Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: In this episode of Super Normalized, we talk to Bob Martin. He's an ex mob lawyer that then was led to becoming a meditation teacher. It's a really weaving conversation. We get to hear his understanding of his earlier life, then moving into mindfulness and meditation as a part of his therapy, who was done by a therapist who happened to also be a daoist, but also trained in the Shaolin School of Arts. Amazing story. Really enjoyed talking to Bob. He also dropped in this idea that you can actually do meditation, like a micro dosing experience. Very cool. So listen out for that. Thank you very much for listening and, yeah, enjoy the show. I know from the statistics that I have through YouTube and through other podcast apps that a lot of the listeners that I have aren't actually liking or subscribing. So if you could do me a really good favor, like, and subscribe, because you're on YouTube and if you're on a podcast app, go and give me five stars. That way, other people get to hear these great conversations too.
Welcome to Super Normalized. Bob Martin. Bob, can you share how your early career as a criminal trial lawyer influenced your journey into mindfulness and meditation? It must have been quite a change for you to go through, to sort of emerge from that chrysalis into a new being. What did you go through? And tell us a bit about yourself. And welcome to the show.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. Yeah. So I'm not real sure that my career as a trial lawyer or as a mob lawyer or as all those crazy experiences during the 70s in Miami, Florida, really influenced me into becoming a meditation teacher. But what I would say is that all of those experiences, you know, and the whole process of learning to analyze things from an objective point and working with people who are on the edge of existence. I mean, when you come to a criminal lawyer, either side, whether it's the prosecution or whether it's the defense, your life, either as a victim is on the edge or as an offender is on the edge. And so dealing with people that are on the edge of their existence has been a good repertoire of experience. I suppose that helps me work with people learning meditation, because I think we all have the same stuff. It's just a question of degree. So I think that it was a big help. But the two things really happened in spite of themselves, I would say, other than the fact that, you know, the tension and the people that I was hanging out with, you know, I was a mob lawyer. And let's just Say that I was spending a little bit too much time with them in a little bit too little time with my family and things were kind of falling apart. And so, I mean, in terms of influencing me by going down a rabbit hole. Yeah, that would be true.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Okay, so that influence upon you, that, I mean, it sounds like what it did, it actually forced you into making a bit of a self realization for change. What was the pivotal moment that led you to explore the spiritual aspects of life? And how did that shape your approach to teaching mindfulness?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Like a lot of things in my life, things were very coincidental. Some people would say synchronous. Although, you know, that's a whole conversation. Do things just happen to happen together or are they caused to happen together?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because, I mean, you say that now. Right. But looking back, does it look like it was all planned?
[00:03:57] Speaker B: You know what. But what the.
What the godly universe consists of and whether it's intelligent and whether it's not is a bit above my pay grade, but based on my.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: You don't have an opinion?
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Well, I do have a current working hypothesis.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Okay, tell us. I'm very interested.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Well, the current working hypothesis is that information flows on energy and that the entire universe is wrapped in an envelope of energy. And so that the idea of having some kind of intelligent glue that holds it all together makes sense to me.
And then based on all of the things that happened, I mean, I can kind of. I got to be a lawyer because somebody said I should and went out and got a job and earned the money for me to take the law school aptitude test. The same person stuck with me and died. Three days after I was admitted to law, I was at the bottom of my existence seeing my therapist. I didn't know where to go, and he started throwing coins and gave me an answer which pissed me off royally, but caused me to ask him what he was doing. And I found out that he was one of the primary students of a 72nd generation Taoist master from the Shaolin Temple.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: What?
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Who I studied under for six years watching me.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Then when everything was coming together from my teachings, from watching me and my heart was changing, I ran into trouble with my mob clients and I had to move out of Miami. And I wound up in rural North Carolina where I was given an entire blank canvas to rewrite my life.
I mean, these are just coincidences that, you know.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: You're saying coincidences, that's just a wrong word. I think it sounds, it sounds so planned.
They were plotting. They were plotting your life, or whoever they are. But the energy.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: The love force.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: It's funny because my, my, I, I, my, My spiritual background is growing up in an amusement park carnival family from a Hungarian. My dad was Hungarian royalty whose ancestors were all wiped out by the Bolsheviks.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: My mom was Roma Gypsy whose ancestors were, all right. Wiped out by Nazis and everybody else. So they didn't really think that there was a very merciful God around.
And so we didn't have a religious conversation in my family. But then I'm introduced to. Watching me think about it, 72nd generation. That's 1400 years of passing wisdom down from father to son.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: That's crazy. I can't even, you know.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: And then getting to.
