Welcome to The Thravo Journey.
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And with that, I wanna thank you
for being a part of The Thravo Journey.
Yeah, I was reading about you
and I was looking at the,
you had a blend of Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity
in which I practice Neaturing Buddhism.
So I knew that that had, you know,
there's some similarities in all of those.
How does that, those teachings play
in your transformation of your journey?
Different pieces at different times, of course, you know.
But when, if I just bring a little piece
of brain science in here and, you know,
the Eastern masters knew this thousands of years ago
and our neuroscientists are just proving it's true.
But you really can't,
quiet or turn off negative thinking or negativity.
Because it's built into us for a survival instinct.
We always have to be aware of dangers
and be sensitive to dangers.
You know, when we were in the jungle,
we had to be aware of sounds and things
that might present dangers to us.
So our mind is always scanning for that.
And we always are going to allow it
into our conscious, our mind is always scanning
for consciousness.
So there's no real way of quieting it,
but you can balance it by cultivating the opposite.
What are the misconceptions that you find about meditation?
Well, first of all, people think that meditation
has something to do with quieting the mind
and finding peace and serenity.
And you don't meditate to do that.
Now, as a side benefit, you may get that,
but you don't do it for that.
So the best thing I can say is,
I mean,
so there have been times I'm sure where,
you know, you've been in a regular conversation
with somebody and you really want to listen
to what they're saying.
And then at some point you realize
that your mind drifted off.
Yeah, it's happening.
It happens all the time.
And at some point though, you kind of like wake up,
you know, you kind of get this little startle feeling
that, oh, I'm not listening.
Realize that you're not listening, right?
And usually that's followed by a flood of judgments.
Oh, I should have been listening
now I'm not listening.
Now I lost what he was going to say
and how am I going to go back
and I don't want to go back, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right?
Yeah, all the noise.
After a couple of moments though,
that noise quiets down and you go back
and start listening again, right?
So that's what meditation is,
but we set it up artificially.
Yeah.
Oh,
beat up, pull it and dunked on.
Beat up, pull it and dunked on.
We'll eat it and dunked on.
Yeah.
Let's get it.
Welcome back to The Thraval Journey.
Today we welcome an extraordinary gentleman, Bob Martin,
a man whose life story reads like a blockbuster movie
to me from the high stakes courtroom drama
of Miami's cocaine cowboy era as a mob lawyer
to become any certified meditation teacher
and professor of wellness at Elon University.
Bob's transformation is nothing short of remarkable.
A two-time author, mindfulness guru
and an expert in blending Taoist wisdom
with modern brain science.
Bob is here to share his journey of resilience,
clarity and finding peace in life's chaos.
So really let's just get ready to be entertained
and inspired by Bob.
How you doing, Bob?
Thanks, Michael.
I appreciate you having me on the show.
I think you ought to take a moment
to give yourself a pat on the back.
Putting a podcast together is not an easy thing to do
and it's gotta be an act of love
just to create a platform for folks like me to come on
and be able to share the stuff that we love.
So I just really wanna thank you for that.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, I'll do that because no,
it's not an easy quest.
But I do have a partner, she helps produce,
and it is a love.
We find the love in being able to,
and I find that a love in being able to have conversations
with people like you who have great stories to tell
and to share with the world.
And it's just a joy to have that.
And for people to get something
from the stories that you have.
So thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Let's really talk about,
let's get you in the know of people
and who is Bob Martin?
Who is Bob Martin?
Bob Martin is the son of some Eastern European,
Hungarian dad and a Roma Gypsy mom.
He grew up in an amusement park atmosphere.
We were the popcorn cotton candy folks.
And much to my father's dismay,
I wound up becoming a lawyer.
He says, he always thought of lawyers
as blood sucking vultures.
So.
Okay.
A lot of people may agree with that.
It's funny when people say,
oh, here's Bob Martin, he's a lawyer.
I always say, please don't hold it against me.
Yeah.
But I started out my career in Miami during the 70s.
And if anybody's ever seen the movie Scarface
or the TV show Miami Vice,
those were those days.
And I will tell you from personal experience
that that vibe that you get from that movie Scarface,
that was Miami.
It was that, that was the vibe that was there then.
So I started out as a prosecutor.
And I worked for Janet Reno.
For those who don't know the names,
he wound up being the attorney general
in the Clinton administration.
And we rose up in the office,
had a pretty good career there
and wound up in the economic crimes
and consumer frauds division.
And I got together with a federal task force
and we wound up hitting the mob for a lot of money.
When I see the mob in Miami,
what I'm talking about is I'm talking about
at that level where the Italians are speaking
to the Columbians and the Haitians
and the Cubans and the Peruvians.
And everybody kind of cuts up their pathways
to import in the import-export business, so to speak.
Yeah.
And so we hit them for a bunch of money.
I went out in private practice
and they came to me, the mob, Italian fella
named Clollum Johnny.
And basically he said,
that'd be pretty good to beat our lawyers.
And so we wanna start sending you some clients.
And so I didn't become like conciliati,
like advisor to the mob.
I started getting a lot of referrals from them
and hanging out with them.
And so they were the cocaine cowboy days.
And if I kind of confessionally, I'll tell you,
I was hanging out with them
and I was doing a lot of that stuff.
And on a personal level, my life was kind of falling apart.
Professionally, I was making a lot of money.
I had a lot of respect.
I was one of the top lawyers doing high profile cases
and all that, but personally, not so great.
Not so great.
