kind of taken aback that so many people mentioned that gratitude was a doorway. Well, I kept a gratitude journal and I found it boring, and you know, I forced myself to do it, and it wasn't very good. So you know, I kind of gave up on that technique.

And then a friend of mine came back from India a few years ago, and he looked like he was totally lit up, And I said what happened? And he said, well, my my guru gave me a mantra for feeling overwhelming gratitude. Well that perked up my ears. So I said, well, what's the mantra. You know, I always want the best technique, and he said, well, you have to go to India to get it from the Guru. Personally, I said, crap,

you know, have you ever been to India? Eric, No, I mean it's it's a long plane right away, and and then a phrase yea yeah, but you know I'm persistent. So I flew there and took a rickshaw for four hours. Finally get to the guse ash Ram and I explained to him after waiting for a while, uh, what I wanted, and he said, in his Indian accent, ah, yes, my mantra is the best mantra on earth. And he leans

into whisper into my ear. I'm so excited, you know, I flew all this way and he says, whenever it's possible, repeat these words. The untra I give you for a feeling overwhelming gratitude is thank you. Well, I look at him. I'm figuring he's like joking with me, but he's totally serious, and I go, thank you, that's it. I traveled eighteen thousand miles. Again, thank you, that's it, and he goes, no, that's it. Is the mantra you have been using and that makes you feel like you never have enough. My

mantra is thank you, not that's it. That's it would think you nowheh. So I'm totally I'm totally piste off. So I look at him, I make a snide face and I go, well, thank you, and he says thank you. It is not the montre. You must say it from your heart many times a day. So when you eat good food, say thank you, or when you see your child, or a sunset or your pets, say thank you from

your heart for five seconds and you'll feel overwhelming gratitude. Well, you know, I had nothing to lose, so when I went back to my hotel room, you know, I said thank you for the air conditioning, and then I said thank you that there was water running. You know, in India there's nothing guaranteed. And then I opened up my computer and I think, well, thank you for this computer. I mean, this is fifty thousand years of human ingenuity in a little box in front of me. And then

I skype my wife. I'm talking to my wife on the other side of the planet for free. Instantaneously, I say thank you, and it hits me how much we actually do have. So tears of gratitude start coming down my eyes and my wife looks at me and she says, that must have been some mantra he gave you, And I said, yeah, you won't believe it, you know. So gratitude in terms of journal or or other things that

I was doing little meditations didn't work. But saying thank you for this moment twenty times a day for five seconds actually does really change my experience. And once you find technique that works for you, you have a friend that is like your best friend. Because if you can change your consciousness quickly, that's better than money, that's better than anything else. That's a great story. So has that approach continued to work for you? To continue to just

say thank you? You know? Do you say thank you for your computer every time we remain thankful for the computer? Or is it something you know, like the gratitude journal. Like you said, I've had similar experiences where I'm like, all right, you know, it's starting to feel like I'm going through the motions here? How do you avoid it

feeling like you're going through the motions? Well, the good news is I have a bunch of techniques, you know, like five or six I cycle through So every day I choose what technique I'm going to focus on, and I write it on a post it note. I put in a couple of places. So today's my thank you Day. Now do I get used to it? If I did it every day, I would? But really the key is I up down from my head into my heart. I feel my heart, and in my case, I kind of

say thank you to creation. And it's not always thanking for the same thing. You know, my knee hurt yesterday. Today it doesn't. I'm thinking, Oh, thank you for my knee, you know, and it's only five seconds. I can then turn to my dog, thank you for my dog. I can thank you for being on this podcast. I can thank the weather is nice outside. I mean, it's endless. And I keep it new by only doing it one day a week. What are some other techniques, like what's

tomorrow going to be? What's what's gonna be on the post it note for tomorrow? I'll go over a few of them. Sometimes they're just a simple phrase. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a judgmental mind, and I bet a bunch of your listeners do too. So I'm trying to be more compassionate, more loving. I have definite opinions about how people should be handling the pandemic, and some people are not doing what I think they should. Have definite opinions about politics, and some people are doing

