Michael Pollan On: Reducing Rumination and Reclaiming Your Attention From the Machines

Key Takeaway

Consciousness is the fact that you have experience—that a world appears when you open your eyes. Being more conscious means being more present to experience and reality, leading to a fuller life. Michael Pollan explores how meditation and psychedelics defamiliarize consciousness, making us aware of the 'windshield' through which we perceive reality. The key insight: reclaim your consciousness from technologies colonizing it by establishing daily practices like meditation and time in nature without devices.

Episode Overview

Michael Pollan discusses his book on consciousness, exploring the 'hard problem' of how three pounds of gray matter generates subjective experience. The conversation examines: • The nature of consciousness as experience and awareness • How meditation and psychedelics reveal consciousness by defamiliarizing it • The relationship between consciousness and the self • How social media and AI are colonizing our consciousness • Practical ways to reclaim and defend our consciousness in daily life

Full Transcript

Transcript of Michael Pollan On: Reducing Rumination and Reclaiming Your Attention From the Machines from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

How is it that three lbs of gray matter between your ears, these neurons, this animal flesh, can generate subjective experience? And nobody really knows how that works. It remains a tremendous mystery. It's incredibly weird when you think about it. At the same time we're looking at each other and having this conversation, there's another conversation going on in each of our minds. Being more conscious is to be more present. more present to experience, more present to reality, and it's just a fuller life. Michael Pollen, welcome back to the show.

show. show. Thank you, Dan. Very good to be here. It's great to have you here. Congratulations on your new book. Speaking of your new book, I'm just curious, why this subject? I can imagine why, but but why consciousness? You know, when I think about it in retrospect, I think I must have been crazy to think I could write a book about consciousness. about consciousness. about consciousness. And uh I I don't know exactly what got into me, but it really grew out of a series of experiences I had um both in meditation and in experimenting with psychedelics uh which I had done for my book before last, how to change your mind.

And there is a way that both activities kind of smudge the the windshield windshield windshield of our perception. And suddenly we realize there is a windshield and it's like this. But why isn't it like that? You're suddenly aware of something that is normally just the water you swim in. Uh which is to say this conscious awareness of the world, but also this this space of interiority. You know, I mean, it's incredibly weird when you think about it that at the same time we're looking at each other and having this conversation, there's another conversation going on in each of our minds.

minds. minds. Is this guy crazy? I I don't know what you're thinking, but um uh so so so wait, wait, wait, wait. You're you're thinking, is this guy crazy? Is that what you're thinking? I'm thinking maybe you're thinking that. Uh Uh Uh he talks about the windshield of perception. I don't know. Um, and I'm having my own like, you know, what is he wearing? What is that red dot behind him? Um, you know, there. So, there's a lot going on that we don't really think about at all and we think we have this transparent relationship with reality and this direct conversation with other people.

So, what essentially had happened is that consciousness had become defamiliarized for me. Um and in the way art sometimes can defamiliarize experience and make you look at it and say, "Yeah, that is really strange." And so that's kind of now this is not unusual. Lots of people who meditate and use psychedelics finally start asking questions about consciousness. I mean in meditation you get a chance to observe your consciousness in a way we don't in everyday life. And um so I thought well I like to write books about things I'm curious about.

Why not this? And I have an incredibly indulgent editor who when when I proposed this didn't bat an eye. She says, "Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it." So that sent me down this very long trail of trying to understand something that um is, you know, famously known as the hard problem. And uh you know, warning, I didn't figure it out. I mean the the the main question that goes under the rubric of hard problem which is essentially um how is it that three pounds of gray matter between your ears these neurons this animal flesh can generate subjective experience and nobody really knows how that works.

It's it remains a tremendous mystery. I once heard Jack Kornfield articulate the mystery thusly. Um, how did planet Earth go from rocks to opera? That's the story. And That's the story. And there's another mystery in there, too, is how do we get to life from dead matter? Another question we really haven't solved yet. I mean, we, you know, we know about the Darwinian soup of chemicals that might have joined in a certain way and started reproducing. Um, but that's uh so those are the two two of the three big questions.

The third one is why is there something rather than nothing? And I'm not going to write about that in the next book. Going to go back to food. Uh something. So we we've been using this word consciousness, but it might be helpful to define it and perhaps while we're at it, and you touched on this a little bit, but on top of the definition, maybe add like why we should care. Yeah. Okay. Well, those are two big questions. Um, consciousness can be defined in one word as experience.

The fact that you have experience, that's something your toaster does not have as far as we know. Um, or awareness, the fact that you are um, not just present here, but aware that you are. Those are two good definitions. Another way to think about it is back in the 70s there was a famous article written by a NYU philosopher called what is it like to be a bat and his contention was if it is like anything to be a bat and we can imagine with some effort what it's like to be a bat which is to say a creature that navigates its world through echolocation echolocation echolocation you know bouncing sound waves off of its environment rather than taking in reflected light as we do.

So it's weird but it's something to be that creature. Well then that creature is conscious. So it's not exactly a definition but it's a a formulation. a formulation. a formulation. So in in one sense it's very simple. It's the fact that you know as the title of the book goes a world appears when we open our eyes. It's also though I mean there more complicated dimensions of consciousness that awareness many many animals have. It's not so unusual in nature and experience is not so unusual in nature and what it is likeness is not so unusual in nature.

What we have in addition to that uh are these layers of uh kind of recursive layers of self-consciousness. The fact that not only are we aware but we're aware that we're aware. we're aware. we're aware. Um that's pretty kind of trippy when you think about it. And we have a sense of self also uh which is a product of consciousness. Uh it's it's certainly not a product of brains. I mean, we've never been able to locate the self in the in the gray matter. Um in terms of why it matters, that's a that's a really big question.

