Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth! We have a returning guest, Dr. Nate Klemp. And Nate actually wrote a book called The 80/80 Marriage. That was my last interview with him. And today we've got him coming on with a new sounds true book. I always love stuff that Tammy Simon finds just the best people. It's called Open. I'm sorry if it's a little blurry but there you go. Open. And the subtitle is Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. Nate, how are ya?

Dr. Nate Klemp
I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me back. Greg, I always love our conversations.

Greg Voisen
Well, you have out you know, a person who is a philosopher has very deep thinking. And it requires people to get a little bit more critical about their thinking to dive into this topic. And I want to tell the listeners a tad about you today, you're in Boulder. And that's where you reside. And he's got a very cool website, folks, especially if you like drone footage. It's Nate Klemp, k-l-e-m-p.com Just go there. There you can learn about him the books. And we'll talk in a minute about the free open meditations that he has at the website as well. Nick grew up in Boulder, went to college at Stanford, where he got hooked on jazz and philosophy. He said there I made the pragmatic decision to become a philosopher rather than a jazz musician and attempt to learn how to live the good life. I then got an MA at Stanford, followed by a PhD at Princeton. At the end of the 10 years of this intense philosophical training, you said you didn't exactly achieve the goal of realizing human flourishing. You said, Actually, you were burnt out, ended up working as an assistant professor at Pepperdine for four years rewrote the morality of spin a book about the ethics of political rhetoric. Then I left his cushy tenure track job in 2012, to continue exploring the crazy idea of philosophy as a way of life. He then met his wife, they got married. And they have wrote, actually, he got involved with life, x t, which we did an interviewing about, which is optimal well being. And that ended up merging with mindful magazine to become mindful. And they co authored a books called, you did with Eric, called start here, the lifelong skill of well being. Then calian, you co authored a book called The 8080, marriage, a new model for happier stronger marriage was a Penguin Random House book. And now we're on to death, which is open living with an expansive mind and a distracted world a February release from sounds true. Well, Nate, you have an interesting background, and you're the person that we could just talk to about this probably all day long. But let's start off this way. I read the introduction or the book, or you speak about navigating between these two worlds, and you kind of use your own personal day as the the way to open it up, right? I go from here, and I get distracted. And I go there and I open up this. And one were our phone and the physical world of getting your daughter off to school was the kind of analogy you're writing about, right? Okay, I'm gonna pour the cereal and I'm gonna go click back to the phone, speak with the listeners about the addiction to the screens and how this closes stuff up, closes us off to our inner world, because it really does. We're so damn distracted. Yeah,

Dr. Nate Klemp
Well, thank you for the bio there, Greg. That was great. Yeah, the idea for the book really came from an experience that I started to notice in myself a few years ago. And it felt like the size of my mind was somehow getting smaller. And I know that's kind of an abstract idea. But what I mean by that is, I would find myself feeling some sort of uncomfortable mind state or emotion or sensation. And then that was accompanied by an almost instantaneous urge to pick up my phone. And so there's this closure that I was noticing happening in my own mind to closing down like turning away from my own internal experience. But then on top of that, I also noticed that there was A closure happening in a more external sense. And that is that I was starting to close down to anyone who disagreed with me anyone who had a different perspective on politics. And that's when I realized, I wasn't alone here that in some ways, I think this is the problem of our time, right? Like, these two forms of closure, screen addiction and political polarization have captured the modern mind. And you know, if you if you listen to conversations with friends, you'll, you'll hear this happening, maybe not explicitly, but you'll hear people talking about being distracted. And I'm so stressed, and I can't stop looking at my phone, and you'll hear their complaints against the opposite political party or candidate that they hate. And underneath all of that, is some form of closure. And I think that's why, in some senses, this really is the problem of our time, because we all know that it's happening. But it's happening subconsciously, it's it's like invisible, it's difficult to see. And

