Crazy Wisdom

Check out Francis' Company Invisible Technologies

(0-10 minutes)

Stewart asks Francis: What does meditation mean for you?

He says that being in the present is a bad response because it doesn't accurately reflect what the present is. The future merges with the present. He says you can continue to meditate when doing something mundane like thinking, planning, or abstract reasoning. He says that state of meditation is being connected to source or flow. When you are connected to everything else. This is the state of meditation. He says that meditation is about fully expressing yourself in the cosmos. Meditation is not anti-thought Subscribe

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Stewart responds by saying that sounds like a non-linear reality. Francis says that there was a time when he meditated for 8 hours a day. He did the Santiago de Camino in Spain and started to use headspace, he took an art class in Florence and then continuously increased the time that he meditated until it was eight hours a day. He ended up in monasteries in the east, particularly in Thailand.

At some point, he realized that this meditation practice had permanently shifted him and he could either bring it into his daily life or he would stop living his life and end up in a cave. He said that spending time in Buddhist monasteries leads him to realize the falseness of secluding yourself in a monastery. Practice is meant to be lived.

Francis talks about the Buddhist ideal or messiah, the bodhisattva. He explains that the first movement of Buddhism is realizing that the world is suffering. The second movement of Buddhism is that through meditation we can experience the unity behind all duality. He says that meditation is an act of living death. Its the act of getting used to death before it happens. He says that this consistent with Stoic forms of meditation. He says that if it ends there, then you have a pathetic religion. Francis says that its great that Buddhism doesn't end here and that the third movement of Buddhism is coming down from the mountain and sharing what you have found and fully expressing yourself.

Francis gets into the idea that people who are fully expressing their truth are what the Buddhists refer to as Bhoddisatva's. He says that Donald Trump is a Bhodisatva, that Genghis Khan is a Bodhisattva. That horrible historical figures are more enlightened than your average person who is not fully expressing their own truth or dharma. He says that people like Martin Luther King or other "good" historical figures are also enlightened or bodhisattvas. All of these people, both "Good" and "Bad" fully expressed themselves. They took a position and risked being wrong.

From here Francis gets into the historical evolution of Zen and how it is a combination of Buddhism and Taoism that merged in China. He talks about the great historical loss of great temples in China under Communism. He discusses the Yin Yang symbol of Taoism and how it represents duality and how duality becomes one. Male and female are one. Good and evil are one. Past and future are one. They are both present. We are all playing our part.

(10-20 minutes)

Stewart talks about how Enlightenment itself is misunderstood and that the actual state of enlightenment is not a concept but a way of being or an experience. He says that this whole comparison of enlightened beings kind of misses the points because each experience of enlightenment is a unique and subjective awareness of unity. He expresses that talking about enlightenment and comparing different historical figure's state of enlightenment gets into murky territory. He questions the validity of comparing different states of enlightenment.

Francis responds that validity itself is a dogmatic word. It implies that there is one right way to do things, a scripture or a code that will tell you how to get there. How to find enlightenment. He offers that the explanation of enlightenment as someone who continuously comes back to the present is a trite one. True enlightenment comes from fully expressing your own truth, no matter what that entails. Essentially Francis says that if you are red, be red. If you are blue, be blue. But if you are blue, do not try to be red, blue, green and everything else. You have to choose to be who you really are.

He returns to the idea of Trump being a bodhisattva because he believes that the person who is fully expressing their truth and triggering everyone around them is challenging everyone else to live their truth and express what reality wants them to become. He says that this is why he doesn't like normal people. They are ignoring their god given destiny and hiding from reality. He likes villains and heroes because at least they are playing in the drama of life.

Francis brings up an important point about the three movements of Buddhism he mentioned earlier in regards to movement two and how meditation brings on a sort of psychological death. He says that with this psychological death comes the philosophical underpinnings of nihilism and that this is a dangerous field to play in. He says he considers himself a Taoist and Taoism has managed to fully move past this stage of nihilism.