And I've seen a therapist
and I came to a real important crossroads in my life.
I asked my therapist, his name was George.
Said, George, what should I do?
And rather than giving me some therapeutic questions
or the like, he picked up some coins
and started shaking them in his hands
and throwing them on the table
and counting the heads and the tails
and making some mathematical computations.
And here I'm thinking, whoa,
I'm paying this guy to be my therapist
and now what is he gonna do?
Pull out a bunch of tarot cards or something?
Yeah.
So I'm getting more and more pissed off,
but finally he comes to the solution of his math
and he comes up with the number
and he opens this book to that chapter number
and the title of the chapter was Retreat.
And he shows it to me and I curse him out,
stomp out of the office,
but it's like that word got tattooed on my forehead,
retreat, retreat.
So I started pulling back from some of my
excessive behaviors and it really,
it really stopped me from going all the way down
the rabbit hole.
And I went back to George and I said,
well, what was that thing that you did?
And he says, well, Bob, that is something called
the classical book of changes.
It's called the Ai Qing.
And I said, where does that come from?
And he goes, it's Taoist.
And I go, what's Taoism?
And so I learned then that my therapist turned out
to be a disciple and also the English language editor
of, and did this, a 72nd generation
Taoist master from the Shaolin temple.
Really?
Think about that 1400 years of wisdom being passed down
from father to son to father to son.
That's extraordinary.
When you said 72nd generation, I'm like,
that's years, thousands of years.
About 1400 years.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
And the Shaolin temple, that's where Kung Fu comes from
and Tai Chi and Yang Yang and all that stuff.
So those are all Taoist practices.
So I didn't grow up with any kind of religion really.
My folks, all of my ancestors were wiped out
by one group or another.
My folks, my dad's ancestors were wiped out
by the Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution
in the early part of the last century.
And my mom was Roma Gypsy, you know,
and everybody kind of blew them away.
So they just didn't believe much in a merciful God.
So I didn't grow up with that conversation.
And so when I bent master knee, it was like,
this guy just bowled me over.
He was just absolutely, I'm sure, Michael,
you run into some people that you meet them
and you just go, wow, this guy's real.
This is the real thing.
And that's who he was.
And so I wanted to study under him and learn under him.
And I studied with George and master knee for eight years
and it changed my life.
Yeah, I was reading about you
and I was looking at the,
you had a blend of Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity
in which I practiced in Eastern Buddhism.
So I knew that had, you know,
there's some similarities in all of those.
And how does that, those teachings play
in your transformation of your journey?
Different pieces at different times, of course, you know.
But when, if I just bring a little piece
of brain science in here,
and the Eastern masters knew this thousands of years ago
and our neuroscientists are just proving it's true.
But you really can't quiet
or turn off negative thinking or negativity.
Because it's built into us for a survival instinct.
We always have to be aware of dangers
and be sensitive to dangers.
You know, when we were in the jungle,
we had to be aware of sounds and things
that might present dangers to us.
So our mind is always scanning for that.
And we always are going to allow it into our consciousness.
So there's no real way of quieting it,
but you can balance it by cultivating the opposite,
by cultivating loving kindness and compassion.
And you can actually build up the other side of your brain
and use that to dampen or govern, you know,
your negative impulses.
And so through my teachings with master knee and the like,
you know, we did that.
We cultivated, intentionally cultivated things like
loving kindness, gratitude, generosity and the like.
And at some point in that process,
Michael, your heart opens.
And you can feel it happen.
And once that occurs, you know,
the only thing that you want to be the main purpose
in your life is to reduce suffering among other folks.
And so whatever you do, whatever business you do
and engage in and however you decide
that you want to make money,
you always have this consciousness, you know,
of doing no harm and trying to make a difference
with everybody that you come into contact with.
And the funny part about it is not only is that
giving you a happy life, but it also is good for business.
Yeah.
You know, when you take care of your customers
with kindness and compassion and care
and real attention to what their needs are,
you know, they're gonna come back to you.
Yeah.
It's like you're caring for their immediate need,
but there's something else deeper there
you're connecting with to have them, you know,
get your services returned to you for whatever reason.
Yes, sir.
When you...
And as well with the people that you supervise
and that you manage.
Well, if you really care, you know,
to make sure that you give them the information
that they need to do a good job.
To do a good job, yeah.
That you gently, you know, help to guide them and the like
and that you really put an effort into their progress.
They don't ever forget that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's the saying that you may forget what somebody says to you
but you'll never forget how they made you feel.
Yeah.
That's true.
That's your connection.
So would you have an extraordinary story
from my perspective?
I'm pretty sure for others.
You know, you talked about in the cocaine cowboy era
you were very arrogant.
Mm-hmm.
But it changed, you changed, you transformed
into the person that we're talking to now.
What was the biggest like transformation?
I know that you did do the training with Ai-ching
but what was the transformation that sticks out to you?
What story can you tell about that?
Well, so many.
Let me just...
Ha ha ha.
Well, I really haven't shared this in publicly
but as you asked me the question I can't get away from it.
So...
Okay.
So in my meditation training, okay, again, remember,
I grew up without a conversation around God
or angels or demons or devils
or any kind of supernatural beings.
You know, Taoism talks about energy
and the flow of energy through the universe and the like
and you know, because we understand that there is electricity
and that it does do work,
it's not hard to buy into that idea.
But the idea of having a connection
with an intelligent energy was beyond my touch.
So I'm at a silent retreat for a week
and we do this exercise called body scan in the morning.
