Scott Barry Kaufman on Living a Transcendent Life

much about coping. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. 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. Have you tried to start meditating daily but can't seem to

stick with it? I had that same problem too for a long time, which is why I've created a new guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem to stick with the meditation practice and how to actually build one. At last, just head over to our website at one you feed dot net and you can get free access to this helpful resource. Again, that's a free guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem to stick with a meditation practice at one you feed dot net. Thanks

for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Scott Berry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist interested in the development of intelligence, creativity, and personality. He applies a variety of perspectives to come to a richer understanding and appreciation of all kinds of minds and ways of achieving greatness. Today's Scott and Eric discuss his book Transcend, The New Science of Self Actualization. Hi Scott, Welcome to the show. Hey been looking forward to be on the show for a while. Happy to

have you on. We're going to discuss your latest book called Transcend The New Science of Self Actualization. But before we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's done with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What 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 granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second, and she looks up at her grandfather. She said, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather 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. So much, so much that parable is so important. In fact, the ideas around that parable have really influenced me a lot in studying notions

such as what is the true self? Is there such a thing as the true self? And then is that true self the the bad wolf for the good wolf? You know? And how do we know what? You know? Can we choose which is the true self? Do we have any choice in the matter. I'm very interested in it from a humanistic psychology perspective. Humanistic psychologists are very interested in the tension between secure in growth or or defense and insecurity and growth, and how those things are

constantly battling for attention. I'm interested in from an evolutionary point of view that parable, you know, the extent to which we evolved to be naughty. You know, that's why we have. We evolved because our genes don't you know, don't care about the great life meaning we do, but the genes don't care. The genes want to propagate it as fast as possible to the next generation. So we have all these hedonistic pursuits and fears of potential survival

issues take priority. So just so many different levels of analysis. I just think it's so wonderful that your your podcast is around what some could argue the most important parable of them all. How did you first discover the parable? I first heard the parable somewhere in my first several months of recovery from heroin addiction. I just heard it in some a a meeting somewhere, and of course, coming out on the heels of heroin addiction, it was a

pretty powerful story for me. Because and I saw the truth in it was like, well, this way I can get better, and here's the things I can do that will get me better, and these are the things I can do that will make me worse. And you know, I often joke that, like I wasn't even feeding the bad wolf anymore. He was just eating me, uh pretty much for for dinner, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for that matter at that point. But that's where I first heard it, and so it sort of had kicked around my head

for boy, twenty some years before the show started. That really so such so powerful. Yeah, so let's jump in here about your book. In the pre show conversation, you and I were talking for a couple of minutes and I said, hey, I loved your book. I love this stuff about transcendence and I love this stuff about self actualization. But one of the things a lot of listeners are struggling right now and they're looking for ways to cope. And I said, can we spend a little of our

time on ways to cope? And you said, let's discuss that on air. So let's discuss it. I've been doing a bunch of podcasts and promoting I don't like the word promote, but talking about my new book Transcend the New Science of Self Actualization, and everyone wants to talk about how can we cope? How can we cope? And it's interesting because sometimes the way you phrase the question in your head, the framing, influences how you actually feel, and this whole parable is relevant. You know, if you

keep feeding the question how do I cope? How do I cope? You'll forget We're capable of thriving. Not everything in life is about coping all the time, even when it seems like it is. My researchers shown is that if you take the leap towards growth, you stop worrying so much about coping, that question doesn't even become that prominent in your consciousness anymore. So I actually would argue that the best way forward in this time is to devote as much time in your day to more transcendent

ways of being. There's a whole continuum of transcendent experiences, things like gratitude, love, uh flow, getting deeply immersed in something you love doing, watching inspirational videos, watching romantic comedies, you know, or watching naughty comedies. That's fine too, you know, the things that that that really give you a deep belly laugh because they're so wrong. I mean, that could be transcendent to get outside of yourself, get outside of