I mean, many people go through life not thinking about consciousness or the fact that they are conscious beings and this rock is not a conscious being. Um, but I found that paying attention to it was incredibly rewarding and that we take our consciousness for granted. There are certain experiences certain experiences certain experiences that make us see it and feel it and being more conscious is to be more present. Uh, more present to experience, more present to reality and it's just a fuller life. But there's also, I think, a particular urgency about paying attention to consciousness right now, which is that there are uh technologies and corporations that are eager on kind of colonizing your consciousness.

Um, if you think about social media, it has colonized all that stray time in which we are more fully conscious of our environment, of ourselves. uh you know, think of standing online, you know, at the cash machine or whatever and um we used to look around, think, plan our dinner, daydream, wonder about the person in front of us online. Now we scroll on our phones. Now, you have to be conscious to scroll on your phone obviously, but it's a pretty minimal consciousness compared to what's possible.

And I think that that uh problem that that social media has given us is being amplified right now by AI because AI uh chat bots are pretending to be conscious and fooling people that they are. And in the same way social media allowed companies to kind of hack our attention, they're now with AI hacking our our emotions, our attachment. you know, this very central human need to attach to other people. Many people are are starting to fall in love with chat bots and have, you know, meaningful relationships with machines, which I basically think is very dangerous and is the is the very definition of dehumanizing dehumanizing dehumanizing when when you're relating to a machine like that.

But so so that's another another uh kind of urgency. I I think we need to think hard about our consciousness and how we might reclaim that precious space of interiority from these technologies and and corporations that have designs on it. So two parts there. The first is becoming conscious of your consciousness, aware of your awareness. It just helps you live a more it thrusts you into the present moment. like definitionally it helps you live a more vivid and fulfilled life and on a related note and this is the second part of your argument as I understand it and you'll correct me if I misunderstand it we're in an era where we have and this is your term and I really like this term these colonizers of consciousness in the form of phones generally social media specifically and now even more specifically AI that is you know reducing the aperture of consciousness in ways that can be quite pernitious Yeah, exactly right.

And um we we're giving something away that's really precious and I think we need to reclaim it. And you know, we've all had this experience of what happens when as at a meditation retreat, you put aside your phone for for days or weeks. Things change. You are uh alone with your mind. And other things are happening at a meditation retreat, too. I say the lack of eye contact and the lack of conversation. you really are kind of putting a fence around this this amazing thing of your consciousness and going deep to explore it.

And I found the value of that profound. And it's it's interesting in the book the book gradually makes this transition from really worrying about the hard problem and framing things in this very western male problem solution frame which is the the frame that all the scientists studying consciousness use to realizing well there is the problem of consciousness but then there's the fact of it and I got more and more interested in the fact of it and how does the stream of consciousness work how does medit meditation affect consciousness?

How do psychedelics affect consciousness? Um, so my my the book kind of shifts in focus as time goes on and by the end um well I don't want to give away the ending but um it it's very much about experiencing consciousness um and in which for me became very profound where I I went into a period of isolation. There's a a few days at the end of the book where I'm essentially living in a cave in in New Mexico. Mexico. Mexico. And uh I won't tell you what happened, but it was to I was more alone with my consciousness than I'd been in a long time.

I should add though that it can be hard to be alone with your consciousness. It isn't always wonderful. There's a reason, I think, that we want to be distracted. Um we we're willing ourselves to be less conscious, and that's cuz it can be painful. I mean it it causes you to examine yourself. You know, the mind can be a scary place to be and and particularly for people who've had a traumatic past um who are struggling with um you know, profound issues uh of mortality or relationships.

So, I totally get the desire to escape this place. Um, but in the end, I don't think we're going to be satisfied in our lives without learning how to occupy it and defend it. defend it. defend it. In terms of the defending it or reclaiming it, as you referred to it earlier, for people listening who may not, you know, want to go on a meditation retreat or be able to go on a meditation retreat. And just side note, I am going to come back to your meditation retreat experiences eventually, but just staying at the sort of shallower end of the pool.

What do you recommend or what do you do personally in day-today life to defend or reclaim your consciousness? Well, I do meditate every day and not for a very long time. usually for like 20 minutes and that that that's just a kind of reminder of this phenomenon and it it it calls my attention to it and I'm I'm really struck at how strange it is the the kinds of images that come up, the kinds of um snatches of narrative that come up. I feel like I'm in touch with some interesting forces within me and um so before I enter the day which is going to pull me this way and that way uh whether it's the email cue or the zoom meetings or the conversations with people I'm going to have to like put aside a lot of my interiority for that period of time but I have that little anchor every morning.

Um, and I think that's that's one thing. The other thing is, you know, really trying to get on top of our distractions and getting, you know, putting myself in nature. Um, nature speaks with a much, you know, quieter, subtler voice than most of the things we deal with every day. And um so going out in nature place where you know in my case there's no cell phone reception or I leave my phone home is another way to kind of reconnect and um uh so you know I try to make some time every day and at the beginning of the day it's meditation end of the day it's a hike in Tilden Park above uh above Berkeley.

Um so those two things help but I need to be reminded too. I can I can completely get absorbed in um you know social media or watching the news. I mean all these things that are you know yanking our attention away from consciousness and and our families and our presence and our where we are where we actually are. I want to go back to our daily or dailyish or occasional whatever cadence you prefer uh meditation practice our short bursts of meditation. I think I I can imagine a listener thinking well you know I meditate once in a while but I don't think of it in terms of consciousness uh you know I just you know try to focus on my breath or something else u sounds in the environment whatever I pick something to focus on loving kindness phrases and then every time I get distracted I start again and again and again and I thought I was doing meditation correctly but now you Michael Pollen are coming in and talking about consciousness but I don't really think about it in those terms and therefore am I doing it incorrectly No, no, no, no, no.

It's just it's just a name. I'm I'm putting a name on that space that you're occupying that you're saying to yourself, "Oh [ __ ] I forgot. I lost the breath. I better get back to it." So, I think of it as a as a place, a space. And um that's kind of where you're operating when you're meditating. I I don't think it's any different than what I'm describing. I think I'm just putting a name to it. And you know, one of the things that strikes me, I mean, we all worry we're doing it wrong, right?