Francis talks about how in Zen monasteries they tend to decondition new participants harshly so that they come to find reality faster. They ask questions and any verbal or intellectual answer comes with a slap in the face. The proper answer could be something like a shout, something that fully expresses the terror or joy of a life being lived as opposed to the dry intellectual understanding of life. This leads to the realization that the truth is beyond words.

Stewart asks Francis about how the three movements of Buddhism played itself out in Francis' own life.

Francis explains that his own journey through these three movements of Buddhism was precipitated by the failure of his first company, Everest, along with the failure of his first ideology. He explains a little bit about his own life story. He grew up in San Diego, in the suburbs. He says its so nice that its horrible. It's purgatory.

He says that his first blessing in his life was taking a five-year course on the great books of western history. He says that going to Cornell barely taught him anything, but he kept on reading the great book and his education flourished on its own as opposed to the schooling. After university, he started his first company which tied in with his first ideology. He built an app that helped people complete their goals. He thought technology could be used to make humans better at being human, i.e. accomplish their goals. He thought he could build an ecosystem to support this. He was building an educational system

(20-30 minutes)

Francis explains his story of developing his own ideology while he develops his first company, Everest. He says that he believed in truth, a final truth. He believed in Good and Evil. He thought that questions have answers. That it was possible to develop a unified theory of everything. He believed that someday humanity might grasp objective reality. He realized through reading that when reading an amazing book he would feel enlightened, he would feel like he would understand reality. Then, of course, he realized that feeling would go away and he would realize that he doesn't know.

He explains how this ideology and his company failed. He made the mistake of not charging users and tried to use the Facebook strategy of growing very large and capturing a small amount of value. He and his team thought that everyone has goals so it would be a universal app that anyone could use to achieve goals. This failed because he realized that most aspirational products are just that, aspirational. Nike doesn't make money when people exercise, it makes money when people want to exercise. Amazon doesn't make money when people read books, they make money when people want to read books, etc. The failure to achieve goals is a deep-rooted human issue that technology might not be able to fix. People fail to achieve what they set out to do and building a business that tries to solve this problem didn't work.

Francis realizes that goals themselves are a flawed construct. Goals are a really bad way to frame decisions or actions. The goal "get fit" is a very vague one. Goals are preconstructed blueprints that we try to fit on top of reality instead of listening to what reality makes clear. Humans are bad at defining goals and really anticipating what the human will need in the future. Reality is very complex and even though our brains are very advanced, they have very little chance of developing theory or goals that accurately map reality.

This failure broke him. He spent $3 million. His team lost their jobs. He was distraught and undertook his mindfulness journey through the world. This brought him to the point of nihilism and lack of meaning.

(30-40 minutes)

He puts this into the perspective of the 20th century where we had complete destruction with WWII and then it turned into peace and a golden age for the world. People thought that History had ended and we were all good from here on out. Then people realized that's not really the case, we are just in a break. We are actually in what TS Elliot calls the wasteland. Francis says that the West started to turn towards the east for answers to more deep questions of human consciousness and existence.

Stewart argues that instead of looking at the West looking towards the East for answers, he says that the West actually looked back in time at what the East had written. Just as what happened in the dark ages in the West, the East also experienced a period of darkness and a loss of the wisdom that they had developed. We are still only just discovering much of the wisdom of the past.

Francis argues that this loss and then rediscovering of what had happened in the past lead to the rise of nationalism and stories being created that lead to the rise of national consciousness and thus fascism in places like Japan and Germany.

He says that the best person to read for understanding the world today is Rene Gerard. Rene says that we need enemies and that if we don't find one we will invent one, a scapegoat. Society will unite to kill the enemy and sacrifice the scapegoat.

Stewart says that again when the west looked towards the east for wisdom they also looked at it with their own filters and perceptions. When we rediscovered Buddhism we changed what Buddhism was into something we could understand. Francis says that we have created a monstrous caricature.

Francis explains how he sees a consumerist culture in New York that creates a political correctness that is false and superficial and is based on fear. He goes on to explain the beauty of Nietzsche.

