Awakening Now

Self Is A Story Behind Stories With Chris Niebauer

Ilona Ciunaite / Chris Niebauer Episode 59

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Self is a story. Created by the left brain and experienced as your inner voice there is a story. A story behind all stories.

Meet Chris Niebauer. He is the author of a famous book No Self, No Problem. Chris earned his Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology at the University of Toledo, specializing in the differences between the left and right sides of the human brain. He is currently a professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on consciousness, mindfulness, left- and right-brain differences, and artificial intelligence. 

Listen to our fascinating conversation and learn about the trick of language, the left brain and right brain functions and a unique Brazilian tribe, that has no stories. In the episode, Chris shares some exercises and advice for a seeker.

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.”

https://chrisniebauerphd.com/blog/
https://www.youtube.com/user/chris5264


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http://www.IlonaCiunaite.com I’ll be happy to help. 

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the self it's a center of  gravitational narration and so this idea like you know it's it's a gravitational Center of Storytelling so all the stories we tell and you know in the two books I talk a lot about how the left brain creates all these stories but the self is like the story behind the stories uh the left brain is a Storyteller so creates all these stories but the right brain is really far more into reality and in fact it has a very important job he refers to as The Devil's Advocate and so yeah so it it the left brain stories if they get too out of line with reality then the right brain steps in huh and it and it steps in and it corrects the left brain uh you're not the inner voice so why do you care what it does

hello Chris hi lovely to meet you it's great to meet you and thank you for joining me on this podcast and guys today I'm talking to Chris Niebauer you may know him from the famous book no self no problem and this channel is very much about the no self no problem so I think Chris is the perfect guy to have a chat and well Chris is a really interesting guy and you may watch some of his videos on YouTube and probably you already seen them he's a professor and he wrote another couple of books and today I want to share to share the space with you and see where it takes us sure sounds like it'll be fun great so the the podcast is called Awakening now and I would like to know your definition of Awakening what is Awakening what is Awakening from to what's the whole thing can you let us know  sure I'm actually working on a new book and the title is waking up from the dream of thinking and so the stuff I typically work well I start off with the no self uh straight from Buddhism and uh little bit of Hinduism and uh step back a little bit more so if the self is an illusion what other things uh are Illusions and uh the left brain the self is just one example of what the left brain does in terms of creating kind of a linguistic fantasy or linguistic illusion and it turns out uh modern humans live in a lot of different Illusions uh mostly caused by what the left brain does in terms of thinking and it's very easy to get caught up in these uh work uh one of the ones I like to talk a lot about is ownership uh we buy into ownership we there's this amazing uh illusion that 1% of the world owns 50% of the world's wealth but this tricky thing about ownership is you can't become conscious of it uh you could try right now you could say well why do I own anything you could find pieces of paper that have words on them but that's clearly just some other social agreement that we have there's no physicality there's no conscious experience that one can have of ownership and so that is one of these other Illusions and when we talk about Awakening uh what we awaken from is a dream of the thought world a world that was based in Left Brain Linguistics and this is fine language is a  useful tool it can actually help us navigate through the world but what we've done what humans have done is we've taken it a step further we've we've gone a little bit more asleep in this dream of thinking where words themselves become realities and you know this started uh just it everything really changed just a couple hundred years ago and um oh I think it's the book sapiens uh it's a wonderful story about a car company Peugeot uh this car company and how uh the person who started it uh just had a kind of interesting idea like well why don't I just create this fiction on paper called the company and it was a very ingenious thing to do because if he got in trouble he just blamed the company but the company had no physicality to yeah there were buildings but it was really a legal agreement so it didn't have any real existence to it it just uh people bought into it and we do the same thing modern humans we go to work and we take our work very we bring our work home which is a weird thing and so we think about work even when we're at home and you can be out on your uh patio it's a beautiful day but then thoughts of work intrude and suddenly uh you know you start to worry and stress out and so waking up from the dream of thinking is all about really just Awakening to the power this kind of abstract thought World created mostly by the left brain how much power it has over modern humans and how problematic it is and when you stop thinking not only does the self-illusion disappear but all the I problems associated with it all the problems seem to disappear as soon as you stop thinking wonderful yes it's such an alluring place this mind I say it's like a story Park you you wake up here on this planet and here you are in the story Park one story ends another finishes then here you go again yeah one of big stories is that there is the self here or like inside the body inside the brain or inside the somewhere that is running the show but it has never been found right no it has never been found in fact just for your listeners there's different ways we can show the self-illusion and some people have uh and certainly in no self no problem I take an approach based in Buddhism that you know the self has no stability to it it's not the