Joe Rogan Experience #1062 — Dan Harris & Jeff Warren Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dan Harris and Jeff Warren. Thank you, man. Dragooned? There's nothing to be scared of. So I was a little wary. Then you called me a chicken, and I was like, well, fuck, time and again to myself and others. So I was a little wary. Yeah. I think, well, it happens just people in general. process of testing yourself and stress and regular life stresses sort of become diminished.

3:37 Jeff and I were down at actually at Vanderbilt where they wanted to take a look at my brain in a scanner while I meditated. It's not like there's a dog in the room that's going to bite you, right? the one in particular was on television on Good Morning America in 2004. it happens to bow hunters and there's a thing that happens where you literally can't keep the pin on the target

6:06 And it's really, really common to the point where people seek psychologists and sports trainers, In the tank, I was thinking a lot do it isn't the right way to say it. But I've struggled for a long time with dropping my self-consciousness enough so that i can dance in a way that you know i have a You pointed to something important about testing those limits.

8:09 allowed me not to get carried away Well, if you have damaged shoulders, man, you kind of have to. Have you ever looked into hanging? I don't do it on a regular basis. It's, like, tremendous for your shoulder. where he just tells them, you know, at the beginning, And then as tree-swinging primates, we're constantly doing that. When you're talking about the mind and you're talking about the body and talking about impingements

11:17 Muscle tissue in particular, joint tissue, like around the shoulders, that can do this sort of things in the range of motion that your shoulders exhibit while carrying weight. to the point where see a lot of people get shoulder replacements yeah so the your mind is a mental body and it, kind of mental practices. I think it's literally the same thing. And you, and that there's just

14:00 That's probably why I probably need to get in the tank reasonably soon. some stuff before you get in the tank. Yeah. Yeah. It's pure culture mushrooms. Yeah, they eat so strong. So what do you do in those moments? What's the right term for it? it is trying to control it what compounds it is trying to wrestle the moment away from this experience and just taking control of it and try to sober yourself up.

17:02 poorly or weird choices that you might have made decades ago or, you know, things that crossed your mind a couple of days ago that you're And your brain desperately wants to point out all these areas that it feels that you It makes me, it gives me a perspective. everything can go wrong so appreciate this with much more zeal like much more lust for life

19:22 Sometimes I think of it as like you're exfoliating the brain then it can actually work its way out. And then you can get into this really beautiful stage of classic place where people have these shifts, you know, they have like a no self experience, or it's behind your eyes. Just the mind releases a lot of dopamine in and serotonin in response to the

22:14 Is this a waste of time? And one day I was kind of complaining a lot about the futility of my practice. And he said, surrender. He said, you It's all just coming at me and I'm not reaching for it and I'm not pushing it away. like a video game where you can't planning lunch, whatever it is, I was fully in this zone of like, oh, this is the end of my next book. I, this is, I'm enlightened.

25:07 the tank where you you try to let go and you let go and relax and then you realize no you just and you have to peel those layers. but you're holding this fist, And I think I describe it as like walking the onion. to figure out how to exfoliate that or let that go. of kind of working through your conditioning, but also simultaneously learning to work through the

27:35 but that to me seems the most realistic. like the grooves and patterns that you normally find yourself thinking in. And it's extremely difficult to get people out of that and learn to do things correctly. You know the right pathway. and you find comfort in them because you know where they're going, and so you slide right into them. that there are ways to retrain the mind. And I didn't know that until my late 30s when I started

30:51 and there's now been a lot of, miserable. It's very testing. Well, it seemed like the obvious aspects of meditation are conscious, like you're looking for these And in doing so, especially in the other end, once you come out of it, Okay. her into it. So in her defense. But they are often giving these, the teachers are often giving these really sort of affirmations from the front of the room. And my traditional approach to those

34:36 yourself a story you can't do it but you actually can Yeah. I think it's a problem. and often the answer can be this sort of Pollyanna-ish Disney Channel thing But if you can find new ways to articulate them, they can land. And you came on my radar screen because you were on his show, the Chappelle show back because I only did two and a half. We're going to take the snout and we're going to make good stuff out of it.