Greg Voisen
so that's here. But in your humble opinion, how did this bifurcation occur? The dissonance between, it's like between, right? There's no like bringing people together. I mean, you wrote a book called the morality of spin. I mean, I think we have political figures today, regardless of Trump. There's tons of them, Trump included, that are distracting people about issues that they finally feel very charged about. But prior to this never really had social media to express themselves out. What's the way out of that climber. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there listening right now. They're like going, Wow, this guy really hit on something. Yeah, I knew that was it. But I have my point. I don't like that guy. Right. So it's hate. It's not compassion.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah, well, I mean, so first of all, I think the statistics really do tell us that there's something new going on here. So 1980 47% of Americans felt warm and favorable toward the opposite party. In 2020, that number drops, basically in half to 25%. I was writing my first political philosophy book in the early 2000s, or early to mid 2000s 2005 2006. And at that time, there was definitely polarization happening. But most political scientists at the time pointed out that the political, the polarization we were seeing was really an elite phenomenon. So it was confined, mostly to politicians, pundits, people on TV, etc. And what I've noticed shift is that all of a sudden, it's like, polarization has gone mainstream. It's no longer just something you see on, you know, Fox News or MSNBC. It's something you might see at your family reunion or your school board meeting. And I mean, I think there are a lot of reasons for this transformation, probably the the foremost being, just the way in which we now consume information that we have this ability now to totally customize and curate our information environment. So that all we're listening to is one perspective, right? We, as soon as we find a point of view that we that we find somehow antithetical to what we believe in or, you know, uncomfortable, we unfollow the person, or we stop looking at that news site, or whatever. And I think that's created a strange phenomenon, where we keep getting more and more sort of confined in our own little echo chambers, hanging out with people who think and read the same news as us. And basically living in this kind of siloed informational environment, where it's really difficult then to see the other side to to even understand the other side. Well,

Greg Voisen
the polarization is extreme at this point in our country. And I don't think it's doing my humble opinion. Any good any way is it bringing collaboration about you can see by Congress, they keep kicking the ball forward. In even on budgetary things, they don't seem to be seen, not certain of everything, because I get my news like you do from all these various sources, getting done what they need to get done for the people. And I think people get exasperated by the whole thing. It's like others just kind of throw up their arms. And this brings me to this question. You mentioned that our addiction to the screen and digital devices happens slowly. And over years, which is probably true for me every listener out there right now. Speak with us about opening our mind and what it means to live with this expansive mind. I mean, you just made reference to it with, you know, us getting feeds from one area versus another. But to expand our mind, I remember Steven Kotler was on here, speaking about flow, and he said, If you really want to expand your mind, and you all you read his business magazines, why don't you read Architectural Digest? Why don't you read something different from what you normally read? And that really stuck with me? Because I find myself reading stuff that I only want to read, not what I wouldn't think about reading.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah, I love that. And I think you're right that there's a way in which closure is closely associated with comfort. Right, so if you think about your relationship with your device, for most of us, the reason we're checking our devices so often is that it's actually in a strange way comfortable, right, we get this short burst of dopamine in our brain, we get the experience of novelty, some new fact. And so when it comes to the practices of opening, and just the concept itself, what we're talking about here is a mindset shift. That's pretty radical. And there's sort of three levels to this that I like to talk about. One is that there's a shift in the focus of our mind. So when we're in a closed state, we have this experience of unconscious mind wandering, mind wandering, being the psychological term for getting lost in thoughts about the past and future. And when we open, there's a shift from that state of unconscious mind wandering to being a little bit more present, being aware of the present moment, being aware, sometimes even of our attention itself. So that's one dimension. The second is, there's this shift in the attitude of mind. So if you think about the last time you are really stressed out, or distracted, there's an experience there, that's subtle, but it's one of kind of like withdraw of like, pulling away from the experience you're having pulling away from life. And when we open, we're shifting that as well from withdraw to something more like approach. So instead of turning away from distraction, turning away from the present moment, we're approaching it, even if it might be uncomfortable, or painful, or involves certain emotions that we don't like to feel. And then I think the most important quality in all of this is the final one, which is the size of the mind itself changes. So in a closed mind, it's almost like we're looking at our life or reality through this long and dark tunnel. And I think this is an experience we've all had, right? You know, when you're really overwhelmed, or really stressed out, it feels like all you can see is that source of frustration, or that project or person that's stressing you out, the size of our mind, our mental field just sort of reduces down to this really small tunnel like experience. And the magic of opening, I do think it's kind of magical, is that there's this expansion in the size of the mind itself. And this is also something that everyone has experienced, even though you might not have called it opening, this feeling of like, a little bit more space in the mind more perspective, being able to see the big picture. And that I think, is the big deal about opening and, you know, made it not sound like a big deal, Oh, just a little more space or size of the mind. But, but that's the difference between responding and reacting. It's the, it's the gap between stimulus and response that allows us to build new habits. It's the space of possibility, the space of curiosity, the space of creativity, and there's, there's so much that can happen in that space. And that's why I think it's kind of a magical practice and a magical thing to play with in your life.

