Stillness

The Weekly Hue Demon, Full Steam Ahead. I'm looking at my numbers. Gosh, it's spiking up towards 200 very quickly. I'm like, wow, people actually listening to this.

I'm trying to make it better and put more time into it. Because initially for the first four to six weeks, I was literally just sitting down with this microphone and rambling away and not giving a whole lot of thought. No notes or anything. So I'm trying to polish this a little bit.

Everything I read is so you have to control your RSS feed. That means starting your own website and actually paying for it and things like that. So I went to four squares. I started at my own podcast site.

I started at that point going forward. That's why I say it's episode 48. But if you're really keeping count, it's probably more like episode 55 or maybe 60. So I don't even pretend to try to keep up on the pop culture.

I never look at New York Times, but I'm solidless. I don't care about movies. I see people magazine and I roll my eyes. I can't believe people read it, especially when we know that the Hollywood handlers purposely paying a holy false picture of the celebrities and that absolutely nothing you see or hear can be believed.

That's not by the way to say that everything in people magazine is false. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is you have absolutely no clue of knowing what is true and what is false. So the practicum matter, everything in people magazine is false in the sense that you look at it in your subjective sense.

Subjectively, what can you believe in people magazine? Objectively, nothing. Because if say 47% of the crap you read in people magazine is false and you have no clue what is false and what is true, then you just need to assume everything you read in is false and there for there's no reason to read people magazine. I'm not supposed to say, well, yeah, we can know some things.

We can know the Kardashian family tree. We know who's related to who. And I say, yeah, but you don't know who's banging who. That part you don't know.

And everything else you don't know is I guess you can know some hard facts. Like when a movie is released, the length of the movie, I don't know. But to be honest, I don't even know what people magazine reports on. I think I literally have not once read a sentence of people magazine.

And I think that's a true statement. I mean, we'll go back to age 14 or 17. I used to work at Kmart and the break room and all sorts of these trashy magazines on the table. And I don't even recall flipping through people magazine during break.

I honestly don't. Anyway, I don't know about pop culture, but it still never ceases to amaze me how there are writers, especially nonfiction writers, who apparently produce great stuff. And I have no idea they exist. That happened last week.

I hear a podcast with a guy named Ryan Holiday. And I guess this guy's written. He's going on 10 books he's written. He wrote a book called The Obstacles is the Way.

And it was read by the New England Patriots during the run of 2014. He has two or three best sellers. The guy is 32 years old. I was floored at her that I listened to this podcast and that's would loved it.

Now that was on the Google. I'm sure enough Ryan Holiday comes up. He's 32 years old. I'm like, wow.

Now, part of me says if he's 32 years old, he has nothing to say. But the Christian side of me says that's ridiculous. Christ started his ministry depending on your ass between ages 30, 33. He died between ages probably 32 and 35.

So if you're 32 years old, you got to figure out listen to you. And I've applied that principle for a long, long time. You know, pretty much under age 30. I'm not telling kind of listen to you.

Although David Hume, who was absolutely frickin brilliant. And he wrote his essay regarding human understanding. I came to him and was called, he was 26 years old and he wrote that frickin masterpiece. So, you know, quite frankly, I never write off anyone due to age.

You know, Tris LaSue. She wrote her story of his soul when she was in her early 20s. So I never write anyone off because of age. You just never know what's channeling through their fingertips when they write.

So let's write it out a day. Yeah, I might start reading them. The podcast is Econ Talk again. I try to switch up the podcast and listen to it.

But this one came through my feed and it's about stillness. And I was like, man, this is exactly something I read about, write about podcasts about. And it's Econ Talk, which I really enjoy. So I'm going to listen to it.

It was a great podcast. It's October 7th episode. So go on and check it out. The whole gist of the podcast is him talking about why people need to cultivate stillness, which is like a meditative act and how important it is.

And I'm pretty sure Holiday is Catholic. At one point, how he begins each day, reviewing the upcoming day and kind of what his goals are, minds that he needs to keep. And then at the end of the day, he reviews it again. And the second review that he describes is pretty much the daily examination of conscience that Catholics are encouraged to do.

And then throughout the podcast, he makes at least two, probably three Catholic references. Even references Joseph Piper. He called him Piper. He's really Joseph Peeper.

But he actually references him. And I would hear the hardcore Neo Thomas in the 20th century, a floss from the vein of Thomas Aquinas. Not exactly a household word. But Peeper is great.

If you want to read Peeper, just go to Ignatius Press. I think they've all spoke at least all his English translations. And his classic work is called Leisure the Basis of Culture. That's one of the few books I've actually read twice.

So go check out the Leisure the Basis of Culture. And one of the wager, quite a bit of money, that Ryan Holly makes reference to the book. And Holly makes reference to Leisure the Basis of Culture. At least once, probably dozens of times since the book.

