EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,899 words- 0:00 – 1:33
Intro
- CACory Allen
We are in nature, and we're a part of nature. So the idea of saying, "Well, I'm not gonna respond to my environment," like, you are the environment. The way of looking at reality is as if you can just create this wall between reacting completely to what's happening out there, it's like, you're out there too. You know? It's like someone that's in traffic, and they're like, "Oh, I hate all this traffic." It's like, you're traffic as well.
- CWChris Williamson
You are the traffic.
- CACory Allen
(laughs) Yeah. And so that way of thinking, to me, is unrealistic and doesn't really follow through all the way.
- CWChris Williamson
(wind blowing) Corey Allen, welcome.
- CACory Allen
Yes, sir. Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you for having me in your city.
- CACory Allen
It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming to the city.
- CWChris Williamson
I know, man. It's been very good. It's been a shame that we haven't got to see each other until now for professional purposes, but we've, we've made it work. We've spoken previously a lot about mindfulness. You've got, still, my favorite ever guided meditation course. And I wanted to try and have a discussion today where we can help people who are into mindfulness, who practice it when they can or pr- practice it regularly, to try and take their theory and the work that they do during their mindfulness practice off the cushion, so to speak, into the real world, try and get some practices, some triggers, some examples of how people can stay mindful and create the mindfulness gap in their everyday lives, whether that be with family, when emotions arise during situations, to help them feel more present and mindful and live a life which is richer, and also to be able to distance
- 1:33 – 8:03
Where to Begin with Mindfulness
- CWChris Williamson
themselves from their emotions, to stop themselves from identifying with things. So where would you start? Let's say someone comes to you and says, "Corey, I want to try and take my practice off the cushion." Where would someone even begin?
- CACory Allen
Yeah, um, well, I think that the, the first place someone would start would just be focusing on their actions, more, like, their physical actions more, uh, with more intention, right? So just paying a, a bit more attention to, as you're going throughout the day, like, not just letting your hand do something sort of by its own, but actually, as you're going to pick up your coffee mug or whatever, just notice the fact that it's happening. Just notice it happening, and notice the feel of the cup and tap more into the sensory experience of your experience more often, you know? And by doing that, even, you know, of course, uh, doing that with your own breath during, throughout the day, um, but even wh- whenever you're walking, just note the fact in your mind, "I am walk- oh, I'm walking. There's a foot, you know, planting, planting, planting. Interesting." You can s- and you, whenever you start w- by doing that, what you're doing is basically tuning yourself in to the sensations within your sense doors, you know, all of your, your five senses plu- and then the plus one, which is the sense o- consciousness. You know, in Buddhism, there's, uh, they add that as a, there's a sixth sense. There's mental formations, and for a good reason, which I can share later. Um, but essentially, yeah, getting tuned into how you're, you know, ju- just being in a body in the world and being aware of what you're experiencing when you're experiencing it. That would be step number one, because even focusing on that alone, that simple thing, like, take, make it completely secular, take away all of the, all of the other stuff that meditation or mindfulness may have to offer, and even take away all of the insights. Pluck some random person off the street, and say, "Hey, try this as an experiment. Pay a little bit more attention to just the, your, your sensory navigation of your day, and just see what happens." And what happens is that in a, a person can't help but not, you know, the mind begins to train and begins to focus more on that as opposed to being caught in this, this, what most people are caught in that live an unexamined life or this automatic causal type of repercussion momentum of, of life to where they have all of their, their, you know, their programming, the chance of their life, the, the happenstance of where they were born, who their parents are, the experiences that they've had and so forth and so forth. And what happens is that in all of that conditioning, you know, the conditioning of kind of what you should think, who you should be, how you should whatever, um, you just go along kind of reacting to everything that you experience. And in that, um, people spend a lot of time unfocused in their, their mental area, just their general conceptual view and connection with their, the present moment of experience. And because of that, because there's no focus on this, it's all kind of this drifting sort of, um, uh, mental kind of junkyard of stuff that's happening up there, just lack of, uh, focus ultimately. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. One thing that I find quite interesting, and it's nice that you touched on touch as the first one, you know one of those days where you, you notice yourself being lost in your own thought? It's almost like you're walking through your own dream in a weird way, and you're very much just on automatic mode. One of the things that I do, I, it happens sometimes when I'm driving in the car, is try and grip the steering wheel and feel, it's got little perforations-
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... on the, the leather steering wheel, and just really, really try and get very, very clear about how that feels underneath my hands. And it's so strange that that seems to pull me out of it, but John Vervaeke, a guy, Canadian psychologist guy has some really nice experiments that you can do around this. So everybody, most people that are listening are wearing clothes, right? Um, but you don't feel the sensation of the clothes on your skin unless you focus on them. Let's say that you've got a pair of shoes on, you don't feel the pressure of the shoe around your foot, you don't feel the seat underneath your bum, you don't feel the ground underneath your feet, you don't feel the wind on your skin, you don't feel the breath in your lungs. All of these sensations are there at the forefront of consciousness, ready for you to tap into, ready for you to feel present. Look at how much, how many layers there are, and I've just named some clothes that people wear, some items that are attached to their body.You can feel the ten- uh, the sensation of a T-shirt that's just pushing on the front and on the back of your body. It's there all day. How is it that you don't notice it? Well, it's because you're not paying attention. Now, what it'd do for you to spend your entire day lost in the world of your T-shirt's pressure on your skin? Might be a suboptimal way to live your life. However, it shows that that is there for you at all times, and that's such a cool practice.
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I n- I need to do that more.
- CACory Allen
Yeah, absolutely. And really, um, you know, we're kind of jumping out a little bit, but the, the focal point that one wants to get to after a, a period of mindfulness and meditation training is finding this, this buoyancy between the macro view of self, just kind of the overhead view of like, "Oh, I'm a person that's existing in a body," and the highly focused view, like, as you mentioned of, like, "Oh, what's the sensation of my T-shirt only?" The real sweet spot is in between those things, and continued practice makes it to where the transition between those two states is extremely not only natural and fluid, but instinctual as well. So if you read the actual original canonical commentaries on, you know, mindfulness training, which is a very small part of a huge, um, uh, dialogue, a way to describe it is if you're looking at a tree in the distance, you wanna be as focused on the tree as you are in the field as well, an equal balance on the big picture and the individual thing. And that as, as... it's a truism, but it's also as an analogy to as you're going throughout the day, you always wanna try and be focused on the big picture to a degree, and then in, in equal balance with a focused, precise, uh, point of attention and focus. But allowing h- having the relationship between those two things be such that it shifts instinctually based upon what your response is into your current moment experience.