thinking so much about yourself, you know. Um, the more we can get outside of um that self rumination, I think that's the real key to moving forward. I've been asked the question so many times in the past week. How can people cope? That I almost feel a nauseous what's on asking that question? Now? It's like too much? Too much with the question. You can put on CNN and they'll tell you plenty of things you need to be worried about, and you can watch that eight hours

a day and not learn any new information. Then if you watch it five minutes in the morning, check in, Okay, that's happened yesterday. Okay, I'm done, done for the day. Now I can Can I enjoy my day? Am I allowed to enjoy my day? Am I allowed to have any peace? You know? Like? Am I allowed to uplift others? And forget about it? And my answer is yes, you can. Yeah.

I love that. It makes me think. We had Mark Nepo on the show very recently, and one of the things that he talked about that really stuck out to me was this idea of yeah, their survival, but a lot of times we make a god out of survival and that ends up taking away our ability to thrive. I love that. I need to listen to that episode. Obviously, what does it mean to cope? Like, let's philosophically discussed that a second. What is the state of your coping

look like? To me? The idea of coping has this mental image of like, you're just holding back, you know, as hard as possible. The barrage of cropole that's about that that wants to dump on you. Yeah, and you're just sorry for the terrible analogy, but in any second it could crack. Yeah, coping doesn't seem to make a

very permanent solution to me. The most permanent solution, in I view, has always been U might take a very act approach acceptance and commitment therapy approach is not doing experiential avoidance, but just go toward the darn thing, you know, with with bravery, you know, I remember there's a there's a cute YouTube video which I'd have to look up. If if you do show notes, I can send it to whatever um talking about the act approach, where you're on a ship and you're steering a ship, and you

know where you want to go. You have the direction you want to go. You know our direction in the coronavirus. The direction is to live our lives again like before, maybe even better than before. But there's these constant monsters underneath the whole of our boat that are just screaming at you, like stop. You know you can't go further. You're not allowed to reach there. You you need to stop.

Go And and what this video beautifully shows is that this person realizes has the insight that well, first he tries going and clauboring them all, but they keep coming back. They're not going to go away forever. The best thing is to keep driving that boat with it all in your ear and be like, no, it's it's there. I'm I'm I'm with it. I'm with it. I hear you all, I hear you all, but I ain't listening to you. I'm still going. I'm still going in the direction I

want to go. And this applies act approach, by the way has been applied to people overcoming drug addictions has been uh. Steven Hayes has pioneered this and he's a good friend and we have lots of nerding out sessions. I did a role play with him on my podcast and I was like, I was like, Steve, I I'm a loser. I mean, I don't really think a loser, but I was role playing with him. I was like, I'm a loser. I have all these thoughts and I don't know why this is my role play voice, Vinny,

But you know you chucolate too much. You know what can I do? And he helped me through this, and the best way through it is not through experiential avoidance. You know, it really isn't. So I don't know, coping seems like a boring outcome. How about we transcendent? Yeah, and you say that oftentimes the way to grow towards greater growth and transcendence is not by ignoring the inevitability

of human suffering, but by integrating everything that's within you. Yeah, this is part of us now, this moment is part of us. And the question is how are we going to integrate it and not get rid of it? I mean that it's a bad question to try to get rid of it. How can we integrate it? Well? A lot of people are integrating it really well. I just

must to have been really impressed. I'm not surprised. I've always have positive faith in humanity, but I'm seeing so many people integrating it their fears in such beautiful way as creating videos that are going viral and uplifting all of our spirits. To healthcare workers, sure they have fear, what are they gonna do just cope during the day, or they save lives, you know, like they're saving lives.