thing the stable thing we think it is and that's a very easy thing to show because uh the self is changing all the time so you know I put on one self right now and you know that'll change uh two hours from now then that self will change it's continuously changing so there's no stability to it and of course the Free Will problem you know uh so many modern people are uh they suffer over intrusive thoughts but if the self were real then it would just turn these off it would it would just say I don't want to I don't want to think this anymore and you would just turn it off and so it's been argued that because there's no stability because there's no free will the self is an illusion but I think it can get a little easier than that because if you consciously explore reality and take a sip of your tea and you say well that's I mean that's real it's here it's now and uh and it's a conscious a direct conscious experience I'm gonna take a sip of my tea too what te what te do you have do green tea oh have black tea with lemon it's good too and it's a it's a wonderful Rich conscious experience and you say okay well can I experience the self in the same way that I can experience tea or a sunny day and you and you could explore and explore and you're like oh well I could see my hands okay but can you see who owns these hands you know supposedly there's this little self that owns this meat suit and so you know can you find the owner and you can keep exploring this and you can explore and explore and as it turns out in the same way that we can't find the self in the brain you can't even experience the self so it begs a question then what is this self and how we don't how how how is it experienced and how is it believe if it's not even there what when we say word self it may mean different things for different people how would you say what is this mysterious self the the self is a linguistic trick it's a trick of language and um and we fall for a lot of tricks of language there's a wonder I wish I could remember the origins of this it's a wonderful phrase it came up in one of the Zen books it was I can use words without without being fooled by them and it's a wonderful way to put it because words are useful tools we're chatting right now and and we can as long as we're pointing to realities like but like before I used the word tea and you really knew what I meant and you got your tea and as a so it's a very effective way to communicate but modern humans we've fallen into this linguistic story this this linguistic fiction and now there are all kinds of words out there that actually don't mean a thing like the self doesn't really mean anything it doesn't mean anything we can't find it we can't point to it we can't consciously experience it but if you fall for it it these stories have a certain reality like any story you pick up a Stephen King novel you start read and the story sort of comes to life and that's one of the blessings but also curses of being a modern human we we've gotten so talented with language but then we take the story seriously see if if a story is recognized for what it was for what it is like you said what is Awakening that's recognizing a story for what it is a story right and so there are useful stories so I pay my bills you pay your bills I'll get in my car I mean which office it's not really my car but I I well let's play this game I'll get into my car I'll go to this place I'll do some things they pay me and you know and that and that all could be a very useful game you ever hear the tragedy of Commons it was um this idea that like if there's just a big uh piece of land and say there's 10 Farmers they might all use the land uh overuse it and then the land becomes worthless but if you create this illusion of a self and you say I'm going to give you this little piece of land and it's yours then they'll take better care of it because this idea like oh it's mine I don't want to ruin it and it's the same thing we do you know think about how you treat uh a rental rented car versus one that's yours you treat your car pretty well but you just bang up you know if it's a rental what do you care and so in that sense the self could be a useful illusion and and so it could actually solve some problems and uh uh but that's all it is it's just a story do you think we got this idea of self to take better care of bodies this is my body yeah exactly and and that illusion and and you know that sense of ownership again it's totally illusory but if you if you if you if you buy into it um at least even on a superficial level yeah you'll take better care of your body you'll uh take care better care of the stuff you own and so there's a certain sense where it works not rented yeah and it's and it works and so but the trick is and it's a subtle difference between using the illusion and letting that illusion use you and that's all the difference between uh get finding peace having a very fun time while we're here and having a panic attack when you look at anxiety and depression these all stem around taking the self seriously as if it's a thing and people use these phrases they say I am depressed that's a very uh i' be very cautious about using language in that way because you're you're you're you're stating that there's an I and that somehow that self is in a state of anxiety or a state of depression and I think it would be much more useful to think of it almost metaphorically and so our moods May fluctuate but it'd be more useful to say well I kind of there's a little downess today you know instead of saying I am depressed when you say I depressed you're creating this story but taking it seriously and then imposing some State on it as if it could be depressed it's a much more playful uh nonserious way to go about it if you don't take the story seriously and just oh there's a little downest today or maybe there's some upness you know there's a good feeling going on right now and and so I'm very cautious about uh how we use the the language of I uh it's a very powerful thing and so um I it's it's more useful to get playful with it and that's what all the difference between a left brain which is terribly serious about particularly language grammar there's all these rules and the right brain seems to be a lot more playful uh and it also seems to be more in touch with what we call reality rather than these stories about reality yeah because this