- CWChris Williamson
How can someone bring more of that into their life?
- CACory Allen
Yeah. Well, meditation certainly is a key, a key way
- 8:03 – 13:32
Why Meditation is Important
- CACory Allen
because first most people are stuck in, um, focused mind, but it has no aim. So they're sort of zeroing in on one little tidbit and then another tidbit and another tidbit and another tidbit. And that's where people feel like whenever someone says, "Oh, well, my, my mind is crazy. I have too many thoughts going on. I can't focus on anything. I'm thinking... I'm ADD." Or what, you know, whatever someone might say. That's just because they're leaned way into this... Ultimately, what it is, is it's a, a panic state. That's where most people are, is because if no one... i- if a person doesn't train themselves in whatever modality that they have to move the body over to a parasympathetic nervous system state, then they spend all their time in the kind of amygdalally fight or flight or fight or flight adjacent state, and that's where most people are. Because being, as I was saying earlier, being in this state of conditioned awareness and conditioned mind of what you should experience, what you should think, how you should act to X, Y, and Z or what someone says, um, that also goes to just the contents of life as well. So people are continuously just reacting to everything all the time, instead of engaging with it with a sense of self-awareness. And, um, ultimately, whenever you, you, you are in this panicked state because there's so much stuff, especially now with, you know, social media and just all the technology stuff, there's so many things to focus on, is that people are just going from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. And what happens is that's really just juicing the amygdala brain, or part of the brain, like an orange, and so you're in this panicked reactive state all the time. And that's like people that say, "Oh, well, I'm, I'm an achiever. I'm crushing it all the time. I'm doing... I'm working like, you know, 4:00 AM to 10:00 PM. I have 9,000 meetings and all this stuff, I'm doing all these things, and I'm really, like, feeling good and doing..." It's like, no, you're caught in a panicked state because you're going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, but you're mistaking the, the, um, like, serotonin release of constant low level craving, like basically taking a bunch of, like, a thousand little tiny hits of a drug over and over, but you're not actually feeling, you know, really good. You're just kind of scrit-... like a rat hitting a feeder bar in a lab experiment, right?
- CWChris Williamson
We spoke about this earlier, we were talking about the fact that now the most important skill that you can have in the 21st century is to be able to filter information. You don't need to be able to scavenge for more. There is more information than we need. The smartest people on the planet are the ones who are actually able to effectively discern noise and signal and spread those apart.
- CACory Allen
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
That's what people needs to be able to do. And I suppose that on a personal level as well, you need to work out, okay, what are the stimuli that I want to have in my life? What are the things that I want to continue to allow in? And what are the ones that I want to get off? So we've got a somatic practice-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... or a, a focus on the body. What is it that I'm sensing? Doing that, connecting with that, I'm picking up this glass. How does the food taste? How does the fork taste and feel in my mouth? Et cetera, et cetera. What would be the next step?
- CACory Allen
Yeah. So then actually moving to some type of, like, sitting practice I think is really valuable. Um, and I know you, you mentioned taking it off the mat, but in terms of what we're talking about here, this is someone who has no mat at all, right? So let's say even if someone doesn't wanna say, "Well, I wanna start meditating," as you mentioned, just let's parse out some of the noise, right? So having a, a moment of time in your day that's scheduled in if you have to, where you're shutting down the phone, you're shutting down the computer, you know, and turning things off, just having a space of quiet and stillness that you can exist in for, you know, however long you can-
- CWChris Williamson
What would you prescribe for someone that is, is keen to do this? The people that are listening will be familiar with mindfulness practices.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Some people will have a, uh, semi-regular one that they wish was probably a bit more regular. I would imagine that that's a big chunk of, of the audience. So what would you say is your prescription to try and aim for how long, how frequent?
- CACory Allen
Yeah. I mean, uh, I... if you can, at least half an hour. I mean, that's w-... 'cause you think about, like, people think that sounds like a lot. "Oh, I'll sit in silence for half an hour." But, you know...... someone will sit down and watch a half-hour, you know, episode of something on Netflix or whatever, and that's a half-hour. You know, it's not that long, and there's time that, that fits into the day. It's just about dedicating that time to that, or you think about before bed or a- after, like, I know some people, a lot of people that they wake up, the first half-hour of their day is just reading or, you know. And so y- you can plug these things into life and really just having that time in there. What it does is it just starts to desaturate the senses, you know, but... and, and it's t-... it takes away some of kind of the chewing gum that the, that the intellect has where it's always trying to focus and having something because if you're always engaged with a phone or a social situation or some type of entertainment, then what you're doing is you're really ignoring the... your, your inner self, right? Because you're always just... you're externally involved with something else. It's a form of distraction, and that's how people s- stay so intensely plugged into those things is because they're, they're staying intentionally distracted oftentimes from something that they don't want to acknowledge or they don't want to feel, you know? So it's like, oh, if I go, if I go out six nights a week, I never have to think about why, you know, I feel whatever, whatever way that I'll ne-... I'll never forget. I was in a, a relationship with a girl while I was at uni, and we were breaking up. It was my choice, and, uh, she was upset, and she was...
- 13:32 – 18:45
Being Mindful of our Interactions
- CACory Allen
she said something to the effect of, "Um, I don't want to go back to having to go out all the time." And that blew me away because implicit in that is if I'm not with someone, I can't bear to not go out all the time. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And that scared me, and that really made me th-... I mean, one thing it said was, "Fuck, this was the right decision."
- CACory Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Because if this person has s-... if they struggle so much with being on their own, with not having a sense of validation personally that they then need to go and get it sort of publicly-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that's a pretty malignant part of their life. Uh, but it's stuck with me, man. That was fucking 12, 13 years ago, just some random, tiny little line, "I don't want to have to go back to going out all the time."
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's so crazy how stuff like that sticks with you, you know?
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I, I always think about this. Think about all of the stuff, all the interactions that you've had with people on your podcast, in meditation sessions when you've met somebody in the street, and some throwaway fucking line that you just decide to say someone could keep with them for 60 years for no reason. It might not be profound.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That one was, like, a profound insight, but it could just be a thing, the funny way that you said fortune or whatever, you know? Like, just some random shit. It's so mad how that happens. We don't know the, uh, legacy that our interactions carry with them.