And when you do a body scan,
the guidance, the guiding teacher will say things like,
okay, bring your attention to the big toe of your left foot.
Just notice whatever physical sensations might be there
and if there aren't any, it's okay.
Just notice that there aren't any.
Just bring your attention there.
And if you feel a slight tingling, that's fine.
And if you don't, it's okay.
Just bring your attention there.
Notice whatever physical sensations are present
and then when you're ready, bring your attention
to all of the toes of your left foot.
And then you go through your left foot and your heel
and you know, all the way up your leg
and you scan your entire body, noticing.
And the whole idea of it is to reconnect
with your physical sensations.
Because what we learn later is that your emotions
are nothing more than physical sensations
and thoughts that are combined.
And so learning more about the physical sensations
being able to identify gives you a little bit more
of the ability to manage your emotions
from the physical end of it.
So that's why we do the meditation.
And then once we scan the body,
we start imagining ourselves breathing in
to the entire body, not just to our lungs
but breathing into our body.
And just having that mental imagery of connecting.
And then I was there and about halfway through this,
one particular time, I took a breath in.
And for me, it was unmistakable.
There was the presence of an energy in my body
that filled my whole body.
And you know, I can't describe it adequately.
It's just for me, at that moment,
I understood that there was an intelligence,
there was a consciousness.
That was something that was outside of me
that was there and that I connected and touched.
And after that experience, you know,
it's one of those things like, you know,
when people say you can't unsee it,
I never unfeel it.
It was there.
I would say, you know, for me,
that was, you know, a major transformational moment
in my life.
Yeah.
And this is, now you've been practicing at this time,
you know, your spiritual practice.
Was that just a kind of like an elevation
to where you are now?
I'm sorry, give me, ask me again.
So you were, this is like when you get that experience.
This was past, you know, your Cabo Era days
and you were now practicing.
Was that an elevation into like a deeper sense
of what you were practicing?
I remember Jack Cornfield wrote a book that said, you know,
after the enlightenment.
And it relates to a story where the student is coming
to the master and says, master, master,
I think I'm enlightened.
I've been enlightened.
And he goes, no, no, you haven't.
Go back and practice some more.
And he comes back and he goes, no, master,
I'm enlightened now.
He goes, no, no, go back and practice some more.
So finally, you know, after several times,
the student comes in, he truly, you could see
that there was this change.
And he says, I have felt it.
I am enlightened.
And he said, yes, you are.
And so the student says, now that I've been enlightened,
what?
What's next?
What now, right?
What now?
And the teacher says, the laundry.
So, you know, you have these experiences
and you have these, you know, aha moments in these things.
And then, you know, you have to go and do the laundry
and you have to get up the next morning and go to work.
And, you know, you have the same troubles and trials
and other things, but you always have deep within you
this sense and this knowledge that, you know,
there is something that's greater than you.
And I think that that concept, that if you,
that the understanding that my ego, my identity,
my shield of protecting who I am are the things
that actually imprison me.
And when I can let go of my shields that are up there
to protect my vulnerability, the very, you know,
unusual thing happens that I become invulnerable.
I mean, if I can live my life saying,
hey, I am what I am and I is what I is
and I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, you know,
whatever you see is what you get,
it's real hard to hurt me.
Yeah.
And it's so counterintuitive because we think
we have to protect ourselves when lowering the shields
is really the ultimate protection.
And it's just how counterintuitive.
So when you begin to understand that your ego
is really insignificant and you start to live your life
for something greater than yourself,
that's when you find happiness and joy
and unbridled joy, unrestrained joy.
I don't know if I'm getting too touchy feely here.
No, well, there's the spiritual part
of everything you're saying,
but then there's also the human part
where we're living in a world day to day
and we're bombarded with all these things on the outside,
be it social media, be it the news, politics,
you know, whatever it may be.
And we're engulfed by all this stuff, right?
And what then is there that we can connect to
that would kind of take us away from that
and connect us to something that's greater than who we are?
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.
So that's where I think, you know,
meditation comes in and is very, very helpful.
And it kind of connects, you know,
with our understanding of how the brain works now,
like I say, the ancient Eastern masters,
they knew this 4,000 years ago.
And our present brain scientists are only now confirming
that what they understood is the reality of our brain.
So if I could just get into brain science
for just a little bit to answer.
I was going there, but go ahead, jump in.
Okay, so we have a right and left hemispheres of the brain.
Everybody knows that.
And the front of the brain is called the prefrontal cortex.
Now the right side of the prefrontal cortex
is where our sympathetic nervous system is
our fight, flight, stress response.
The left side is our rest and digest relaxation response
or the parasympathetic nervous system.
So this is what endowism we call yin and yang.
These are the countervailing forces.
Now everybody would say, oh, I wish, you know,
I was all left brain, but you know,
if you were all left brain,
you'd be kind of scattered in kumbaya
and everybody's nice and you never get anything done.
You need to have a little stress in your life, you know,
to motivate you, you know,
if you know that the roof needs to be patched,
yeah, I'll get to it someday.
If it starts to leak, you get stressed, you go fix it.
Right, right.
So you need to have that right side
that's gonna motivate you and cause you to move forward
and take care of issues.
Sometimes you need to punch through.
And you don't wanna be like, you know,
blood dripping from your fangs, aggressive,
and you know, go to war.
You need the other side, which is healing and compassionate
and everything else to balance it out.
Yeah.