Greg Voisen
Certainly is and I and it brings me to discomfort, uncertainty. And the fact that, you know, the only way we can grow is to have those levels of discomfort in our life. But we've been programmed from a neurological standpoint, almost like fight or flight. So it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna run from this, I don't want to address this, right, I'm gonna like put it under the carpet or put it in the backseat of the car or the trunk of the car, and move on with the things that I believe are important. And I think you use this analogy about the tantric path of sacred what you call continuity. I really like loved it because it was a great analogy. But you if you could speak with us about your personal experience about going into benching, and watching TV, which you did, which I just thought was crazy, and what you emerge realizing from this experiment. Also, in that same side, it's a two point question. Can you cite some of the statistics about how much we're closing to, versus opening our minds through our screens? instead? Yeah.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Well,

Greg Voisen
I thought the part about the TV was like, Okay, I'm just gonna sit here and watch TV all day today. And I'm like, really? Who does? Uh, who does that? But it was a great experiment for you.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah. So I mean, in terms of the context here, how much we're closing to screens. Nielsen estimates, the average American spends 11 hours a day on screens. Deloitte Consulting found that 96% of us check our devices within an hour of waking. I think 50% of American teenagers describe themselves as having a significant addiction to their phones. There are these crazy, sort of, would you rather style survey questions where they ask? Would you rather spend a month without your pet or your smartphone? 40% of people choose their phone over their pet? Would you rather spend a month without your significant other or smartphone 44% of people Wow, choose their smartphone or their significant other? Would you rather spend a month without sex or your smartphone 56% of people choose their phone over sex. Right? So crazy statistics, I like to cite those only because they show that this problem is real. This is not like overblown, oh, you know, whatever, on our screens a lot. So, starting with that as the context, I thought it would be really interesting to really experience closure in a different way. And what I mean by that is that I have been trying for years, like many of us to implement all sorts of screen time techniques and hacks, you know, to not look at my phone so much. And it's basically this relationship of resistance between me and my devices. So what I thought would be really interesting is to apply this tantric Buddhist practice, often called Feast practice, where the idea is, what would happen if you consciously over indulge in some of these things that create craving, you know, and soften us with like sex or drinking or food. But I thought, wouldn't it be interesting do with my screen, so I spent three days basically, just binging on my screen all day, every day was like this all you can eat buffet of little dopamine hits that I was gorging on. And what I noticed a couple of really interesting things. So the first thing I noticed is that the connection between screens and insomnia is real. You know, we hear a lot about don't look at your screens before you go to bed. When I was binging on that much screentime, I was up every morning at like 250 no hope of going back to sleep. So that was super interesting. But the thing that was most interesting is that I started to really understand the thing that's drawing us to our screens, is this experience of novelty. Like you pick up your phone, you go through the lock screen, and it's the novelty of seeing the new texts, or you go to your email, it's the novelty of new email messages, or your newsfeed or social media, whatever that is. And so paradoxically, by going all the way with my screens and overindulging for days at a time, I had this experience of almost like destroying the superpower of my phone. So I woke up the day after this. And I had the thought, Oh, this is where I usually grab my phone, and I go to the bathroom. And the thought just like totally fell flat. There's no desire. So it was kind of interesting to me that, that we could use a tool like this, which sounds crazy, obviously, to in some ways, like undermine the central power of our devices itself, this ability to give us the experience of novelty. I like

Greg Voisen
how you did that because the overindulgence part of it would actually become, I would think to most people, if they tried it quite boring. You know, it becomes it becomes less stimulating than it did when you first started into we're doing it periodically, right? Because you're periodically giving yourself that dopamine. You know, I had you cited the book hooked by nariyal. And he was on this show not that long ago speaking about hooked. And he, you discussed this point that he made about addictions being around variability, which you were just saying, because that's the next new email uncertainty, hey, is there a supply surprise, somebody's going to send me a million dollars today via some email that I'm gonna get or something really great gonna happen? Or is a new client coming in via, you know, this cell phone. And so especially this, this mystique around, ooh, something new, something exciting, something's going to happen, that's going to be good. And as it relates to connecting to the screen, speak about that. Because, you know, near did a lot of research, you've done a lot of research. And I think this whole concept of variability, meaning it's new, it's unique, and it's uncertain. Is is really true. Yeah,