- CACory Allen
Yeah, an- another reason why mindfulness is important, because you're more aware of what you're saying when you're saying it, and so you're not... the chance of saying one of those things with a positive effect is much higher because you have this intentionality about what you're saying as opposed to just talking shit freely, and, you know, maybe you give someone the wrong idea based off of just something that you're carelessly saying, and then they take that as a script to move forward with, you know? I, I was just recently reflecting on one... and this isn't really connected to anything other than how those little kind of earworms get into your brain and just... I was recently thinking about one of those. Um, so probably, like, almost 20... (laughs) it was 20 years ago at this point, I was working in a bookstore and to find a... see if this bookstore had a particular book, you find... you look it up in one system, and then there's, like, a 10-digit number, and they type that into another system, and it would show you if they had it or not. So there was an older gentleman that was in there, and I was, you know, like, 19 or 20 or something, and he said, you know, "Do you have this on?" And I looked, and I got a pen and paper 'cause I found that number I wanted to write down, and he goes, oh... he said, "Hold on a second. What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I gotta write this down, so I can put it in there." And he's like, "No, no, no. Y- you can, you can do that." Like, "Let's think for a second." Like, "It's, it's 10 numbers or whatever. Like, w- look at them. What are they? Like, r- remember them. You've got, you know, five, seven, nine, w- whatever." And he said, "You can tot-... we can totally do this." And I was like, "Okay." And I remember I, I did it, and then I remembered them, repeated them in my mind, and then typed them in, and, like, boom, got it right. And for whatever reason, that just stuck with me where I was like, "Hold on a second. Like, I shouldn't default to just not engaging with my intellect and my brain in moments because I either think it's not possible, or you're just, 'Oh, well, you should grab a pen and paper.'" Wh-... it's one of those conditioning things. It's like because i-... as a group in society, it's something that people default to saying, "You should grab a piece of pen and paper," instead of, um, just, you know, kind of leveling up a little bit and engaging and saying, "Actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna apply my mind to this-
- CWChris Williamson
Man, life-
- CACory Allen
... and use it."
- CWChris Williamson
... life needs to be lived by design, not default-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... because so many of the default settings that we've got are horseshit. They're so bad. And I don't know whether you do them. I imagine that you pro-... (laughs) I imagine that you probably do. Um, did you ever, as a kid, make little games for yourself about th- how quick you could get up the stairs? "Oh, if I can get up the stairs this quickly or maybe if I can jump over... if I can go up in twos," or whatever it might be?
- CACory Allen
Oh, yeah. Well, m- my... well, g- go ahead. Yeah (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Just those- those little things kind of like that. I do that as well. I try and come up with dumb, dumb little tests-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... for something, you know. I've gotta remember a s- a string of numbers for somebody's phone number, and I'll go out of my way to make it not a big deal but kind of like a little, a little challenge for myself. But that's the same compulsion that I had as a kid while I was saying, "Well, if I, if I throw this basketball in on the next three goes, then I'm gonna become a millionaire"-
- CACory Allen
(laughs) Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- CWChris Williamson
... "or whatever it might be." You know, that sort of dumb stuff.
- CACory Allen
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I used to... this sounds weird saying it out loud, but that's why I'm-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CACory Allen
... sharing it. So when I was a little kid, you know, you play with your toys in the bathtub perhaps, um, if you're lucky enough to have such a thing. And, uh, as a little kid, I would get, um, like, Ziploc bags, you know, like, those plastic bags, and I would get, like, a toy, and I would put it in there, and then I would put food coloring in there, and then I would get packaging tape and a Swiss Army knife-... and I would play surgery. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CACory Allen
So if I could cut the bag open and extract the toy with, like, not leaking a certain amount of red-colored, you know, water-
- CWChris Williamson
Into the bath.
- 18:45 – 24:19
Learning to Switch Off from the World
- CWChris Williamson
we've got making sure that we've got intentionality when we're doing things, when we're actually engaging with our mind.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We've got a seated practice, which you've said, for about half an hour. I think, personally for me, half an hour really pushes the limit. I think that I worked up from 10 to 15, and then 15 to 20, and as I start to go over 20, I'm like, wow, this is, uh, that goes from it being a, a something that my compliance is high to something that my compliance is lower to.
- CACory Allen
But, but that's even just, like, sitting, like, laying in bed without anything-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- CACory Allen
... happening. Yeah, I'm not talking about meditating.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, okay, so not a formal practice. Okay.
- CACory Allen
Yeah, yeah. Just, just, yeah, just stillness. Just quiet, like, shutting out the noise because that's for someone that doesn't want to try and meditate, just, like, turn off the static for a while every day, you know? That's really cleansing to the mind, and that will actually draw your awareness inward because this is one of the big things is that, like, when, if you're always engaged with, like, content, or data, or some type of distraction, you can't hear your own voice because you're always thinking in relation to whatever the other thing is. And so shut all that out and think, "Well, what, what am I thinking right now?" Not, not, "What am I reacting or, or whatever to." You know? Because you're co-regulating your, your consciousness by constantly being engaged with external material.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yes.
- CACory Allen
You know?
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, w- here's an awesome hack for that. Just drive in the car without any music on.
- CACory Allen
Mm, mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And without anything in your ears. This was something that I started doing when I went to... I would d- uh, the drive to the office is about 15 minutes, and it was so good. I'm already driving, I'm doing something which is sufficiently system one that I don't really need to think about it, right? You're not thinking about driving when you're driving, unless you're a really bad driver, and there are some awful drivers in Austin. I'm gonna segue. Austin has the most barbell strategy of drivers I've ever met in my life. Everybody is either an ex-rally car driver-
- CACory Allen
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... or a danger on the roads that shouldn't have a license. There is no one in between.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
There are people that are amazing and people that are terrible. But, um, driving to work with silence is so good, and you're doing the drive anyway, and it's sufficiently passive that it's probably not going to matter. That's a great way to do it, I think.
- CACory Allen
Yeah. No, that's a, that is a good way to do it. And so the point of doing all of that would be to start to withdraw somewhat from the continuous kind of panic mode of always dealing with something, and give yourself a chance to slip into that parasympathetic mode, right? So by doing that, you then, that's the, the rest and digest zone, where you become less, um, frantically focused on things, less kind of anxiety-driven and reactive, and more calm, full, you know, more serotonin's releasing, more self-aware, heartbeat slows down, breath becomes more shallow, you know? And in that state, um, you're, of course, feeling good. That's where most people would like to be, and that's ultimately, after you meditate for 10 minutes or whatever, that's where you, what you'll typically switch over to. Um, but doing that, getting into that state consciously through, you know, even just shutting out the noise, or some type of formal meditation practice, even just a easy breathing practice, um, that will begin to bring balance because if you're always in that fight-or-flight mode all the time, messing with a bunch of noise, it's just gonna introduce a counterbalance to that state and draw that one back a little bit. And the more that you practice those, and the more time you spend in that state of stillness and mindful awareness, the more balanced that those, uh, you know, more into balance that those two things are going t- to become.
