0103 PTSD to Peace: How Meditation Changed My Life

PTSD doesn’t always look like movie flashbacks. Sometimes it looks like a body that can’t downshift, a mind stuck on alert, and a craving for intensity that turns “normal life” into something flat and unbearable. Mark knows that terrain firsthand. He walks us through the path from working class Philly to the Marines, then back into civilian life carrying hypervigilance, depression, heavy drinking, and the quiet isolation many veterans feel when the structure disappears and the adrenaline is gone. 

We also get honest about what comes after survival: risky behavior, identity built around being “high strung,” and the kind of suicidal thinking people hide because they’re still functioning on paper. Parenthood becomes the turning point, the moment he decides he needs real mental health support if he’s going to be a father. From there, the conversation opens into spirituality and mindfulness without the fog machine, where “spiritual” means how you treat your family, how you drive in traffic, and whether you can meet your own inner chaos without running from it. 

Mark’s Zen meditation approach is radically simple and surprisingly hard: sit down, expect nothing, and pay attention. We talk Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, why guided practices can accidentally plant outcomes, how to relate to a wandering mind, and why breath awareness becomes powerful over years instead of minutes. He also shares a memorable blue light story that connects meditation, grief, and community in a way that feels both mystical and practical. 

If you want a realistic way to start a daily meditation practice for stress, trauma recovery, and nervous system regulation, this one gives you a method you can actually do today. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find the show.

Transcript

Cold Open On PTSD And Fatherhood

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The issues that I had and said, I need help if I'm going to be a father. My nervous system was a mess. You know, PTSD, I was drinking a lot, I was hypervigilant, I went through long periods of depression. It doesn't prepare you for anything coming back into the civilian world.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

What did that PTSD look like for you? How did it manifest for you?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I was addicted to adrenaline. Everything seemed so boring and slow, and I just wanted action. And that's when I started meditating in Israel. Spirituality is not a separate thing. See it, I sit right there on the truck window. And then she saw it and she broke down and she started crying.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

How many hours or minutes of meditation do you recommend to a person to do every day?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Don't expect anything. See what arises.

Meeting Mark And Early Life

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Mark, welcome to Multispective. I'm so excited to have you on air and share your unique story and perspective with our audience today.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Well, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Why don't you begin with just telling us a little bit about like your childhood? What was your childhood like? You know, who is Mark?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, I was raised in a place called Delaware County, which is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So it's kind of a working class type place. My father worked at a factory. He worked like the midnight to eight shift at one point. So, you know, he was always working. So it was working class. It was the 70s when I grew up. It was pretty tough. There was a lot of fighting, and um we were kind of free to roam the neighborhood because our parents worked hard. And uh, so it was a lot different than you know, it is today with the way I'm raising my kids. But it was a pretty good childhood, but there was a lot of emphasis on what are you gonna do for a living? I'm sure it's the same way now, but back then it was Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States, so it was like uh very materialistic. I'm not saying it's not like that now, but that's just the sense I got back then. And it was a lot of pressure to do well in school and things of that nature. And I really wasn't in the school, I was in the sports. So I didn't know what I was gonna do when I graduated from high school. So I got a job with the union, the Teamsters Union, which is it's a pretty tough outfit, you know, Philadelphia Teamsters Union. I loaded boxes like at the dock early in the morning. It was real dusty, and it I didn't really like the job, but it was a job. And it was there that uh one of the guys I worked with, his name, his nickname was Little Sween. So his last name was Sweeney. Yeah, but he was a pretty big guy, and he said, Hey Mark, uh, you know a lot of people. I sell these football pools. It was illegal gambling. Nowadays, gambling has become kind of legal, but back then it was illegal. So to make a long story short, I got pretty heavily involved in that and started working for his father, Big Sween. And um I didn't I was young, I didn't really realize what was going on. I tried to play it smart. I got a job at a gas station, a petrol station at night, and I used their phone for people to make the bets just in case I was, you know, the phone was being tapped. So I took precautions, but it was very stressful, and um, I wanted out. I I couldn't handle that kind of stress. So to get away from the stress, uh, I joined the Marines.

Leaving Gambling By Joining Marines

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Wow. You see the irony in that?