They chose to save lives. You just have such a wide range of the human spirit right now on display, like it's never been on display. Sorry if I sound too optimistic, but I think there's I think there's some positive outcomes in this situation. Yeah, well, I think there certainly are. And I think that the challenge with things like this I always find is that on one hand,

difficult situations, we know they give opportunities for growth. Difficult situations can be some of the most fertile soil there is, and yet oftentimes I'm hesitant to pay my growth in my fertile soil while other people are dying. Right. It's this sensitivity to say, well, yeah, I recognize I can grow through this, but I don't want to only frame it as a growth opportunity for me, because it's fairly callous to people who whose experience of this whole thing

is very different than what mine is right now. But just because other people are suffering doesn't mean that you have to suffer a and be you do care about other people, which is a very worthy goal. Not suffering is the best way you can offer value to the world. So I would put out those two postulates in response to what you just said. Yep, I agree with both those. One of the things that you say in the book is that this is critical not only to health and wellness,

also to our survival. And it's the ability to reduce, manage and even embrace uncertainty. And I think that is what a lot of people, if you, if they had to boil down what they're dealing with right now, it's this massive uncertainty because what's coming? When is it coming? So what are some strategies for doing that for reduced

managing and embracing uncertainty? Certain team management is like one of thost important skills we can learn in life, and many of us are are faced with having to develop those muscles, sometimes for the for the first time in it to a great degree. Other others are faced with this moment of great uncertainty, having spent their whole lives being neurotic messages you know, uh and and and they're

ready for it, like you know, I'm I'm ready. Like when this happened, I was like, you know, come on, really, I got my oxygen tanks, I got my I got everything right here in my living room. I've been waiting my whole life for this moment. We have the portable breathing oxygen things, not the whole not the full tank. No, no, I got that I could pull it out of. You know, I got just you know, I got you know, the kind of that that hikers you know by Yeah. So

we each come to at different stages. But I think that I'm not the here are the five ways to hack your management uncertainty guy Like, that's not me. So um, I look at the science and try to think of what practices can help us move towards growth. And I found that this trait openness to experience is a personality trait that we differ on, but we can all cultivate.

And in my prior book, Wired to Create that one of the central went to that book was The thing that separates creative people from lesser creative people is that the created people get excited by uncertainty. They don't fear it. They have a different temperament and attitude. Sure, so, in one way, my answer your question is changed your unproductive attitude towards uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean you're going to die.

Uncertainty is uncertainty. The thing it drives people who are neurotic crazy is uncertainty, not something that's bad. In fact, research shows that people who are neurotic a f they tend to prefer the really dire outcome over a prolonged period of ignacious outcome. You know, you have a lot of neurotic people right now. Herson, give me the darn virus already, you know, like, come on, let's get it over with. Let's go, I can't kill. What's killing me is that is having to sit and would deal with

this uncertainty. This, this is the thing is is going towards being open to the new experiences and embracing it and like and and being like, you know, there's there's so much I can't control, you know, letting go of that illusion of control, and some people do it through mindfulness meditation. That's really helped a lot of people to be able to sit with their thoughts and sort of unload their deepest anxieties away from their consciousness so they

don't have to connect to it so much. Other people manage it a movement and have found that exercise really helps. But so much of it also is just changing your core beliefs, as they say in cognitive behavioral therapy, your core beliefs about the world. And maybe one of your core beliefs before this moment was that the world was safe, and your core belief has been completely upended, and you don't know what to do or what's right or what's wrong.

And my response to that would be that you're your core belief before maybe it was not right, maybe you didn't realize, but every time you stepped outside across the street, there was an uncertain outcome there. Every time you know, you'd a lot more than you realize. I definitely think that's true. I think that this has brought to the

surface things that have always been true. We've always been profoundly out of control of lots of elements of life, and and the fact that we thought we were controlling it all was just an illusion. I just think this is exposed some things that some people are already in touch with, and maybe increase the likelihood of some of these things, but but certainly didn't change our fundamental relationship to them, which is that you know. Again, to quote

