Rainn Wilson Is Calling For A Spiritual Revolution

The Rich Roll Podcast. We threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. We are missing something by throwing out religion categorically. We're missing some things that religion gives us, which is purpose, meaning and a sense of the transcendent, the sense that there is something more to strive for. You could make the argument that our postmodern culture has largely dismissed any notion that faith or spirituality

can be a collective pursuit, and certainly not the bedrock of our society. Personal beliefs should be just that, personal, unique to every and each individual, and securely separated from the state. My guest today has a bit of a different perspective. Rain Wilson. He suggests a new way forward through total spiritual revolution, what he calls soul boom. Now, you might be wondering why the guy best known

for Portraying Dwight Shrut on the Hit TV series, the office is here to wax lyrical about matters spiritual, but the truth is that rain is a deep reservoir of wisdom who has more than earned a position of authority on matters ethereal. First, rain is the co-founder of the Media Company Soul Pancake, which focused on content related to the human experience and positive social change. He co-hosted

the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake with Resa Oslan. They came on the podcast together a while back, and that podcast made a point of diving into the deep end of topics religious and ethereal. And rain is also the author of the new book Soul Boom, why we need a spiritual revolution. In this conversation, we discuss rain's behind faith is conception of the divine, the importance of finding meaning

in life, finding the sacred in our everyday lives, and why the solutions to the existential problems we currently face require a spiritual revolution. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by Inside Tracker. No two bodies are the same. Well, general principles can guide all of us. On some level, I think it's fair to say we're all

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Well, great to see you, man. I'm going to be a great, good to see you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Thank you for bringing the Pacific Northwest weather to this experience. It's absolutely insane. It's crazy. I know. I got caught in a hail storm. It's morning. It literally looks like a different place where we live right now. And I've lived here

since 96. Okay. I don't know how long you've lived here, but I don't I don't remember it. I've never ever remember a colder wetter crazier winter than right. I was saying to my wife, because we're both from the Pacific Northwest, it feels like like the Olympic peninsula. Yeah. Mea Bay, Washington. It really does. Walls of like dark green clouds and like rain every other day pouring

and it just it's it's a rainforest weather. It's crazy. It really is. And and for people that that aren't familiar with Los Angeles, I mean, we live in a desert. And there's lots of out where we are. There's lots of kind of low hanging mountain ranges. That are typically brown and kind of just scorched by the sun. And the emergence of green feels like this sort

of weird avatar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of parallel universe that we've suddenly found ourselves in. And it just reminds me of again, you know, kind of going to the heart of some of the things you talk about in the book. Like the regenerative nature of the planet. Like left to its own devices. It finds a way. And it's repairing itself in real time. And it's amazing

to see how green these hills are right now. As much as I am over the rain and kind of I'm pining for the sun right now. It is kind of a spectacular site to behold. It is. It is. I hate to get I hate to turn this conversation a little dark. But I was reading this article on climate change. And they were talk they were putting

this weather system in the context of global climate change in terms of greater droughts and greater flooding. Sure. So it's just more certainly in Disha of something a rye. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we had a nine year drought with hardly any rain at all. And then and now just like a biblical deluge. I know. So we're not going to get too dour too quickly. You know, because

you you strike an optimistic tone. You know, I love the book. The book is great. I read the whole book. I love it. Thank you. I can't wait to talk to you about it. And there is a you know, a certainly a core of of hope and an optimism that kind of provides the underpinning for all of these thoughts as you kind of canvass spirituality and

religion and our place in the world and how to, you know, think about an approach solving some of the giant problems that we face right now. Yeah. What I wanted to do. And it was a it was a big swing. Yeah. It was kind of a big swing. Yeah. It was kind of a big swing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if I succeeded. But I wanted to reexplore and reinvigorate spiritual ideas. And I wanted someone I wanted to reader whether they're a born again Christian, whether they're agnostic, whether they're spiritual but not religious, whether they're atheist to just kind of look at the panapaly of spiritual ideas in in an exciting new way

through kind of some new lenses. A lot of I hadn't thought. That is interesting or there is there is a way to take up a spiritual perspective on partisan politics. You know that spirituality is not so many people view spirituality. It's such a weird word. I even hate it coming out of my mouth. Sometimes I say spirituality is like, oh, because to so many people it

connotates. Is that a word? Connotes. Connotes is that what it is? I think connotates is an a word, isn't it? It might be. Listen to me. I don't even know what I'm talking. You're the author. I know. I should know these things. Now I went I can't tell you how many times I went to the source.com to look at. Yeah. Look at words always reliable. To

so many people, the words spirituality connotes a religion, an existing religion. To a lot of people, it means something very vague. A vague feeling in the heart. That's kind of a very very hibbley, bibley, hippie-ish kind of yoga class and incense kind of vague feeling. And I not to dis on yoga or meditation or even some great new age concepts or self-help books and works and

concepts. I love so many of them. But and to some people spirituality just means like ghosts and angels and spirits, you know. And so but I wanted to reinvigorate the words. And you know, the subtitle of the book is why we need a spiritual revolution. And to do so in such a way that kind of maybe gives people a kick in the ass about spirituality and

saying. And there's a there's an urgency behind it. This isn't like a vague nice feeling kind of word, but there there is an urgency to transform how we do pretty much everything. And the way that we can transform is through. The use of spiritual tools. Yeah. And I think you did an incredible and beautiful job of doing that. But I kind of want to put a

pin in that for the moment. Because I think it's important. You were on the show. I can't remember how long ago it was. You're a half ago. Something like that. Two two two. It was a two or three. Yeah. I think it was a while. Yeah. And because that was sort of a unique show where you and and Resa showed up and and instead of kind

of telling each of your stories we just did these no card things and tackled big problems which we're going to do again today. I would like to indulge you a little bit. You know, spin the wheel and do a little bit of what it was like what happened. And and what it's like now to help kind of contextualize why these issues are important to you. Sure.

Because as you kind of call out right at the beginning of the book like what the hell is this actor doing like writing this big book about big ideas. Yeah. Like how dare you. You know, rain Wilson. You think you are. Right. But these ideas run deep throughout. You know, the experience of your life dating all the way back to childhood and how you were reared

and the various experiences that you've had over many years. Indeed. So I grew up a member of the Baha'i Faith and I won't kind of go into detail about that. But for those who don't know the Baha'i Faith acknowledges the inherent divinity of all of the world's religions. That they all essentially come from the same source and are gradually unfolding chapters of one eternal faith of

God of the divine. And so growing up Baha'i, we would meet with Buddhists and I would meet Sikhs and born again Christians and Mormons and Muslims and we read holy books and writings from all the world's faiths as well as Baha'i holy texts. So it was a very... idea provoking milieu to grow up in. It's a somewhat obscure religion but there are like, I don't know,

5 million people that practice this faith. That's right. Are you perhaps the most famous Baha'i? Are you the... Are you the... Are you the Baha'i? What Tom Cruise is to act? Oh no, don't say that. Oh my God. I had to. Oh man. It's... Yeah, it's a little weird. So yeah, there's about 5 or 6 million Baha'is around the world. There's pockets. It's the second most

widespread of the world's religions. Next Christianity. So no matter where you go in the world, there's Baha'is. It's pretty crazy. It's kind of cool. Like you can go to the Galapagos and there's going to be some Baha'is. You can go to Mongolia. There's some Baha'is or Malawi and there's Baha'i communities. It's very... But the numbers are not huge. Yeah, I'm one of the most well-known Baha'is.

There's some other actors. And directors Justin Baldoni. He's a Baha'i. And Andy Grammer, the singer is a Baha'i. Penn Badge Lee from the show You and Netflix is a Baha'i. There are some other... Dizzy Gillespie was a Baha'i. When I grew up, there was this band Seals and Crofts. Sure. Some of Breeze makes me feel fun. Kind of a hippie band. And they were Baha'is and

we were so happy because they had this kind of like beautiful spiritual kind of essence through their music. But yeah, it's a faith that I talk about this a little bit in my other book, The Besoon King. I talk about how I left my faith for a long time. And I threw those years kind of wandering the desert. And then I've come back over the last

10, 20 years or so. Sure. As every good kind of spiritual seeker is want to do. We have to venture away to come back. And we have to figure these things out for ourselves and do our own kind of challenges and crises. And you certainly allude to that in the book. And I'm interested in... You don't have to be specific about it. But as you kind

of emerged out of the cocoon of how you were brought up and went to New York City and started getting into theater and acting, what it was that drove you back to the need or the desire or the drive. To search for something more meaningful and grounding. Like a guiding principle in your life that kind of when did you back to your faith. The author, Julia

Cameron, who wrote the artist's way. She wrote, I came to spirituality out of necessity, not out of virtue. And that's how I would describe my path. So when I left the book, I thought, I was going to write a poem. I was in the Ohio faith. I was in my 20s. I was in New York City and I wanted nothing more than to be an actor.

I just wanted to be a bohemian downtown actor. I was going to NYU living in the East Village. And I really cast aside morality. I didn't want morality over my head. I wanted to have sex with my girlfriend enough. I feel guilty about it. I wanted to drink. I wanted to try drugs. I really kind of... Let me put it this way. I drank the coolate

of alcohol. Contemporary society and thinking that religion was of necessity. Something that was for grandmothers and for fearful people that needed like a big daddy god to protect them. So I jettisoned anything and everything having to do with religion at that time. That was great for a few years. It was really awesome. And I had an amazing time. I was working as an actor. I was

living my dream for a nerdy suburban boy from Seattle. And I'd never known a single professional. Artists in my entire life. Anyone who had ever gotten paid a dime to make art. Here I was acting in plays. And yeah, I was only getting $375 a week. But I was in plays. And I was in New York City. And I was working with some great theater directors.

And I had a great group of friends. And I dove into the study of acting and the making of art. And it was fantastic. And to fast forward about why did spirituality become a necessity for me? What I was dealing with at the time, we didn't have a name for in the 90s, which was a mental health crisis. So I started to have anxiety attacks. That

would leave me crippled on the floor in a pool of sweat. I would have them sometimes on the subway. Especially the subway was paused or stuck. I lived it way out in Brooklyn. Before Brooklyn was the Brooklyn, we know now. I was out past Williamsburg near Brownsville in an abandoned beer brewery because I lived there. I was squatting there essentially. And when the subway would stop

like under where the river was. And I would picture the river above the head of over my head in the subway. I would start to have a meltdown on the subway. And I would start sweating. And I would just hoping people aren't noticing like just sweat pouring off my face. I would start shaking. I'd have to hold myself. And I got really, really, depressed for long

periods of time. And I was using more and more alcohol and drugs. And this combination of anxiety, depression, and then what I realized now was addiction. And I cycled through. I had my pot phase. I had my Coke phase. I had, you know, and alcohol all through kind of an alcohol saturated decade. I was lucky in the sense that, because I'm in recovery now, but I

was lucky in the sense that I wasn't a blackout drunk. I didn't, I wasn't waking up in a pool of my own vomit somewhere or something like that. But I, I recognize that I used it on a daily basis to Medicaid my own anxiety. And I was deeply, deeply unhappy. So, and this is what I was in this conundrum, Rich, where I was living my dream.