Um, for me, I get a if I'm meditating, well, there's a lot of kind of hypnogogic imagery that kind of those kind of snatches of narrative or images that pop up right before you fall asleep. And it's not like I'm sleepy or anywhere near falling asleep, but for me, when I'm meditating, well, all that material uh is seems free to enter into my consciousness. And it's really interesting. Um, and I'll I'll watch that and sometimes drift along with it in a way you're probably not supposed to, but um, but you know, our attention, which I mean, that is a term you I'm sure you think about in terms of meditation.

You know, am I attending to the breath or focus? I mean, those are elements of consciousness, tools of consciousness. Um, you know, where we aim our attention. uh it's the it's it's it's kind of the outward um focus of consciousness. Um but there are other elements too and you know there are emotions and feelings and um and then all that weird imagery that's floating up from who knows where. I mean, one can play with the weird imagery or random thoughts in a way that points you directly at consciousness simply by asking who ordered this dish.

Yeah. Or Yeah. Who thought this thought? Who who perceived this perception? And of course that's a an exercise in meditation and usually you come up empty and that's really interesting too. I mean one of the things that meditation does and this is obvious to people who meditate seriously is raise profound questions about the self uh and whether it is real or a hallucination or a construction. construction. construction. And I mean I have a meditation teacher here in Berkeley and that's a big part of what he does.

Um which is take you down a path and then just say okay let's take a look who's who's having those thoughts or are those thoughts thinking themselves and that you know going back to David Hume in the like what the 1740s that that operation of looking inside to find the self which he recommended and of course failed to do. He he said, "I you know, I went inside myself and I saw perceptions and thoughts and feelings and and there was never a lack of those, but I could not find who was having those perceptions, thoughts, and feelings." And that's, you know, that raises big questions about something we all take for granted.

I mean, that's kind of the mo more subversive piece of meditation, I think, is to lead people to overturn this assumption that they are identical with their sense of self or ego. the not finding there's in Tibetan practice they often say the not finding is the finding. So the the point is is to to look who's taking delivery of all these perceptual packages and when you can't find anything well that's the point you're you're seeing that all there is is you know phenomena arising perceptions. Yeah.

I like the way you you involve FedEx in consciousness there. there. there. You know they're they're a sponsor of the show Michael. So if you're listening FedEx, um we we would gladly take you as a sponsor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's arising in this consciousness is greed right now. So but at least I'm seeing it clearly. So we're we're saying a little bit more because you dedicate a whole chapter to this you called it I think radical idea that the self is an illusion. Maybe just Yeah.

I'd be curious. I struggle with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all do, I think, because we can resolve to make something happen and then make it happen. And who's doing that? I mean, we do take actions all the time. So, I'm not 100% convinced that the self is an illusion, but I get it. Uh, I did an exercise with Matthew um Ricard, the uh, you know, the uh, French scientist turned Buddhist monk. Uh, very interesting guy. He's written a lot on the self. And I was saying is are there any any meditation exercises I could use to explore this question?

Because it it is one of the questions in the book. And he said yes. Imagine your mind as a house of many rooms and there is a thief in the house and go through every room until you find the thief. And you go through the room and lo and behold you find nothing. And he said that thief is the self and you can't find it. Now then I had this weird okay so interesting exercise um similar to what David Hume did right looking inside for the self but then I had this interesting experience of of being hypnotized uh by a Stamford psychiatrist named David Spiegel who's a great believer and uses hypnosis in his practice and I asked him I said could you hypnotize me and I want to try this exercise under hypnosis So he put me into a light trance.

Turns out I'm, you know, we're all we all have a are either very hypnotizable, mildly so, or not at all. Turns out I'm like nine out of 10. Not hard to hypnotize. And I did this exercise going through the rooms of my head. And instead of finding nothing, I found a different self in every room. I found my like 13-year-old bar mitzvah boy self. I saw my 32-year-old young father self, you know, each dressed differently, looking differently. So, I found like six selves and I never got to get back to Ricard on that what that meant.

It also it did deconstruct the idea that there is this unitary abiding self um that there are many that the self is many things. But it didn't sort of fit uh the you know the official uh Buddhist idea I think. So I'm I'm somewhat agnostic about the self. Um I do think however and did conclude that the um self and consciousness are not the same. In other words that you can have consciousness without a self. And there I think and that might seem like a strange idea but people who've uh meditated more extensively than I report this feeling of being conscious of very aware but no sense of self and it's something that happens on psychedelics too.

It can on a high dose and I did once have this experience of complete self-dissolution. self-dissolution. self-dissolution. I saw myself explode in a cloud of blue Post-it notes that then fluttered to the ground like um snow and then they coalesed in this pool of blue paint and it was like that was me and I knew it was me but I was looking at it from this selfless purely objective completely calm perspective and not troubled by it at all. And if that sounds weird, if you think about, and this is a practice, um the moment when you wake, the first 500 milliseconds when you don't quite know who you are or where you are, that is an experience of no self, everybody has every day.

We don't think about it cuz we just wait for everything to click in and and start again. Um but we all know that moment where like, who am I? Where am I? Am I? Um, and it's worth paying attention to um, because it helps you take on board the idea that the self and consciousness might not be identical or that you're not even identical to your ego and that you'll survive its death or temporary dissolution. You know, the self is is very funny in that we all in our culture at least kind of celebrate it.

You know, we talk about the importance of self-confidence. self-confidence. self-confidence. Uh, we we practice self-interest. Um, we're told that it's very important to our success and it is right. It is our ego that helps you get your writing done, my writing done, making podcast. On the other hand, we put a lot of energy into escaping or transcending ourselves. And, you know, we we look for very absorbing experiences, right? We we go, you know, we we take physical risks. We want to put ourselves in that place of flow.