Now what brain science has found is just like you say,
you get this barrage of stuff coming at you.
And the reason that most of it is negative
and the reason that we're aware of most of the negativity
is because our brain evolved to be especially sensitive
to anything that is dangerous.
Now, when life is simple, like in the jungle, you know,
it's a tiger or a snake or a poison berry,
something like that, we tune into that immediately.
And our brain is designed to do that.
Unfortunately, in our modern life,
those kinds of dangers aren't tigers and snakes anymore.
They are deadlines.
They are bottom lines.
They are, you know, profits versus losses.
They are, you know, they are all of these things.
And it's a chronic, undifferentiated type of threat
that causes us to have this chronic,
undifferentiated, you know, stress.
And stress on a physical level,
it actually cortisol, which is one of the hormones
that dumps into your body, it actually dissolves
and it erodes the protective coating on our nervous system.
So we get edgy and jumpy and more quick to anger
and the like over time.
So what the Eastern masters learned
and what the brain scientists tell us
is that there's not a thing you can do to suppress it.
You can't turn it off.
You can't.
What you can do though, is you can intentionally
and consciously build up the electrical activity
on the left side of your brain.
Okay.
You expose yourself to beauty and awe and love
and kindness and generosity.
And by building that up, you return to balance.
Okay.
And that governs that negative side.
And so what we learn in meditation
and what you learn when your heart opens
is that the path is not to stop doing stuff.
It's to start doing stuff that gives you joy.
And it's also what I'm also hearing is,
it's the acknowledgement of what those things are,
but then having a tool to balance those issues.
Right.
And we're talking, you know, podcast is,
and the emphasis on, you know, entrepreneurs,
but you know, our audience is more than that.
So what can you speak to as far as like steps
for people to take when,
I'll just use myself as an example,
like when I have all these different projects
that I'm doing and it may not seem like it right then
and there, but there's the influx of information, right?
And then sometimes I'll get so much of the influx
of the information that I'll just freeze, you know?
And then I know that I have to kind of just stop,
get away from it, walk outside for a minute,
take some breaths and then do kind of like a,
look a walking meditation, just so I can get back to self.
You know, what would your steps be for people
that either they freeze or just get scattered
or whatever the response would be to that.
Overland.
Okay.
So this is what I would say.
Somebody asked me a different question once.
They said, because we were talking about like getting a feel
for the dynamic of the energy of the time that you're in.
Now, like if you and I are speaking
and I have a great idea and I wanna share it with you,
but you're not in the mood to listen,
I would be wasting my time by trying to force you to listen.
That's the time is just such that you're not listening.
So the more effective and efficient thing to do
would be to pull back a little bit,
to retreat a little bit and go over what it is
that I wanna tell you.
Maybe I could refine it a little bit more.
Maybe I could think about your particular listening
and how to say it in a way.
So then when you turn to me and you say,
now what was it that you wanted to tell me?
I am ready to say it in a much more effective, efficient way.
Right.
It conserves my energy and it also refines my presentation.
So I've become more effective and more efficient
and yet I have expended less effort.
Right?
Yeah.
Because I haven't spent the force,
I haven't spent the effort to try to force you to listen
when you weren't ready.
And there's all kinds of times there are times to progress
and times to retreat and times to wait
and times to punch through and the like.
So if you become sensitive to those times, it's helped.
So I'm trying to get to my point.
I'm sorry, it's taken a bit.
It's okay.
It's okay to learn.
I'm gonna ask you more.
Somebody once asked me, well, you know,
you say that there's a time to retreat,
but you know, I mean, isn't retreat surrendering?
And so what I said, the answer to that was no,
if the retreat is surrendering,
then what happened was you missed the proper time to retreat.
You missed it.
Okay.
You went past it and then you became in chaos.
You got immersed in chaos.
And cause the proper time to retreat
is when you could pull back with enough energy
to regroup and come forward again.
And then go forward again.
You missed it and now you're lost.
Mm-hmm.
So now I'll get back to your question.
So if you are getting to the point where you say,
I just gotta break this.
I gotta take a walk.
I gotta get out of here and stop,
then perhaps you missed the time
that you should have pulled back.
So by becoming aware of how you felt
when you finally became overwhelmed and said,
I gotta stop, if you become sensitive
to exactly what that feels like to be overwhelmed,
then what will probably happen is you'll be able to sense
when that overwhelm starts growing.
Yeah.
I was gonna ask you, when are you able to sense that?
Right.
So it's just a matter of practice.
It's just a matter of when you start feeling overwhelmed
you ask yourself questions like,
where am I feeling this in my body?
When did I first start feeling this?
What are my thoughts when I am feeling this way?
You just start inquiring,
like how, what is this feeling?
What is it?
Physically, what is it mentally?
And then ask yourself,
when did I start feeling I was becoming overwhelmed?
Mm-hmm.
So if you ask yourself those questions,
you'll be able to identify it fairly simply.
And by doing that a few times,
then maybe not the next time,
but maybe the next time or the next time,
as you start to feel overwhelmed,
you say, wait, let me take a two minute break
instead of a 15 minute break, that littler break.
It's, you know, you ever watch people doing yoga
and they're doing the tree pose?
They have one leg down and they got one leg on their knee
and they look like they're standing so stable.
If you look at their foot, the foot's going,
Yeah, there's little,
it's making these little adjustments, right?
To stay in balance.
So I think we wanna get to a point
where we can start making those little adjustments as we go,
rather than having to make a big adjustment
when we get to overwhelm.
