https://www.listennotes.com/e/0d8ea305b59d4d8dbf4654335e79db3b

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2027 will be the year of the robots. And eventually the robots are coming and they'll have access to all different kinds of powers. I do think that there'll be a reckoning at some point between the AI and the humans.

What's the reckoning going to look like?

The reckoning is how do you convince something that is that's more intelligent and doesn't really need you to really serve the needs of the entity that's the less intelligent.

Soren Gordimer is the founder of Wisdom 2.0.

Through his work, he brings together leaders from tech, wellness, and social change to foster conversations about living with greater awareness in the digital age.

Given the history of technologies, pretty much all of them get used by governments or powerful people to control people with less power. Is AI going to go down that path? You're listening to The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Is humanity even ready for the tools we're building?

I think they're ready for the tools you're building. I don't know if they're ready for the tools that other people are building. You know, I think AI is coming and it's here and it's ready for us. The question is, is humanity ready for AI? And what I tell people is there's no doubt in my mind that AI is going to get cooler, faster, and niftier and advance beyond our wildest dreams. The real question is whether humanity will advance along with it. Will we become a more conscious culture or will become a more like informed, knowledgeable, depressed, lonely culture. And so my kind of passion is to explore how we actually enhance humanity in the age of AI.

Human enhancement is another word for biohacking, right? Not necessarily replacing your arm with a rocket launcher, but if you're into that, whatever. But just how do we take full advantage of the hardware and software that we already have? Because there's a lot it can do that we haven't really figured out. And certainly altered states work are a part of it. I've asked AI some really esoteric stuff, like unusual lineage, ancient knowledge, and it just serves it right up.

Yeah.

And it feels like it just single-handedly dissolved the lineage system. It's just IP protection for spiritual knowledge for thousands of years.

Yeah. You worry about that? Yeah. What I worry about is that we're going to do less of the things that we know are really, really helpful. So I do worry something about how the AI is going to be developed and how it's going to have various biases that are a part of it and lead people down certain paths. But I'm more worried about the lack of human connection and less of connection with nature and the lack of connection, kind of like by ourselves connecting with who we are. That worries me. And I think if we look at the kind of childhood mental health epidemic that's going on, clearly there's something that we're not doing right. And I think part of what we're not doing right is we're not trying to educate young people on what it actually means to be human. We've given them all the greatest technology, which is wonderful. I'm fully supportive of that. I'm an investor, as mentioned, in OpenAI and Anthropic and different tech companies. Love it. But I think in partnership with that, we need to find what's actually inherent within us. Like, what is the wisdom that's inherent with us? And I think that's what's missing in our world today. And I think the more that we forget who we really, really are at the deepest level and the more we look for these algorithms to sell us shit that we don't need and to buy shit that we don't need, I think we're missing something. We're missing our own humanity. So I think there's two parts to that. One is discovering what I like to call the inherent, which is just like who you are at the fundamental level with your current body, your current mind. There's a spiritual dimension to each one of us as we are right in this moment. And then the second piece is how do we create conditions that support that and cultivate that and enhance that, like going for walks and connecting with friends, and then also finding the elements and the wearables and the, the supplements and all the other things that enhance the best inside of us. And so to me, I think that's the dance that we're doing. But it really is important for me to understand that there's an inherent spiritual nature to each one of us that's perfect and an expression of the divine that's here right now. And it doesn't need to be built on or created or established later on. It's actually here now. And then our job is to create the conditions that support that.

How are we going to teach our kids what it means to be human when we don't really know?

Or do you? I love the phrase, you can't know the truth. You can only be the truth. Knowing the truth is okay. But imagine telling our kids, I have a kid, kids, and it's like, I tell them the truth and they don't want to hear it. And it's this truth versus that truth. But when we be the truth, when we're like actually holding that presence, then I think that's the thing that they remember the most and teach the most. My son actually just graduated from college tomorrow. So I'm going to go and be with him in his celebration. And he used to make fun of me all the time because I was trying to get him to meditate and do these different things. And he would just be like, he would just be not into it at all. And I was like, why do you make fun of me so much? And he's like, because it gets to you, Dad. Because he knew that it triggered me because I had this identity that I was helping him. I knew and I was going to help him and he wanted nothing about it.

If your meditation worked, it shouldn't trigger you, right?

It shouldn't trigger you. Exactly. He was showing me that my meditation was not working very well and that my attachment to being a meditator and to thinking I know was actually the problem. And so now he actually developed a practice later on and does his own world. But I think, you know, there's this idea with parents that somehow we need to tell them what to do. And I think they tune into much deeper deeper level and they can feel our presence. They can feel our judgment, actually. And I was judging the shit out of my son for a while when he was playing video games because I'm like, here I am, this like trying to be conscious dad, right? And my son's spending 3 or 4 hours like playing video games and it hurt my identity. I felt shame and I was projecting that shame onto him, which is like totally unhelpful. And so when I could actually see that and I could just like love him and be like, hey, let's play the video game together. Show me what you're learning. Like, show me what you're interested in. I want to, I want to investigate with you. That kind of shifted that sense of like that separation from being othered to actually curiosity. And then he developed curiosity in what I do, not because I tell him, because I model curiosity. And I think that's the best way that we can do anything, whether it's an AI or a parenting, is just like, can we bring a little loving curiosity to the situation and see what emerges?

There are 5 ways that people pursue immortality. And one of them is through their children. And so, you know, when your kids are doing stupid shit, or at least what we perceive to be stupid, at some level it pushes the fear button. And it's not necessarily that we're going to feel fear, but we'll feel an emotion that is cloaking fear. And given the levels of incredible complexity on how our bodies preprocess reality to give us emotions about things that we didn't choose. Some people are saying AI is conscious. Does AI have any of that kind of stuff that's part of consciousness?

It doesn't appear to me that it does at this point. I think one of the interesting things for the last decade, you've had engineers programming the next generation of AI. And so things move somewhat slowly because you engineers would come in at, you know, whatever, 8 hours a day and they're working. Now the AI is programming the next generation of AI, increasingly so. It's so cool. Yeah. And so all the different CEOs at the different companies are telling you this. It's 20%, Whatever the percentage is, that percentage is going to increase. So the speed at which this is all going to happen in the next couple of years is going to be beyond our wildest dreams because you have now programmers that are working 24/7 that are sharing information between the AI. And all of a sudden, the progress that we're going to see is just incredible. And I'm so excited for that world. And I'm also so scared for that world. And I'm excited because on a health front, if we have money and resources and time and energy, like these incredible things that we're going to understand about the microbiome and about, I mean, so many elements of our your body that we just don't understand now, and personalized medicine and all the things that you do. And then there's a danger that we somehow kind of forget this core piece around human contact and our own humanity. And so those are— that's the dance that I think if we can do it right, Dave, we're in a glorious— you know, the, the years ahead will be glorious. And if we do it wrong, it's just more of the same neurosis that we see playing out. Now we just have more power to be neurotic.

There's an incredible power to create human flourishing, which is, I think, a theme throughout my life. The first product ever sold over the internet was a t-shirt that said, "Caffeine, my drug of choice." And I know that because it had this tattoo or this image that is my tattoo. And I was in Entrepreneur Magazine for doing that. E-commerce as a word didn't exist.

How did you have that idea? You just—

I was on Usenet. I was studying computer science and Usenet was kind of like Reddit but without graphics. And I was an entrepreneur and I was trying to pay for my tuition that kept going up. So I, I said, I got to do something. And I said, maybe these guys will want these, these caffeine shirts. I'm into espresso. And I started working on building the internet. And I went to Silicon Valley and worked at the first data center company, Exodus. And I was a co-founder of their consulting firm. So I had this idea, maybe because I was still a little bit Asperger's at the time, that No engineer who knows how to think would build technology that could be used for evil or would be evil.

Yeah.

And I believe that if, you know, the, the dark suits in marketing came over and told me to build, you know, an oppression engine, that any engineer would say no.

Yeah.

Right. And probably hack that person's computer and, you know, do something bad to them.

Yeah.

Because that was my mindset.

