The Psychology of Awareness | Jon Kabat-Zinn

23:07Dr. Michael Gervais:What is the body politic? What I mean by the body politic is either the nation state, if you're talking about the United States, or the United Nations, or all nations in a certain way. You know, the body. The United Nations is meant to be a larger body that holds these individual nations. You could think of the nations as organ systems. And the world is like the body politic. And the organ systems have to all function effectively. and you don't want the liver going to war with the lungs because we like the way we look better or we want more oxygen than those people get because in the end, the whole thing would fall apart.

23:49And I think that's where the waking up comes, that we need to actually recognize as Thich Nhat Hanh, this great Vietnamese meditation teacher and practitioner, who, by the way, was molded by the horrors of the Vietnam War, which never needed to even happen. At least the U.S. involvement, just picking up on French colonialism. And then the Japanese invasion that happened before that. It was a choice. We made the choice. And it shaped Thich Nhat Hanh's life in such a way that, you know, he devoted his entire life to actually trying to bring what I'm talking about into the world in ways that would help us to govern ourselves in a different way.

24:34And that governance is what I'm using relating to the Buddhist term dharma, which means actually the actuality of things, what science would look at as the nature of things.

24:47Dr. Michael Gervais:I love that you bring up Thich Nhat Hanh. I'd never had the chance to meet him. I'm imagining you did. But he has been a teacher. I mean, his writings, his meditations, his sense of how humans work in this world has been profound for me as well. One of his students has a podcast. The Way Out is In is the name of the podcast. It's so good. Is that Brother Pat Blue? Who is that? Yeah, it is. Oh, he's an old Dharma buddy of mine. Oh, perfect. Well, I'm going to ask for an introduction. So yeah, he is amazing. He sounds just like Thich Nhat Hanh. Like he's really embodied a spirit. No, he's beautiful.

25:30And you couldn't really say that to him because he would say, well, that's true for everybody. And he's right. But they embody that. And in a certain way, that's why the monastics in that tradition and in all traditions, but particularly in that tradition, why they wear very plain robes that just cover everything. They're not fancy, although they do have fancy robes for special occasions. and, you know, the women wear headscarves. And so you don't actually see them as individuals, but they are part of some larger community or sangha of intentionality. Yeah, that's right.

26:07Dr. Michael Gervais:Sangha meaning the... Sangha means community. The community. Yeah. The community of people who love, who care, who practice, who have kind of enrolled in, so to speak, the adventure of loving what is. Right. But okay, let me paint a scenario. The person listening or watching is saying, okay, hold on a minute. I'm barely keeping myself together. I'm more stressed and more anxious and feeling more overwhelmed. And you want me to go into that and actually like get more in touch with my feelings because as soon as I flip open my phone or TV or a glass of wine or a nice meal, or I feel like I can just escape a little bit.

26:49Dr. Michael Gervais:And wait, John, you're asking me to actually tune into that more through a process of paying attention to my feelings or my thoughts. And I'm going to feel more. And I don't know if I have that kind of compassion. I don't know because I want to burst out in tears or crawl in a hole on a regular basis. Paint that scenario of that person, whether you see them as a parent, a grandparent, you see them as an operator of a business, whatever, wherever. Can you speak to that experience that so many of us are having? Yeah, well, there's no question that it's overwhelming. And to turn towards what you most want to run away from is kind of like, why would I possibly do that?

27:36And my short answer would be, well, how's it working for you by running away from it? Oh, God. You know, this is, again, to come back to the monastic community, this is why they are together. See, because you can't carry the burden of human suffering by yourself. We need a community. It turns out the community is all of humanity. But we have to reclaim that sense of community because we've othered ourselves so much that now we're nation states and we're competing. and now we're even disregarding the Europeans. They're no longer our friends. We've thrown the NATO alliance down the toilet, and it's every man, and I say that advisedly for himself.