(40-50 minutes)

David Foster Wallace ended up grappling with this nihilism and ended up committing suicide. To combat this humans end up in commercialist paradises like Sweden or San Diego. We try to mold the world so that we feel secure and safe with our creature comforts. Francis says that most of his millennial friends want to move to Sweden and look up to Sweden.

(50-60 minutes)

He describes Nietzche as the romantic nihilist. He was able to complete the Buddhist journey and have a victory over nihilism. He was able to say I'm not sure if God exists, I'm not sure if heaven exists, or if there is a goal. He was able to see that society was also confused. Amongst all this confusion, Neitchze was able to assert that his values were correct and true, even though he was not able to really say for sure that they were. Essentially he will do his best and accept the consequences of acting without full knowledge. I don't know what absolute truth is, but here is my version of it.

Francis brings up an interesting point which is that you have to choose what you believe and that when you choose you are choosing not to believe something else. You cannot have both privacy and security. You cannot both express yourself and be politically correct. You cannot be both red and green at the same time.

This realization leads him to start his next and current company Invisible. He realized that the biggest problem is the problem of finding a solution that works for you. There is now technology that can do anything to the problem becomes harnessing the technology to do work humans don't want to do. He built one single bot that coordinates humans and automates the repeated tasks. They automate repetitive work.

(0-10 minutes)

Hannah introduces herself and Within Meditation. Within Meditation studio is in San Francisco and they offer 30 minute guided meditations to people who work in the financial district.

Hannah talks about how she teaches beginners and how that is different from teaching more experienced meditators. Beginners have a lot of expectations and they aren't sure what exactly meditation is. This requires Hannah to be more present throughout the meditation with cues to come back to the breath and the body. When she teachers more experienced practitioners, she usually leaves a lot more silence as that is what they are looking for.

We talk about our mutual experiences with Vipassana. Stewart asked Hannah which day was the worst day. She says that day 3. Stewart asks her about integrating after the ten-day meditation retreat. She says that in Vipassana on day 8 they usually talk about how people can bring back what they have learned on retreat. She said that a voice inside her said, "having a child is a way to bring love incarnate into this world". At the time she had never wanted kids and after the retreat, she ended up coming back and having two of them!

She talks about how having kids is an amazing experience of unconditional love. Stewart mentions that they originally taught him how to do loving-kindness or Metta meditation and Hannah's description of being a parent perfectly describes this.

Stewart asks Hannah where she got the idea for Within Meditation. She says that she noticed that in other countries with meditation traditions that they don't consider ten days to be too long. Here in the west, 10 days is a really long time. She realized that for people with busy lives the best way to introduce meditation is in short sessions and she started offering 30-minute sessions to people at pop-up events. Then they found a space in the financial district.

(10-20 minutes)

Stewart explains his own meditation practice and story and how he worked in office environments. He explains how he met a founder at a cryptocurrency event recently that reminded him of this intense energy that founders have when they try to create something out of nothing against a lot of barriers. He asks Hannah how she deals with this intense fire energy that founders have or how does it show up in her work.

Hannah replies that when she takes her teaching into office environment's she often meets people who are skeptical about the whole practice. She says that skeptical people often say that they have good thoughts and they want to hold on to them because they are good. She tells these people to ask themselves "What are we doing right now? Are we just thinking or is there something else going on?".

This reminded Stewart about a time on meditation retreat where he had a good business idea and he couldn't do anything about it at the moment. He couldn't let it go and it caused him to have insomnia. Once he learned how to let it go he was able to find that there will always be more ideas, but very few ideas that you actually want to spend your time or energy on.

We talk about how creativity arises out of a natural byproduct of the meditative state and a quiet mind. Not a permanently quiet mind, but a mind that finds the spaces in between the thoughts.

Hannah says that a lot of beginners realize that their minds and neurosis are running their lives. They realize that meditation is a non-pharmaceutical way of calming the mind and letting go of the neurosis.