differently than I think about that, etcetera. You know, we have a lot of polarization, and if you're trying to feed the one, it's not about them being good or bad. It's how can I feel more compassionate. So I've come up with some phrases that help me to feel more compassionate when I notice I'm judging people. One of those phrases is forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Now you may have heard somebody stole that from me a couple thousand years ago. Uh yeah, and I have

forgiven him for stealing that from me. I'm just kidding, of course, you know, but people don't know what they're doing. People, including me, often do unconscious things. So when somebody is doing something that I think might be detrimental, I say, hey, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. Or I might say it must be hard being them. Know, if somebody is doing something I think it's really detrimental, to

their kid or something, or to their own health. I think, wow, it must be really hard being them, and that helps me feel compassion. Or I might say, hey, I don't really know what's best. You know. That helps me to realize why should I be so judgmental. I'm not God. I don't know what's best for somebody else. So tomorrow is my phrase day for feeling compassion. Okay, what are some others I hold? You know a motivation you did about you know, five phrases to ease your judgmental minds.

I think you've given us a couple. You've got a couple more in there, sure, you know. One of the things I do is I might say, how is what they're doing? Like what I do? You know? Yesterday there was a guy tailgating me, like, you know, like three inches from my bumper, you know, And I'm starting to get annoyed at this guy, and then I think, well, how is that like me? A lot of times I'm in a hurry, or I'm tailgating someone, or I'm not giving somebody's space. As soon as I realized how's that

like me? I just let it go. That's a great one. I have that experience driving to where I'll be like, somebody will just do something and I'll think, what a jerk, And then I'll think I have done that fifty times in my life, a hundred times in my life ten minutes ago. It's a very helpful one to be like, yeah, And I think that speaks also to this underlying idea that I really got from Buddhism that really stresses this fact, which is like everybody wants to be happy, everybody wants

to avoid suffering. So like, if I look at like something like you said, and I think, well, how is that like something I do, I may get there. I may not write because I may look at that and go, well, I don't do that. But if I drop down another level or another level, I realized at the end of the day, what they're doing is the same thing that I do, which is I try and feel happier and

I try and avoid suffering, and they're doing the same thing. Now, our strategies are different, but underneath and I've I've always found that to be another way to keep drilling down.

You know, how is that like me? Okay, maybe it's not on the surface level, but one layer down or another layer down, eventually I get to if I have to that common layer, which is okay, they're trying to avoid suffering, right, And that would be an example of a phrase that came to you, that's real to you, that through trial and error, really has impact on how you look at the world. You know. Another phrase I use is they are being a perfect them. I heard that one when you said it, and I loved it.

I thought, that is so good. They're being a perfect them. Say a little bit more about that. Well, you can do it an experiential way. Imagine your favorite politician that you hate or that you love to hate. You know,

it will be different people for different folks. And even if you think they're a bad person and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, it's kind like in a movie where you see a bad guy and you can appreciate how well they're being a bad guy, how much you dislike them, they're just doing a perfect bad guy. And your favorite politician that you love to hate is kind of like that, like, Wow, they're really doing that role really well. And I encountered a very nasty cashier

a couple of days ago. They were very rude, and I thought, wow, they're really doing the rude cashier thing really well. If we needed a rude cashier in a movie, that would be the first person I would pick, because they're doing it perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's such a great one. It's a hard one when we start talking about politicians or people in pandemics who are not behaving the way we think they should, because we go well,

it has real impact and real consequence on people. So I think all these things are as you're saying, they're just ways of shifting our view. It's not like we stay on that view that's the only view. It's not to say we don't think that person is doing great harm, but it's a way of shifting our view so that we can be a little bit more flexible in the way we view the world. Absolutely, And you know, if you have that don't know mind, like I don't really know,

it's best. You know, for example, is a pandemic good or bad? People would say it's bad, But what if there's a worst pandemic coming in two years that we don't know? And because we now are better prepared because of the science and the things that we've had to do to deal with this stuff, when it comes to the worst pandemic, we're going to be ready. We don't know what the future is, so I think it's helpful to look at the world and well, I don't really