- CWChris Williamson
How happy would you be with someone doing this alongside a fairly menial job? So let's say it's driving a car, doing the washing up, mowing the lawn. Are you happy with somebody utilizing that time, or is there too much stimulus going on if they're doing a task?
- CACory Allen
Um, as long as they're focused on the task, I mean, that could, that's definitely a mindfulness practice. Yeah, y- but it-
- CWChris Williamson
Chop wood, carry water.
- CACory Allen
Yeah, but it would apply suggestion number one that we had to that moment. So, getting into the awareness of your actual experience as you're experiencing it, and being aware of the sensations and the sense stories and so forth, um, while having that, you know, just something to focus on, uh, is, is a good way to do that as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Thinking about how overloaded I sometimes am, but also some of my friends are ridiculous at this. They'll be listening to a book on three times speed whilst the Roomba automated schedule is going around and Hoovering up the house, and they'll be cleaning things up, but they'll have their laptop open 'cause they've got some notes for an exam that they've got coming up a little bit later on.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm like, the threshold, the waterline for acceptable stimulus has just shot through the roof. You're already listening to something at a million times speed, you've got this schedule thing going on, you know you've got a call in five minutes but you're going to fit this in because... Yeah, the, um, I don't know where that compulsion comes from. I, I, I think it's partly productivity, more done in less time stuff, but I also think that you're right, that there is an anxiety beyond I should be doing more with my time, there's simply an anxiety with just sitting-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... with a bit of silence.
- CACory Allen
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Yes, because if you, if you haven't done it before, you know, then all of the stuff that you haven't seen, you kind of start reacting to 'cause you, you f- feel like, oh, well, now you become aware of your internal dialogue, and what you're actually sensing, and it's just overwhelming because you're used to numbing it by being distracted away from it, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
What's next?
- CACory Allen
Well, um, from
- 24:19 – 41:27
Pay Attention to your Movements
- CACory Allen
there, I'm gonna go to-... just a, (laughs) a something a bit more fun, and it's a bit more, more deep, but, um, it's a fun thing that people can do to really begin to get to the root of something that will be very helpful. So along with the sensory input of, uh, just experiencing what you're experiencing in a physical way with more awareness, um, start paying attention t- throughout the day to your, your movements and what kind of, what you choose to move, how you move your hand, what you're actually doing, and again, just note those things in your mind as, as you're doing them. So you're sort of like, oh, I'm, again, I'm lifting the cup, you know, I'm setting the cup down, I'm walking, I'm talking right now. And you can do this as detailed as you want. This is actually a, a part of the fundamental training of mindfulness, uh, as far as it's actually written is to do this, but a, a monk would do this 24/7 for, you know, however long (laughs) for, for weeks, years, months, whatever, and it's very, very detailed, and that's all you're doing is noting. Um, but the point is, is that the more that you start doing that and you focus on just kind of noting your own awareness, being aware of your own experience, then something interesting starts happening, is at the time it takes you... 'Cause you'll, you'll stop doing that, and then at one point later in the day, you'll then go, you'll, you'll kind of catch it again and, and remember and see like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. I was noting things. So now, now I'm, I'm getting some food or whatever it is," right? Um, famously, uh, Ouspensky, I believe it was, Gurdjieff's disciple, uh, went out to... He was doing what he called self-remembering, same concept, just different school of thought, and was walking and he was self-remembering and things were going good, and then, uh, a few weeks went by, he went to get a pack of cigarettes and a few weeks went by and he said, "Oh, yeah, I was self-remembering until (laughs) I went to go get that pack of (laughs) cigarettes," you know? So even someone who's doing it and is trained at it, you could, you, you could start it and you'd be doing it and then something will kind of sweep you into this long chain of thought so much that it... a lot of time could go by. But eventually, you'll remember it and you'll go, "Oh, right. I'm gonna do that thing," and you start doing it again. Um, and then the more that you focus on that, uh, just the more curious it becomes how, how you're not really, um, as in control of yourself as you think you are. You know, we're very much these autonomous kind of beings that are on autopilot in a lot of ways in our lives. If you think of the amount of times that you shift your feet around while you're sitting in a chair, or you scratch your arm, or you go to have a sip of water, or you lift your arm up, or you, you kind of move a thumb across a fingernail or something like that, or you blink, whatever it is, there's all these things that we do constantly that we're, that we're not even aware of. We're just engaged whatever, with whatever kind of our focused mental mind is on at that moment. But when you start doing this practice more, you'll start noticing how much that you're actually doing without realizing it. You'll notice how you're shifting in your chair, you know, you'll, you'll notice all those little movements and stuff like that. And what gets really trippy is that then you start to notice like, something for the example of like, oh, if your arm is itching, i- if you were completely unexamined, you'd be sitting there at your office or at home, your arm would itch, you would scratch it and you wouldn't even think about it. It, it would happen way, way in the background. If you're noting your, y- y- your present experience, you'll notice, "Oh, I just scratched my arm. That's interesting. Cool." And then as you continue practicing this, uh, as time goes on, then you'll get to a place where you can, if you so desire to go s- deep into it, of, "Oh, my arm is itching. I want to scratch my arm now." Instead of just going, "Oh, I just scratched my arm."