So I'm sorry, where was that going?
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Talking about your lineage and how it's all influenced you.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So the spiritual journey. So then it was Taoism, and then it was Buddhism, and then it was kind of just kind of philosophy. And then I married my second wife, and she's a Southern Baptist Bible literalist, you know, who really believes that the world is 4000 years old and that Noah's Ark and Garden of Eden and all of those historical biblical stories are literally gospel. And so it's been an interesting spiritual journey, and it's exposed me to a whole lot of thinking.
And of course, you know, that was my relationship with my wife and who is a true saint. And we really connected on values, but not on cosmology, I promise.
But that's what caused me to write my second book, which was a kind of a Rosetta stone between Eastern thinking and Western spiritual thinking.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: What's the name of that book?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: The name is I Am the Way. Yeah, because, you know, the dao, the word dao means the way.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: The way. Yeah.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And Jesus said. And the way, which maybe he was saying, I am the dao.
It could have been. So it's called I Am the Way. Finding the truth and the light through a biblical reimagining of the dao.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: And so that book is about, you'd say, then, finding your place to be in accord with the universe and path.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: I think that Daoism, that is the general thrust of Taoism, to find your place in the universe and also to help you learn how to align properly with that place. It's like if you're, you know, a lot of times people think going with the flow means taking your hands off the wheel. You know, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a Dream, but it's not. Because if you're floating down the river and it's calm, that's great. But what happens when you get to the white water?
When you get to the white water, you need to attend to your canoe.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: And if you're approaching a waterfall, you have to take some action.
And if it's a hurricane or if it's a general rain, you act differently and align yourself differently with it. And I think what Daoism teaches is that there are all of these different times in your life. Times when you're being listened to, times when you're not, times when you can make great progress, times when you can't. And how do you respond wisely to each of those energies?
[00:09:52] Speaker A: So, rolling back to your experience with your therapist, throwing the coins for you, and did you yourself end up realizing that that reading, even that first reading, was right on point?
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
He ran it and he drew out the hexagram and analyzed it. And he opened up the I Ching to the chapter. And the name of the chapter was Retreat.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Look, whenever I throw the I Ching, I'm like, God, it's just. It's just so bizarre and like, perfect, right? You look at it, you read it sometime. It's like talking to Yoda another time. It's like the. The wisest old sage just giving you a slap across the head. It's like, come on, this is what's happening. Please be aware of this. You know, so, yeah, I totally relate to it. Totally relate to that.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
So how do you integrate your experiences from the teachings of Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity in your meditation practices? I mean, what sort of meditation practice do you actually.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Ah, that's great question. Thank you for that question. So there's all kinds of meditations, you know, there's transcendental meditation and, you know, many different. The school, I suppose, that I teach from is insight meditation.
It's the process not of quieting the mind, trying to find an empty mind, but actually becoming a skillful manager of your thoughts. Because you can't stop your thoughts, but you can manage them. You can learn to manage your thinking. And there are techniques, just like any manager that you can go to, to school, to a business, you know, a business school and learn management skills. Yes, meditation is learning thought management skills.
So just like, I think just like any. You know, I'm going to go off on a tangent if you'll let me.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Because I. Yeah, go for it.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: I think that it's just kind of came up, it's important so, you know, I teach. I also teach business law classes. And I noticed that there is a lot of thinking these days because of electronic media and because of the Internet and Google and all of these other things, that there's this kind of sense and feeling that I don't need to know it until I need it. I don't need to learn it until I need it, because anything I need to know, I can access and get.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah, Outsourcing your own knowledge. Like your own.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Outsourcing your own knowledge.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah, Even your own personal intelligence. Right. Just putting it over there. Because you don't really need. Then the. And I know where you're going with this. It's like the embodiment of that knowledge is different to doing that.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Isaac Asimov, who was a very prolific writer and came up with, you know, hundreds of science fiction stories and books, somebody once asked him, how do you come up with all those crazy ideas? So he wrote a very brilliant essay explaining how he does it. But basically it comes down to there are two factors. One, you have to have a lot of bits of information.
