Expand Your Self || Dan Siegel

way forward is inward. Later on in this episode, I have a lot more to say about the Perception Box and how it relates to this episode, but right now, let me tell you a little bit about today's guest. Today, we're so happy to welcome Dan Siegel to the show. Doctor Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry the UCLA School of Meta and the founding co director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Doctor Siegel is also

the executive director of the Mind Sight Institute. He's authored numerous articles, chapters, and books, including the New York Times bestsellers Mind a Journey to the Heart of Being Human and Aware, the Science and Practice of Presence. His latest book is called Intra Connected MAWII M plus we as the Integration of Self, identity, and Belonging. In this episode, I talked to doctor Dan Siegel about expanding the notion

of the self. Modern culture has taught us that the self is all about individual identity and personal experiences, but doctor Siegel posits that who we are is not limited to the brain or body. He argues that the self is not isolated. It's composed of our relationships to other living beings and to the natural world. This expanded view of the self has important implications for the trajectory of humanity. We also touch on the topics of consciousness, neuroscience, quantum physics,

and the full state. This is a really rich and lightening conversation. We had a whole bunch of aha moments about transcendence, about the nature of self, and about the interconnectedness that we all have with others. I think you'll enjoy this episode just as much as I did, and find it just as mind expanding and self expanding as I did. So without further ado, I bring you doctor

Dan Siegel. I am really excited to chat with you today because there's just so many threads that you bring together in this latest book, interconnected, and you know, it's like, I'm reading this book and I'm reading this thread from a prior book of yours, another thread from another prior book, another thread from another prior book, and I love how you integrate all together. But I guess that's your point, isn't it. This book is really your real integration book.

think it'll be very intriguing to our listeners. Who we are is both within and between me plus we yeah equals MAUI the reality of an integrative wholeness of our interconnected lives. Can you explain our audience a little bit what that means? What does it mean to be both simultaneously within in between?

larger humanity. So that's the between this. So if you take a step back and say, well, what are you really, you're really energy flow and that flow happens inside the body. So that's the within this, and that flow happens in how we're communicating with each other. Right now, you and I are speaking with each other or looking at each other, people joining us in this conversation are literally con is with and verse to turn. We're turning together our attention,

and attention is that process that determines energy flow. So you know, in many ways what relationships are sharing of the betweenness of energy flow, between the two inners of you and the inner of me. And then when you put them together, that's like the me is the inner, the we is the relational And you say, well, why do I have to choose? And I had taught a course once a workshop called me to We, and one of my students was so upset with me. She said,

you're a hypocrite. And I said, okay, well why my hypocrite? She goes, You said, it's important to have both. You know, this honoring of the inner of your knowledge of yourself. You're taking care of your body, sleeping your body, feeding your body, exercising your body, knowing the history of your body, and all of that's the me. She was absolutely right. And we're also a wei. So the term me to we implies getting rid of me and going to we. And she was right to say it needs to be

something else. So she said, what is it? It's got to be something else, and I tried out this word we ultimately and she loved it, and it really made sense that who we are as both within and between.

you and what does it How did it sit with you? Good.

as part of the revised hierarchy of needs. And I also it tried to integrate indigenous wisdom, which is why I appreciated you doing that a lot in your book. But I found the need to I kept explaining to people, Well, it's actually like Russian nesting dolls, right, It's like every part of you, you know, the higher parts, really do need the other parts, the so called lower parts, you know,

in order to have a whole of interconnectness. But when you say self expansion, you don't need to explain it as much, you know, you don't need to defend it as much. So anyway, when I got to that line, I believe you were talking to doctor Keltner, who's I guess, I think a mutual friend of ours, and you said to him, you know, what do you think of self expression? I think he said awesome. That was again such a typical doctor Keltner response. But you know, so no that

I really like that change in terminology. I really like it.

it's there's no separate individual self. And then I say, well, but you know there is an inner aspect, so it is a real thing. I mean, as an attachment researcher, you know, my science training is in studying parent child relationships, and you know, we study how when the way your parents treat you is not so good, your development of a let's just call it a core self, this inner core self lot that's lodged in your body is pretty disrupted and it leads to a lot of suffering. And

to say that that's not real. You know. I got to say as a therapist, that is really upsetting to me when I work with these people who are suffering, and to say their suffering is not real is really painful to hear that stance. So it's kind of like a bypass that sometimes happens, not with everyone, but in

some meditation practitioners. They're trying to bypass the hard work of actually taking a core self that didn't develop well because your parent child relationships are really troubling, they were problematic. Do the healing that takes a lot of work, but it's doable. And then to go as your course. And this is why I try to take a developmental stance in the book, you know, to say, well, how does

that course self actually develop? Is it real? And the view is that it's real, but it's a differentiated way of being an individual, which is fine and not a butt. And there's also a self experience which we can talk about next. You know, that is beyond the skull and skin, you know, and so in that sense, your word transcend is great. It transcends just the separateness of being an individual. And then you know, I really and I don't know

