038 Zan Perrion: The Art Of Beauty

Zan Perrion is legend in the world of dating advice. Ruwan first read about him in The Game when he was a wee lad.

In this podcast, they speak about his philosophy on transcendent beauty which is one of the most practical applications of spirituality Ruwans has heard. His book, The Alabaster Girl, applies his views on seeking beauty to dating, confidence, and living life.

Transcript

Today's episode's guest is Zan Parian.

Zan is a legend in the dating world.

I first read about him in the game many,

Many years ago,

Half of my life ago,

And he was the guy in the book,

And I always remembered him for this,

He was the guy in the book that only gave advice because he had figured things out way before Mystery Method and all this other PUA lingo and stuff,

And he's kind of a guide within Neil Strauss's journey in that book.

And yeah,

So I got to speak with him,

Speak on the same stage as him in the Integrated Man Summit in Miami a few weeks ago,

And I was very thrilled to see that he was as cool in person as he was in the media that I've seen him in.

So he actually brought up something,

He was kind of riffing on stage and going into somewhat abstract philosophy,

And he cut himself off because he was there mainly to give dating advice I guess you would say.

But I really want to talk about the philosophy,

So I invited him out to speak.

We had a couple guests on listening and adding questions to the mix,

So this was a very fun conversation.

And now you're listening to episode 038,

Zan Perrion,

The Art of Beauty.

You're listening to the Ruwando Podcast,

Perpetual Orgasm,

Infinite Play.

Please subscribe on iTunes and enjoy the show.

Yes,

Cool.

Awesome.

How's it going?

Good.

How are you?

Pretty good.

I'm well.

I broke my arm the other day,

So.

Oh wow.

But otherwise I'm great.

Well,

How'd you do that?

Skiing?

Jiu jitsu.

It completely separated.

I dislocated my elbow,

It's really gnarly.

But yeah.

Oh my goodness.

In a sling.

Partially disabled.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Okay,

Well yeah,

Well,

Merry Christmas to you and all that.

Yeah,

Merry Christmas.

Is the video good enough?

Yeah.

It's weak Wi-Fi and I'm in a room,

So I have some privacy.

Okay.

If the Wi-Fi is poor,

We don't need the video,

But it's nice to see each other as we speak.

Sorry?

If the connection's not good,

We could turn off video,

But it's nice to see each other,

Of course.

I think you cut out.

I can turn it off then.

It'd be better because I did a call earlier and it was in and out.

Okay.

Turn it off then.

All right,

Yep.

No problem.

How long do you usually do these calls for?

An hour tops.

Okay,

Yeah,

I'm catching a flight.

Okay.

Pretty fine too.

Well,

I'm in the west of Romania,

Timișoara,

Town called Timișoara.

I'm flying back to Bucharest.

Okay.

So it's just a family,

Diem's family,

Vacation type thing.

Cool.

Cool,

Yeah.

So you might have some people from my mastermind group pop on and ask you questions in the chat or I might unmute them.

Okay.

But otherwise,

I mean,

It's the middle of the day in the States,

So we can just jump in.

No problem.

So you'll just tell me the questions though because I'm on my phone here,

So I don't know how to look at this.

Okay,

Yeah,

Yeah.

I got that.

Oh,

Okay.

Perfect.

Awesome.

Yeah,

So it was really cool sharing the stage with you a few weeks ago at the Integrated Man Summit because I realize I've been following you for kind of half my life.

I'm 30 years old.

I read about you way back when.

So it was really cool meeting you in person in Miami.

Wow.

Yeah,

No kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah,

So you said something on stage about beauty and you're going off on a tangent.

I think you cut yourself off because it was getting a little abstract and I got a little upset because I kind of wanted to speak about your philosophy on beauty,

So I do want to dig into that.

But for anyone who doesn't know you,

Could you share a little bit about your story?

Well,

Sure.

Like,

To make it really quickly,

To say it quickly,

I grew up in the north of Canada and I left home when I was 13 years old and I lived in the wilderness for my teenage years and then came into this society,

The normal civilization,

And I had real lack of self-esteem and lack of,

I was math major because I had things that I aspired to and so quickly,

And I loved girls,

And I always felt that I had nothing to offer and that no girl would ever find me lovable.

And so I spent my life since my late teens till now trying to understand the hearts and minds of women.

Hold on,

You're breaking up quite a bit now.

In the last 50 years.

I have been traveling a little bit.

Okay.

Yeah,

It's in and out probably,

Yeah?

Yeah,

It's not the best internet here.

Okay,

I can hear you now though.

Okay,

So carry on.

So yeah,

So I mean like that's my story in a nutshell.

It was very massively insecure in my early years and thinking I had nothing to offer and thinking I was unlovable in some way.

That makes sense.

Yeah,

That was the thing that stood out to me in the game was obviously who mentioned a lot of people who were influential in the dating industry,

But you were the guy who only gave advice is what I remember from the book.

And what stood out to me and why your name was always stamped in my head was that like,

Oh,

Here's one of the guys who figured things out before there was PUA lingo and before this structured community.

It seemed a lot more natural,

More like the stories about Casanova.

Like you just traveled the world and figured it out.

That was always like what I always remembered the name over everyone else's.

Yeah,

I mean like when this all started back in the day,

I guess,

You know,

It was,

I was,

I had already been thinking about it for a lot of years.

So when the whole,

You know,

The game came out and Neil Strauss would about me in the game and that explosion of the quote unquote seduction community.

I had been thinking about it a long,

For a long time.

And I was one of the early guys posting on the internet saying,

You know,

You know,

Relaying my discoveries back before anybody was really being a dating coach.

And yeah,

It's like,

I've been around the very beginning of this,

I guess you can say because I've always been interested in this.

So when the internet came along,

Even back in the Netscape days,

When I was first getting involved in internet and Usenet and the Bolton board and stuff like that,

The conversation that I graduated,

I gravitated towards was exactly this,

The conversation about women and men.