Stewart explains that a lot of beginners have an idea of what meditation will be like. He asks Hannah how she helps people move away from these preconceived ideas of meditation. She says that she helps them realize that mindfulness meditation is a method for coming back to the present reality. As Thich Nacht Hahn says, mindfulness is keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality.

(20-30 minutes)

Hannah talks about coming back from Vipassana and the difference between practicing alone and practicing with a group. She says that when she got back she needed to find a group of people who she could practice with and found her teacher Michael Mcalister.

Stewart asks Hannah about her favorite Dharma books. She says that Eckhart Toll's "The Power of Now"and Jack Kornfield's "The Path with the Heart".

Stewart mentions that "The Power of Now" was the first book that got him into a mindfulness practice. He also mentions that he has been reading J. Krishnamurti.

Stewart asks Hannah about Within meditation and where she sees it going for the next couple years. She says that she wants to fill the room and build the community.

We discuss "How do you sell meditation?" Stewart brings up headspace and the other apps that have actually got consumers purchasing meditation services. Hannah says that apps are great for beginners, but that they don't serve the purpose of having a teacher give accurate feedback in the moment.

Stewart responds by saying that Headspace is going to bring a lot of people into meditation and then a whole bunch of other services and teachers will not be needed to serve this larger population who are now into meditation.

We talk about how prerecorded meditations like Headspace and others are a different experience than live ones. In live meditations, everyone in the room is on the same page and a prerecorded session is more of a solitary undertaking.

Hannah brings up that she likes the meditation apps that give short practices that help people bring mindfulness into their daily lives. Stewart asks her how she helps her students at Within take mindfulness into their daily lives. She says that she gives students a trigger like a stoplight for remembering to stop and take a breath and notice what is going on.

Hannah brings her own experiences up about how she tries to bring mindfulness into her life and she says the biggest practices is with her kids. When she is noticing anger she can regulate her emotions and take a break up.

(30-40 minutes)

Stewart brings up the two main tools that mindfulness gives us: regulation and awareness. Hannah says that when in a formal meditation practice she just uses awareness and whatever comes up she just moves through it without regulation. When she is having difficult moments with her children she uses regulation for example something called affect labeling, essentially labeling what is going on in her experience and choosing to respond skillfully to that.

He asks Hannah about whether she uses any regulation practices when it comes to the breath. She says no. Stewart mentions his own struggles with reverse breathing and how he had to use a lot of breath regulation to help him heal this. He mentions the difference between Buddhist traditions and a lack of breathing exercises as opposed to yoga and its reliance on breathing exercises.

Hannah brings up how she asks her children some time to regulate their breath. This reminds Stewart about how he came back from his meditation journey and he tried to teach his nephew. It didn't work. He wasn't buying it. Hannah tells about her experience at Wisdom 2.0 and how someone asked Jon Kabat-Zinn about teaching your family or the people you love the most. He said, "You don't, just lead by example".

Stewart asks Hannah about the main thing that has changed in her relationship with other people. She says that she learned about her own responsibility in any interaction with another person. She became more empathic and let the wall fall down between her image of herself and how that's different for others. She allowed herself to become messier.

(40-50 minutes)

Hannah talks about the conflict between living in the material world, but then realizing that those things don't really define us.

Stewart asks Hannah what the relationship between evolution and meditation is. She says that it doesn't appear that other animals don't have the ability to be aware of our own awareness, but humans do. We have a linear time frame that other animals don't seem to have.

Stewart brings up epigenetics and how what we do gets expressed in our genes and that meditation seems to have a place in this process. If he had had kids ten years ago, those kids would carry different genes then they would now.

Hannah brings up her experience giving birth and how helpful mindfulness has been for that. She learned how to experience intensity without translating it into pain. Her birth process was pain free thanks to her mindfulness process.

(10-20 minutes)

Andrew talks about his struggle with technology starting when he was 12. He grew up in the suburbs and had a sibling rivalry. Technology created a happy space where he could go to get away from these things.

Technology helped Andrew connect with others, but the problem was that he was always on. At the time he thought it was great.

