Michael Pollan

There's a famous old quote, I don't have the speaker in memory, but it says, huge amount of the world's problems come from man's inability to sit in a room by himself.

I remember I was in a period of meditation a couple years back, and I was trying to meditate a lot because a lot was happening in my life.

And I felt like I was just getting more and more upset.

And I remember talking to Will Kabat-Zinn, who's a great meditation teacher in the Bay Area, who we both know.

And he said to me something I've never forgotten.

He said, oh, so you're not enjoying the process of insight.

And I actually think this is

part of actually a lot of things to say nothing of our president who i think his uh cannot sit in a room alone with him cannot sit in a room alone with himself i think his need for constant distraction and ego reinforcement actually speaks to some complicated relationship he has of his own consciousness um

It is sometimes actually quite hard to be there by yourself.

And when you make space for it, and I mean, people go on meditative retreat often have very difficult times.

It can be, and I think usually is, very profound.

But you are often going through struggle.

One of the great lies about meditation is that it's peaceful.

In fact, it's often much more...

Yeah, it's much more peaceful to distract yourself, or peaceful may not be the word I'm looking for there, but we distract ourselves away from internal agitation.

Is that a question of consciousness or of attention?

I've just met people who are increasingly working on...

Attentional liberation movements.

The Friends of Attention being a good example of this.

It just came out with a new book.