Dr. Nate Klemp
I love nears work. And I think he really is interesting authority, because he was one of the people like building these technologies into the some of the original devices and things like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, people totally well, and he has this really great example or analogy, to illustrate the difference between the world we experience in sort of the analog realm, real life versus the virtual world, where he talks about, you know, you open the door to your refrigerator. And the experience you have isn't variable at all, right, you open the door, everything that was in there last night is still in there. But if you were to add a variable reward, meaning some sort of uncertain possible outcome to that system, you would be essentially creating a smartphone app. So his example is like, imagine every time you open your refrigerator door, there was some new treat there that just appeared, right? Like, all of a sudden, you open it, and there's a little piece of chocolate cake there. All of a sudden, like your refrigerator who'd become much more enticing, you'd want to open that door more, because you never know what tree is going to be there. That feature a variability is pretty difficult to design into our analog world. But it's extremely easy to design into the virtual world. And I think it explains why so many of us are getting sort of our attention is getting derailed from our actual life and into our virtual life. Because our virtual experience is full of these kinds of variable rewards, these uncertain outcomes, you know, and in fact, they're designed into the apps themselves, right? Like, every time you go on to Instagram, your feed is fresh, even if you were there five minutes ago, you get a fresh feed when you come back, there's something new. And in that sense, it's actually pretty similar to other forms of behavioral addiction. You know, if you think about a gambling addiction, the person who's at the side of the casino, who can't stop pulling the lever on the slot machine, what is it that they're actually doing? They're, well, they're pulling the lever, but they're getting that experience of variability. When the dials finally settle, and they see like, did I get four bars across or whatever it is, you know, and when something that's pretty much the same thing is what happens when we pull out our phone. And we're getting this this surprising reward. And as you say, usually, it's not actually that great. Like, every time I open my email, there's a part of me that thinks maybe there's something really great here. And I would say one out of 1000 times. That's true. Yeah. And yet I keep coming back for more. It's crazy.

Greg Voisen
Well, it brings me to this and you cited somewhere in the book. I was honored last year to actually in December to go to healthy mindsets to Richie Davidson, and all the studies that he's done with Dalai Lama. So I flew to Wisconsin. And, you know, you know the story, but my listeners may be Don't you know, Richardson was studying anxiety prior to studying compassion. When the Dalai Lama told him, Hey, I think what Joe to do is really study the brainwaves around compassion, versus anxiety. And as I met with Richie, I thought, well, he dedicated 30 years of his life now to studying compassion. Now, this is self compassion, compassion with others, doing for others. And I think that when people get anxious, if they get outside of themselves through some act, other than self serving, they can and I'm looking for your thought on this. They can break that addiction and also mood remove themselves from the anxiety. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I think compassion and comfort actually giving, doing something where it's, you're completely doing it for someone else, you have a tendency to forget about all this shit.

Dr. Nate Klemp
I agree with that. Absolutely. I think that there is this experience of anxiety that we all have. That's uncomfortable. And the question then becomes Okay, in that state of discomfort, what do we do? And to your point, the habitual path of least resistance is often engaging in some sort of compulsive habit. That's probably not the best thing for us. Right? So maybe it's picking up your smartphone, maybe it's overeating, maybe it's drinking, right, like, there are a lot of different ways that we can mollify that experience of anxiety. But, but that habitual path of least resistance is often not the best path. If we can have that awareness that you're talking about, where it's like, okay, I'm experiencing this uncomfortable state of anxiety. And see it from a little bit bigger perspective, create a little bit more of that space in the mind that we were talking about. You called it? Awareness? Yeah, meta awareness is sort of the technical term. define