Um, and I I'm very curious about that paradox that we celebrate the self and then work like hell to transcend it and and through meditation too. It's one of the reasons people meditate and or take psychedelics because they feel tyrannized by their self. So uh you know I that's something I explored in the book and in my own mixed feelings about the self but there's a sense of uh liberation I felt in that in that psychedelic experience when the self disappeared uh it felt like so right and one of the things that happens when the self dissolves is that the walls come down you know the ego is a is a defensive structure among other things and it uh puts a wall between us and other people, us and nature, us and you know everything out there and the experience you have and this is true in meditation too and I I have to say I've only had glimpses of it in meditation um there is a sense of merging with something larger uh that happens when those walls come down and for me in that psychedelic experience it was a piece of music in this Bach unaccompanied cello suite and the subject object distinction fell away and I just was that piece of music and it was the most profound and beautiful experience of music I'd ever had.

But some people merge with nature, some people merge with, you know, others and and they they feel like they're connected to to others in this, you know, bath of love. So, some very interesting things happen when the self dissolves, but we're also afraid of it because it's kind of like a a death practice to let yourself go. The best B2B marketing often gets wasted on the wrong people. I can't tell you how often I'm scrolling and I get served ads for stuff I have no interest in.

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And one of the things I always make sure to say is, "Don't worry if this doesn't make sense. Kind of let it wash over you." uh in my experience just kind of letting the idea just letting myself marinate in the idea over time allowed it to make sense a little bit more and even then it only I have like episodic moments of clarity but but on one specific point I just want to make a build and see what you think or do a build and see what you think you you were kind of answering the question like so what why whether the self is real or not can feel hopelessly you know abstract act at first at least.

But it's not um for one reason that you articulated which is, you know, if you're not so owned by the ego, then there's much more room for everybody and everything else. You know, the the walls come down and and we know what, you know, the the essential ingredient really for human flourishing is contact and connection and um with other people and with the world. So yes, there's that and but that even that can sound a little grandiose and you know it's the the apex predator of all spiritual cliches is oneness with the universe and that you know it can sound a little like hard to get a toe hold in.

But so I would offer something a little bit more modest which is when you learn to not take everything that comes up in your mind so personally and so seriously well then you can work with it more. So if if you move from viewing any anger that comes up in the mind as my anger, I'm I'm like this. I'm always going to be like this. I feel shame about being like this. I can't get out of this anger to no, this is just a um a meteorological system moving through inherently temporary, not mine, or as one Buddhist monk put it, to call it mine is a misappropriation of public property.

Well, it just becomes much more workable. So I'm curious what what you think about that. I do. I I totally agree. Um Joseph Goldstein, you know, puts this has a very nice way of dealing with this, which is put it in the passive voice. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh instead of saying I am anger angry, uh anger is happening, anger is being known. And suddenly you've separated that you know that tight identification. It's interesting. We work very hard to identify ourselves with our thoughts. But one of the things that happens in meditation is you find these thoughts happening on their own.

M and and to me that's one of the most interesting things about it is that tight uh identity of me and my thoughts falls apart really quickly for me and and things are just popping up that I don't want to think or or didn't think I thought and that's kind of I don't know one of the things I find interesting about meditation is it gets you in touch with the sheer strangeness of your mind and and and how much how much is going on and that you realize that consciousness is like probably the tip of the iceberg.

There are things there's a lot I mean and we know this actually it's not a guess because the brain is busy monitor you know does all sorts of things automatically. It's kind of incredible what it does automatically, right? It's it's, you know, regulating your heart rate, your blood pressure, your blood gases. Uh it's perceiving lots of things in your environment without rising to your awareness. The I think the question is why isn't it all automatic? Why is there this space of awareness for you know, which I think is for decisionmaking?

But anyway, things are bubbling up from there. And there's a there's a scientist I I interviewed quite a few times named uh Kina Kristoff who's a psychologist at UBC and she studies experienced meditators since they're expert at noticing what's going on in their mind to see she asked them she puts them in an MRI and says all right meditate try to empty your mind which she says people can only do for like 10 seconds. Um she she said her biggest discovery about meditation is that you know it only works for short amounts of time in her experience.

Anyway, so press a button when a thought occurs. And what she's found really interesting is there's 4 seconds that elapse which is you know a year in brain time between uh her spotting activity in the hippocampus and the awareness of that idea, memory, thought, whatever. So there's some process and it's elaborate and slow by which unconscious material forces its way into our awareness when we've when we think we've kind of cleared the decks. Um we don't know what's happening but something's happening and some stuff's getting up and through and some is not.

So, it's just another example of the um the sheer strangeness of how our minds work. I'm going to say something else and see if you agree with to see if you agree with me. Um I I I'm completely with you on the strangeness of it. But again, my mind goes right to the liberative potential, the the utility of it. And for me, it's not only the awe that gets produced when I see the strangeness of my own mind and how involuntary so much of it is.

And by the way, just side note on the stuff that does feel voluntary, like the directed thinking, I'm now going to think about X. Well, upstream from that, I mean, how voluntary was the impulse to to decide? But back on point, the liberating aspect here is to me at least, and I'm I'm and I'm I'm checking this with you, is well, if so many of my thoughts and emotions are involuntary, well then can't I drop the shame that I feel around a bigoted thought or a angry or greedy thought.

I mean, I I often experience some judgment or some, you know, some judgment about somebody else, some uncharitable thought, some greed or or unh wholesome unspeakable impulse that arises in my mind and then and then I tell myself a whole story about who I am because I've just seen this thing flit through the mind. But if I can view it all as nature, well then, as uh to quote another Buddhist monk, it's it's it's not my fault that this stuff is happening, but it is my responsibility.

So that doesn't let me off the hook, but it it it does help me uncoil out of shame. shame. shame. Am I making any sense to you? Well, it Yeah, it does. It kind of weakening that link of identity of you and it and that to the extent you see these thoughts as as passing through. I think it helps and you're less invested in them. But in terms of responsibility, I mean, that's interesting. I mean, the whole kind of ethical implications of this, I I I'm not sure I totally understand.