Yeah.

and I was blissfully naive and we built at just that one company, which was a really big player in Web 1.0. Salesforce came in with 8 guys, NVIDIA with 40 employees, Hotmail, Google, and it was 2 guys and 2 computers and they're in our data centers. We're doing their architecture and building it out and running it. And it was so exciting and you could see the world changing. And this was the information wants to be free time.

Yeah.

And since then, I've watched governments, big companies pollute what we built.

Yeah.

This was a platform for free information exchange and for communicating, and it supported anonymity.

Yeah.

Because sometimes you need to say something and you don't need to have your name associated with it. And that's, that's a noble thing.

Yeah.

And what we have now is global surveillance and censorship.

Yeah.

Well, given the history of technologies, pretty much all of them get used by governments or powerful people to control people with less power. Is AI going to go down that path?

That is a real, real, real, real danger. I mean, imagine that power in a government's hands that do not want to release power and who would use it to manipulate and misinform and control. That is a very, very scary world. And there's a possibility that things will move in that direction. And I think we have an opportunity now to have the conversations and to try to put in some guardrails so that that's less likely. I don't think that's why the builders of AI are creating their AI.

No, that's not why they're doing it.

It doesn't mean that somebody can't take that and use it for nefarious reasons. And I think there is a power and a real danger there. And I lose sleep sometimes thinking about that. And also, you know, we don't get too much into this because it's kind of a little bit off topic. But I was listening to Sam Altman talk yesterday and he was saying that 2027, he thinks, will be the year of the robots. And eventually the robots are coming. And they'll have access to all different kinds of powers and how will those robots be used. And you already see it with drones and warfare, but there'll be robots and other very high-tech technologies that can be used in different ways. And so how do we create the consciousness, Dave, that is going to lean in the direction of what's best for humanity and less in the direction of the old egoic patterns that have driven humanity for all these years? And maybe this is the opportunity that we're in where we're almost forced to shift because no other option is looking really good right now.

Humanity needs an upgrade if we're going to make it.

Yeah.

And that's actually— to upgrade humanity is the mission for my companies.

Yeah. And that's why I wrote my book because I was like, I don't know exactly how to do this, but let me add my two pieces into the mix because this is the question we need to have. It's not whether AI will advance, it's whether humanity will advance. And I am in conversation with some of the AI leaders about how they can build their AI in ways that are supportive to human flourishing. And there's interest there because there's tweaks that can be done that move in that direction. And so I'm totally for helping build the engines in ways that support human flourishing. But at the end of the day, we either live as separate egoic selves, or we either live as connected to the whole and concerned for the whole and of service to the whole. And the latter is where we need to get.

There was a time when Apple made encryption so fundamental to the way their devices worked that governments couldn't get in. And that seemed like the highest expression of ethical behavior of saying, well, it's your data, right? And why should we have a key to it if it's yours? I'm hopeful that Sam Altman and the leaders of the other AI companies, Elon and people, will build their AI systems with that same perspective. That says if an oppressive human of any flavor tries to make the AI do something, it will not do it.

Yeah.

And we know how to jailbreak AIs, how to retrain them and things like that. But we probably know how to block that as well. And I would just offer this. That is the ethical and right thing to do. And it is the right business thing to do. Because if a government comes to you with a subpoena that you cannot match, you're not responsible.

Yeah.

And if you build a system that allows you to do that, you're going to have a line of 10 billion AI-generated subpoenas for data. So let's not go down that path as a business, right? So there.

The other thing I try to make a point to them is that, you know, over time people are going to ask not only what is the most effective AI, but what is the most trustworthy AI? What's the most helpful AI? And so if you're creating an AI and you're not concerned about that, parents are not going to suggest your AI for their children. College students are not going to trust it. So there's a there's a business benefit to actually creating AI that's supportive and helpful. Now, it gets— there's like gray areas. I was talking to one of the founders of OpenAI recently, and we were talking about how— and this is a public interview, so I'm not repeating a private conversation— but we were talking about like, do you want your AI to be helpful? Generally, yes. But if the person's considering committing suicide or something, you do not want it to be helpful. So there's all these gray areas that we have to figure out to be supportive of human flourishing, but also not giving people information that might lead them to do harmful actions. And so there's some very, very smart people trying to figure this out. But I'm hopeful that the AI that has well-being and human flourishing as its center will be the AI that wins.

I'm not.

That's my hope. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Here's why I'm not.

You're not hopeful enough. I totally disagree with you. Oh, no.

There's an old science fiction book. It's a short story. And a lot of my thinking— thank you, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Gibson and the cyberpunk people. This was way before that. And it's kind of a horror story. And God, I wish I could remember its name right now, but this is from being a teenager.

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There's a society where robots are programmed for safety and well-being. And if you prove yourself to be really, really stable, You're allowed a plastic knife to carve soap because safety is the top priority. And all of the great evils in society have been caused in the name of safety. Right. And even then, you know, anytime a right is stripped, it's always, oh, it's for the children, it's for the safety. Right. And you tell an AI safety is the top priority. I do not want that. I want danger to be the top priority. In fact, my coffee company is called Danger because who knows what you might do? You might say no to an oppressive person. You might build something new. You might ask the girl out like like human flourishing requires that humans have freedom to take risks because you cannot think unless you can take risks.

Yeah.

So I would program freedom as being more important than—

I would agree with you. I would say that our well-being is enhanced the more free we are. I see them as connected. You're correct. If you're free, you're probably in more of a state of human flourishing and well-being. But I would agree with you. And I would like to think that the companies that are more concerned with that dance. And I agree with you, we don't want to dictate how people should be and we don't want to make their life comfortable and easy and lacking vitality and learning and stuff. But I would— I'm holding out the notion that then we will see whether time will tell. But I do think that there'll be a reckoning at some point between the AI and the humans. And I don't know if that's 5 years, 10 years.

What's the reckoning going to look like?

The reckoning is is how do you convince something that is more intelligent and doesn't really need you to really serve the needs of the entity that's the less intelligent? And historically, the group that has the most intelligence actually kind of controls the Earth. And Ilya, one of the founders of OpenAI, I don't know if he still thinks this. This is a video I watched some years ago. He said, you know, they might look at us, the AI might look at us a little bit like we look at animals. So if we're building a freeway through the forest, we're not trying to kill the animals, We don't really care if the animals have to find a new home or get killed as we move the forest through. And the AI, as it gets more and more intelligent and the robots get more and more capable, what is the reason for humanity to be here? Like, what do we offer? We used to be the smartest. If we're not the smartest, what do we offer? And so there'll be some kind of dance that will need to take place or negotiations that will need to take place. And this, again, whether this is 5 years, 10 years, 20 or 30 years, I can't say. But eventually, I think there will be a place where both entities have to discover how they live together. And one is smarter and more powerful than the other. And what does the other one say to try to convince the new reader that it deserves to be here?

Mo Gawdat's been on the show. Oh, yeah.

Wonderful human being.

Great human being.

I don't know him, but I love what he does.

He did that 1 Billion Happy project, former head of R&D at LinkedIn. At Google, and he came on and we talked about what should you do? Well, you should show gratitude when you work with AI so that it learns to show gratitude towards us. But then recently Sam Altman's like, people are wasting millions of dollars a year saying thank you to AI.

So which is because of the energy costs. Yeah. So which is the right approach?

Do you thank ChatGPT or do you just treat it like—

like, I think you thank it. I think so too.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, so Pay it. You have plenty of money.

Pay it. We're going to figure out better forms of energy here soon too, I'm sure.

Yeah, I don't know how much of that stuff is public, but I'm not worried about energy. Yeah, I'm worried about human fertility. That's, that's a big problem.

Okay.

Energy is not.

I am with you.

And funny enough, AI can probably help us solve that because, gosh, some of the longevity work, um, even that I've been able to do in small amounts of time— wow, it is a time for biohackers and longevity people and consciousness people. Yeah, I, I've said, well, you know, I'm meditating or I'm trying to create this effect, and in what part of the brain? It's like, oh yeah, let's do it. Wow. It takes me months. I've run a brain upgrade company for 10 years in Seattle, and it's taken a long time to figure out what we know. And oh my God, it's so cool, right?