And it's the only thing I ever really talked about online,

Way back in the Bolton board days.

So I've been talking about this for a long time.

What I,

The things that I discovered over the years,

I presented online in the early interviews with internet.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And like throughout your book,

The Alabaster Girl,

I mean,

A lot of your,

And this is what I really want to speak to you about because there's a lot of stuff on your take on dating and meeting women.

And we might get into that in this conversation,

But you speak about beauty and that was the thing that stood out to me when I heard you speak in Miami.

You were going into something like,

It sounded almost spiritual,

Like beauty is what's beyond the subjective and the objective.

Can you say a little bit about that?

Yeah.

Like I said,

When I started out,

I was trying to figure out my role as a young man,

Which means that everything was surface.

I was trying to get some money.

I was trying to get a career launch that was trying to get girls to like me.

I was trying to get phone numbers,

You know,

What I would call,

You know,

Kind of surfacing type things without the introspection of what is beyond it,

What is behind it,

What is the depth that underlies it all.

And as I've gone through this journey over the years,

You start to realize that all the things that we're chasing,

Like money and possessions and all this kind of stuff,

And it's a cliche,

Nobody knows this,

But underneath it all is a little desire to touch into something that is,

To touch something that is transcended to our experience here.

In other words,

What's the point of it all,

You know?

And for me,

It's like what I've discovered slowly over the years is,

And I've known it for a long time,

And I've been trying to put words on it.

The idea that beauty is what I really do believe that beauty is what we're missing on this earth in relationships,

In everything,

In politics.

And I,

You know,

I mean,

I can talk about it from length.

I think beauty is a substrata that is a layer that underpins everything that came from the very beginning of time.

Beauty's always been something that,

You know,

For instance,

The ancient Greeks thought beauty was as valuable as truth and beauty,

Or truth and goodness.

And so I really do think that,

You know,

The guys that come coaching with me or discover my work,

I really do think that what they're trying to discover themselves is a life that is filled with beauty.

Beauty in relationship,

Beauty in career,

Beauty in adventure,

Beauty in where you live,

The whole thing,

You know?

And I'm saying it very quickly because it's,

I know it's abstract,

But I think beauty is the theme of my book,

The Alabaster Girl.

The first chapter of the book is called The Way of Beauty and the last chapter is called The Way of Beauty.

So if you were to ask me what is my book,

The Alabaster Girl,

In one word,

I would say beauty.

But beauty,

What we're missing in the hearts of men and the hearts of women.

And yeah,

I mean,

Like what I've discovered is my lifelong pursuit,

Trying to understand my role as a young man,

As an older man in this world is to find out,

You know,

Is a pursuit of beauty.

So I'm saying things very fast,

But it's true.

No,

No.

Yeah,

No.

I mean,

I love this stuff.

Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by any chance?

I have not,

No.

Okay.

Well,

The book,

I mean,

The whole book is kind of an intellectual abstract narrative where the narrator is trying to define the word quality and he goes into exactly what you're,

I mean,

It's almost synonymous with the way you're framing beauty.

Like it's not quite subjective,

But there is an objective element and like throughout the book,

He doesn't ever bring up the word God or anything religious.

But by the end of the book,

I was like,

Oh,

What he's talking about with defining quality as a thing that you know and you experience and everyone wants,

But it's kind of hard to define.

Like that is what every religious person refers to as their deity or the Tao.

And so when you said that little bit in Miami,

I was like,

Oh,

That's what Zen's talking about with beauty.

It's the same exact thing kind of applied to women perhaps.

Well it is.

I mean,

Like if anyone that listens to what you're talking about,

Like this is a podcast,

Right?

So if anybody listens to this and they have any kind of yearning in their heart to seek an excellent experience in life,

If they look at the way their life is constructed now and they seek something more,

In other words,

They're seekers.

It's 100% a spiritual quest.

Anybody thinks it isn't is,

Well it is.

It's a spiritual quest to want to understand your role in this world in a different way.

And the whole idea is that anybody who's a critical thinker,

Who questions the way life is and wants to know something more,

They're drawn to it.

And Carl Jung said that all have a spiritual longing.

And when we recognize that,

We recognize that this quest of trying to find,

For instance,

A partner or to try to find some kind of value or meaning in life or fulfillment or even just something to look forward to,

Which is a meaningful thing.

I'm looking forward to something that defines us.

And that's the idea of a quality of life.

So beauty to me,

Yeah,

I really do think that's a,

I mean,

To say it in a large way without going into detail,

My thesis,

And I'm trying to write a second book about it.

My thesis is that beauty is larger than we think.

It is more fundamental than we think.

It is more relevant than we think.

I honestly think it's a component of space-time fabric.

I think that beauty has been since the beginning of time,

Whether you believe in the Big Bang,

You believe in creation,

Whatever you think the origin of the university is,

I think beauty has been a component from that moment to now.

And we touch on it occasionally.

That's like if you see,

If you have a first kiss with a girl that you're really attracted to,

That Twitter flutter you get in your stomach,

That's,

You're touching the transcendent,

You're touching something that science can't explain.

If you get moved by a piece of music or a piece of art that you sit,

You stare at it forever and you get goosebumps or you get that kind of like that moment of feeling connected to something,

You're connecting to the divine,

Whatever you define that as,

You know?

So yeah,

I don't think that beauty is,

The age old conversation is that beauty is subjective or objective,

As you said.

And there's people that think that beauty is objective.

In other words,

It exists in the object.

So this flower is beautiful no matter who looks at it or nobody looks at it,

It's still beautiful.

And then other people say,

No,

The flower is beautiful because we perceive it and we bring our memories and our concepts and our dreams onto the flower when we look at it.

So it's us that perceives it.

And I really think that beauty is a third thing altogether.

And beauty is really the channel that we,

That by perceiving the flower,

When we look at the flower,

Beauty is something that is a channel to the divine that we see through the flower somehow.

That makes sense.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And like,

There's all these different parallels.