He accidentally got disconnected from technology for a week and experienced presence and being aware of all the things that were going on when not connected to technology. He realized he had an issue and started to develop his own methods for staying mindful when using technology.

He developed a way of taking notes offline when he wasn't connected to the phone using low-technology but then realized that a hardware device would be way better.

This lead him to create Siempo which is a layer on top of a smartphone operating system that turns your phone experience into a more intentional but less distracting interface.

Stewart explains the evolution of how technology is evolving quickly and human beings are adapting to it slowly. Siempo and Andrew are attempting to now harness technology to mediate the harmful effects that technology created.

Mindfulness leads to the meta skill of where to place attention and how to prevent distraction from becoming chronic. It can enhance the tech that is being built

(20-30 minutes)

We talk about how technology plays itself out differently in diverse cultures. In Latin America, it seems that there is a strong family-oriented culture. They end up using a lot of technology and are some of the heaviest users of social media. Yet they use it differently.

We discuss how its easier to take the social media off the phone, but when using the computer it's hard to regulate because of the way this technology is presented to users.

Andrew mentions that Facebook seems to have engineered a system to get people addicted to new information in a very stick way. Mindfulness helps us to step in and cut this process out before it begins.

He mentions that the social conditioning that humans have always undergone is now mediated by technology and we are having hyper-targeted versions of it on Facebook. Its a much more pervasive form of societal conditioning.

Stewart asks Andrew about how maybe what we need is a lot more educational opportunities to teach people how to use technology mindfully. Andrew says that it is probably a mix. He mentions a program in Vermont that has its students sign a pledge to not drink or do drugs. In exchange, they get access to a lot of yoga and mindfulness programs as well as a special dorm.

(30-40 minutes)

Andrew notices a trend that Wisdom 2.0 conference is full of older people but hasn't found many young people getting into mindfulness solutions. He says that the banks, tech, and consulting are still taking most young people straight out of college because of high salaries.

Stewart brings up the idea that many older people have a difficulty adapting to a new world with rapidly evolving technology. This is a difficult problem for the future. Stewart says that maybe its easier to get younger people to adapt faster than older people. Andrew says its still important to get older people as well.

Andrew mentions some figures about how children who grow up in single-parent homes are much more likely to spend most of their waking life on their phone.

Stewart asks Andrew about some of the practices he uses to get himself back to the present moment. He says that he has triggers that remind him. He has a google chrome app that reminds him to breathe every fifteen minutes. He has a fake watch that says "Now" on it. He makes sure that he takes time for rest. He downloads meditations that he can use offline.

Andrew talks about how his meditation practice has evolved. He mentions his first retreat where he was taught that meditation is about focusing the mind on an object, which can be anything (the breathe, the body, etc).

Charlie talks about the Meow Wolf working environment and culture. He explains how its this weird progressive culture that actually supports the people working there as opposed to the stiff corporate environment that is present everywhere else. He says there is a punk angst to Meow Wolf that really draws people in. Everyone he works with gives him hugs and genuinely asks him how he is. Charlie talks about the difference between working in the tech world and working at Meow Wolf.

Meow Wolf seems to be questioning everything that has been traditionally been considered necessary to get work done. He says that it is an emotionally draining place to work, but in exchange, there is a realness to is hard to find anywhere else. Charlie's main challenge is to help people at Meow Wolf see how some of the stuff they are doing might lead to problems in the future.

(5-10 minutes)

Working at Meow Wolf has helped Charlie to heal some of the trauma that he experienced when working at dysfunctional startups. Stewart mentions that working at Meow Wolf is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in a working environment.

Stewart talks about how a lot of our reactions to things are based on what happened in the past and not what is currently going on. Stewart asks whether Charlie sees this at Meow Wolf. He says that he has seen this because there isn't a lot of judgment which allows people to quickly reassess what is going on. He mentions that this is a skill that is common for people who have gone through recovery and alcoholics anonymous.

(10-15 minutes)

Stewart asks Charlie whether he considers himself to be an artist. Charlie says he is a musician, but his main art is actually writing code. Charlie explains his history of learning how to code and how he found an interest in it that he had never found it before.