Greg Voisen
that for the listeners, because you relate, you speak about it in the book.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah. So meta awareness. It's exactly what I was just talking about. It's that ability to disentangle your sense of self, from what's happening in the mind. So often, you know, we're just sort of like, our mind is wandering, there are all these various mental habits that are running the show. And we don't even know that it's happening. I think that's the most important thing to see there. When we can see it happening in real time be like, Oh, wow, I'm feeling anxious. That in itself is like a revolution in the mind. Because all of a sudden, now, there's a little bit of awareness. And there's a little bit of a distinction between the thing that's watching the anxiety and the anxiety. It's not like tethered together. And so that's where I think we start to get this freedom. To To your point, maybe we say, hey, instead of checking the smartphone, this time, I'm going to call up my relative, my mom, see how they're doing? I'm going to go help out my child, I'm gonna go help my neighbor shovel the snow, right? There's all sorts of like, micro actions of compassion, and contribution that can be so powerful. But but we have to have a little bit of that awareness first, because otherwise, these habits are just so strong, so many years of conditioning behind that. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. It reminds me the guy from Stanford I interviewed not that long ago on tiny habits, but yeah, BJ Fogg. Yeah, BJ BJ. And, you know, this point, I think, needs to be addressed. So if you would speak to the listeners, about the fact that screen addiction points to a fact that could be a deeper emotional wound that hasn't been killed. Now, I don't think that people correlate that there. It's like, what are you talking about? Dude, you're out of your mind. And the reason is, is like I said, they want to brush that under the carpet. They don't really want to address that. uncomfortableness. Can you address the issue also speak about? We did a little bit, but this political polarization and how we have become closed minded, which you did, but I think closed minded to a really to a fault. You are actually saying some of the things that you did. And I think one of my questions was around you going to the NRA and going to a gun. A place where you were experiencing something in the foothills and then you said hey, people in Boulder, politically, Boulder is not a gun town, but 35 miles outside of Boulder. There's a guy with guns and then you to your surprise, talk about polarization. He wasn't so polarized. He was quoting Buddhist stuff. And then I thought that was a pretty cool part. So talk with us about that, if you would. Yeah,

Dr. Nate Klemp
well, the first point there is a really important one, which is that the relationship many of us have to our screens is what we might call a mild to moderate behavioral addiction. So different than substance abuse, addiction, but similar to something like gambling, addiction, shopping addiction, where there's a behavior that's compulsive and addictive in some manner. And Nir Eyal actually makes this point really nicely that there is a sense in which these addictions have their own momentum. But often what's really driving them is that we're trying to escape from some significant emotional trauma or you know, really uncomfortable mind state. And so this just it gives us A pathway of pleasure that's sort of easy to traverse. And so it really is true that for many of us what's anchoring this addiction? Yes, it's the compulsive nature of checking our devices all the time. And if we can, you know, use behavioral hacks and things like that, that can be helpful. But it's also often some sort of deeper form of psychological distress or you know, unprocessed trauma, things like that, that can be at the root of all this. So, so that's, that's one point that I think is worth making. And then you were talking about polarization. And, you know, how do we overcome this experience of seeing the other side as just a bunch of morons or the enemy or whatever it is, which is kind of like the rut that our culture has fallen into. And so in order to explore that for myself, you know, I live here in Boulder, Colorado, very liberal town, sort of a left of center kind of guy, pro gun control, things like that. And so I thought, it would be really interesting to just immerse myself in a very different political echo chamber. So I ended up signing up for the National Rifle Association course, here in Colorado for getting my concealed carry permit. And I actually now have my concealed carry permit, I don't concealed carry, but I could if I wanted to. And it was just, it was such an amazing experience. Because, you know, like, I, I went to a rural town in Colorado, and, and I ended up spending the day with people who I would never interact with in normal life. But I think what became clear by the end of that, is that there was no enemy here that yes, these people, they believe something differently than I believe they have different views on guns. Ultimately, I found that the real difference was that they have a different view of human nature. And we can talk about that offensive, interesting. But I came to see that, you know, we're all just trying to do our best here. These are good people. And for me, that was actually this just like mind blowing opening experience. I could never look at politics the same way afterwards. Because now I had kind of created these relationships, friendships with people who believed something totally antithetical to everything I believed in.