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- CACory Allen
You'll go, "Oh, there's an itch there. Interesting." And now, we get to a deeper level of it, which is the arising, um, array of impulses that we have, because our impulses are really the root of all of our behavior, and whether you, you note your physical movements enough, you then can go backwards one step or deeper one step and realize the arising desire and impulse to do things, as opposed to just the fact that you're doing them. And what that does is gives you one level deeper of control and awareness of your actions and how you're existing in the present moment. And all of this really boils down to being able to navigate, you know, w- put a sail up on the boat of your life and navigate your existence with more intentionality and more self-awareness. And what's interesting is if you watch this f- the example, say you have the itch and you notice the impulse to scratch, then you realize you have agency within that. You go, "Hold on. I, I don't have to lift my hand up to scratch it right now. I can choose to respond to that or to not, and I can actually just kind of focus my attention on that itch feeling. Like, what is that really? It's just an odd little sensation. It's, it's really not unpleasant. It's just there. But I'm so conditioned to mechanically and automatically en- engage with it that I've always done it." But if you just watch it and you keep watching it and then it just kind of goes away, like, "Huh," and the more you start getting into that level, then you realize that that awareness of the impulse to do things, not just d- as you're doing them, you, you become more in, in control of e- everything in life, like, like eating per se. You're not stuffing your face. You're actually aware of what you're eating. You're aware of... well, this arising impulse to just crush whatever's on your plate or go like, "You know, I'm actually gonna... I'm already getting full. I'm gonna stop now because I'm full. I don't wanna feel sick later." Um, if you're ta- speaking with someone and you have these words arising in the directions that you want to change or move the conversation or the interaction with, normally a person who's unexamined is just kind of, you know, they're, they're going, going, it's all unraveling against their real will. It's just kind of just happening to them almost, a person.... and that's why people say things they regret. They say harmful things, they say kind of unskillful things, as one would say, um, or just stupid things, you know? Um, but with that deeper level of mindful awareness, you then, like the same awareness of the impulse to do a physical action as opposed to just doing it, you become aware of the arising dialogue in your mind, in what you're going to say, and if you should say it or not. And that's really where that mindfulness gap appears, that you mentioned earlier. Because then, say that you have a, a reaction to an experience, someone says something that triggers you and you get irritated, and you feel normally you would react and say something cutting or mean or, like, resentful to them. Um, with that level of clarity and self-awareness and, and intentionality, you can then feel that feeling arising, and then actually examine and know what you're going to say, you know, more skillfully, if anything at all, and, like, what the moment actually calls for, as opposed to being drawn into a further detachment and distraction of that panic and anxiety state.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, man. I think about an example Sam Harris uses a lot while he was... sat at a meditation retreat. And if you have tight hips, like almost everybody, and you sit on a meditation cushion, your knees can hurt a fair bit-
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... a good bit of, uh, force going through them, and he said that he focused on the pain in his knee for so long until it broke apart and it became sort of pure bliss. And I've been going to a place called Kuya, which I need to force you to come with me at some point.
- CACory Allen
(laughs) Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, hot and cold therapy. Sauna gets up to 250 degrees, which is a hot puppy.
- CACory Allen
That's hot.
- CWChris Williamson
And then they've got 34 degrees Fahrenheit cold plunge straight outside. You go and you lower yourself in, and there's a little clock on the wall. And, um, very quickly after starting to do that, I noticed that if I focus on the sensation of what cold feels like, not on being cold, not on the narrative around the fact that this is cold and this sucks and I've just come out of 250 degrees and now I'm into 32 degrees, if I focus on the sensation, everything completely changes. It's a fascinating experience that kind of feels like tiny little needles, tiny little pinpricks, and then it feels like a vice, and now it feels like warmth, and now it feels like something else. But it doesn't feel like cold. Cold is the narrative name that we've given-
- CACory Allen
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to that particular combination of sensations. If you actually get into the sensation itself, it breaks apart into components that... Like a meal, right? You eat a meal. If you're not focusing on the meal, you're just eating the, the aggregated macro flavor overall. But if you really, really pay attention, you go, "Okay, well, that's the chicken, that's the oregano, that's the pesto, that's the spice, that's the pa-... Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." And you can break it apart in that way. And, um, the richness and the level of depth... I mean, you, you can see how much I'm desperately trying to stay in for three minutes, that I'm going into some black hole of, uh, mindfulness just to try and stick about for 180 seconds. But it's awesome. The cold therapy has been, you know, those... Whatever I've done, maybe 30... Between 20 and 30 three-minute blocks since I've been here, in that cold plunge.
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And every single time, it's fascinating.
- CACory Allen
Yeah. I'd, I'd like to do the cold plunge in the sauna.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, you think?
- CACory Allen
No (laughs) . Um, uh, yeah, no, th- that type of stuff is... That's almost like a manufactured, uh, external intervention, you know, where you're, you're shocking the system into forcing your attention onto something, um, which for someone... It's useful for anyone. It's usual- useful experience, but also for someone who just feels like they can't break o- out of it. It's like, "Well, there, there are ways." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, man. Put yourself, put yourself in that cold plunge and think about something that isn't what you're doing.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So Paul Bloom's most recent book, The Sweet Spot, is great, and he interviewed a dominatrix for it, and he was trying to work out why it is that some people end- Suffering is part of a good life, and how-
- CACory Allen
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... pain sort of contributes to our sense of enjoyment. And this dominatrix said, "Nothing captures attention like a whip."
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
What she means is that if someone slaps you in the face, for the next three to five seconds, you're not thinking about anything other than the fact that you've just been slapped in the face. And it's not that people want peace of mind, it's that they want peace from mind.
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
"Can I enter into a state..." It's one of the reasons that I think people love extreme sports that have a very, very high chance of death. You know, BASE jumping, wingsuit, downhill mountain bike, snowboard, ski, all this stuff. It forces your attention into such a narrow chasm because you know that the problem and the issue of you straying from that is so grave that you may die. And that's peace from mind, not peace of mind.
- CACory Allen
Right. Exactly. And it's, it's kind of fascinating that there are so much easier ways to get to that place than getting squirrel-
- CWChris Williamson
Wingsuit diving, yeah.