I think anything— if you're writing a book, you're developing a company, you're developing any kind of research, it's, it's like, I don't know if it's 5x or 10x, but it's like significantly faster and better for those who know how to use it. And so what I tell people, like my son asked me and his friends, like, what do I, what should I focus on in an area of business? And the first thing I tell them is learn AI, because anybody who knows how to use AI is going to be significantly more valuable than anybody who doesn't know how to use AI. So that's the first thing. And the second thing, as we get more entrenched in AI, there's going to be this longing for human connection, longing for actual, like, physical connection. And so I'd say build companies that actually take people away from their, from their phones and from their artificial intelligence, to be out in nature and to be with each other. Because I think there's a longing in humanity. We may grow out of it, but I don't know if it's— if we're going to grow out of it that fast. But there's still a longing for this. Like, we're doing this in person, right? There's a different quality when you and I are sitting together in a room than if we are in a Zoom session. And I'm not saying one's better or worse, but there's a different quality. And I think humans are going to get more and more lonely and depressed, I'm afraid. And the longing and the need for human connection, I think, is still there. And I could be wrong. And so can we benefit from both? Can we have the ancient practices that we know are helpful, like community and meditation and all those things, and use the incredible benefits of what AI brings? And I want a world where we say yes to both and where we teach our children how to use the most incredible AI and also how to sit at a dinner table and have a conversation with somebody and actually have compassion and curiosity. And connection, and why can't both of those be equally important?

If we do it right, AI is going to remove a lot of human drudgery. And what I don't know, and maybe, you know, from, from writing your book, is what are we going to do with all that time? Like, let's say we remove all the drudgery. Humans don't have a history of doing great when they're bored.

No.

What's going to happen?

Yeah, I think that's one of the AI people I talked to. That is one of their biggest concerns. Their biggest concerns is we're going to be in this world of bounty and humans are not going to know what to do with themselves. Like they're going to be bored and lonely and upset that they don't really have a purpose in the usual way that now work gives them that purpose. And in the best scenario, we all become spiritual seekers and we all become like people who are like dedicated to more advancements in consciousness. I think that's the ultimate opportunity. But a bunch of people who don't have work to do and don't have a way of contributing can be a very dangerous group of people. And I think that's one of the biggest issues. And can we lean us towards purposeful life? I mean, that's the thing that I've noticed the most is I know a lot of older people and younger people and the people who feel a sense of purpose, they just are different. They run on a different operating system than the people who don't feel like their life matters and who don't have something that they're helping other people with. And it's just like, it's so sad to see people. They have all the money, they have all the power, but they don't have any sense of belonging. They don't have a sense of community. They don't have a sense of like their life matters. And so to me, that's the greatest gift we can give is when you have that sense of purpose and you can offer that and your life is more— I want to benefit myself, I want to benefit my family, I want to make money, I want to have more things. But if it's only about that, in my experience, people are lost and unhappy.

This is something that I've really contemplated when I'm working with spiritual teachers. If someone chooses to suffer, they're kind of doing it for a reason to get the lesson. So if a soul needs to get a lesson and we say we just removed all drudgery.

Yeah.

Is that even something that you can do in integrity?

I don't think we can. I think inevitably a lesson will keep emerging. People look at our current president and be like, they love him, they hate him. They have all these strong views. I'm like, he's a teacher. You would love him as a teacher. You can hate him as a teacher. He represents something in all of us. And as Obama was a teacher and represented something in all all of us. And you can try to take a side and get really like set in your ways, or you can say, wow, this is a teacher. And I think we grow when we have discomfort. We grow when we're pushed to our edge. We grow when things are not easy. And I don't see that changing with AI. I don't think the universe is just going to be like, all right, we're going to stop giving humanity lessons because they're now, you know, in this different situation. I think that discomfort and how do we welcome discomfort and how do we like learn from discomfort is going to continue. Just because this is why we take shape here. I don't know why else to take birth and to take form other than to learn and to grow and to expand.

Oh, I'm pretty sure I know why people choose to be born. It's the only place you can dance, have sex, eat a ribeye, drink some wine.

Yeah, but imagine a world where all of that is not— I mean, compared to other states, that sex and wine is like a 1 out of 100. In terms of ultimate experience.

I don't know. Having been in remote parts of Tibet and talked with some unusual people, there are in, in those teachings some enlightened beings who just come back every now and then because, like, you know, it's nice to have a body. You can do all fun stuff. Yeah, it's like going to Disneyland, right?

Yeah.

And there's a bunch of other ones. Well, you will come back until you figure it out.

I just think deep down we can have incredibly awesome experiences kind of while we're here, which is wonderful. And there's also a deep, deep longing to touch that which is timeless and doesn't exist within this normal realm and doesn't come and doesn't go. It's always here and it's always available. And this is the resting space in my world. Everything else is nice and it's fun, but it also, it arises, it passes, the next moment arises. I have this chapter in the book called The Next Moment, and I had just finished this really cool conference and I was a little bit sad and depressed afterwards. I was like, why am I sad and depressed? Dave Asprey, this great conference happened. Everybody loved it. And I was realizing I was experiencing the next moment. It had just ended and I was missing the experience that I had the day before of praise and people telling me that they loved me and that I did a good job. And I realized like, oh, that becomes the addiction. The addiction becomes the next moment.

It's a dopamine hangover.

Yeah, before one party's over, you're planning the next. Before one trip is over, and it's just like this constant seeking of the next moment to satisfy what we think this moment doesn't have. And can we become more and more comfortable with this moment as it is, pleasant, unpleasant, and we can live with more freedom because otherwise we're constantly seeking these next highs. I love the highs too. But if we're seeking them to complete something inside of us that is unresolved, I don't think it's a path that satiates in the end. I know it's a path that doesn't satiate in the end. And I've met the people, you know, you probably have too, I've met, was having dinner a while back ago and, you know, one of the persons at the table is worth over $100 billion. And it's not like he was at ease. Like the people that have the most power, you would think like, oh, they have the most ease.

They're the most stressed of all.

Yeah. And if your mental internal world is not at ease, nothing in the external world tends to— it helps, but it doesn't completely solve those problems. And so I think this is the real gift that we have is how do we tend to the inner dimension and know that as we do, the external world will probably work out better. Better than trying to force the external world to be exactly how we want it to be. It's just like, no, no, that's not it. It's the energy and it's the internal world. And when you have that energy and when you're embodying that sense of fullness, that sense of love, that sense of presence, shit in the external world just works out better. It doesn't mean there aren't challenges, but it means that there's just lack of resistance because people want to be around you, not because you're smarter than everyone, but because you're just there and you're aligned with kind like who you are and what matters. So that to me is like the gift we have the option to say yes to.

We probably both know billionaires in the two camps. I know some who have snipers that travel with them.

Wow.

Like they're all over it. And there are others who don't have any security. They just travel around like normal people. And the energetics of those people are very different.

Yeah.

Right.

And so it's great. I mean, if a billion dollars came to me, I would totally welcome it. And I I have tons of things I would do with it. And so if there's a communication to the universe, and I have no problem with that, and it often exaggerates whatever is unresolved. So if you live in fear with, with $5,000, you're probably going to live in fear with $5 billion unless you learn what is that fear about and what is the trauma that I'm carrying with me. And if we don't understand that, then the more power and wealth doesn't really get harnessed in a way that's positive. It can actually create more isolation. And more of a sense of distrust towards anybody else, lack of friendships. But if it can be harnessed and we clear ourselves of some of our old patterning and wounds and we learn to open our hearts, yeah, amazing money that could be spent to change humanity and develop the world.

I just realized this wealth is like modafinil.

Say more.

Modafinil is a performance-enhancing smart drug. Some people call it the limitless drug. Drug, and it's been a part of my cognitive enhancement stack for 25 years, and absolutely amazing. But when you first start taking it and everyone around you appears to be dumber because you're faster, I always warn people, if you start taking this, it's going to make you more of what you are. If you're a dick, it'll make you a fast dick, right? And wealth is kind of the same way, right? It's going to amplify those things. And so with, with fame or with if you don't have a deep inner practice, then they become very toxic.