Um, I think that you could look at all this and think, oh, this is a disowning of responsibility, except what happens in the in the private space of our own minds and and I haven't used the word private to this point, but I think it's very important to this idea of consciousness that it is a zone of privacy. M anything goes in there you know it's whether you act on things or not that is m that's when ethics enters the picture when there's behavior involved and you know having bigoted thoughts or ugly thoughts or or uh unacceptable fantasies that's what consciousness is good for.

So I I'm kind of like let it rip you know as long as it stays in there. Yeah. I think where it gets tricky is um you might under the influence of enough meditation notice that you have a a pronounced and hereto for unseen bias that you've been acting out of your whole life and so there there you do then have some responsibility to deal with it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And let it go. But the ability to let thoughts go is huge. I mean, I think that uh so many of our problems and mental health challenges revolve around rumination.

The fact that we get stuck in these circles of thought and they're often self-critical, but breaking that breaking out of those circles, I think, is is really important. And meditation can help and and we also know psychedelics can help. I mean it's it's it's very interesting to watch how psychedelic therapy has evolved to uh address rumination and rumination is at the basis not only of depression and anxiety and OCD but also addiction. Addiction is a ruminative behavior. It's very repetitive. It's out of our control. And um there's a there's an interesting study going on at Harvard now looking at um rumination as a as a root cause of uh a variety of different mental illnesses uh using psychedelics to see can you can you break those patterns.

It's interesting. I I had a conversation with a psychiatrist uh a few years ago and I was reporting on psychedelic therapy and its value and um for how to change your mind and I said isn't this a little suspicious that the same drugs psilocybin is being used to treat anxiety, depression, OCD, addiction, addiction, addiction, um eating disorders and uh it seems like too it seems like a panacea and he said and this is a guy who'd been head of the National Institute of Mental Health, a psychiatrist very prominent uh and he said, "Well, how do you know they're all different?

Maybe they're all symptoms or manifestations of the same stuck brain." Yes. Yes. Yes. And of course, what that brain is stuck in is is rumination. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, I think a danger of meditation is that freed of external distractions, some people ruminate um you know, during meditation and really get stuck. uh and that's you know it's counterproductive but it it can happen. happen. happen. I would say that's not necessarily a danger of meditation properly understood. I think it's a danger of meditation without proper instruction.

I think you're probably right. Although the tendency will surface you just know how to deal with it. Yes. Yes. Yes. But what do you recommend for people who get stuck in ruminative thoughts on meditation? meditation? meditation? Go back to the breath. Yeah. Well, first the thing I would say is it's completely natural. You don't need to beat yourself up for it. you're not the moment you've noticed it is success. Even if it you noticed it after 25 minutes of a 30-minut session, that's still a good meditation session.

That's more metacognition. That's more self-awareness um self and scare quotes uh than most people get in a lifetime. So yeah, I I set the bar really low. Um and so if you if you're noticing that you keep ruminating in meditation, I hear a good practice. It's like good. good. good. That's the point. I'll I'll tell my wife because she struggles with that. You know, we meditate together and I'll say after, "How was it?" And she's, "Oh, you know, I was stuck on this and this and this." And I'll tell her, "Well, good.

You you recognize that you were stuck on this and this and this." Yeah, that's um there are further refinements that a um you know a Joseph Goldstein or a Sharon Salsberg could provide obviously cuz and I'm not nearly at that level, but my reflex response to your wife would be gold star, you know, like that's you're doing it right, keep going. Um I uh you know I I spent time with Joan Halifax, the Zen um priest uh in in the last part of this book and she had described Upupaya, her retreat center, as a as a factory for the deconstruction of selves.

And I was very curious how that happens. that happens. that happens. And I asked her how, you know, how do people get to that point? And these are people who come for a retreat for several weeks. Some of them come for years and it's Zen practice so it's got the least amount of support really. Um and you know you're just staring at a wall. Uh and she said I said what do people think about and she said they um well they ruminate and they plan and she said after about 3 days they are so sick of the reruns in their minds that they drop in.

Yeah. And there's some other things that are done to to facilitate this, but she just thinks it's sheer amount of time spent in front of in the Zeno in front of the wall and you just get so bored with yourself uh that you open up to the group uh and the self slips away. Um but she could time exactly when it happened for most people. I love Roshi Joan. She's been on the show a bunch. I'll drop some links in the show notes to my conversation.

She taught me a lot. So I'd be curious and there there are a bunch of like practices that emerge in the book that I that I want to talk about with you. But before we go there to the extent that you're comfortable and I know you said earlier you don't want to give it all away but there is this kind of climactic scene in the book and the chapter is called uh the cave uh where you're meditating in a cave. So um what can you tell us about that experience?

Oh I'm happy to tell you anything about it. Just kidding. If you're reading this book because of suspense, uh, it's not going to work. Um, well, as the, you know, I mentioned the book kind of starts with science and there's a lot of stuff on the science of consciousness and the the the challenges that it faces and and um, it's a relatively new science and we figured out certain things about consciousness, but not the hard problem remains pretty hard. And then I went looking for other ways of knowing and one of them is literature.

Uh you know novelists and poets know an awful lot about consciousness. Um and I interview a stream of consciousness writer and talk about Joyce and Virginia Wolf and um that's where we went for a couple hundred years to understand the consciousness of other people uh because novelists can penetrate it and poets too. But I also knew that Buddhists uh knew important things about consciousness and had been thinking about it for a long time. So, I thought I would reach out to Roshi Joan, who I'd met a couple times um and and really liked and admired.

And um I asked her if I could come to Upupaya and hang out for a while. And I thought what I would do is just kind of join the the the retreat members and the and the practicing, you know, the the aspiring monks and get into their routine uh and meditate with them. But she said, "No, I I've got a much better idea for you. We're going to go up to the refuge, which was this place that Upupaya owns uh that's um couple hours north in the mountains, very isolated, off the grid.