38:25 Well said. It was great. He's like – he goes, oh, hey, Joe. he's got this crazy fake mustache on he's like you've got the best New York boobs and he would That's 2003, 4? So I think it's 2002. It's hard to say that, though, because if you boil down a lot of the all-time great shows, like In Living Color or some of the other ones. They had so many seasons.

40:39 I was watching last night rationales for going into the war in Iraq. I really do. Unless Netflix let him do a Chappelle show where they just left him alone. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes nonsense that I dealt with the exact same administration at Comedy Central, so I'm well aware of how silly they were about certain things. They're executives.

43:16 get dave out there like that and like and it for him he was like fuck this i'm going to africa for That's who he is. special to the point where I watched it and like 40 minutes into the special, I started getting anxiety. No, I was high, but I didn't keep getting high through the special. in a way because you're so comfortable that experience of like giving in to the to the

45:37 No, it's fun. The writing has been done. So most of the pressure's off. Yeah. And then it will be – this is your material. It looks casual. It's like you do the preparation so you can almost let go of it. It's tricky. that yeah so then i wait about a year and then i start doing it again and now i'm in the process happening. And then there's that really this beautiful thing where you get into flow,

49:55 but it's the effortlessness that comes out of preparedness. You have to be prepared, for when I'm live on Good Morning be there, Yeah, that is the art of the podcast. There's a unique thing about a conversation, especially with people interacting with each And then everyone's got a little bit, feels a little bit weird and then someone's trying to overcompensate for someone over here and it just wrecks the whole flow of it.

52:36 That if you can get rid of the stale, planned, canned stuff and just touch in on what's happening right now which is fresh uh then the spontaneity Z-E-N, Shinzen Young. Like how do they, what is the way in which they free you or they reduce your suffering? And you got to get to this thing over here and you got to get this thing over here. And when you see these guys from those monasteries or from those traditions

54:48 They've gotten out of their own way. And he basically describes, you know, it's like he's just there and it's like he's sort of part of this upwelling of the world. taking conditions seriously, Taking conditions seriously. But that's his battle. Yeah. Japanese as a teenager, went to Japanese school, Well, they do hardcore stuff, like they have you on ice baths and things like that.

57:49 they do these sits and these guys it's all about what shenzhen would say it's about recycling the feels like maggots squirming, and then it just, an actual impingement or a physical thing seems to change now that's really weird because then be, I mean, there's some, I know another teacher, all he teaches is lying down. He teaches people, We need to be here and present.

1:00:43 And that's what's going to free you up to be the most and, you know, you're kind of like, So it's just skillful use of energy. the, the meditative, like learning. Well learning. It's so interesting what you're talking right things and have Like you're an observer and a passenger as much as you're the driver of the experience. Because saying to people, hey, get out of your own way, get out of your head,

1:04:08 Where do gerbils run wild? Go back to the breath. This basic move that we're doing in meditation, which is just sitting back and allowing all talk about practice, And that was, you know, That's one skill. Can I have this centeredness in the middle of what's going on, And then you just try to apply it everywhere. Or no, no, no, no. Yeah, this weird experience that doesn't have an owner's manual.

1:08:08 You get shitty operating advice. and is in unquestionably valuable but in the, they actually were working on the owner's manual for the mind for millennia. And I think the beautiful thing we're watching now globally, this trend, is the meeting of these two things. Like, I think that's absolutely true, If you look within the Abrahamic traditions, there are these understandings are there as well.

1:10:43 a shit about other human beings about whom very few other people give a shit. when you, it's through repetition, it loses its meaning. And then sometimes you get the sense, Right? And sometimes it's just weird people that are just making noises with their face because But even when it's real, I mean, this was my that I... This is why I wanted Yeah, it's like certain yoga teachers can say the exact same thing.

1:13:21 This is a badass woman named Jade. And so I started working with her one-on-one. But you knew he really believed it. I can continue to do this and we could pay the rent and It's great if it can work, right? And the whole thinking is basically like we want it to be kind of one-stop shopping. And we'll do that as much as we can for you. So there's all this diet stuff, movement stuff, all this expertise out there.