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Needless to say, I didn't get away from the stress. I went into a whole different kind of stress.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And this was during the first Gulf War. When I first joined, I didn't think there was gonna be any wars or anything. It was fairly peaceful. The Berlin Wall had just come down, and then out of nowhere, almost, you know, I was in for maybe three or four months, the war broke out in the Gulf, and uh that was that. So

Coming Home With PTSD

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I don't really want to get into all that, but what I can say is when I got out, I was a mess. You know, PTSD, I was drinking a lot, I was hyper-vigilant, and I went through long periods of depression. I managed to do good in college despite all that. That's kind of the common theme in my life up until the point where I got help, is that I was coping, I was moving through life, but I was suffering from mental illness. Finally, when I moved to Maui, I moved to I lived in a kibbutz in Israel. This is a long story, but I ended up living in a kibbutz in Israel and making a documentary movie, which that was kind of the turning point in my life. I kind of dropped my life and just took off. And that's when I started meditating in Israel. I wasn't real serious about it and I didn't have any discipline or anything, but it it was implanted in me meditation. But it wasn't until I moved to Maui and my ex-wife was pregnant with my daughter that I finally walked into a veterans clinic and asked for help. And that was about 20 years ago, and I can say that's really when everything started to come together, when I actually addressed the issues that I had and said, I need help if I'm gonna be a father.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Imagine the power of like parenthood can be can be such a jolt to the system in making one recognize their deep dark issues, their deep dark, you know, problems and seek that help. I've done episodes in the past where people have been at the brink of ending their lives, you know, they've been ready to sort of like just end it all and found out um that their partner, girlfriend, was pregnant and how they just found this new sense of purpose. But before we get into that, I still want to go back a little bit more into you know, when you were at uh wartime, we were when you were training and all of that. Was there any ever any talk of mental health? Was there any provisions? Do they had do they have any counselors there for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

There was a chaplain, you know, a religious type figure, but uh you were real careful what you said to anybody outside of your group. I recall there being like a one-day training at the end when I got out, like a deprogramming, but uh it wasn't, it doesn't prepare you for anything coming back into the civilian world. You know, I ended up going to college, I was a freshman and I was four years older than everybody else. And I just I felt like I was alone.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

What did that PTSD look like for you? How did it manifest for you?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Uh, you know, I used to announce, like, hey, I'm a little high strung, you know, I used to like, it was my identity. But you talk about being on the brink, you know, I I knew how to use weapons and I I stared at a nine millimeter for a couple of years, you know, thinking, okay, when am I gonna do it? So I I seriously considered it. Um,

Adrenaline Addiction And Risky Living

SPEAKER_01 7:15

but I woke up every morning with like a sense of dread and a sense of uh just being hyper-vigilant, and I was addicted to adrenaline. I mean, I realize that now. Everything seems so boring and slow, and I just wanted action.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Is that quite common among the veterans?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Uh I I would say it probably is from the ones I've uh met and from my experience. You know, when you're everything's so fast and you're you have so much action in your life, and really it's extreme. It goes from, you know, you're in in your unit, and you're out in the field and you're doing all these things, and then you come back, and all we wanted to do was party when we got back. So we wanted to live life to the fullest. So there was it was part of the culture. So when you get out, kind of the action's gone, the party's over, and you just for me, I just wanted to continue it as you know, as long as I could. I considered going back in. I think a lot of guys do that. They get out and they consider going back in, but it turned out really well.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

How did you seek that thrill? How did you seek the adrenaline?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Oh, a lot of risky behavior. I remember I used to like driving at high speeds, it's unbelievable. I uh hung out with an outlaw biker gang, you know, like real bikers. And uh it was kind of my dream to join. I had this crazy idea that I would go to law school and be the club's lawyer. So I started hanging out with those guys, but they ended up being uh even too much for me. I mean, there was drugs involved, and as soon as they did what is called a gut check, they like wanted to see what I was made of. I I ran away. I it I felt like I was going insane. They make you do meth and all coke and drink for like days straight, and it was it was a little too much for me. But the point is, is that I how did I even get involved in that? You know, what what was I thinking? And there was, you know, one night stands and partying and fights and jail and close calls with the law. And I don't know how I managed to go all the way to a master's degree and then get a decent job after all that. But like I said, somehow I kept it relatively together. But inside everything was falling apart.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Were you also because I know that it's quite common for people with PTSD having a lot of dreams, uh not being able to sleep through the night, certain memories sort of popping up in your in your mind at certain parts of the day, you or being triggered by regular life things um that just kind of reminded you of like you know being out on the field.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, I just remember it was my whole life, you know, from the time I went to bed to the time I woke up, it was just ingrained in me. My nervous