these people that believe that there is the I me in charge in control it's so difficult for them to approach this question in a playful way because that I is so serious and what if I disappear or what if my story is no longer here or what if I lose my my identity can we talk about identity what is identity and how does that show up and play out I like the way Daniel Dennett put it so he was probably the greatest living philosopher he just passed very recently just maybe a few months ago and Daniel Dennett said that the self is the center of um gravitational narration and so this idea like you know it's it's a gravitational Center of Storytelling so all the stories we tell and you know in the two books I talk a lot about how the left brain creates all these stories but the self is like the story behind the stories and um and I love the way you put it there because it as soon as we buy into the story the first thought is what happens to the story when it's gone where what's going to happen to the story and that creates all kinds of fear and anxiety and uh gets us living into a future which is another story and so um you know I would say this the self is the story behind the most of the other stories and so there is something special to that story and um and it's a you know if if you consider all all the problems and again we have to word it in a certain way the problems your problems you know because it is interesting because I could ask your listeners okay the last time you were very anxious and worried about things what were you worried about did you worry about someone else's problems someone across the globe were you're worrying about their problems or were you worrying about your problems and so that story itself self it's like a magnet it it attracts I problems you know problems and and and when we look at what the left brain does and so Gazzaniga and the people who did all the split brain research that they really discovered the function of the left brain is is this uh interpretations in fact even called the left brain The Interpreter and so it's always it's trying to figure out the world it's trying to create hypotheses to figure out what's going on and that's what the self is it's just so I I you know I see this hand moving and I hear speech coming out and so the left brain creates an idea well maybe there's a self and so and so and but the but it also ends up creating a lot of problems because um it looks around and it creates interpretations like you know do I have enough money how successful am I um and uh and what's going to become of all this and so it creates all maybe I'll be a failure maybe I'll be successful and and and it's interesting because all of these stories they come as the inner voice and so this is really your left brain it doesn't just talk to other people it actually uh creates an inner voice and it turns out the research is pretty clear on this that inner voice is the main cause of intrusive thoughts and so it could be a beautiful day everything's perfect you know nature Consciousness everything is just perfect as it is but then this intrusive thought comes and that's that interpretive left brain it's trying to generate hypothesis about what might happen oh that Presentation tomorrow is just going to be Dreadful you know oh that email I sent I'm gonna get in so much trouble over that and what I ask people to do I think it's a pretty useful little project is to test it out so every time you have an intrusive thought uh if if make a note of it and make a note and particularly see how confident you are in it so if it says you know oh that email I sent I'm definitely going to get in trouble at work tomorrow and then write that out and then how confident you are and maybe you say this is a nine out of 10 I'm very very confident that this is going to turn out that's why I'm anx I have so much anxiety right now why you will find and I've done this with students for years what you'll find uh is that the highest rate of accuracy of our in voice trying to predict the future is about 50% uh that's still a lot well that was the absolute highest most people it most people it was so so horrid it was maybe one out of ten times it would be right it was far more wrong than it was right and so this uh left brain interpreter has a certain survival mechanism to it so it's sort of always looking on the on the uh negative side because for survival it's it's much better to be overly cautious and so once you recognize how off it is is then you take it less seriously so you could be laying in bed and you could hear the voice and it will start telling these Dreadful stories but it you don't take them as seriously anymore you're like oh that's just my left brain doing its thing and as soon as you unplug the seriousness of it it's no longer energized and it's a very interesting thing you can observe and for some people it takes a couple years for some people it happens very quickly uh it just sort of Fades out and so we we stop talking to ourselves all the time yeah I'm curious now about your story how did you come to this recognition realization whatever you want to call it Awakening what happened well uh in the book I talk about how my father died when you know I was just my first year college and um it threw me into a really uh intense state of anxiety and panic uh so most of it was this death you know thoughts of just horrific things and like even if I was like right now I'm having a conversation with you and and that's at the center of my Consciousness but back then I would have maybe 10% where I could talk to people and most of my Consciousness was so into that inner voice and this is going to go wrong this is going to this something you know it was just one continuous state of anxiety and that's pretty Dreadful it's a rough way to you know to live and there was a point of surrender where I recognized that my anxiety was me not wanting to be anxious in other words I was there's a very interesting way the inner voice works the more you fight it the more energized it becomes when you finally let your guard down and just let it do so Nisargadata has a great way of putting it so Ramana Maharshi also talked about this he said 