So acquiring information simply for the sake of acquiring the information has value, even if you don't use it and don't see a use for it right away.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: He says, and then you have to learn to allow your mind to be flexible and to be wrong. Because if you allow the flexibility, your mind will start to connect all the dots. And lots of times it comes up with a mismatch, but every once in a while it comes up with a zinger and there's a story and there's the story putting this together with that. And if you didn't have either this or that, it wouldn't have been there.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: It does speak to the dissolution of people's sort of, would you say, like a personal intelligence with the distraction culture that comes from our media. And like, we just talked about outsourcing your knowledge. You can. If you can't connect all those dots, then basically you're just a sponge. You just soak things up, you know, and then drop them. Drop them straight away because you've got no way to put him together. And. And I think that's pretty much a bit of a curse of our society as it is right now. So, yeah, I think that the best thing we can do is like, pick up books, start reading, turn off the tv, put the phone away, you know, and I think that would change a lot of people's.
Well, but they should watch this show and also listen to you.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they should watch the show, you know, in Buddhism, there is the expression beginner's mind as opposed to expert mind. And you know, when you're expert, the problem is you may know the answers, but there's no possibility because, you know, but in beginner's mind, the world is full of possibilities. And like, if you think of a child, childlike curiosity and what's that like? And just to watch a child, you know, walking around outdoors and picking up a leaf of grass or a rock and looking at it and examining it for no reason but just mere curiosity. It's a. It's a skill that we ought to take into our adult lives.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Keeping the curious mind, for sure.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Matter of fact, in meditation, we call curiosity the antidote to judgment. See, because when I judge, I know, I know that's wrong.
A thought came up in my head and I accepted it as truth.
And I don't question it or I'm not curious either about why it came up or whether it's valid or what brought me to that thought or whether or not it's helpful. No, those are kind of curious questions. That's a curious thought. You know, that guy's ugly, you know, she's too thin. That's a curious thought.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: I wonder. I wonder where that comes from. I wonder why, you know, I wonder why I felt something when that happened.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: So I know. Yeah, that's. It's exactly the sort of mind that I have when I basically go around and do things. Sometimes I have those thoughts and I go, where'd that come from?
You know, because it's sort of hilarious. I even laugh at myself like, what the hell?
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Hey, C.J. tell me, isn't that a happier way of dealing with stuff?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it makes the world hilarious. Yeah, like, you know, it's like instead of engaging with the world as a. An adversarial sort of position, you're actually engaging the world in a position of co creation. And that's extremely important because if you're always co creating, you always also realizing you're also co creating all the rough stuff too. So if you can figure that out and then step back and then just laugh at it, you're like, ah, well, what can I do now? You know, what's next? Yeah, yeah. In your opinion, what are some. Some common misconceptions about meditation that you'd like to address for the listeners?
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So as soon as somebody hears I'm a meditation teacher, what I hear most often is meditation. That would be really great if I could do it. But I'd never be able to do it because I try to sit down once and my mind just went crazy and there was all these thoughts and I'll never going to be able to quiet my thoughts or, you know, that's what people say. Then there's all of the images of monks sitting in the lotus position. You know, overnights for days, going to a monastery and that takes years and that, you know, you have to be very quiet.
You know, I, I meditate for 15 to 20 seconds, maybe 30 times a day.
Just the other day I was in the, in the supermarket. Yeah, I was in a bit of a rush and I've been meditating for 20 years. That doesn't mean that I don't get rushed and I don't get stressed and I don't get angry and I don't feel grief, you know, But I'll mention something about that in a minute. So there's this woman in front of me, I'm in a rush and she pulls out a three ring binder full of coupons.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: So you're like, I'm gonna be here.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: For a while, right?
So I just paid attention to my breath. I just, I went into, you know, took a deep breath and started like noticing my breath. And you know, before I knew it, she was done and I went through, and I wasn't even in a rush anymore. So that's, you know, it's a much nicer way to go through life than to sit there and grumble and mumble through the whole thing.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Everything happens at the right times. You know, the anxiety around, you know, whatever future event that you think you may be missing out on is not worth it. Like you, like you've experienced and like you just said there, microdosing, meditation, that's, that's fantastic. I love that idea. You know, I do it, but I don't realize that it was that until you just said that. Then I'm like, oh, that's what I do too. So.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Well, we actually all do it, we just don't recognize it as meditation. The only difference between just doing it and calling it meditation is that when you do the exact same thing but are aware that it's meditation, all of a sudden it becomes an intentional act.
And because it's an intentional act instead of an accidental act, it's the same act. But because it's an intentional act, you can make use of it because you've given it your attention. It was your intention to pay attention to what you were doing. You can make use of it to a greater extent than if it just happened and faded away.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It allows you to actually.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: And that's what we do. You know, when we start learning meditation, we start distinguishing between being lost in a fog of rumination and projection and attending. I'm driving home and my car is driving me home. Right. Most of the time you just get in your car, turn it on, and it drives you home and you're thinking about a million things and you know, la de da, and you're going driving.
