The Art of Stillness

The Art of Stillness [00:00:00] FAWN: Welcome back everybody. Hello. Welcome. Welcome, welcome. Welcome back Bonjour. Hello. Salam Ola. Hello. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning Buena. , last week we were talking about time, a waste of time. What's a waste of time? Right? We were saying how when I brought up the subject, you immediately started talking about being still. [00:00:26] FAWN: Mm-hmm. I'm like, whoa, you consider that a waste of [00:00:28] MATT: time watching the grass grow. That's weird. Watching the paint drive's weird. [00:00:32] FAWN: So anyway, I thought, you know what? Let's do a whole other podcast on it. So here we are. This week we're gonna talk about the art of stillness. [00:00:40] MATT: Yeah. I feel like I'm walking into the lion's den a little bit on this one. [00:00:43] MATT: Why? Well, okay, so part of, I think, still. For most people would involve meditation, which is something that you do all the time. So that makes me a little leery to start pontificating on said subject. First [00:00:59] FAWN: of all, I am so short that I can do nothing but practically be still with all you tall people in the world. [00:01:08] FAWN: Like we're taking a stroll and I have to do a light jog to keep up with people. So it just feels like I'm always still my career. Hasn't been going as fast as other people's. I feel like I'm slow being still, Ugh. Anyway, like standing still. Yeah. But anyway, before we start, I have three little quotes. [00:01:31] FAWN: Can I, can I ro can I give you three quotes? I don't know. Can you all on the art of stillness, one is from your big buddy. [00:01:38] FAWN: I [00:01:38] MATT: have a lot of big buddies, the Buddha? [00:01:40] FAWN: Okay, ho, hold on a second. Let me just, I'll read it. I'll read it and you tell me if you know who it is. Okay. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. Within you, there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. [00:02:04] FAWN: It's your buddy. I have a lot of buddies. Within you, there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, Herman Hess. [00:02:18] MATT: That sounds about right actually. 'cause interestingly enough, I first even read the word meditation 'cause you would always talk about, oh yes, I wanna meditate on that or whatever. [00:02:30] MATT: But he was the first. One of his books was the first place I actually ever read where somebody was meditating. Mm-hmm. Like it was a thing. And until then, you know, my, my poor little suburban brain didn't refuse to wrap around all of that aspect of stuff. 'cause while I was raised in a quasi-religious household, it wasn't, it had none of that tradition to it that even the Catholics have [00:02:57] FAWN: got it. [00:02:57] FAWN: I have another quote. Uh oh. Even in stillness, there is movement. Sometimes it takes time for the molecules of change to shift form. Even when it feels like nothing is happening, transformation is taking place. [00:03:15] FAWN: Even when it feels like nothing is happening. Transformation is taking place. Anonymous. Dunno who said that. Do and one more. Mm-hmm. From our friend LAO TZU ooh. To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders. [00:03:36] FAWN: So I, I do a lot of meditations through like I, I love Joe Dispenza. Mm-hmm. Dr. Joe Dispenza. You guys just look him up if you don't know about him. But in all the work that he's done. whew. I [00:03:48] MATT: mean, yeah. But he feels like agenda, agenda, agenda. [00:03:53] FAWN: Well, his meditations are to achieve mind over matter. [00:03:57] FAWN: Right. Right. So, and he, I mean, he's training people to get out of the wheelchair to, you know what I'm saying? And I, I get [00:04:05] MATT: it. But going [00:04:05] FAWN: to get rid of the tumor [00:04:06] MATT: in the body referencing back to our last podcast, you know, gotta get something done. Gotta get something done. [00:04:15] FAWN: But you get to the point of nothing. [00:04:19] FAWN: You are, no one, no name, nobody, no body nowhere, no time, nothing. You get to that place of complete stillness of nothingness, which is what typically you think of meditation as being right. No thought, nothing. There's so many different [00:04:37] MATT: ways to meditate and there's so many different ways to meditation. [00:04:40] FAWN: Exactly. But what, what I'm saying is, through the teachings, through the way they do it mm-hmm. You reach that point where you are in nothingness. And that's where you're a part of all the universes at the same time when you achieve that stillness. Okay. Alright. Anyway, so [00:04:59] MATT: well hold on. I have my own quotes now. [00:05:01] MATT: Oh, all right. Mathematician Pascal French mathematician. I would attempt to say his first name, but I'll butcher it so I'm not going to, all the unhappiness of men arises from one simple fact, that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber. Mm-hmm. Which is an interesting thing for him to say. Not having to deal with 10 million emails a day, [00:05:25] FAWN: but also think about the people that freaked out that had to sit still