you're not the inner voice so why do you care what it does and that's a great piece of advice I wish I would have read when I was 20 because as soon as you recognize that you're not the inter voice and stop fighting it then it takes its power away and so I just had a moment of giving up and I said I don't care anymore you know do your worst I just don't care anymore and all of a sudden the inner voice became quiet and I thought well that's really interesting then I had recognized that um I was generating this all by trying to escape it and so that sent me on this path and I was reading Alan Watts and he's probably my favorite philosopher and he had a huge influence over me and um and of course to discover that he had talked about this uh you know I ended up calling it uh the of opposition that whenever we you know Force something often the opposite happens you know it's like the same thing happens in sports you know someone is an expert they can make this shot in their sleep but now of a sudden the game depends on it and they have to make this shot and then they end up freezing and they miss and so you know they miss a shot that they could make very very easily and it's because that nature of opposition or you know it could even be easier like you have to get up early and so you try to go to sleep and you're like I really need to go to sleep well you just made a recipe you're going to be up all night but if it's you know some occasion where you have to stay up all night you end up falling asleep and so it's a very so it's the same thing you know you try not to be anxious and that makes you anxious but if you give up on the whole game and you just say well I'm this I'm not any of this and you just sort of sit back and watch the show it unplugs that uh reactivity and and how the left brain the Inner Voice work oh that's very interesting like you really need to become a martial artist of aikido where you just meet whatever is here and yeah rather than fight it yeah yeah I mean they you don't fight the energy you don't hit it you just you know redirect it and then it ends up uh kind of losing its own power  over time and and and so it's very non uh confrontational there's no enemy to defeat and so I think that's a very aikido in fact it reminded me so I did marshal arts most of my life I can remember the first match I had and I wasn't thinking and I very quickly went in and got a point but then my left brain kicked in and I started hearing this oh you're going to win you're really good and you know and you're you're going to win this match and all of a sudden I lost a point and then I lost another and then I lost the match and it was because because I was I turned to the inner voice instead of being the awareness that was doing the match yeah this problem big problem I I would say it's the main problem modern humans face and in both both of the books I talk about the Pirahã and because I they're a small tribe in South America and they very much live like ancestors their hunter gatherers and the most fascinating thing about them so uh they were studied Dan Everett uh was a linguist and he ended up spending most of his life living with them and uh they've got some very interesting things about language because they kind of sing their language which suggests you know a lot of right hemisphere is involved but the most uh uh impressive thing about this culture is they're they lived in the immediate now and so they were not interested in the past they had no creation stories they're have zero interest in how they got there wow they they don't tell their kids stories they everything is about the immediate present moment and it turns out they're the happiest people on the planet and so when people visit the remarkable thing is even though they deal with uh hardships that most of us couldn't imagine uh they die very early uh no medical interventions um no technology uh but at the same time they are so obviously happy uh westerners when they uh meet these people they're like everyone's laughing everyone's smiling like like what kind of secret did these people have and the secret is they're just not thinking they're they're actually in reality they're experiencing reality as it happens rather than getting caught up in that inner voice and so it's kind of one of those messages we should you know like look we've discovered this here's a group of people who are facing real problems you know uh malaria things that will kill you and then they do um but at the same time they're blissfully happy and it's so there there's in fact there's a really good article on this um and it's free online so I suggest your listeners pick just check it out it's called a Wandering mind is an unhappy mind and what they discovered is we spend about half of our waking day in that inner voice just drifting off of from reality into some inner fantasy or thinking well this thing will happen or that thing will happen and they played with the statistics a little bit and what they were able to show is that the more time you spend in that inner uh fantasy world the less happy you are wow and so the Pirahã are blissfully happy because they're in reality is a very and and this is the thing when you stop thinking you immediately recognize how joyful existence is it's a very um peaceful joyful place that's taking a sip of your tea can really be like it and and but then for modern humans we let the thinking mind take over and most people we could probably think uh maybe an hour probably less than an hour a day uh maybe less than that and so there's stories like I don't know if you've uh listened to Gary Weber talk yeah and so and he talks about how this voice in the head to shut off completely and yet he's running these companies and and he it had no effect he was able to keep his job he was effectively running companies and he just had no inner voice and so it's really an like the appendix like we don't really need an appendix now we probably don't really need the inner voice at all um and would probably be much happier without it now hearing this many people will think that mind is wrong thinking is wrong how to shut it off do you have any exercise or any advice well firstly of course it's not an enemy is just part of evolution and it's here for a reason so it's not a bad thing it's just been taken for something that is not exactly you know and again if you fight it it's going to defeat you it's a very powerful mechanism uh people with anxiety people who have Panic a panic attack is basically trying to fight the mind and the more you and if you fight it it's going