1:16:52 great things about communities like the comedy store is that we get together and talk about the In the past, it used to be a very solitary pursuit, And it's much more of an open and supportive community. people who have meditated, Yeah. cues and subtleties and things in the culture that other people overlook. Maybe there's something we could learn from that population.

1:19:42 And a lot of that has to do with how much have you managed your own mind and your own Like one, I do a lot of yoga breathing exercises and I do them by myself where essentially just completely planned or you know i really need to go running instead of going to yoga tomorrow maybe i should I was just going to say that I was trying to figure out what,

1:21:47 You're not feeling your feet on the ground. It's like you're being breathed by a giant cosmic lung. There's a doer. too when i'm in the tank i i lose the sense of what is up and what's down like you lose like what when you're lying there and you're floating you kind of lose this everything seems like all over Yeah. And I was asking, you know, is it okay for me to quit at some point because this pain is too intense?

1:24:33 There's a lot of, as you know, there's been a growing body of research into the salutary effects of psychedelics. but this is something I've been wrestling with a lot. attacks. And I think it's about the And then you have one of those experiences and it just shows you that you don't know anything. that you don't know or you win because you don't stay equanimous, you fight with it, and you get ripped to shreds.

1:27:14 Yeah. You've just got to resist that clench. Hero's dose? threshold. But they're not dissimilar in the way that when you don't know up from down, And that is where psychedelics take you. exist is, I think, ultimately very liberating. what happens is they take you out on a jet ski out into the middle of the ocean, Like you're ready to go out on the jet ski and jump in or do all this crazy stuff that

1:31:17 I had a panic attack or the beginnings of a panic attack on a subway about five years And then for the 10 days after that, I would never be able to host a show called Fear Factor the way you did unless it was a completely different show where you're not getting in a tank full of tarantulas on the first day. I think the problem was just the opposite.

1:33:01 I just wasn't very good at it. But basically the thesis, it comes from being really a guy namedeter levine who spent a lot of time looking at animal behavior can't run or whatever. And this is the same as when we're kids. We just swallow it up. We swallow it It's like, oh, I feel comfortable sitting over here. in your experience in your consciousness which is very centered and comfortable and then you find

1:35:46 All trauma is just shock to the nervous system. And so one time I was in there working with a somatic experiencing lady. And she's like, And she got me to work to turn my head. In that it's not about learning how to be a great fighter or learning how to beat people up. Yeah. You need that. Totally. Totally. Oh, we got that shit sorted out. but it's also just this continual practice of paying attention to what's going on inside your head.

1:40:51 You don't get just fixed. and i reminded everyone about oprah and the secret yes i'm like do you know how many fucking people Anybody who's born right now in a refugee camp, were they thinking incorrectly in utero? It is demonstrably false and recklessly dangerous. They keep writing books. They keep saying, come back to There's a difference between having a positive attitude.

1:43:30 way in which he distinguished people who had, who had maybe had a spiritual outlook in life. You had to come to your view through a honest reckoning with the crappy stuff about being a human being and the crappy stuff that's out there and that you couldn't not look at in your perfect bubble. It's like there are amazing things to this life, and the more you concentrate on them, the more you'll recognize them, the more you'll sort of bask in the amazing experience that we're all going through right now.

1:46:04 Yes. That's what we're trying to do. Yeah. But the idea that that in and of itself is all you need, that it's uniquely powerful so many different life experiences you could have had, in the DVD of The Secret. He was one of the guys talking about The Secret, in the DVD of The Secret. Yeah, they also found in his hotel room a lot of HGH and testosterone and stuff like that.

1:48:28 And how many, two people died or it's a guideline that you're And they live in this sort of that was why, And I ended up covering I mean, we've been talking about that a lot lately. I like your analogy about the open mic. was anywhere in North America. Whereas in France, it's just like things are fucked. a realism where people everything is fine right now

1:51:34 This idea that everything is fine in the moment, this exact moment right now. You know, that to me is like – I wrote about consciousness for a long time before I started realizing that there's this thing here. But it's true as an experience. Now, let me ask you this as an outsider. It seems like you're just alive. or you're responding to situations.