Mark Nepo again, I don't. I guess I got him on the brain, but a long time ago he talked about the terrible knowledge, and the terrible knowledge is that anything can happen to any of us at any time. You know it is. It's a terrible knowledge, but it's a hard truth that once confronted, we can sit with easier. Abraham also, the humanistic psychologists argues in a lot of ways, going right to the ultimate unknown as the best thing

and making peace with your mortality. I know it sounds not like a fun thing to do, but there are cultures where they make death such a prominent feature. You know, they don't shun away from it or sweeped under the rug that they make people think about it and meditate on it, and they're much happier. Those countries are like like the country buton they're a very happy people. It's not like that practice has created it more anxiety. In fact,

just go towards your worst fears. And now I'm not saying, hello, Corona, come to me. That's not That's not what I'm saying. But in your head, you know, like really meditate on your deepest fears and think, what is the worst thing that could happen? Even if you're dead, what's the worst thing that happened, you know, like you won't suffer anymore.

Lots of Buddhist cultures have always recommended, you know, meditating on your own death, which actually, your book is tremendous and I have a preposterous number of notes for a forty conversation, so there's no way I'm getting to all of it. So as you hit on something and it comes up, I'm like, wow, just I guess I'll take that one. But you described I guess it's a game. But something called the End that you got involved in

that basically was this confronting our mortality straight on. So I guess two questions there A tell us a little bit about that, and be is that something that's available in the world to normal people or was it some experimental thing that you just happened to get looped into Oh I can find out. I don't know what stage there at right now with it, but I think you might have to live in Philadelphia to participate in it. I should totally make a virtual version of it. It

was an experimental theater production that I got involved in. Yeah, it was really interesting. I was going through an existential crisis at that time in my life and it was really bad, just right before I started writing this book and getting the idea for this book, and I was doing a lot of reading, a lot of ringing the existential humanistic psychotherapists, Irving y'all who wrote a great book Existential Psychotherapy. I started with that book. It was so good,

it was so good. And then this this game fell in my lap, and this game allowed me to for feul was thirty days fully confront my worst fears. And they would even give us role playing situations and it was scary like because they were such good actors that it was real. But we would we would go in the doctor with one of our missions. We would get a text from an entity called the End every day who would give us on a new mission. And one of our missions, I went to a doctor's waiting room.

It looked like a doctor's waiting room and they were like that, They're like, doctor will see you now. And I went into the doctor and the doctors like so their test results came back and your cancer has really gone weight stage and you might only have a few days to live. Basically now I knew it didn't really happen, but for some reason that the way they set they set it all up to plug tugging your your heart strings. And the actress was that we were supposed to really

confront what would have feel like. We we role played everything we got, we could, try to get our finances in order. We had things like if this was our last day and earth, who could we most want to talk to? And I just felt like a greater connection to everyone and I a greater sense of meaning. Um My fear of death really dissipated after that. It was just a really beautiful, beautiful game. One of the things that you talked about in the book, and I thought

this was really great. And a lot of this book you're talking about Maslow and a lot of his writings and really going deep and unearthing a lot of things of his that most of us who have a passing knowledge don't know, but there's a phrase that I loved, and he said he made it clear that human match duration was an ongoing process and that growth was not a sudden, salutary phenomenon. But it's often two steps forward

and one step back. And I just think that's such an important idea, that like, we don't grow all at once, and we don't grow in a linear way that are maturing in our growth. We go forward, we go back, we go forward, we go back. But I just think that's such an important idea, and I was really struck

by it when I read it. I think it's so important because people treat Maslow's hearchy of needs like it's some sort of mountain you climb, and that we're like it's a video game, you know, where you reach a certain level. He's like, dude, to two, level three now, you know, and you go into the next level and you don't ever turn a level two. Maslow did make clear that we're addressing multiple needs simultaneously all the time.