how you feel about this. But I, you know, I really wrestled with because I have a big doubting mind. You know, maybe self should just be limited to the individual, and it should be self transcendence, and there should be another term for like feeling that you are other human beings and that you are the trees. And then I

thought about it some more. I thought, well, when I looked at the literature on self, it was always about like the sensations you have, the perspectives you have, what you act on behalf of, and that you know, had this fun acronym SPA, you know, sensation perspective agency. And then I thought, well, actually this really self expanding. It's not self transcending, because what if you could feel into the suffering of others, really not become them, but feel

into it to then act on behalf of them. Or what if you could feel that the earth was your body, we would stop treating it like a trash can. So then then I and I don't know how it's going to come out, But then I felt like, yeah, it was self expanding, and we should start seeing that you have an identity lens that you can move it close up and say yeah, there's the self that's inside the skin in case body, but then you have a self that's all humanity and a self that's all living beings.

So anyway, I mean, that's that's the proposal. And to hear from you that it sits well with you, they're really exciting for me because you know, I know you write deeply about this and you know the importance of it. And even when dak Or Keltner said, awesome too, why don't we change the name from self transcend it to self expanding? And he was really excited about that. It really makes the conversation a little different to say that our bodies right here and now we are each other.

And I don't mean that in a poetic way, but more like a deeply scientific way. How are we defining the self to say that it ends at the skin?

You know, not all representations of the self are in the mind. We have other representations in the mind that necessary, not our necessarily self. But that links to Andy Kark and David Chalmers the extended mind thesis. I kept thinking about that when I was reading your book, because I feel like there was a strong connection between what you were saying and what they're arguing. And then my friend Anny Murphy Paul wrote a book recently called The Extended

Mind The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. But they use the term mind, right, And you're focusing on self, and so it's an interesting question like, what are we talking about the same thing a different thing? What's it difference between self and mind? And how do you view the self? I'm asking you a lot of questions in one here. Well, how do you define the self?

You look at Webster's definition of psyche, so a psychiatrist or a psychologist, you know, like yourself, or someone doing psychotherapy or in the field of psychological health, all those psyche derivations have those four meanings. Psyche means soul, spirit, intellect, and mind. So then I don't know how it was for you, but for me, as a psychiatrist trained by psychologists to do research, so I'm trained to detachment research by psychologists, I had the opportunity to ask my academic

mentors what is this mind? And I was kind of confused when they said, we don't have a definition of it. So then I started systematically asking anyone in the field of mental health, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nursing people in master's level, were you know, all sorts of folks. I asked literally one hundred thousand people in person before the viral pandemic, and the numbers were remarkably consistent across the globe. It was about two to five percent would say yes.

In my formal training as a mental health practitioner, I was given a definition of the mind, and ninety five percent would say no, I was never given any definition. I would be in the ninety five percent. Where would you sit in at in what exactly? Yeah, did someone in your training in psychology tell you a definition? Not a description, you know, like its emotions, its thoughts, but a definition of what is what is the mind?

him years ago about some other issues related to his research. Anyway, we were at the faculty dinner.

you know, I've never thought of that before. I said, okay, could you think about it now? He says, of course, let me think. Pauses. He goes, no, we have no definition of the mind. So I said, would you like to hear one? He goes yeah. So we're in San Francisco. We get on the trolley car. You know, he's old,

and so we wanted to sit down. Everyone else is standing up around us, and we're sitting in the trolley car, picture it going, and I'm giving him this download of you know what I said in the developing Mind, you know, which is that you can make a proposal for a definition of mind beyond descriptions. And after he hears the definition, his face lights up. He goes, that is consistent with

my entire life's work. And I accept that definition, and then everyone on the trolley cars starts applauding it was. So you want to know what I said, Yeah, I said my seat, you know, I said, if you see our mental lives is being both within and between. That is, they happen in relationships, you know, and they happen within the body, including you know his expertise with studying the brain.

You know, they happen both within in between. So what is shared what's happening both within and between its energy flow. And some of that energy flow has symbolic value, so it's information. So a formation of energy that is standing for something like the word hello, is not just the airwaves going hello. It's a symbol. And when when formation is symbolizing something, it's information anyway, because it changes over time,

we call the flow. So I said, the mind might be Now this is coming up like in the early nineties, so right after the nineteen eighties, when a bunch of mathematicians and physicists has gotten together with system science and really talked about emergence. That there's something arising from the interaction of elements of a system that is larger than the elements themselves, and it's called emergence. It's a scientific

property of what are called complex systems. So to me, the criteria for complex systems, which are systems capable of chaos, they're open to influences from outside themselves, and they're nonlinear, meaning like a small input at one point leads to a large and difficult to predict result. If you have those three characteristics, you are a complex system. So it

seemed to me our lives were complex systems. They're immersed within the internal complexity of the embodied nervous system, the brain and its body, and also just our relationships are incredibly complex literally in this way of defining complexity. So those scientists and the eighties had shown that there's an emergence comes from complex systems. So I thought, what if the mind is the emergent property of complex systems which property.