I'm going to play for you two excerpts from the Econ Talk episode. First, this is Russ Roberts asking Ryan Holly some general questions about its stillness. What's the use of stillness? It does have a productive aspect to it.

But I think if we pursue stillness or serenity or clarity as a goal, in and of itself to make, excuse me, not as a goal in and of itself, but as a tool toward being more productive. I think that kind of destroys it. And if that's true, I'm personally going to throw some of that in it, then I want you to answer the question. So what's the point?

I mean, it's lovely. It's an interesting human experience to be still in a chaotic busy world. But why should I care? Okay, that's a great question.

Unfortunately, how they doesn't answer it? He does come close. That's why I play for you to suck an excerpt about two or three minutes later. You know, Joseph Piper, I'm terrible at names, but the German philosopher, he had this idea that Leisure is an incredibly important part of life.

And he was saying that Leisure can make us better at work in the same way that praying can make you sleep better at night. But if you're praying to improve your sleep or missing the point, so I don't think we should be seeking out these moments of stillness to get an edge over other people. But we can know that as intrinsically valuable as they are, they do make us better at what we do. I just find that fascinating.

And if you've listened to this podcast especially the past couple of weeks, you might be at Inkling Y. You know, basically Russ Roberts notices or observes and relates to holiday the fact that you can't pursue stillness with any aim in mind and holiday basically acknowledges you. That's accurate. And then they move on.

You know, meanwhile, I'm sitting here and I'm at my produce like you ready to do some gardening, some fall, some fall type stuff. I'm like, wait, stop. We need to figure out why that is. I mean, why can't you pursue stillness with any sort of goal in mind?

Like, I want to increase my productivity. Why is that? What is it about stillness that makes that the case? So I grind the podcast to a halt to get my headphones and fortunately I had to do some burning.

I had this great big propane weed flamer. It's actually pretty cool. It's a pretty cool chick's dig it. The big propane tank goes in my back.

I was like 25 pounds. I walk around and I spray weeds with flames. I can't hear anything when I'm doing that because it's pretty loud. Not a lot more, but it's definitely too loud to build this into a podcast.

So I sat there for the next 10 minutes, cogitating about it. And the answer is very simple. If you've listened to this podcast and you read Zen and you understand what I talk about the existential gap. The reason you can't pursue stillness with any aim in mind is because if you have that aim or that goal in mind, you're pursuing stillness with an object.

Stillness is, and it's very, very evident from their dialogue in this econ talk episode. Stillness is being in that existential gap between subject and object that I talk so much about. So if you enter into the pursuit of stillness with a pursuit, with a goal with a name, you're entering into it with an object in mind. And let's face it, the object, then if you say, well, I want to be more productive at the office, I want to earn more money.

That object, give a mind. That then is serving the subject, serving the ego, serving yourself. So if you enter, if you try to enter this thing, they call stillness and you're trying to enter it with an object in mind and the object then serves yourself, you're just back into the vortex, subject object, object, subject object, back and forth, like you spend your everyday waking life. So no, you can't pursue stillness with the answer to the ultimate game in life.

I just love it or I find a fascinating whatever it is that here on the seacon talk, they go right to the cusp of that, right to the cusp of taking to the next level, why is this a case? But they pull back. And again, I'm totally fine with that, that they've been kind of born for each of our talk listeners to get into. And honestly, if I thought how they addressed it in this book, I'd probably go buy it.

I'm going to go back and get that. Go back and read yet again the paper book. You know, it's interesting, I was trying to come up with an analogy. I wrote it in this little note card, I said, you can't seek stillness with a goal any more than you can.

And I was trying to figure out an analogy. I was walking to the office this weekend, pretty hung over, walking to the office this weekend, and I was trying to think, what would be the analogy? I got to my office and actually walked around a little bit and went into the library. And thought about it for a while.

I was like, you can't seek stillness with a goal any more than you can force someone to love you. And I thought, that's not bad. But I don't think that's a great analogy, because love is really an attraction to an object. It's a self-forgetting attraction to an object.

So it's better than being in the subject of object vortex, you know, ping ponging back and forth, back and forth. But if you really love someone or something, it's a self-forgetting attraction. So you just focus on the object, which is a great experience. Again, just because I talk about existential gap or what Ryan Holiday might cause, the illness.

I'm not saying that's like the best place to be, although I clearly hold it in a high level. But being absorbed into the analysis also self-forgating that that's also a higher goal or a higher thing, I should say. But it's not the existential gap. So that analogy, you can't seek stillness with a goal anymore, you can force someone to love you.

Even that doesn't quite get it. And I start thinking, why can't I come up with an analogy? You know, quite frankly, I'm not getting an analogy machine. It's just some of the way my mind works.