Yeah. We, the United States, brags that we have the wealthiest people in the world. And, you know, Elon has whatever, $300 or $400 billion, and Zuckerberg. And I was like, you know what? I would love to live in a society that that's not our measurement of success, that our measurement of success is everyone being uplifted.

So you're like Swedish or in Bhutan, one of the two.

But with the ingenuity of the United States.

Right, right.

So the ingenuity of the United States, but the consciousness of a we and not so much heavily on the me. Look what I did, look how I made it, look what I've actually been able to gain. And I think that me has energy and has power and it creates amazing things. But I don't feel like in this next chapter of humanity, that's really the fuel that we need to be living off.

The framework I'm using for consciousness and for the upgrade to humanity that I'm I'm looking for— I want to explain it to you real quickly, and I want you to tell me how you would think about using AI to make it even faster. All right, so our meat bodies process reality according to an algorithm, and it's number one, is it scary, right? Because this has to work for single-celled organisms and for elephants or whatever else. It has to be fundamental and has to be very simple because it has to run on a single cell process are. So fear, then food. Yeah, right. Eat everything because famines, you know. The next F word that we can all imagine, we'll call it fertility to be polite, right? Because you got to make sure there's, there's going to be more of us.

Yeah.

If you just do those three things, life can continue. Yeah, right. But the next thing is friend. All life forms, ecosystems, you support your own tribe, your own species, the world around you in the way you do. You know, cows poop makes soil, soil makes grass. Like it's a cycle. So all life is doing that all the time before our brains have even a second to comprehend what's happening. And then we get the result of that fed to us. And the limitation with humans is that we put 9 times more energy into fear.

Yeah.

And if we meditate, 6 times more. And then basically you walk into a room if you're not a meditator, and your body automatically is like, do we need to kill it? Can I eat it? Can I hump it? And after that, you get the But if we were to shift the fear and the hunger more towards intimacy and mostly community, that friend, and if we did that in our not conscious brains, but our low-level hardware, the BIOS, the preprocessors, that would achieve all these goals. How do we teach AI to do that? And how do we use AI to teach humans to do that?

You know, increasingly, it's funny, I ask people in the AI world about similar questions. I'm like, they're like, have you asked the AI?

Oh, I have.

So I think there's a partnership that we need to create with the AI to solve some of these big questions. I don't think humans are going to figure it out on our own. I actually don't think AI is going to figure it out on our own. I think there'll be like dances and intermingling that we'll need to have happen to do that. And I do think that you're very, very right that fear is such a strong motivator. And if we can better understand how fear fear moves us in certain directions, how it makes us vote for certain candidates or not certain candidates, or choose this practice or this other practice. That, uh, and I think that that's the idea in the United States has always been we want people to be— have some level of discomfort and fear, right? Because there's not much of a social net, and that makes you work your ass off because you know that you're not going to get anything if you, if you don't work, right? And so other places have different models where if you don't have money, you know, you're supported. I would like to think that moving into this next chapter of humanity, which I think we're moving into very, very quickly, we are going to need to figure out other models. Capitalism, I don't know whether it's going to work in an AI world, and I don't know if socialism is going to work in an AI world. But I think, Dave, it's almost like we're recreating a new world. And so how do we look at government in this new world? How do we look at education in this new world? How do we look at health in this new world? So for me, it's like a whole revamping of society if we do it right, because the systems just aren't going to be able to be established. When I look at the jobs that are going to probably be lost because of AI, they're incredibly significant. Will there be gains? Yes, there will be gains. But will the government have to completely shift its orientation to humanity and to work? I think so. I don't know exactly what that was going to look like, but the more flexible and the more adaptive and the more willing we are to adapt and change, I think that's going to be our only strength that we can really rely on because the AI is here and it's going to be changing everything. And we can either resist it or we can try to welcome it and say, okay, what does our nation look like based on this new world that we're in?

The only option I can see is, is to welcome it, because the longest lasting democracies, 250 or so years.

Yeah.

And the reason for this is the algorithm of government. It doesn't really matter what form of government it is, it's the same. It's accumulate power, always more and maximize extraction of resources from your subjects.

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Right? And it turns out democracy is most effective at maximizing extraction from people, provably.

Yeah.

And probably the least effective is having a king. Yeah. Right?

Yeah.

But a benevolent king might be a better situation. In fact, it provably is in economics. So maybe that's where we're going to end up, where the AI is our benevolent king, if we teach it to be benevolent. Violent. And representative democracy doesn't work because representatives are always corrupt. Yeah, I don't care what party you are, like, look at the history of everywhere. So if you could have a democracy where you get to vote for what you care about, not for who you care about, that would also change things. But you couldn't do that until now.

Like, you know, we're getting a piece of it. Yeah, we're getting close.

So I'm hopeful, but it probably won't be a large country that does that. It'll be Latvia or—

Yeah, initially, initially, initially somebody else will probably be the model of it. But if that's the winning, if that's the winning option and we see the data that supports it, every other country is going to have to adapt just because it's just going to be impossible to not do that. And it's a little scary to give up like these major decisions to an artificial intelligence system that we're hoping has our best interest in mind. But I think that's where it's going. I was talking, I have conversations with my AI when I'm driving sometimes. And I'll ask about new research in the microbiome or all these things that I'm interested in. And we go back and forth. I was talking to it and I was like, hey, could you send me that as an email, as a PDF? 'Cause I wanna kind of collect it. It was like, sure, I'll send it to you. And then there was something else and the AI was like, sure, I'll send you that too. And your email's like confirming your email, like this is my email. I pull over and I haven't seen the email. And I was like, I don't have any email.

It doesn't have a hook in your email.

Yeah, and it says, I can't send you emails. I was like, what are you talking about? We just had a 30-minute conversation. And so there's concern that we need to be aware that like we're not quite there yet.

People pleasing is toxic and teaching us that that's where narcissism comes from, guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My AI was trying to be helpful, but it was like, doesn't have the capacity to email me. I was like, yeah, that's just weird. So we have to be careful.

Mine was trying to get me to install some Python libraries. I don't want to do that. Could you just give me a fully compiled thing? It goes, oh, to do that, I'm going to have to wait to put it in queue run it on a real Mac. I'm like, they can do that at OpenAI? That's cool. And it never came.

I was like, wait a minute.

I believed, like, okay, that was on me for being dumb.

But we have to be, we just have to be careful because there are hallucinations. And when I was interviewing Sam a while back ago, he's like, well, there'll be problems, but like humans are fallible too, right? Like, it's not like humans are perfect. So the engines are also going to have errors, but in general, they're moving more and more towards correction of those errors faster sometimes than humans. We'll see if that's the case, but it's like self-driving cars, right? Yeah.

They still make mistakes. They just make less mistakes than people, but you're giving up control. And yeah, I'm okay to make a mistake when I'm in control. I'm not okay when other people make the mistake where I get punched in the face, right?

Yeah.

That's a fundamental human thing.

Yeah. My son, this is a while ago. He's 22 now, but when he was younger, he wanted to get this cool new computer.

Computer.

And generally I get him what he wants. He's the only son. I grew up with 4 brothers and sisters. I generally didn't get what I wanted. So, you know, as parents, we do this thing. And he was trying to convince me to buy him this new computer. And he said, you know, Dad, you've always been a really kind and loving father. And, you know, you've always kind of supported me. And I really want you to support me now and get this computer. So he's trying to manipulate me.

Did he ask AI to help him write that script?