What those scientists showed was that there's a process called self organization. So it might be that everything is an emergent property of the mind, like, for example, it might be that certainly sensation subjective experience might be an emergent property. The consciousness that lets you know you're having subjective experience

might be an emergent property. Information processing clearly is. But this fourth facet of the mind that I offered as a definition to that professor is this the mind might be this is from thirty years ago now, but it might be the emergent self organizing, embodied and relational process that is regulating energy and ination flow. And when this professor thought about it and said that is exactly what

I've been studying, you know, it was so beautiful. And I think the reason everyone applauded was because it wasn't trying to say, in a way anything new. It was trying to say, let's just define what we're all doing anyway, and so we can have a shared vocabulary. And from that definition of the mind, you could actually then say what a healthy mind is, because you could say, how

do you optimize self organization? And we can get into that later, but that was a very powerful moment back in It was nineteen ninety two, so it's you know, a long time ago now, But you know, I put out that definition in a publication and I called it a working definition, and I was excited that other definitions would come in and we'd have big debates and we could get rid of that one and come up with

something more accurate or whatever. But in thirty years there hasn't been a single other definition short of just saying, you know, the mind is is what the brain does, which doesn't really say what the mind is. If the mind is just brain activity. By the way, why do we need a word like mine? M just call it brain activity, right right?

it arise? Through the complexity of interconnections, is what I what I believe, and through the evolution of you know, the evolution of the species, we got to a certain point of complexity where this this emerged. But I do see a distinction distinction between conscious the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind. We learn lots of things implicitly, like I That's what I studied for my pH d thesis

was implicit learning and its relationship to intelligence. So I wouldn't put that within the mind, you know, the realm of the mind or so. I do think that in a lot of ways, mind and consciousness are very synonymous with each other. And it sounds like you view that as the situation as well.

on the planet. So these are important foundational concepts and vocabularies that actually set the stage for you know, how kids learn in schools, how parents raise kids, how people interact with each other at work, what governments can do. I mean, we can go on about that in a way, maybe we should looking at, you know, where we are at as a human family. But for this question of consciousness in mind, I'm really open to you know, learning more every day. I see every day as an opportunity

to keep on opening and learning and changing. This is why it was so peculiar that in thirty years no one has pushed against this definition or offered an alternative definition. And the definition is not the same as conscious. I wrote a book on consciousness called Aware, where I try to outline the distinction between mind and consciousness and also looking at itself so we can talk about those three words and how I think they're actually importantly different from

each other. So let's take implicit learning, which you've got your doctoral degree in, and certainly implicit memory, which my research advisor was an expert at Bob Yorke. You know, I was so taken by the whole field of memory research when I was a psychiatry trainee and you know, got a it wasn't a PhD, but it was a national and studentmental health you know, research training grant to

study memory systems, narrative systems and relationships, you know. And as a therapist, it was really relevant because you know, so much of you do what you do when you have a client command of patient, you say, what do you remember about this? Tell me this story of that, you know, and as you're suggesting, so much of what

they've learned is implicit learning. And then I came across patients who had been traumatized where the implicit memory systems, at least my view of what was going on, were being activated without being integrated with the explicit memory systems. So for me, and I'm giving you this background because for me as a therapist back in the nineteen eighties,

when I became a research fellow in eighty nine. You know, this is a long story, but my research mentor's boyfriend's ex roommate was Larry Shackter, you know, who is a big memory researcher. So she says, let me call Larry up and he's going to meet with you. So I meet with Larry, you know, and I'm just some kid, you know, just interested in these things. But he's like this world's expert, you know, in declarative and non discarded memory.

So it was at that moment, you know, back in probably eighty seven, when when I was getting set up to apply for the research grant, you know, and I'm meeting with Larry, you know, that that I realized for therapists to understand implicit learning. And here's where maybe we

differ a little bit. Their mental health was impacted by the implicit memory system that when it wasn't integrated with the hippocampal processing and a part of the brain that allows it to become explicit, that is, explicit, factual or explicit autobiographical, then they were prone to flashbacks if they'd been traumatized, and that the implicit you know, my understanding of implicit memory is it has you know, emotions, it has perceptions, It probably has bodily sensation, it has behavioral

repertoires call procedural memory, and these are all summarized under mental models and influence something called priming, which is the getting you ready to respond. Now, I guess for me, and maybe this is a mistake, Scott, so you can tell me. But to me, that was all a part of the mind, even though it was not a part of consciousness. So that I would have a patient come in.

Let's say they were in a relationship and every time they were about to be sexual said they'd been abused sexually, their whole system would be primed to feel like their partner when they loved, was an attacker. And then their mental model was, you know, sexuality is bad and people who get involved with you sexually really want to hurt you. So then they'd come in for couples therapy, and the only way to work with their mental health was to

work at the level of implicit learning. That was absolutely affecting what I would call their mental well be so, but maybe that was not such a good use of the term. But for me, in that sense, it was energy flow patterns that were being organized. So it was self organization of energy flow patterns. And here's the thing. When simal self organization happens. This is now mathematics, but you're differentiating in linking aspects of the complex system to

allow a kind of harmony toize. Where it's these five features of flexible, adaptive, coherent, energize, and stable. That's from math. And when I've been when met with mathematicians, I said, what do you call that that creates optimal self organization? They said, we don't have a name for it. I said, well, is it when you differentiate and link? They go, absolutely, that's what creates that harmony of that optimal complexity maximizing complexity. And I said, well, I got to talk to my

patients about it. I gott to name it something. They go, name it whatever you want. I said, okay, I'll name that balance of differentiation on the one hand things being different and linkage on the other is integration. It's different than how mathematicians use that term, which is more like addition anyway, So integration looks like it's the way you get optimal self organization. But if you block differentiation or linkage,

you go to either chaos or that's math. So I went back to the psychiatric books and especially the diagnostic Bible, the DSM, and every symptom of every syndrome's god was either chaos, rigidity, or both. And in this very room, over thirty years ago, I went nuts because I said, Oh my god, here's the definition of well being integration, and here's a definition of unwell being impaired integration. And this is what I need to do as a therapist.

I need to identify blocked integration and help my clients, my patients become integrated. And sure enough, those things started to work in ways that I wasn't doing anything my supervisors told me to do. I was just following this line of scientific reasoning.

the walls of our perception box. The perception box is the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Dan presents his fascinating ideas on how we can expand ourself and widen the lens of our identity to include other people. From a perception box perspective, we can actively work to change the negative stories we tell ourselves, such as I am

not safe. By including other people in our sense of self and being more open, honest, and vulnerable with others, expanding our perception box can help us feel the joy that comes with being our authentic selves. Truth is, we always have to live in our perception box, but the more we can practice expanding the walls and realize that another person is part of us, that the self is not in isolated entity, we can increase our agency to

how we respond to what rising inside us. Sometimes this just requires deep breaths just to get enough space that when the thoughts come up, you can choose to believe and act on them or let them pass self. Inquiry is also valuable, constant questioning is this really true? And authentically engaging with others to get at the real truth about how you are perceived and also to discover the

common humanity you may share with another person. When we expand our perception box walls, we see just how interrelated we all really are. To find out more about unlikely collaborators, and the perception box go to unlikely Collaborators dot com. So this is this is interesting because this map is I'm an individual differences researcher as well as a cognitive scientist. And the two meta traits of all personality break down as stability and plasticity. They're above the Big five is

the Big two. Yeah, and most mental disorders can be classified into a severe lack of stability and that usually those are usually the effective disorders or an extreme heightened plasticity, which would be chaos, which you tend to see in schizophrenia. An optimal amount leads to creativity and that so I've tried to show that the optimal amount for creativity where you fall off the edge and then you can just gets into psychosis disorders. But that's just perfectly maps onto what you just said.

fuel distinguishes the unconscious mind from the conscious mind. I do think there's a valuable distinction there, because there are I think the unconscious mind consists of aspects of our mind that are not available to conscious introspection, and I think that that's a valuable distinction. To make Mark Leary interesting enough, he's the closest one I've ever seen to coming up with a definition of the self that you know.

He just lays it out there as the definition, whether or not you agree with it or not, and I'll read to you his definition. Mark Leary defines the self as the mental apparatus that allows people and a few other species of animals to think consciously about themselves. So he really does equate the self with consciousness in his explicit definition.

of self reflective consciousness. You know, we do have consciousness that's you know, more not second order, but first order. You know, aware of your sensations and aware you know of your movements, like appropriate reception basically an inter reception for awareness of the interior of the body. And even in evolutionary terms, there's some interesting things that if you want to go off on that tangent to look at what does self reflection mean where you start developing what

some people would call an autobiographical self. And I would I would love to have discussion with Mark Leary and yourself about the important role of autobiography, right, which is not just saying here's what's happened to me now, but here's what's happened to me before, and maybe here's what I'd like to happen to be in the future, that kind of past, present, future, autobiographical capacity and the capacity

to be in the present moment. And as someone who does myself does active work with you know, mindfulness and all that stuff. You know, it's really interesting to distinguish an autobiographical self versus a mindful a mindful self, which if you look at the work of Norman forban Zendel Siegel up in Toronto, you know, they would suggest, even if you look at the brain networks, that the midline default mode network would be more like what Mark Leary

is talking about an autobiographical self. He doesn't use that term, but what we can call an autobiographical self, whereas the lateral circuits are more sensory capacity to be in the present moment and let go of that autobiographical past, present futures stuff is part of in Farben Seagulls no relationship to me, se g a l in their work, you know, would suggest that there's also a researcher I'm trying to remember his name up in Canada also who does a

lot of work on the default mode network, but I can't remember his name right at this moment. But he would also occur, Oh no, no, oh gosh, I remember when he first presented his work a while ago. It's with an l I think, but that might be wrong too. But in any event, he and a lot of other people would say, yes, there's an autobiographical consciousness that Mark

Leary is talking about. That's important. But for me anyway and an interconnected I tried to make this distinction that, you know, sensation and perspective and agency, just to go across lots and lots of ways of looking at the self. That's just one way of finding a common ground. It

would not include necessarily an autobiographical capacity, you know. So for example, you could say, and this may be too far out, and I'd love to know your point of view SPK you know about you know, when I in the book, I tell this story of you know, going first to Panda Populace, which is a forest in Utah, and seeing these forty eight thousand aspen trunks that look like separate trees. But then you go a little bitneath the surface, it's one root ball. You realize it's one

of the oldest and largest organisms on Earth. It's one

living thing. And then I was out in the forest a week later with some system scientists doing a retreat, and after the three days when we came back, the only word I could use because they were all saying I was interconnected and interwoven, an intered being, and I couldn't use the inter word because in those three days of being alone in the forest, it felt like this could sound funny, But I was the body, yes, and I was the creek, and I was the trees, and

I was the sky, and there was no longer this autobiographical distinction of the body being the center of experience alone. And so I don't know how Mark Leary would feel about that, but for me, it was the feeling that. And I know in pant psychism people actually write about this, and I'm not saying I'm a pant psychist, but they would say there is consciousness in all living beings something like that, or maybe even all things. I wouldn't go that far because I don't. And that's why I don't

think you need consciousness to talk about mind. In other words, I think mind is subjective experience, it's information processing, it's you know, it's consciousness, and it is limited by the scholar skin. So it doesn't need to be you know, confined, just to the individual. Now in that sense, maybe people would disagree and say, no, no, no, you have to have mind only happening inside a person. And this is where maybe this distinction self, mind and consciousness, those distinctions

is important. I think mind includes more than consciousness. I think mind includes more than self. And then in some ways, when you look at the idea of self construction, self is constructed out of mental experience. So, you know, some people see the self as really narrow. Some people have a collectivistic view, and that self construl you know, is

a mental process. So I guess I would put the word mind as the larger construct and then put self as one aspect of mind and consciousness as another aspect of mind. That's that's just this could be just semantics, but at least the way I write, that's kind of how I try to use that word. Maybe there's a better word for it than that, but for now, that's that was my placeholder for that overarching energy and information flow emergent experience.

in the fMRI machine, to h to rappers. When they're in the flow state of consciousness, their default low network is as alive as can be, and their executive attention network, which is what mindfulness people love so much. It was like showing, look, mindfulness improves executive attention that it's actually quieted.

So when I jump between literally when I jump between literatures, I see like I feel like there needs to And I've been trying to like integrate these literatures and it's not easy because they're almost not they're almost talking past each other. The mindfulness literature to them, they get so excited when they quiet the default will network, where the creativity literature they get so excited when they ramp up

the default will network. And so what I liked in your book was a kind of a throwaway paragraph you had, but it was like I was like, no, no, no, he needs to really stay there and explicate it. And is that you didn't take a hard stance, which I see a lot in the mindfulness literature where you say like, oh, it's default networks evil, it's bad, we need to quiet it. You said, it's all about the disintegration, integration of it with the other brain networks. And I think that's the

key to this mystery. I think that's that's where the field needs to focus on. Is the extent to which you bring all this because I've argued the default world network is the functions of the default mold network are the very form of the very core of human existence. If we wipe that out, we would know, Yes, it's true, we would not no longer feel such a great sense of self or an identity to ourselves all you know, identity,

all those things. It's true. But I also think there's something so uniquely wonderful and human about the capacity to have an identity, about the capacity to draw on our rich associative network of emotional memories, you know, to make meaning, to make meaning, And I think we'd be so remiss to knock that out. Do you see what I'm saying?

you know, and then say wow, because it is. It is something an impression that I've also experienced that in some writings. The default mode is you know, thought of as you know, a wandering mind is the unhappy mind, and the default mode when it's activated is a bad guy and shut.

But the first to say is that the brain, you know, as a pattern detector and an anticipation machine, you know, that really helps with our survival. But what that means, unfortunately, is that as we learn, you know, we develop these top down filters. So every time we see a furry animal, you know, with a tail that barks, we just label it dog and we don't really bother with it because it's not a wolf, it's not a lion, it's not

going to kill us. We can just go past the dog, right, So then we don't really see this being in front of us, right. So just to label all of that top down. There's a lot of top down ways that help us be efficient in how we function in the world. Every time you go to eat food, you don't like marvel at the amazing you know, whatever lettuce that's in front of you, just eat the lettuce. Now, on the

one hand, that makes things efficient. On the other hand, that can actually dull our senses, meaning that while sensation brings energy, flow into the body. We quickly go from sensation to perception, and perception is a construction where sensation is as much bottom up as we get living in these bodies. So now we have this interesting distinction between energy flow as a going through a hose like a conduit. So I made up this word conduition versus construction. Right,

So once you get to perception, things are constructed. Now, part of what the default mode does partly and the associate of cortex is to take all this learning and perceive things and then conceive things and even higher order construction. Right, And so we're actually getting further and further away from seeing things the more we know, and as the classics line goes, the more you know, the less you see. Okay, So part of I think the positive aspect of mindfulness

research and mindfulness practices, and I speak this way. I don't know how many if other people do, but whatever, This is my experience of it. Anyway, you know, is that it helps to basically disengage top down filters so

you can see more clearly what's actually there. So the dog now is not just the dog, it's this amazing being with pause and flaws and fur and all this beauty and you kind of fall down in ecstasy over the incredible privilege of being alive, and the world becomes so beautiful and at the same time so funny, because the whole gift of being aware is like a comedy show. I mean, even though there's all this suffering, on the

other hand, it's an incredible privilege to be here. Now, that combination of beauty and humor is I think, not telling the default mode to be quiet, but telling the default mode to be open. So part of the introcept of it is perception of the interior sensations. For example, in those studies of jazz players, when they're doing jazz versus people just playing a memorized or reading a classical piece,

the circuits are different. You have to be super present with what is, and the default mode is needed for that right And at the same time, we want to make sure it isn't overly differentiated to say, well, I'm just Scott, I'm just Dan, and Dan just acts this way or that way whatever, Like Dan as an adult, Dan shouldn't dance, Dan shouldn't move, Dan shouldn't wear plaid on a podcast. I mean, what the heck is going on with you know this body called Dan you know.

So in a way, and this is consistent with the recent research on you know, psychedelics and their one or two sessions can lead to help and depression, trauma, people facing death when they're a terminal diagnosis, you know, in the panic about that, the anxiety. I think what happens and I say this in the book Awhere, you know is that you are able with psychedelics but also with mindfulness.

Practice is and we have a practice called the Wheel of Awareness where Daker Keltner gave the Mystical Experiences Scale when we were teaching a workshop together. He got the same scores on people doing this wheel that they got as if they were on psilocybin and people were walking around going, oh my god, look at all the beauty,

Look how funny everything is. You know. So I guess the big picture of this is I think when you integrate the brain, it includes letting these top down filters relax and then beginning to open in a creative way. That when I was for with one hundred and fifty physicists, you know, I was given a chance to you know, be a junior faculty on this this week long gathering of one hundred and fifty physicists and me, you know, and I I kept on asking them what's energy? What's energy?

What's energy? And they said the most amazing thing, Scott. They said, well, energy is the movement from possibility to actuality. Yeah, And I said what And they said, energy is the movement from possibility to actuality. And I said, oh my god. And I'd already gathered thousands of reports of people doing this Wheel of awareness practice. And the wheel basically is where you have the things you're aware of on the rim.

And this metaphor of awareness, basically, consciousness is the awareness itself. The knowing of consciousness is representing the metaphor of a hub, and then you have a singular spoke of a tension. Anyway, when people would, just as one example of the practice, bend the spoke around and get into the hub, they would experience this expansion of who they felt they were. They felt connected to everyone and everything is one parliamentarian once said, feeling of love arises and when you take

the common statement said it's empty but full. And I would ask people what do you mean by that? They go, I don't know, it's just what it feels like empty but full. I don't know what that means. That's what it feels like. And then you map it out on the physicist's view, which I put in a graph where basically when they say the movement from possibility to actuality with in visual terms, what their meaning is the lowest level of certainty is where all possibilities are sitting before

they manifest into actuality or even into probabilities. And that you know Arthur Zionce who was at this meeting I was at in Italy with one hundred and fifty physicists. He calls it a sea of potential. So it's the quantum vacuum. And so I drew it out for Arthur and I said, well, Arthur, look here's the wheel of awareness studies and here's your view. Does it map on like this, so you have the bottom, you have maximal uncertainty where all possibilities are sitting. And what Arthur calls it,

and he says, this is a physics term. It sounds poetic, but it's from him as a physicist, quantum physics professor at Amherst. It says that there's a formless source of all form, where all possibilities are sitting, and from that formless source of all form in our graph we called the plane of possibility arise different movements of energy into different degrees of probability that we can call plateaus that limit which peaks can arise, or you can go straight

up from the plane of possibility. So what I think creativity might be, and I want to hear what you feel about this, is when people let the default mode relax a little bit, when they let these top down filters relax a little bit, not getting rid of them, but actually relaxing them. Integration is enhanced because now you can differentiate by accessing this plane of possibility, which I think, by the way, is the source of awareness that we

could talk about. Did I hurt another thumb? But you dip down in and you need to be ready to be filled with uncertainty. So that's hard. But the synonym you learn for uncertainty is freedom and possibility. And I think creativity arises when you allow not even so much make you allow this energy flow to rise from that plane of possibility, and then new combinations naturally emerge in

integrative ways. It's almost like it's a portal through which integration arises, and then, as many people will say, I don't know how this piece of music got made. I don't know how this poem came out. I don't know how this song got written. It just came through me. And I think that's because you're relaxing the filters, which are top down filters, and letting integration manifest.

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an additional fifteen percent off. For gut health support that covers all the bases, including brain health support. Try Qualia symbiotic with code psych podcast at Neurohacker dot com Slash psych podcast. I think that the description of creativity that

you gave is quite right, and I love it. I think you got the neuroscience completely backwards, and I think this is a big problem with a lot of the mindfulness people who talk about the neuroscience of the default mode network, is that I think the research actually suggests the opposite. The research suggests that that the top down filters are not coming from the default won network. They're

coming from the executive attention network. That's where the top down great That's where the top down filters are coming from. And I think, you know, a big pet peep of mine is I don't think the mindfulness people fully appreciate the value of They treat the executive attention network as though it's the greatest thing since sliced bread at all times.

You know, maybe it's their own personalities, Maybe you know, they just they love to constantly be in that sort of zombie state where it's like I am fully aware of everything happening outside of myself. But look, the thing is, I think that creativity requires a relaxation of the executive network enough where you don't have that self critical because I think I don't think that self critical shit comes from the default mode network.

we start criticizing ourselves, We spile downwards, spiral upward. If you're I think a pure state of being is actually one where you're deeply in touch with your default mode network. I really think that.

of daydreaming. There is a style of daydreaming he calls positive constructive daydreaming, which is the greatest source of creativity, and that is intentional uh, using your mind wandering in a way that's productive and future oriented and.

because you're feeling negative. But also I think that the third type is the type that that I think is really what a lot of people chris a lot which is not good for mental health. And that's poor attentional control. And that is that's that's the mind wandering that has a negative connotation. That's where you just don't feel like

you can control it, control it at all. So I think probably the best for mental health state to be in is one where you can access your default mode network at will, but you have the attentional control of the executive network. You have that flexibility yeah when you want it, and the flexibility to turn it off when you don't want it.

I said, could be this many? She said, yeah, you've done fifty thousand people in person? Did the wheel awareness, and then the percentage that reported their experience doesn't mean everybody had this experience. Would talk about these subjective sensations,

for example, time disappearing or feeling empty but full. That when you look at the physicists view of energy as the movement for possibility to actuality, it looks like, and this is the proposal, you know, it looks like it correlates with dropping into open awareness, accessing some timeless place which is empty but full, which correlates with and I'll say this at the risk of you saying I don't agree with that at all. But before my book Aware

came out in twenty eighteen. The month before that book, which really gets into what I'm about to talk about about quantum versus new Tone realms. The cover story of Scientific American was when does the quantum Realm Meet the Newtonian Realm? And I said, Lord, this is is amazing because I was so nervous. People think I'm like out of my mind. At least I have defined the mind so I can say them out of it, you know, because I'm talking about one reality and two realms, and

that it looks like that. In macro states, large bodies like you know, the bodies were in anything larger than a molecule or you know, an apple falling from a tree, Planets, you know, these large objects macro states. Newton figured out three hundred and fifty years ago the properties and had equation has equations that we use to this day to

stop a car, for example. But then one hundred years ago, you know, we started studying because of technology, we could small things like electrons and photons, and those micro small states have very different properties than the macro states. So even though it's all energy, as Einstein said energy, it was mass some speed light squared, meaning mass is just very condensed energy. Well, we know that these units of energy called quanta, their probability fields, and that there are

no entities in the quantum realm, the microstate realm. There are just events. There are happenings. Now, Interestingly, in this quantum realm, it accesses what's called the quantum vacuum, which is the formless source of all form. It's empty of form but full of possibility. And it is timeless, meaning in the quantum equations there aren't there's no variable of time. It's because the second law of thermodynamics. Most likely it only applies to the macro states where things are tending

to fall apart. And it's probably our awareness of this what's called arrow of time, this directionality of change, that the second law determines. That probably is what we mean by the quote the word time unquote. So I say all that because so far anyway, with the fifty thousand people who did it and collecting and recording their reports, it looks like when people get into pure awareness, it's in the quantum realm of timelessness and this empty but

full state. And I say all that because when you talk to artists, which I have a chance to do. My son Alex Siegel, as a musician, and I'll talk to him, and he's a composer, but I'll talk to him and his colleagues, and they talk about when you talk about the flow state, they talk about entering this what to them looks like an alternative state of mind without drugs or anything. They get into the flow, it becomes timeless and stuff starts happening through them. That feels

full of possibility. But how does that all sit with you, that all quantum of you?

think that's exactly what's going on there. We found an interesting correlation between the efficiency of the default mode network and the personality trait openness to experience. We publish that paper showing that those two things are actually positively correlated with each other quite substantially. So people who have a more efficient default mode network where all the different sub hubs, because you know, each of these networks have so many

different hubs that do different things. The more there's integration there we go. The more there's integration within within the default mode network, the more you tend to score higher on that trade openness to experience.

four other colleagues. Now there's just three of them up, so there's four total living one passed away on a model of subcortical networks and their relationship to temperament and how these subcortical networks may be preferentially sensitive in different individuals, and you study individual differences and we've come up with a model that we're you know, when you have this many people writing a book, it takes forever because every time you get one version you get it's been taking literally,

I'm not exaggerating seventeen years of composing this framework. But in any event, it'll be fun to talk to about it because part of it is looking at the Big five personality traits and seeing, you know, how do you actually do something with those as a therapist or as an individual versus this model we have, which is something you can actually do something with, and it's very different.

It overlaps a bit with the Big five personality traits, but it's a little and anyway, well, when that's all done, I want to send it to you and have a conversation about it because because it also builds on this notion that we're talking about that you know, the role of consciousness in accessing flow states or in you know, liberating us from and I'll just say it from the modern message we get is that the self is separate, that you know, who you are is just your body,

and people are feeling incredibly lonely, especially after the viral pandemic. People feel very isolated in the in group outgroup distinctions we've inherited from our primate evolution, you know, get worse under threat. So there's more social injustice and racism, you know, and even the way we treat the planet is we excessively differentiate ourselves from nature, as if there's humans and nature,

you know, rather we are nature. So these are really pressing issues of social justice, environmental you know, protection and generating regeneration. And the opportunity is here for those of us who study, you know, issues related to mental life to contribute to that journey of humanity in a way where everyone, you know, it's called pervasive leadership, everyone listening to you and to me right now has an opportunity to participate in guiding life on Earth in a more

positive direction. So often we feel helpless and hopeless, but actually these ideas I mean, for Scott and for me these are interesting, but for everybody you know, these can actually be actionable ideas when you start to live your life that you are more than just an individual self,

when you realize your default mode network. Sure can participate in autobiographical stuff, but it could be part of flow and creativity that in fact, part of that flow in creativity is to let go of what you've been told from outside of you that you are just separate. You dissolve away the loneliness and realize you are connected to this larger hole. It's where the word intra connected comes from. It's like we're not just interconnected, like you're there and

I'm here and we're connected with cha. That's cool, but we are intra connected. There's a wholeness to life that we can feel this deep sense of commitment to for agency, take the perspective of the whole and even sense into it, and that's an invitation. I think that really can be a gift that keeps on giving as we every day there are new challenges to take on as kind of

dance partners. But realize, what's the music today? How do I really take this dance and move it forward in a positive direction?

gin in cased bodies. I wanted to ask you because he didn't make this stuff, this this link here in your in your book, and I was like, how did you know make that link? Because it's your to your earlier work. How does that relate to the window of tolerance?

in this together, you know. And you know, I did this some critical conversations for some educators where I said, look, we live in a body that has a genetic evolutionary history, and part of that history is in group out group distinction. We're probably never going to get rid of that. So the isn't The issue isn't how do we get rid of that?

But these are actionable things we're talking about.

modern culture. We get a message that the self is separate, and so we work from an individualistic point of view, and I'll just speak maybe a little bit to the extreme. But it's not working. I mean, I think we all know that people feel it, that stats are there, it's not working. So what I hope the conversation that Scott and I are having with you is you know, really saying, well,

maybe that was an error. Maybe the modern cultural message of separation of this solo self is actually an error, and not only is it mistaken, it might be a lethal lie. So just like if you had a friend who had a splinter in their foot and they didn't know it, and they're hobbling along. They don't like to hobble, then you say, let me look under your shoe, let's look under your sock, let's look at the sole of

your foot. Oh my gosh, let's remove the splinter. Now your friend puts their sock back on, puts their shoes on it, and they could walk in a balanced way. It could be that the splinter of the psyche of modern society is the message that the self is only in the body, the soul of self. And if that's the splinter, it actually might be quite simple. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, but it might be simple to say, let's raise children to realize that they're a

me and a wee. Let's have people in schools realize they are a me and a we. Let's work with people in companies. Let's treat each other out on the street. Literally, have a new word we. I mean, it's a funny word. But we can get in all the languages on Earth and say, look, we made a mistake. Whoops. We thought the self was the same as the individual. We were wrong,

and it led to disastrous outcomes. We still have a window of opportunity to change by removing the splinter, the lie of the separate self, and now learning to walk in a more balanced, integrated way on earth with all living things. So thank you for being here with us, and Scott, thank you for having this body called Dan here with you. And I just think we can do this. I really do. It's a matter of identifying the splinter, removing it and having fun walking, running, dancing. We can

do this. We can.