Stewart asks Charlie how the perception of art is changing as technology changes how quickly we are able to create and with way fewer resources. Charlie says that writing code will become like writing. We will need to start teaching elementary school kids how to write code along with reading. The key is to learn how to use technology to make something. Technology is becoming ubiquitous and as they become more so if you don't know how to build something with technology you are missing out.

Stewart asks if its possible for programming to get easier and Charlie says yes. He gives the definition of engineering as finding something a scientist has figured it out and making sure that no one ever has to figure it out again. It is the process of automation. The scientist figures out whether something is true. Engineers read what the scientist writes and finds a solution to incorporate the truth of what the scientist found.

(15-20 minutes)

Charlie talks about why he doesn't use Facebook. He deleted his account about 3 years ago because he was getting really depressed reading what a lot of his conservative family members were writing. They wrote a lot of homophobic things that caused him trauma. He also brings up the fact that he didn't really trust Facebook and he was giving them a lot of information.

Stewart asks Charlie whether the creators or engineers of successful products have an ethical responsibility to make sure that their products do not become golems or Frankensteins. Charlie says that its very difficult for someone to create something and to know what the consequences will be, particularly for things like Machine Learning. He says that the product carries the biases of the creator. He also mentions that once it starts to grow and evolve other stakeholders like advertisers, employees and consumers start to change the product as well. It eventually becomes something of its own.

(20-25 minutes)

We talk about how pockets of the internet are centralized now such as Facebook or Google, but the internet itself is decentralized. Stewart brings up cryptocurrencies and how a lot of ideology behind cryptocurrencies is based on the benefits of decentralization and how that is really important. He mentions that it could evolve into another form of centralized products operating off a decentralized network similar to how the internet evolved.

Charlie brings up the fact that the internet now gives everyone a voice, but some people's voices are toxic. He brings up how direct democracy allows for the majority to promote legislation that affects the minority such as legislation against gay marriage.

(25-30 minutes)

Charlie talks about ways to try and correct some of the negative consequences of new technological products. He says there are two options: work from the inside and try to influence the evolution of the product or not use the service or work for the companies creating the products.

Stewart brings up the fact that we don't really know how pharmaceutical products are created and we can figure out short-term complications from their use, but they haven't been around long enough for us to know what the long-term consequences of taking them are. Humans tend to think they have a lot more control than they actually do. Charlie responds by saying its probably a good idea to internalize the saying "I am not that smart" to stay humble when faced with complexity.

This brings Stewart to note that this idea of "I don't know" is really important for a spiritual practice as well because it brings us back to the present moment and how our awareness of what is really going on in the current moment is limited by our conditioned perception of what is going on.

Charlie asks Stewart what his definition of Spirituality is. Stewart says that it is the process by which humans realize that the limited ego they have created is actually a puny mirror of the whole and that they are actually part of a much bigger universe. Its the process by which the self-constructed barriers to union with all that is around us crumbles. It is a felt experience of union with all that is around us. Stewart says that he recognizes that there is a divine presence that underlays all of experience and existence and that spirituality is about surrendering our individual consciousness to this greater reality.

Charlie talks about how he has a difficulty with the term spirituality. He conflates it with religion or believing in ghosts or other things that aren't actually backed up by evidence. He practices a lot of things that a lot of other people consider to be spiritual but he sees them as practical. Stewart brings up the fundamental division between the theological underpinnings of Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism proposes that there is no separate individual self and Hindus believe that there is a bigger "Self" hiding behind the smaller "self."

(30-35 minutes)

Charlie brings up his idea that well-working technology is indistinguishable from magic. Stewart talks about how we are now creating what would have been considered magic with technology. Stewart says Meow Wolf is in the business of doing magic.

We talk about how augmented reality and virtual reality will bring about a feeling of magic to its users.

We segway into Nuclear power and how it relates to other fossil fuels. This leads us to talk about how a lot of fossil fuels create jobs and a lot of the reasons why we haven't moved to Nuclear power is because it would lead to fewer jobs.