- CACory Allen
Yeah (laughs) , a wingsuit and jumping off the side of a mountain. Um, but to each their own. Um, yeah. It... I think going a little deeper and, and moving into a real useful aspect of what we're getting to here with, with this being more aware of what's going on in the mind, what's going on starting with the body, being aware of the senses, and then s- starting to move into the mechanism of the mind. If you, you keep following that, you get to, you know, one of the places you mentioned, where like, well, these arising things, these impulses, these are just fabricated concepts that don't really mean anything, you know? I'm just, like, resonating like a wine glass, you know, with someone singing, but there's not really... That material, the conscious material that's arising, that's not me. Those are just mental formations, you know? So even whenever you, you want to... Say you go, want to, "Oh, I need to go check my email real quick." Like, that impulse, you see it arise, that, the feeling to go, go into motion and check the email-... it's like, well, that since, that's just a complete passing cloud of nothingness, you know. And being able to distinguish that those are really coming from nowhere and going to nowhere will show you that your thoughts are really not you, right? You or the awareness is observing the passing of the thoughts, the witness to the content of mind, not the mind itself. And understanding that is so valuable because one of the things that people do is mistake their thoughts for who they are, and that leads to an extensive amount of, um, self-criticism, of self-doubt, self-hatred, um, all sorts of things, and really just a true confusion about the nature of self and reality. An example that I have been enjoying using lately to describe that is, um, imagine if you are there and you, you have a nice orange, nice tasty orange. You open it up, you smell the orange, right? You smell it for a moment and while you're eating it or whatever, and then you carry on about your day. For hours later, you never mistake that you were the smell of the orange. You're well aware that you smelled an orange, that was the smell, you moved on, it moved on, and it's not, not there anymore, right? But with thoughts, what happens is that a thought arises, someone looks at that and they go, "Oh, that's who I am," or, "That is some type of truth." And then because it's internal instead of external, they're then able to grab onto that and then relate to it, right, to their identity to that thought or that sensation. And that's much more insidious and long-lasting because it's internally resonant as opposed to externally informed. So with the s- the smell of the orange, we're aware that that is outside of the w- our skin, there is a tactile world, and in that, there is stuff happening, and our senses take in the information from that world, and we recognize that there is a relationship between our experience and that external object, and there's no real confusion there in general, right? But the issue is, eh, uh, the- the we're getting... The reason why that's so clear is 'cause we're getting constant feedback from the external object, right? Um, like you always know your arms are on a table 'cause the table is always pushing on your arm, you know. There's no mistaking, like, "I'm becoming the table." Like it's, it's there, it's there, I'm here, right? (laughs) And so, um, with, with the mind, since those things are generated internally, whenever a thought goes by, there's no resonance, there's no reference point, there's no constant feedback. It can just hang in the space of the mind's eye, right? And so then because often our thoughts have to do with us, because we're thinking about our own narrative and kind of creating our story of whatever's happening in the moment, um, we can, we begin to mistake that mental material, you know, for truth, and for reality, and for what we are. So if someone has this thought, you know, some type of like, "Ah, I'm a piece of shit. Like, I shouldn't have done this. Goddamn. I'm a, you know, and I'm failing at like this thing," or whatever, y- that thought arises, and then you can grasp onto it because there, it's, it's kind of suspended in space in your mind. And then you, like-
- CWChris Williamson
It's like an endless orange.
- 41:27 – 45:55
Reminding Yourself that Thoughts Aren’t Things
- CACory Allen
that was a pretty good one I just shared, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CACory Allen
... um, (laughs) -
- CWChris Williamson
I just, I, I'm just trying to think if we've got the orange, we've got that idea, we've got... I'm just wondering if there's, if there's another, another way that you like-
- CACory Allen
Sure. Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... to frame that.
- CACory Allen
Yeah, so you can think about something more simply 'cause I know that was complicated and, and exhaustive. Something more simply, if you think about like how, say you, you are, you wake up in your bed one morning, right, and you feel great. You didn't have any drinks the prior night. You ate well, you slept well, you feel good. The sun is shining in the window, smells good and fresh in there, beautiful crisp day. There's a little owl outside your window looking in at you. He's happy. Belly full of mouse. The, everything is good in the world, right? You get up, you feel good, you're like, "All right. I'm gonna go. It's a beautiful day. I'm gonna go out. I can't wait." Et cetera, et cetera. You go on. Now, say that the next, that night 'cause you were having such a good night, you decide to celebrate, right? Now you're going out with, you know, with your friends, you're having 30 drinks or whatever it is, you're eating cheeseburgers at 4:00 AM, and then a pizza, um, you get into a fight of some kind, you know, someone glasses you in the head with a bottle, you know, whatever.Um, then you decide to have a glass of sand instead of a glass of water before getting in bed. We've all been there. So you get in, you wake up the next morning, headache shattering, pounding, splitting headache, eyes are blurry, that sunlight now is, like, giving you this crazy headache. It's contributing... Like, oh God, pull the curtains closed, you know? Now the smell in the room, you're, now it's smelling sour to you 'cause now everything has got this kind of pungent, repulsive smell. Everything makes you a little nauseous. Uh, the colors in the room now hurt your eyes as well, and seem distasteful and disorganized. You have no energy, you know, for the day. You don't want to get moving, none of that stuff, and you just want to lay in your sweaty bed and just lay there and just rot, right, with this, this headache. Um, and the bed feels lumpy or you can't get comfortable, you know, all this stuff. Now, think about the fact that that room didn't change. The room a person... you had those two distinct experiences in was the same. Same room. What was different was your mind, and what was different was th- your, your frame of consciousness, your state of mind in the way that you're perceiving it because of what was going on in your body at that point in time. Now, that's an extreme example, and what I'm doing here is peeling apart the subject and object relationship of mind. So what we experience and what we think about experience is we, we receive it all based upon where our mind is at that point in time, and how we're thinking and how we're feeling, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CACory Allen
And so as far as the thoughts are not things go, if you... uh, a good practice to notice, you know, kind of, uh, the, the true nature of that is to pay attention to, uh, thing that you're experiencing whenever you're feeling good and how you project your feeling onto that situation, versus an experience when you're feeling bad and how you project your feeling onto that situation as well, with a, a negative light, a disruptive light, versus a positive or an optimistic light. And then as you start realizing that you're really kind of projecting the story of how you're feeling onto your experience, then try to separate that. Uh, it's easier to do whenever you're in a good mood. Realize, like, "Oh, I'm feeling good. This room is great," blah, blah, blah. "Uh, these people are nice." And just stop for a second and be like, "Well, e- am I enjoying this so much or am I just in a good mood?" (laughs) You know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CACory Allen
Like, "Is this really the best wine I've ever had, or am I just... was I looking forward to it?" You know, and you can start to just notice how... the difference between the, the way that you're thinking versus what really is.
- CWChris Williamson
Would you say... I, I think if you run that forward, the stoic, uh, uh, stoicism's prescription would be something along the lines of, the external environment should never impact your internal state? Now, to me, given the fact that most people are trying to find a route to happiness and joy and flourishing in life, that feels a little bit like y- y- you wake up on the great day and the owl's full and, uh, everything's going fine. But the stoic would remind himself, "This is no... m- materially no different to the day when I woke up with a hangover." That feels a little
- 45:55 – 56:50
How to Successfully Deal with Bad & Good Situations
- CWChris Williamson
bit like constantly trying to build up a fire, someone coming and throwing kerosene on it, and you saying, "No, no, no, no, no, I don't want that."