A Nervous System In Overdrive

SPEAKER_01 10:09

system was a mess. And um, you know, when you're in the midst of something like that, though, you're not really thinking clearly about it. It's only after all these years I can look back and kind of see everything for what it was.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

But uh, you know, if you would have known me even 10, maybe 15 years ago, uh it's just uh it's night and day. I mean, I I can't even believe that I'm relatively stable and have a stable, quiet, nice life where I'm actually helping people and helping my community. I never thought I would get there. I didn't even think I would be alive, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

You mentioned that you were drawn to meditation. Was this because you were in search to try to heal yourself from the depression and the sadness that you were feeling uh and then knowing that you were going to be a father, or what was it that kind of started um the meditation for you?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Well, like I said, I took I left my job. I was working for the governor of Pennsylvania, believe it or not. Somehow I ended up getting a job. Yeah. I was a policy analyst for the governor, but I took off to Israel to make this movie, and you know, it was kind of a the idea behind the movie was not the best way to make a movie. It was to follow the spontaneity of the universe wherever it took me. So there was about 300 hours of footage that had to be condensed down to an hour and a half, which that was a heck of a job. But I had been reading this guy, this philosopher, kind of an ecologist slash priest named Thomas Berry. Uh, wonderful. The great work is his kind of landmark piece. There's a whole program at Yale Divinity School and at Stanford as well, Brian Schwimm, uh, on Thomas Berry's kind of teachings. And it was kind of how the future was going to look if we were gonna live in harmony with the planet Earth. So I was highly, I mean, so influenced that I felt like I had to do the great work. I had to do something, anything. So I took off to Israel kind of on this quasi-spiritual journey. I had no clue what spirituality even was. I was like following some sort of authentic inclination, but I didn't have any semblance of understanding of what it actually meant. I didn't realize it just meant being relatively balanced in your normal life, that you didn't need to take off to Israel and try to solve the middle, solve the Middle Eastern crisis in film, you know. And I think that's a mistake a lot of people who get involved in spirituality make. Like I said, this is looking back, and it was an essential part of all this. But I've gotten to the point now to skip ahead all these years that it's just normal life. Spirituality

Spirituality As Everyday Attention

SPEAKER_01 13:05

is not a separate thing, you know. And in the West, maybe because we go to church, we go to the mosque, or we go to the synagogue, and then we go home, we kind of separate the two things. But what I realize now is it's just normal everyday life, you know, paying attention, paying attention to how much water you use, you know, because water is sacred, paying attention to how you treat other people, paying attention to how you treat yourself. Are you present with your family and your children? Are you present with other people? You know, how do you drive in traffic? That's spirituality. How do you eat all that stuff? Although I cheat a lot, you know. You can't be too serious about this stuff, otherwise you become uh become too much for anyone to handle.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Did you did you first kind of try to experiment with different forms of meditation? Because there's so many different types, like there's the body scans, there is the you know, listening to the guided meditations, there's so many different types of meditations. Which one stuck to you? How did you find out find the one that stuck with you?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Well, I did vipassana in uh Israel, which is very similar to Zen meditation, and I've done uh Jewish meditation, which is like mystical meditation. You kind of ponder a passage of the Torah and then you meditate, and then afterwards you discuss it with people. There was a guy named Dove Dove Pinson, I believe his name was, who taught that. Um, so I dabbled, I dabbled, and I lived in Maui, which is like kind of the new age Mecca for uh any type of alternative spirituality. And I was kind of turned off by everything, to be honest, after living in Maui, you know, a kid from Philly, a marine, living among uh that kind of crowd. I was a little turned off by it. But a friend of mine, uh, I kind of looked at him as a mentor, much older than me, pretty influential guy. I kind of just bugged him for years. I just kept bugging the guy until he finally took me under his wing. But he kept telling me, read this book, Mark. I'm telling you, just read this book. It's called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by a guy named Suzuki Roshi. So