during the pandemic. [00:05:31] FAWN: Yes. And be with their kids. Yes. To be with themselves. People freak out. [00:05:38] MATT: Well, I remember hearing, oh my goodness, this will take us off in the left field there was a blackout in New York City in like the, somewhere between the forties, fifties and sixties. Nine months later, all the maternity wards were full. [00:05:53] MATT: 'cause people can't sit still and they didn't have the TV to distract them. Dun dun. I know, I know. Anyways, , and actually there is a recording artist. His name is, uh, Thomas Merton. He actually recorded for a long time and then he completely rejected, being out there. [00:06:15] MATT: And he went and studied at the Mount Baldy Zen Center in Southern California for like, Five years. Mm-hmm. He spent his time just as a monk and he would say, he wrote the song, huh? Well nevermind. I can't actually do it, but hallelujah. Mm-hmm. That you heard in Shrek. He actually recorded that song some, many, many years before. [00:06:33] MATT: Mm-hmm. But anyways, and he would say that, the way of contemplation. The way of contemplation. So now he's talking almost about Tao is not even a way. If one follows it, what he finds is nothing. I don't know what you're saying. Yeah, that's the point is you're supposed to try and unravel this. It's almost like a Zen Koan that, you know, it's the sound of one hand clapping. [00:06:58] MATT: What does that mean? Oh, well then, boom. And it's supposed to open up your mind to meditations, but that's just it; one of the aspects of sitting, still being, still, if you enter it basically with any set purpose, any set purpose, , you're not gonna find it. You almost, you have to renounce whatever it is you're looking for in order to find it inside of stillness. [00:07:25] MATT: Otherwise, you're gonna be looking for it and you're gonna be directed. That's how I see it, and that's why I'm like, Joe Dispenza do, but he's directing you. No, he is not. He's he, he, you have an end goal in mind. No. [00:07:40] FAWN: Well, you've just said you did. No, that's not fair though. You haven't really been to his workshop, so you can't say that. [00:07:46] MATT: Well, I'm I'm saying it's, it's guided thought. No, it's [00:07:53] FAWN: not stillness. It's not guided thought. It's guided teaching you how to properly achieve a state, but it's not guiding your thoughts. It's being unlimited. It's, it's showing you. Hey, I am gonna teach you how to go this way, to enter the doorway, to enter this other realm, but here's the directions to the door and this is how you open the door. [00:08:18] FAWN: So that's the only direction really you have. The rest is all up to you. That still sounds like direction. Yeah. Most people don't know how to where the doorway is. Matt. Why you wanna like rag on my Joe Dispenza?. Oh, you haven't even been to his stuff. Mm-hmm. [00:08:38] MATT: Love is winning. [00:08:39] FAWN: Ugh. Love is winning. But I'm gonna tell you this, there's, there's a good part of stillness and there's a bad part of stillness. [00:08:46] FAWN: Oh, there's a bad part. Maybe I'm referring to quiet Really, but I've talked about this before. I hate it. I hate it when you reveal very raw things about yourself. Right. Or something that's bothering you and you finally, you are brave enough to speak about it. Mm-hmm. I hate it when people are still and quiet. [00:09:08] FAWN: Not a word that is death to me. Right. And so I had a few friends like this, they're not friends anymore. That would do this. And I would even say, like, if you look back, if you listen back to our podcast, I've said it before, I would be vulnerable and they would be quiet. I'm like, guys, please say something. [00:09:28] FAWN: I just told you something crazy. Mm-hmm. And you're quiet and it's scary to me. So I need to know where I stand. Are you still with me? Right. Are you judging me? Are you no longer my friend because I exposed this? Part of myself, was it a faux pa? Should I not have done that? And then later they would say, well, you know, I'm, I'm just giving you your space. [00:09:51] FAWN: I'm like, but I told you I don't want space. [00:09:53] MATT: Right. And that's one of those weird, I think, Cop outs that people come to when they are really not sure what to do because we, one of them, we hate being stupid, [00:10:05] FAWN: but one of is a therapist. We hate being stupid. One [00:10:07] MATT: of them is a psychologist. I, I understand that, but we hate being stupid and nothing makes us, when we're emotionally connected to something, it can be really hard to almost distance ourself from that in order to be able to help them. [00:10:23] MATT: But then the, the, because I wanna describe how it affects me. [00:10:27] FAWN: The way they would come back at it was, you know, I'm, I'm showing you that I'm present, that I'm here with you in my quiet. I'm like, no, you're not. I'm telling you, no, that's not how it feels. But then that's what they want. That's what they believed. [00:10:43] FAWN: So that part of being still and not taking action and that stillness in talking, that quiet, that