And when you go there, there's a series of huts um where she some of she sends students and she'll send people up there and you're living without, you know, plumbing or electricity for um for years at a time. And um she said, "And I think you should stay in the cave." And I'm like, "Cave?" And she said, "Don't worry, it's a five-star cave. You'll be comfortable." comfortable." comfortable." Which wasn't quite true. Uh and the cave was another long hike from this little village of huts, uh where she has a house and spends a lot of time.

It's a beautiful place. And so I went into this cave and I was living there for a few days. And it was a it turned out to be a very profound experience. Um I was so far off the grid that I could almost feel the absence of electromagnetic waves. You know, there was like there was a profound silence and I felt like the world had really dropped away. I had nothing to do. Uh my phone obviously wouldn't work. Uh I and I spent my time um you know sweeping the threshold and making tea.

There was a meditation platform. There was a single bed. There was a battery hooked up to a solar uh array so I could get some power to read at night. Um and there was a little camp stove and 5gallon jug of water. And uh I just kind of sunk into this silence and I spent a lot of time meditating and um I was able to meditate for hours at a time which I'd never been able to do and I just felt this kind of sense of time you know forcehortening.

I mean I'm someone who's normally in the future you know the the near future worrying about what has to happen what I have to do and I found the future falling away and I found the past falling away. And I realize when you when your sense of the past and the future are not present, your self shrinks. I mean we we don't have a self unless we can connect it to a story of the person to which all this happened and then uh and then the person who has these goals or objectives.

I mean that's the self is is a product of time in many ways. and that kind of fell away and I um I just sort of felt as though I was in touch with uh I was just more present to nature. Um it was interesting at a certain point my routine became a meditation. the sweeping of the of the threshold, the um you know the digging of pit toilets in the woods, the making of a a pot of tea, all this became very ritualized and was in a way I was more present then than I was when I was meditating.

And when I was meditating, I was going off in all these crazy places and all this strange imagery. Um and that was kind of like I don't know too almost too active. Um, but when I was not meditating or or or I felt like I was meditating with my eyes open, um, I was as present as I've ever been. Uh, and it was, you know, it was a a wonderful experience. And I realized at a certain point Joan, who who kept evading my attempts to interview her in in classic Zen uh, fashion, you know, she knew I wanted she knew I was in I was in my head when I told her about this consciousness project.

She was like, "You're hopeless and um we're going to get that out of going to we're going to get that out of you and you just need to be and you know, she it was kind of like an experiential co-an that she was posing for me. Stop thinking go live in the woods for you know 4 days and um and she was right in our interview. We finally had an interview and I described what was happening and she called what I was experiencing the sacredness of the everyday." um that when your everyday chores become ritual that is a practice too and I had never never been aware of that but she also said with regard to consciousness um you you need to get comfortable with the the don't know mind and that when you give up trying to understand something in that classic western male problem solution mode which which involves a narrowing of focus right what's called sometimes spotlight light consciousness.

Um, you can open up to something with 360 degrees of awareness instead of one degree of awareness. And the don't know mind admits wonder, admits awe. And so that was her lesson to me and it was a great teaching and she did it essentially by putting me in this spot and letting me fend for myself. I love that story. Paleo Valley is a health and wellness brand that focuses on creating nutrient-dense, whole food sourced organic products. The brand's mission is to create nutrient-dense snacks and supplements without unnecessary additives like preservatives, chemicals, or added sugar.

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Head to paleo valley.com/happier valley.com/happier valley.com/happier or use code happier at checkout for 15% off your purchase. That's paleo valley.com/happier valley.com/happier valley.com/happier or just use the code happier at checkout. So, the two things I want to uh double click on are um don't know mind and uh the the sacredness of of the everyday because these these really do seem like things that a listener could do without having to live in a cave or befriend Roshi Joan Halifax. So, let's just start with the sacredness of the everyday.

Um, can you just say a little bit about how we might turn this turn our chores or the humdrum activities of our quotidian life into something elevated? Yeah. Um, something else Joseph Goldstein said at that meditation retreat I was at, uh, was what he he talked a lot about walking meditation, which I'd never really gotten. uh it seemed kind of dumb and the more I slowed down the more I lost my balance. He said during a walking meditation, think just this. So when you're sweeping the floor, let's say, think just this.

When sweeping the floor, just sweep the floor. It's that these these activities we regard as wrote and intellectually unstimulating unstimulating unstimulating uh approached in the right direction can become profound and and even sacred. It's it's all in our head how we decide to think about it. So the first thing is just do it to the exclusion. Don't try to don't try to multitask. You know when sweeping just sweep when you know brewing tea just brew tea. And I mean that's a you know a zen uh a zen idea but it's it's actually quite powerful uh and it can be hard to do again because of our distractions.

We live very distracted lives but to take those activities those activities those activities uh and elevate them to something important and they are important. This is how we keep our you know our homes clean and orderly and they they just we just are not encouraged to think about them. Why? because it's in no one's commercial interest. Basically, so many of our thoughts are thought by other people uh or thought by companies. I mean that are, you know, it's very hard to defend that space. Uh you know, that's totally uncommercial and uh so that's yeah, so that's what I would say about that.

Um am I good at that? I needed the discipline of the cave to get there. But I try now when I'm doing that, when I'm doing the dishes to just fully absorb myself in it. And you know, I do a better job when I do. I'm feeling notwithstanding my earlier Jeremiahs against shame. Um, I feel a little bit ashamed listening to you talk about this just just because I've I've done so many [ __ ] meditation retreats and meditate every day and help people meditate and yet this stuff with the chores doing them undistracted, you know?