You know, we're we can go right down the list of the basic needs and you give me a number from zero to one hundred how much it's satisfied, and none of them are going to be a hundred, right, and we're constantly falling backward and moving for word again. And you know, people who are from addiction can test this for sure. You're not a failure. If you slip once or twice, you know it's not It's not like you've gone back to level zero, even after a full

year of growth. If you have a slip, it doesn't mean you fell all the way back to step one again. Um, it's it's actually part of the process. Despite some of our recovery programs over reliance on how many days you have. What you just said is an absolutely true statement. The more that we can remember that as we struggle, the

better that you know this is a learning process. The other thing that you said pretty early in the book, you said today many people who are striving for transcendence, they're trying to hit transcendence without a healthy integration of their other needs. You use examples like people who expect a mindfulness retreater or yoga class to be a pantasy

for trauma and deep insecurity. So to what extent do we need to sort of do these things in meet our basic needs, work our way up the hierarchy of needs and and to what extent can we jump in at different levels? It sounds like both at certain points. The key is it's all about integration and we're a whole unit. We can't separate one of these needs from the rest of us, and if we do, that's when

things running a problem. And and you know, to the to the chronically hungry human being who's not a vegetarian, everyone looks like a hamburger to them. You know, you're walking around, that's all you're seeing. You're looking for food for vegetarian, You're looking for where's the broccoli? You know, like everywhere you look, I'm desperate for broccoli, and you

don't care about anything else but broccoli. And the same principle applies to being severely deprived of any of these just severely deprived of connection you come across to others is very quite needy, which is actually a parado. It's very unfortunate. It's a kind of catch point two that the the loneliest people tend to be shunned the most by society. That's a shame. But you know, you you walk around and being like please love me, please like me.

I'll do anything you know for you to like me when you're chronically deprived, and the same thing with esteem. If no one respects you at all, any of the work you do in this world doesn't feel like it has any of an impact. You start to have an outsized demand for respect. And that can take different forms.

That could take the form of the school shooter, the shy, introverted school shooter, or it could take the form of I don't know if you could think of any examples of a grandiose narcissist, someone who is really obsessed with greatness or something. I don't know. I can't think of anyone like that right now, but maybe you can think it's not only that, uh, they could take that form. You know, I shall have power over the world, and so this is really important to identify where you're most

severely deprived. But I would say ultimately it's all interconnected because we need to think of it like you want to get to the heights of your humanity. If you want to reach your full potential, well treat it like chapel. You know, you can't observe the most beautiful aspects of

the chapel. The chapel uh needs a strong foundation, or alsino crumble and you have to really make sure that that foundation of who you are is as strong and stands on as a sturdy a foundation as possible, so that you can really reach those heights so they're all interconnected with each other at the end of the day. That's a debate that shows up in the spiritual world, particularly parts of the spiritual world that are more focused on nondual awakening or awakening from the illusion of a self.

Is hey, are you more likely to awaken if you've met your basic needs, if you're psychologically healthy. Is doing psychological work worth doing? Or you just skip right by all that and just have a non dual experience and you're on your way. You know, it's a It's a debate that that community spends a fair amount of time on. Are you in that community? I spend some time in that community in that I've had some mystical experiences that I'm a big believer in the Buddhist sense that this

self is an illusion and illusions the wrong word. It's it's not what we take it to be, and that there are ways of orienting towards the world which which result in profoundly different orientations to what I call myself. So in that way, yes, but I wouldn't say that's the only world I'm in or the only place I'm interested in either. You know, I guess if I have a you know, a spiritual orientation, as I'm a Zen Buddhist,