I literally, if like, you could go to a 16 year old rain Wilson, like, what's your dream? Live in New York City. Be paid to be an actor. Have cool friends. Have a beautiful girlfriend. Live in a loft and have a van. And like, collaborate artistically with really cool people. I mean, I was living my dream and I was miserable. And so that's when, and I

was before I went into any 12 step programs, I was just like, what the fuck is going on? Why? Why am I waking up at three in the morning? Just like, I'm just like, I'm going to be in a room. Like, staring at the wall. Why am I considering suicide? Like, what? This doesn't make any fucking sense. It doesn't make any sense. Like, I'm living my

dream. This is what you wanted. As whole, why are you so ungrateful? So, that started a long, slow process of me reinvestigating faith, God and religion because in that, again, I'm living my dream. And out of that necessity, it was kind of like, kill yourself or investigate spirituality or reinvestigate spirituality. But I didn't want to do it the way my parents would have me do it.

I needed to do it in my own way. So I cleared the decks and I just started at ground one like, is there a God? Do I believe in God? I'm in my late 20s living in Brooklyn with my girlfriend depressed and anxious. Medicating myself, drinking every day. Let me go on this journey. Sure. And as a good Gen Xer, I think we're about the same

age. I'm 42. Yeah, I'm kidding. Getting to. The sort of ethos or kind of sensibility of our generation is a proclivity toward cynicism, irony, everything. It's a kind of, you know, a kind of, you know, a general kind of disinterest in a lot of the things that the culture or the generation that preceded us prioritized. And certainly religion and spirituality, despite your upbringing, were not only

uncool, but, you know, just not, you know, part of the fabric of like our age group. Right? So it's not like to me as somebody who's your, you know, age peer, you know, age peer, you know, age peer. Like, of course, like you move away from home and you distance yourself from all of that. I moved to New York City too. Like, I totally get it.

But the interesting thing of you, not only deciding to, you know, embark on this spiritual odyssey, but then to find yourself returning to the very faith that, you know, was, was part of your upbringing to begin with is, is super interesting. Yeah, it's kind of like the Godfather, like, with that famous line, they, I want to go out and they pull me right back in. Yeah.

That type of thing. The Godfather meets some sort of postmodern Gen X, Sidhartha exploration with a little Joseph Campbell mixed in. That's perfectly said. And by the way, I love the way you summed up Gen X because I had never heard someone sum it up in that way. But, there was this, also this weird thing about our generation, isn't it interesting about this whole idea, about

selling out that people just don't have these days? Oh, no, we're so, like, if you were to celebrate it for like good for you for creating your tequila brand or whatever it is. Yeah. If you were to go, you're the famous rich role, ultra marathoner, nutrition, vegan, wellness, health, spirituality, expert. And if you were to go on a, do a commercial for like cereal bars from,

you know, proctor and gamble or something like that. Like these new, like, people would be like, yeah, you go. I know. It's so strange. And, but we really were like, oh, if a band sold more than like a hundred thousand albums, they were, they sold out Nirvana sold out. Leach was their best record. Right. Like, dare they. Yeah, let's, let's talk about Sonic youth and, you

know, got live in the DIY sensibility and anybody who breaks out, you know, God forbid. So there were great things about that. But like you said, there's also bad things where, you know, it gets too precious, but at the same time nowadays, it's true. Like you can, you know, just rampant capitalism and selling out is is lauded. Anyway, putting that aside. So yeah, this Joseph Campbell-esque

journey of mine was very interesting. I think in the back of my head, I always knew I was probably come back to the Baha'i faith because of all of the world's faiths. It's the most I find the most kind of inclusive of a wide range of ideas, like the idea of me becoming a Buddhist or a Christian or a Muslim or a Sikh or something like

that. It would have been a much smaller slice of the pie or as the Baha'i faith because it's inclusive of all of those world views. You know, it feels more arrived, you know, way. But I had to start with that essential question, do I believe in a God? And that took me years. And I really dug deep into that. And I would talk to my friends.

And it was very interesting because they would all say, I would say, do you believe in God? And talk to my artsy genx friends. And at that time, very few of them were straight up atheists. Very few kind of said, no, I don't. I think there's just the universe. And we're just atoms. And it's all random. And that's it. Very few people said that. Most people

were like, well, I believe in some kind of energy force out there. But I wouldn't call it God. So they were struggling with this idea of like a daddy, Santa Claus, bearded white man. God on a cloud looking down on us judgmentally, certainly as we all should struggle with that idea of a God and discard it immediately. And then I started reading, I talk about this

in the book a little bit. I started reading Native American spirituality. A lot of books about it. And that's when the light bulb went on because the indigenous North American view of the creator is so rich and beautiful and deep. And I think that's what I'm talking about. And inclusive and just profoundly poetic and moving that it's hard to dispute. So in the Lakota tradition, Wakantanka

means the great mystery. And I remember at like 27 or 28 having a conversation with my friend, I was like, I don't know if I can believe in God, but I can believe in the great mystery. Yeah, this idea that God is not a bearded man, but is more like a pervasive energy that it's not like a who, it's like this thing that surrounds us. And

that that sue idea that you explore in the book is super interesting. It's like, what did you say? I wrote it down in the notes, but it's not a what, but it's what did I do? What I wrote it down? I can't find a power. Yeah, it's a how, right? God is less able to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it's God is a how, not a what?

And you explain this idea, like the analogy you use is think of God as like the internet where, where Wi-Fi is the Holy Spirit and computers are, are souls. So it's this like diffused energy that exists everywhere from which we are not separate, which is a distinct departure from the notion of the monotheistic, you know, God that's like sort of pure and pure. So it's like

the thing down upon us as a separate thing. The theologian David Bentley heart talks about most people's conception of God. And when, when atheists talk about not believing in a God, what they're describing is a Demi-Earge. And this word Demi-Earge is really interesting. It's like, it's like a Marvel character. It's like this all powerful being among other beings that has the power to create worlds that

is looking down on us that can cast thunder and can cause miracles and can look into your mind and read your thoughts like Dr. Xavier, you know, from the X-Men. And so getting away from anything Demi-Earge called toward I also describe God in a parallel to some larger forces like beauty or the concept of love. And you might say, well, I don't know if I can

believe in God, but I certainly believe in love. And and you know, we can be shown that love on a brain scan lights up certain areas of our brain and and it's there from a behavioralist point of view to help us create families and and and propagate the species. That's the only reason it exists. And you could kind of say, well, nonsense. I know in my

heart that love is more than just a couple of neurons firing in my brain and a propagation of the species. I I have experienced it on with so many different facets and and varieties and variables and nuances. And I've experienced it holistically. And I've and from my wife and when I held my child in the hospital in the in the hallway and Van Nies at three

in the morning. And I I experienced it when I'm in nature. And so that experience of that force of love is much more akin to what I hope people will think of when they think about God or the divine. And I mean, less as some kind of being among other beings that has superpowers. Sure. And as the one sort of biological creature that has the capacity

to really, you know, embrace these, you know, these types of emotions that we can't actually locate within the brain, the Korean. Right. Where does love exist? How do we define it? Like what is it exactly? Where does awe and what is it? And how do we wonder, sit and how do we think about that? And why do these impulses and these emotions live within us? And

and why are they provoked by, you know, certain chords of music or somebody on a stage, you know, you know, sort of in the midst of their pathos or or what not. And what do we make of that? And how do we extrapolate from those very human experiences? To think more broadly about what is actually going on? Like how do we telescope up from that? Consider

more deeply our place here on planet earth and in the universe and fucking a dude, like what is it all about? Right. Like that's what this book is. Like, you know, what's up for you, rain? You know, not much just consciousness and God and spirituality and religion and and you know, the need for a spiritual revolution to solve our existential problems. You know, are we on

the cusp of something new? Are we at a break point that is going to lead to the decimation of ecosystems and perhaps humanity itself? Like what are we actually talking about here? How are we going to solve these problems? And you know, this book is really a call to action in that the solutions that we seek cannot be found within the parameters and the structures of

the limited systems that continually push us in the wrong direction. But instead require a whole cloth, you know, new way of looking at all of these problems. And the capacity of human beings and erecting new solutions like it's almost, you know, it is a revolutionary act. This book, you're asking a lot of the audience and reading it. But it's also very, you know, hopeful in that

regard. Would you like to do my book tour for me? That's what we're doing right now. That was better. Help me help you rain. That was better. And we're articulate than anything I've ever said about the book previous. Yeah. So I'm going to. I'm going to copy that. Remember write that down and repeat it. Very well said. So the book kind of has various parts to

it. And I'm not sure what the question. Should I go right to the spiritual revolution? I want to just talk about whatever's coming up for you. Okay. It wasn't a question. No, no. So here's what was fun to me about this book. I have a chapter on death. Death is one of my favorite topics. In fact, I felt so proud where I got my first call

from someone who said, Hey, my sister is dying of cancer. Can you talk to her about death? And I felt. So that was one of the greatest phone calls I've ever received in my life. Like I feel honored and inspired. I love the topic. We're all going to do it. You and I, Rich, might be 20 years, might be 40 years. We're all riding around and

meet suits. We got about 90 some years. If we're lucky and our essence, what I will call our soul continues on an infinite journey to meet the divine source, whatever that looks like, infinite, infinite worlds of, of the, of the divine of the Holy of the sacred that await us on our journey past this physical plane. So I got to write about death. I lost my

dad. He didn't die of COVID, but during COVID of, of heart disease about two years ago. It was one of the most profound and disturbing and heart-rending experiences of my life. And I write about that in the book. I got to write a chapter on God, because God, as, as you can tell, is one of my favorite topics as well. I get into consciousness. I have

discussions of aliens looking down on planet Earth and talking about, you know, what these ridiculous human beings are going through down on the planet. I got to just pose super fun. Conversely, I got to talk about my favorite TV shows from the 70s and their kind of, through a spiritual lens, which is Kung Fu. Trust me, we're going to get into it. Oh, okay, good. We'll

get into that. Yeah. But, but like you said, in your, in your, in your summary, where it's all leading, and the point I really wanted to make is like, just plain and simple. Okay, just, where rubber meets the road, like totally practical. The way current systems are set up, they are based on the worst of humanity. You think about the worst of humanity, what do you

think of? Lust, greed, aggression. You think about one-upsmanship and kind of a rampant individuality that overrides community. These terrible qualities of humanity, competition. Now there's healthy competition. There's even a certain amount of healthy aggression. But they have run rampant in every existing system. You take any system. Educate yourself. You take any situation. Healthcare, certainly politics. International relations. Just capitalism. In general, they're based on the worst

qualities of humanity. And we need to like, throw out completely and find practical ways to do this. This is not some like John Lennon, imagine all the people living life in peace. Kind of hippy-dippy stuff. Like they're, they're, they're has to, we have to find solutions that protect us. Bring spiritually based systems of interaction to bear on how we run everything on planet Earth. And if

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slash ritual today to get 10% off your first month. That's a better help. H-E-L-P dot com slash ritual. So right now, we tend to address the problems that we have with band-aids, whether it's campaign finance reform or gerrymandering or healthcare reform. What have you? These are all sort of small, short term fixes that are blind to the dysfunctional underpinnings of the system itself. Right? So sure,

we're going to have a lot of money. Sort of a complete revamp, a social and spiritual revolution that allows us to deconstruct and dismantle the systems themselves. They will continue to perpetuate and drive us towards the edge of that cliff. Because they're premised upon these predilections of humanity, which are not great. As you mentioned, greed, power, lust, this zero-sum game mentality. The worst of competition that

are pitting us against ourselves and basically in so doing, alienating ourselves from the beauty of our innate humanity and the unity that we share, like our inability to actually see and embrace the fact that we are all one and that what we share and who we are is much more alike than what differentiates ourselves. Yeah. And we're just quiddling over bullshit as we sort of accelerate

towards the precipice of this cliff. This is what's happening. These problems are ranging from small to extremely existential. And yet I can't help even in the beauty of what you propose in this book. It's hard for me to be optimistic about our capacity to get our shit together. And not only will we be able to see and identify this, but actually take the actions required to

deconstruct and then reconstruct the systems that would set us on a better path. Yeah. You brought up a lot of things. Let me get to a few of them. First, let me start at the end with the optimism. I get it. It's very hard for me to remain optimistic as well. And I do think, and I use the analogy of like a teenager having to go

to rehab. Like humanity is in its teenage years. Humanity right now in its development is literally like 16 and a half. Thrashing around kind of it's kind of following its worst most base impulses. And you know, using opioids and oil and materialism and consumerism and the narcissism of social media to kind of hit bottom. Yeah. Fuck you. And hit bottom. And needs to be harder to

wait a rehab and go hiking around the mountains of Utah for. But what is that bottom? Like how far does that elevator have to go down? And we have that reckon. And we hope that it's not a nuclear war. Yeah. We hope it's not a breakdown of all societal structures. We hope that we're able to kind of like hit a soft bottom and not a hard

bottom. Do you use a 12 step parlance? But you know, look at Rwanda, for instance, underwent one of the most gruesome atrocities of carnage in human history. And now, you know, the way that they have the tribes there, the Tutsi and Hutu, have have healed the conflict. And the way they have set the economy forward. And the way women are used in politics. And kind of

there's been a profound sea change and shift in how that country works. So you brought up a great point. One of the things that I stress again in the past, again, and here is about politics. And one of the things that is my personal pet peeves that I hate more than anything is partisan politics. Because partisanship is immediately like how much money can I raise, how

much can I denigrate the other party, how much can I try and assert power and control over them at all costs. We have stopped seeking solutions to really difficult problems. And everything becomes polarized. Yeah, it's not solution oriented at all. It's about throwing grenades. At the other side, it's about owning the lips or pointing out, you know, the stupidity of the other side, quibbling, you know,

at the cost of actually solving problems. And that's really a systemic ill of the greater structure. Right? Like, part of it is driven by, you know, kind of maybe what's wrong with human beings. Like we're sort of, you know, we like, we get activated by that sort of discourse. And certainly social media amplifies all of that. And I think it's exacerbating this problem. But we need

systems and structures that incentivize and bring out the best of us as opposed to the worst of us. And I feel like that's the pivot that you're speaking to in the book. Well, I, so in partisan politics, you talked earlier about band aids. People are like, well, we need, you know, we need 20 Supreme Court justices. That'll solve the problem. We need to, you know, campaign

finance reform reform. That'll solve the problem. You know, we need less gerrymandering. That'll solve the problem. It's a, we are looking for these fixes. But the entire system is based on fuck you. I'm going to own you. Let me say this for an example. When there are debates, what's the headline the next day? Who got in the best zingers against the other person they were debating?

Oh, Kamala Harris got this incredible zinger in Joe Biden did the zinger. Oh, Donald Trump really took down Hillary Clinton there. Like that's how we're celebrating. We're celebrating the ability to stand on a stage and cut someone else down. But that also speaks to the unhealthy incentives of the media and social media and the algorithms and the way dopamine works in our brain. Like it all

works together. It's a, so an example that I bring up in SoulBoom to get really again, because I, I feel like spiritual solutions to these problems need to be super practical. And if they're not, it's again, it's just this kind of ari-fairy kind of vague idea. I use an example from the Bahai Faith. So in the Bahai Faith, it's a, there's no clergy. It's all democratically

elected. So here we are in this suburb outside of LA and this particular suburb. I don't know if you tell people where you record this top secret. The, there is an assent every year. The Bahai is elected assembly of that nine most spiritually mature people to guide the community, right? Every year we, and we do this silent ballot. Prayereful, we meditate, write it down, put it

in a slip of paper. You don't know who did it. We've got tellers. They tally it. There's no yard signs. There's no campaigning. There's no fundraising. Now you can say, well, that's fine in a small religion of, you know, a couple hundred thousand in the United States. But how would that work? Well, let's say this small suburb out of here in LA decided one day, hey,

we're sick and tired of toxic partisan politics. So this suburb here we are in thousand oaks, California, we want to do things differently. We want to have an election. We're going to meet at the high school cafeteria and everyone from the community is going to show up. There's going to be no campaigning, no yard signs, no money. No money is going to change hands. Not about

money is not about power. And in the city of thousand oaks, we're going to think of the nine most maybe not spiritual, but let's say wise, mature and selfless public servants we can think of, we're going to write them down on a piece of paper. And we're going to find the people that tally the most votes. And we're going to ask them to serve one term

of one year, three years, five years, whatever it is, to selflessly serve to meet the needs of that community. Now can you imagine doing that in a small scale? Maybe you can imagine that in a small town, maybe a tiny town in Iowa decides to do that. Let's say, and then it spreads. And then you could say a county could do that. Or a state could

do that. Could we eventually do that in a way? I think we could. It might sound pie in the sky. But wouldn't that be such a better alternative to the to literally the hundreds of millions of dollars that are changing hands every year, money that could be used for social benefit. And instead is used for campaign ads that no one under 60 listens to anyway. And

they play on repeat on Fox News and MSNBC and during, you know, infomercials. Like it's an insane amount of waste and money and corruption perpetuating a broken system. Yeah. I mean, I, I love it. And I also can't help but think perhaps that is a little pie in the sky because humans are our own worst enemies. And I imagine the guy who's like, yeah, I know

what rain's saying. But I know if I like this guy, he's going to let me, you know, sidestep regulations and build that fence. And my front yard that right now the city's not letting me do. And he told me secretly that if I, you know, like workarounds, right? Like we are, you know, always devolve to, you know, self interest. And I think perhaps that speaks to,

you know, something I want to explore with you, which is, you know, perhaps uniquely American, which is this idea of rugged individualism. Like it's really about me and what I want to do. And like my liberty versus the responsibility to the collective and you kind of couch this in a really great analogy that I love because I'm your age, which is Star Trek versus Kung Fu.

nerd as you. But I was a rabid Star Trek fan and just less of a Kung Fu fan will get to that. But Star Trek was my jam. Yeah. I was the guy who went to Star Trek conventions and like the whole thing. Right. Yeah. And, and even now, maybe it's that thing when you're at a certain age, like stuff becomes indelible and you irrationally fall

in love with it and still think that it's the greatest. But the original William Shatner Star Trek was so beautiful. And I loved how you talked about it in the book because what it did was it really grappled with like big social issues and did it in a really entertaining way. Right. And, and that was in the book, you sort of say, well, this is the

collective spirituality that we need to sort of consider more profoundly. And then in turn, Kung Fu being an example of rugged individual spirituality, like the internal development that we need in terms of a spiritual revolution. And you posit this idea of merging these two sensibilities, individual spiritual evolution and a, you know, a true kind of prioritization of the importance of, of, of you know, collective responsibility

and, and, and, and, and responsibility to kind of elevating the whole that is missing from our current culture. So maybe riff on that a little bit or explain. You summed it up perfectly. I think the spiritual journey in contemporary society is very much the kung fu variety. So in Kung Fu, for people who don't know, Quai Chang Can is a Chinese shalan monk. He's actually, I

think he's half Caucasian in the show. Originally, it's Kasta White, White Guy. Yeah, we should note the racism of the show, which was invented by Bruce Lee. They stole the idea and cast a white guy in the show, which was just horrific. But nonetheless, the show was brilliant. And David Caradine, who played Quai Chang Can, who studied Kung Fu and spirituality in the book. In the,

in a shalan monastery in China, he goes to the Old West in the 1870s, 1880s, looking for his brother. So he's on this quest to find his brother. And he's taking his wealth of knowledge from his background, from the shalan monastery, what the, and there's flashbacks to these beautiful monks that are teaching him the, you know, you know, be supple, be supple as the willow tree

and the wind, you know, kind of concepts. And he's taking that into a racist, aggressive, violent, old West. And every day he's on his path, meeting up with some racist cowboy. And there's always a couple of good fights and some Kung Fu fights there. But he's also most of the show is kind of talking about concepts of forgiveness and healing and acceptance and compassion and some

of these, you know, profound and universal spiritual ideas. So for most contemporary Americans, at least in secular, cities, that's what a spiritual journey is considered that what do I do? What are the tools that I use at a yoga class and my meditation and my reading and listening to Eckhart Tolle, who I love? You know, these, these spiritual guides and teachers along the way. We've got,

you know, roomy on Instagram. And we try and make ourselves better people. We try and incorporate divine qualities in our lives. We try and find peace and surrender and serenity in our daily lives. And as we go out into the milieu of modern life, stuck in traffic and horrible bosses and backstabbing fellow employees and and and screwed up teenage kids that are are lost. And we're

trying to use what we've learned in our on our journey. To make ourselves better and kind of and stay on the path. So that's one side of spirituality. And it's a very important one, right? And that's what I'm trying to do. It's the spirituality we nurture in the garden of our hearts and we take with us on our daily journey. But Star Trek to your point,

I see as a metaphor for a larger spiritual context, which is that humanity when Star Trek begins has had a giant war. And they came together after this giant World War III. They don't really talk about what that looked like, but it was mass decimation. And humanity has greatly matured because of it and has healed income inequality and has brought the all the planet together into

kind of a one world government. That is a just government. And they are then able to focus on technology and healing. There's no poverty at home. No one is starving. And they're able to go explore outer space. He got strange in the world. And humans seem to be liberated from their base in instincts somehow. We're not quite sure how that happened, but it seems to be

the case. Well, it's kind of that chicken in the egg, isn't it? I mean, if you have a society that's eliminated these kind of building blocks of inequity and injustice, you know, I think it's much easier for our higher natures to flourish. Yeah. In fact, Roddenberry insisted and Star Trek the next generation. And if you notice this and you read about the show in the next

generation, there's no conflict at all. Right. So the TV writer, very difficult to create drama. How do you create a TV show when no one disagrees with each other? Yeah. But you never hear like number one or Decker or Worf going up. I disagree. I don't think we should go warp for. I think we need to go warp to their past. Now, I don't know the

humans will ever go past disagreement. But there is what I view as kind of a necessary evolution, a transformation, a maturity of humanity that we are able to connect with the other species of the universe. But I'm fascinated by what life on Earth is like during Star Trek when they're out gallivanting around solar systems. Sure. And they happen upon certain civilizations that serve as metaphors for

social issues that we were grappling with and continue to grapple with now in our times. And you highlight two of the more notable episodes, the more interesting things that we've seen. The episode where the aliens half the face is black, half is white. And you don't even realize as a viewer until halfway into it, these people that are in conflict with each other, they're on the

black and the wider on opposite sides of their face. And you realize how preposterous that is as a sort of analogy or metaphor for race relations, as we currently contend with them. And let's not forget the first interracial kiss in television history. Yeah. And I saw a book called the book on Earth and Oru. Michelle Nichols. Yeah. The gorgeous Michelle Nichols. I got to meet before

her past. Oh, you did? Wow. Wow. It was legend. Yeah. So, and that did more for race relations, moving forward, race relations, then almost any other event on television in many ways. Yeah. And as you kind of happily point out of the book, it's not that the kiss happened. It's how they kind of low-keyed the whole thing. Like, yeah. Yeah. Big deal. Yeah. Right. And I

think it's the top of the story. Yeah. I think I'm going to put you in a new episode. I was going to leave it behind. I'm going to leave it behind. Are you going to find out that I'm going to put you in a new episode. Yeah. And I'm going to put you in a new episode of the book. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm going

to try to get a little world where human beings are of the human race. Right. And so in the book, I'm going to read a little section where you kind of talk about like how these two like the sort of Kung Fu sensibility and the Star Trek sensibility have to come together to, you know, create the foundation for this new spiritual revolution that you're talking about.

And you say, what good is a spiritual path that only enriches our own inner peace? Well, hundreds of millions go hungry. In other words, like the Kung Fu thing of just focusing on self, right? And conversely, how do we sustainably serve those millions if our hearts are hard, empty, cold, and filled with selfish ego or materialistic motives? How can there be peace without justice? There is

an ongoing dance, a conversation between the twofold moral paths that lie ahead of us. We seek personal enlightenment so that we can serve more, have an outward orientation and help create a better world. And when we undertake this, we are in turn, internally awakened and fulfilled to an even greater degree. Damn, I wrote that. I wrote that. I wrote that. I wrote that. I wrote that.

I wrote that. Like this Dwight Shrut character. I know. Come on, dude. Jeez. Yeah. Like, how are we supposed to take you seriously? I don't have an answer for that. That's good shit, though, man. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I'm glad that that stuck out because I view it as like a yin and a yang shape that these two, I try, rain Wilson,

I try to be a better person every day. I try and be more patient with my wife and my kid. And I look at my character defects, you know, like we do in 12 step programs. I can be really judgmental. I can be impatient. You know, I have, I have to work on these and get better. And then I also feel like something that many Americans

have lost track of is this idea that, you know, Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Face says, all men were created to usher forth and ever advancing civilization. So part of our spiritual purpose is to help all of us move forward. Whatever that means. That doesn't mean you need to be Mother Teresa. I can mean that at your job as an accountant, you have great integrity

and you refuse to back bite about the other accountants. There's all kinds of ways that we can be able to service and be moving the ball down the field toward human transformation and maturity. And I found this in the office, you know, like I can't tell you like every day online or in person. I hear from people like thank you so much for the show. We

recently, it's recently been 10 years since we did our very final episode. And I posted about it on Instagram and the thousands of comments like thank you for your show. It it it soothed us. It made our family laugh. My my mother was really sick and we would watch it together. My parents were going through a divorce and my siblings and I would watch it together.

It helped me through a mental health crisis. It helped me through COVID. Like who would have thunk that something is silly is like a bunch of, you know, weird denizens in a paper company, you know, doing a sitcom could have provided that kind of a service to a lot of people. And certainly not why any of us did. I got the job because I wanted a

house. Yeah, you know, I just thought that like perhaps even more people watched it in recent years than even when it came out like the long tail on this thing. And you know, the kind of audience building that's happened even over the past. The past couple of years is unbelievable with this thing. I mean, it really is a unicorn. In that sense. I'm profoundly lucky. I

have so many friends that are actors and so many of them have been on shows that we haven't even heard. I had a friend who was on the show. Yes, dear, which was right before the office had twice our numbers three times our numbers. Yeah, no one talks about yes, dear. Oh, I can't wait to get home and watch some episodes of yesterday. I'm not. Shooting

on the show. You know, it's fine. Funny, you know, sitcom. But the fact that the office has has legs and has great. It has a kind of a timelessness oddly enough. Offices look like offices. There's fluorescent lights and there's phones and there's desks and there's crazy bosses and. And there's and you're all archetypes that everybody can identify. They all know their version of, you know, the

character that you play. There's a Pam and a Jim in every office. And there's a Dwight in every office. And there's some version of Michael Scott. And and that's the other funny thing about the office is. The fans are young. They've never set foot in an office. Most of the fans that watch the show are teenagers and college kids. And the people who discover the show

and watch it. They've never even they don't know what a facts machine is or a copy machine or a, you know, a staff meeting or anything like that. That that was the thing that was greatly surprising to us. Like all of a sudden. When we were almost canceled a dozen times. And then all of a sudden we started getting the numbers in like we at the

average age of your viewer is 24. Like whoa. That's crazy because we thought it would be people in their 30s and 40s that worked in offices after all. Yeah. I mean, my kids. Are great examples of that. I mean, it's so interesting. Like what do you make of that? I think you, you, you, you tapped into it. I think it's a, I think it's the universals

of the characters. And it is a, I think the office is a vision of working in an office might be. And very often I find people that write online and they say. I want to work in an office like in the office. And like they want to work in like a mean. I mean, I'm like, no, I don't do it. You're missing the whole thing. I

was soul crushing. It can be. It's not always, you know, but. But you know, going connecting that to the book. One of the interesting things with millennials and Gen Z is that for years when they would ask young people, what's the most important thing you're looking for in a job? They would say, you know, good pay high status. Like people will think highly of me by

having. Being sales manager or senior executive or what have you, you know, commute from home, being in the community I want, you know, perks, like healthcare, et cetera. There was always this list. And it was the same for decades. Then all of a sudden, we found that when I was working at SoulPancake, this digital media company I had that we found, and it was around 2010,

2012, all of a sudden, like making a difference in the world was shot to the top, like, number one, two or three for millennials and Gen Z. All of a sudden, there was a questioning of, like, why are we doing this again? I don't necessarily want money, status, and easy commute, and perks out of my job. Like, I want to be a part of something that

that makes a difference. And I think that's also, this is a really lost couple of generations. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but I think lost in questioning. I think mental, the mental health crisis, obviously, is just through the roof. And it's devastating. It's something I talk about in the book, a great deal. But you do, I, they're going back to hope. I

think these younger generations really have their eye on something greater in a way that we didn't, as gen. Sure. My son is 18 years old. And my wife said that she found him in tears. Because he found out that Biden had okayed this willow petroleum oil exploration in Alaska and opening up a national park in Alaska for new drilling. Even though that went, goes against everything

he campaigned for it, every promise the Democratic Party made about a green new deal and whatnot. And what do you hear? Silence. Silence. He's opening up Alaska for drilling. But if a Republican had opened up Alaska for drilling, the Democrats would be like, the toxicity of partisanship and the hypocrisy of partisanship, my son was in tears over this. And, and he also came up to me

the other day and he said, Dad, when no one's around, he calls me dad. If someone else is around, he calls me father. He's like, Dad, I was like, I was like, what's going on, Walter? What's in your heart right now? And he's like, Dad, I'm really upset about income inequality. I'm really, I was researching it, watching these YouTube videos like the middle class is shrinking

and the halves are getting heavier and the have-nots are getting have-notier. And it's really, really fucked up. I'm very, very upset about it. And we had a long talk about, you know, socialism and social programs and how the middle class was initially created in the United States. And so this younger generation, they're very tuned in to what the world needs. Yeah, that is a source of

great optimism for me because certainly that was not my sensibility when I was 1820, when I was, no. And the fact that there is this new generation of people who, you know, very much are prioritizing meaning, purpose, impact into the bigger decisions they're making about how to invest their time and what career to pursue is extraordinary. Yeah. We like to shit on young people and, oh,

whatever. But, you know, that's really beautiful and lottable. And I'm not sure from whence that, you know, emanates. Like, what is the, what is the source of that? Is it, is it really just a, you know, greater objective perspective on what's actually happening where they're looking at it and thinking, this is not right. We can correct this. Every generation, obviously, to your point earlier, is here

to kind of elevate consciousness and, and push us forward, progress humanity and hopefully a better direction. But when you think back on why this younger generation is seeing things in that way, like how do you make sense of that? Okay, let's look at the hippie days. If you went into a coma in 1964 with a nice trim haircut, such as your demonstrating. And you would have

long. I'm sure you'd. And I, and you woke up from that coma in 1974. And they're like, hello, Rich, wake up. Oh, thank God. Oh, you're saved. You've been in a coma for 10 years. You'd be like, Oh, okay, great, great. So what's going on? It's like, ooh, 10 years. Okay. What's going on? Well, we had the Beatles and we had Led Zeppelin and we had

the race riots and we had the Vietnam. War and we had the protests and we had the bra burnings and we had Watergate and, you know, like, it would be jaw dropping. The amount of change. Be like, wait a minute. Guys aren't just wearing skinny black ties and skinny black suits and going to their, their jobs in their, in their olds mobiles. Like what the hell

is going on? Where's, where's the Eisenhower America that I knew, you know, back then, you know, we have, you know, finally, you know, rights for, for, for black Americans and legislation, kind of putting a nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. Like, it's a completely different world. So I think, and I hope one of these days, we're at a turning point. Now, there were a lot

of problems in the hippie days. We all know how kind of drugs and sex got involved in that kind of. Everything just moved towards drugs and sex landed by the mid seventies. Everyone was just getting baked and loving the one they're with. And we kind of lost sight of like real social change. But maybe we're at an inflect, a similar kind of inflection point. Yeah. I

think there's, I think there's a lot of truth to that. And, and in thinking about that, we have the young people with this elevated sensibility of responsibility and purpose, which I think is really beautiful. That's, that's a star trek sensibility, right? We come from more of the kung fu sensibility, me, me, me, and, you know, in my own kind of personal relationship with religion and spirituality.

I probably fall into the camp of, you know, this idea that you explore in the book, which is, you know, our own personal bespoke relationship with spirituality, right? Like, like this idea that, that, you know, we're in this era where religion is on the decline. You know, people of our generation had the experiences that we had growing up with various doctrines and churches that were kind

of resistant to. And we're finding our own connection to meaning through these, this sort of pastiche of various spiritual principles, whether that's through yoga or Hinduism or Buddha, we're kind of patching these things together to try to find meaning in our own lives. And I probably put myself in that category on some level. And then matching that, and that's a very individualistic thing. Like, it's about

me and my relationship with myself in the world. And how can I be a better person? On top of that, with the decline in religious traditions, at least within the context of the United States, we're seeing the rise of the secular guru, right? Like, you talk about celebrity and sport stars and the people that have sort of supplanted religious figures or leaders as people that we

look to for guidance or for inspiration. But one thing that you kind of left out in that discussion are these new figures that are on the social media landscape that a lot of people are gravitating towards for inspiration, for wisdom, for guidance, for better or for worse, right? The Jordan Peterson's or the who, you know, pick your pick whoever Russell brand people like that, who in

many ways, to my mind, seem to have stepped into the place of the local pastor at the church or, you know, the kind of community figure that would have galvanized, you know, the young people within that community. So, how are you, like, how do you look at that and think about that? I think that's very well said. And you're right. I'm kind of like kicking myself.

Oh, yeah, I should have talked more about that because it's true. And you look at the veneration that Elon Musk gets, for instance, and a lot of the Silicon Valley startup kind of got the billionaires and the, the, the, the, the technologists and, you know, these are demigods, right? And our culture. And then on the internet, you have, what's that asshole who got arrested in Romania?

Andrew Tate. Yeah, you have that, you have the Andrew Tates who are just despicable materialistic, sexist, violent idiots. And then you have people that have enormous followings of people, you know, particularly young men in the, you know, in the age bracket of, of your son Walter, right? Like, I'm sure he has friends who are sort of cotton on to this guy's messaging and what that's doing.

Like, there's very real implications for all of us. Yeah. It's, it's very real. And but you also have people like Jay Shetty. Sure. And, uh, you know, there's, in the podcast world, there's Louis Housen, four hour work week. What's that guy? Tim Ferris. Yeah. Like the podcast of sphere. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of great wisdom and offer. And I would, and I'm going to challenge

you on this because you say that you have a bespoke spirituality. And I kind of make fun of it in the book a little bit like, oh, I like this yoga class. And I like this roomy quote, but the high faith is sort of that too. On some level. It's really. Is it? Okay. Well, disapuse me of that idea. I'm sorry. I'm in a rough. First,

I'm going to disapuse you of your own thought, because what, what did you do? You created a podcast. I, I'm sure that you just like having deep conversations, and it's fun for you, but you have helped millions of people toward greater health and wellness and wellbeing in, in your work. So you are a hundred percent part of the solution in what you're doing. You could have

just stayed. Been an ultra marathoner, gotten a job at a running shoe company. You know, made a nice living or what have you and gotten sponsorships and just kind of like enjoyed your yoga class and your meditation app, right? But you took it a step further. How is the Baha'i faith different? Those are not here to promote the Baha'i faith. But one of the things I

talk about in the book is like, we threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater. So in, in our kind of, especially secular left, urban, contemporary America, we have rejected anything and everything having to do with religion for a very good reason, for a very, very good reason. Let me underline that for a very good reasons. Religions have brought some of the worst pain and

suffering and grotesque aspects of human nature to bear over the past couple thousand of years that you could ever possibly imagine. And every decade, you read about some new horror that, you know, the Catholic Church or that evangelicals have engendered. But I do think that we are missing something by throwing out religion categorically. We're missing some things that religion gives us, which is purpose, meaning, community,

and a sense of the transcendent, the sense that we are missing. And I think that there is something more to strive for. There's a lot more to the very best of religion. And I have a chapter on kind of the universals of religious faiths. Why Buddhism and Islam and Christianity are, why and how they're connected, the essential ideas that bind them together. And even have a

chapter called, hey kids, let's invent a new religion. Where I'm like, let's take the very best that religion has brought humanity over the world. And last three or four thousand years, let's take the best ideas from that, put it together in a jambalaya and make our new religion. Because we, which you call soul boom, I call it soul boom trademark. But I also refuse categorically to

be any kind of guru or leader of the soul boom religion. But I, I posit it kind of jokingly. But at the same time, there are some by throwing out religion. And we see this current mental health crisis. And if you, have you, have you read the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, the awakened brain? Yeah, I had her on the podcast. Oh great. Okay. She's amazing.

Sorry, I missed that one. Yeah, I love that. Come on. I mean, ah. She's great. But there's hard data that supports how spirituality and religion itself makes people happier, greater wellbeing, greater community. More resilient, which, you know, resilience is one of the big factors in the mental health crisis. So, it's something to be explored, you know, and I can already hear all the people right now

switching off the podcast and like throwing things across the room. Fuck that. I'll never be a part of religion that's so evil. And it's like, I get it. I get it. It has been. It's true. But there are some universal, beautiful truths in religious practice. And let me say this. Spirituality, there has to be some kind of systemic sensibility to spirituality. If we want to achieve

social transformation. If we want that Star Trek world, there has to be some kind of systematic practice that leads in that direction. So that's how I would say different. The Baha'i Faith offers some, again, I'm not trying to like convert people. But the, what I love about the Baha'i Faith is that there are, it, it fosters grassroots community spiritual movements in a systematic way. Right. And

I think, sorry, go ahead. People gathering to pray together, bringing diverse people together, bringing of service together, children and youth classes that are focused on spiritual virtues, divine virtues. You know, the very best kind of character and leadership qualities that humanity has to offer. These are ways of building a grassroots community movement. But you don't have to be a Baha'i to partake in this. But some

kind of systematization other than a, like you say, bespoke spirituality, I think is crucial to move. Sure. In order to really shift the tectonic play, the benefits of culture and society and, you know, progress humanity or elevate consciousness, you not only need the revolutionaries and the chaos agents, you need a foundation and a structure and an organizing principle, right? And over the history of grassroots movements

and uprisings, etc. The opposition is always much more organized than the revolutionaries. Right. And now, time and time again, and you, aptly, you know, very stuutly, you know, kind of highlight that in the book, which is this idea that if we do want to manifest the change that I think we can all agree that we need, we need to be organized on the level of, you

know, the opposition. Right. So how do we do that and not fall prey to the pitfalls of, you know, humanity's basis nature? And so what do we do? So just, we have a few organizations that have figured this out or thrived, you mentioned the Baha'i Faith that's figured out some version of this. And you also point out, 12-step, like Alcoholics Enonymous, this decentralized, a lot of

talk about like decentralization with cryptocurrency and all of that, well, look at A.A., this is this amazing revolutionary movement that has thrived in you know, due to the, you know, peccadillo's are humanity because there was only church. This is the only way to do this. I've banged this drum so many times, but it's almost like, they should teach this model at Harvard Business School or you

know, figure out like, you know, management consultants should, you know, really do a forensic deep dive into, you know, how this came to be because there's true wisdom to be gleaned from this magical mystery. Not really. Not absolutely. This magical mystical thing that kind of, you know, percolated up through, you know, a combination of, of need and I don't know what else, but the fact that

this thing exists and is functional today, I've ever been to is, I've ever seen or been to an A.A. meeting in a super remote location. I remember once traveling through mountains of Guatemala and I saw the little A.A. logo over just some, you know, a wooden hut and I didn't go in, but I walked by and I just had a little, you know, curtain blowing in

the breeze and there were, you know, there was 20, you know, Mayan, you know, laboring farmers that kind of had that ancient kind of Mayan mountain look to them in a circle, sharing, praying, you know, they had obviously all hit bottom with drinking in some way. And I was, I was moved profoundly to tears. Like, how incredible that Bob and Bill would have these discussions and

then this thing would spread to this little hut in the mountains of Guatemala, where these people are getting solace, consultation, companionship, guidance, surrender and wisdom. And it, it, it is, and that is the, it is the artippon grass roots movement that has spread around the world and helped millions. And I said, we could learn a hell of a lot from it. Right. How do we extract

the best of that and apply that template on, on to, you know, a new model of how we, you know, organize activism, advocacy, spiritual principles and, you know, dare I say the word religion. It's such a, it's such a loaded word. Like, I don't even want to say that word because it immediately alienates people. And I have my own weird, you know, kind of relationship to

all of that. And part of your book is, is really, a reprogramming of how we think about that word and the traditions. And you do that by canvassing, you know, you, you do a deep dive into the history of all these various, you know, face, what we can learn from them, what has gone, by acknowledging what's gone terribly awry with how humanity has kind of weaponized

them in various ways. But how do we find our way back to the best of what religion has to offer? And why should we reconsider or the importance of religion in this, kind of secular, post-religious world in which we are over indexing on intellectualism, rationalism, the rise of atheism, and our own kind of bespoke, you know, you know, versions of spirituality, you know, as a side

dish over here. I don't have any answers. We've, I mean I took a stab at it by trying to invent a new religion. Yeah, I don't have any answers. I just, I just proposed a new religion in my book, but please don't call me a guru. I will say that I have the seven pillars of a spiritual revolution. You do it that you do indeed, indeed

you do. And they are to write a new mythology of humanity, you know, the current mythology that we have is like doggy. It's a doggy dog world in one upsmanship and survival of the fittest and don't tread on me and live free or die and this, this kind of like, you know, the strongest survives. We need to write a mythology that remembers that we're a cooperative

species that we've come together in community that we have healed through great traumas that we have lived for most of our existence with great peace with planet Earth, right? We need to create a new mythology. It's like that I use the Star Wars mythology. As an example of, you know, how to use a Joseph Campbell, you know, heroes journey. Well, we can do the same thing

with, with our human. I'm not going to read through all of them, but, but just to pause on that idea for a moment, I mean, that's a big ask, right? Especially in America, where it's all about rugged individualism and sticking your claim and your individualistic, you know, pursuit of happiness and, you know, your rights and your liberty, which I think overshadows to, you know, harken back

to what we were talking about earlier, this, this notion of collective responsibility, like liberty is only as powerful or as potent as it is paired to the responsibility that we shoulder for the collective, right? And I think that, that responsibility piece has gotten lost in this conversation. And what you're saying is we need to recapture that. But it's almost, uh, requires an undoing of the very

sensibility of this, this whole kind of American myth or, or ideology, like, uh, rewriting that story is not a small task. It's not a small task. Um, I don't know what's a, what's a way forward. Um, yeah, I, I don't I don't know how to start. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how to start. I mean, I, I think this mythology is not just a

myth. We have, don't tread on me, live free or die. Every man for themselves pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. We came to America for a very good reason. We were escaping Puritanism. Although many of our forefathers were Puritan's who wanted to be more Puritan. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't hardcore enough. Well, yeah. More hardcore. Yeah. But then there was a lot of people that just

wanted to be out of the auspices of being told what to do in the kind of draconium bureaucracies of Europe at the time. So you know, we, we wanted guns and we wanted land and we wanted freedom and freedom of free speech and expression and, you know, a lot of those things are, are, are great. I think. But again, we just need more storytellers to be

telling the stories because think about freedom. Have you ever been to a country where there's no traffic laws? Yeah, they just, it's just a free for all cars are just parked on sidewalks and every man for themselves. I remember driving in Morocco is the first time I saw it. That was immediately the place that I thought. Yeah. Anyway, the first time I saw human brains splashed

onto a street. Wow. Because everyone just goes as fast as they want through barreling down the wrong side of the road. The stoplights are optional. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It does not get you there faster freedom. They're total freedom in Morocco. So in, in the United States and in countries that have traffic laws, we're like, oh, we've got these traffic laws. I don't

want to drive. I can't drive 55. I don't want to wear my seatbelt. You know, but these are all for a very good reason. And it actually works and it gets you there faster. And you're really grateful for our traffic laws because it works. So I know that's just a lame dumb little example, but it's an example of, you know, reinvesting, reinvestigating the word freedom and

what that really means because freedom in the context of system and cooperation is a really powerful force. But freedom just on its own without any kind of limits and without any kind of morality for lack of a better word is extremely dangerous. Yeah. I mean, it's a bottom up thing. Is it not like in order to, you know, kind of shock people out of their own

personal agenda and, you know, self seeking and to contemplate the well being of the greater whole. That requires a spiritual revolution. Right? Like you had it. It's an elevation of consciousness in order to. So here's my challenge to you, Rich. The next one here is to foster joy and squash cynicism. We've been talking a lot about that. The pessimism and cynicism that you feel around this

and I completely understand. And this is part of my character defects is to be cynical and pessimistic. I, I tend very easily in that direction. It's hard for me to be hopeful. It's a practice. But one of the superpowers of this kind of like these seven pillars for a spiritual revolution is to foster joy and squash cynicism. Whenever that arises in our chest, we just have

to know it's not serving us. I tell the story in here about, I worked with a great theater teacher and director Andr Gregory, who's the star of focal point of the amazing classic film, My Dinner with Andr, if people haven't seen it, it's absolutely. It's an entire two hour movie of a conversation with two people at a dinner table. And I got to work with him

for several weeks or several months and fascinating human being who has traveled the world and done theater and every culture of the world and is just beyond fascinating. Anyways, he had a meeting with me as he did with his students. And we had tea and then as we were leaving, he's like, so what, how do you feel, Rayne? How are you these days? I'm like, well,

can't help but getting cynical. I'm kind of pessimistic. How is things going to work out in the world is so dark? And fucked up. This was the 90s mind you when things were actually pretty good. And yeah, he grabbed my arm hard, grabbed it. He was a little old man then. He's still alive. And he's like 98. He grabbed my arm. He looked into my eyes.

He's like, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't give into cynicism. Don't be pessimistic. If you do that, they win. That's how they want you. If you're pessimistic, if you're cynical, they win because you aren't going to do anything to change the world. You're going to get shut down. Don't do it. And he was just like, held my gaze and held my arm. I was like

25. I was like, and then he let go. And then I walked out into the world. And I saw things in an entirely new way. I won't say that. I was transformed and all of a sudden I was arrived or anything like that. But I'll never forget that interaction. And I think that for all of the listeners for you and the rich role, Posse, it is

so dark. It's so important to foster joy and hope in everything that we do because the other side, the side of darkness, the empire, the Voldemort forces that are out there. They want us cynical. They want us pessimistic and they want us in resultingly not doing anything. So how do we, especially engender that and inspire that in the younger generation? How do we do that with

teens? How do we do that with college kids and people in their 20s that are lost in dealing with this rampant mental health crisis that's killing millions? How do we foster an engender hope in that generation? Whatever we can do, that's our most important task in front of us. That's beautiful. Yeah. Like you, my default setting or my disposition, as a tried and true gen XR

is to be cynical. And it's, it's a very important thing to do. It's work. It's a practice to keep that at bay and to try to find a way to hold on to hope or to cultivate that. And I was, as you were sharing that beautiful story, I was thinking about the, what's her name? Having a senior moment. It happens to me all the time. Come

on. The, the beautiful woman who worked with the apes. Jane Goodall. Jane Goodall's the book of hope. Have you read this book? No. Yes. So it's a book, co-written by Michael. Michael. I'm a friend of Doug Abrams. And it's all about that. Like how do you maintain hope in the face of dire circumstances or, you know, all the, all the pressures of society that are kind

of marshalling you to, you know, believe otherwise. And he also wrote a book with the Dalai Lama called the Book of Joy. Yeah. And it does mean two to the same guy. Yeah. So, yeah. Same guy. Which are, yeah, those two books together kind of speak to exactly what you're saying. Yeah. Which is great. You have a whole beautiful section in this book about pilgrimages, like

this idea of going on a sacred pilgrimage. And it's really a discussion about, in a broader sense, you know, asking the question about, like, in our modern world, like, what is holy anymore? Like, what is deserving of reverence in the modern world? Like, how do we think about what is and what is not sacred? And how is that? What changed or evolved over time? Yeah. I

went with my family a few years back on what is a Baha'i pilgrimage to the north of Israel, in the Haifa, Israel area, where the founder of the Baha'i Faith is buried, which is the most kind of sacred spot to Baha'is. And there are a number of other, you know, shrines there. That's where the Baha'i Administrative Center is. And so it has a lot of, like,

pah-ah. And, and, and beauty, beautiful gardens and architecture. You can Google it. And it was really profound, because we went on this journey with people from, like, the Philippines and Romania and Italy and, and Finland and, like, all over the world. And, very diverse group of people that were Baha'is that came in to, you know, take this nine-day journey of prayer and meditation and to be

devout. You think about that word devout, which also is connected to devotion. And it really, when I got back home, I saw things in a very different way, because I was like, wow, there's just nothing sacred around me. It was so weird to have nine days when things were sacred. And you would, you would pray and you would meditate. And you would ponder things, and you

would, and you did it as a group. And it was really beautiful experience. And then in contemporary Los Angeles, it just feels like nothing is sacred. I mean, I suppose if you do a dawn hike, I would say, I'm going to pray. I would take, and you're on, you know, and you're in the Santa Monica mountains, and you see the sunrise, or something like that. Certainly

that has a sacredness and a connection to nature is, is, is where sacred is. But I, I use that story to kind of pose the question about what is sacred in the modern world. And I, and I reference the great medieval Japanese poet, Bashou, who wrote Haiku and is considered like the great is Haiku poet of all time. And what he would do as part of

just his tradition is, it's part travelogue, it's part spiritual journey, and it's part meditative journey and connection to nature. And it's a part of an artistic journey, is he would walk from town to town, and he would go to temples and beautiful places, and he would meditate and pray, where he was, and then he would write a poem about that place, and he would leave it

at the local temple. Every day, right? Every single day. So it was like this, and you can track, you can go on his journey. And he wrote this book called, sometimes it's called narrow path to the interior, narrow path to the north. It has different kind of translations and meanings. And I thought about how special that was that here's this person combining art, right? Haiku, prayer

and meditation, a spiritual path, and kind of a cultural travelogue at the same time, visiting historical places, and highlighting the sacredness of this path and the way that he walked this path. So I just kind of issued a challenge to the reader and to myself, really, like, how do we find what's sacred in our lives? Does it need to be some special place where someone's buried?

Can we find, I reference, you know, lambo, stadium, and to the people of Green Bay, how sacred that stadium is, because of the mighty Green Bay Packers, and that's such a legendary history. So yeah, I'm just wondering if that resonated for you, or how you find the sacred in your life? Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea of what is and what is not sacred

is really about our relationship to things, right? The idea that this Japanese poet could write, and he's a beautiful Haiku, as he's traversing the landscape, he is, you know, creating art out of mundanity, right? And in that, there is something sacred. So you can create a relationship of sacredness with whatever is providing you with meaning, or just the effort of trying to be present with something,

I think creates a sacred relationship. That's really good. You go to these faraway places, and you also talk about, you know, going to Israel and like, you know, these historic, the wailing wall, and all this sort of stuff, like these, you know, artifices that are just, you know, loaded with historic meaning that are, you know, obviously agreed upon sacred sites, but I think that there's a

broader conversation to be had about finding the sacred in our everyday lives. Like, how can we mind meaning? And be elevated by our own environments, right? And that's just a decision that you make and a decision to kind of invest whatever experience you're having with a, with a more kind of elevated conscious awareness of, of how it could be awe inspiring or wonder inducing rather than

just mundane or normal or I mean, can it be, can, can you drive down? The one on one freeway in Los Angeles and, and figure out a way to, you know, find something sacred about that. I don't know. Maybe. Well, I was just thinking as you were saying that. What would it be like if we wrote a high coup about every place that we visited every

single day? Yeah. Even in the mundanity of our life, even just going to trade our joes and picking up some naval on the rich. The rich role podcast elevated, diversations. I'll see. I can't. We can put cheap TT 4 onto it. Yeah. We have it right out. Some good. I'm doing it for us. But, but even that brings a kind of an elevated consciousness. And I

think when you read the work of Eckertollet, when you read the work of Tick-Not-Hon, who talks about being present while you're washing the dishes, how that's the hardest task. Like part of it is presence. Like to really be where you are. Most of it is. Is it not? That's a such. If you can be, I mean, Eckertollet would say if you're completely present with what you're

doing, there is nothing that isn't sacred. Right? Like that capacity to be 100% in the moment that you're in is there. You know, it speaks to this idea of oneness and unity. Right? Like human beings are organisms that are always trying to identify patterns. And in that pattern making kind of no-clivity, we tend to other. Right? Like, were this there that this makes sense? This doesn't.

I fit over here. Those people are over there. And it, it, it belies the truth, the greater truth, which is the oneness of everything, which you speak. So eloquently about in the book. And, you know, presence is a way of transcending or overriding that, that default to kind of identify patterns that are mechanisms of separation. Hand in hand with that, very well said, is what we

can learn from Indigenous Peoples and looking back into our history. Because if you look back far enough, all of us were at one point in time Indigenous. You know, my people were Indigenous to the, to Norway and to the British Isles back in the day. But when I think about Basho, I think too about art. Nature, because a haiku is always about nature, art, nature, spirituality,

religion, you know, comes from the Buddhist and shinto tradition. Art, nature and spirituality all converge and there's no separation between them. So to strive for the sacred, I would say that art, beauty, nature and the spiritual are all unified and are working together. As the many names of Native American traditions point us to. So how do we do that in the Western society? I don't know.

You're supposed to have the answers. I don't have the answers. I have the questions. Yeah. While speaking of Indigenous traditions, one thing you do talk about in the book is, you know, how we as modern individuals in Western society, are always trying to look for shortcuts to these answers. And one of those shortcuts is, you know, exploring traditions of the Indigenous in the form of plant

medicine, right? And the sort of pitfalls and also advances that, that, you know, these experiences that people are having, like I have a lot of opinions about this, but you're, you're pretty clear in how you feel about all of this. So explain kind of your perspective. Here's my unpopular opinion. Okay. It's an unpopular opinion. I'm not a polar opinion that I share. So go ahead. You're

in the unpopular opinion. Oh, that's good. I didn't know that you shared that. I talk about, quote, unquote, plant medicine, which by the way, why isn't heroin or cocaine a plant medicine? Yes. I've asked myself this question. Why is it only like what we want? Is a plant? Like we apply, like also this idea that it's the work. You heard that one? Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing

the work. I'm doing the work. Yeah. Do the work when you're, you know, you're doing your taxes and doing the work when you're, do the work when you're taking your family to the mall to get some shoes. Yeah. I feel very strongly, because I remember, because I'm old enough to remember people in the 70s who were talking about LSD and what a revolution that was in

the early 60s and mid 60s with Timothy Leary and drop in, drop out, et cetera, and everyone doing acid. And that acid was the gateway towards self realization. And you know, I met and I have a couple uncles that fried themselves in that way. And met people whose brains were just fried from doing acid and they, you could look in their eyes and you saw rainbows

in their eyes, but you'd also fry a lot of neurons along the way. And then I remember being in college in the 80s and early 90s and people, like going to the, going to do peyote and going to do mushrooms in the mountains and having these kind of like experiences that are outside of the daily where they're looking for this enlightenment. And now with ayahuasca, I

feel like it's the same kind of thing. So my shot, the shaman went to the best Western in Tempia, Arizona and I met them there. Used to go like to Panama and Columbia and actual Amazon and now they're coming. They're coming to you. Like yeah, like down by LAX. Yeah. But I know people that have gone to literally just gone to a conference room. You know,

tell them to do their ayahuasca. And I just feel like it's a very American thing. It's like, I want to, I want to have this peak experience. I'm going to pay, you know, $875 to fly the shaman up to Costa Rica, to this resort in Mexico and have this experience. It's going to change my mind. It's going to change how I see things. And, you know,

and, but I'm going to do it every year or two. And the rest of the year, fuck it. I'm just going to like be an asshole. Just try and make a lot of money. I'm going to use my backamps. Yeah. I'm going to look at you. You, you, you porn and just, you know, you know, collect comic books and, you know, go to the movies or

whatever it is that we do in our lives. And it's a very American kind of thing. I think it's a cop out. And I think it, it, we were talking about a show. We were talking about Wakantanka. We were talking about Eckhart toll. Like this, this is hard work. You know, spiritual transformation is hard daily work. Now I can hear a lot of people saying, well,

I'm going to do the daily work. But I just, this will help me. To help me see things in a different way. And I know people that has had a very powerful effect. And by the way, I don't want to take away from the efficacy of these drugs to help people who are suffering from severe extreme depression. And from severe extreme drug addiction that there has

been some proof that they have worked on those things with, you know, a professional, you know, and with a very specific system in mind toward healing. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that. I'm talking about a recreational, touristic idea of, I want to go get enlightenment in Costa Rica at a resort. And I can, I've only got to Friday 3 PM till Monday

10 AM in order to do it. Right. Because I got to get back for the board meeting. Yeah. Yeah. So I agree with you 100%. Certainly there are efficacious cases. I know people personally who I think their lives have been benefited from having these experiences and the science that's coming out around. You know, the use cases with respect to depression, PTSD and addiction. As you mentioned,

I think our, our promising and interesting. Yeah. I just think that the idea that we can have a casual relationship with these very powerful substances. And that the main streaming of it such that, you know, we're sort of lured into this idea that, that this should be part of our like daily wellness routine is, is irresponsible. And I do think that tourist sensibility, is problematic. And

it is, you know, kind of so, you know, emblematic of like an American sensibility. Like as somebody who, like went to rehab and I know people, I have a, I know a guy who, you know, was on ketamine and jumped off his roof. Like these are not benign substances. These are very powerful substances that need to be, you know, administered in controlled environments in the best

case scenario. And I think we just need to slow down a little bit. And like you know, like, you don't need it to have a transfer of experience. Right. And it's really about like to the extent that they can open up a portal and allow you to step outside of your ego and, and see things maybe more broadly. I'm, I'm cool with that. Like great. But

that is only as valuable as the follow up work and the path that you're going to pursue to. Kind of more deeply invest in, in, in what that means for you. Right. And you don't need to do those things in order to have those experiences. And fast tracking your spiritual development or growth is, is really not like what it's about. I met a young guy and

he talked about his, I wasca trip and how he saw oneness and all things and how all things were connected and unified. And it actually gave him a belief in God. And it was really transformative. And I was like, oh, that's great. What do you, and what do you do? What do you do? What's your life? It's like, well, I buy selling trade sneakers and air

Jordans. So I, you know, I'll buy a sneaker for $300. And I'll sell it to some teenagers. I'm going to buy a sneaker. And Ohio for $500. And it's like, okay, all right. Now, nothing against the little commerce. I do, I do some dumb commercials sometimes to make some money. But that just seems antithetical to the spirit of, you know, real profound soul transformation. How a

change of mental of you. Yeah, there's my character defects. I know. Yeah, it's tricky. But I just, you know, I guess my, my overall kind of vibe on that is like slow down, think twice. These are, it's not a binary thing. It's not bad or good. It's what is your relationship to this? What are you trying to get out of it? And what is the plan

of, you know, after these experiences? What are you going to do with it? Like, I, yeah, I have a friend who, I think he does it like every weekend. Yeah. You know, and then he's like, I'm doing the work. And I'm like, dude, like, are you not enlightened yet? Like, what do you do? Like, this is an escape on some level. Like, how are you incorporating

this into your life? I did the work 15 years every day with alcohol. I was doing the work. Yeah. How that worked out. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't work. It's such a bummer. It didn't wish it did. It didn't soothe me. It didn't allow me to escape my pain and my anxiety. It didn't, it didn't quell the fear. And so what

is the, what is the, what is the daily practice now? Look like for you. So, I would say about four or five days a week. I am able to wake up in the morning and read a holy writing from my faith tradition, which reminds me about my spiritual essence and my spiritual nature that I am a spiritual being having a human experience as a pair Tehart

Deshardan says. I do a meditation for a very simple one, 15 or 20 minutes, nothing fancy. And then I exercise, even lightly jog up and down my driveway, which is kind of a hill and lightly lifts some weights and stuff to help reduce my anxiety. And then I do a cold immersion, even for just three and a half minutes. You got the cold plunge. I have

a cold plunge although most of the year in LA, my pool does the trick just kind of. Yeah, it's cold. Right. And I, and I fool myself. It's like, oh, it's 59 degrees. That's cold enough. Yeah. I don't need to get it. It doesn't need to be 39. I don't need to get in the 45 degree. Yeah. But that has really helped with my mental health,

with my anxiety. And in the behind tradition, we pray between noon and sunset, a very simple prayer that connects us to our creator. And then I read another quote to spiritual quote in the in the evening. You know, there's usually, you know, in 12 step programs where, you know, we're making calls and reaching out and like connecting with people in the program, which is part of

its beauty and the community that it creates. So I'm I'm rolling. Rich rolling. I'm doing phone calls as well and kind of living in consultation with my with my brothers and support group. So, um, and then I do therapy. I'm very serious about therapy. I'm part of what my therapist does is hypnosis. So I do. At least twice a month. I'm doing hypnotherapy, which I think

is, uh, really powerful. Yeah. Kind of forgotten kind of therapy. It was like making the 70s or whatever. And you hear about it. If not at all hypnosis, like, you're a chick, pretend you're a chicken or some like that. It's just getting in touch with that enormous reservoir of the unconscious. Sure. Um, and I think you mentioned last time you do like a men's group. You

still do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do a men's group retreat every three or four months. We get together. You know, an Airbnb or someone's house and we do an intensive, you know, step study and sharing and, um, and bonding activities and and stuff like that. Because intimacy among grown men, as you know, is really difficult and it's something that's really lacking in our culture.

Yeah. The only way men can bond is over sports, really, and, and, you know, playing sports and and watching sports and and stuff like that. So, you know, sharing with other middle-aged men and being vulnerable and, um, asking for feedback help and, you know, consultation is, is a powerful force. Yeah. I think modeling that is, is super important, especially when it comes to kind of untangling

that not like, um, when we think about what's required to elevate consciousness in order to more efficaciously, like, solve these problems in a healthy way, like the big problems that we have, a lot of it, you know, kind of tracks back to, you know, masculine models of unhealth, like our inability to kind of communicate, uh, or, or be honest about our emotions or, you know, check

our ego. And all these sorts of things that like kind of, you know, have this undercurrent of like driving culture in the wrong direction and, you know, pushing us towards that, you know, existential cliff. I remember when I first got into therapy, um, in the early 2000s in L.A. And someone recommended a therapist and he ended up being really great. And they, and he would say

like, so rain, what's going on? And I would kind of summarize what I did that week. And then like, so how are you feeling? And I was just like, I had literally had no vocabulary to talk about what was going on inside. It wasn't that I was, I was flummoxed. I literally didn't have the language. And he had this kind of poster of this emotion wheel.

And it was like, is it this? And I'd be like, I'd be like, well, I'm, I'm pretty frustrated with my career. Let's say, like, I would do a superficial thing. And he'd be like, frustrated. Okay. And he pull out this like emotion color wheel. And it was like, um, frustrated, you know, and it had different variations of it. Like, I worked, I rate, um, overwhelmed. And

it's like, do any of those? I'm like, actually, overwhelmed. Yeah, overwhelmed. That's when I'm feeling overwhelmed. Oh, okay. How does that make you feel? And then I'd have another emotion. And like, I had to learn a language because no one had taught or modeled it for me. Language of how to have feelings and how to communicate those feelings. I was just so locked up and constipated.

Yeah. Um, and, and the idea that to do that somehow threatens your masculinity, right? Like, it's a, it's a threat to, like, this identity, you know, of what it means to be a man. And I think it's so important to do that. And, and I think your guy, Justin Belldoni, yeah, he's like at the leading edge of like trying to educate people about this in a

really interesting way. He's caught a lot of flack for that. He's really, yeah. He's gotten this great book and podcast called Man Enough where he really challenges his own ideas about his masculinity. And obviously he's like a model handsome guy. He's like, so handsome. It's crazy. But he talks about how like, you know, if he was doing a show and he had to take his shirt

off, like, for weeks in advance, he would just feel less. I mean, he's got washboard. Right. I mean, they're insane. And he just feel less than and judged and overwhelmed and like, and his body and he wasn't enough. And, but they really take apart masculinity. And some interesting ways on that podcast and in his book and boy, he's caught a lot of flack from it. I

mean, he gets lambasted online. What is the, what is the negative feedback? I guess it's the Andrew Tate contingent of like, you're a cuck and a pussy to kind of even question what being a man really is. And you're, you're emasculated and you're, you're pussy whipped. And there is, you know, there's a, there's a population that views any challenges to masculinity as, you know, some kind

of very threatening affront and, uh, and a dangerous direction for humanity to go, which is men having feelings, being vulnerable, expressing their feelings, asking for their needs to be met. Yeah. That's problematic. That is the concern. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I guess the idea of, uh, you're better off just getting in your Lambo and, and smoking your sick car and, and you're we. Yeah. Exactly. I

don't know. Um, that's upsetting because I, I see what Justin's doing. And I think it's so cool. Yeah. And the fact that there's organized pushback to that is disconcerting. Yeah. I suppose. Um, so we got to wrap this up. But, you know, maybe, you know, we can kind of close this with, with just some thoughts around why you think it's worthwhile and meaningful for somebody to

cultivate a spiritual connection or to really grapple with, you know, these ideas that, that kind of transcend the, the, you know, material world in which, you know, kind of predominates our, our daily experience. For somebody who's listening to this or watching it, for whom, maybe they have a negative, uh, reaction to religion because of the way they were brought up or they have an allergy to

anything spiritual. Um, you know, make the case for why this is worthwhile for somebody to kind of mine or explore. Gladly. Thank you. Great question. So the first thing I will say is the reason why spirituality is important is because it is reality. So what is reality? I am fully in agreement with Tehart Deshardin who said we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We

are spiritual beings. We are a human experience. I fully know, uh, it goes beyond belief. I fully know that I am a soul and that I am inhabiting or attached to or in connection with a bodily form for who knows how long 60, 70, 90 years. I'm not sure how long it will last. And that is my reality. And the who I am and what I

am is not my body. It's not even my personality. It's not even like the background that I, you know, it's not the trauma I suffered. It's not what I've been through. That there is a little spark of the divine inside of me. Or that is part of me. That is reflecting the majesty of the divine of God, the divine presence, the creative force. Just like a

sunflower turns to the sun and follows the sun throughout the course of the day. That is reality. So for me to deny my reality is not beneficial to anyone and at least to, at least not myself. So now if you are a hardcore atheist and you're like, that's bullshit. Prove it to me. Prove to me this divine spark of what you speak. I want to see

it in a laboratory or in an algorithm or on a computer screen. Well, that's not quite how it works because every spiritual tradition will show you that we live in a matrix that we live in an illusion. And when we wake up from this corporal form, we are going to be in some greater reality. And this has come from the atheist, this idea that, you know,

perhaps we're living in an avatar. This is the simulacrum, you know. And we're living in a fleshy avatar and we're going to wake up to some greater reality. But putting all that aside, I would say to the atheist, a diagnostic that try it and see if your life is better because there is hard, which we talked about Dr. Lisa Miller in her work. There's hard data

that shows around mental health and well-being, that having serenity, meaning, purpose, focus, a sense of service to others, a losing of oneself to a transcendent self of the divine, the transcendent, the abundance that's around us increases greatly the quality of our lives. When we see ourselves in true humility with the size and scope of the universe and whatever infinite universes are beyond this universe, that it

makes the quality of your life better. So cost-benefit analysis, putting in a small amount of time every day. I'm talking about 40 minutes in your day to some kind of spiritual opening and or practice has incredible benefits. This has been found time and time again. It's found in the 12-step programs. It's found in Buddhist meditation. It's found in the most ancient texts that humanity has ever

proved created. The Vedas and Upanishads from 3000 years ago, this sense that we are a wave on the sea of creation. And the wave crests and the wave falls, we're a part of something much greater and much more beautiful than ourselves. And in living in that state, can greatly enrich your life. How is that? I think, despite the fact that you are shunning the mantle of

Guru, you might have just inherited. That was pretty well said and very inspiring. I have no interest in being a Guru. I am however interested in the cash. The cash? Yeah. Caching in on a spiritual ship. Thought leader, spiritual pioneer, maybe retreats that cost of $1,400 or something like that. I think your wealth is, I mean, this book is like, you know, basically the foundation of

a whole new thing for you, dude. Not going to know. I'm a man. I'm a I'm lonely. I'm about a lonely. We're the actor. I'm going to play my next weirdo character on television screens near use. It's funny. What you just said, I think, you know, guys in the back clip that, that is an Instagram reel. We didn't even talk about the fact that the last

time you were on, I mean, we had some texts about it. But that monologue that you delivered, around like your 20s are for like fucking around and exploring life and like trying things and trying failing things. And failing and all of that, like when, you know, crazy viral and created like a really interesting discussion and dialogue that was split. Like a lot of people like, amen,

probably the older people, right? Like, oh, I wish I'd done that or whatever. And then an interesting pushback of some younger people like you don't understand my life or that's convenient for you. But like, you know, this is my circumstance. And which is great. Like that's a dialogue. So I would view it differently. I would view the younger people were like, thank you. That put so

much in clarity. Gave me so much clarity. Some, yes. But some like barriers up like, hey, like scared of that message. I think many people viewed it as like, oh, that's just an invitation to like fuck around and not do anything. But no, it's try things, learn, explore, fail. But don't worry about it. You don't even know who the hell you are. I know. But it's

like when you're that age, you can't hear that. Because like you think like everything is so, you know, time sensitive and precious. And you've got to get on it and all of that. I had, you know, Kevin Kelly is. I had him in here the other day found a founder of Wired magazine. Okay. Yeah. Like legendary, like futurist big thinker kind of guy and he like

dropped out of college after a year and like lived in Asia for years. And like basically said, everything that you said in that clip. And I was like, yeah, that's what rain said. And he's coming back. It's cool. I loved how viral that one. And I love that. It's great. Provoking a conversation. And that's what I hope to do with soul boom. With soul boom. Why

we need a spirit revolution is we are here to market your book. This is my purpose. Rain. Come on. Let's stop it. But I, but I do. I do, I do have more questions than answers. So it's just it's an important conversation. We need to be digging into, you know, what are spiritual tools? Can they benefit us personally? And can they benefit us collectively? Let's talk

about it. Sure. And I think it's important to point out that that you have a sense of humility about this whole thing. Like we didn't really talk about that. But like you're sort of self deprecating throughout this whole thing. Like, hey, I don't have the answers. But let's ask these questions and like, hey, how preposterous is it of me to be writing this book? And, and

you know, using like kind of fun examples from pop culture to illustrate like these deeper points that you're making. And it's a really, it's it's it's it strikes a balance between being super deep and and provocative and asking a lot of the reader while also being really fun and easy to read. Like I literally you are. And like a day you are marketing my book. It

is. I loved it. It's great. I'm excited for you. I love it. I know I'm doing that. I'm trying to make it happen. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to do it, and I'm trying to do it. I love what you do when you're podcast and the conversations that you have are so important and the scope of what they are from veganism to wellness to

exercise to to to greater consciousness. And you are you are on the Star Trek path of making humanity a better place and helping mature our species. Thank you for that. Well, I appreciate that. But I think what we can conclude from this conversation. Is that we should each be each other's publicists. Yeah, we should. I love you buddy. This book is great. I'm super excited for

people to experience it. And I'm at your service. And there's always a chair for you here. I love it. Thank you. Love you too. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Ray. Cheers. Beautiful discussion. Peace plants. Be high. Spiritual prayers be there. Star Trek. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Live long and prosper. This episode was brought to you by Inside Tracker. Learn how to live healthier longer by visiting InsideTracker.com.

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