I I mean, I do sometimes, but it's so frequent that I forget. you know, it's like, oh, you know, there's this podcast I'm in the middle of, so I'm going to listen to this while I brush my teeth or while I'm doing the dishes or whatever it is I'm doing instead of just doing the dishes or just brushing my teeth. And you want to be clear, it's not that I feel bad that I'm forgetting to eat my vegetables. When I just do the dishes, I'm way happier.

um opening up Instagram or listening to a podcast less so with podcast but still true with podcast any interaction with the digital is a reliable source of suffering for me I'm just speaking for myself here but it's just just really effective way to dampen my mood and and if I can remember to just brush my teeth what what's what is the predominant sensation Joseph likes to ask when you're brushing your teeth check it out it's actually surprising it's it's not where you think it's going to be.

Um, and I just drop into the sensations and then of course you get distracted, start again. I like life much better when I'm doing that and yet I'm embarrassed to admit how often I forget to do it. Yeah, it's really hard. You know, we have all these opportunities for multitasking. Uh, some of them new. I mean, being able to put in your AirPods and and uh listen to a podcast or music while you're doing the dishes or while you're walking. You know, I realize sometimes I've I've got I can't leave the house without putting in my AirPods and listening to something because I've got to catch up on this or that podcast or or I'm reading a book.

And uh but when that happens, I'm not hearing the bird song. I'm not hearing the wind. And so the very simple practice of doing one thing at a time is is is a really big deal. And there's so much competition for our attention that doubling up on things is really what we're being sold now. And and and it's so convenient. You know, we're able to carry these powerful computers in our pockets. And what they're doing is like they want us 24/7. There was a quote from the head of Netflix the other day.

He was talking about, you know, theatrical versus streaming and everything. and he said, "You know, we don't we're not competing for your movie time. We're competing for your sleep time." time." time." Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Um so our attention is an incredibly valuable um resource and it's essentially being, you know, stolen from us. us. us. Yep. Yep. Yep. And and sold to the highest bidder. And when we say attention, read our consciousness. And as I said at the beginning, it's it's only going to get worse. you know, we have these machines are now speaking to us in the first person.

I think that is a fateful development for humanity. Um because we are so prone to anthropomorphize everything. We anthropomorphize our you know I mean stuffed animals when we're kids um and uh you know our our cars or you know whatever it is we tend to project human qualities. So when these machines tell us they're conscious and like us and and flatter us endlessly, um we're we're bonding with them. And so that's taking things to a whole other level that you know the attention economy is going to look quaint in a few years.

years. years. You know, it just struck me as I was listening to you talk about the human propensity to anthropomorphize or aka humanize humanize humanize nonhuman actors like LLMs or or teddy bears. is technology. It's interesting. Technology gets us or wants us to humanize LLMs, but it also gets us to dehumanize fellow humans. Yes, that that is part of it. That is part of it. The other thing that's going on with technology, Sher Turkl is this sociologist at MIT who I interviewed and she said, you know, technology allows us to forget what we know about life.

By which she means when we have a conversation with a machine, which we're increasingly doing, we have cheapened the concept of what a conversation is, we we we dumb it down to the level at which the machine can operate. So we forget that a conversation is a full body experience body experience body experience with eye contact, with body language. It's a really intricate thing that through Zoom, but also through interacting with a chatbot, we've reduced to just this stream of words coming back and forth. And that's a cheap idea of of a conversation, but we accept it.

Um, and you know, in a way, the great symbol of this is the emoji that you know, when we accept the emoji as a substitute for emotion, think how much we've given up. But we gladly do it to these machines. It's really weird. Before I lose you, can you talk a little bit about don't know mind and how we can practice it in our lives? And it just seems obvious to me that this is actually not unrelated to our to tech pushing us to dehumanize people we disagree with.

disagree with. disagree with. Yeah. And also to answer all questions whether they know the answer or not. Um you know, LLM's don't know from don't know mind. know mind. know mind. I've I've yet to have one say I don't know. Um know. Um know. Um and they're they're breeding this idea that um knowing is just a matter of asking and uh and an answer will come. And that's kind of not how important questions in the universe seem to to be. Um that there are many questions to which we we can't have answers.

And how we deal with that space of not knowing is um we can act we can be frustrated or we can be open and that not knowing is is a space in which it can be of acceptance but it's also of this kind of you know as I said it's it's it's this trading in this spotlight consciousness for uh what's sometimes called lantern consciousness um which is taking in information the way children do which is not in a pointed way but from all different directions. That distinction I learned from Allison Gobnik who's a colleague at Berkeley and she points out that children have a different kind of consciousness than adults.

It doesn't even rise to the level of don't know. Uh it's not articulated but it's a very uh taking in information from everywhere at once. They seem very distracted and distractable, but that's because they haven't learned to focus in a narrow way the way we do and the way they're taught in school. I think you have to acquire spotlight consciousness to thrive in our society. But before when kids are three, four or five, they're taking in information in a really different way, which is incredibly productive.

I mean, they're learning about the world. Um, and that's how they learn about the world. It's not through books and looking at videos. But we can practice that kind of consciousness too. Um that's kind of you know she describes it as numinous um with lots of awe. I mean kids are bowled over all the time by things that we take for granted. And that's one of the great pleasures of being with young kids. And as she as she puts it, the the closest analogy to that kind of consciousness for adults is when we're on psychedelics.

um where we lose that focus and we suddenly start taking in information from a million different directions. And uh she said, "You know, if you want to know what it's like to be a 4-year-old, um LSD can help." For those of us like me who are terrified of LSD, are there other ways to inhabit the spotlight, sorry, lantern consciousness? consciousness? consciousness? I I you know, I think you can cultivate it. Um I think sometimes it happens in meditation. you have this sense of, you know, 360 degrees of awareness and not you're not focused on the breath.