(0-5 minutes)

Eric introduces himself and explains his current passion which is mindful improv. He teaches groups of people how to respond mindfully to social situations. He explains some exercises that he uses at the beginning of class.

He talks about how he helps beginners get through initial blocks and past their fears of opening up in front of an audience. Stewart then brings up his experience as a beginner in Salsa and how when we begin anything we are only aware of a small fraction of the stimuli that is being presented to us. After we start to improve whole new layers of awareness open up.

(5-10 minutes)

Eric explains how he views teaching and how its really important to impart to new students only one thing about what they are learning. He has people focus on their emotional experience. Whether they are fearful or excited? This brings people into how they are feeling now. He says that mindful improv is about helping people develop a practice of it not only in the class itself but in their lives as well. Stewart brings up how this is one of the most important parts of a meditation practice as well: to bring the practice into daily life.

Eric explains how he has been practicing disciplined mindfulness practices for several years now and has taken notes. He shows how no matter how much we practice some things just continuously come up and we have to learn how to deal with these issues and not wish them away.

We talk about how Eric doesn't really have a formal practice and that he really tries to bring the practice into daily life. He mentions that many friends of his try to convert him into a formal meditation practice. From Eric's perspective, he is already aware, at least a little bit, in everyday life. Awareness is always present so its a better practice to just heighten that awareness in everyday life as opposed to setting off a time where we do it.

(10-15 minutes)

Stewart mentions how historically he would have disagreed with Eric about the necessity of having a daily formal sitting meditation practice, but how over the last couple years he has started to see it differently. Any technique is just a crutch that makes the conditions more favorable to drop into a meditative state. The meditative state is what we are looking to engender, not the technique. Humans have a way of turning positives experiences into stable beliefs, but these beliefs are not accurate indicators of reality.

Eric mentions that culture itself is a byproduct of these stable beliefs. He explains the process of ego development in a young child. The infant starts off as just pure consciousness. There is no separation between the baby and its environment. The baby just is. As it starts to develop, the baby takes on communication with the family and starts to develop a sense of self. The baby starts to develop likes and dislikes.

At some point, the individual then becomes conscious of this conditioning and they have an opportunity to make a shift to say "Oh now I'm an individual and I am on my own". In reality its difficult to do this because the process of the individual's relationship to the environment continues. We are always conditioned to the environment around us. There is no separate self.

Eric goes on to explain how formal sitting practice might be helpful for someone who has a 9-5 job and needs a sense of structure to their practice to make it stick. Eric doesn't have this life. He talks about how his schedule is very erratic.

Stewart mentions that he often finds himself in a state of friction and that its difficult to remember in those times that those times are necessary for the creative times.

Eric mentions the cult of working hard that is endemic in the startup world. He believes that this type of deification of work is unnecessary. He mentions that most work and conversation are worthless and busywork.

(15-20 minutes)

Eric mentions the importance of being clear from the outset as to what the people working on a task are doing. He says that many of his friends are working long hours in something that they supposedly like, but then end up totally drained at the end of the week.

He talks about how work environments lead to people stealing energy from each other. He mentions that with his company Mindful Improv, he teaches people how to share energy with each other which leads to lots of exponential benefits.

We drastically switch topics to how Eric uses marijuana to improve his meditation practice. He says that it helps him to do problem-solving and increases his sensitivity.

He talks about his personality and how he tends to always be in problem-solving mode. He says other people used to tell him that he overanalyzes anything and he agrees, but at the same time, it is a gift as well. Weed helps him tap into this more frequently.

(20-25 minutes)

Stewart asks Eric whether he has any negative aspects of his marijuana use. He says that after intense analyzation and note taking he can't find any real drawbacks to its use. Sometimes he has to police his use and he checks in to see whether it is a problem, but he hasn't been able to find any.