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you, um, factor in the ability to be sufficiently robust is to be able to deal with bad situations, but also, um, absorbent enough that when you have a good time, that you utilize that as a catalyst? Do you have a-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you, do you get this tension that I'm talking about?
- CACory Allen
S- sure, sure. Yeah, a- and that's why I think Stoicism is, um... has a lot of incredible, you know, beneficial qualities to it. But at the end of the day, it's quite repressive, you know? Um, 'cause the reality is, is that no matter who you are, you're always gonna be, uh, affected by your external environment. It's just a fact of... ne- we're, we're hairless little monkey creatures, you know? Like, we are in nature and we're a part of nature. So be given... I mean, the idea of saying, you know, "Well, I'm not gonna respond to my environment." Like, you are the environment. You know, that the way of looking at reality is as if you can just create this wall between reacting completely to what's happening out there. It's like, you're out there too, you know? It's like someone that's in traffic and they're like, "Ugh, I hate all this traffic." It's like, "You're traffic as well." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You are the traffic.
- CACory Allen
Yeah. Yeah. You are too. And so that, that way of thinking to me is unrealistic and doesn't really, you know, uh, follow through all the way. And so it's realizing, you know, in, in those moments, the fact that you always are gonna be flowing with what is, but it's just about... a- and this really is the crux of all of the stuff we've been talking about, putting enough effort into being more self-aware, being aware of what you're thinking in the moment that you're thinking it, being more aware in the present about your actions and the choices that you're making. And using your intentionality to then make choices towards, you know, the direction of who you want to be or what you want your life to be like. And in that comes, uh, you know, interfacing with the, the truth of whatever your e- environmental circumstances are at that moment, and using the information there, along with your self-awareness, to then continue to make intentional choices.
- CWChris Williamson
What about emotions? Because that's, like, a... not a particular thought, not a narrative, you know, a felt sense-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a phenomenon that arises. How would someone utilize taking mindfulness off the mat, uh, to be able to give them that mindfulness gap when an emotion arises?
- CACory Allen
Yeah. I mean, that's a really valuable one because, uh, emotions are, like, the ultimate, you know, n- no, no logic a lot. (laughs) You know, if you can't... it's, it's tough to be very emotional and very logical at the same time. Um, so people tend to do things very, you know, brashly whenever they're getting really emotionally, um... or getting really emotional, rather. And so mindfulness is super valuable because it takes some of the heat and the impact off of...... negative emotions and allows you to then react or respond to them, instead of just being bowled over and controlled by them. So even if you say, you know, something happens and you get, like, furious at someone, normally without, you know, being unexamined, you would just jump into whatever it is, yelling at them, or I don't know, uh, what people do whenever they get furious. But, um, with, you know, being more tuned into a mindful way of living, that would arise, and then you really get to address the, the root of that fury and that anger in the first place. And it's an important distinction to make, because obviously, it's not useful to just respond emotionally, be crazy and out of control, and see red, and do whatever. Um, it's also not useful to completely play, and this gets into an interestingly nuanced area of what, you know, of, of mindfulness, or some would say spirituality, um, to not look at that situation whenever you get frustrated and go full on. Like, "Okay, I notice the arising feeling of frustration. I'm not going to respond to it. I'm going to, you know, exhale, breathe calmly, and allow it to move on, and just let that move, and then later, I'll engage with whoever the person was, you know, if, if it's still an issue, and discuss, you know, constructively what the problem might be." Um, that also, if, if not done well, can be... You have danger of, of again, passivity and of compartmentalization. Um, and so if you wanna get to the root of the matter, you... When it arises, you could use mindfulness to not react to it, but then to pause and actually really examine, like, the impulses. "What am I thinking? What am I... Why did I get so reactive?" Like, "Is this something of, of mine that I'm being triggered? Is it something I need to work on? Is it something that I need to create a boundary that they've... you know, someone has done something to me that, you know, I need to address?" And it helps you actually get at, like, why you had that reaction in the first place, instead of just getting swept up in the drama of the emotion.
- CWChris Williamson
Bring that back for me. Someone has an emotion arise. What, what are some of the cues, or the, the, the triggers, or the practices that they can use to just build that mindfulness gap and before the downstream how to deal with it?
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what's the first step in that?
- CACory Allen
Yeah, the first one, again, I think that the noting thing is really valuable. So when you start getting mad, just recognize. Like, "Okay, hold on. I'm getting, getting really pissed off here. Let me just pause." You notice it and pause. Don't go straight into action, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
And this is the same for a self-talk about being sad or-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... anxious or depressed or whatever.
- CACory Allen
Exactly. Just notice it's there and then, and then pause, and you can, you know, take a breath, create a little bit of space. Give yourself time to actually catch up to the flurry of what's happened, and then you can start the self-inquiry process and realize, you know, what kind of intentional choice you need to make. Um, what I was gonna get into earlier is an interesting pretty, um, tricky part of the ever-evolving story of someone living mindfully or more, um, you know, a, a quote unquote "spiritual identity," which I don't... I'm not really into that word or those words. But it's in terms of what people think about it as, um, is that you can do all these practices. Let's look at, like, the, the maximum optimal person who is, uh, doing... You know, they're, they're completely non-reactive. They're tranquil. They're peaceful. You know, they're, they're doing all this, uh, 24/7, never disrupted, always just super easygoing. Um, what can happen there, interestingly, is that you can begin to feel like you, um... You get stiff in this way, to where you can start, out of the service of trying to do these things so much and, um, trying to almost play the character of this person as you try and do this stuff more, you can run the danger of actually becoming, uh, self-righteous in this way, right? So whenever you're... You're... You don't want to kind of break the character and acknowledge that you are actually a human being, and that you're actually feeling some of these things. You're just... You're, you're living this kind of calcified form of mindfulness zombie and not allowing yourself to acknowledge the truth of what's going on deep inside of you. And that is a trap that people can fall into, you know? And you start... The self-righteousness is that then you wear that character of being the completely calm, tepid person at all times, around others and even with yourself, and that way, you're like, "Oh yeah, no, I'm completely unaffected by all of you and all of this." You know? And this-
- CWChris Williamson
You become a prisoner of your own mindfulness.