nothingness mm-hmm. I think is a killer of friendship in some ways. [00:10:55] MATT: You're right. Yeah. I won't argue that I was kind of coming to it from a completely different place, and that place is one of more, I. [00:11:06] MATT: Welcome to the world of today where everything is so quote unquote busy all the time. We're constantly multitasking. That's where I was coming to it from. I mean, are you aware you're gonna love this? I pulled this statistic out of thin air, but we actually work less than we did 50 years ago. But doesn't feel like that does it because we're [00:11:26] FAWN: multitasking, [00:11:27] MATT: right? [00:11:28] MATT: It, part of it is we're multitasking and another part of it is we're spending our quote unquote leisure time doing things that feel very similar to work. We're studying at home or we're having to go through social media. We're having to, and that's how I feel about it. I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but we have to go through social media. [00:11:49] MATT: We keep getting bombarded with stuff. Mm-hmm. That we have to, we have to deal with. And that makes it a very, very difficult thing. [00:12:00] FAWN: And by deal you mean process. We, you see something, you always need time to process what you just saw, what you are feeling. Yes. What someone said, you need time for processing, but it's, if it's one, one thing after thing after another, there you go. [00:12:14] FAWN: Then it makes you crazy. Right? And [00:12:17] MATT: it may be just literally, Opening up your, you know, the bills. Oh my God. The electric bill is what? Oh. Mm-hmm. Wait a second. My credit card just got hacked. This happened to us recently. Shock of shocks, like it doesn't happen to everyone else, right? Our credit card just got hacked. [00:12:33] MATT: We have to make sure that, the auto insurance is paid and oh my goodness, we gotta get new tires, put on the blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, does seem like that. There's a lot of stuff, but all that stuff 50 years ago, people still had to deal with a lot of it. It's just there's such an expectation now of instantaneous communication. [00:12:53] MATT: Mm-hmm. And that's really scary. Back in 2014, which was the last time I pulled any kind of stati, well that's where I found my statistic from. But in 2014, they were saying it takes. 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. So just to get back into whatever headspace we were in before we got a phone call. [00:13:12] MATT: And that's not encountering the time that we spent on the phone. The only problem is, is we seem to get phone calls every 11 minutes. That's [00:13:21] FAWN: what we used to do. So we, but now the phone calls don't recover. Are now the phone calls are social media posts, right? Emails. [00:13:29] MATT: And it may be it's text like. 30 minutes of texting where you each send 10 messages or just [00:13:35] FAWN: one text. [00:13:36] FAWN: Sometimes you [00:13:37] MATT: can throw off depending on it off. [00:13:38] FAWN: Absolutely. Um, okay, so I was trying to go to bed the other night. Mm-hmm. And I had already paid our bills. I was freaking out about money and I went to turn off my phone, turn off the sound, right? Mm-hmm. To go upstairs, get into bed, and I received a text from The power company, the electric company, joyous. [00:14:03] FAWN: And I saw, 'cause they're like, you know, we're paperless now. So they, they let me know how much the bill was that's coming up and it set me through this, spiral, like I spiraled, right. It was horrible. I'm like, and that was one text. One text, and I couldn't sleep. And then the next morning, First, you know, I finally did get to sleep, but first thought was, huh? [00:14:28] FAWN: The numbers that showed up. Right. I was like, how in the world is the bill so high? [00:14:34] MATT: Right? Yeah, I get it. Studies have shown it's best to listen to a little music or nothing. Mm-hmm. But certainly not to be on your phone just before you go to [00:14:46] FAWN: bed. So the art of stillness, going back to that, I think a lot of people are afraid of it. [00:14:51] FAWN: Like I said, I, I'm, I don't like it when people are still with me when I want them to speak yes, give me a hug or something, but they just give you a blank stare, for them, it's like, I'm being here for you. I'm like, no, thank you. [00:15:05] MATT: There's also a, an uncomfortableness. Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, and there's also an uncomfortableness on like a Monday when somebody asks, what did you do this weekend? [00:15:14] MATT: If you don't say something like, well, I went to the big game, and then we, you know, and then I made a pizza recipe, and I, well, unless [00:15:22] FAWN: they, okay, they, if they don't have all those things, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro or whatever. If you don't have that, it's like it's not an in thing to say. I laid on the couch. [00:15:37] FAWN: You have to be proud of it. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. For it to be inspiring, I laid on the couch. Yes, I did. And I wore my most comfortable shirt. That was my most proud of moment of how I spent my time. Right, right. But as far as like people, like people freak out about stillness when I was a kid. [00:16:01] FAWN: I would ride my bike a long way to the beach. Mm-hmm. And then once I got to the beach, this was in Santa Monica, but I didn't live in Santa Monica. I would take these windy wooden staircase that was at like, there's a huge bluff. Do you remember Santa Monica? There was that park? Mm-hmm. The Santa Monica Pier and everything. [00:16:23] FAWN: But there's like this park. But then every once in a while there would be a staircase that was rickety that would go all the way down to the sand. It would go over the Pacific Coast Highway and then that you had a long walk to actually get to the water walking on hot sand. And of course this was during the summers when I didn't have school. [00:16:42] FAWN: Right, right. every weekend I would ride my bike and then take my bike, take it all the way down those steps. Mm-hmm. walk that hot sand, and I would sit there for hours. I didn't know what meditation was, but I was meditating. I would sit and put my gaze way out on the horizon, and I would not move. [00:17:05] FAWN: And it was still like, by the time I get to the beaches, still early in the morning. There would be joggers going back and forth. Mm-hmm. They would jog by me. And like I said, I was a kid. Oh, I was a kid. So they would jog by me and I would guess like, maybe, I don't know, an hour later, they would jog back and they were adults. [00:17:25] FAWN: Mm-hmm. So they were like, are you okay honey? Do you need help? Right. And that surprised me. First of all, they interrupted my gaze. Right. 'cause I was totally, I mean, it must've been from a past life thing, but I was totally meditating. Mm-hmm. No one taught me how to do it. It was my way to be. It was how I survived my life. [00:17:49] FAWN: Mm-hmm. But I was so shocked by, are you okay? Do you need help? All because they saw this kid sitting and not moving. If you think about it, all that time they jogged, they were done jogging and I was still sitting there, not moved, not moved an inch. Right. But it was, disturbing to people. Mm-hmm. [00:18:08] FAWN: Especially back then, I guess meditation was not in, meditation was certainly not in for the masses back then. [00:18:14] MATT: Well, I still would say it's [00:18:15] FAWN: not in, it is in. Everybody please. 20 years ago when Oprah started teaching meditation to people on air, it became in whatever Oprah [00:18:26] MATT: says, whatever Oprah says, it's true. [00:18:29] FAWN: Oh, all right. Remember, like whatever she said turned into gold, right? Yes. Whatever she put that is true. Put intention on her, her, her focus on, I [00:18:39] MATT: think the pendulum has swung all kinds of different ways since then, but yes, absolutely. What do you mean? [00:18:44] MATT: People are still eating red meat. [00:18:47] FAWN: Well, she never said you shouldn't eat red meat. Didn't she go after she went after the, uh, poultry people? Oh no. Wait a minute. She did go after the meat. She went after the meat people. That's right. That's how she met Dr. Phil. She got sued by the meat industry, right? Was it meat or chicken? [00:19:03] FAWN: I think it was beef. I think it was chicken too. Okay. She said I'll never eat a chicken. Okay. Once she found out what, what happens, right? Which I still, to this day, I'm like, what did she see? What I mean? We've seen our own fair share of documentaries. We're vegan by the way, if you all don't know. [00:19:19] MATT: And in point of fact, I mean they do talk about cage free, free range chicken. [00:19:24] MATT: Certainly. [00:19:25] FAWN: I'm sorry, but I know when you see the other documentaries, it doesn't matter. I [00:19:30] MATT: know Happy cows. It's a horrific, happy cows being slaughtered, but anyways, horrific. [00:19:34] FAWN: Anyway, we're vegan. [00:19:36] MATT: But, uh, yeah, back to back to meditation. Meditation does indeed lower blood pressure boosts your immune system, raises your emotional intelligence, ironically, because here you are in a place of stillness by yourself, but it raises your emotional intelligence, gives you more compassion for others, and it does lead to clearer thinking. [00:19:57] FAWN: And it also stretches time because the whole concept of time just shifts. So you actually transcend time [00:20:04] MATT: on some level time and space. And honestly, for me, really the key to being still is sometimes it feels, you know, when I'm talking with people that I'm either, and this is actually a quote, I'm stealing this from somewhere else, but since it's so much agrees with me, I'm just gonna pretend it's my saying. [00:20:25] MATT: But I'm foisting on others. Either my exhaustion or my distractedness. So I'll talk about, oh, the news stories, or, you know, what's happened, as opposed to really communicating who I am being still, if I'm still, then I, I have a better awareness [00:20:45] FAWN: of who I am. Have you ever met people who never stop talking? [00:20:49] FAWN: They