I study with a Zen teacher, I go on silent retreats. Um, I'm pretty interested in this idea of awakening, and you know, have had some pretty profound experiences that have shown me what's possible. So, yeah, wonderful. I wanted to hear your personal experience the closest I would come to for myself as describe myself as a Zen Buddhist as well. Um. And I think that the humanistic psychologist Abraham has a deeply influenced by by that. Did you get a chance

to read the final chapter theory? Z? Yes? I did that state of consciousness that that he was getting at the plateau experience? Yes, not the peak experience. I think it's as closest as we get to two ancient notions of satory or you know, some of the highest states of consciousness that one could could achieve. And I think it was striving towards that I really tried to to

get us to it in the book. It's there's kind of a twist ending of the book because you think, I tell you to tell the listeners the twist ending, I want them to spoiler alert. You think that you're just going upward in some upward direction, like you've transcended this and that and that, and then you're like, you're gonna end the book triumphantly with your purpose and then your full potential, and then you can start being a

positive psychology coach and make millions of dollars. And then what you find in the book is that it actually ends on a different note, right am I? Right, that's not the note of which it ends. It ends on Maslow's realization, having gone upward that upward trajectory and then facing mortality, that the you to life actually was there all along in his backyard, in the view of a

of a tiny flower. Yeah. I just have found it so interesting reading the trajectory of Maslow's own life and his personal journals and his correspondences with his East Asian colleague, you ay as Rani, who made people might not have heard of uh this generation, but who was deeply interested in these higher states of consciousness. And it seems like those states of consciousness are just you're so profoundly touched by beauty and things that are as many school as

can get. It makes me think of several Zen teachings. There's a Zen teaching that I never get these things exactly right, but it basically says, like, in the beginning, the mountain is just a mountain, and then the mountain is no longer a mountain, and then after that the

mountain is just a mountain again, you know. And it talks about the fact we start from this ordinary consciousness, we might have some of these peak experiences, some of these mystical experiences, and then when we're on the other side of it, we're back to like, well, it's a mountain, but it's a mountain in a different way, in the same way that you're describing in the book, this plateau experience, which is we think of a peak experiences this thing.

We it's a speak experience. We sort of shoot up too and we're there, we come back down. But the plateau experience, they're more enduring, and they involve seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. And that's the thing I love about this Zen training for me is so great is because whenever I start spinning off and being like, well, I need that, No, it needs to be that, it needs to be over there, I need this, and it

just goes no, right here, come right back. Like your life, right where you are, with the ordinary things in your life, has the capacity to awaken if you look there closely enough. I'm so glad I didn't know that I'd be able to bond with you today over our our mutual interests in this. I don't get a chance to bond over this everyone I talked to, So I don't take it for I don't take anything for granted. It's really blest

for this moment that we can have together. But I've really come to that realization too that so many things in life are pulling us. We need to do that. We I want this, I want that. Those are actually all the distractions. Those are the distractions. The truth lies within you right now without anything more, anything added. So much of the key of all of this is not adding stuff, being as president and aware to who you

are at your deepest core in this moment. It's a profound realization, and and and it's something that you can forget. That realization. You can get it through meditation, sometimes you have these moments or you have that insight again and then you forget it and then you go back, you know, like, oh, we might be looking here to do list, you know everything, you're looking at your emails and getting stressed by your emails.

I agree, and I think it's interesting that that is true, and that it's not immediately and often apparent, and that there are ways of being, there are things that we can do, and I love that was what a lot of the book talks about, is this idea of of the B realm, right, this is this realm of pure being. And near the end of the book you list like, I don't know how many it is, but like pages of these things that Maslow recommended, his potential ways to spend a little more time in the B realm. Did

you like those things? I did? Some of them were great, some of them were Yeah. He was just rattling that off there towards the end of his life. The other thing that was interesting for me in that section of the book was meta grumbles. Yeah that interesting. Yeah, can you share that idea a little bit? He went all out with the meta So meta needs, we have meta needs, meta values, met of motivations, being motivated by things that are above our basic needs. He called meta motivations. Meta

grumbles are higher forms. You know, I've had met as, like higher higher form of each of these things. So we can have lower forms of grumbles, which are like, oh my god, I'm hungry, Oh my god, no one loves me. Oh my god, what am I gonna do? You know, like no respects me. But meta grumbles are like grumbling and being completely dissatisfied with things that lie outside of yourself, you know, like I'm so frustrated that there's such a lack of beauty in my environment right now,