Greg Voisen
It's really interesting, you use that as a way to kind of fully shift yourself into a world which you had never kind of crossed into. And when you left, the experience was not bad. It was it opens your mind, just like we're saying, this is called open. That's the name of the book. And I know for many of my listeners, they're gonna go, wow, that was a pretty big step you took, I might be afraid to do that. I really wouldn't want to do something that radical. And I think there's small steps that we can take. Now, you this goes back aways, obviously. But you ended up in Cuba. To experience your first opening, you said, and other experience you had you spoke about it a lot about your aunt happened at 35,000 feet, you're not a big flyer, you don't like flying in an airplane, you get anxious and have anxiety attacks are you did at the time? Maybe not now. And could you tell the listeners about your openings, plural. One was at 35,000 feet. And one was in Cuba on the beach? If I think if I remember correct,

Dr. Nate Klemp
yeah, well, I like to use those two examples to illustrate the different sides of openings. So one of these experiences, I was 20, I was living in Cuba in Havana, I went to this beautiful beach, you know, and here I was, didn't have all the the hustle and bustle of my life back as a as a college sophomore. And I have this experience of just my mind going still. And this feeling of just like an expansion of awareness. And I didn't really have the words to wrap around all of that at the time. Right. Looking back, I would say that was one of those experiences where the mind just felt bigger, more expansive. And it was a very blissful, pleasurable experience. But I think this opening of the mind can happen in a totally opposite way as well. And so the other experience I write about happened eight years later, when I had I had just gotten to the end of my PhD program. I had a pretty severe bike accident. So I was experiencing a concussion and you know, My mind was kind of whirling with dizziness, I had really bad tinnitus. And I got to this stage after that bike accident we're doing almost anything was like so hard, the fatigue was so deep. And you can go into the grocery store was like running a marathon. And I had to fly to this family get together. And I faced this really crazy choice do I get on this plane? Knowing that like, I was in no condition to do this. So tired. So just like blasted by this bike accident? Or do I not I ended up getting on the plane and, and I had this experience of just like, breezy, profound anxiety. But then at a certain point, I had what I would call an experience that was more like opening where I realized I had no control over my situation, there was nothing I could do you know, here, I was trapped at 35,000 feet. I remember just like begging God, like, please help me please help me. And it was in that moment that there was a kind of opening experience that happened, the mind got bigger, even though it was a very different doorway than the one in Cuba. I like to describe it as the doorway of just like intense suffering versus bliss.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think the term is overused many times, but at certain points like in that airplane, you have to let go. Now, Letting go means a lot of different things, a lot of people, but to allow yourself to go into the experience. So you can get out of the experience. Right. In other words, like you're saying some of these things are, I've got to walk into it, I've got to be uncomfortable. You were totally uncomfortable on that airplane. And then when you took deep breaths, I remember reading, and just asking God for help. And walking into it and understanding that, you know, I'm caught here, I got however long left in this plane, I have to chair I'm responsible for changing this experience. I'm responsible for changing this experience. And there are certain techniques and things that people can do to actually shift that. And one of them. Because there's a lot of people that use micro dosing, ketamine drugs, to get away from anxiety, they got PTSD, you went to this control center, one October morning, you were talking with your best friend, Andrew, and you're on this hike in Colorado. And he says, Well, you're writing this book, are you not going to address, you know, micro dosing, drugs, or just drugs, and explore psychedelics as a way to open? Can you tell us about this controlled experimentation that you went through which you finally did? You didn't want to? But you did. And I think you were a great experiment for this book. To actually take smaller doses than a larger dose and you turned it up with 200 milligrams in the end of ketamine. What happened? And what happened when you doubled the dosage?

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah, well, as you mentioned, I was not planning to write about psychedelics at all.

Greg Voisen
No, I know you weren't. But Andrew swayed you.