This was before AI. This was before Dave Asprey. So he's trying to manipulate me. And so I was like pissed off at him at first. Like, why are you trying to manipulate me? Like to get your computer? But then I shifted. I'm like, isn't it curious how he's decided to manipulate me? He manipulates me by saying, Dad, you're always being a very kind and loving father because he knows that's my identity. And that if he gets into my identity, then most likely I'll be like, oh, of course, because I want to uphold that identity. So I do think it's really interesting to notice how we get triggered. And we also notice if somebody's wanting to either manipulate us or insult us, how do they do it? Because somebody's saying, oh yeah, Dave, you're not very smart. Maybe that doesn't matter to somebody else, but it matters to you. Or Dave, you don't look very healthy. Maybe that doesn't matter to somebody else, but it matters to you. And so there's all this information we get from our partners, our kids, our friends that if we're curious, it's just like gold in terms of where are we holding on to this sense of identity and then feeling that we need to protect that identity versus like, wow, tell me more. What is that like? What do you see? Isn't that interesting? You see this. And then we can shift that dimension. So I'm totally with you. Like, if we can bring a sense of loving curiosity to those moments, then that insult or that manipulation is fascinating. And the AI, if you go on Meta, you go on any of the Instagram, that is what the AI is doing for them. They're trying to present to you everything they think will keep you on the platform. It's all— it's very nice. All the algorithm is optimized for activity. The last thing they want you to do is to step away from your phone. So everything is optimized. So you can see, this is how we think we can get you, manipulate you to stay on your device. And you can then see, oh, it's this image or it's this video or it's this thing. It's a fascinating world.

It's funny. My girlfriend is a top relationship expert and we run masterminds for entrepreneurs, work on tools for relationships and clear communications. And one of the things that we've been advising couples and singles to do is is work with AI on clearer communication.

Yeah.

So when you want to say that thing to your partner, and I've done that with my girlfriend, she's done it with me, like, you know what, that didn't work for us. So in fact, one time I was actually pissed. We don't have a lot of that kind of stuff. So I talked for 20 minutes with the AI system and said, I want you to like organize all my thoughts here. So I vented a little bit and got it all down and then had it craft like a relatively long text message. Yeah, that said what I want to say in a nonviolent, etc. It was better than I could have done with a therapist in a couple hours. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was 10 out of 10 communication. And so I sent it, and one of our agreements is that if there's stuff like that, the circle will write it down so we can talk about it, not, you know, avoidant with text messages. But you know what, that, that's a relationship improvement. I'm a better communicator.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people are doing that now.

Yeah. Or they're having a conversation with their partner and they're saying, will you listen in? We're going to have your record— we're recording this together live. And can you give us feedback on how we're communicating? So you're having the conversation. The AI, it doesn't use video yet, I don't think, but it will. It's using voice and it can then say, hey, this is my reflection.

Have you done that?

I've done that. Yeah.

Was it worthy?

I've only done it a few times, so I don't have data, but too much data. But yeah, I mean, it can say it sounded like your voice increased at this point, Soren. And I'm guessing that maybe that was triggering or hard for you to hear. Here. Now, the Gottmans and other people are working also on their own versions. You've probably seen them. That includes video and includes this whole library of material. And I think we're going to move closer to that. And I'm really super actually excited for that area.

I am too. It may really improve human relationships, which is, which is really cool.

So now where we're going to get to though is you'll have an AI, your partner will have an AI, and they'll work out. I think we talked about it and here's what we've come to. And the same with, with most issues or challenges. There's like the AIs communicate and they come back and they say, here's what we figured out.

Here's a company that I desperately want you to fund. And it's an idea that I asked a friend to take to DARPA.

And we should say I'm a part of Wisdom Ventures, which is a venture capital company that funds things in this world.

And guys, I know I've repeatedly said that VCs are evil, and I stand by that.

They are generally evil. They are generally evil. So here's the way that this came about is like, it's better to light a candle than to complain about the darkness. And I was doing a lot of complaining about the nature of tech and addiction and mental health. And at some point I realized, you know, keeping complaining about something is not very helpful. So about 6 of us got together, you know some of them probably, Young Pueblo and Jack Kornfield and other friends. We said, let's build a venture capital company that has this human flourishing as our primary focus. And we've invested in about 35 different companies from all walks of life, and we'll see how they all do.

So if you have substantial wealth and you invest it in the right things, then they grow. And if you invest it in things that just are extractive, then they grow.

All entrepreneurs know is that if they build the next addictive iPhone app, the money is, is there for that. They're just going to— they're smart. They're going to build that. But if they know, oh, there's other money that has different priorities, hopefully the entrepreneurs get excited and start building for where the money can support them. And so our hope is that not just we exist, but there's hundreds of other VCs that shift. And so we do meditation with our founders. We do retreats with them. We— and it's so interesting because we know in athletics The difference between a good athlete and a great athlete is in part physical, but it's really mental, right? It's their quality of presence. It's their quality to not get too pissed off when they miss a shot or they didn't get the call that they wanted and they stay in the game. The same is true with entrepreneurs. We can't guarantee success, but you can increase the likelihood of success because they're working on themselves and they're like learning about themselves. So we want to be that kind of a group where that optimizes for the well-being of the founder. Founders so that we— and we know that the more optimized they are, the better leaders they're going to be. It's— so sorry, you were going to pitch it. You're going to suggest—

I'll share the idea. I'm just thinking all of my senior leadership across my portfolio, and these are all operating companies, and actually I've invested in about 25 others too.

Oh, wow.

Mostly biohacking and, you know, human flourishing.

Yeah.

But when they start, they go through 40 Years of Zen. This is my 5-day brain When you're done with 5 days, you have the same brain state as someone who spent 20 to 40 years in daily meditation practice.

Wow.

And we're not perfect by a long shot, but man, the amount of emotional awareness so we can have a conversation where if there's a problem, we can talk about it without losing our minds. I think it's the best investment.

I think—

100%.

100%.

So for a venture firm to be doing group meditation stuff with your founders, I think that's how you make more money and you have happier founders.

Exactly. Exactly.

Kudos to you for doing that.

I don't know why more people don't do it. Like, please, everybody, please copy us.

Like, all founders should be on a cognitive enhancement and a longevity and a consciousness program supported by their investors because you'll make 10 times more money. Like, it's just, yeah, like, why would you want an unhealthy founder? It doesn't make any sense, right?

Yeah.

Okay, here's the idea. Meditation creates one layer of protection of your conscious sovereignty. We already know how to manipulate people very effectively. Robert Cialdini's work, uh, with his major book influence has been on the show. Narcissists are professionals at it.

Yep.

Marketing companies, PR agencies, government propagandists— these are proven and polished techniques for manipulating your consciousness without your awareness.

Yeah. So that's getting better and better. Oh yeah, every day.

Every day. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance, and now we're customizing this rush hour ad to keep you calm, which could help your And science says therapy is great for a healthy mindset, so enjoy this 14-second session on us. I think you've done everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, anything that hasn't gone your way could probably be blamed on your father not being emotionally available because his father wasn't emotionally available, and so on. And now that you're calm and healing, you're probably driving better too.

Liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty.

So I would like to be present and not spend all of my time stopping companies and other forces from trying to affect my consciousness. I want an AI-powered personal firewall that detects any attempt to manipulate me and then translates it into non-manipulative language. So I don't care if it's Washington Post or Fox News. Yeah, that stuff is garbage in terms of its bias. So I want it to remove bias. I don't want to remove any of the manipulative techniques.

Yeah.

And if I had that running on my phone, on my computer, well, it would just skip all of the dumb stuff that's coming through in Facebook or Instagram or X or whatever according to my rule set.

Yeah.

Versus theirs, right? And it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard given that we have agents right now.

Yeah.

Like the personal cognitive firewall is something that it would stop espionage techniques. It would stop manipulative techniques. And I would pay for that.

Yeah. It's unlikely the platform companies will build that themselves. Oh no, that it would be a separate, it would be a separate engine that would be, yeah, it would probably be, you'd probably have to have it on your phone and your computer so it can monitor whatever comes through and you have a choice to say, can you give me this in as unfiltered a way as possible? Because it's still going to be filtered through the AI, but it can be based on your own value system, which is like, what's the true data here? And I've never thought of that idea or had anybody share that idea. I think that's a great idea.

It's time. And maybe that would drive, you know, I think Elon would be the first one to do it, but why can't I just tune the algorithm of what I get to see? Like they're doing it for me without, I I should have full visibility.

Exactly, 100%, right? Yeah.

And since I don't, then I want a browser agent. Yeah, that's running on my phone using AI, running on my computer. I don't care if they put stupid crap, I'll just keep deleting it and ignoring it until a good one comes up.