to uh increase its power over you and so in that it's that wu wei uh this like no effort uh that was discovered long ago in the East that uh you don't fight it but and again you can recognize it's not you and so there are tricks like that but I think one of the first ways to uh uh not eliminate thinking but recognize that your reality is far beyond thought is to catch the moments when you're not thinking and so I got an exercise uh Susan Blackmore is a famous  Consciousness researcher and she has her students um they do this uh practice where they would make little Post-it notes and it would say was I conscious right now you know was I conscious and and I I don't I I think we're always I mean there's no other way to know reality outside of Consciousness so I played with that a little bit and I had my students write out little Post-it notes but it was was I thinking just now and you sort of put these all over the place and what you recognize is that we have moments of blissful uh conscious awareness like you get up and you walk outside and you just feel the warmth of the Sun and it's you know it's a wonderful moment but then the thinking mind turns on and then it starts becoming judgmental and it's it kind of ignores that and it gets involved in problems so the first step is to recognize how often you're not thinking and how peaceful those moments are so that's a trick of thinking it's kind of like uh someone who comes to a party and they they show up late but in their mind the party only started when they got there and so the thinking mind it doesn't buy into other conscious States and so the unless the thinking mind is on it uh it devalues every other conscious state so the thinking mind has this impression that it's somehow the CEO and that no real business to takes place unless I'm here but the truth is we have many moments throughout our day where we are peaceful we are Blissful we we it's it's just it's a it's a state of Awakening but then the thinking mind turns on and it sort of wipes this slate clean and so the first trick is to recognize those moments where you're already where you're trying to go very good I like that it's happening all the time it's just not noticed because that mind is always looking for something wrong and it would just dismiss that even though there is a silence while you know cooking or washing dishes or maybe creating some piece of art or whatever it's not recognized because there is no talking okay if your listeners probably heard the expression you're already a Buddha you just don't know it and we're already there we just don't know it because the clouds of thinking you know the sun is always shining but when the clouds are there it makes it look like the sun isn't shining but those clouds are just thoughts and so we're always shining it's just those thoughts make it seem like we're not and so recognize there are all kinds of moments that are blissfully happy uh start to recognize them that's a good place to start because you'll the connection will be made and recognize when thought takes over that it's not a peaceful place m because thought is all about solving problems I mean that's why it evolved it's a problem solver well first it needs to create the problems you know then it solves them then gets either happy or unhappy and yeah I mean you know these there are little things that come up during the day where uh it's useful you know and some kind of little thing comes out the thinking mind turns on solves the problem it's say for us modern humans we never turn it off and that's that's that that IM that power the self you know it comes on and again the self it could come maybe here and there very maybe half an hour a day I think you could get by with less than that um but uh but we have it on uh far more than we have to I agree this is fascinating so in terms of Left Brain okay it's creating all these stories and the right brain is creating all the images right is that how it is the images the uh mental pictures mental pictures yeah and there's some evidence that the right brain does that but I think um so if if you look at there's a famous uh neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran and he has a really nice way to look at the left and right brain how uh the left brain is a Storyteller so creates all these stories but the right brain is really far more into reality and in fact it has a very important job he refers to as the Devil's Advocate Yeah, let's talk about that and so yeah so it it the left brain stories if they get too out of line with reality then the right brain steps in h and and it steps in and it corrects the left brain and the interesting thing from that perspective is people with right brain damage so what happens when we lose this Devil's Advocate that's in touch with reality well our stories become absolutely absurd and so these patients will tell these stories like they'll be totally paralyzed so again since we're cross-wired if you have a massive stroke in the right brain most the left side of the body will be paralyzed but here's the trick with that when when a person has damage to the right brain it also takes out this Devil's Advocate and so they they no longer question the stories of the left brain and the left brain is free to confabulate and what we do what we see is an exaggerated version of us so we make up stories all the time and believe them but in these patients the stories become like I could get up and walk if I wanted or I could their paralyzed hand is sitting there and they just say well I could move it if I wanted but I just don't want to and in one case I thought it was particularly interesting Ramachandra 