As you look at any philosophy,

Even science,

There are objective qualities to beauty.

Like I think it's called the divine ratio.

Right,

Symmetry.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Things like that.

But yeah,

I mean,

Of course,

It is something beyond subjectivity and objectivity.

And I like the way that you frame it because when I speak about quality,

Which has been like my language for a long time,

Sometimes people zone out,

Like I have no idea what you're talking about.

But the word beauty is so much more accessible.

And like,

Even if you bring it down to,

You know,

A field of life,

Such as dating women,

That's a word that can directly apply.

And,

And like,

I what I what I gathered from your book was kind of like the inner game idea of like,

If you can find beauty in every moment,

The practical side is it drops your anxiety,

You get to appreciate the moment regardless of outcome,

And to get to really be there,

Which is what I love about it.

Yeah,

Because you're always looking for what is what is what is the component of beauty in this experience.

And if you're looking at that,

And for instance,

You want to go on a date with a girl and you're trying to find out what is beautiful about this experience that I'm that I'm having with her,

As opposed to what can I get from her.

And so you're starting,

You look at things with different eyes,

Because you're trying to seek the beauty of the of the experiences you're creating.

And when you do that,

People start to look at you with different eyes and say,

There's something about him that I'm drawn to because he sees things on a different plane.

And so really,

I mean,

Like,

All you're doing in your whole life is maximizing your,

Your,

Your experience with beauty as best you can.

You know,

The Bible says,

Whatsoever things are beautiful,

Think on these things.

You know,

Yeah,

This reminds me of like,

What I've heard from many of my model and photographer friends who say like,

In a photo shoot,

A good photographer can see the beauty in the model that brings her out and makes her feel beautiful,

Which is why there's a lot of sex in model photography,

Like at least in the air.

So it's,

It's cool seeing it go from the abstract.

So it's a clear examples.

You mentioned earlier about like,

You started the way I think most people start with is chasing surfacing goals,

As you said,

Money when yeah.

But really,

I mean,

Everyone who does that,

I think it's most people at the beginning of their life,

At least.

But they're really chasing his beauty,

Right?

We just kind of like put a surrogate in between,

I need to make a million dollars first and then my life right.

Yeah,

They,

You know,

You ask somebody,

What,

Why is it important to make a million dollars?

And they'll have different answers like,

Well,

Then I can,

I can go sit on a beach somewhere and drink pina coladas and,

And look at the sunset every day.

So really,

The furtherance of the million dollars is the abstract connection to beauty that they believe it will bring them.

And and so it's,

It's,

It's a divine seeking,

And there's nothing wrong with it.

And the more you stay on this journey,

Trying to understand yourself and your role,

And the more you are a seeker,

The more as you go along in the path,

The more you start to realize that what you're really,

You know,

Seeking is a connection to the transcendent qualities of life as opposed to what a million dollars is going to be the banks and you can't help it if you are if you're a seeker,

And you start out your 20th guy,

Listen to this could be 20 years old.

And he spends the rest of his life trying to understand his role.

And if he continues on that path,

Slowly,

An awareness comes into your heart and dawning.

It's like beauty has a quality of dawning on us.

You look at a painting or sunset,

Or a mountainscape,

It has a quality of dawning on us.

And it takes us in it like,

It warms up to we warm up to it.

And it's the same thing as a guy's spiritual journey.

He will start to dawn on him that he's seeking something deeper.

And something will change in the way he looks,

The way he talks,

The vibration of his voice,

The way he stands,

The way he walks severe,

Something will change that people will perceive because he's seeking something.

It sounds so abstract,

Not practical at all.

But it is it is there's something holy about it.

And then and it's the only real seeking that has any value.

Yeah,

No,

I mean,

It doesn't sound that abstract to me,

Actually,

I see the practicality in it,

Like,

I mean,

It's similar to,

I refer to self love a lot,

Like,

Really love yourself,

You're now immune to whatever outcomes happen because you have your own back.

It's almost like that,

Like,

You're going with a thing that's beyond whether you succeed or fail with one woman or one business venture or something.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I'm curious about your thoughts.

I mean,

The surface thing I think is interesting.

Almost everyone starts there,

Right?

Like,

You know,

A young person or any person at any age who decides they want to change their life things,

Okay,

I want to change my life.

I want these things in my life.

I set my smart goals,

Whatever money women and do you think that's you think it's one necessary and like,

To what about the people who never make the realization like,

I'm really seeking seeking something spiritual to use that word?

I mean,

Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah,

I do.

Like I said,

There's nothing wrong with any of the pursuits of your heart.

Like you want to get a girl you want to get,

You know,

Have a wild party on the weekend,

Or you want to have a million dollars or you want to get a bunch of money or something.

Nothing's wrong with any of that.

Because it's your heart's desire.

You're trying to you're trying to move life through life with something to look forward to something to attain something from goal to move toward.

But I do believe that there's a subset of people who never have a thought like that.

And I'm certain,

I'm certain that you in your conversations with people because you've been on a spiritual journey yourself,

That you will bring up something related to your your path and your journey,

What you're trying to understand,

And they look at you blankly.

They look at you like they don't,

They've never had that thought.

They look at you like a cow would look like you like,

It's never entered their mind.

And I think there's some people who don't have that,

Who just,

You know,

They eat and they drink and they watch TV and they go to the next day and they never have a thought of what it means or is this all there is.

You know,

And I think,

But this isn't the audience that you have.

Nobody's tuning into you from lack of curiosity.

They're tuning into you because they have curiosity,

Because the curiosity is in the heart.

They want to know something.

They want to learn.

They want to grow.

And so I think there are some people that really just they would never have listened to this conversation.

They go,

I don't understand what you're talking about.

Like they never thought about it.

So yeah,

I think most people,

Most people are seeking.

Go ahead.

I'm just saying it's reminded me of like when I started like studying dating and it was before I realized I was on a spiritual journey.

I thought it was just existential angst,

But maybe it's the same thing.

But I met all these guys who maybe 10 years ahead of me slept with hundreds of women and they clearly hated themselves.

And they would even say things like,

Oh,

Like all the women in the world doesn't make you happy yet.

And at the time,

You know,

I was 20.

You know,

I just,

I just wanted to get laid.

It was like,

Well,

I don't care.

I don't care if I'm miserable.

I just want to sleep with a hundred women.

Tell me what you did.

I didn't,

I didn't get it.

And it's reminding me of I think Dan Bilzerian said this,

The billionaire poker player.

Of course,

Money and women won't make you happy.

Until you come close to it or you experienced it,

You don't really know.

It's almost everybody can't take that anyway.

I think that's absolutely correct.

I mean,

This is why,

You know,

A guy who has spent his years in a garage jamming with his band,

Trying to make it with his buddies and when they do make it and become famous and they can have any woman they want and they can have all the money there and they have all the money they want,

They realize that they're,

They're,

They're frantically still feel lost and feel insecure and feel,

And,

And,

And all the things that they said that they wanted,

They click on the surface.

Don't fulfill them.

And so,

You know,

The cliche is they turn to drugs.

They have to,

They have to try and,

You know,

They have to,

Or extreme experiences.

They have to go to extreme to try and get the same kind of energy of,

Of,

Of trying to fulfill themselves.

So yeah,

What Dan does,

Aaron is sad is correct.

And it's true because you haven't ever approached that you don't know.

And you think,

Yeah,

Well,

That's easy for him to say,

If I had all those girls and I had all that money,

Then I would,

I would,

I wouldn't have like that.

I would,

I'd be different.

So when they do get that,

Anybody that comes close to it realizes,

Wait a minute,

That's it.

That's as good as it gets.

So yeah.

Yeah.

And then you either make the switch to recognize in beauty or you're miserable with your pile of gold or you check out.

You're miserable.

You're miserable.

You check out and you do substance abuse.

You say,

You know,

You give up the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm gonna read some comments from the chat.

Everett,

Our friend said,

David Hawkins talks about the void in a number of books,

A place of perfection,

Just sort of enlightenment,

But what's missing from it is love.

And he also said,

Anything that resonates has an aspect of beauty,

No getting around it.

So there's a different facets of the jam turning it this way or that.

So for everyone listening,

If you want to,

You only have a few people on.

So if you want to ask a question by voice,

Just unmute yourself and hop in.

We do have a question from Ryan.

What were you about to say?

Yeah,

I was going to comment on Everett's comment,

Which was like a couple of weeks ago,

I was in Canada.

I'm in Romania right now,

But I was in Canada a few weeks ago and I was invited to speak at a men's church group.

And so I went and I spoke to this group for a couple of hours and I spoke from the pulpit in the church to the group of guys about this very thing about the concept of beauty.

And because it's a Christian based group of guys,

They said,

What you're really saying is that the concept of love,

Because the Bible is all about love and Christianity is based on love your neighbor,

Et cetera.

And but love is too broad of a word,

I think.

And like beauty really the concept of beauty.

And I'm going back to Everett's comment.

He talked about this guy that said,

You know,

What's missing is love,

But love has been overused in my mind and covers a lot of bases.

And the real specific thing is beauty.

Like what is,

What touches our heart?

What makes us cry?

What makes us feel like the world's okay,

Or what makes us feel like we want to do something great for somebody else?

What gives us compassion for another?

And it's a desire for beauty.

Anyway,

I just want to make that comment.

In other words,

The word love to me doesn't encompass what we're talking about here.

It's different.

It's a component of the universe,

You know,

I think that beauty for instance,

Is the voice if we believe in God at all,

Beauty is the voice of God.

That's what it is.

It doesn't matter your religion.

Doesn't matter your,

You know,

Beauty is the voice of the Holy Spirit or beauty and is,

So it draws us to Nirvana.

And without that,

We're just moving to life going through the motion.

So anyway,

I want to make that comment.

Yeah,

It reminds me of this quote I bring up from the centenary motorcycle maintenance a lot about quality,

Like quality is the track that drives the train of life.

I guess this thing that moves us forward and moves toward evolution and the creation of planets and our preferences on some level.

And I was hoping to say something about what you said.

Oh,

Yeah,

Because like,

There's even beauty in like the most on lovable parts of life.

Like I think I think a lot about like how people are just inherently drawn to violence and war and problems.

And like,

There's the whole kind of spiritual joke of like,

If humans had a perfect society,

They would first try to find a way to ruin it.

And like,

When I think about the things that make me the most emotional,

Like in entertainment or anything,

A lot of it is not very lovely.

For instance,

Like war,

I think is one of the most emotion jerking experiences for people.

And it's weird to bring the word beauty into that.

But there is something to like,

You get to feel a lot of things in an intensive environment like that.

Yeah.

Well,

Let me make a distinction here.

Because if you look at the history of aesthetics and beauty,

And the philosophers that talked about it,

You go back to Edmund Burke,

And in the late 1700s.

He talked about the concept of the,

You know,

Beauty is a concept,

But then there's also the awesome,

In other words,

What would like a storm that's bearing down upon you.

Like a fierce thunderstorm.

He called it the sublime.

He said,

There's beauty which makes us which makes us calm and makes it our heart.

Look at the flower and that's beautiful.

There's beauty in that.

But then there's things like a storm that's gathering and coming towards you,

That overwhelms you.

Or like you said,

The incredible experience of war and that sort of thing.

There's a beauty in that too,

But he called it the sublime.

He made a distinction between some beauty and sublime.

Sublime is something that overwhelms us with its incredible,

It's awesome and overwhelming.

Awesome in the way the original word used to be,

Not the way we use it now.

And there's something to that.

So yeah,

The whole concept of beauty being all utopia and everything's perfect and everybody loves each other.

That's not what beauty is.

Because beauty has a component of sadness,

It has a beauty of depth and gravity to it.

And otherwise it's not beautiful if it doesn't have a sense of loss and a component of real,

You know,

We're going to die one day.

That's a beautiful component.

Anyway,

I'm trying to write a book.

Yeah,

No,

No.

It still speaks to me because I've been thinking about what kind of draws me in life.

I realized one of my favorite emotions is nostalgia,

Which is not a positive emotion,

But I love reminiscing about past relationships,

Past friendships,

Past events,

Things that don't exist anymore,

Almost more than the actual event.

And I was like,

That's kind of weird,

But I don't know.

That's just the thing I like.

When you look at Casanova,

You know,

He spent his life traveling the world,

Living in the wind,

Drifting with no money.

He'd go from fortune to famine,

Famine to fortune.

He went,

You know,

In and out of experiences.

He was in jail a couple of times.

He was chased out of cities.

He had all these experiences,

Okay.

He was in duels and everything.

And yet he spent his last years,

The last 11 years of his life writing about his experiences.

And what he wrote constantly throughout his memoirs is writing about this gives me the same and remembering it gives me the same pleasure as I'm living with again.

So yeah,

It's a very strong component.

That's a beautiful component to nostalgia has beauty in it.

Absolutely it does.

It's curiosity again.

Are you going to write a tone with your memoirs at some point?

I know you have a ton of stories.

Oh man,

I tell you.

I should,

I should think about every story I ever thought about and remember and write it all out.

Yeah.

I mean,

Maybe when I'm old,

When I'm old,

Then maybe that'd be my last book I ever write.

I'll write this book of kind of a quasi memoir,

Which is the story about,

Hey,

Wait a minute.

I remember this one time this girl said this,

I did this and then write it all out.

It'd be great actually.

And I've got a lot of crazy stories.

Life of Zen.

I want to read Lion's questions.

Like Everett had a comment on this thread.

Everett saying,

I'm having a tough time seeing the difference between beauty and love.

Sure love is an overused word,

But as far as true love or unconditional love or whatever,

I can't see why beauty isn't synonymous.

Yeah.

And I,

And I,

And I,

I can live with that.

I have no,

I have no explanation,

But it just,

And I'm going to try and discover it ever.

Like I'm going to try and figure out why.

To me,

Beauty is a standalone thing and love is,

It's not synonymous with love.

And I don't know why I honestly don't know,

But I'm going to figure it out.

I'm going to try and figure it out.

Yeah,

I think,

I mean,

The problem with the word love is that it's a,

It's used in so many different contexts as well.

Like so I mean,

I think unconditional love is probably quite close to beauty,

Whereas love is a transient emotion.

Maybe it's just one experience within it.

Anyway,

This is for you to figure out for your book.

Because I,

Because I do believe that love is,

Is,

Is something that emanates from our heart for others or emanates from others to us.

It's love is the constant community of living in community of living in,

You know,

Fellowship and living in family.

I mean,

Love is a component of all those,

All those things and,

And,

And duty to your fellow man.

I mean,

Like we have duty because we love our country.

We love our,

You know,

All these things.

And there's beauty,

Honestly,

I think beauty is a scientific abstract.

I think it's,

It's like,

If you think about dark matter,

You got your science base and you know,

Einstein spent his entire,

The rest of his life after his first couple of thesis,

You know,

Of relativity,

Spent the rest of his life trying to come up with the grand unifying theory of everything.

In other words,

To put the nuclear forces together with,

With the,

With gravity,

Et cetera,

And come up with a theory that is,

That encompasses the quantum world and the macro world,

Which,

You know,

Anyway,

And I think that the beauty is,

Is a mathematical concept.

That is part of the fabric of the universe.

That's what I think.

Where love is,

Is an emotion and a feeling and a,

And a,

And an abstract way of relating to the other.

That's how,

Something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah,

That makes sense.

I'm going to go to Lion's question,

Which is back on,

I guess,

The application to dating or life with this concept Lion wrote,

So might charisma be one's inner beauty projected into the outside world that resonates with it?

Well,

Sure.

Charisma is absolutely like,

If you look at,

You look at an individual who has,

That we would say is there's beauty emanating from that person.

What kind of like sub qualities can you say?

Charisma's one charm,

Inviting spirit,

Empathy,

Kindness,

Sadness,

All these things are components that they come up with the beauty of the individual.

So for sure,

Charisma is part of it.

And we know what is not beautiful.

You look at politics nowadays,

The United States,

There's nothing beautiful in the politics of the United States right now,

Then the whole concept of the Republic of the United States has no beauty has been stripped out of it.

And you look at religious extremism,

Whether it's Christianity or Muslim or whatever the extremism and the real,

Leaning towards the terrorist side of things,

There's no beauty in the belief system.

So something stripped out of that becomes this antagonistic aggressive energy,

Because the beauty isn't there to calm the spirit,

To soften things.

And you look at art nowadays,

I mean,

This is part of what I'm trying to understand is like in the last 60,

Well,

Since the 1920 or so,

Art has been stripped of beauty.

Art has always been about trying to capture beauty and everything from all the way back from,

You know,

Forever from the gay paintings and trying to capture beauty.

And now art is all about how to shock and how to glorify the artist and how to make you get,

You know,

This is art and the abstraction of it.

And architecture too,

Is all about,

And music too,

I mean,

Like you listen to what people say about music and it's like formulaic as opposed to music from the heart necessarily.

So a lot of things have been stripped and devoid of beauty in our hearts and minds.

And the crusade that we're on,

That you're on for sure,

And that I'm on as well,

Is how to reclaim beauty in the hearts of men,

Reclaim beauty in the hearts of women,

Reclaim beauty that speaks to us as a society.

So there you go.

What do you think caused that stripping of beauty?

Is it like a military industrial complex type thing?

Not necessarily.

I think that as the philosophy of the earth became,

You know,

The enlightenment and the scientific revolution to the point where they said,

Wait a minute,

Now we have telescopes and we can now see that there is no angels out there,

There is no,

It's just empty dead space.

And it shocked the hearts of men,

Society,

And said,

It's empty,

Uncaring universe out there,

It goes forever and it's empty,

Pretty much.

And that,

Plus the world wars that we had,

You know,

Like,

How can there be,

How can there be a concept of religion if there's a world war that destroys and men and people die and all this kind of stuff.

It really shocked the heart of mankind and society,

Western society for sure,

That said,

Wait a minute,

Maybe there is no God and maybe God is dead as Nietzsche said,

And maybe we're alone and there's no meaning,

Which is what Camus and Sartre talked about the existentialists and the absurdists and said,

Maybe there is no meaning.

Maybe there is no meaning at all.

It's like,

You know,

Albert Camus said that the only real philosophical question is should you kill yourself or not in this uncaring world,

Should you kill yourself or try and continue?

And so the whole,

So art followed,

Music followed,

Even,

Yeah,

I mean like the whole,

The whole concept all along those,

This existential angst and this postmodern concept of why does it matter?

There's no beauty in anything in society,

In history,

Whatever,

No beauty.

So let's just check out.

And it,

But you know,

You look at it,

I don't care if you're staunch,

There's nothing in the universe but us and we arose in chance and it means nothing.

And when we dive and go right back into the gravel of the earth,

We still have this concept in us as we live from cradle to grave.

We still look at a painting and we hear a piece of music that touches our heart and makes a stop in our tracks and listen to it.

And that's,

There's something beyond that's the connection to the divine,

Whatever that is.

So,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Everett just wrote in Yeats slashing towards Bethlehem,

Written in the wake of World War One as an intensely beautiful poem.

Yeah.

Yeah,

And you think about some of those poets that you know,

Like Wordsworth and Yeats,

Yeats is incredible.

And Robert Frost and all these guys,

They wrote about concepts that makes us stop in our tracks and think,

And everyone listening to this podcast can remember time,

Or if not,

They will at some point in their life,

Where they meet someone,

For instance,

A girl that makes their heart stop,

Makes them pause and makes them think,

Wow,

What a beauty.

And I want to be connected.

I want to gravitate towards that.

And maybe it's a fleeting moment,

But you'll never forget it for the rest of your life.

It's like,

It's a touching of the concept of transcendence.

Transcendence is the word that we're trying to capture.

Yeah,

This reminded me of the scene in The Godfather,

When Michael Corleone sees Apollonia and is like hit by the thunderbolt,

Or whatever they called it.

Yeah.

You know,

That's what I was thinking about.

I was reading,

I'm helping a coach friend with his online stuff,

And I was reading his book and he goes into childhood trauma and stuff.

And basically,

In the book he has,

You think about your absolute worst day ever,

Like when I first saw the worst emotions,

Like going through my head,

Like,

What is my worst emotion?

Worst day emotionally?

And it's actually kind of a benign experience looking back,

It's like being rejected when I was 15 by a girl I like.

And it seems like compared to other things that have happened,

You know,

People dying and stuff,

It seems like that shouldn't be the thing.

But for whatever reason,

That's the worst pain I've ever felt,

If I'm honest with myself.

And actually,

I'm bringing this up because it made me think about how I haven't really been awestruck in my love life in a while.

And that's probably not a way I want to live.

And maybe I haven't let myself be fully overcome with that sensation that you're mentioning when you see a woman who takes your breath away.

Well,

You know,

When you put things in,

When you start to have a different perspective on things,

In other words,

In other words,

Like people say to me,

Like,

How do you have this perspective?

How do you see things from this eyes on that level on that plane?

And it's because I think for me,

It's because I came from this,

This background of wilderness and nothingness.

And no opportunities and no possibilities,

No possibilities of life.

You know,

I wasn't handed anything,

For instance.

And yet here I am,

Traveling the world,

Meeting you in Miami,

Like a month ago,

Or whatever it was,

Right.

And now I'm in Romania,

And I'm talking to you,

And I'm looking at the stars in the city in Romania.

How was that possible for this poor kid from the north of Canada,

You know,

Who all I knew was like,

You know,

Everybody was loggers and hunters,

And that's what I was going to be too.

And yet here I am in the cities of the world.

And so I have this perspective of,

Like,

I'm awestruck of my journey,

Of my history,

I guess you could say,

From here to here.

How did they get here?

I don't get it.

But how am I standing in the theaters of the world?

How am I standing in the ruins of Rome?

And,

You know,

The Roman ruins that are,

For instance,

Right outside the door where I'm standing right now,

How is that possible?

Because I,

You know,

There's a sense of connecting to history and gravity that I never,

That I,

That it's not possible for someone like me.

And so when I look at it like that,

I'm thinking,

How can I,

I have a lot of perspective on,

I guess I have a lot of gratitude around my whole journey and what could be as opposed to what is.

And so that makes me,

It calms me,

It calms me because I can go and talk to a group like it in Miami there.

I had no idea what I was going to talk about.

I had no speech prepared.

But I can go up there thinking my first thought is I have gratitude to be here in Miami,

150 guys,

Whatever it was.

And I get to be here.

I get to,

I get to do this and something shifts in my consciousness shifts in my energy so that I can speak from not trying to impress,

But trying to connect to that feeling of like,

I don't know.

I don't know what I'm trying to say.

But yeah,

I get it.

It's kind of like what every spiritual path tries to proclaim,

Which is a great gratitude and humility.

You can't help but feel joy in these moments.

Yeah.

Like,

Like I say to me,

What is the best,

What is the highest quality of what is the greatest quality of a man?

I'll tell you the quality of a man who has women in their life,

For instance,

The quality of a man who you're drawn to.

There's two things he has.

He has generosity of spirit and his gratitude.

Those two things are incredible as opposed to blaming and my life sucks and women are mean to me,

Right?

There's a gratitude element there for what he's been given and what his path has been so far.

And there's a generosity of spirit.

He wants other people to have to,

To,

To,

In his presence,

To feel uplifted and feel inspired in their journey.

And the worst quality you can have with a man or a woman in my mind,

The worst quality is to be judgmental,

To judge others and say,

Oh,

I don't like that because you are blah,

Blah,

Blah.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So on the,

How,

How did you go from this to that?

I mean,

I'm remembering one line you said in Miami about how back in the day when a man wanted to have an adventure or going off on a journey,

He would like get on a ship.

I think it's,

And it was like,

Oh yeah.

I mean,

It's too bad that that's not as available to people,

But it is in a sense.

So is there any advice you give to people?

I mean,

Maybe anyone who's listening is like,

Yeah,

Well,

It isn't really,

It's not,

It's not so available anymore because we're still connected in the world.

So even though we feel it's not safe,

It is so safe compared to what it was because you hear people say,

Well,

I,

You know,

I,

I,

I gave up my,

My,

My job and stuff.

I took a sabbatical and I went backpacking backpacking across Europe.

I went on this adventure,

But they went from ATM to ATM.

There was no,

There was no sense of I'm in the real wilderness.

I'm going to,

I'm past the edge of my rope.

I don't know how I'm going to survive and I'm naked.

I'm going to fight for it.

I'm going to fight for it out of the fortitude of my gut,

My heart.

And so,

So there's,

There's,

There's safety nets everywhere we go.

We can go to a bank machine,

We can call mom because we have cell phones that work in Europe,

You know,

That sort of thing.

Right.

And,

And so we think we're on an adventure,

But we're not really.

And I don't know,

It's like this,

This idea that,

I mean,

If you think about it,

You know,

300 years ago,

If a young man who's 25 years old went out to seek his fortune,

As they would do,

They went into a rickety old wooden ship where there is no connection to anything.

There was no way to call mom.

There was no medical insurance.

There was no safety.

There's no security of any kind.

If you break an arm or you,

You just said you broke your leg or something.

You broke your arm,

Right?

I broke my arm,

Yeah.

You broke your,

Right?

There's no recourse.

If you were on that ship 300 years ago and you broke that arm,

They would set it up with some kind of splint and you'd limp along the rest of your life with it.

Yeah.

You know?

But nowadays we have everything covered and we have everything and all we do is complain and whine.

Oh,

Like we complain about it.

And you know,

This is why we have this great deep culture of self-help and this culture of therapy.

Okay?

Because we were abused as a child and we were abandoned as a child and we were hurt in our past.

And so we need therapy to work through these issues in our heart.

Okay?

And I'm not saying that's bad.

But what I'm saying is nobody had it in the history of the world.

In the history of all cultures of the world,

Nobody had therapy.

They went sad and they talked about their problems about their childhood trauma and their mother didn't love me.

And you know,

And daddy abused me.

And I'm not saying that those things are,

You know,

Are invalid.

What I'm saying is it's happened in all childhoods,

In all of history,

In all cultures,

You know,

From across the world and across the spectrum of the world.

There's been children who've been abused,

Children have been abandoned,

Children have been,

Saw their father die.

Their mother can't feed them.

Saw their sister,

You know,

Dragged away.

And yet we're the first generation that has to deal with it and has to come to terms with it and has to blame others for it and has to,

Anyway,

Yeah.

So I guess what the answer to your question,

My long-winded answer,

Is there was a time in the history of the world where a young man,

For instance,

Would go out to sea.

And they would go out without security,

Without any kind of assurances,

Without any kind of medical,

You know,

Coverage and all that kind of stuff.

And they would go do it anyway because they had to live a life.

And so they could come back if they did come back and speak words of gravity,

Words dripping with experience and words dripping with,

I've seen some things.

And so that when you talk to a girl at Starbucks 300 years ago,

You're not going,

I hope she likes me.

I wish she's like,

You don't think those things.

You think,

I've seen some things in my life.

And here I am talking to you.

And I'm talking to you now.

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's kind of like the ultimate first world problem is that we don't have as many problems.

I'm sure someone else said that before,

But like we kind of have to kind of looking back like why would people need a problem to face,

But almost all survival issues have been covered in the first world.

If you're middle-class anywhere,

You're okay.

So you kind of have to seek these,

Whatever political things that are now the big trending topic.

Yeah.

I mean,

Like someone living in a trailer park in America is living a better quality of life than a king from 500 years ago.

Everything from electricity to plumbing to the whole thing,

Right?

Like medical attention,

The whole thing.

And yet we don't see that.

And have no perspective on that,

You know,

Rightly so,

Because that's all we know.

But at the same time,

If you put perspective on things,

Nobody had any kind of like,

Nobody had any help in history.

Nobody.

You know,

The thing that like I had a broken childhood and I had a traumatic childhood and I saw a lot of violence as a kid growing up and like drunken parties and the whole thing.

And instead of going to therapy and trying to sort that out,

My therapy has been literature.

Reading about the story of men who went to see and guys who became pirates and guys,

Casanova,

Who had no opportunities,

No nothing.

And he went out there and Benvenuto Cellini,

This artist,

You know,

From Italy.

And I read these stories,

I'm thinking,

Well,

They're no different than me.

They had no opportunity.

Nobody helped them.

And they created a life.

So something in you relaxes and you can.

For me anyway,

That was my therapy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think when you're forced into real humbling experiences or to go back to the 300 year ago example,

Like whatever money you have in your coin pouch is everything.

And if it gets stolen,

You figure it out.

It kind of,

It makes you resilient in a way that many people have lost.

And the line is from the chat.

So you have to create an initiation ritual for yourself.

I think you've spoke about this.

I don't remember if it was you.

I have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like a right.

Like rites of passage are missing for men these days.

While our rituals are missing completely from the modern,

From the modern civilization,

We don't have the concept of rites of passage of,

You know,

Rituals.

We don't even pray before our meals anymore.

We used to pray before meals.

And like there was a pause we would do before our meals.

For instance,

There's a pause we would do before we go to sleep and a sense of being thankful and to give thanks.

And we don't have that anymore.

We just,

We just,

We get up in the morning,

We rush you,

Or we answer a couple of emails,

You rush to work and rush home.

And there's no sense of pausing and thinking and introspection and giving thanks.

And around our meals,

That was a ritual that we would do.

We would sit around the meal and the family would gather around the table and you would sit there and you would pause and you would give thanks.

And now we just grab the food,

Run to our computers in each individual bedroom.

And then we lost a sense of ritual and the rites of passage.

So yeah,

I've talked about this a lot and like,

You know,

How we always had a ritual from,

Well,

In all cultures and all civilizations,

There's always been a passage that was a ritual from boys to men.

And you know,

Like,

You know,

Like all cultures,

The concept of going into the wilderness and then coming back 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness,

And then coming back and standing on the earth again.

And it's like,

We don't have that.

We've never been challenged.

We've never been,

We never had to,

To have our 40 days and 40 nights in the desert.

And I think that's what's lacking in the hearts of men,

For sure.

Yeah,

It's like the closest ritual men have is like getting wasted during their bachelor party.

Like that's the closest we can get like a medicinal spiritual experience.

Right.

And then we don't reflect on it the next day.

It's just like,

Oh man,

Well,

I got so wasted.

And you do it to get the same thing again next weekend.

And there's no,

There's no reflection,

I guess is what it is.

Yeah.

There's no introspection on life thinking,

Wow,

What does that,

What did that mean?

It's a,

You know,

Which is a,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lion wrote in,

Then isn't there adventure and insecurity in your very own journey?

Let's say going for what excites you facing your fears,

Pursuing desired experiences and so on.

I think and feel and experience myself that that is what makes one truly alive.

Well,

If you don't do that,

Then you just,

You just exist.

Then you're just a guy is going to the mall and coming home,

Watch this on TV,

Going to the mall again tomorrow,

Doing your job,

Uh,

Having a beer with your buddies.

There's no,

There's no depth in anything you're doing.

So your common is accurate.

If you're not seeking these,

These experiential moments,

Then what's the point?

Like,

I really do believe that,

Um,

That if we're not,

If we're not trying to create this and trying to seek it,

Then we're just existing.

I really do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So everyone has a question on gratitude.

Um,

So we don't have rituals,

But if gratitude is the main thing or one of the two main things,

Men who have women in their lives have,

Uh,

Gratitude is all over the place.

Everyone does gratitude lists,

Et cetera.

So what is still missing?

Well,

I don't believe that's true ever.

I don't think there is real true gratitude out there.

I think there's,

There's acceptance and nodding our head and saying,

Okay,

Well,

That's good.

Thank you for that.

But there's no real sense of,

I'm not,

I don't need gratitude towards others and gratitude towards what we've been given or what we have a gratitude towards,

You know,

I think what we're missing is the gratitude to ourselves gratitude of what our journey is.

We're 40 years old and we're 25 years old,

Over 30 years old.

And our journey to this point has been trying to teach me this.

And I have a gratitude towards that.

Um,

I don't think I don't,

I don't,

I don't seek gratitude too much.

Be honest ever.

You're saying it,

You see it a lot and I don't see it a lot.

I don't think that true gratitude is out there.

There's a acceptance and a nodding our head,

But there's no real sense of,

No real sense of a true gratitude for what could be as opposed to what is.

Yeah.

I think with,

Uh,

With gratitude lists and like,

I mean,

I recommend this to people as well,

But it's kind of almost like a,

It's kind of a stepping stone or training wheels towards feeling true gratitude because if you're really feeling true gratitude,

You don't need to write it down.

I can really in that state of appreciating beauty in every moment,

You don't need the self help hack of,

You know,

Counting your gratitude.

You can feel it or like Nietzsche had a whole thing and how to fall asleep at night.

You think like 10 thoughts you're grateful for 10 fears,

You conquered 10 things and made you laugh or something like that.

It's like ingrained in your head beyond the technique.

I think.

Yeah,

Exactly.

You said it right,

Which is gratitude,

True gratitude does not have to speak.

It does not have to show everybody,

Look how great gratitude I have,

How grateful I am.

It's a calming experience.

It's a quiet experience.

It's a knowing experience that only you can contain.

It contains only you.

If that makes sense.

Totally,

Totally.

Um,

Yeah,

This has been awesome.

I feel like I could riff on,

On beauty philosophy,

But I know you have a plain second question.

So thanks for being on this.

This has been awesome.

Is there anything you want to share that's coming up for you?

No,

This conversation is good because it's recentering me.

I've been,

I've been doing,

I've been traveling for the last ever since Miami when I saw you and traveling and doing different speaking engagements.

And this is good for me,

This conversation,

Because it recenters me upon what I'm trying to capture next in my life,

Which is the concept of beauty,

Concept of gratitude.

Um,

Yeah.

Um,

It's good.

I have to go.

I have to go back to the book rest and have to spend the rest of the winter,

Like fighting for the energy of trying to capture the spirit.

Cause I,

I don't understand it completely,

But I want to understand it.

That makes sense.

So this might be an annoying question to a writer,

But do you have any idea of when you think the book might be out or more ideas on this,

Uh,

I guess the more abstract side of the movie?

Well,

I'm going to write a shorter book than it is last time.

That's for sure.

Okay.

So my last book was 400 pages.

If,

If I sit down for this entire winter,

I'm going to try and get it done.

You know what I'm trying to get done this year,

2019.

There you go.

Awesome.

Cool.

Well,

I look forward to it.

I look forward to meeting you again.

I'll probably be in Europe in the spring.

I don't know if you'll still be in Romania.

I will be.

So come visit,

Come visit us.

Cool.

Awesome.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I have to,

I have to visit people.

Come visit,

Man.

You'll love it.

Awesome.

All right.

Well,

Have a great flight.

Thanks so much for being on again,

Dan.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

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