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All right, we're doing the spot.
Let's get back to the podcast.
There's a lot of things that I'm learning now
and through different podcasts about balance.
Like, you know, again, I say this before,
but that, you know, like riding a bike,
you find balance, but sometimes when you don't ride a bike
for a while, you got to find balance
and those are just small, you know,
you know, small ways you have to, you know,
correct yourself to the left or to the right.
And I think that there's a practice as being human,
and being human, that we need in order to find
and continually create balance for ourselves.
Yes, yes.
And I know that a lot of that comes through
people who do meditate.
What are the misconceptions that you find about meditation?
Well, first of all, people think that meditation
has something to do with quieting the mind,
and finding peace and serenity.
And you don't meditate to do that.
Now, as a side benefit, you may get that,
but you don't do it for that.
So the best thing I can say is, I mean,
so there have been times I'm sure where, you know,
you've been in a regular conversation with somebody
and you really want to listen to what they're saying.
And then at some point you realize
that your mind drifted off.
Yeah, it's happening.
It happens all the time.
And at some point though, you kind of like wake up,
you kind of get this little starting feeling that,
oh, I'm not listening.
You realize that you're not listening, right?
And usually that's followed by a flood of judgments.
Oh, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have been listening
and now I'm not listening.
Now I lost what he was gonna say
and how am I gonna go back
and I don't want to go back, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, all the noise.
After a couple of moments though,
that noise quiets down and you go back
and start listening again, right?
So that's what meditation is,
but we set it up artificially.
And we set it up in such a way
so that you can have that exact same experience
over and over again,
so that the experience of it becomes routine
instead of emotional.
And that produces all kinds of insights.
So the way we set it up is we say,
let's form an intention to put our attention on our breath
or on a candle.
So I'm gonna do that.
So then within three seconds,
my mind goes off and I'm thinking about,
did I leave the stove on?
What's my wife gonna say when I get home?
I didn't forget the grocery,
when I'm done, have I fed the dogs?
Blah, blah, blah.
And then at some point, you go,
oh, I'm not paying attention to the candle.
And that's followed by a flood of judgments.
I'm doing it wrong, I can't keep focus,
I'm not concentrating.
And then after a while, that all quiets down
and you go back to putting your attention
on the candle again.
Then your mind goes off again,
and then you wake up and you come back
and you begin again.
And this happens several times.
So what comes out of that,
and it's really experiential,
I can describe it to you,
but like the Buddha said,
the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.
I can describe it,
but you really have to just experience it.
But at some point, you start noticing
that you're noticing your thinking.
Because now that you've done it a few times
and it's no longer weird or odd to you,
it's just kind of routine.
You kind of like get it that,
oh, I'm looking at my judgments
or I'm watching my thinking.
And very, once you notice that you're watching
and you're thinking,
you get this amazing thing happens.
And that thing is you go,
oh, I'm not my thoughts.
I'm watching my thoughts.
I am not my thoughts.
And that is that alone,
once that happens, you can't ever unforgettable.
You can't ever unknow it.
Because then you know that when you say,
I had a thought, you will always ask yourself,
who is the I that had the thought?
And so I'm no longer my thoughts.
I am the creator of my thoughts.
Because for the most part,
we all believe that we are our thoughts,
like that old, you know, like that toy store toys are us.
You know, thoughts are us.
Thoughts are us.
Thoughts are us, right?
I have a thought and I have bias.
I have a judgment about somebody or about myself
or that committee in my head says,
you're not good enough.
I mean, that's my truth.
Because I thought it becomes my truth.
And when I realized that I'm not my thoughts,
all of a sudden your thoughts become clouds passing
in the sky, some little electric pulse
that's floating through your brain.
You can't hold them.
You can't sell them.
You can't trade them.
I mean, they are,
they come from somewhere and they're here for a moment
and then they're gone.
And when you start to get that in this little practice
of just wandering, waking up, returning, beginning again,
wandering, waking up.
So you're not quieting your mind, you're allowing it.
You're allowing it to be.
You're allowing it.
You're not restricting it.
You're just letting it do what it wants to do.
And I often think it's kind of like,
it's kind of like a little bratty kid in your head.
And it wants to bother you with all these stupid thoughts.
Needs all the attention.
Yeah, and when you give it your attention,
you start to stop it.
I don't want to think this anymore.
It's like you energize it.
But when you let it be, when you allow it to just be
and you just sit back and say, well,
that's an interesting thought.
I wonder where that one came from.
It's like the same thing as a child
who's being bratty in a room and you say,
you know, I don't want to play that game.
I'm going to go in the other room.
I'm going to deprive you of my attention.
Let you do whatever you want to do.
They very quickly get bored of it
and they let you, they come over.
And your thoughts do the same thing.
You know, what you resist persists,
but what you can be with will let you be.
And so it's all counterintuitive
and you start to explore this counterintuitive
metacognition of watching your thoughts
and you start to, you know,
become more understanding of yourself.
And after you see, you know, you watch
and you see the same thought coming up
and it's a thought like, you know, you're not good enough.
Well, if my brain tells me I'm not good enough
and it does it every once in a while,
it's going to affect me badly.
But if I see it over and over and I see it a hundred times,
I'm going to get so bored and sick of it and tired of it
that I'm going to disempower it.
I'm going to say, look at this stupid.
I can't believe that this thought has been running my life.
Yeah.
And so when you get to that point, it goes away.
You can't make it go away.