28:22This is not a formula for health and well-being of any kind in any realm. And I think when one's practicing mindfulness, you're actually, although you may not realize it at first, and this is why you need effective teachers to kind of point things out to you. When you are taking your seat, let's say, in formal meditation, all by yourself in your own home, I've come to see it over the 50 years that I've been practicing. It's not one more thing I have to squeeze into my day or to eat vegetables or to change my lifestyle or run more or whatever. I've come to see it as a radical act of sanity. to stop and drop into this moment because this is life.

29:14This is the only moment anybody, whether you're listening now or you're listening later, the moment of listening, this moment is it, okay? And everything else is either over or it's yet to come. And of course, we create gigantic fictions about both what was over and what is yet to come. But very often, we don't know who's actually in this moment. And we don't even, a lot of the time, inhabit the body. We're so caught up in the mind, in the head, that we lose touch with the body and has vast repercussions in terms of stress, pain, illness, and health. So MBSR, for instance, where we, you know, sort of one of the things that I'm most known for of bringing meditative practices, mindfulness-based stress reduction into hospitals and medicine is to actually help people, you know, who are falling through the cracks of the healthcare system with chronic illnesses of all kind tap into their potential for learning, growing, and healing across the lifespan.

30:13And in eight weeks, very often the entire vector of their life changes. And we've documented this in multiple scientific studies and clinical studies and MRI studies and so forth. Really, what looks like nothing from the outside changes everything in no time in just this moment. So not only is it a radical act of sanity to, and I'm using take your seat metaphorically, because you can do it lying down, sitting, walking, standing on your head, hanging from your toes. I mean, the question is, can you be in this moment in your life? And it's not just a radical act of sanity. It's a radical act of love.

30:54It's a certain kind of statement that I belong, I am sufficient, and I am connected to everything else. And the proof is I need to take the next breath in. I'm not actually independent of this world I am one breath away from being dead and if I don't take this breath in and then let it out I'm gone so an appreciation of the breath and the fact that you know if I have like living next to some kind of power plant that's polluting then people who are living around there can't even breathe You know, the practice of mindfulness is really a way to affirm that you count, that you're important, that you're at least that one cell of the body of the whole planet, and every cell counts.

31:49And you belong, and then you also are in community with all the other cells around you, many of them like-minded. You may not even know your neighbors, but, you know, why not get to know your neighbors? This is the kind of thing where I think with what's going on in the country, a lot of people are beginning to actually know their neighbors and realize, no, this is really important. Local stuff is important. Being engaged rather than just sort of, you know, sort of sitting back at a distance is important. And as I said, if you care about younger generations, you know, if you have a kind of family investment just by being a father or mother or parent or grandparent, then this is a critical moment again.

32:34So acting is not a kind of luxury. It's an absolute necessity. That's the way I see it. That's a very existential position, so to speak. And I really do feel like mindfulness and heartfulness are one human discovery of potential that has the potential to unify everybody on planet Earth.

32:57Dr. Michael Gervais:What does that mean to you? Well, what it means is that we wake up to the fact that we're not only capable of destruction, destroying ourselves and each other through greed, hatred, and delusion, but we're also capable of embodying love in the present moment. And so when you practice in this way, then you realize very shortly the real meditation is not sitting on your cushion for some period of time trying to look like calm and collected. The real meditation is moment by moment, life itself, all of life. So how you show up in your relationships, how you say goodbye, how you say hello, how you hug.

33:37And when you're not doing it out of thinking, but you're doing it out of embodied wakefulness, it's an entirely different experience. And so that, in some sense, changes the trajectory of the world in small but not insignificant ways. And I feel like the fact that the UN is getting into mindfulness, that wasn't happening 50 years ago. The fact that the World Health Organization, that isn't happening. There's so many positive things that you can look to in the world that really are moving in this direction. We have to pour energy into those and call out the greed, hatred, and delusion wherever it is.

34:16It doesn't go by Republican or Democrat. Everybody's, you know, sort of like driven by self-interest. And what we need to do is redefine what it means to be a self in relationship.