won't even give you a breath to interject. I remember a friend of Daphne's that came over to my studio one day and I was waiting for Daphne to come back. Mm-hmm. Because she wanted to meet up with Daphne. They were traveling. Oh my God. I'd never met this person before, and I was doing them a favor. [00:21:07] FAWN: They're like, Hey, can we meet at your studio? I'm like, sure. Fine. Daphne was like three hours late and the whole time this person would not stop talking. Did not one breath. Of, a pause. Mm-hmm. And I was, the whole time, I, I was exhausted. it takes the life out of whoever you're with. If you're constantly on the move, if you're constantly moving your mouth or causing some sort of movement, there is an art of being still that totally lets the person know [00:21:39] FAWN: you are here with them, you are present, you're loving them, you're embracing them without physically touching them. There's an art to that, and it's quite simple. You just have to be still hold your own and look at the person and see them and listen to them, and I think people are so afraid of what happens to the in-between that they'll just keep running; [00:22:04] FAWN: running their mouths or running away one thing after another. But that was an important and very expensive three hour lesson. Oh dear. Because I, the whole time I was like, what is wrong with this person? Mm-hmm. Why are they doing this? They're afraid of something. Maybe they don't wanna be exposed. It was a form of control. [00:22:25] FAWN: It was the fear of maybe, What would happen if there's a lag in conversation? So what if there's a lag in conversation, I think that's another thing why people don't like to hang out with new people [00:22:39] MATT: because they're afraid of an awkward silence. [00:22:41] FAWN: Yeah, because a lot can come out of that. Yes. A lot of truth, a lot of pain Maybe. [00:22:48] FAWN: I don't know. But a lot is said within silence, which is probably why I don't like it when I tell you something and then they're silent. 'cause to me what comes out of that, what I'm thinking is like, these people are not my people. Now they have nowhere to go and they're just quiet or, or, I don't know. I don't know. [00:23:09] FAWN: I don't know. I mean, there's so many examples. It's, [00:23:12] MATT: it honestly, it runs the gamut. And there are points in time where it's good to be still and there are points in time where it isn't. And that's just it. We can literally pick and choose those moments and we should pick and choose those moments and to take us all the way back to [00:23:30] MATT: being still as being a good thing. Not only does it help rechannel our energy and give us more connectedness to ourselves, which allows us to better connect to others. But if we think about this guy, Thomas Merton, after he left the Mount Baldy Zen Center, he wrote a album that ended up going to number one in 19 countries. [00:23:55] MATT: Hmm. By not touring, by not spending time in the industry. He created that because he had something genuinely new to say, and that to me is also part of the key of friendship is genuinely having something new to [00:24:12] FAWN: say. I think that's why the bathroom is my conference room, because it's the only place I can just be without interruption. [00:24:20] FAWN: Because once your mind is clear and not interrupted, That's when you are coming up with your brilliant ideas, right? That's when you can hear the voice of God, right? You know, whatever, however way you wanna describe what God is for you. But that's when you can hear things. And there you go, is when the mind is still. [00:24:39] FAWN: So go in the bathroom, [00:24:40] MATT: or at least the mind is in the complete and utter flow state, whatever that flow state is, and a flow state is one of those like moments where you are Perfectly focused on exactly one thing, like riding your bike, like riding your bike. Hey, what do you know? Or, you know, doing the walking meditations that exist in mm-hmm. [00:25:00] MATT: In Christian traditions and in all traditions. I don't know all traditions. Mm-hmm. I don't know all traditions. [00:25:08] FAWN: You sure don't. [00:25:12] MATT: My ignorance is complete. [00:25:16] FAWN: I was gonna say something else I totally forgot. [00:25:19] MATT: See, we could have left it off on that quote. It would've been brilliant. Alright. Say [00:25:22] FAWN: the quote again. [00:25:24] MATT: My ignorance is complete, [00:25:26] FAWN: which I still don't understand. Explain. [00:25:32] MATT: I don't [00:25:32] FAWN: know. You don't know? You know nothing. Exactly. [00:25:36] MATT: That's what it is. My ignorance is complete. [00:25:38] FAWN: Alright guys. Don't be afraid to be still. I know you're not the art of stillness. When you look at martial artists, the ones, remember, our teacher would always say the laziest martial artists are the best. Well, yes, the less movements possible, the best. [00:25:58] MATT: I always descend a lot faster when I'm tired and don't wanna move. [00:26:04] FAWN: Thanks for listening. We love you. We'll talk to you in a few days. Be well, bye.