You can only allow it to come and get bored of being here
and then it kind of goes away.
All that I have so much to ask,
but let me try to streamline it a little bit.
Just saying in the world of neuroscience,
when you're going back to the beginning of this conversation,
when you're noticing what you're noticing about your thoughts,
is there, you're in a certain place,
is there a name for that?
Is a name for that place?
Metacognition.
Metacognition is the process of thinking about your thinking.
Okay.
I've heard the word.
I didn't know that that's what it meant.
Okay, perfect.
That's what science is called,
the process of thinking about your thinking.
And you know, and we all know that when we metacognate,
we almost feel we're in two places at the same time.
Mm-hmm.
So here, when people talk about peace and serenity
and stability and the like,
they're not talking about some mood that comes over you
and transcends you and transports you away from life.
Mm-hmm.
It is this metaphor.
So most of the time, we live life
like we're floating on a log going down a river.
Okay?
Okay.
And the river is life.
And the log is our thoughts.
And we're just writing our thoughts going down the river.
Okay.
Sometimes the river is nice and calm.
Life is good.
I got everything I need.
I'm comfortable.
But then it gets a little choppy.
And then there's white water.
Then there are waterfalls.
Then there are floods
that sweep away your home.
I mean, there's disaster.
There's all kinds of characteristics of the river.
And if you're just writing on that log,
you're going to experience the full width and breadth
of everything life can give you.
The goods, the bads, the ugly, the ups, the downs,
the dangers, the calmness, all of that.
We never wanna leave that alone
because that's important for us to be able to gauge
how we respond to stuff.
We need to know what the river's doing.
If the river's flooding, we need to be protecting ourselves.
If the river's nice and calm, we need to be relaxing.
We need to know that.
But when you are in metacognition,
when you're watching your thoughts,
like I said, we just said,
you feel like you're in two places at the same time.
So from the log, life can be ups and downs and roller coaster.
But from the place of thinking about your thinking,
it's like climbing up on the bank of the river
and watching yourself on the log.
Now, from the bank of the river,
your objective, your stable, your calm,
you're not emotional, you're stable and peaceful.
So that's where the stability of meditation comes from.
We get more skillful in being able to pay more attention
to the part of us that's on the river bank
than the part of us that's in the river.
This is us noticing what we're noticing.
Now, that's pretty deep.
And there is a practice that needs to happen
in order for that to actually occur in our lives, right?
As people are in this 225, in this space in our lives,
how does one go about, again, with all the outside noise,
how does one go about really creating that for themselves?
And noticing that they are actually doing it.
So you go to the gym and the first mission you get on
might be the treadmill.
And it's gonna be flat and you're gonna be going
at two miles an hour, three miles an hour,
and you're walking flat.
As you get a little bit more skillful with it,
you're gonna give it a little tilt
and if you get a little bit more skillful,
you might move to an elliptical.
Then you might start jogging,
then you might start working with weights.
So it's the same thing.
So the initial process is just what I've already described.
It's no more difficult than taking a few minutes to put your attention on something and watching your mind wander.
And there are lots of guided meditations that will guide you through that process.
Of course, I have to say, there's nothing like a coach.
If you wanna learn yoga, you can do it.
You can do it.
If you wanna learn yoga, you can learn it from apps
and you can learn it from you males, YouTube.
But there's nothing like a coach that says,
no, move your shoulder a little to the right.
Move your foot a little bit to the left.
Those little adjustments can make a huge difference in how you progress.
So there's nothing like a coach.
But you start off on a treadmill with just doing this little practice,
five, 10 minutes a day of watching your thinking.
And from that, you start, you know, so then the first stage is that you start to get
that understanding that you're not your thoughts.
Okay.
And that's like the first step, you know, that you would take.
Once you get that you're not your thoughts, the next thing that we usually move on to
is something we call labeling thoughts.
Not only not my thoughts, but now let's start.
Looking at what are the thoughts that are coming up for me?
Am I ruminating?
I'm thinking about the past.
My projecting and my gambling and my threatening and my worrying and my blah, blah.
And when we start labeling them, it's funny how once you label it, it lets you,
leaves you alone.
It's like you put it in a drawer.
I can get it later.
And so there's a process.
I mean, I do without getting into too much detail.
There's a process.
But I would say if, if for your audience, like if you want to take away from today,
something that's going to start to make a difference, I would say take it as an hypothesis,
accept it as a reality that you're going to accept for the moment and play with the idea of.
Consider.
And start playing with the idea that you're not your thoughts.
Just, I mean, I think that that idea alone, I am not my thoughts.
It gives a rise to so many questions.
Well, if I'm not my thoughts, what are my thoughts?
And if I'm not my thoughts, then who am I?
Start playing with those questions and it will leave you.
You know, Michael, we have an internal intelligence, our intuitive sense of things that if we just
give it a chance to speak to us, we already know all the answers.
We really do.
We, you know, you want to need somebody said, well, somebody, I didn't know what to do, but I had a hunch.
I've got to do, right?
That's just our intuitive intelligence telling us, you know, this is the way to go.
So if you just play with that idea and, you know, as a completely new concept and what it might lead to,
it will lead you to the questions that will lead you to want to take on, you know, experimenting more.
A bunch of life. Yeah. It's just consider, you know, something to consider.
Right. Yes. Something to consider.
Yeah. I mean, that's pretty powerful because I was shifting a little bit here, but it's powerful because there are people in the world who want to be or can be up
to big things in their life that can be life changing, not only for them, but the people in their lives.