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35:06Dr. Michael Gervais:She's amazing. And what her and her team are building is something I'm really excited about. Head to fatty15.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery for an additional 15 % off your 90 day starter kit. Again, that's fatty, F-A-T-T-Y, one five dot com slash finding mastery. And the code is finding mastery. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning.

35:41Dr. Michael Gervais:That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. The best part? It only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to findingmastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free. Again, head to findingmastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine. You subtly have introduced formal training and informal training. Formal training is when you create a structured amount of time and you are going to on purpose pay attention to maybe one thing, your breath, your inhale or exhale?

36:24We just learn to, say, take up residency and awareness for a period of time. And every time your mind wanders, which it's going to do infinitely, the awareness function actually recognizes sooner or later that you're lost in thought or carried away by some dream. And that awareness function is always functioning. So you're already back. And as you exercise that muscle, as you know from working with all these athletic teams, you exercise the muscle by working with, not against, a certain degree of resistance. So when the mind says, well, I don't want to sit anymore, I don't want to be present anymore, try stretching it out for one more in-breath and one more out-breath before you decide to get up.

37:09And in that way, you're actually embodying wakefulness in that moment and not falling into the lowest common denominator of your own self-soothing. And in doing that, you're actually learning, growing, healing, and transforming what might be possible for you in your life before you breathe in your last in-breath and out-breath. Is that making any sense to you, by the way, what I'm saying with it? It's really clear. I just want a reality check here because I'm asking a lot of us, but I feel if you ask a lot, and this was like true in MBSR, the first principle of MBSR, because we see people who medicine can't help anymore.

37:52I mean, that's why they're sent to stress reduction often. And our principle was, if you will ask a little of these people, give them some light rinky dink, a little relaxation, a little this, a little that. If you ask a little of people, the most you're going to get is the little you ask. If you ask a lot of people, first of all, they see that you believe that they are capable of that. If you ask a lot of people, there's no telling how they're going to respond because we love to be asked and seen as people who are capable of doing more than what we think we're capable of. I know you know that from all your work with professional sports teams.

38:31I mean, you know, it's all a matter of like, how do you get optimal performance? It's by letting go of the idea that you can't.

38:38Dr. Michael Gervais:And you really need to apply yourself at your edge. Exactly. And then to make a fundamental commitment in your life to do that as often as you possibly can. And that's what elite sport in plain view can teach us. There's a lot of problems with athletics, but there are a couple of things that are really important to understand is that those that are fundamentally committed to being their very best as a person and as a teammate need both of those. they organize their life and they've got a sangha. It's not in the same tone, but they've got a team of coaches and teammates that hold the standard, that help them hold the standard of one more breath, one more rep, you know, stay in it just a little bit longer.

39:21Dr. Michael Gervais:Can you, can you have a little bit more fun on the edge? Because that's going to extend us a little bit for, can you relish in the way it feels to work hard with each other? And that keeps extending what we now view we are capable of. It's like a new mountaintop. Oh, look, there's another horizon. I didn't even know that was there. You get to that new one and you're like, I didn't even realize there's another whole horizon behind it. And so in elite sport, just to pull on the thread a little bit more, it's the fundamental commitment that I just want to make sure sings in what I'm saying. And then what they do is they front load their physical training, their technical training, and their mental training.

39:58Dr. Michael Gervais:The world's best don't leave one of those up to chance. So they front load that training and they're trying to get to that messy edge as often as they can, because that's where the unlocks and the learnings and the insights take place. That's where the capacity building happens. And then they test themselves with other people that are equally as committed. And now we've got this kind of stepwise approach. And before you know it, like we're changing the way we understand what people are capable of. That's a beautiful metaphor for what we're talking about in the larger world is that, yeah, we are capable of that and we need each other and we can inspire each other and help each other and share practices together and have it be joyful rather than I'm only committed to this because I'm attached to some outcome.

40:46The highest performance is when you even give up being attached to the outcome. You're so in the moment that the outcome is almost assured by the fact that you're beyond clinging and grasping because that sucks your energy in certain ways that we often don't understand.