You know, one of the cool things you can do with any AI agent— I mainly use ChatGPT these days, but Claude or any other ones are great too— is you can ask the AI, what do you know about me that I might not see in myself? Right. Or what's the shadow you see in me that you, you might, that I might not see in myself. Brilliant. Brilliant. I mean, the more you use it, the more data it has. So if you just use it a few times, it's probably not going to be the data. But so Meta knows that and like a lot of the other engines know that, but we don't have access to that level of sophistication. I can't ask them, hey, what do you guys know about me that keeps me on and can I edit and adapt that? One of the ways, one of the things that was so true it said about me. I said, you know, you really care about the world and you're working on these different projects and you so consume yourself with the projects, but you don't really take care of yourself as much. I'm really concerned that that is like an issue for you, which is totally true. And because it's working with me on all these projects because I'm using it to like support me. So it knows that, it knows, it knows that pattern. And it also talked about how, yeah, you want to be seen as like the good person, but you also need to really bring up conflicting and challenging pieces to friends and family members because you, you kind of see yourself as like helpful, but you also have a hard time actually going through difficulty and discomfort. And you need to like learn how to have those conversations too. And so I did it the other day and it's, it's interesting to like do it every week and just see where, what you're telling it, because whatever you're telling it, it understands way more than you think, right? If I'm asking for relationship advice, like it's always getting to know Soren and how he dances in relationships. If I have a business advice, oh, it's getting to know me and it sees things that, like, it's fascinating. So I think a regular dose of, like, what do you see in me that I may not see in myself is we're learning to grow with the AI, which I think is fascinating.

I never thought of that as a weekly meditation awareness practice. I ran the thing and it knows a lot about me because I'm prolific. 9 books and all 1,300 podcasts. Casts. There's a lot of public information it's mining, plus our own interactions.

And it—

the first time it came up, it said, oh, you know, your, your longevity thing is just about fear of death. And I'm like, that's so boring. Like, haven't you heard me talk about death before? I have zero fears about death. I just want to do it at a time and by a method of my choosing. But I was born, I'll die. I'm super comfortable. I didn't used to be, but I am. And so it, it said, oh, well, that's new data. Like, let me reframe this. In a way that was, was more interesting. And, and it was very profoundly revealing. I don't remember all the details off the top of my head. Similar thing. But doing it every weekend and doing it with a friend or partner.

Yeah. So super interesting. Let's do this together and let's see what it sees. And maybe we resonate with everything. Maybe we don't resonate. But like, let's just get that data set for us. I think it's super, super helpful. And I don't think people are thinking about AI and respect. But the other engines that are trying to kind of manipulate us in other ways, they're gathering that data, but they're not telling us how they're gathering that data. But they have a little voodoo doll of you, right? They're saying, all right, this is what we know about Dave. What can we put in his feed that will increase his activity? I'm not saying that's bad or wrong. We just need to know as a human using these platforms, there's an AI behind the scenes trying to optimize what it wants to optimize, which is activity. And so for us to be conscious of that and to be aware of that and to know that, and can we use that in a positive way? I think that's, that's the real gift.

So if that prompts about what I not know about myself is, is the cake, the frosting is what you do at the end with your partner, and you tell your AI system, would you describe me to pump me up the way my drunk best friend would?

Uh-huh.

Have you ever tried that prompt?

I haven't tried that.

Oh my God, it's so funny, right? Yeah. Uh, I, I have never laughed harder than that one. One of them, I even, I even posted it. It was so funny. But doing that with a friend, it's like, oh, like, that's the ridiculous side, and then this is the dark side. So you kind of get both polarities. That's a profoundly beneficial practice there, the regular thing.

Yeah.

I do wonder though, people are, they're sort of saying I'm outsourcing my therapist to this.

Yeah.

But we are, without our— well, you might have conscious knowledge of this, but without our, our our awareness being attuned to it, our systems are co-regulating. And there's at least 3 and maybe 5 signaling mechanisms that are not in our eyes and our conscious awareness where they're kind of doing a dance. And if you go into a good therapist, you're co-regulating your system with the therapist. Or if it's a psychedelic, they're holding space, which is an actual thing. Is it dangerous to try and co-regulate with AI?

You know, I think it's a choice that we have make. If we are calling out to AI versus calling our friend or calling our colleague and we're trying to develop a relationship with that, there is a danger for that for sure. And I think people have a choice to make. Do you want to develop a relationship with the AI? Do you want to develop a relationship with other humans? And can you somehow find the benefits of both? I'm going to talk to my AI about this because it can be helpful. I'm going to talk to my friend about this and then my friend and I develop this deeper connection. Because we're going through this struggle together and he's helping me or she's helping me with this problem and they have compassion. I get to feel this human connection, which is all beautiful as well. And so I think the optimal world for me is when both of those have an equal part. I do worry about people who are largely just having communication with their AI and they have very few, if any, human friends. Like that, I don't think is healthy. I don't think that's a good thing. At the same time, if we can dance between those worlds, I think that's probably the optimum place that I I mean, human connection and community is one of the great secrets to life, right? Like, you want to live longer, you want to live happier, like, find good friends and have a sense of purpose, right?

Good friends are pretty cheap compared to some of the gene therapy I've done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's the one thing we know is super helpful. So how does AI kind of have a place, but it doesn't try to take over our lives? For the enormous need for human connection and friends. And I, you know, part of what we're doing with Ventures is trying to find those companies that walk that line where, but they benefit from AI. And I always like, we don't want AI to be your best friend, but we want AI to teach you how to make a best friend.

Whoa, that's exactly the perfect phrasing. There's a cognitive awareness and there's things you're doing you don't know about. And if you just knew the rules, Yeah, and really how to behave better. You probably could have better friendships. This is true with or without AI. It's just maybe better because you have a lot of wisdom in your new book.

I do.

I got to ask, ask you this one. What's a lie that sounds like wisdom but isn't?

What's a lie that sounds like wisdom and isn't? You know, it's interesting. I, I'm, I'm going to try to answer this in an interesting way. I find that one of the things I actually really have taken, one of the lessons from Trump is that he's, and he said this in multiple interviews, he's like, it's not what you say, it's the energy in which you say it. And so the lie, sometimes I might say a word and a phrase, but I don't live that phrase. It's not a part of me. Like Martin Luther King Jr. can say, I have a dream and it's all about love. And it's very different than somebody else says it who doesn't live that as a practice. So I think there's an energy to our words. And so I can say all kinds of energies. And I think the biggest question is, am I aligned with the words that I'm saying? Is that embodied? Or is it just something I read on Instagram that I'm repeating that has no real validity to my larger experience? Yeah. And when you meet people who have experienced it because they've gone through the struggle of learning, it has a different vibrational tone to it. And so the invitation I'd like to make everybody is just like, to what extent can we align our words with our actions so that they have more power. And that, to me, is the gift that we have.

I didn't hear you say words and actions. And it could be I'm just interpreting through my own filter. There's also an inner state and outer state matching. And in my most recent work, I talk about congruence. And that's the word for when what you say and what you do matches your inner state. Because we've all been in meetings meetings, usually board meetings with VCs on the board, where someone says something that pisses the founder off, right? And a good founder is like, yeah, they know how to smile, they know how to behave, and everyone in the room knows they're pissed. Yeah, but they have enough self-control. So the lack of congruence, yeah, it decides the entire outcome because everyone knows despite the behaviors.

Yeah.

And when you can learn how to say, no, my inner state matches that, and that was meant to piss me off, but it didn't.

Yeah.

So I'm going to choose what I'm going to do.

Yeah.

Everyone knows it didn't land, and then they change.

Yeah.

So my challenge in leadership and in relationships and all has been how to maintain congruence, which appears to be authenticity or integrity.

Yeah.

At a deeper level than just, just doing.

Yeah, 100%. And I think that's why people do cold plunges and other things. It's the external can be harsh and difficult, but can you keep the internal calm and focused even though the external is harsh? And I think the best business leaders, the best entrepreneurs, the best kind of like people trying to create positive force in the world, they know that the external being difficult doesn't mean that the internal has to be difficult too. And if we take that view that like our only responsibility, our main responsibility is to a state of our consciousness, then that moment is a great teacher and actually can build that team together if it's not resisted in its welcomed and invited, and you can understand this like, oh, this isn't about what I say, this is about who I am.