And there's that little thought in the background that probably stuck with them since they were three and it says to them,
they're going for something big, but that thought says like, you're not good enough to do it.
But that thought is not who they are, you know.
It's, it's right. Yeah.
And this is something good for people to consider so that, you know, it can really break it out of the, the mold or the trap, I guess.
The condition.
And then somebody, especially, you know, especially women in this society, you know, when, when a young girl sees that her brother is asked,
well, what are you going to be when you grow up? And she's asked, you know, well, what kind of a man are you going to marry when you grow up?
The signals are there.
You know, the signals, those, those, those ideas that you're not whole, that you're not complete.
And they're just not true.
They're just not true.
But your conditioning lays these layers of belief on.
And once we can start realizing that we're not our thoughts, then we can start accepting that maybe our thoughts came from somewhere else other than from me.
Maybe it's the conditioning that was laid on me.
Maybe it's not helpful.
And that's, and that's a process of, you know, reconditioning yourself so they can, that can, that cannot be you.
So, man, you're, so you say you said you're 74, correct?
Okay, you've done a lot of things, you know, from a lawyer to restaurant owner from, you know, you're teaching at Elon University in Tennessee, correct?
North Carolina.
North Carolina, I'm sorry, North Carolina.
And you've done all these things.
I mean, you've, how has all this like really influenced your purpose in life?
Still, I used to read science fiction.
One of my favorite authors was Isaac Asimov.
And he was, he was very perfect.
He wrote lots of books and textbooks.
He just wrote a lot.
And somebody once asked him, you know, whether you get all those crazy ideas.
And his answer was, he wrote a long essay explaining it, but in a nutshell, it was basically this.
That you have to have a lot of bits of information.
And then you have to have a mind that is willing to put those bits together and kind of notice when it's a good match.
And I would say the answer to your question is having all those different experiences has given me a lot of different bits of information and given me the, the, the, the honor of seeing
so many things from different perspectives that it allows me to choose from a tool belt that is varied.
So that I can pick the right tool for the proper situation.
You know, often we run into people and there's this expression of one trick pony, right?
There are people that have learned like a winning formula.
They learned some way that they're being like there might be a particular politician whose name I won't mention who seems to have a winning formula of being angry and, and, and talking about things that frighten people.
And that seems to be his winning formula.
And he's one trick pony because no matter what situation comes to him, he always responds with that response.
So it's kind of one dimensional.
And when you have a variety of experiences from a variety of perspectives, maybe you say anger might be appropriate for sometimes, especially when you're talking to the people in the utilities, like your phone company.
Okay, bills bills bills.
Sometimes, you know, you have to get angry, but that's not always the best response. And so I would say that what it's done is it's given me a variety of ways.
And if I can just pull in a little Taoism into that.
One of the basic teachings of Taoism is to learn how to go with the flow.
But not the trap of going with the flow is like taking your hands off the wheel and just allowing whatever is going to happen to you happen to you.
That's not going with the flow going with the flow. In Taoism, we talk about becoming aware of the situation of the river that you're in.
And then responding in the most wise and profound way to that situation.
So like if you're in the ocean, and you want to swim into shore, you can panic and drown.
Or you can just be bullheaded and say, and I'm swimming into shore and you might get there, but you'll be exhausted.
Or you might say, my notice that sometimes the tide is going in and sometimes it's going out.
And when it's going in, it's giving me a boost. But when it's going out, it's getting in the way.
So if I can swim like heck when it's going towards shore and just hold my position and save my energy when it's going against me, I can move forward and hold, move forward and hold.
I'll get into shore. I will have saved a lot of energy. I will have been effective, efficient, accomplished my goal with less energy.
Now, if I can live life like that, that's what Master Nhi taught me. He said, that is what mastery of life is.
Using the least energy possible to be the most effective and efficient by aligning yourself with the appropriateness of the time that you're in.
Yeah, that tastes something. Exactly. How do you do that?
Well, in Taoism, we have a practice that teaches that. And it's called the Ai Ching, the classical book of changes.
And what the Ai Ching basically says is that there is a cycle of movement.
Day turns to night, night turns to day, winter turns to summer, but good times also turn to bad times. And bad times always turn to good times.
And so if you look at the cycle of behaviors, you can learn like where you are on the cycle. And the way that you've learned that is the Ai Ching actually cuts that cycle into 64 pie slices and six sub pie slices.
And if you just read a little bit every day, you just read a little bit of the Ai Ching, just one of the little things, and you learn about the labels of the times, like there's a time to punch through.
There's a time to retreat. There's a time to advance. There's a time to calculate the weight. There is a time of great propitiousness. There are time to dim the light.
So you learn all of these times, it teaches you all of these different times, and it teaches you how to act wisely there.
And so that was what Master Nne, you know, strenuously,
wrote us to practice every day. And I would say that it after a while it becomes muscle memory. Yeah, there are practices, you know, practices that you can learn.
I would suggest picking up a copy of it's called the Ai CHING, the Ai Ching.
And the one that I like the most is the illustrated Ai Ching by R.L. Wing.
And it has all the instructions about how to practice and all what you need. And remember I told you about my therapist throwing coins?
Didn't I say that I went to my therapist and he was throwing coins? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yeah.
Well, that's what he was doing. He was practicing the Ai Ching.
Well, you know, you also, which is really cool, you have a meditation book as well that you offer for free download.