41:04Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, in sport, and you know the term as well as anybody, but athletes call it being in the zone. Musicians call it being in the pocket. The technical science term is flow state. and like what percentage, when I've asked this question for, I don't know, 25 years, what percentage of time do you experience that? Yeah. And, you know, the number comes back like somewhere between 5 % and 25%, somewhere in there, which begs the question, okay, the other 75 % of the time, how are you operating? Where's your mind? That's right. And the greats, the greats, they go, that's it, Mike. That's like, I am working.

41:42Dr. Michael Gervais:I'm working really hard with my thoughts to get over to this like open aperture of what could be. And I'm backing myself and I'm trying to find fun in the moment. And I'm working to refocus my mind in the present moment to what could become amazing. And when I'm not at my best, like it feels like I'm just tight and constricted and worried and anxious and overwhelmed. And I get kind of sucked into that loop. So the best are working underneath the surface to try to guide their mind to their best abilities. And that's when I first introduced mindfulness to the NFL. The wave of interest was not for enlightenment, wisdom, or deep insight.

42:23Dr. Michael Gervais:It was more - Optimal performance. Right. And I was trying to like, what do you do? Sneak the vegetables in with the fruit? Or what's that saying? Like you're just trying to get a little taste into the things that maybe people don't want. Yeah. Yeah, that's not the saying, but you know what I'm saying. And all of a sudden people are like, whoa, when I'm more aware, when I'm with awareness, and I'd love for you to explain the nuances between when I'm more aware or versus when I'm with awareness. But when I'm with awareness, I'm able to nap. I'm fully present. I can navigate. I'm kind of unfolding with the unfolding moment.

43:01Dr. Michael Gervais:And I have like everything is at my access. You have infinite degrees of freedom, or at least it feels like infinite degrees of freedom. And it's not your thinking mind. Your thinking mind can't work fast enough to decide whether to faint left or faint right. You have to trust the body's intrinsic wisdom in motion. That's right. Yeah, but it is a trainable skill. So that's meditation in action. I want to do two things. I want you to talk about awareness. And then I want you to talk about just the super mechanical, simple way to train meditation. and then like super, super. And then I want to get into the curricula of life.

43:39Dr. Michael Gervais:And I want to talk about if you were the president of the United States of America, like what would be some things you would do? And so let's kind of go in that order. Awareness, technical training, and then curricula to optionality. The way I talk about awareness is that awareness is not something you get. And I try never to say your awareness or my awareness, because who would be arrogant enough to claim it? It's a gift that we're born with. We don't understand it. Not even, no neuroscientist understands what awareness is or how it arises or whether it even is a property that arises out of the brain.

44:19I mean, but we have what's called sentience and human awareness and other animals and maybe plants also, you know, have some degree of sensitivity to something larger, the environment, because the trees are kind of breathing in carbon dioxide, let's not forget, and breathing out the oxygen that we're breathing in, and we're breathing out the carbon dioxide. So in a certain way, we're completely interrelated. So it's not my awareness. I would say not so much trying to be with awareness even, but to just be aware, to be awake. because it is a given for us. We have it as a property, although we can't claim it as mine, but what we don't have is easy access to it.

45:09We don't have awareness when we most need it because usually we're lost in thought and caught up in heavy-duty emotions of one kind or another. So if you just stop and see where's your mind at one moment or another, most of the time it's lost in thought, thinking this, that, or the other thing. A lot of time in the future, a lot of time in the past, that's called worrying, you know. But when you start to pay attention, you realize what your mind is doing, that's awareness. So the awareness can actually hold what's going on in the present moment, and then you don't inflate it with the story of me, that that's the full reality, because you're more awareness than you are what's happening to you.

45:57And this is like, we could call it one's true nature, is awareness itself in the form of you or in the form of me. So it's like phenomenal and a giant mystery. And so how do we learn to actually set that as our default mode, as the neuroscientists might say? Because default mode, when you put people into scanners and just tell them, don't do anything, just lie there in an fMRI scanner. This sort of midline region of the brain just goes crazy with activity. And when you interrogate people, well, what was going on in the scanner? They were making laundry lists of what I have to do when I get out of the scanner or taking care of the kids or whatever.