1:54:00 Even when things are objectively shitty. this is the stuff I like looking at, but I don't like this stuff over here. Everything is fine. Can you be free in more and more situations? And can you begin to appreciate the beauty of even these difficult situations? And we're not paying any attention to the only thing we ever get. You've got to use every arrow in the quiver.

1:57:09 I've dealt with both since I was a kid. And it's almost like, I mean, I know too many people whose lives have been, including people Like a manic thing? How do they diagnose that? And they've been getting worse the past. But it wasn't, it hasn't been totally addressing it. able to get to a place where i could then let my body kind of heal itself help itself out figure

2:00:32 You feel like you can't get your shit together. I'm excited about stuff and I'm just jacked up on this like on this energy. Like, you know, I just let me lose like that thing about being in the center that I was talking about. And I know that once a week or once every week, two weeks or something, I'm going to I've gotten way better at not believing in it when I'm in a high and not believing when I'm in the down.

2:02:35 No, but I can feel the fucking heart sometimes is going like a jackhammer. has been hitting a punching bag. I can tell you about what it can't do. This is what I can tell you about how physical practice You get this energy surge That seems insane. the energy is still in me. Like speed. It feels like... All of a sudden, so this is the thing. It's pure exuberance.

2:04:54 We're like this, right? I'll do crazy shit. and I and it's really uncomfortable being in that vibrating energy and not acting on it, not It's hard to be in that. so it's not I think the bipolar go for me I never had that happen. There's no, they don't understand that? It feels like, I mean, I'm sure people can relate, then people call it the arising and passing.

2:08:01 you're just all that energy is coming through you. I just, I think it's worth pointing out that it's highly unusual and very courageous for with as his co-author. But over time, and actually, I started to see that he was wrestling with this Yeah, so in many ways, what you're experiencing for your own profession is almost a gift. You're then able to see the more subtle way it plays out for everyone because all the stuff i'm talking about it's just the human condition hand

2:10:57 It's just what comes up must come down. I looked back at an old talk I did and like that. Yeah. So we would be, this is a, the book we wrote is for beginners. i have a wife and a child and it would be insane even if i didn't have that and so my job was to He would be on a manic up swing. and you get super excited and now I'm just pumped. and I would explode it all and elaborate whole new dimensions of stuff.

2:13:58 Because when you're in an up, you're not really seeing the world as it is. in the process of working on the book. own story and uh the name of the game here at the end of the day notwithstanding my already stated misgivings about words like compassion that is where the rubber hits the road because you can To see the character in their face, what they're really telling you.

2:15:34 They're just talking to themselves. You have to see that stuff in yourself Many of us like to spend a lot of time complaining about He talks about how meditation doesn't conquer your neuroses. It makes you a connoisseur That's playing the game well. all these pieces together. but there are some easier-to-comprehend benefits from meditation, is probably enough to derive many of these benefits. But so that's the good news. But I

2:18:48 see that you've become distracted, in that moment, You could recognize it. I agree. is self-awareness you're just training to see your own stuff clearly so that it doesn't own you. just bubbling up through us all the time, and we're not craving anything. days, it's just that you're going to become Notice what got you distracted. I mean, normally we lead with that.

2:22:13 you so if you're just completely if you're training your attention to be fragmented it's That's a very sobering thought. And it's all about our relationship with technology. all the notifications, the buzzing, the flickers, that's kind of blowing our attention apart. It's just a tool. One thing I would say is as somebody who does use Twitter and Instagram is there's a great tweet from this guy, Ian Bremmer, who who's a big thinker about current affairs.

2:26:06 Yeah. and check out some different perspectives? look at the person who presents the ideas as your enemy. It's fucked up. You can just say whatever you want because you don't actually have a real human being right in front of you. With people saying things to me that I doubt they would ever say to my face. There's no consequences. to increasing the sanity quotient in our society which badly needs to happen but again i do think

2:29:08 how personally you're taking your own inner chaos. I agree with you 100%. There's an expression, gratitude is the expectation of future favors. I'm sure they have them. And the book, to people, the title.