Stewart explains about the endocannabinoid system and how its the oldest system in the body. It reacts directly with cannabinoids or cannabis. An Israeli researcher found something called Anandamide when researching cannabis and named it after Ananda, or the unconditional bliss that arises once you tap into a meditative state. Anandamide naturally occurs in the body, but if the endocannabinoid system doesn't produce it naturally due to trauma or other conditions, the body can react favorably to cannabis.

Stewart talks about plant medicines and how they make it clear that we are not separate selves and we are in a constant relationship with the outside environment. Eric brings up how the cells in our body are constantly changing.

We bring it back to Mindful improv and how relationship is really important and maybe one of the most important places to bring mindfulness into. Conversation is not a real thing. They are symbols of reality. They are not reality itself. Language is a construct that humans created.

Eric explains how his sense of self developed. He never felt like he fit in with the kids at school. He never liked the noise. Kids usually create an identity for you. This leads to a sense of self and kids who are bullied usually need to develop a protective shell by becoming what they think they are as opposed to what the other kids say.

25-30 minutes

Eric talks about how the ego develops and how we find ourselves in romantic relationships with people who fall in love with the false ego we have created. Then when the partner starts to change from the thing that we fall in love with, we fall out of love with them because they aren't the person we fell in love with.

Stewart brings up how the sense of self is changing just like everything else, as much Buddhist wisdom points to. Everything is impermanent.

Eric brings up the fact that many humans are tied to an emotional connection with people and people are balls of emotional baggage. It's important to be careful with those we choose to be an emotional connection with because everyone has stuff going on beneath the surface.

Stewart starts to tell his story of how he created his sense of self as an overweight nice kid who people liked, but was a bit of a loner and awkward. At the age of 19, he started smoking cannabis and his diet changed radically. Eric says "shouldn't you have eaten more because of the munchies". Stewart explains how he started to change his diet based on the input of cannabis. After Stewart lost the weight people treated him very differently.

(30-35 minutes)

Eric also has a similar story but with different storylines. He was thin and people treated him that way. He brings up the idea that its hard to tell what other people see when they look at us.

Stewart asks about Eric's practice and whether he has any practices that have to do with the breath. He says that anxiety is excitement without the breath and that for much of his life he hasn't been breathing.

He explains that he moved to San Diego and he took four months to just focus on breathing, weightlifting, yoga, and eating. He gained 16 pounds of muscle which went away right after he changed his diet. He tapped into a different way of breathing underneath the anxious breath. Weightlifting and yoga taught him how to find this deeper breath. He found this breath quite liberating because he decided to take this time after getting tired of constantly over analyzing everything. He could take all the energy of trying to analyze everything and just focus on being here now.

Stewart asks Eric whether he has any practices currently. Eric explains how he is now done with a five-year challenge where he moved to a new place every 6 months and practiced creating a new version of himself. He would meet totally new people and developed a new sense of self based on these new relationships with other people.

Stewart explains his own experience living in new countries for a year at a time and then came back to integrate it and then repeat in a new country. This experience allowed him to form a new more confident self who wasn't trapped by the boxes that other people placed him in. He became more confident and ready to take on challenges. The most difficult thing about this is coming back to family and having a total reversal of all this to come back and play the old family dynamics.

(35-40 minutes)

Eric explains how Boulder is great for him because he has a fast paced mind and Boulder is slowed. He can't live in fast-paced places because it's too intense. He had a moment in New York where he realized that he isn't even there when he is there. He says New York is a place of human doing, not of human beings. He says that in Boulder people are ok with just being.

Stewart asks Eric about the most important thing going on in his life right now. Eric says that a wise friend once told him that there are three phases in your life that you must go through. Number 1 is to figure out who you are. Number 2 is to figure out where you want to be. Number 3 is who you want to come along.

Stewart asks Eric about the balance between chaos and rigidity and how he deals with it. Eric says that mindful improv brings a lot of chaos into that. The ego creates rigidity. If you have a strong ego it makes it difficult to adapt to change. This applies to companies as well. He brings up that humans are the most adaptable species on earth.

Stewart brings up a theory from "Sapiens" about how grains and other vegetables used humans to make themselves more widespread.