Dr. Nate Klemp
But my mind, my mind started to shift. Because I, you know, there's so much amazing science coming out about the potential of these compounds. And I started to see that there's a really important distinction here between the compounds psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and psychedelic assisted therapy, pairing these compounds with an intentional structure of support, and a skilled guide. So that really opened me up to the idea. And at a certain point, I realized, like, if I'm really going to explore this idea of opening, I've got to be open to this. So I want to I want to understand this. So to your point, I had this a session, which was more of a large dose, ketamine assisted session with my therapist, where I happened to be flying to Orange County and a couple days before just after the session. So I was, I could feel like a little bit of background anxiety about flying happening in my mind. And I, you know, took the drug put on the IMS put on the earphones, and then all of a sudden, it was like I was on a plane. You know, it wasn't a real plane. It was a plane that only existed in my mind. But it felt like I was on a commercial airline. I was flying somewhere. And it was almost identical to the experience of flying in real life but for one thing And there was no fear, no anxiety. And for somebody who had experienced slight anxiety since 911, really 20 years, that was wild. And so then, you know, I'm flying on this plane and the the walls of the plane are dissolving. And then all of a sudden, I actually went back to that moment that we were just talking about the mid flight meltdown, right when I was in my late 20s, at the end of graduate school, right. And I was able to re experience that moment. But with none of the associations of fear and anxiety. And in fact, what I saw is like, that was a moment where something in me just cracked open, and I could see like the beauty of that moment, and then I actually experienced the plane going down and crashing, and, you know, saw myself vaporized by the flames. And it was just like, again, seeing this horrific thing that was like the worst case scenario of my mind. But seeing it with none of the fear. And I think that's, that's the real power of pairing psychedelics, with therapy. And this intentional structure of support is that there's a way that we can re experience some of the most traumatic things that may have ever happened to us. Or we can approach some of those corners of the mind that are almost impossible to touch in ordinary consciousness. And I started to see that is just like, an incredible gift. And for me, it completely changed my experience of flying, you know, it's been two years. And it's a totally different experience for me. Now, when I get on an airplane,

Greg Voisen
well, you opened your mind to the extent that you were able to see something different and actually feel it. And it felt real. And I think, sometimes when you go through those experiences, the reality of what is is accentuated. And it allows you to remove the fear from what you'd made up. So you made up all this other shit about the plane? Yeah, you can die in the plane, that's for certain, but you know, what are? What is the likelihood of it? So you spoke in the book about non drug psychedelic experiences? So I want you to combine this with another question. Which is, you state to open the mind isn't add anything new to the mind. It really is more about returning the mind to the natural state. And so what I'd like to have you speak to the listeners about is loving kindness and compassion practices as a way to open the mind. And I think for most of our listeners, they're going to understand this. I don't think I've ever seen more expansive minds than two people. Many of the people that were at the Healthy Minds Institute, Richie Davidson, Dalai Lama events where I've actually been, and they end up seeing him talk. And then you think about, boy, that gentleman's mind is just all about love and compassion. I'm not certain that he thinks about anything else. Yeah. And I don't know if he had the anxiety or not, but I kind of doubt it. Right. You know, I think as I think the other thing too, is your life experiences. I'm going to be 70 in July. And I think is your life experiences continued to move forward. And you add to the playbook, you realize that much of the stuff you've made up during your life, and then you spend a lot of your life, undoing what you made up to get to the new reality that you'd like to have. Because we're, you know, I call it MSU making shit up. We're really good at that. And then we're really good at believing what we made up. That person doesn't like me, how do you know? I don't know. They looked at me wrong. Like, really? How do you know that person doesn't like, Well, I went through my whole life with that person not liking me.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. Well, yeah. I love that you brought up compassion and kindness. How does that relate to opening and I think there's a really tight connection there. You also brought up this idea of like, opening isn't about adding anything new to the mind. I think the the way I would describe that connection is that open this isn't about changing our experience. And I think this was a lesson I had to learn again and again and again and I talked about this a lot in the Book that, you know, it's easy to identify openness with a state that feels really good. You know, like, the sky like mind, you know, when you feel amazing, and you're at the end of a hike, or you're at the end of yoga, lying in shavasana, you know, like, it's easy to identify that as the experience of opening, and then set up your whole life around the goal of feeling awesome, like that. And then shame yourself for all the other moments in life, which are probably far more vast, where you don't feel that way where you feel like crap, where you're tired, where you feel anxious, or you're angry, whatever. And so I think the lesson that kept emerging throughout this project, is that real opening is about opening to things exactly. As they are opening to your own mind exactly as it is. Whether that's feeling amazing, whether that's feeling terrified, whether that's feeling overwhelmed. And the way that I think that relates to compassion is that the at its deepest essence, I think, compassion is Pema Chodron talks about it as like this experience of unconditional friendliness towards yourself, and others. And it's so difficult to do. But when we're able to do that, there's a way in which we are opening ourselves to our own experience, whatever that might be. Right, unconditional. Friendliness says, when you wake up in the morning, and you feel like shit, and you don't want to do your day, like being okay with that experience in that moment, and just allowing yourself to stay there. So that I think is maybe the connection.