I'm always coming up with an analogy. Even though analogy by its very nature is deficient. If it were wholly adequate, it wouldn't be an analogy. Kind of confusing, but that's the case.

An analogy is always not quite accurate. If we're fully accurate, it would no longer be an analogy anyway. And if I'm an an anodomy, I think it's pretty obvious or interesting or telling. There is no analogy to this.

We live in the subject-object world. That's what we live in. Every day, experience the subject-object, that's all we know. So any readily available or possibly any available analogy at all is going to be subject-object.

And therefore you really can't come up with an analogy for it. I although I did come up with one in the physical world. I think pursuing stillness or trying to get into the existential gap with a goal in mind, like to earn more money, whatever it is. That's like trying to touch your own shadow.

I know people use that analogy for all sorts of things, but I think it's pretty good here. You can look at your shadow. You can just look. You can see it.

But the mere act of trying to touch it eliminates it. You know, as you get closer to it, the light, the background light that creates a shadow, then decreases against the object you're trying to touch. So the mere act of trying to touch it eliminates a shadow. So that's probably the best analogy I can probably come up with.

But again, it's deficient on many, many grounds. First of which, it's on the physical plane. Not the emotional flesh of a planet. Alright, let's do some lighting segments.

I had a new taste experience Friday night. My son Alex was just finished his first week of work. He had to move back to town with always celebrate with a bottle of pink gin he bought me. He got from it for Christmas, I know where he got it, but it's from Germany.

It's called the bitter truth. This pink gin was just great. You know, for me a lot of times when I taste different gins or vodka, I really can't taste that much of a difference. That's why I struggle with buying a high quality vodka.

Now gin, I can't pick up some difference. You know, like Bombay, Sapphire, Tanger, I can taste the difference versus like Gordon's or something like that. But it's real real subtle. This wasn't overpowering, but it wasn't subtle either.

You could definitely pick up like a grapefruit hit to it. I absolutely loved it. I loved it so much. I remember going to bed Friday night thinking, oh man, it's going to be a long Saturday.

But I woke up, no hangover. It's extraordinarily groggy. And I felt like I had hangover, but I didn't have a stomach and no headache. It felt good overall.

So I don't know if it was the pink gin. Is there something in that that helps? Or as often happens, I just got freaking lucky. I tell you what, hangovers.

Especially with gin. Gin is just bizarre. One of two gin and tonics. I could be kind of hungover the next day.

But then I have eight or nine. Then I'm not hungover. It's totally unpredictable for me. I don't, I wish I could even hear him in my 50s and I still can't tell for sure when I get a hangover when I don't.

Marie always says this because you don't drink enough water. You know, drink drink water like all the freaking time. And it's actually a very good habit, quite frankly. But that night, I didn't play drinking water between the gin.

So I like had like eight gin and tonics without any water whatsoever. I had some pizza. And then before I went to bed, I did drink a Gatorade. I normally drink a noon tablet in New UN that will wonder hydration tablet.

I use two, three, four times a day. And so I think the Gatorade probably helped and also took two every profile. But again, I've done that other nights and it doesn't matter. I'm stuck in my headache next morning.

But here I know who knows. I got that book about trying to find the ultimate hangover cure. And I never finished it. It's a funny book.

I have to go back and check it out. I walk the office at morning, kind of clear my head and get some exercise. And again, I'm just groggy. Just brain dead.

And when I left, I was thinking, I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about the podcast this weekend. By the time I got to the office, I had like four subjects. I got back there and I started writing feverishly on no cards. So I didn't forget all these ideas.

And that's just bizarre. I mean, when I left the house, I felt again just brain dead. Like I'm just going to walk them out of the office, clear my head. But that actually turned out to be mentally one of the most productive 20 minutes of the month.

Again, thoughts have just flown in my head of things I want to mention this podcast. And that's just bizarre. And I think it kind of goes back to things we talk about here. You shut down your mind.

Grace flows in. And that's like the whole stillness thing. You know, when we think about it. And here's just like, I'm just shut down because I drank too much last night.

And I'm just groggy. And I'm just going to walk the mile. And that itself would be an accomplishment given how much I drank the night before. But no, not only did I make the successful mile trek, took 20 minutes.

I wasn't moving real fast. But on top of that, I actually got a ton of good ideas. I think it's like, hey, my mind wasn't racing with other things. I sure as hell wasn't thinking I'm going to get this and this down at the office because I wasn't sure.

I wasn't going to make it to the office. I was kind of taking one step at a time. Mind shut down. Thoughts flowed in.

It's like Mitch in last week. Einstein was fascinated by the Eucharist. It reminds me, I learned recently that that guy was like quite a womanizer. And I offered Einstein that goofy looking effort.

And I don't know how many women he begged. And I'm not sure how successful he was. But the fact he was called a quote womanizer, unquote, by the source I was reading. Tells me must have had some success.