know what's best. I have my opinions. The problem is that we believe our beliefs, right, Yeah, we do. And I always find this one of the hardest aspects of the spiritual life to navigate, which is that a certain degree of awakening shows you that, as you said, it's all kind of one, and there is a place, perhaps beyond good and bad, that there is this different view of the world that doesn't divide it up. So there's that, and that's very real, and there's the life we're living

right here. You know that. Zen, we talked about the absolute and the relative, and it's a teaching eye reference often because it's being able to hold both those views and move between them that I find both very important to being both liberated and being a compassionate, ethical, moral human being. And I think it's an interesting dilemma to find our way back and forth between those places. Yeah, And in my podcast, we often talked about two wings

of a plane. One wing is realizing that we don't know to trying to feed, the one to trying to see beyond good and bad, and the other wing is discernment is being effective in the world, making wise choices, and being able to act passionately on our beliefs. And if you have two wings well developed, that plane console. But if you only have one wing well developed, that

plane is likely to go around in circles and eventually crash. Yeah, it makes me think of phrase by I can never say the guy's name, Mr. Gadata, who says, wisdom is knowing, I am nothing. Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves. And I just love that phrase. It speaks to exactly what you just said, the two wings of an airplane. And as a coach, what I often do is I try to ascertain which

wing is weaker. I think people should work on their weak wing, because that one, if you don't work, goanna and it really falls apart, the planes going down. But in this culture, we focus a lot on, you know, getting good at the world and making decisions and getting good at money, but we don't necessarily focus so much on love, compassion, unity, that other wing, which is half of what it is to be a human being. Yeah,

you need both. But to your point, ninety eight percent of us us care only about the things of not only but very much about the things of the world and the outside events. And so what most of us need is a nudge back towards you know, the deeper realities of life or or you know, what we might call spiritual spiritual just being a clarity on what really matters to us, what's really important. I have a refrigerator magnet to quote from the Buddha, and it says, do

not search for peace in the world. You will not find a there. Peace is only found within. And in a way that's an uplifting message because I don't know about you, but it seems like things are getting really crazy out there. Eric Uh. You know, we're having several catastrophes hitting us at once, and if you're trying to find peace in the material world right now, you're going through a lost stress. But that's just one channel. There is another channel, and on the other channel, the channel

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Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application Upstart dot com slash wolf. I think that's really well said and really important is it is a balance of the channels. You know, we can get the message that it's all about what's inside us, it's only about our internal state, and if we think that's true, then we often we don't live in the world in a way that serves our best interest. I love that balancing out the channels.

I think the spiritual teacher A jun Chaw once said, if I see a guy about to go off the road into a ditch on the left, I shove him to the right. And if I seem about to go off a ditch on the right, I shove him to the left. And it's so knowing it's where we do. And so in the coaching work I do, it's a very similar thing. It's sort of you've got to ascertain. Okay, that's the same thing. Isn't what everybody needs because some people, you know, have got that thing down really well, they

need a different tool. So I think it's back to that idea a little bit earlier about flexibility, right, It's about being able to move between these different realities, these different insights, these different views, these different stories of the world. It's you know, I have become more and more focused on this idea of flexibility of our views. You know, how can we be flexible? We're always taking a view.

We can't really not do it, but we can certainly learn to be a whole lot more flexible in them, and we can learn to not take our view quite so seriously. You know, if you look back on your life, you can say, well, I believe that way back when what was I thinking? You know, and ten years from now we'll probably be doing the same thing with what we're thinking now. I like to think beliefs are like

outfits that you try on. Oh I'm now playing the I'm a spiritual secret belief or I'm now playing like I know what I'm doing in the stock market belief. But it's all with a certain amount of amusement. A certain amount of playfulness. You know, all kids play, and really all animals or mammals play, but a lot of times adults lose that sense of play. They don't even play tennis. They compete at tennis, so they compete at golf.