the lack of justice, deficiency of meaning. Those kinds of concerns have a different flavor to them and can be viewed higher than are lower grumbles in the sense that they don't always need to be satisfied. They may never be. It might actually be good to be perpetually dissatisfied with those things. Why, he said, at the highest level of consciousness, we are beyond health and happiness. Such words don't have

meaning anymore in our world view. What it made me think of was I agreed with those meta grumbles, and then I also sort of thought, well, like you just said, there's not enough beauty or meaning. My metic grumble is often with myself. What I feel like is occasionally my lack of ability to perceive those things, you know, is like I know that there's meaning and beauty right where I'm at, and yet I'll be damned, but I can't

seem to see it today. I just can't find it today. Yeah, And it's that interesting that like the next day you might look at the same thing and suddenly it looks beautiful to you. I mean, the same thing, you know how you notice that, Like, yeah, you'd be like, you might have great appreciation. Gosh, I'm so lucky to have a mom like I have. And then the next day, you know, she she nags you to death, and you're like, I don't see that, right, Yeah, I don't know what

your mom's like, no comment. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna You've got a line that I think is a really powerful line, and it summarizes a lot of what we were talking about a little bit earlier, and I guess still very much in what we're describing right now, which is the self can be our greatest resource, but it can also be our darkest enemy. So you might challenge the even

grass resource part. I feel like a lot of people in the Buddhist world that they kind of hate on the self and and and I know, I know you're not like that right now now, I'm not one of them. I don't. I don't think so. I think it's a concept that is actually fairly useful in a lot of ways. And it's also that's why I said, when I said, well, the self is an illusion, I was like, well, that's not really what I mean, because no, on on some levels,

it's not you know, it's not psychologically an illusion. It's a psychological mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, And I think, you know, there are moments where I feel like myself gets in the way, and there are plenty of moments where I feel like it's a pretty useful thing to have a sense of People who completely lack a sense of self that psycho pathological, for instance, people with borderline personality disorder report feeling no sense of self that's independent from others.

They feel like there's always serving others and don't have any grounding. What I try to do in my book is have a good synthesis between Eastern notions of self actualization and Western notions of self actualization and have an integration of them, because I think too much selflessness can become pathological, just as pathological, not more so than too

much selfishness. UM So I try to mix it up by talked in the book about healthy selfishness, for instance, that whole section on that um I talk about when you have a deep integration at the highest level. The word selfish doesn't make any sense anymore because what you do is good for you and it simultaneously good for society. So what does that even mean anymore for it to

be selfish? Is there anything that you'd like to make sure we touch on or that you feel is important that we haven't covered on as we as we head towards nearing the end. No, please don't say that we're nearing the end after playing that game. I don't actually want the end happened. Um Well, I want to give a shout out to swim Pony, who is the experimental group that that at the end. First of all, I wanted to give them their name a shout out so

people could google that if they wanted swim Pony. But I'm so glad that we had a chance to cover the transcendence aspect and the plateau experience that I don't get a chance to talk about that all the time. I just want to emphasize to people that this idea of what you feed grow stronger, well, that's backed up by evolutionary psychology. Robert Wright wrote a wonderful book called Why Buddhism Is True. I don't know if you read

that book. Yeah, we had him on, Oh great, because he must have loved the parable because the research does show that we have lots of parts of ourselves that are constantly fighting us. Well called it the civil war within and it's you know, constantly battling within us, and we can integrate it and we can have harmony among all these factions. A lot of that is about where we put our focus, and we where we put our attention.