And I just like, I don't get it. I was like, oh, your brain is so big. Your brain is huge. I don't get it.

But I just had soft Albert Einstein being a Catholic podcast. I can't really condone the type of behavior. But I guess if you're irreligious and that you're pursuing, good job, Albert. So I listen to this podcast.

It's called, I can't remember what it's called, but there's a Jose Maria Escriva podcast. It's like the Opestay podcast. Opestay got bad rap back in the 80s. Probably 1990s, some guy who was higher ranking, like in the Bush administration, turned out to be like a spy or something.

And he was a member of Opestay. And I got a bad rap and I never stood it. I'd actually be considered a member of Opestay, but I just, you know, I'm not really much with Joyner. I'm going to come to things like that.

But I read a ton of this. I read a ton of this. I read a Scriva, this Saint. It's just a great writer 20th century.

It's a lot of stuff really speaks to me or speaks to everyone. He wrote a little classic called The Way. It's 999 aphorisms, a real short. I don't agree with all of them quite frankly, but I agree with them.

90, 9% might agree with them. I say 80% might find quite edifying. So anyway, his followers, you know, the priests, they're in Opestay. They put on lectures and they put them on this podcast.

They're always good. Some are great. They're always good. And the one that came across recently is that basically study is prayer.

I'm going to download that because my hour in the morning that I spend is pretty much just study. I mean, I have a hard time thinking this is even prayer. It's just time to study and thinking right now, notes, et cetera, et cetera. I was out listening to podcasts and yeah, they said the exact quote from the whole Zemriya Scriva was quote, one hour study is one hour of prayer.

Actually, I should say it's quote for the modern apostle one hour study is one hour of prayer, unquote. And then they go on this podcast. It starts playing a wide in the modern age. Truth is so buried.

It's been so muddled merely trying to sit down and grapple with the people who are modeling the truth or people don't get it. That itself is such an active service that it rises to level of prayer if you're then able to take those truths and then teach other people with it. So I guess that's what I'm doing on this podcast and everybody thought about in those terms, but I guess what just buys my hour in the morning and I'll take it. Hey, I'm moving.

I'm going to buy my parents' house. It's about two blocks south of me. I moved there in 1969. It's been in the family for 50 years and I'm going to buy it for my mom's estate.

And then my son, Jack, is going to buy my house. It's really, it's a hard move. I love my house where we are currently. We raise our kids here.

It's softens the emotional blow because Jack's going to be here. And it's really a great house for a young family. I guess we're just not a young family anymore. We have two kids at home and high school, but they're not four and six anymore.

They're 14 to 16. So we're going to move to a better house. I mean, just objectively speaking, it's bigger and better built and bigger parcel of land. I hope they put in a little garden area because there's a lot more land back there.

Really looking forward to it. The podcast shouldn't suffer. I will say I get a lot of confidence on the sound quality of the podcast. People are like, you know, what do you do?

I'm just like, just in my basement, tucked away in a corner. I did research at the very best of the microphone. You can get without it being, I don't know, there's different types of microphones than I don't know much about electronics. But without getting like one of those great big microphones with a big black sock on it or whatever.

The one I got is pretty high quality. I think I spent 70 bucks on it a couple years ago. I said, other than that, and I don't do a whole lot, but sound quality is good. So I'm a little bit concerned that when I go to my new house, and my library is going to be in the main forest, that can be the basement.

I'm kind of a little bit concerned about what the sound quality would be like. But we'll see. I want to say one more thing about people magazine. I was not talking about people magazine.

I'm talking about all celebrity magazines just in general. People is kind of like the, you know, they're the top of the heap. So I was kind of singing them out as representative of all celebrity magazines. And I'm not saying any of the magazines purposefully set out to paint a false picture.

What I'm saying is it's kind of the old saying junk in junk out. If you're taking in faulty data, anything you put out with that faulty data is going to be junkie. Hollywood carefully, carefully, carefully screens manicures. However you want to put it, the image you see of their stars.

They have for over 50 years, I guess it's even in the contract. So they have to portray this certain public persona. So all the data that these celebrity magazines take in is filtered and screened. That's why that's why paparazzi are so huge.

Because they're actually trying to get behind this false persona. I mean, people condemn the paparazzi and the celebrities get down to the paparazzi and say they're horrible, they're horrible, and I think they are too. But you guys are encouraging it by putting out these false personas. If your whole motive operation when it came to the public wasn't to make your actors look like the characters they portray on screen or you want to give them this whole some image.

If you guys weren't so frightened to begin with, you wouldn't set up this motivation of the paparazzi and other reporters to get behind it to get under it. And to show all things where they are. Alright, that's a wrap for this week. Please follow us on Twitter, check out the Facebook page, go to the blog, check out your team at podcast.com, it's all sorts of information that you might find interesting.

And as always, thanks for listening.