You know, I think we need to be able to be playful with our own thoughts and beliefs, and that gives us a certain amount of freedom right there. And it's a freedom that not only gives ourselves freedom, but it gives other people interact with us a certain spaciousness and freedom because we're all very serious now, you know, problems, plans, pandemic, uh, money, worries, depression, the whole thing. And really, you know, as a kid,

we all kind of play with this stuff. We're not waiting for everything in the world to be okay before we have a good time with our friend. Yep, that is really true. And I've over the years, have really started to work on that that play element, because, like you said, I will immediately turn something that is fun

into something I'm competing at. Like I took up rock climbing recently into a rock climbing and I love it, and I've had to be careful that, you know, part of it is just my nature, and I just let it do what it's gonna do, which is like I'm like, I want to climb that, and then I'm gonna climb the harder one than the harder one and the harder one. So some of that I just take with a grain

of salt. But to some extent I also have really just tried to also just focus on the enjoyment of being up there and the feeling of just the pleasure of doing it, and whether I stay on you know, V twos as they call him in bouldering, or V three's the rest of my life. So what Yeah, it's really a matter of are you really enjoying yourself? You know, I've been some books about happiness, and I'm going to give you the single best happiness technique I've ever come across.

Are you ready? I am ready. Okay, If you're enjoying a moment, don't let your mind hijack you away from the moment. So that if you're playing with your dogs and you have a thought, oh, I need to get back to work, give yourselves another freaking minute to play with your dogs. You know, if you're having a good conversation with a friend on the phone and the thought comes up, Oh, I gotta make another call. Give yourself another two minutes and just tell your friend how much

you're enjoying this. You can literally double your amount of enjoyment just by giving yourself a little bit more room, a little bit more play, a little bit more space, and not being so committed to always being on top getting stuff done at the most efficient rate possible. You know, I'm a type a personality to Eric, so I have had to learn this and it's really a wonderful feeling to like just let some of that constriction go and be a little bit more like a kid again, and

you know, we're here to have a good time. Yeah. You guys had a podcast recently where you talked about the five different types of inquiry. I think questions are really important. I think inquiry is really important. Can you walk us through what those different types of inquiry are? Do you remember that one? I do remember. I don't

know if I'll be able to say all five. One of them, of course, is Byron Katie's work which she has four questions in a turnaround and the first question I love or really the first two questions are, can you absolutely know for sure that this is true? So you're thinking the politics is all screwed up. Can you know for sure that that's true? Or you're thinking, you know, this person shouldn't have done that to me. Can you know for sure that that's true? Just asking that question

gives you a little bit of space. And then there's um Romana Ma Harshy's inquiry, which is trying to get you back to this place of pure awareness. I actually have a funny story about that. Many years ago, I went to India a prior time to see this guru named Punjaji you you may have heard of. He was a disciple Romana Ma Hershy and Um. I didn't really know what the scene was there. So I walked into a house which ends up with his USh ram and

there's like thirty people sitting in front of him. He's a big bald headed guy and he looks at me. He points at me. He says, you sit here right in front of me. So I'm like nervous. I I sit in front of him and he gets really close to my face and he says, who are you? Well, I didn't know anything about Romano Ma harshy or any of this stuff. So so I say I'm Jonathan Robinson from the United States, and he and everybody in the room just bust up laughing, and I think, well, that

was the wrong answer. So he goes, no, no, who are you really? And I go, I'm a seeker and he shakes his head. No. I go, well, I'm a man, shakes his head. No, A writer. No, I do this for like twenty things. You know. I'm a husband, I'm a I'm a tennis player. He keeps shaking his head no. Finally I run out things to say. I look in his eyes, and his eyes were like beams of light coming out, and I decided to just shut up and

look in his eyes. And I was really overwhelmed by an incredible wave of love, and it was so strong that I just started sobbing in his lap. As I'm sobbing in his lap, he says to me, this love that you feel now, this piece that you feel now, is who you really are, and your job in life is to never forget that. And that's really who we are are somewhere in us, you know, thank the creation that we have that inside of us. Call it a soul. Or consciousness or awareness or God, doesn't matter what you

call it. But by asking well, who am I? That's a former inquiry that can help you see through the character that you're currently playing. Your job is to go from a role to our soul. And one former inquiry is called who are you? Or what are you? And I like that former inquiry because it's very quick for the people that it works for. Another former inquiry is just asking people questions like you and I ask on our podcast. You know, just wanting to learn? What do