Attention lies at the heart of so much of our suffering, and I think that it's important to recognize that we can nurture what's good within us just as much as we can nurture what's dangerous or damaging to our health. But I would also say that this idea of good and bad is also a dichotomy that is transcended as of economy, transcendence, the high level of conscious. They wouldn't even understand that parable. You know, evil and good would be integrated so that there'd be a higher unity. Neither

would make sense on its own. You know, ultimately, nothing would be viewed as good and bad by itself. That things like kindness can actually backfire, and you can try to be kind of people who aren't ready to receive it and do damage to them. Um, you could have anxiety, and anxiety and lots of situations can be helpful. So I think that parable is very simplistic in categorizing. Well, these are the things that are the bad wolf, and

these are things that the good wolf. And sometimes those things that are listed under the good wolf can be very bad, and under certain contexts, things that are listomed to the bad wolf can be great. Like aggression can can lead to growth in a Martin Luther or King sort of way when integrated towards motivating you to to solve an injustice. So that's why I like Maslow's framework of things that have a D flavor to it and a B flavor to it, deficiency versus growth or being

and anything. You know, I think nothing is either good or bad on its face. Everything can either have a D flavor or be flavor UM includes aggression. D aggression be authenticity. You can have authenticity it comes from a D level where you have to say everything that's on your mind, like and you call that authentic as opposed to be flavor of authenticity where you really grow and um and and do things and make choices that are authentic,

but they're authentic and will help you grow. I often think about that da of like any personality trait taken too far to one direction or the other tends to become problematic, but not just an extreme extremity version. But just where is it coming from? Is it coming from what kind of motivation? Is it coming from motivation to satisfy a deep deficiency within your soul? Or is it being motivated by wanting to grow and to integrate and to help others? Ye, that makes a lot of sense.

Let's wrap up by talking about AWE. You call all the every person's spiritual experience. My colleague David Yiden called it that. Yeah, Like yeah, I really resonated with that description of all. All is the state of conscious where you feel reverence for something as well as maybe even a little operating fear of it. But it's just so beyond you, It's so beyond comprehension um. It's it's you're struck by the beauty of it and the scope of it.

And my collegus and I have been studying it because we do think that it's out of all the transcending experiences. It's it can be stripped of its religious connotations. Regardless of our religious belief system. We can all experience the same feeling of all. We can all have that feeling and rally around similar experiences. You know, the mystical experience is not something that people easily divorce from religion, but I think all is something that can be and gets

as close to it. Yeah, and I loved the discussion of there being two sort of main cognitive parts of it. One is the perception of something vast and the other being the fact that it's hard to mentally process. It's sort to put it into a box. That's exactly right. That sort of leads to this idea of a unitary continuum. Tell us what the unitary continuum is? Well, there's a lot of transcendent experiences we can have in our lives, and they differ in the extent to which there's a

deep connection between softened world. We feel some connection to something we're doing. We feel absorbed, We have mystical experiences alway on the right side of they continuum. That's like a oneness of the kazoo, you know. I think that's a I think that's an ancient zen terms zoo. Yeah. Yeah, like you're you're one with everything, even where people are like I want to check you in our mental institution, you know, because but you don't need to be all

the way there. You can be a somewhere on the continuum um. You can have feel so inspired and have a peak experience. And Maso's view two see great possibilities for yourself you never saw before or or for others. Gratitude the love experiences is certainly on that on that could tow quing romantical of um. Some people are, yes, some of the most profound experience that one could have. So I think that we can have a whole continue

of it of transcendent experiences, yep. And I like that because I think it makes transcendence applicable at a lot of different levels instead of like transcendence is just this thing that's way out there. No, we all get flavors of it. Is that correct? That's what I'm hoping to do. I hope to democratize spirituality a bit. Yeah, that's a worthy goal, I think so. I'm glad, do you think so? Yeah? Well it Scott, thank you so much for coming on

the show. I really enjoyed the book a great deal and I really appreciate getting this chance to talk with you too. Eric goes for real delight to chatt with you today. Thank you if what you just heard was helpful to you. Please can that are 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

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