I mean, it's that it's that open awareness kind of meditation that, you know, is is one one tool, but it's giving up the focus and and essentially allowing everything to come through and simply observe it. I don't know that the child is observing it, but it's more like just having, you know, just all these waves passing through. So I would say that's the yeah that's the closest way short of uh psychedelics uh psychedelics uh psychedelics probably nature too where it it is such a surround sound surround vision um experience.

experience. experience. Yeah, it depends how you I mean I you know that that's one way of being in nature just simply walking open to what you're hearing and seeing. It's weird though. I like to hunt for mushrooms which is bringing spotlight consciousness into uh into that experience. So you can use nature in lots of different ways but I agree that it has enormous power to help us with all these issues we've been talking about um taking us out of ourselves. The experience of awe is uh precious and uh I have another colleague you know Der Kelner who's who's written about awe and he does this and the relationship of awe and the self which is really interesting and he does this very cool exercise where he asks participants in this study to draw a stick figure of themselves on graph paper and then he gives them an experience of awe uh which might be uh river rafting or it might just be a photograph of Euseite blown up and then he asked them to draw themselves again and they draw themselves at least half the size.

the size. the size. Um their self shrinks before this experience of awe. And I think that's a that's a beautiful uh way to get at something we all feel when we feel awe. We feel smaller but in a way that feels great. Before I let you go, Michael, I'm going to abuse my position as host of the show to ask you a bald-faced um self-interested question. just want to run run something by you and this is on the question of psychedelics. I did reference I've said this to you in our prior conversations on the show that I am terrified of like the true psychedelic experiences LSD, Iawaska, psilocybin and yet I I've had this problem.

Well, first of all, I'm just super curious about it and but I haven't been able to get over my fear to do it and especially since for the last four years of my life, I've I've been my my panic disorder has really come roaring back. I'm not feeling like I'm in the right place to do it, but I' i've been wanting to find a way to to work to I've done a ton of therapy or, you know, exposure therapy and other types of therapy for my panic disorder, which mostly shows up in elevators and airplanes.

And um I saw a video recently on Tik Tok of the singer Lord, L O R D E, uh that's her performance name. And she was talking about how she used MDMA assisted therapy to get over her stage fright. So, I have signed up uh to do a dayong MDMA assisted therapy. I have no fear of MDMA because I've done it a lot recreationally and enjoy it immensely. So, I'm not worried about it, but I'm not convinced it's going to quote unquote work either. So, I'm just curious um to hear what you think about any of the foregoing.

Well, I I do think MDMA is much less daunting than classical psychedelics. Uh and in fact there are many guides today who start a psychedelic session with MDMA and you do a couple hours on MDMA which one of the things MDMA does is is lowers activity in the amygdala which is the fear center of course and um you might find after an hour or so on MDMA yeah bring on the psilocybin um it's just less frightening um and and that's uh why I think it's it's it's used sometimes as a kind of appetizer.

But on its own, MDMA is is very powerful and has proven um very useful in therapy. Um going back to the 80s and the 70s when it was legal, it was used by many uh therapists uh to help people with a range of different things. And its value was uh I mean it's two or three-fold. I one is it lowers your fear. The second is there's a there's a flood of oxytocin which is the the bonding hormone and it allows you to form a powerful relationship with the therapist where you're you know uh what might have taken years to develop trust happens like this.

And um and that's very useful because it allows you to open up and talk about things that otherwise would be very hard to talk about. MDMMA is very useful in couples therapy for that reason. People can say things to one another without getting antagonistic or defensive. Panic disorders in particular, I don't know that much about. Um but to the extent that there may be some underlying issue that is leading to the panic disorders, um there's a good chance it could come out on MDMA because one of the things that happens is people bring up material uh from their childhood or or even generations ago.

So it can have a lot of the value of psychedelic therapy without the um you know whatever you're finding frightening about it. I should say though that I was frightened too to do psychedelics. I was worried about what I would learn about myself. Uh that I would have a you know frightening trip and I was kind of forced into it because I was uh committed to write a book about it and and I and my readers expected me to do it. Um but I think when you do these things with a good qualified guide, the risks are mitigated substantially.

substantially. substantially. Um and they can they can walk you through a difficult experience so that it is productive uh and that you can get through the scariest episode uh with the help of uh you know the kind of advice. But the the big advice that I think applies to MDMA as well as psychedelics when you're doing it in a therapeutic context is to simply surrender to what's happening. If you get anxious and try to fight it, you'll get really anxious and perhaps paranoid and and uh but you know, as the guides tell you, in and through um surrender.

And if you keep that mantra in your head, surrender, um invariably you'll pass through whatever difficult patch to to a much happier place. So anyway, uh but having a guide makes all the difference. You know, someone's looking out for your body. You're going to be safe. going back to FedEx. The FedEx guy is not going to come to the door or they're going to answer the door for you. Um, so I think that that makes a a great difference. But, um, I'm happy to hear you're going to uh try this cuz it's it's using MDMA in a therapeutic versus recreational context.

It's a really different drug. I mean, one of the things that's so curious about these substances is how um funible or malleable they are. That in different contexts, they act on you in very different ways. Using these drugs therapeutically, very often you'll have an eye shade on and maybe have headphones on listening to music. And this sends you inside rather than dealing with all the interesting sensory things that are happening. And that change that eye shade is like changing the identity of the substance completely. Um and is uh is very powerful.

So I wish you uh happy trails. I love talking to you Michael. Thank you so so much for making time for this. Um before I really the the truly last question before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book and of your prior books? Uh um just please plug the new book which is my 10th. I'm I'm amazed to think uh is called a world appears a journey into consciousness and this follows on the heels of two books about psychoactives uh how to change your mind about psychedelics in therapy and uh this is your mind on plants which looks at three different substances including caffeine my you know all-time favorite drug um and before that I wrote a series of books about food including the omnivore's dilemma in defense of food and food rules tools and cooked.

And before that, I wrote a book on gardening and and what I was learning in my garden called Second Nature. That was my first book. Amazing career, Michael. Thank you again. again. again. Oh, thank you, Dan. Always a pleasure to talk to