46:39It's just thinking, thinking, thinking and the emotion that's associated with thinking. But when they've trained in MBSR for eight weeks even, you see an attenuation of that activity. The story of me doesn't dominate as much. And instead, there's other activity in different regions of the brain, but it's more like there's simply awareness. I won't even say I'm here or I'm aware. There's simply awareing or awareness.

47:07Dr. Michael Gervais:And then when we slide into the concreteness of like formal practice, if you will, the way I think about it is like, okay, I'm going to set my intention to focus on my inhale. than my exhale with all of my might, with all of my essence that I possibly can. I'm just going to work right now. Okay. And then inevitably, you know, on the second inhale, my mind has kind of started to go somewhere. Including, this is stupid. Yeah, right. What am I doing? Whatever it is, right? Why should I be doing this? I got so much to do. Yeah. And then the moment that I go, oh, I'm not with my thought, or I'm with my thought, not my breath.

47:44Dr. Michael Gervais:Oh, I go, oh, that's That's the moment of awakening. That's it. I'm in it. That's awareness or awareness. And I used to, that's right. And John, like it was from your training. I used to go, oh man. And I go kind of into this negative state. Like, I am so not good at this thing. But there's one more instruction that you're gonna share with us right now. And what is it? Not to judge yourself. A hundred percent. And then, so, okay. So then I reckon, oh, well, and then watch this. Man, I am not good at this. Wow, I'm really judging myself. I'm not supposed to be judging myself. I know better than that.

48:18Dr. Michael Gervais:Come on, get yourself together, Mike. Like if this is your life, so quickly down the slide trap. And then I realized from you, John, I was like, wait a minute. I'm aware. I'm aware I'm in this state that I'm on this thought train. And then I started to celebrate. There I am. Here I am. Right. And then you build a story out of that. Or I refocus my mind back to the inhale. And you can just rest in awareness. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Either one of those two. That's the invitation is to actually, the way I say it is if like you only remember one thing I've ever said in my life, it would be don't take personally what's not personal.

48:59And it turns out none of it's personal. So it's like, you know, we're just building the story of me constantly, but the awareness doesn't have pronouns. It's just, oh. And there's something about it that's insanely beautiful, and you already feel complete, whole. And of course, you're still you, and of course, you still have your name and your age and everything else. But now, like in this moment, you're simply present, and you don't have to push the river or stay stuck in some narrative. And then you can apprehend reality much more clearly because your thinking is not obscuring everything and your emotional reactions to everything.

49:44If we were to do this on a level of society, then we would actually be in a much better position to minimize harm, recognize harm, minimize, you know, harm to whatever degree we could, and maximize well-being and create new laws that actually further that as opposed to laws that actually maximize. I mean, you know, sort of Citizens United is a beautiful case in point. Maximize greed, hatred, and delusion. And the concentration of wealth, you know, that you're given permission to just go for it.

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50:58Dr. Michael Gervais:They want to grow. I've been building businesses for over two decades now, and I'll tell you, the right team, that matters so much. It's the difference between grinding and flowing. So this partnership, I believe in from the inside out. When you hire through a platform like LinkedIn Hiring Pro that surfaces people who are genuinely aligned with what you're building, you get a different quality of candidate, not just in skills, but in fit and values, the kind of energy someone brings to a team. So if you're thinking about your next hire, I want to strongly encourage you to be intentional about where you look.

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53:30Dr. Michael Gervais:There is a merging between the two. But could you speak to, let's go first with the person that is like, look, I want to perform really well in life. I want to be great as a father or as a mother. I want to be a great business person. I want to be a great community member. and speak to that performance-based, which is just a tick below this conversation in my mind about mastery and even enlightenment. But just talk to the performance aspect for just a moment. Well, what we're talking about is a way of being in relationship with experience. And there are ways of being that seem more driven than other ways of being that are, in some sense, prescriptions for suffering often than other ways of being.

54:17And that when you are simply present, then you can catch those impulses to go in one direction or another and realize maybe that's not where I need to go. And then you maybe can just be a little bit longer. And then what's so amazing, almost miraculous, is that sooner or later, you will have a kind of realization of where you belong, what you need in this moment, what you need to do. And when the doing comes out of this domain of being, it's an entirely different doing, much healthier, much more robust, and really undeflectable so that you have a kind of motivation that is enduring, so to speak, and goes across, you know, since I'm in my ninth decade, I can, you know, sort of speak that it really does go across the decades in a way that is quite extraordinary.

55:19And then you don't need to build a story around that. Other people are going to project as they always do onto everybody else, who they are, what they've done, how great they are in some cases, how horrible they are in other cases. But it's really important never to believe anybody else's projections or even your own story of who I am, but more just stay in the present moment and let the results speak for themselves. Then you are love. You don't have to be loving. You just love. You are present. You are caring. You are concerned. Everybody will be who they are, which will be unique and uniquely different, and yet will take some kind of real inspiration from the community of people who are engaging in this way rather than engaging in endless othering and trying to concentrate, you know, their own well-being at the expense of everybody else.

56:14That's my kind of orientation, but I understand that other people might think I'm absolutely out of my mind.

56:23Dr. Michael Gervais:I love the unreasonable ones. You know, the Army Corps of Engineers has a wonderful sayings is the difficult we do today, the impossible takes a little longer. And what we're talking about is the impossible. But the stakes are incredibly high for humanity. We either wake up or we're going to destroy ourselves sooner or later. Or make life so miserable. I mean, if you were working in a gold mine in South Africa, or if you're working in a gold mine in Brazil or any other, I mean, there's documented evidence and artistry around, you know, what many, many millions of people on Earth, their lives are like, and nobody in their right mind would want that.

57:09And they are desperate, and they do it because that's their only way to survive. We need to restructure the nature of work so that, yeah, I mean, and we're extracting everything from the Earth, you know, all the rare Earths that we need all of a sudden to build the technology and stuff like that. But our rare earth is in some sense being extracted and destroyed in the process, driven by endless factors that could be modulated with wisdom and compassion in ways that, yeah, we could still build stuff and at scale, but without all the harm that we're creating for people. Why not? If we can conceive it, why can't we do that?

57:53Dr. Michael Gervais:So if you had a position of power in the United States and you could institute an inspired curricula, and there's a listener right now that says, John, tell me, I'm in it. You know, tell me what to do when I wake up. Tell me, like, give me some milestones throughout my day for this curricula to be, you know, the fertile ground for living an amazing life where I can be a contributor to the whole in a meaningful way. How would you guide that curricula? Yeah. And I don't know if you're going to base it on MBSR or something else. I mean, I would say trust yourself. Ask yourself what you most love.

58:30Spend some time hanging out with yourself in a way that is really brave. Go places where you don't want to go. If you read Michael Pollan's latest book, A World Appears, the last chapter where Roshi Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center, this is the last chapter in the whole book on understanding consciousness. and he goes to this Zen center, by a Zen center, and the Roshi there, Joan Halifax, has him go up, not sit in the monastery with all the other meditators, but to go up into a cave in the mountains for a couple of days by himself and just live with his own mind. And, you know, when we apprehend the nature of our own mind and we learn to actually befriend ourselves in this way, then human beings are capable of incredible creativity and compassion and a deep kind of respect for our relationship to the earth, to nature, that we're a part of, and then to our incredible precocity as a species where we can go around the moon and do stuff like that.

59:38And we need to do this in a way that, again, lets every single human and probably also environmental, you know, sort of ecosystem, have an adequate blood supply to be able to flourish because otherwise we have necrosis on planet earth.

59:58Dr. Michael Gervais:Are you familiar with the long body? No. Yeah. So it's the first people's idea that we came to learn up in the Northwest. And the idea is that we're all connected. This tribe, small or large, is all connected. Absolutely. And we are one body. And if one of us or some of us are hurting, the body is hurting. So we need to take care of each other. And it is a way that we introduce that to teaming and being great teammates. Like, look, we're all in this thing together. So and if one of us is hurting, it's not up to that person just to fix themselves. You know, like we need to surround to your language about blood flow, provide love, provide attention, you know, put out a hand, whatever it might take.

1:00:43Dr. Michael Gervais:Exactly. And yeah, and it was a really warm and very powerful way to think about the cutthroat nature sometimes of professional sports. And so. Well, indigenous people have lived in harmony with the planet for thousands and thousands of years. And since the Industrial Revolution just a couple hundred years ago, we're despoiling it to the point where, you know, we're destroying it, including all the indigenous habitats that are left. two of which are at least, or three or four of which are the lungs of planet Earth. So this is like we're committing suicide on a planetary scale. But, you know, the native peoples around the world knew how to live in harmony with nature for thousands and thousands of years.

1:01:31I'm not saying it was all peaches and cream, but there is something about our destroying what's left of their worlds that is really criminal. And we have a lot to learn from their relationship to the Earth as their mother or grandmother and the animals and the plants. And we're in our infancy as a species, and maybe this is kind of like the test. And, you know, they say, well, why aren't we getting signals from other planets, you know, elsewhere in the universe? We see all these exoplanets now everywhere. Why have we been looking for like 60 or 70 or 80 years for signals from outer space, intelligent life?

1:02:14And one theory is that it's very hard to get beyond the place where we're at now without destroying ourselves. And so maybe we're not getting any signals from other planets because in almost all cases, they reach a certain level of technological sophistication, then they destroy each other. They destroy themselves. Oh, God. I'm not joking. I mean, you know, serious people talk about this. And so this is kind of like, it's our final exam, so to speak, or even this is a pregnancy. And the question is, is there going to be a live birth? How about it?

1:02:52Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay. With your nine decades of investing in the quality of the human experience, the quality of life, full planet life and full human life. What do you want the next generation to know? And what do you want the parents of the next generation to do? I think that we are the result of 13.8 billion years of evolution and analog evolution. It's all been analog. And now we're moving into a digital universe with AI and then AGI. And what I would want them to know is don't give up on the 13.8 billion years of evolution that have resulted in you. It's not too shabby. It's got its own dimensions of intelligence that no machine intelligence is ever going to surpass.

1:03:45And we need to have a certain kind of faith in that and the kind of recognition that you are beautiful, that you are, your potential is infinite, that you belong, that you are okay as you are, and that you are loved by a loving community that has your back. And if we all did that for each other, then I feel that's what I want for, you know, the next generation. But we need elders, we need adults, we need teachers who actually teach that curriculum rather than just filling people's heads with how to code and things like that. I'm not knocking the digital world. It's here to stay and it's going like gangbusters.

1:04:30But I do feel like this is the big challenge for planet Earth is to find a way to accommodate the digital with the analog so that our own intrinsic genius isn't destroyed in the process. Yuval Noah Harari talks a lot about this in his latest book, Nexus, and he is a very, very serious and committed meditator. And I think that the meditation, mindfulness, what we've been talking about, the learning how to set awareness as our default mode, so to speak, and compassion as our default mode, it really is a possibility that can be enacted and embodied at an individual level, at a societal level, at a global level, and that we can create new laws and new ways of governing ourselves that outlaw certain degrees of greed, hatred, and amassing of wealth and minerals and everything else and maximize well-being, happiness, a sense of belonging, and a sense of wonder on the planet that we live in.

1:05:37You know, when the astronauts go out there and they look back, we are, we can't even say hanging because it's so unbelievably mind-blowing, but we simply are in the vastness of a universe that is incomprehensibly big and does have structure on multiple levels, including, you know, sort of chains of galaxies and stuff like that. But basically the Earth is just hanging here at a certain distance from the sun. We've got this beautiful moon going around there, which we absolutely need in order to have life on Earth function the way it does, in terms of the tides and everything else. And we need to recognize the beauty of that, the wonder of that, and that that planet has produced us.

