Simple Program - Complex People

Well, hello world. This podcast today is going to be about simplicity and some of the ideas that I have that others have had and how the simpler I seem to make my life, the more growth I seem to have in all aspects. The idea that having simple tastes are, I don't know, a prerequisite for like the journey to, I'll use this that I read in my Herman Hesbuk Transcendence. I find it again and again, maybe I'm looking for it, but you see it in these spiritual traditions, these equations of happiness and even kind of modern thinking. And I don't think it's because simplicity is like quaint, but it clarifies. However, you want to define enlightenment, it does make you think that you have to be able to see things clearly. And if simplification causes clarification, then making things complicated or having complicated tastes tend to complicate perception itself. My preferences at one point did seem pretty elaborate or I thought they needed to be. It's almost that paradox of choice, right? When you have a million things on the grocery shelf to choose from, all for the same, let's say serial, it's very tough to find one, but if you had three things to choose from, it's pretty easy. And if you have those complex kind of tastes, you got to have more maintenance, you got to have more money, more status, you have to be validated more and you then almost become preoccupied with acquiring, keeping, but not so much with just being. And to those equations, I read that desire multiplies faster than satisfaction. I like that, which on the other toe could be dissatisfaction becomes like noise. Having grown more into simple tastes, it's, ooh, I'll just use this, it shortens the distance between what I want and what I have. It reduces some friction. And then it makes me find that peace of mind, that contentment, almost all the time, rather than something rare. I think there's just something just pleasant about simple tastes. And I had to get comfortable with some discomfort, right? Many of our preferences, or at least many of the preferences that I had are cultural, or things that I was told I needed. So it's almost a performance. And that's a lot of like, I had a friend once say I was being, I was virtue signaling and I remember how mad that made me it, but I didn't actually know what it was. I feel like I know what it means more now, right? And I think we sing all the time, we try to, that we belong to a group or that we're sophisticated or that this, this is what, this signal is what means we're successful. And I'm not sure if all of that genuinely, like nourishes my soul. And when I'm choosing simplicity, I'm taking away desire from an image. And that's hard to do, right? It's like that willingness to be embarrassed is, oh my God, so freeing. Did karaoke the other night? First time in my life. And I thought this, what are other people thinking? What are they going to say? Right? And I'm recording this in a tiny apartment that I live in. What are people going to say? In a way, in some ways, you have to be comfortable with kind of disappointing the expectations of other people in order to like remain faithful to my own inner way I want to be. The other thing that I've noticed is that when I, like, when I strip away a lot of the excess, it, I, what, what, what, what seems to remain is more important. I value conversations with people. I value being present and in the presence of other people or in nature and being sufficient over, like, being overloaded or abundant. And there are some things, right, that are still provided a ridiculous amount of pleasure. You know, a really good piece of bread, a really good omelet, writing, being with someone that you love, a real partner, sitting and doing nothing, just being present. And it's fun because I don't get worn out by that stuff. You know, it's, it's, it's the simpler I get, the more space that seems to be made inside of me. And it's another one of those weird paradoxes, right, that I seem to gain more understanding about what I feel is important, the more I remove things from my life. And the more you can get down with simplicity, I think it's one of the best ways to get rid of things. It's not that it's always easy, right? And in the program, we like to say it's a simple program for complex people. I'm not sure. That's, I guess that's probably true. But I think we complicate things. We make ourselves more complicated than we really are. You know, it does take guts, right? When you're trying to live simply in a world that is pretty complex, you have to actively try to do it. It's not just something that you do. We have to like make repeated decisions against cultural expectations, whether that's status, it might be because of convenience, or even just like in the instinct, like what we think we want. I've talked about this a lot. It's before I got help, there was never enough. It was like this unending quest for enough. And you have to learn how to do that, but we're constantly surrounded by this culture of more, more, more. And when you make that choice, like actually make that deliberate choice, that you're going to almost disengage sometimes, then your convenience, well, no, that's not right. Your conscience becomes clearer because now you're actually doing, or or you're aligning what you're doing or your actions with what you actually value. And when I do have a clear conscience, then I'm not thinking about the stuff that I've got to continue to manipulate or manage. And I found this quote the other day, "A clear mind is the soil in which enlightenment, however modest or profound, can take root. And man, I do love a good gardening metaphor." So Father Charlie would love this. And I think him having been a priest that maybe he already knew this and just it was the way he lived, that we're not sacrificing something by living simply, but we have this new discipline of freedom. I used to just want, want, want. I used to think whatever you had I needed was that comparison. And I got back and have found and have really tried to live where I have this serenity, I have this peace of mind, I didn't buy it. You know, I just, I've learned to recognize it and how to get it. Peace.