 said well if you could move your left hand touch my nose and the patient hallucinated she goes I'm touching your nose right now and so that shows us the power of these left brain stories uh without the right brain to step in our stories become extremely outrageous and and uh certainly out of touch with reality what you can see like Ordinary People we do the same thing we we we think like uh companies you know we think they're real we think the self was and those are sort of along the same line it's just in these Pages it's much more extreme so what we need to do do then is as a humans as a Humanity to lift up the right brain's ability to question all these stories and bring the left brain down into reality as much as possible because the biggest story is that there is the self or there is me I in control deciding making choices and perceiving this this world but then the right brain for some reason doesn't correct that exactly yeah and it's a and you put it really nicely that's exactly what uh modern humans need is that right brain to uh step in and correct some of these stories and and sometimes it happens with Altered States Of Consciousness so if you have ever heard the story of Ram Dass how he tells like he had taken all these stories very seriously he's a professor and you could even see old pictures of uh Richard Alport who he was before this Awakening and you know had tie and he looked very serious and then all of a sudden that story collapsed and in a way that is like the right brain came in and said oh this story there's not a whole lot to it and all of a sudden the story just faded and and it broke apart into fiction and and that was a life-changing experience for him I'm also curious about you know we have the mind right we have the heart um the center of being the seat of Consciousness or whatever you want to call it so is the right side corresponding more to the heart which is openness compassion happiness peace or is it something is it something else well there's couple areas in the right brain that seem to be connected with the emotions of others and the perspective of others so when we look at what compassion and um empathy in particular uh there's a part it's it's you could point to it it's in it's the right temporal parietal junction and it doesn't seem to have much of a function other than taking the perspective of other people which is really what we would say empathy is and the interesting thing is like you can get into the lab and they can hit this with um uh a really strong magnetic energy and it will disrupt it for a while and once that happens people become completely non-empathic that they just can't take the perspective of another person and as soon as it comes back on again then it works so there is something with the right brain that seems to uh connect us with other people and um and and and of course that's uh uh part of the practices of most religions you know and certainly Buddhism and uh we practice uh empathy uh and of course the right brain is also dominant for emotions in general and so one of the things that happens with right brain damage is the patient becomes emotionally flat and so you put those two together and it really is that emotional connection with other people that's through the right brain and so in both of the books I have practices so if the right brain does empathy and compassion how do we how do we crank this up a little bit yeah yeah how do we boost the right brain and so it becomes more online do you have any exercises yeah sure and fact some people are probably already doing these because um one of the things about the the left brain is it's is its attention is very narrow and that's what all caught up with language so right now I'm talking one word at a time and and this is how the left brain works one thing at a time the right brain's attention is much more vast and and so one of the practices of meditation to get your right brain going uh it's one of my favorite meditative practices is uh say you're outside that you actually you could be anywhere and you may notice one sound but then just imagine your awareness just ever increasing and then you so maybe there's some birds in this tree and they're kind of singing but then you notice some other sounds some other winds or animals making a little bit of noise and so you just keep how many things can you pay attention to at once and what that does is it gets the because that's what the right brain does it's it's simultaneously processing everything all at once ha and and so if you could feel your awareness just expanding and expanding you'd be absolutely amazed at how many things you could simultaneously pay attention to and one other version of this that a lot of people are already doing is music and so the the very interesting thing about music is how right brained it is because when you listen to music there's lyrics but there's also multiple instruments and they're all going at once and so you it's that simultanious processing that's connected to the right brain and so uh I did a exercise one time it was just very spontaneous with my class I said what does music mean to me and then write an essay on it and I got these fascinating long essays where people were I mean in love with music it's all that was their form of meditation they just didn't know it and so uh you know we're already listening to music and if you see someone you know on their way to work and they've got the music cranked they're kind of practicing a form of right brain meditation um before they go to work and and they just maybe not label it that way and so uh you know music is a is a is a wonderful Doorway to getting into the right brain processing um and and so that's fascinating you know sometimes you get like um music playing in your head not necessarily some song that is stuck you heard it and it's stuck for some time but just some music playing in your mind then there is no story they left the left brain is shut off he's just listening to that Melody which is continuously playing I noticed that a lot like is that means that the right brain is more active in that moment then I would say yeah I would definitely say so and that's again this this culture the Pirahã who are so happy uh it's so interesting that the the most difficult thing about their language is that they sing so they sing language and so that really puts that it's a right brain there's there's such a right brain culture that even it had an effect even on their language and um uh and uh and it's interesting too because their refusal for stories and they have no theater in a sense they don't have plays they just don't have they have no gossip and when you start getting into how obsessed we are with stories you could see it's this kind of you know the right brain plays out on you know you're listening to this then you get to work and now work politics and go work gossip and it's all again all these stories and then of course you bring those stories home and that's why people get so stressed about work because and they bring the work home with them never realizing that it's all just a story hm I think that