1:06:28and that we are sentient beings, that we are capable of compassion, we are capable of caring for each other and for this planet, and that that's kind of like a fundamentally, I don't want to use the word religious because it has so many negative connotations, but it's a fundamentally religious feeling in the sense that it can, The word religion really means, religio means to link together, to bind. And what we're doing is we're learning how to see how the world is linked together. And we apprehend that in a way that includes our own beauty and our own genius. That's why the Native people will say, you know, often, may you walk in beauty.

1:07:14You know, of course, we do walk in beauty, but we have to realize that we're walking in beauty and that everybody is walking on the same mother.

1:07:24Dr. Michael Gervais:John, I could spend a lot more time with you and I'm looking forward to the next time we get to see each other in person. Body Master is brought to you by Momentous Fiber Plus. Here's a stat that surprised me when I first came across it. Nearly 95 % of us are not getting enough fiber. And the thing is, most people think that they are. That used to be me. I eat well, I'm intentional about whole foods and I still wasn't hitting it consistently. And fiber matters. It's one of those quiet, unglamorous fundamentals that shapes how the rest of your system runs. Your gut, your energy, how well you absorb, everything else you're putting in.

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1:08:33Dr. Michael Gervais:That's the Momentus standard, and that's why it's been part of my routine. If you want to upgrade one of the most overlooked foundations of your health, head to livemomentus.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery for up to 35 % off your first order. Again, that's livemomentous.com slash finding mastery. The code is finding mastery for up to 35 % off. Finding Mastery is brought to you by ProtonVPN. For so many in our community, travel is part of the rhythm of doing meaningful work. Boarding flights, hopping between cities, working out of hotel lobbies and coffee shops. It's all part of what it takes for some of us to lead and build at a high level.

1:09:13Dr. Michael Gervais:And one thing that's easy to overlook in that rhythm is digital security. because the moment you connect to public Wi-Fi in a hotel or airport or cafe, your activity is suddenly a lot more exposed than most people realize. Logins, emails, financial information, sensitive work, it's all in the open in a way that doesn't match the standards we hold for the rest of our lives. That's where ProtonVPN comes in. ProtonVPN is a secure service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It lets you access the internet the way it should work, open, secure, and on your own terms.

1:09:47Dr. Michael Gervais:If you take your work seriously, take the conditions you work in seriously too. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering you 70 % off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com slash mastery. That's proton, P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com slash mastery for 70 % off your two-year plan. Again, that's protonvpn.com slash mastery. Thanks for the conversation. You know, I hope some of it's made at least a little bit of sense. I mean, you know. No, you are a force of clarity and of conviction and of hope and of a future that is compelling that we need to work toward. And you're a breath of love and freshness in, you know, that we can renew again and again and again and again.

1:10:39Dr. Michael Gervais:And we just got to keep doing that to make contact with reality again and again and again and again. And thank you for being in my life in the way that you have. And thank you for making a difference in this community as well. They know you, even if they haven't met you or know your name, they know you through how I show up in the world. So again, thank you, John. Thank you. I'm very, very touched to be in conversation with you, Michael. More to come. All best. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist, professor at Columbia University and best-selling author of The Awakened Brain.

1:11:15Dr. Michael Gervais:In this conversation, Dr. Miller explores a surprising idea that spirituality doesn't necessarily mean religion, but rather an innate human capacity for connection, meaning, and purpose. One that may play an important role in protecting against anxiety, depression, and the growing mental health struggles facing young people today. So join us Wednesday, June 10th at 9am Pacific, only on Finding Mastery. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community.

1:11:54Dr. Michael Gervais:And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show.

1:12:28Dr. Michael Gervais:If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only.

1:13:04Dr. Michael Gervais:If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.