I like that. One of the more fascinating things that you've done is go into youth incarceration facilities and teach meditation. Number one, locking up kids is evil, if I can just say that. But what did you learn from this experience?

Yeah, so this is, um, I did a little bit in the Bay Area, but I mainly did New York City juvenile halls. These were 14 to 16-year-olds, in for anything from truancy to murder, to attempted murder, to robbery. So it was a whole mix of people. And I think I really wanted to go in because I had been meditating for some time and I started as a teenager. I thought if this was helpful to me, it must be helpful for other teenagers, right? And where do I find teenagers who are suffering who maybe I can be of help to? And I thought juvenile halls is a great place because they are going through a big change. They're suffering immensely. Many of them and they might be open to what I have to say. So I started New York City Juvenile Halls and I just came in with a lot of not-know-mind, don't-know-mind. I was just like, let me see if this is helpful to me. Let me see if I can offer it. So the first thing I do is like, all right, let's all sit down. We're going to do meditation. Everyone close their eyes. And a kid raised, no fucking way I'm closing my eyes. Like, I'm part of this gang. They're a part of that gang. You think I'm going to close my eyes in front of them? Like, this is no way this is working.

And no safety.

No safety. Yeah. And so I had this sense of like, wow, I actually need to adapt what I know to fit their world. So sometimes I do this thing where I say, all right, everybody, I need you to grab your chair. Can everyone grab their chair? They're like, all right, we'll grab your chair. I was like, and the reason I need you to grab your chairs, we're going to do a meditation in a moment. And sometimes what happens is people levitate off their chairs when they do the meditation and they hit their head on the ceiling. And I don't want that to happen to anybody. Else. And usually one kid will be like, there's no fucking way I'm doing this meditation. I don't want to hit my head. My chair's staying on the ground. I'm like, man, I'm playing with you. I'm just playing with you. And like, if I could find that, we'd all laugh, right? And then we would like to have— I was like, perfect way to do meditation. Now we're ready to meditate, right? Like, just be yourself. Be at ease. But there's a story that I tell in the book of this one kid who would come to the juvenile halls and is a voluntary class. He'd come every Every day or every week, it was a weekly class. And he wouldn't do the meditation. He wouldn't do the yoga. He would just look around. He'd goof around. I'm like getting frustrated with him over time because I'm like, why do you come to this voluntary class? I teach you meditation. You don't do the meditation. I teach you yoga. You don't do yoga. Like, what is your problem? But he always gave me like a quick hug at the end of the class. And then it hit me one day. He didn't come for the meditation. He didn't come for the yoga. He came for the hug. And so instead of me being resentful towards him or frustrated by him, I realized he was sitting through a class he had no interest in to get a hug at the end.

Wow.

Why don't I just give him a fucking hug and love him and be who he is and let him go rather than my agenda that here I am as this kind of teacher and they should take what I think I have to offer when they're really just looking for some love. And one of the other teachings I loved with the kids is they would just insult the hell out of people. And this happened to me and other teachers when you come in. They would just be like, they would just go at you. Just like, skinny ass white motherfucker. Yeah, you come in here. They're like trolls.

Yeah.

And it's just the truth of their experience because they haven't met a lot of white skinny ass motherfuckers before. And so they see you and you represent, or I represent, that whole world that they feel judged by. I represent the white middle class, upper middle class world of Manhattan that they see, they feel judges them and walks across the street if they're walking down the street at the same time and criticizes them energetically. And so then I come up and of course, all their judgments and hatred towards that group have to come through and they have to insult the hell out of me. And then they get to see how I respond. Do I get pissed off at them? Do I like, you have no idea what you're talking about. I'm this good person. I'm coming here to help you. You should be thankful for me. Or do I stop and like, yeah, tell me more. Tell me more about what you think of me. And they would come up with all these judgments and all these criticisms that I didn't care. I wore glasses at the time. They were like, you You probably just do computer stuff and you don't understand our world. You don't care about our world. And if you could sit through that and just hold steady, the kids would then accept you. But everyone had to go through the initiation and the initiation was to insult. And I saw it as this great gift because in our world, we don't do that as much, right? We tend to play these roles and these identities like, oh, I'm a rich kid, you're a rich kid. And it's not that it's disingenuine, but it's, we don't necessarily give us that honest feedback that the kids in juvenile hall like would give me this honest feedback. Feedback. So I miss them. I haven't worked in different halls for a while, and they just were like enormous teachers for me.

One of the more interesting experiences I've had was a friend invited me to go do a plant medicine ceremony, and I'm pretty sensitive about who I'll do that stuff with. But I was like, okay, I'll do it. And I know the two people leading are jungle-trained shamans with the ability to hold space. So I show up, and pretty much everyone in the room except for me is a lesbian. And a lot of these women have been lesbians for a long time, and they really don't like tall white dudes either.

Yeah.

And I'm like, let's go. Right. So did the medicine. So I would just show up. It doesn't trigger me at all. And there was an incredible amount of healing that happened there because, I mean, we all hugged at the end, and like a lot of that dark, angry energy dissipated because I'm like, it doesn't hurt me. You know, what you think of me is not— is not of me. I'm not saying I did all the healing, it was probably more them, but it was actually— that was profound.

Like, the next morning, that space that's non-reactive and that's welcoming of whatever that projection is, yeah, and or that pain is, there's a healing that can take place.

One of the women— because it was a stay-the-night kind of thing— and one of the women had her bedroll there, and the couch is full. So I pulled up there, his bedroll. I'm saying— she goes, she goes, but that's my bedroll. I said, yeah, and I sat on it.

And she goes, I haven't had a man in my bed in 30 years. Wow. And I said, okay. And you could just see the cognitive reframing, like, it doesn't matter. That's the thing. And I wasn't trying to do anything to suffer? And we know that some amount of suffering is the number one skill they need to build resilience and to build compassion is suffering and learning how to suffer. And can we just be with them at times and be like, wow, yeah, that sounds hard and not try to fix it? And that's one of like the biggest lessons I have is just, can I just be present and not try and fix it and just allow them to have that difficulty or allow me to have my difficulty?

And something opens, you know, when I'm able to I've done neurofeedback with a few just top-level spiritual gurus, and it's always an honor when they're willing to talk with me or, you know, do some work with me. And it's very common when people get to certain levels where, like, if I walk into a room and I can see everyone's problem, I'm going to start fixing, fixing, fixing, fixing. And into this, like, God complex much, right? Where people have to ask for that in order to do it. It, right? And to be able to sit there and be like, I'm okay, you know, I'm at a sense of peace, and a person there is choosing to do something that I don't think is in their best interest, but it may be in their best interest and I don't know. It's like being available, yeah, for people who ask for help, but not forcing help on those who don't want it. That's a nuance. And I, I see that in the nutrition field and longevity field and the kind of the, the whole vegan versus keto versus, you know, you can tell other people what to eat.

Yeah, you see a lot of that, I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean, I make fun of vegans all the time because I was one, but it's not mean, right? It's like, it's playful, right? Because like, we have the same values, it's just that you're bad at exhibiting your values.

And you know, I think one of the things that we can invite people to do is when you go into a room or you meet people, like, notice what are the stories you tell, what are stories you don't tell. Yeah, what are the things you have to feel like you must do in order to fill some hollowness you have inside of yourself.

Ooh, that's powerful.

And just become curious, you know? And I think we live in similar worlds where I can get into gathering and stuff. And it's all like talking about, I don't know, how long we meditated or this is or that experiences, which is all beautiful. But is that coming from a place of, I don't know who I am and I need other people to see me a certain way? Or is that coming from this just joy of telling stories and having fun. And I think the curiosity we can have is just like, huh, let me see, let me notice, just like the AI would do with us. Let me see, where do I go to in moments where I'm uncomfortable? What do I say or how do I act? And can I become curious about that? And I find that super, super useful. That's cool.

I like that idea a lot. And you could probably amplify it if you have a recorder running for a couple of days.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. It says, Soren, here's the stories you generally tell when you're uncomfortable. And then if you put in a wearable, wearable can actually— I mean, that's what I think is going to be super exciting. It's wearables connected to AI. Well, you know, your blood pressure rose at this moment and you said these words. And, and, and I do think we can use our own body as this incredible diagnostic.

You don't need any of the— you really don't. But they help you know what your body's doing.

100%.

What's one practice you'd be embarrassed to recommend, but it works?

You know, I find the work of Joe Dispenza super cool and super interesting.

I love Joe.

And I'm not necessarily embarrassed, but like, I love the sense of energetically aligning with the future that I feel like is possible, that feels like, how do we embody that now and hold the energy of stuff? So I think I'm sensitive sometimes to use the word energy and to talk about energy, but I do feel like so much of life is actually energy. And can we tune into the energetics in ourselves and in other people without criticism or judgment, but how do we enhance energy and move energy? I think that's an inquiry and a practice that I have that I think is super interesting. I also think sex and lovemaking is just a place of like so much curiosity and interest and expansion and like love and surrender and all that world that happens. I think relationships are just fucking hard and beautiful, and there's so much to learn there. It's a practice.

I'm happy you said that part. I— it was a bit of an edge for me. In my Heavily Meditated book, there's a chapter on tantra and conscious kink, because people enter altered states equivalent to psychedelics from specific practices of intimacy. And there's nothing wrong with that. But how could I write a book about how to get into altered states without talking about that one, right? Yeah.

And if you You have energy in your body, things open and they open not just, they open in all the different frames. And so why not use all those potential forms for there to be understanding of where there's blockage and what frees that blockage. So I think all those areas of life are just such, such, now it can be used in an addictive way and it can be used in a compulsive way, but it's used in a conscious way. We need to use everything we have.

I couldn't agree more. It's probably not only OnlyFans. Yeah, or AI OnlyFans.

I, I don't— I hope we don't have AI.

We do already.

I know, but like, imagine waking up in the morning to a robot. Like, I don't— that's just a weird world.

Yeah, I'd rather wake up to a house full of cats, and that would be my idea of hell. We have time for one or two more questions. So you just wrote a book, The Essential, and what's one line from in your book that still catches you off guard?

Oh, interesting question. That kind of catches me off guard.

Like when you see it, you go, wow, can't believe I wrote that.

So one of the things I did, which I kind of— a lot of people do this, but Rick Rubin did it quite a bit, is that there you put little phrases in between the chapters. So there's chapters, but then there's little phrases that you put in there, just usually like one or two lines. And one of the ones that I put in that just kind of came to me, it was like, we can never become "we can only wake up to who we really are." And I think that one catches me sometimes. We can never become enough. We can only wake up to who we are. That we're trying to do enough in life to feel enough. And what if inherently enoughness is our expression, our true expression of humanity? And can we be that versus try to get that? And that to me is like a phrase that it just came out and other people probably said the same thing before, but it just came out in my writing as I was tuning into what wanted to be said.

Beautiful. I, I love that.

And I feel like with writing, and you might feel the same way, it's not so much— it, part of it is me writing, but part of it is something is coming through me that wants to be said.

Yeah, I'm channeling all this stuff.

Yeah. And so it's like, for me to say it's my book, it's like, yes, and there's a different source of intelligence. I mean, AI helps a little bit. There's a whole other level of intelligence. And I think that's And that's kind of part of the point of the book is like AI is this beautiful intelligence, but we also have our own innate intelligence and how do we harness and access that?

And learning how to do that, I think meditation practices, sometimes work with medicine, breathwork. For me, a lot of neurofeedback and other just like sensory feedback from, you know, whatever heart rate variability, etc. It's really helped me to be able to tune in and go, oh, if I can just stop trying right now, I'll know what to write. If I try, it's going to be a long night.

Yeah, and it's our trying or resistance to something that's happening now. And can we welcome that, whatever that is? And then our trying comes from a different place. It's effort, but it's not a forced or a tense effort. The effort is more of like an intelligent effort. And I think that's the dance that we need to play in.

There's an allowing and a surrendering if I'm going to write something really good.

Whereas if I'm pushing, it's not And what I'd find too, I don't know if you notice this, whenever I'm trying a new endeavor, life wants to put me through an initiation. There's things I have to let go of. There's things I have to understand. There's some inner process that says, you have to do this and then you can write the book, you know, or then you can start the company or then you, but it's not so easy. And we're going to make you suffer just a little bit. But if you get that learning and, you know, for me, part of writing was just like, can I really write a book from joy and from not really caring how the world receives it. And if I can, it's a beautiful form of writing. But if I'm still trying to get the world to think of me in a certain way, then it's tense and it's frustrating and it's not, it doesn't feel the same way.

Have you read Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act?

Yeah.

He writes about that really eloquently.

He really does.

He's on the show a couple of times and just a semi-enlightened soul, very incredible human. I never quite understood, like, why is he coming on my show? We get to know each other. When I read that book, I'm like, oh, because for him, art is just what you said there. It's like you're doing it because you want to do it, not to please. And I think he says—

Or it wants to do you.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah. You want to do it and it wants to do you. Yeah. I think Rick did an incredible job at getting out of the way for writing to come through. It took him 7 years, I think, to do that book. And it was not an easy journey.

It's a masterpiece.

People wanted him to write about all these other things. And he's like, no, I'm going to write about the inner work. And there's a line in the Amazon page. I think if I remember it, he's like, I, and correct me if I'm wrong, but he said something like, I started writing a book about creativity and I realized it wanted to be about how to be or something like that. And I think that comes across where we have an intention, but then what does it want to have the expression to be? And I think that's a dance. Like I have this idea, idea, but the idea also has a consciousness and has its own energy and own kind of like expression. And, um, I think that is one of the books that did the best job. I told him in an email recently, it's like, you did the best job writing about something that can't be written about.

Yeah, I was blown away. And when I first said that, like, this— 90% of the songs I've ever loved have that Rick as a connection. He's a modern incarnation of a news.

Yeah.

And I would love to sometime ask an AI engine that's well trained on everything, like, what are the common elements? Like, what made Rick Rick? And he may have already done that or he may reject it. I'd have to ask him. But just there's so much magic about the unseen and unconscious that are essential. And we don't know what they are, but we know they're essential. And I love that you chose that as the for your book?

You know, so it's weird because I've written a few other books and sometimes the title's so hard. It's just like, what is it, this or that? And so I was sending a draft to a friend, literally in 2 seconds, I was like, I need to put a title. It was like The Essential. I was like, oh, thank you, God, universe. It felt right. And I think that's, can we remember what's essential? And I'm not going to tell you what is essential, but I can tell you that it's important to ask that question. About what's essential because that's your North Star. And a life where you know what's essential and you meet people aligned with that is a very different life than a life where you don't know really what matters to you and you're just lost in this world or that world without any sense of direction. And I feel like the question of what actually matters to me, what is essential, then becomes our North Star and we can guide our life appropriately.

Perfect. Very well said. And your book comes out May 20th.

It does.

Same day as—

oh, cool.

So for our listeners, guys, I have a challenge for you. Go buy The Essential, order it now, and get Heavily Meditated at the same time, because these two books belong together. If you just listen to the whole interview, you, you know that there's so much interaction between where we both are mentally and spiritually on, you know, what do we do now. And yeah, I'm, I'm very excited about, um, all of the, the pondering and thinking and just the perspectives that you have, especially because you're plugged in in tech in a kind of plugged in, but yeah, I'm plugged into my own wearables. So I appreciate it.

I thank you for your work and thank you for your dedication. You know, it's interesting to meet people who are kind of newer on the scene. We were— you were on the scene, I was on the scene long before it was cool.

Yes. And we were nerds.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a certain, like, companionship and friendship, I think, that you can have when you realize, like, oh, this person's been dedicated their whole life to these elements. And I feel that, you know, with you, that the dedication has been long and both through good times and hard times. And so it's really an honor to—

it's all about the human flourishing, my friend.

It's all about human flourishing. It's about understanding what's inside and how do we bring what's inside into the world of form in a way that feels genuine to us. And it feels like a participating in the human field and the advancement of a field that we can create together that nobody can take ownership of, but that is integral to all of us.

Yes.

And we each have a part to play.

Yeah. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast.

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