left brain is so hungry for attention it's just unbelievable Dragon for attention because you know if you don't just sit here and listen to a little bit of music you need to scroll your phone or go on the news or put on TV or something just not to sit and be happy that needs some attention to survive or to exist to continue with the self illusion and uh Iain McGilchrist wrote a really fascinating book The Master in his Emissary and he got the story from Nietzsche and it really fits modern culture so his book is all about how left brained modern culture is and it's all about um a very a kingdom that was run by a very wise King and so the people were very happy peace everything was really wonderful and it started to get a little bit more grew and grew and it started to get a little more complex so uh he had an emissary who would take care of things but the interesting thing is the Emissary got very arrogant thought it was in control and sort of started taking over and of course that's a story that we've experienced with uh the peace of the right brain but then suddenly the left brain now needs attention it it sort of has taken over uh this need for control and now it thinks it's running the show and so it's really nice uh story about uh how modern culture went from this useful tool this Emissary that's going to help with things now that helper thinks it's in control and again it's craves attention uh because it knows deeply that uh it's a servant not a master and uh and and there's almost this weird left brain insecurity that seems to uh come across as uh this need for attention and uh when you like we started off a while back and you were like what's Awakening and I think Awakening is getting recognizing that left brain is a servant it's just here to help yes yeah and I I think the fundamental problem before before that voice in the head is the security of feeling safe because that that left brain is about survival it's talking about and looking for things looking for problems to solve to survive so it doesn't feel safe but bringing attention to that you're already safe right here right now more and more and more helps that voice to relax and stop trying to control something that you cannot control anyway kind of plugging unplugging the whole process through the noticing that you're already safe it's a amazing shift from being in self mode that is continuously worried that something's going to happen happen to the self and that puts us in a state of panic and anxiety to a state of recognizing the self as just a story when that's recognized you can't nothing can go wrong everything's okay and you recognize hey I'm already safe there's no I that I have to that has to be worried about you know and and then this is what we see in nature you know trees don't and if we look at the all the other species on the planet this is this is what makes us so unique as humans because we've created language and language is so much behind all these stories but all the other species they're just like the Pirahã you know they're in a state of blissful mindfulness which is to say they're just in conscious reality so if you look at all the um you know we have some horses next door and they're just hanging out and dogs and remember that Meme was pretty funny was going around like why your dog is so much happier than you and there's this little Cloud was like they were worried about this and this and um uh but the but the dog's not worrying the dog's in actual conscious experience and that's the huge difference between the two so it seems like Evolution made a mistake and we are here to correct it yeah you know and so that's a great question you know and um it's one I always when I get to talk to other spiritual teachers it's one of the questions I really like to uh put forth so particularly teachers of non-duality and say well you know if this if if there's one Consciousness and uh if there's one non-dualistic Consciousness why do we play dualism why do we play that we're all individual separate selves and then create a state of panic and like why do it you know why go on this trip and um uh there's usually like this nonverbal kind of you know you know why we do this and and so Non duality well if there's one Consciousness why play and uh here Alan Watts gave such a wonderful um uh explanation that comes from uh if you see in the upanishads and you know they they' they've dealt with this and and it's this game of being what you're not you know a great line from Alan Watts he said when it plays it plays it being everything else and so there's some strange thing in the in the universe that forgets who it really is and that's what we're doing you know so when I play Chris I'm forgetting who I really am which is universal Consciousness and uh and and I and I forget for a little bit and when I forget then uh I take on the story and I go on a little adventure and the adventure includes suffering but uh and it's the unexpected you know uh there you know think consider for a moment what if you could know everything what if you could know what's going to happen the next moment uh and then the way I put in the book it' be like what if you owned a casino and you played in your own Casino I it would be a weird thing you know because if you won you'd lose and if you lost you'd win there no there's no real way to win there's no real way to win if you own the casino and you're playing in it but think about this clever trick we could play what if I had some way to wipe my memory of who I really am which is the casino owner what if I could forget that I'm the casino owner now all of a sudden it becomes quite an adventure right now I'm like if I win it's really winning and if I lose then it there's always that chance I could lose and so we play a strange Cosmic game of forgetting our true identity and uh and again this is the phrase you know you're already a Buddha you're already Cosmic Consciousness so in that sense um there's not much you have to do you know you you kind of win even if you lose be so um you know that's the so I like ending the books on some um uh reminder I call them Deminders you know you're once you eliminate thinking I like that deminder once you eliminate thinking it's much easier to see how there's one Consciousness and it's not your Consciousness and so we have this Neuroscience view that the brain generates Consciousness and so of course you know my brain is generating my Consciousness and but when the story of the self is revealed as illusory all of a sudden you're like there's no me having consciousness it's just Consciousness it's not mine it's just awareness