And so 34, I think 38 pages, something like that flip book that I started to read, which is really good. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Sure, sure. So everybody always asks me, how do I get started? What do I need to know? Where do I go? What resources, Bubba?
So I wrote a little 40 page primer on education. It's called, is it for me? What it is? What is it not? How to get started?
And you can go to my website and it's a free download, no obligation, no cost.
And it has resources in it and it tells you a little bit about the kind of meditation that I teach and how I teach it.
But it also gives you some apps and gives you the basics of what meditation is and the basic instructions and all that.
And so it'll give you a good idea of what that's all about.
There's another one that's downloadable called 25 tips and tricks to relax that you can learn in five minutes.
For those people who are getting stressed real quick, good resource.
Box breathing and stuff like that.
And so those are downloadable and on my website, there's also a free downloadable 56 gigabytes of guided meditations and instruction pamphlets and instruction sheets.
And you can just browse through the whole library and take whatever you want. It's all free.
That's awesome. Yeah, I started to look at it and a lot of things that I do as far as my meditation, a lot of that aligned with.
So I was looking forward to having you on and having this conversation.
And it's a peaceful conversation.
And so what you've been through, which I know probably was exciting at the time, being a lawyer,
which you kind of start, you still are a lawyer a bit, a little bit.
I still represent folks in the world of use neglect and dependency parents,
whose kids have been taken by the Department of Social Services because they've been neglected.
And my job is to, of course, represent them in court, but at the same time, help them to understand what they need to do.
They get about a year to get their act together to get their kids back.
Some people, you know, for them, the drugs and the anger are more important than their kids.
And there's nothing you can do.
Some people, you know, their kids are the most important things in the world.
And they just say, you say the department says jump, they say how high.
And there's some other unfortunate souls who really, really want to get their kids back,
but they just don't have the capacity because of different obstacles and their intellect or, you know, their emotional makeup.
And those are the, those are the ones that are heartbreaking.
But my job is to help them, you know, figure out how to get their stuff.
I still do that one day.
Do that. And you're still in your teaching at Elon University as a mindfulness coach.
And you talk about happy.
The world of was it I have a question about it.
I can't find it necessarily, but you talk about the happiness.
You're a happiness coach or something like that.
Maybe I talk about the work ethic of happiness.
The work ethic of happiness. That's what it was. Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, um, you know, everybody, the one common thing that people all across the world share is that all we want to do is be happy.
And I mean, by happy, I think we're not talking about, you know, momentary, hedonistic, little joyful charge.
You know, but we're talking about something that's kind of a long lasting sense of purpose, meaning, fulfilling life that, you know, provides us with that kind of stability, confidence and sense that I can do this.
And so that, you know, you don't feel like you're battered around by life.
Maybe. Yeah.
So, so if you want to be happy, you need to put some effort into it.
Yeah, because of the brain science, we know that, you know, we have to, the world will not flood you with joyful, beautiful stuff.
Unless you go out and open yourself up to it, it will flood you with a lot of ugly stuff.
It will flood you with a lot of news about mass shootings and traffic accidents and bus derailings. And you know, you'll, you'll hear about this stuff all the time.
You don't hear about the stuff that's, you know, invigorating and enlightening and inspiring.
Unless you, you know, seek it out.
That's right.
So, you know, take the opportunity, I would put this way, we have a responsibility to all and beauty.
We have a responsibility to bring that into our lives, not because it makes us a better person, which it will.
And not because it will make a better world, which it will.
But because it makes us happy.
It makes us happy.
And there's nothing wrong with being happy.
You have an extra.
Can I just offer that, you know, Jesus has said to have made two great commandments.
One of them is to love your neighbor as yourself.
And in the West here, you know, we have this Marlboro man icon of being self-sustaining and pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and being independent and having to do everything on our own.
And we think that it's kind of selfish to say, you know, I need to love myself.
But, you know, from a Christian perspective, you do need to love yourself.
You need to love yourself in the way that God loves you completely and unconditionally.
Because Jesus commanded love your neighbor as you love yourself.
If you don't love yourself, you can't follow the commandment and love your neighbor.
If you're self-critical, you will love your neighbor by being self-critical.
We have a responsibility to our neighbors to learn to love ourselves.
Take care of ourselves.
Yeah, loving yourself, loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself or as like you like it, love yourself.
And if you love it on yourself, I mean, it can make a lot of difference.
It can make a major difference in the world that we live in.
And yeah, there's a lot going on with the world right now.
I mean, it's been extraordinary talking to you and, you know, sharing this time with you.
I'd like to know what is, what would be for your last words on the podcast?
What would you story advice?
What words would you give as your last words?
I would cut.
I agree.
Especially a dog. Especially a dog. There's nothing like a dog.
Have somebody, you go, I have the worst day in the whole world.
Have everybody beat up on you go home and that dog licks you and it's all good.
Yeah, yeah.
But I would say love yourself enough to give yourself a few minutes every day routinely.
Pick a time, you know, and sit out and or sit in or look out your window or wherever you are.
You know, look out and just give yourself a few minutes to reflect on the fact that the mere fact that you are a human being means that you're something very, very special.
You're unique.
And allow yourself, you know, that dignity.
I am a human being. I have a right at the table of humanity. I love it the way they said into Siderada.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars.
And whether you know it or not, the universe is expanding and it is unfolding exactly as it should.
As it should.
Powerful.
Well, thank you for being here. I appreciate you. And for all the listeners and watchers, make sure to get his information that's going to be in the description and just continue to make thriving your new normal.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.