Diego Perez

And it's funny because...

I've seen it happen in myself and I had to overcome that.

And I've seen it happen to a lot of other people, but when we learn and understand more of what the goal is, and then we start bringing this like Western capitalist, like productivity mentality to it.

And it's like, how can I optimize?

How can I get there faster?

And this is the antithesis of that.

This is like literally about,

How much can I just observe and allow my mind to be so utterly balanced that I'm letting these things unfold organically?

And I think that's one of the hardest things because like, what's the Buddha really asking?

He's just asking to just observe.

And that's like one of the hardest things for a human being to do.

Yes.

I think that's one of the reasons why I've like, you know, my wife and I, we live now in Western Mass where there's a lot of meditators out here and we've been living up here for four years and we lived in New York before that in New York City and it was just a wonderful time and it was interesting being around in New York City, being around a lot of

people who wanted to help the world in different ways, but also had a lot of ambition to like make these big goals and make them happen.

And I think it was really helpful for me to be in New York City, even like being in New York City, like I got to meet you for the first time when we did the seven minute thing that we made for your show in 2019.

And, you know, meeting Elena Brower, just meeting different people that kickstarted my writing career.

And yeah,

I knew that once the writing career got established and I was like, okay, I've made some good connections, made some great friends.

I'm like, I really want to grow in the practice.

So I had to kind of move up here and just surround myself with people that I could learn from because, you know, I've only meditated what, like maybe like somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 hours.