Greg Voisen
I think that's a big part of opening because, yeah, and here's why. You know, our ego says we can be more. So we're always distracted by that. But are we not really a true, true, more true to ourselves, if we're kind to ourselves? Yeah, meaning meaning no matter what that state is. That is the opening. The opening is to trust yourself, be kind to yourself, and love yourself for who you are, no matter where the heck you are, or what state you're in. And again, that's actually when you think about it. What you and I are talking about is not complicated. It's a state of mind. That exists as a result of an experience that says, I'm okay with me just the way I am. Yeah, that's it. Now, when you move into that state, of, hey, I'm gonna go see the people at the NRA, like you did. And you go with that new state of consciousness and high heightened awareness, you find out that it's not that difficult to be with those people.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah, and I think you're right, that at the root of that there's some form of compassion there for oneself. Compassion, one's one's enemies, you find difficult.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, yeah. And you, you talked about it and opening to the enemy. And I want to, that's the chapter that you address the Hercules weaponry thing. And for my listeners, now, like I kind of want to bring our podcast to a closure. And your book, I've told my listeners, you know, go out and get a copy of open Nate coms book. It is truly, it's not a hard read. It's filled with great stories. He uses he's fun. It's upbeat. He tells stories about himself. So he's not worried about doing that. And all the way through, you're going to learn from his own experiences. So please do get it. You know, you guide you. You have guided meditations available for the listeners at your website, www. Nate clamped.com, K L. E. N p.com. What are three takeaways that you'd leave with our listeners that they could start working on immediately? Like, right after we're done closing this podcast down to reduce their addictions to the digital media, and expand their minds to a new world of possibilities?

Dr. Nate Klemp
Yeah, well, first thing I would say is to get really curious about what is the what are the ways you close down to your life? We each have our own idiosyncratic forms of closure. You know, for some people, it's sports. For some people, it's gambling. For some people, it's news or social media. So to get really curious about that, that would be thing one just to become more aware. The second thing would be to come up with some strategies and I have a number of these in the book but you can look beyond my boat there live. great resources here, strategies for interrupting that momentum of closure. So ways to design your environment, design your time design your device itself, so that you're creating a little bit more friction in between you, and this thing that that may be taking you away from putting your attention on what matters most. The final thing, thing three would be to just identify a couple practices that you could use to experience a little bit more of this quality of openness that we've been talking about. So psychedelic assisted therapy is one option, that's a very difficult option. It's not for everyone, it can be, you know, time intensive, it can be expensive, etcetera. Meditation is another option, what I call street meditation or street opening. So you know, when you're at the store, or you're waiting in traffic, all those throw away moments of life using those as moments to just become a little bit more open and aware of, of what's going on. And there are a lot of other tools that, you know, can lead to this experience of opening, learning another language traveling, having really interesting conversation sex, right? Like, there's so many different ways we can open but to find one or two of these things that you can do to just give yourself a little bit more of that experience. Those would be my my top three.

Greg Voisen
And I would say one more thing to find this place of opening. Don't add to anything. It's not about like you said, adding more, I don't need another device that reminds me and clicks on the phone and says, Here's your notifications or something that some tool that you think you need, just turn it off. Right. I mean, from a screen standpoint, turn it off, turn off everything at a certain time before you go to bed. You know, the blue light we know does affect people. I'd also say add to this, you know, having a really good night's rest before you start the next morning, and then starting the next day with gratefulness and intentions is also a huge benefit to opening because it's saying, Hey, I'm blessed. I woke up this morning, and I'm here. I give thanks for everything that I have. So I think that gratitude, is it compassion for yourself and others, which you said. And really, these are simple little things you can do. You don't have to change much of anything to actually find that opening. You don't have to change a lot. So I'm gonna guide everybody go get this book, do it and do it. There we go. Is it still blurry it is a little bit and make certain that you go to his website, Nick klemp.com. Look at the meditations, the free meditation. He's got all kinds of resources that he also mentions in the book two other books he cites and so on. So Namaste, to you. Vaccinate for being on inside personal growth, spending some time with our listeners, and forming them about how to really be open, open their mind. Loved it. It was great. Nice day.

Dr. Nate Klemp
Thank you, Greg. So great to be here.