Then all of a sudden another car gets a little too close to your car.
Now you're attending to your driving.
There's a shift. And even if you, if you got an mri, if you were photographing the brain, you would see the energy of the brain totally shift to a different area of the brain.
When you're in neutral, when you're in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The part of the brain that goes along the top crevice on both sides is lit up. That's the default. And the moment you pay attention, the frontal cortex just start.
So, you know, you can actually map it in the mind, in the brain.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Okay.
Can you describe a success story of one of your students that particularly resonated with you?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yes. So I teach. You know, I teach in my private practice, but I also teach on campus. Been able to get the university to allow a two credit meditation course. I get 15 students every semester and it's all elective. Of course, it's not a required course. And so generally I get folks who come in, they are perfectionists or feeling overwhelmed or they just want to go from the ordinary to the extraordinary. But they're looking for some benefit from the class, clearly, otherwise they wouldn't take it.
So the way that I teach meditation, the folks at Duke University developed an entire digital infrastructure for adapting meditative techniques to the Western mind. And it's marvelous, but it consists of an app that the student gets and a dashboard that I get.
And every day, like they come once a week and we meet and we talk about whatever's getting in the way and any obstacles. And I show them some videos and we talk about some new techniques and that's what we do in class. Then they go home and I ask them to practice 10 minutes a day.
And then when they do their 10 minutes and the guided meditations are on the app, so they say, today I'm going to do breath awareness, I'm going to do body scan or belly breathing, push the button. And they get their guided meditation and there's a little silent time in the 10 minutes, and then a window opens up and they log how they responded to that particular 10 minutes, how they feel. Sometimes I'll get an log, like, it was a terrible meditation. There was a dog barking, and I got distracted and I forgot to meditate, and it was just terrible. And I'll get that log. I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning so that I can get their logs returned to them before they do their next practice. And I type it on my dashboard and it goes back to their app.
And then before they practice, they get my coaching. So every single day, there's interplay between us. And that is unique in the teaching. Unique in the teaching.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: I like that. It is. And it has. It makes the efficacy of the few weeks that we spend together worth months of normal.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Is that a part of, like, the curriculum? Or. I mean, how did this app to get developed? Or did you develop that or something?
[00:23:32] Speaker B: No, no, it was developed at Duke University.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah, right. The university developed that.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah. That's cool. The counseling department, the psychology department, the medical department, the research department, they all collaborated because Duke students are traditionally stressed out.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: And they wanted to do something to give them a tool to de stress, so they developed it there, and now it's spreading all over the country.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Wow, that's.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Universities all over the country.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: That's a great idea. It's like keeping people accountable, but also helping them walk the path.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's like, you know, it's like a yoga teacher. You can watch. You can watch youtubes, look at an app, but they can't tell you to move your elbow 2 inches to the right.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: And when I get those logs every day, it's like saying. I'll say things like, wow, you know, you use that word, focus all the time. And I just want to remind you, it's not about maintaining focus, which is an important part. It's not about maintaining focus because your mind wanders.
And at some point, because you told yourself that you wanted to pay attention to your breath, your mind will go, hey, hey, psst. You're not paying attention to your breath.
And you'll feel like, oh, you'll feel a little startled, like. And then you think, oh, I screwed up. And then there'll be this whole flood of judgments. And then eventually, all the judgments, you say everything you possibly can say to yourself. The committee in your head gives you all of the judgments it can. And finally, they've said everything they can. And they go, okay, now this is where the healing happens is right here.
If the student then can say, okay, let me go back to my breath and pay attention to my breath and begin again, I can begin again. And then my mind wanders off, goes crazy. I'm thinking about what if I left the stove on, what I'm going to have for dinner, But I should have said to that guy yesterday, I'm not paying attention to my breath. Return, begin again, notice, return, begin again, notice, return, begin again. Now, anybody can do this now, once they know that that's what it is. And it's not wrong for your mind to wander.
It's in the returning and the beginning again. Every time you do that, you're developing a tolerance for discomfort. And you're saying, I can do this, I can begin again. You're teaching yourself that you can start over. And that's a lesson that helps you build a tolerance for discomfort. It helps you get back up on the horse when you get thrown off, get back in the saddle. It starts to change your perception of yourself. And it also starts to teach you that you're not your thoughts.