I want to learn? And you know you are really good at that. And by going with your curiosity, what what do I want to know? No, that's a form of inquiry. I tell people, what question if you knew the answer to it would change your life. What are you really yearning to know? I say, follow that question? So that's a form of inquiry. And then there's forms of inquiry where you kind of go into a feeling and you say, well, why am I feeling this? When did I first feel this? What does this part of

me want? What's its need? And by tapping into what we really want and need in a certain moment, it can lead us to a place of happiness and peace. Those are great inquiries. I'm thinking of a section in one of your earlier books where you're talking about questions, and you say questions are a quick and powerful way to change your focus and what you focus on growth. Our emotional state is largely determined by what we think about. And then you have four questions that I really like.

And these are not necessarily the same level of deep spiritual insight questions about the essence of who we are, but I really liked them as four questions that can help us move for m a state of sort of unhappiness into one that's a little bit more open. I can't imagine you remember what the four are, but maybe you do, but I have them in front of me. If you don't, I might know what they are, but you might as well, uh say them so I don't

embarrass myself. What small successes have I had recently? Uh? What could I feel grateful for? We've sort of covered this. Who do I love and or who loves me? And what do I appreciate about myself? And I really like those. I think those are four really helpful questions that will reorient what we're paying attention to. Yeah, and The great thing is that there's always something that you can appreciate about yourself. There's always someone or some pet that you're

loving or have loved. There's always some success. If you got out bed and made it to the toilet today, that was a success. You know, uh, not everybody does that. There are ways to kind of counter the mind. The mind is kind of always looking for problems. Yes, it's always looking for what's wrong and what can I do about? You know, you don't have to force the mind in that direction. That's a given. A guest we had on called Mary O'Malley. She would be a great guest for

your show, by the way. She's written a couple of amazing books. But she referred to our brains as problem factories. And I loved that because that image really worked for me because I was like, that's the way my brain works. As soon as one comes off the assembly line, it's like another one gets cranked out. There's a problem factory, one after the other. Yeah, and that's its job, and it does a wonderful job. It's a perfect them. But the important thing is to realize that there is something

beyond mind. And if you can both listen to your mind and also not listen to your mind. Then you can be happy. But if you are always on channel two, always what are the problems, then it's going to really limit your experience of life quite a bit. Say a little bit more about that. There's something beyond mind. Well, people talk about it in different ways. People experience in different ways, So you can talk about intellectually like it's

deep piece, it's connection with everything, it's oneness. Uh. Some people tune into it through poetry, or some people tune into it by being in a redwood forest, or some people tune into it by making love or looking into the eyes of their child or their pet. So it's a quiet, wordless place where reality is not being hijacked by a constant dialogue, by a constant narration. And we do have little moments of it, and I'm kind of like a on a treasure hunt for more of those moments.

Right before the podcast, I was petting my dog, looking in her eyes and telling her how much I loved her. Well, that was beyond mind. That was like, you know, it's had somebody walked in the room, then I would have been embarrassed, but it was like we're both in love. We're both devoted to each other. It was so sweet. And then I thought, well, I'd better get ready for the podcast. And then I thought, well, let me do this for thirty more seconds, because this is the juice

of life, and we all want juice. And the mind, you know, is there for taking care problems and making us money and doing those things. But you really have to give this other world it to do the world of oneness. There's another technique that you talk about in one of your books called the Pain and Pleasure List. Could you say just a little bit about what that is. I thought it was an interesting way to look at

shifting some of our priorities. Yeah. Well, most people have a list of the things that they don't want to do. There are difficult that they don't like, you know, it might be like taxes. Well, when you're making a list of the pains in your life, the question to ask is can I delegate this to anyone? I don't like house cleaning, Eric, So I now pay somebody to clean my house. It's great. So making a list of your pains and seeing if you can reduce any of them

will immediately lead to be more happy. But probably even more effective is making a list of your pleasures. People often get stuck with the same three or four pleasures, so I tell them make a list of forty forty pleasures. That's the goal. It could be really simple pleasures, like right now, I have a rock between my fingers I'm playing with and I like doing that. That's a pleasure. It doesn't cost anything, you know, it feels good. Uh,