what would be your advice to a Seeker who is still looking to see that one Consciousness sorry you cut out there for a second oh okay what would be your advice to a Seeker who is looking to recognize this one Consciousness other than reading your books of course yeah you know it's it's it's a really fun way again when you start getting playful you realize that it's all play and you know it's it's an act and and so Chris is an act and you know Professor is an act and and sadness and and all of that um you know uh because when you get into the game it's very difficult to do it without categories you know and and all paterns and this is what daoism has showed us that you know you really can't have happiness without sadness and like all these are all connected and so when we venture off into the game then categories become part of the play and uh this there's this recognition like you know we're as a culture you know we're really obsessed with having a good day I don't know how if if you've seen that but you can go to the store everyone wants you to have a good day have a good day have a good day and without the recognition that bad days make good days like it's all interconnected and and so I just say have a day have the day you were meant to have and maybe that day includes an enlightening experience um or maybe it doesn't I you know my first book I did a self-published first book and it had a very long title it was um well the neurotics guide to avoiding Enlightenment good one and I actually my advice was um this thing you're seeking uh the it's it's the chase it it when you start seeking it it becomes much more Elusive and so I had and I kind of got this from when I was a kid like maybe six or seven I had these very interesting moments where uh nothing seemed very real I guess in modern psychology they call these dissociative moments and as a kid I really enjoyed them I thought wow this is kind of interesting and then it it eluded me and and but as I had those when I got older I tried to avoid them and then they got much worse and so um it's there's a very interesting relationship with uh chasing after Enlightenment you know and when chasing it's the chasing after Enlightenment that makes it Elusive and uh uh so so and it's just and we we knew this with happiness even and you know Victor Frankle you know uh uh put it very nicely he said that uh uh I'm going to paraphrase it but it was our chasing of happiness is what makes it Elusive and um there's been a few other people who have caught on to this like like you know ping after happiness makes it disappear and so it's an acceptance oh actually not even acceptance because then people will say well I don't know how to accept that's true I get that um so I think it's a recognition of the game a recognition that if you continuously chase after Enlightenment it's going to be elusive when you recognize that chasing it makes it elusive that recognition stops you from chasing it once you stop chasing it you recognize that it's already here it's the same thing happened with my anxiety my anxiety was me not wanting to be anxious so I stopped trying to fight off anxiety and as soon as I stopped trying to fight it off it went away on its own so I would say that we there's game going on and everyone is playing the game but the game is not that game the game is to figure out what the real game
is the real game that's take it one more what it seems It's not to get what the left brain wants it's to recognize this machine and to get free from it yeah that's that's a nice way to put it too because there are two games really go the one is with the left brain who wants cars and money and security and then the other bigger game the cosmic game to recognize that we put that in the way just to have some fun with it see how to see how far out we could take the game you know how far how far could we become what we're not how how far could conscious a universal Consciousness how far could it become what it's not in terms of individual an people who are anxious you know and these wars and troubles and destructions and everything massive destru massive suffering on because that's all things that Consciousness can't become on its own you know so it has to become what it isn't and in that sense it kind of completes itself I tell people you know if you're suffering if you're anxious if you're depressed in a way you're you're you're complete you're helping the game and and it's and so if you see your suffering is is you know with a positive light to it that you're completing uh Universal Consciousness then it actually again in an ironic way it seems to dissipate interesting twist there is a Twist in the story yeah the story goes goes goes and then what how is it oh thank you so much Chris it's so delightful to talk to you and I could talk for hours I guess it was fun yeah um and I recommend to get Chris's book no self no problem and the other one which is a workbook with the exercises and if if you resonate with that that you need more information for the left brain you need some scientific explanations you need to get some information then this is this is the information you need but once you're done with the information you start looking inside in your own experience seeing what's going on really here be Beyond any acquired knowledge that's the that's the game okay and I want to finish with this Rumi quote which just came in it says why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open I love that yeah it reminded me of um something I actually put in my one of my first books was you know so many of us we feel like we're imprisoned and like our hands are on the you know cell bars and we're trying to get out and you don't recognize that if you just look behind you you're on the outside of the prison you're not even in the inside yeah my book is about gatess gate like there is no gate you're already free just recognize that narrator or the voice in the head that there is no I there never was any I thank you so much Chris and thank you everyone for listening for watching leave some comments share and I'll see you in the next episode yeah that's awesome thank you bye for now