Because when you wake up and intentionally come back and return your attention to your breath, you're learning that you have the capability of doing that, that you have some manageability in your thinking. So it's teaching you, it's starting to teach you how to manage your thinking. Then of course, we go on to a little more complicated things like labeling thoughts. It's a gambling thought, It's a remorseful thought. It's a this thought. And it kind of organizes all your thinking, puts everything into little file cabinets in your brain, and it starts to make you feel like you have some space.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: It sounds like building that meditation muscle so that you have more resilience in life and resilience in response to life. And from my own experience, meditation just makes everything smoother.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: You know, it's. Clearly, I'm passionate about this, so I hope.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: But a lot of people think that meditation is about cutting out from life or pulling back from life and not feeling all those strong emotions and stuff like that, and that it's all about peace and tinkling crystals and tree hugging and blah, blah. It doesn't mean that you're not going to feel all of the emotions that life gives you. It just.
Well, the metaphor I like to use is life is kind of like floating on a log down a river. Whatever the river does and whatever the log does, you're on it and you're experiencing it. So if It's a calm river. That's great. If it's white water, that's different. If it's a waterfall, that's different.
And you're going through all of the experiences of life. But what meditation teaches you to do is you know that. You know how sometimes when you're speaking and there's another voice in your head that's commenting on your speaking, you might be saying, this isn't going very well.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: That's. Yeah.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Or you might be saying, oh, that was good. Or you're telling a joke that they're really gonna laugh at this line. Or you're thinking, I forgot to put. What was that? That I was supposed to put in here? I think I'm gonna forget the punchline. Oh, no, what am I gonna do now? Meanwhile, you're still talking and telling the joke. Right.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: They gotta watch after that narrator.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Right.
So that other part of you that's commenting on your thinking, and scientists call that metacognition, or thinking about your thinking. If you think about what you feel in that other voice, it's not overwhelmed, it's not stressed. It's just commenting.
It seems like it's a very calm commenting because all the stress is in the other part of you that's actually talking. But this other part that's commenting is kind of stable.
So what we teach you in meditation is to be able to identify that other part of you and allow yourself to spend more time there.
Even as you're doing what you're doing, you're observing what you're doing, it's kind of like splitting yourself in two. Kind of, but not really. But we've all experienced it before, so it's like going up on the bank of the river and watching yourself on the log float down the river. From that place, from the place of being on the bank of the river, there is stability and there's comfort and there's okayness.
So when you reconnect with that part of you, that's where you find stability.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I found personally for myself, with working with meditation, that after a long time of doing it, my. Most of my inner narration has gone. Mostly what My. My inner narration, the inner narrative, it doesn't exist. I don't even have it. I just. I'm just here, which is really odd. But that's just the way it is.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. There is over time, and I really don't talk about that too much for people that are thinking about meditation. But it is true that over time, your focus does increase your ability to Pay attention does increase. Your calmness overall does increase. And then there is a merging. There seems to be a merging of those two things where you almost become much more unified. You become. There's much more singularity.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: So you were. You were inspired to write your books Children of Abraham and I Am the Way. And how have they shaped your understanding of faith and spirituality?
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Well, not having grown up in a Christian household, you know, and of course, living and moving into North Carolina, which is a deeply Christian, Baptist, Bible belt area of the country, you experience people of a variety of faiths. And of course, I spent a lot of time in New York, and New York is very diverse town. So you get into. You get to know Jews, you get to know Muslims, you get to know Arabs, you get to know persians.
And so 9El came around and there was all these wars between the Sunni and the Shia, between us and the Arabs, and all these people going around quasi religious reasons for killing each other. And you kind of look at it and you think about things like the Crusades and all of the craziness that has gone on in order to get you to believe the way I believe that I would have to imagine that from that perspective of that kind of religiosity, that there be a God who might be looking down if he spoke English and if he thought like we thought, and he would say, this wasn't really my intention for you guys, and what could he do? What would he do? So I figured, how could you bring God down in a way that made sense in this technological world?
So I thought, yeah, you know those little tickers on the bottom of your television?
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: All of a sudden, mysterious messages from God start appearing and everybody thinks it's a hoax. But the question of the book is what kinds of faults are redeemable and what kind of listening would the world have for such a radical concept that there actually might be a divine intelligence for real?
And so I take my characters, you know, through this entire transformative time as the world is beginning to change. What about my mafioso client? What about the arrogant lawyer? What about the abused housewife? What about the Arab storekeeper? What about the Palestinian kids serving the rich Jewish family? These are all my characters and they all intertwine as these things are happening in the environment around them. Nice.