- CACory Allen
E- exactly. Exactly. And so, whenever you do feel those things, you know, and it, it says, you know, it a- it answers this question within itself, is whenever you feel the, the anger or whatever, you know, "Oh no, I'm just gonna let that pass and I'm not gonna..." Now, well, that's great and you should not react to it, but if you aren't engaged in it, then you're, you're messing up, because you want to engage in, "Well, why did I... What happened there? Like, why did I feel that? Like, what's going on? What do I need to understand more clearly about this situation or myself, or what should I be saying or, or doing in this moment?" As opposed to just always, like, you're shutting it off, right? 'Cause that's one of the th- miscommunications that people get is they think, "Well, it..." That leads to a lot of resentment, you know, of other people, uh, and as I said, self-righteousness, um, because I've got so many messages from people who are like, "Hey, so I've gotten really good at disarming my reactive anger towards my wife and kids," or whatever, "when they're being crazy and I wanna yell at them. I've, I've got that now. But now, I feel resentful that I'm always the one that's having to set aside my..."... my feelings, and they're just totally unexamined, running wild, and I'm just dealing with it all. And so now I'm starting to feel irritated at them, and that's where, you know, as I said, self-righteous, 'cause now you're like, "Well, now I'm the victim, kind of the one having to bear all this, and these people are (laughs) inferior animals." And now I'm, I, I'm starting to dislike them 'cause I'm always having to offload the stuff, and that's because th- step one is stopping the reactions and all that, but step two is actually examining, r- understanding why you're feeling that, why that button's being pushed and then engaging and communicating with, you know, the person or the people clearly, uh, about what you're experiencing, right? So if pe- if you're, you know, if the kids are running around screaming and breaking stuff and you're feeling irritated and you go, "Okay, let that go. Just be cool, move on, go to another room," yeah, you do that, but then you also go, "Hey, by the way, you all need to calm down and chill out and be..." whatever. You know, tell, give them... I'm not a parent. Give them some... Whatever feedback you give to kids, I don't know. But, um, but that's the point, and if you, you move that into all the areas of your life in that way, it keeps you from getting that resentment or that weirdness or the righteousness and actually... Again, it's, you know, engagement is so important. You know, i- in this stuff, one of the big misnomers that, that's out there is that people mistake being more tranquil and self-aware with passivity, you know, because... For a lot of various reasons. But they think it's almost this kind of, like, disengagement, like, "No, I'm just gonna, like, let things kinda flow by." It's not that at all, you know? It's, it's actually kind of the opposite of that in a lot of ways, 'cause it's stepping out of the, the causal kind of flow of reactivity but then stepping into actually being present and engaged with, you know, intentionality.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Triggers, final bits, anything that you think that we haven't got
- 56:50 – 1:00:36
Habits & Triggers for Mindfulness
- CWChris Williamson
in order to bring that mindfulness gap into the, into daily life? Any habits, any routines, any triggers, any cues that people should remember to use if they want to try and really instantiate this?
- CACory Allen
Yeah, I think a, a useful one is looking for, like, little bits of time in the day, because you can practice even just kind of, like, checking in with your breathing, just calming it down, checking your shoulders. That's where, like, l- so much tension and the anxiety and worry and all that stuff th- that people have, uh, is just through un-... being unaware of their own tension and grasping. So you kind of get tense, you start thinking, your shoulders get tight, you know, your brow gets tight. Your heart starts racing. If you take a moment to just, like, go, "Hold on a second, let me change my posture, relax the shoulders, relax the face, and take some breaths, kind of just calm things down a little bit," like, that will do so much for people. It's s- it's crazy, but it's just having never thought to do that is why no one has done it before. But if you do think to do that, it's on the menu for you, then you just find these little spaces in your life, whether you're standing in line, you're waiting for something, you're waiting for someone to show up, you're meeting them, you have five minutes or whatever, even 30 seconds, you can re- realign the posture, relax the, the shoulders and the face, and then focus in on just taking a couple of relaxing breaths and just tuning back in again. And if you, you do that consistently, when you find these little empty spaces in your day, then what happens is that actually just becomes a trained behavior over time. So, like, I do that without... Well, I d- I'm aware I'm doing it, but I don't have to stop and go, "Okay, I should do it now." I just do it, and I'm like, "Oh, cool. Just gonna reset real quick and then move on."
- CWChris Williamson
Man, if people spent six months working on one habit, one mental cue, trigger occurs, I understand the response, you can move that from the very deliberate system two to the automated system one. And I've done this with a bunch of different things. So the stoic fork was one that I, I did it with for a while, where, "Look, do I have control over this or not?" And that now, for me, is mostly automatic.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It just arises. Look, I don't have control over it, so fuck. Like, it's a traffic jam. I didn't know that this was going to... It's raining. I didn't know that this was going to occur. The power's gone off. Uh, today, I was supposed to have a podcast and the Wi-Fi went off in my Airbnb. All right. Well, I can't fix it. I messaged the person that does the Airbnb. I'm gonna go to the gym-
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... instead. And that's now automated. The number of times... And I think that six months is a, a, a slow enough period for you to have, "Okay, I have one goal. I have one behavioral goal that I want to try and move from system two to system one." And if you can do that, in five years' time, you are unrecognizable. You've just accumulated... And maybe after, whatever, a couple of years you need to go back and do little stints of some of the first ones you did. But man, there's so much here and, you know, from the first episode that we ever did, I think you were episode number nine or 12 or something-
- CACory Allen
Oh, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, and this will be 410, but the mindfulness gap, which was the term that I got from you, that now is still today one of the things that I try and focus on. Something arises inside of me, and there is a beat, just a half-second pause between stimulus and response.
- CACory Allen
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's power. I've al-... I've said this over and over. If the only thing that I get out of meditation is the ability to have that beat, I'll consider it a win.
- CACory Allen
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Maybe some greater levels of flourishing and meditative bliss would be, would be nice, but that's enough of a win to make it worthwhile, to make the practice worthwhile. And I think that trying to make it practical, trying to take it off the mat, trying to go from when you're doing your sits to, "Okay, now how does this apply? How does this make my daily experience more effective?" I think there's some, some awesome stuff in there for people. So
- 1:00:36 – 1:01:11
Where to Find Cory
- CWChris Williamson
if people want to check out what you do, get the guided meditations, do your other stuff, where should they go?
- CACory Allen
Yeah. They go to cory-allen.com, and then heycoreyallen is all my social handles.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. And The Astral Hustle?
- CACory Allen
That's the podcast. The Astral Hustle. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Brother, thank you.
- CACory Allen
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:01:11
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode EgR1sDh6xkA
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome