Integrating Tony Robbins

After a weekend with Tony Robbins at Unleash the Power Within, Seth tries to bring together the lessons he learned from the world-famous life coach with the practice of meditation. Riffing on changing habits, using psychological tools, and loving yourself enough to be the change you need.

Transcript

Okay,

So let's see how to piece all of these questions together.

So as some of you know,

I was at a Tony Robbins event for the past week in Chicago.

It's called Unleash the Power Within or UPW.

And on the first day,

We walked across fire.

We walked across,

We did a fire walk across coals,

Hot coals.

We went into our values,

We went into our limiting beliefs,

We laughed,

We cried,

We danced,

We screamed,

We learned.

It was an amazing experience.

I have energy resources I never knew that I had.

Going off of,

You know,

About three to four hours of sleep a night,

But being at such a peak state for the entire day.

And Tony Robbins himself,

He would go for eight hours full on,

Very intense,

Without going to the bathroom or eating or drinking,

Anything incredible.

And he really spent his life studying with different people who were the masters of their fields.

Yeah,

He's friends with,

You know,

Bill Gates and all these kind of rich businessmen,

But then also with professional athletes and long distance marathon runners and emotional,

You know,

Experts and scientists.

And also picks their brains and really tries to understand how to become the most outstanding,

Excellent person one can be.

What are the secrets?

How do the people that are the professionals in their fields are the best in the world at what they do?

How,

What are their character traits?

How do they do it?

What research backs that stuff up and tries to piece all that stuff together and then presents it and also walks us through all these processes where you're learning it through experiencing it and embodying it.

So it was a really beautiful,

Really powerful,

Really intense time.

And there's something that I heard him say that I really felt applied directly to meditation.

A lot of what we did there,

I would say,

Is part of the precursor to meditation in terms of correcting a lot of the programming in your mind.

You know,

Learning how to live in a more empowered,

Healthy,

Active,

Dynamic state as your base way of living.

But as far as the structure of the mind and how to really get into the structure of the mind,

One thing he said really backed up what I've been teaching,

Which kind of falls under the technical definition of neuroassociative conditioning.

And neuroassociative conditioning,

If you break those words down,

Neuro,

Brain,

Neurology,

Associative,

Making associations and conditioning,

Right,

So what has been conditioned.

It's about what we assign pleasure and pain to.

What behaviors,

What actions,

What people,

What foods,

What situations we assign pleasure and pain to.

Somebody who smokes cigarettes,

They've assigned pleasure to smoking,

Even though smoking is actually harming them.

But because they've assigned pleasure to it,

They keep doing it.

That for them,

Not smoking is painful and smoking is pleasurable.

That's why they do it,

Right?

Some of us,

Meditation is pleasurable.

That's why we do it often,

Because we've associated pleasure to it,

So we keep doing it.

Other people feel that meditation is painful and that's why they don't do it or they don't come to this because sitting feels boring.

It's difficult.

They don't want to do it.

So really looking at what you're assigning pleasure and pain to and maybe reshuffling that around and seeing instead of just my pleasure and pain kind of response to things,

Maybe seeing what actually serves me.

What brings me to become the person I want to become?

What helps me achieve the goals in my life that I want to achieve?

And through that kind of framework,

Then seeing what you want to do and what you don't want to do and assigning pleasure to the feeling of those things that coincide,

That line up with your goals and your values and assigning pain to those things that you don't want that are going to keep you in a way of life that is not allowing you to rise to your highest potential and if anything actually makes you suffer,

It's difficult.

So it was a lot of this kind of thing,

A lot of really looking deeply at the mind,

At the self,

At the psyche and our structures and then he has a lot of different formulas of shifting that stuff,

Shifting your state of mind,

Your state of being.

He says the first thing you often need to do is shift your physiology,

Shake up your body a little bit.

Yeah,

Change your body.

If you feel that something's,

If you're sad,

If you're depressed,

Something's happening,

You'll notice your body's like heavy and it's hunched and it's down,

Right?

So open up,

Shake out,

Move,

Right?

Go to the gym,

Change your physiology,

Then change how you're focusing on the problem and then change your language around it.

Do you see it as a problem or as a challenge,

Right?

Is this,

There's something wrong or oh,

I'm excited to see what the solution to this is going to be.

So changing your way of looking at things,

Changing your focus.

So it was a lot about just re-reframing,

Recontextualizing your relationship with life and you know,

These are also methods that are applied by the richest people in the world,

By the best athletes in the world.

So these are also really part of the groundwork of how to become an excellent,

Successful human being on all levels of what that means to be a successful human.

So I gained a lot from that personally and I'm now going to be taking some time over the next few weeks to probably go even deeper in my unpacking of that experience to see how to really combine that more thoroughly with what I'm teaching in my meditations and my understandings and that'll give me definitely some complimentary information for these classes.

But just sticking with the neuro associative conditioning part,

It's to say for those of you that didn't meditate since I saw you last,

For those that only maybe got like once in,

To really realize that also repetition makes mastery,

Right?

That what we,

You know,

What we praise people for being able to do in public,

Right?

Someone who wins a marathon,

Myself being able to sit up here and teach meditation,

All this,

This comes from thousands of hours of work in private that you guys don't see.

Yeah.

The person who won the Boston marathon,

They're like,

Wow,

That person's amazing yet.

They've been training every single day for years with nobody looking at them,

Nobody applauding them,

Nobody helping them out just based on their own efforts and private is the successes that you see in public.

Yeah.

And repetition creates mastery.

So meditation is no different.

So if you really want to excel in meditation,

Practice it more.

And that isn't something that you do because you feel like you should do it.

You have to do that because you want to do that and you want to do it because it's going to give you the benefits that you want to create in your life.

It's going to create stability.

It's going to create peace.

It's going to create spaciousness and happiness.

Yeah.

It's going to create good feelings.

And I'm also saying this to you.

I'm not like a salesman,

Like you're already in my class.

You've already bought my product.

So I actually have nothing to gain now from you doing this or not doing this.

Yeah.

But just saying to you as a human being who has been in really heavy,

Depressed,

Unhappy states for large portions of my life and starting to practice meditation,

Starting to really change my behavioral patterns,

Seeing things clearly and really being able to say that this is I am at the happiest that I've been in my life.

And that's not like a coincidence.

You know,

That's strictly because I've really been incorporating what I teach you guys into my own life,

Into my behaviors,

Into how I do things.

So I can also say that it does work and it's real.

So after all of that,

I actually forget all of your questions,

But I'm going to look around and try to kind of pick things apart and pull things apart.

So when I was in the monastery,

We used to meditate every morning at five in the morning,

Five to six in the morning.

The question about falling asleep during meditation,

I could say that very often I would sit and I would fall asleep during meditation.

A,

Because I wasn't getting really a good quality sleep at night,

Right?

So a lot of us,

We don't actually sleep.

We're lying in bed at night and we maybe drift off to an unconscious state,

But we're not relaxed.

We're not actually letting go and relaxing.

And if you want to know why,

Then you have to look at what am I doing before sleep?

Am I on my laptop?

Am I on my phone?

Am I worrying and busy and stressing?

Yeah.

Has my whole day been about getting wound up and really,

Really,

Really busy?

And then I go to bed trying to have a good night's sleep and wonder why my sleep is jagged and rocky,

Right?

Because you've been creating the conditions for a mind that just stays in a stressed state.

Yeah.

And then when you sit to meditate in the morning,

You want to sleep because the mind's like,

I haven't gotten enough rest.

Your body hasn't gotten enough rest.

So one thing is definitely again,

Enhancing the quality of sleep,

Maybe not looking at any screens for an hour up to sleep.

Showering at night is great,

Massaging your feet,

Things to just get you back in the body.

Slowing down to give yourself that transition into sleep is pretty important.

Not eating too close to bedtime,

Not drinking alcohol.

So another thing that I can say is a little bit from what again,

This whole changing your state by changing your physiology thing that Tony talked about a lot is that I would say to you if you're meditating every morning or sometimes you fall asleep,

I'd say first go into your basement,

Do 30 jumping jacks,

Do 10 pushups,

Do 30 more jumping jacks,

Stretch out and then sit down to meditate.

And I guarantee you're not going to fall asleep.

Or wake up,

Take a shower.

Drink your water,

Go down,

Jog in place,

Do a couple of pushups.

Do a five minute routine of just moving,

Find something on YouTube,

Five minute aerobic exercise.

Get your body going,

Go outside.

Run around your house three times.

Just something to get you going.

We had a retreat at our monastery for a month with this teacher,

His name was the Paw Oak Sayadaw,

He's from Burma,

Part of the Paw Oak monastery.

So he'd been practicing for,

I think he was maybe in his 80s when he did the retreat,

He's been a monk since he was in his 20s or teens.

Some consider him an enlightened being and I would consider him an enlightened being.

To pass his training,

His students have to remember their past lives.

So to be able to pass his training,

It means your meditation is at the point where you actually are not bound by the perception of time anymore.

And his students can see past lives and things like this.

Then he knows that they've passed his training.

Then when I did his retreat,

We hosted him at our center and because I was one of the hosts,

I had to be up earlier than everybody else.

We meditated at 4.

30 every morning,

So I had to be up at 4.

And we also,

Because we were the hosts and it was our center,

We also had to make sure at night everything was clean and everything was good and stuff.

So yeah,

I would go to bed at around 10 or 11 and I would have to wake up at 4.

And my alarm would go off and I would just jump out of bed because I had no choice.

It's easy when you have a choice.

If you're not sure if you should do it or not,

You're not going to do it.

Yeah,

I didn't give myself a choice.

Jumped out of bed.

But I would be falling asleep.

As soon as I stood up,

I would be,

Oh my God,

I'm exhausted.

And I knew if I go to sit,

It's not going to happen.

I'm going to sit to meditate and I'm just going to be nodding the whole time,

Right?

So the way that I did it was I just did walking meditation.

I just spent that 15 minutes,

I kind of got myself ready,

Went down,

And for 15 minutes just walked back and forth across the room.

Just getting into my body is as simple as that.

Just getting back into the feeling of my body.

Breathing,

Yeah,

Kind of getting moving.

And then when I sat to meditate,

I also sat in an erect,

Upright way.

Temperature is important.

If it's warm,

You're going to be more likely to get drowsy.

If you make it cold,

You're more likely to be awake.

So little things like that.

But really had to kind of juice myself up a little bit before I sat to make it work.

So that's kind of one of my strategies.

When I sat down to meditate,

The question about the tongue.

So that is something I do every single time I meditate that you should do every single time you meditate is you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

This A helps the saliva go back instead of pooling in your mouth,

But also it's an acupuncture point.

Acupressure point.

It creates a connection,

A focused connection.

In this part of your body and this part of your body.

Yeah,

So when my tongue is at the roof of my mouth,

It's also like a Q that I also physiologically know it's time to meditate.

Yeah,

So that's just something to kind of slip in there.

Meditation does also have great healing properties.

Why?

To understand that,

You have to take a step back and understand what is disease.

There's a few different causes of disease.

One cause of disease is that you are putting poison into your body.

Yeah,

If you're eating McDonald's every day.

Yeah,

If you're drinking water that has a lot of chlorine or a lot of fluoride or different things like this in it.

You have lead pipes,

Right?

There's a lot of different ways.

We live in a very toxic world these days.

There's toxins everywhere,

Right?

They're in us.

And a lot of our sickness just simply comes from the toxic environment we live in.

If you're sick with the flu and you cough in my face,

Guess what?

I'm probably going to get the flu too,

Right?

So there's just a lot of sickness around.

Another kind of sickness is because of the body's upkeep itself.

If we are not taking care of our body,

Right?

If we're not eating the right foods,

If we're not exercising,

If we're not sleeping,

We're going to get sick.

Yeah,

So sickness also just comes from not giving the right upkeep to the body.

Another reason that we get sick,

It's also emotional problems.

Has anybody been so worried that they got sick?

Anybody know what I'm talking about when I say that?

Yeah?

Holding this in your stomach and you get sick and you get anxiety attacks,

Right?

You get sick.

So our mental and emotional states have physiological reactions that also can create sickness in us.

So really knowing what kind of sickness we're talking about helps.

But that being said,

When I've meditated and when you meditate,

Because you're slowing the body down,

Because you're relaxing and you're opening up,

When you look at a lot of diseases,

Our center is also a Chinese medicine clinic.

In Chinese medicine,

Disease comes from imbalance.

If something in the body is out of balance,

That's why you get disease.

The body's not flowing through its natural cycle.

And in Chinese medicine,

They use the five elements,

Right?

They use the elements,

It's wood,

Fire,

Earth,

Metal,

And water.

And they talk about those as a cycle.

Like if there's water,

Right?

Water grows the tree,

Wood.

Then fire burns wood,

Right?

So then it's fire.

And when fire burns the wood,

It turns to ash,

Earth.

And then when earth piles upon itself and compresses,

It becomes metal,

Right?

And then water filters through metal.

Metal is the filtering system for water.

And then that can go back into the tree,

And that's the cycle.

So if you assign also then elements to different organs of the body,

And you assign things like fire is hot and cold,

And you assign organs and emotional themes,

We say,

For instance,

The liver,

Right?

If we say like the liver is wood,

Or the earth is the stomach,

Or the lungs are the metal.

And if you have a problem with,

Say you have like a lot of like acne,

Right?

You have an outbreak of pimples on your face.

We'd say your body's too hot.

It's expressing fire.

So we'd say,

Why is there a lot of fire,

Right?

For there to be a lot of fire,

That means there's a lot of wood that needs to be burned.

So if wood is liver,

And liver is anger,

That means you have a built up of anger that you're not expressing.

Because you're not expressing your anger,

It's all burning.

And that's why people that have anger,

Like people that have,

You know,

They've built up anger,

They're often exploding,

And they're really expressive,

And they're kind of hot and red in the face,

Right?

They're expressing this heat,

Because there's a lot of wood.

But if you take a step back,

How can there be an excess of wood,

Because the water isn't being controlled?

Right?

So why would somebody have a buildup of anger,

A lot of anger?

Because they're actually not in touch with their feelings.

That there's boundaries that are being crossed,

That they're not setting,

That they're having trouble in their relationships to themselves,

To the world.

But because their water is out of balance,

It's creating an excess of wood,

Which is expressing on the fire.

And so by looking at things in terms of elements in Chinese medicine,

You can actually see how to rebalance things.

And sometimes we'd see that if someone's expressing a physical symptom,

And I say sometimes meaning 95% of the time,

Physical symptoms,

We can actually trace back to emotional causes.

Yeah,

And I can say that confidently,

That out of all the patients that came to us,

95% of the physical things we were seeing,

Were coming from emotional and mental causes.

So when you meditate,

And you start working with your emotions,

You start working with mental causes,

You start learning to relax,

To open up.

Yeah,

Your body's not so tight,

Your body,

Your blood is able to flow,

You're able to breathe deeply,

You're able to let go and things can circulate.

A lot of that sickness can move through the body by itself.

It doesn't get trapped and build up and create sickness.

Yeah,

Meditation has a very kind of straightforward,

I would say,

Effect in the body's feeling of wholeness and happiness and health.

One of my teachers,

Achean Brahm,

Was also mentioning that when you get into really deep meditation,

Wherever there's a blockage or a sickness,

You'll feel a lot of heat in that spot.

And he's been practicing for many years,

And he's one of the,

I would say,

Leading meditation teachers in the world,

The strength of his practice.

And he said in one of his retreats,

There was a woman who came and she was having really intense heat above one of her breasts.

And after the meditation,

She told him and he said,

Congratulations,

You may have just burned through breast cancer.

You may have really gone through the emotional and mental causes of that to the point that all of that was able to let go and reintegrate in the body and go back into the flow and let the toxins leave.

So when you really start looking at the mental and emotional causes connected to things,

You can also see that through meditation,

Through balancing your mind and your emotions,

A lot of things that might have made you sick will actually pass by,

Pass you by.

So there's a very scientifically proven connection between the body and the mind,

Between the mind and the brain,

Between the brain and the body.

It's all connected.

Yeah.

This is why meditation is also,

You see it in hospitals.

You see doctors recommending meditation for people.

What were the other questions?

So making peace with what's happening in this moment as a question.

I would say that that's after this week,

I would say that there's a simple and a difficult answer to that.

Difficult simply meaning complex,

Complex meaning many steps.

So one of the things we did during Tony Robbins was that we looked at our values and he said that there's actually six values.

So the first value is certainty.

So when I say certainty,

Do you guys know what I mean?

That people value certainty.

Yes.

You want to feel safe.

You want to feel secure.

You want to make sure you have a job.

You want to make sure you have a house,

A partner,

Right?

We want certainty,

Security.

Okay.

Now do you know what I mean when I say yeah?

Certainty.

The second value is uncertainty.

Yeah.

That we want variety.

If everything was certain,

Life gets really boring.

Right?

We want variety.

That's why you go see new movies.

You go out to restaurants,

You go out with friends,

You do stuff.

Certainty.

So right now,

Just only after talking about the two values,

The two basic values,

What do we see?

Conflict.

Right?

That's a paradox.

So right from the get-go,

Two of our most basic values are in conflict.

Yeah.

So the third value that we have,

It's significance.

Wanting to feel special.

Wanting to have attention.

Wanting to matter,

Be important.

Right?

Significance.

Go on Instagram.

You have a whole app of people wanting to be significant.

Look at me.

Right?

Relationships.

I go out with my friends.

My girlfriend says,

What?

You don't want to spend time with me anymore?

Right?

Significance.

Yeah.

This need to feel special.

Significantly.

The need right after significance is love and connection.

Right?

Wanting connection.

Wanting love.

The need for love and connection.

Significance,

However,

Is about me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

I'm special.

I'm important.

Look at me.

Love,

Connection,

That's about we.

Us.

Right?

So,

The next two values,

Significance and love and connection,

What do you see?

Again,

Conflict.

Right?

On one hand,

We want everything to be about us,

But simultaneously,

We want to create a connection which involves you having to also care about other people and connect to other people.

So just on these four values,

These basic personality values,

Two of them are in conflict,

The other two are in conflict.

And then there's the two spiritual values.

One is growth.

We want to grow as people,

Spiritually grow.

And the other one is contribution.

We want to be able to give.

Something to give purpose.

Right?

So if you look at your values in your life,

Maybe you'll see that right off the bat,

Some of your own values are in conflict.

Or if you're in a relationship.

Yeah,

One of my values is uncertainty.

One of my partner's values is certainty.

That's going to be a problem.

Yeah.

I want everything to be about me.

She wants everything to be about the relationship.

Problem.

Yeah.

I want to grow,

Which means that I'm going to have to keep jumping into the unknown.

She wants certainty.

Problem.

Yeah.

So if you look at these things in that sense,

You'll see in a lot of ways,

Okay,

You know,

How do I make peace with the present moment?

Well,

What do I actually want to get out of the present moment?

What's important to me?

What matters?

Yeah.

What do I want to feel in this present moment?

In my meditation?

Yeah,

I could bring any of these values into my practice of meditation.

I could meditate out of a sense of certainty.

I know I'm sitting here,

I'm relaxing,

I'm meditating,

This is good for me,

This feels good.

Anytime I want to feel certainty,

I can return to this place.

Or you can meditate with a feeling of uncertainty.

What's going to happen in today's meditation?

Let's see.

Let's see how deep it goes.

Who knows?

Significance.

I'm so great.

I'm meditating.

This is so great for me.

Good job,

Seth.

You're doing a great job.

You're doing what the Buddha said to do.

Yeah.

No one else is meditating.

Everyone's watching TV and you're meditating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a little bit of,

You know,

Ego involved in that,

But whatever.

If it gets your ass on the cushion,

It's fine.

Connection.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here.

I want to connect to the universe.

I want to connect to the breath.

I want to feel at one with everything,

With the world,

Find God.

Yeah.

Great.

Connect.

Do it.

I want to grow.

I want to be here to grow.

I have all these different things coming into my mind.

All these thoughts,

All these feelings,

All these memories,

All the stuff I haven't worked with.

All these stressors.

Awesome.

Come at me,

Mind.

Let me work through you.

Right.

I'm going to use you to grow.

Or a contribution.

Right.

I want to be a better person.

I want to be kinder.

I want to be more open.

I want to be more patient.

I want to be spacious.

I want to be responsive instead of reactive.

Yeah.

I want to be able to contribute in a better way to the world.

Yeah.

So finding which need for you,

And you could even think about that as I'm talking,

Which of these for you is actually your need that you could pull,

Pour into the meditation to say this,

This will actually get me going more than anything else.

Right.

So that'll help you in this moment make peace with what's going on,

With what this is.

Another thing that we did was look at our limiting beliefs.

Oftentimes we have limiting beliefs.

For instance,

The belief that we're not enough.

Does anybody feel like they might have that one?

That's one that I have.

That you're not enough.

Because we think if we don't have enough,

We're not going to be loved.

If I'm not enough,

I'm not going to be loved.

So we're always trying to do more,

Trying to be more,

Trying to achieve.

For instance,

That's one belief.

Right.

Want to do more,

Achieve.

Always not enough,

Not enough,

Not enough.

So we did this exercise where you feel that feeling.

You write down what it did to you in your life,

How feeling like not enough has ruined your life in many ways.

And then you close your eyes,

You feel it,

Feel it in your body.

What does that feeling do to you?

Right.

It's like heavy.

It doesn't feel good.

It makes you feel sick.

Now imagine carrying the same feeling for a year,

Not changing it.

Imagine carrying this feeling for five years,

10 years,

20 years.

What is your life going to look like in 20 years if you keep feeling like you're not enough?

Yeah.

How do you want to carry that with you for the next 20 years?

Yeah.

Neuro associative conditioning.

You need to connect that feeling of not enough to pain to the point that you say,

I'm done with it and it's any way bullshit.

It's silly.

It's not true.

I'm great.

I'm amazing.

I'm fantastic.

I am enough.

Yeah.

I can make peace with this moment now because I've realized I am enough.

The only thing that was ever wrong is that I had this thought in my mind that says I wasn't enough.

So another way to make peace with this moment is to really look,

Well,

What is making this moment not peaceful for me and identifying it?

Is there a certain belief that I have?

Is there a feeling I have?

Is there a value,

Something not being met?

What is it in any moment that's driving us away?

And really it's important to look closely at that.

Why do so many people identify the present moment with pain?

Why as a society are we always so busy,

So distracted?

When we have free time,

We just scroll through Facebook or we go drink something or watch Netflix or read something.

Why do we always need to be doing something to feel okay or should I say to not have to feel something?

What's going to happen if we stop?

What is the big,

Ugly,

Hideous monster looming right in front of our faces in the present moment that we don't want to face or feel?

What is it?

Why does it feel empty?

Have we been abandoning ourselves?

So when we stop,

We don't feel connection anymore?

Are we suddenly faced with the fact that we've been living a life that's not so happy for us or all the pain we've caused other people or all the pain that's been caused to us that we haven't dealt with?

What is it?

What is your special flavor of suffering when you just drop into this present moment that tries to drive the mind away?

Does it feel overwhelming?

Do you feel lost?

And really look at it,

Identifying it and learning how to take its power away,

Which is what I've talked about,

Is welcoming it.

I feel guilty.

Okay,

Hello guilt.

Come on in.

Let me have a good look at you.

Okay,

Guilt.

Great.

I'm guilty.

I'm such a horrible person.

Okay,

Thank you.

That's my belief.

I'm a horrible person.

Okay,

So let me look at being a horrible person.

How does that feel?

Do I want to keep carrying that around?

Is that true?

Yeah.

Are there times that I've been not a horrible person?

Yeah.

What's going on?

Really starting to unpack that stuff and looking at it and changing our whole psyche,

Changing our psychological structures and makeup into a way that's more harmonious,

That's more cohesive,

That feels more like us,

Right?

You feel more alive and you feel happy to be alive.

And that's possible.

It's not like there's really anything wrong with any of us.

We just don't understand.

We're not seeing clearly.

We're at war in our own minds and we're just not understanding that.

So the reality is that in the present moment,

I would say 99% of the time there's nothing actually happening except what our own mind is doing.

There's nothing really wrong.

Maybe every now and then,

Maybe you need to go pee,

Right?

You need the bathroom,

Right?

So something is wrong.

You actually need the bathroom,

Right?

Or you're driving your car and something cuts you off.

Oh,

Okay.

That was dangerous,

Right?

That there are actual things that happen.

But most of the time there's really nothing wrong except just what we're creating,

What we want that we don't have,

What we don't want that we do have,

The wars that we have in our minds and our personalities,

Our values,

Our beliefs that are pushing us down.

When I did my ancestry.

Com genetic testing,

I found that I'm 98% Ashkenazi Jew,

Right?

So I'm like as Jewish as they come,

I guess you could say.

And when I read the story of the Jews,

We built up this kingdom and around what is like Israel now and King Solomon was there.

It was this whole thing.

And then the Babylonians came and they destroyed it and they killed a lot of Jews and enslaved a lot of Jews and a lot of Jews had to run away.

They leveled everything.

And then the Jews eventually after the Babylonian empire,

The Jews came back and they rebuilt everything.

They had the second temple built it on the ruins of the first one rebuilt.

Then came the Roman empire,

Destroyed everything,

Killed the Jews,

Enslaved the Jews,

Kicked the Jews out.

Yeah.

Then the Romans came,

Then the Jews came back,

Then they were killed and pushed out again,

Again and again and again and again.

Then you see what's happening now with the Palestinians and the Jews,

Right?

Same thing,

Right?

This cultural trigger keeps going.

I personally was never in any of those places.

My parents were from New York.

But in our house growing up,

I was,

Although my parents were very loving and kind and generous,

They were also simultaneously somehow very like weird slash tight with resources.

They gave these weird signals that I should be mistrusting of people.

Always thought the worst was going to happen.

We always say like the Jewish mother,

Right?

This constant overbearing,

Over worrying mother.

And then I internalized that.

And then I'm also thinking that something's wrong and that people have to be careful and all this stuff,

You know.

But then after the genetic testing and I put it all together,

I was like,

Oh,

That's not really how I feel.

And that's not even necessarily the truth of the world around me.

That's the story of the Jewish people that has been programmed into our tribe for thousands of years that my parents took and that I was given.

And when I could see that story clearly,

I could let that go and say,

Seth,

I'm not,

I'm not threatened right now.

There's resources to share.

I'm fine.

I have friends.

I don't have to be afraid of everybody.

And I could start working with that.

And what was wrong,

Quote unquote,

In the present moment had nothing to do with me.

It was something that's just been passed down through my lineage.

So it's crazy because when you start peeling back the layers,

You start to say,

Holy shit,

Who am I?

Because all these things that I think and that I feel,

They come from my ancestors or they come from our culture,

Right?

What is culturally acceptable in America?

In Massachusetts,

There's things that are culturally acceptable in Texas that are not the same in Massachusetts.

I lived in Germany for eight years.

Very different.

I lived in India for two years.

Very different things in India that are totally fine.

I'm like,

That's so offensive.

But if you took those Indian people and brought them here,

Everyone here,

I'd be like,

My God,

You're so offensive.

You know?

But if you do something that for us is totally normal,

They get super offended.

Yeah.

In Asian countries,

If you laugh,

You cover your mouth,

But it's okay to burp and fart out loud.

Yeah.

Different blueprints within our individual families.

Yeah.

What does it mean to be a good friend?

What does it mean to be a good partner?

Yeah.

I was at the gym with my girlfriend.

I think I talked about this and she was on the Stairmaster talking on the phone and I was getting mad at her.

What kind of a person talks on the phone in the gym that's so disrespectful to everybody?

I talked to her about it and she's like,

Well,

If the person next to me was talking on the phone I was working out,

I wouldn't care.

I said,

Well,

I would.

Then it was kind of like this,

Oh,

Aha,

That if I would care if somebody was doing it,

Then that's something that in my mind is offensive.

So I wouldn't do that.

But in her mind,

If somebody did that,

That wouldn't be offensive.

So she doesn't mind doing it.

It's not like one of us is right or wrong.

We just both come with our own conditioning.

We each have a different blueprint.

Yeah.

Now expand that to like 8 billion people on this earth in however many countries.

Right.

I mean,

That's just me and her.

We've been living together for two years.

We're in a relationship.

We come from the same town in Andover,

Massachusetts.

Yeah.

As close to conditioning as you can get.

And we still fight about something like that.

No wonder the world's so fucked up.

Right.

Because we're all coming from such different places and nobody takes the time to really look and understand and communicate.

We just react.

That's disrespectful.

Is that really disrespectful or is that your story?

Is that disrespectful in your world,

But is that disrespectful in other people's worlds?

Is that an absolute thing?

Yeah.

Tardiness.

That's a big one.

Right.

For some people,

If you're a minute late,

You're being disrespectful.

Other people,

They could roll in 20 minutes late and be like,

What?

Doesn't matter.

Right.

Because we were just taught differently.

We're all blueprints.

And it's really important to understand that fact and then understand other people's blueprints to be able to live together.

And communication is a big way.

Anytime we don't communicate,

We leave room for assumptions.

Yeah.

At our house,

I rented a big Airbnb house for Tony Robbins and I just invited everyone coming to the event.

You know,

I had beds and everything.

Twenty,

You know,

19 people said,

I want to come.

Cool.

So I had 19 people in the house.

It was nighttime.

It was getting hot.

They turned the air conditioner on.

They walk downstairs.

They lay there.

It's getting hot.

They go back upstairs.

The air conditioner is off and the heat's back on.

They start getting angry.

They said to me,

You know,

I know who did it.

Yeah.

And that's an act of war.

Right.

That they did this and that's not okay.

And I said,

Well,

Did you talk to them about it?

No,

They should know.

They should know.

They shouldn't.

If I turn it down,

They should know.

And I said,

If you never talk about it,

If you never talk about it,

If you never go up and say,

Hey,

Let's make an agreement,

You apparently like it warmer than I do.

I like it colder.

Is there a temperature we can both agree on that makes sense for both of us?

Right.

That sounds pretty like a normal thing to say.

Very normal way to communicate.

No,

They turned it down.

They should know.

That's right.

If you don't talk about it,

You're leaving room for assumptions.

You're assuming this person's at war with you.

For all you know,

They were just in their room and suddenly it got cold and they're like,

Fuck,

It's cold.

And they go and say,

Oh,

The heat.

And they turn it.

They didn't know how you're feeling.

That's probably know the heaters on a timer and they think they just need to adjust it.

If you don't communicate,

It's just assumptions.

And that's what we do.

We assume and then we fight and then we wonder what's going on.

So making peace at the present moment can be very complex.

There can be a lot of layers of how to get clarity,

How to change our programming,

How to understand for the meditation specifically.

It gets really freaking simple.

Do I want to meditate?

Yes or no?

Yes.

Okay.

Here I go.

There's a pain in my leg.

Can I do anything about it?

Yes or no?

Yes,

I can stretch my leg.

Do it.

I'm bored.

Can I do anything about that in my meditation?

Yes or no?

No.

Then,

Then forbear it.

Sit with it.

Let something not be pleasurable and try not to run away from it.

I would even though,

However,

Give you another way to look at that.

I'm bored.

Is there something I can do about that?

Of course.

I'm bored.

Look at the breath.

How long is your breath right now?

Yeah.

How good does it feel to sit here?

Isn't it nice to stop and relax and rest?

Is there any pleasure in my experience right now that I can focus on?

Shifting your focus.

Boredom.

Okay.

Boredom.

That's a feeling that I always run away from.

Anytime in my daily life I feel bored,

I run away.

How can I change my relationship to boredom?

Welcome boredom.

What does boredom feel like?

Where do I feel the boredom in my body?

What does that feel like in my,

What does boredom feel like in my body?

How bad is it?

Oh,

There's this weird,

I feel like my chest gets tight.

Oh,

Your chest gets tight.

Okay.

Is that it?

So,

You've been running away from this feeling your whole life and it's just your chest getting tight?

If your chest gets tight,

Can you just shake out?

Can you breathe into your chest?

Yeah.

Can you embrace that boredom?

Pretend it's like a little child that you just hug in.

Oh,

Boredom.

Hi.

Welcome.

Oh,

It's nice to see you.

Come sit on my lap,

Boredom.

Let's meditate together.

Being creative,

Playing with it.

Yeah.

What can I do to make this moment workable,

Bearable?

Makes sense to me.

But it's also,

Again,

Just as simple as can I do something about this yes or no?

If there's a yes,

Then do something.

If there's a no,

Then forbear it.

Go through it.

And if there's an I don't know,

Then that's a great place to reflect and look.

And I would say that in life,

There is always something you can do.

Even if that something you can do means surrendering and accepting and forbearing.

Right?

If there's like a lightning crashing outside,

Is there anything we can do?

No.

Except maybe stuff our ears with tissue paper,

Which is something to do.

But if there's really nothing you can do about it,

Then yeah,

You forbear it.

But then that's a decision.

Not getting angry at the lightning,

Not getting mad at the school for not having thicker windows or set for making us meditate in a storm.

Yeah,

You change your relationship to it.

Every time I hear the strike of lightning,

I'm going to remind myself to breathe deeper.

There you go.

You suddenly turn that lightning into an ally.

Yeah.

How can I turn everything that happens to me into an ally?

How can life be happening for me instead of against me or to me?

Right?

So it's all about shifting relationships with things.

Ultimately when you meditate,

However,

Everything's going to let go.

Meditation's not about getting more stuff.

It's about letting things go.

So ultimately you close your eyes.

You're not going to be seeing.

You're not going to be feeling.

You're not going to be hearing,

Smelling,

Tasting.

You're going to be thinking that's going to go away.

There's just going to be this feeling of peace.

The mind's going to drop in on itself.

You're not even going to feel duality anymore.

There's just going to be the state of oneness,

This space,

This peace,

This presence,

That ultimately everything drops away except just that state of being in a very pure kind of way.

It's just beingness,

Uninterrupted beingness.

Even the element of time starts to break off.

That's why after our meditations,

I could say to you how long if we had been meditating,

You'd have no idea.

You'd say it could have been 20 minutes.

It could have been 50 minutes.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It could have been three hours.

You have no fucking idea.

Yeah.

That could have been one hour.

That could have been a half a day.

I have no idea.

I'm just lost.

Time stops.

It just stretches out.

It doesn't make sense anymore.

It's really about taking that proactive step,

But being proactive can also mean surrender.

Being proactive can also be about making a decision to let go.

Stop searching for perfection.

Stop trying to make it perfect and the best.

Stop trying to meditate.

Stop thinking that there's this thing called peace that you're going to get through the meditation.

Instead,

Start practicing,

How can I just relax right here and now?

Stop trying to be anything.

Stop trying to get anything.

Stop trying to change anything.

Guess what?

That's called contentment.

That's what contentment leads to.

A calm mind.

Guess what another word for having a calm mind is?

Meditation.

So for the practice of the meditation today,

Which is not that dissimilar from the practice every other class that I teach you guys,

It's in this very moment,

Where's that contentment?

What am I running away from?

What am I running towards?

And how can I use this moment as my platform to be peaceful?

And just look at what that means.

Play with it.

And again,

Repetition makes the master.

So if you also just drop in this room once a week meditations and then you leave,

Can't even turn off your phones when you're in here.

The world's going to come and get you.

Because that's the world.

The world wants to bring us in.

The world wants to get us.

It's really hard.

I had to go to a monastery for eight years.

It's really hard to get it.

And even in the monastery,

I'd be on retreat and cars would drive by blasting music.

I'd be on meditation retreat three months.

I'm listening to Smash Mouth,

Hey,

Now you're in all this stuff.

Jesus.

I'm in a monastery and I'm still like,

This is still coming in.

So you really have to find that way.

How can in this moment,

I really just let it all go,

Put it all down,

Just stop,

Be fully here.

Play with it,

Work with it,

See and practice it.

Practice it every day.

Try every day from now until I see you again every day.

If you can only sit for five minutes,

But make sure you set your alarm and you don't open your eyes until those five minutes are up.

And I make you close your eyes when you meditate because when your eyes are open,

It's too easy to be engaged because 85% of our mind is busy with visual stimulus.

The eyes are directly connected to the brain.

If you pulled out the brain,

The eyes would be hanging from them.

The eyes are the only sense that directly connected to the brain for survival reasons,

But because the eyes are directly connected to the brain,

That's a lot to try to tune out by keeping your eyes open.

You can try.

That's another method.

But I say close your eyes,

Shut off,

Close it down,

Stop,

Turn into the mind,

Bring in the senses.

So I'm going to do what we did last week,

Simply because I've talked so long,

That we're going to do a 25 minute meditation together.

And I'll guide us into it.

I'll lead us in,

But then also you're going to really sit with it and you're going to be with it.

And through presence,

Through being with something,

We gain insight.

This was the last question.

Through putting our mind on something,

You gain insight.

Through looking at something,

You see it clearly.

Understand,

Standing underneath something,

You can see the whole thing,

You understand it,

You get insight.

Insight comes when you're stopped and when you're present with something.

When you meditate,

Repeat,

Meditate more often,

Meditate longer.

The more you're in that place,

The more you'll start to understand.

Through the concentration of the mind,

The mind collecting into the present moment,

The more you understand things.

Because the mind is all here,

You have all of your full capacity to see and to understand and to know.

The scattered mind knows nothing.

It jumps,

Jumps,

Jumps,

Jumps.

The collected mind sees clearly.

Wisdom comes out of concentration.

So get into positions that feel comfortable for you,

That's stable.

If you already feel tired,

Groggy,

If you feel like you're falling asleep,

Get up,

Do a couple jumping jacks.

Move your body,

Massage your limbs.

Wake yourself up.

It's time to practice.

Whenever you're ready,

Sit in a position that's comfortable.

If you're in a chair,

Legs flat on the floor.

Sorry feet flat on the floor.

Close your eyes.

Reviews

Makes a lot of sense what you are saying. We just don’t see the connection !
Much love and gratitude
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