It was a thought experiment. It started as a thought experiment and it just developed into a novel.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. So interesting you talk about that, because I think we actually are living in those times anyway.
Everyone's getting messages from spirit, we're moving into the paradigm of magic. And as a part of that, I think that people are starting to wake up in new and novel ways. And I think that by the description of your book, that's a good way to actually help some people find their way to spirit as well. So that's cool.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: It certainly poses questions about what really is our relationship to the divine and how sincere are we?
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it does, it does seem like that the divine is inviting us to, you know, connect and participate. What's next for you in terms of future projects or aspirations in both mindfulness teaching and writing?
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Well, I've got two books that I want to write. There was a really interesting case here in Alamance County, North Carolina where a 65 year old white racist man employed a 24 year old ex con black man to be his servant. And then the 65 year old man decided he was gay and they formed a relationship and fell in love with each other. And he wanted to leave everything to this young man and the legal powers in the county wanted to prevent him and find him to be incompetent and tried to find him to be incompetent, but he beat that. And, and they would not, no, no lawyer would write the will for him. And so they had a handwriter will. It's just a crazy, crazy story.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Awful. I mean, seriously, it's like they should be able to do what they like, right? I mean, where does common law sit with that? I mean, he should be able to write a common law will.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Well, no, the laws are a little rough around that. You can write a contract with somebody, like, if you take care of me for the rest of my life, I'll leave everything to you. And the contract would have some. That's exactly what they did. And then when they died, the people who had previously been the guy's beneficiaries sued to wipe out the contract. And so there's this big court case and eventually they settled it out, splitting some of the monies up.
But you know, the sad part about it is that the old man, when he died, I went and got the funeral records. And at his funeral there was only one person who signed the book and that was the young man. One person that signed the book, that was the young man. And he said, pop, Poppy, you made a man out of me and you taught me how to be a man and I'll never forget you.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: That's sad and sweet at the same time.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Sad and sweet at the same time. So that's A great. That's a great story. That's what you call narrative non fiction because it's a true story.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Wild. So that's. That's. You're actually starting to write that now, or you are writing it?
[00:37:25] Speaker B: I'm doing the investigation. I'm talking to the people.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Okay. Getting all the. The facts together.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: And then my father's story is just a crazy story. Escaped from Hungary as the Bolsheviks invaded back in the beginning of the 20th century, got waylaid to Uruguay. And then finally New York. Met my mom, found popcorn and caramel corn as a way to make the American dream come true.
Built up a huge popcorn empire.
Then right During World War II, the mob came in and took it all from him. And he was left with nothing but a trailer in a carnival. And he worked that for a while and then finally came back to New York. And then by happenstance, somebody died. And he had the opportunity to take over 12 concession stands in an amusement park. And it's just like the archetypical hero's journey, but it stretches from 1898 to 1997. So it's like historical fiction. So it would be. It would be fun.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Sounds like it'll be fun for sure. Yeah.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: I'd tell you. I asked my dad one time, dad, you know, he was 95 at the time, so it was 1997. And I said, you were born without indoor plumbing and you live to see a man walk on the moon. What was that like? He says, well, it all happened kind of slowly.
That's all I got.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Well, Bob, we've come to the end of the podcast, and I was going to ask you, how can people find you in your works? Where should they go? Where would you like to direct them?
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Just simply to my website.
There. There's a couple of free ebooks that I wrote that you could get on my website and download. There's meditation for me, 24 tips to relax.
They're all free.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:39:33] Speaker B: At a Wise and Happy Life dot com.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Okay, I'll put that in the show notes. And I want to say thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge and wisdom and stories. It's. It's been appreciated. Thank you so much, Bob.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Thank you, cj.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: All right, I'll just say goodbye to the listeners.
That was a great conversation with Bob. I like the way he has this sort of genuine presence around his understanding of meditation and the processes that go on in the minds. I mean, I find from talking to people a lot about meditation over time now that everyone gets afraid of the idea of doing it because, you know, my mind talks too much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's. You can actually use that as a path to liberation. What I mean by liberation is that freedom of space and hitting that zero point of experience. So if that's something that appeals to you, please. If you wanted to take up your information, your understanding and your growth with Bob, go to his website in the show notes down below. If you've enjoyed today's episode like, and subscribe. It's free. And if you're in a podcast app, give me five stars. Share it to a friend that you know that would enjoy this conversation. And thank you so much for listening. And it's bye for now.