what the hell? Of course, there's things like tennis. There's things like spending time with my wife or my dogs. But it can also be simple things like massaging my hand. Luckily, my hand is with me wherever I go. It can also be big things like going to a redwood forest or playing music. And you realize as you make this list, how many of these pleasures am I doing a lot of people really had this thought that as soon as I get through all the difficult stuff in life, with

my leftover time, I will do some pleasure. I will give myself some pleasure. So it's kind of like you're always giving yourself leftovers. And what I do is I actually schedule some of my pleasures in my calendar. They're like appointments, like I have a date with myself. I have a date night with my wife, but I have a date night with myself where I get to read

some of my favorite books. I get to do basically whatever I want for three hours because it's on my calendar, and that what I need to do during those three hours. And I think scheduling pleasures can be another great way to easily increase your happiness level. Now, there are some people that go overboard, you know, and they need to not do that, But most of us really need to work towards treating ourselves with kindness. Right back to that knowing which side you're sort of airing on and moving

yourself back towards the middle. I love in this you sort of talk about like just sort of adding it up, like the amount of time that I'm spending on these things in life I don't like, versus the amount of time I'm spending on these things I do like. And you say the key to having a successful life is to find the right balance of pain to pleasure. It must be a balance that works not only in one's

current life, but it must also work long term. And you say that I found that when the degree of pain is compared to pleasure rises above a five to one ratio people dislike their life. Now, of course, is it exactly I do one, of course not. But as a general way of thinking about it is to look and go, okay, is there some balance here? You know, if I'm spending ten hours doing stuff I don't like for every hour I do like, that's going to be problematic.

So either a I need to start doing more things I like, which is sort of working on We might even say that's working on channel two. Or we could work on channel one, which is learning to like more of the things we're doing, you know, changing our relationship to the things that we're doing. And a lot of people they don't have a five to one pain to pleasure ratio, they have like a twenty one pain to pleasure ratio, and then they wonder why am I depressed?

I go, well, it's simple mathematics. Here. You're doing twenty times more things that you don't like than you do like, and that's a problem, right, I assume then working with someone like that, you would say, okay, well let's get some more pleasure in your life, and also maybe let's work on reframing some of the things that seem like you don't like them. Is there a way to sort of change our relationship to those things. You know, you're looking for the quickest way to make somebody feel better

for the least amount of effort. That's why I've tended to focus on methods that take under thirty seconds to do. You know, certain phrases, even certain meditations that take under thirty seconds to do. But I found one of the simplest things that really can make a profound change is I have people commit to something that they know would make their life better. You know, as I say that to you, Eric, we all know something that oh, if I did that, I would have a great time, it

would make my life better. But we don't do it. You might be backpacking, it might be uh going for a walk with a friend, it might be meditating. Whatever it is, I say, schedule it into your week, actually put it on your calendar, and then make a commitment that if you do not do that, that you have

to rip up a dollar. For some reason, the threat of ripping up a dollar if you break your promise to yourself is enough to get a lot of people to radically change behavior they may have had difficulty changing for thirty years. Well, I think the thing that would make my life a lot better. Would be to take Chris, who's our editor, and cut his hair in a mohawk like mine. So, Christopher, I am coming over next Thursday.

Get your shares out, get your hair clippers out, because you're getting a mohawk and if you don't do it, you have to rip up a hundred dollars. How's that, Jonathan and I on the right track. Absolutely if he send me pictures, my mohawk needs touched up. Uh, well, we are at the end of our time. I do want to talk with you in the post show conversation for a little bit about meditation in general, and I

am interested in some meditations that take less than thirty seconds. Also, so you and I are going to explore meditation in the post show conversation. Listeners if you would like to get access to this post show conversation a lot of other ones. A episode I do each week called its Teaching Song and a poem, AD free episodes and the joy of supporting a show that you listen to and love. Go to one you feed dot net slash join Jonathan. Thanks so much for coming on. This has been a

really fun conversation. Thank you so much. Eric. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support,

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