Zen Mind And No Expectations

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And I had read, you know, hundreds, maybe thousands of books previously. But finally I did it. And after you know maybe 10 pages, when the guy kept saying, Really, I'll keep talking, but all I want you to do is put this down and meditate alone. You know, I'm saying all this just to encourage you to meditate. Meditation's where it's at. You know, if you really want to see where it's at, just put the book down and teach yourself, experiment yourself. So I just started doing it the way the guy said to do it in the book. At first I did it on a park bench at my lunch break, you know, staring at a tree. And then I started doing it facing a wall, which is a tradition in Zen. There's a guy called the Bodhidharma, pretty famous figure from thousands of years ago, who stared at a wall for seven years straight. So he was kind of my he was kind of my uh you know, example. So I just started doing it. And then Suzuki Roshi said in the book, just don't expect anything. Go in as open as you can. Don't look for results, don't scan yourself, don't try to do anything, just watch, see what arises.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

This meditation, the Zen meditation, was for you to simply locate, like fixate your eyes on something, be it a tree or a wall, and not to think of anything at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

You don't even uh fixate your eyes, you just uh it's hard to explain. You just put your eyes, you don't fix it on anything, which is the cool part about it. So you just you just start doing it. It's it's kind of hard to explain until you do it. But yeah, you go in open, almost like a beginner every single solitary time. You're not trying to solve anything or judge anything or go in and fix anything, you're just observing. So whatever arises, you could spend a whole 30-minute session in some kind of fantasy. That's fine. As long as you real, you know, you will realize it when the timer goes off. You'll be like, oh wow, where was I? Yeah, that's the whole thing right there. Just catching yourself and being aware of where your focus is directed, paying attention is all it is. And it's hard to explain until you do it. Yeah, because I went in to meditation, like you said, to heal myself because I thought I was a mess. Some people go in for enlightenment, some people go in, a lot of people go in for the social aspects of it. Um, and I think all of that played in for me, even like wanting to be some sort of leader or guru or get ahead. And now the meditation, I don't expect anything from it. I just do it because the key is to develop some kind of voice in your head that, you know, when you know you need to do something and you know it's good, like put out your trash because there's flies. You know, you you'll do what you need to do. Because I think basically we all know what we need to do. It's just a matter of doing it. When I first started, you know, for the first six months or a year, I felt a little better, but I didn't really notice anything. It was other people that noticed.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yeah. So what I can say to people who want to give it a try is just wait. When when your mother or somebody close to you, your spouse or whoever says, Wow, what are you, you know, don't even tell anyone you're doing it. That's another big mistake people make. They, you know, become born-again zen, start preaching the good word. Yeah. Um, but the key is to just stick with it with no expectations, kind of under it's better to keep it under the radar so your family doesn't think you joined a cult or anything like that. You know, keep it under the radar. And then all you're doing is you're stopping, like you said. You know, I get up in the morning, I may have had a bad dream, I may have slept on the wrong side of the bed, or I may wake up with that feeling of dread. You know, I think we all wake up sometimes a little intimidated by life. But I just stop, put myself in a perfectly balanced position, because that's all it is. It's kind of emulating the balance of nature. You know, everything in existence, including human-made things, they're all here because all these diverse forces and energies came together, worked together, balance themselves out, and here everything is. I mean, it's a long process, you know, if we go out into the universe and think about these things. So that's not necessarily um helpful. But it is interesting that when you stop and you limit all that sensory stimulation that's usually rushing into us from all angles in modern society, how you start to see, at least I did, how I'm made up of endless things. You start to see things like that. You know, you might call them mystical, you might call them connected to the universe or the earth or whatever you want to call it. But really, the bottom line is I don't feel so alone anymore. You know, even when I am alone, I feel as though I'm part of something. The only thing I try to achieve is the balance of nature itself in honor of the balance of nature or God or whatever you want to call it, the universe. So it's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

I don't know if that made any sense, but yeah, I mean it definitely does make a lot of sense. There's a lot of different types of meditation in which it's done slightly differently, or you know, meditators are being told, or like learners, beginners are being told that this is this is this is what they're going to be able to get out of it. So, what what do you think though, like is the ultimate um achievement? I mean, you know, you mentioned balance of nature and sort of like being in touch with that higher self or with that uh higher power. Um what does that look like? What what how can that change you in as an individual and your life around?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Well, I think you when you stop and you face everything, you get hit with intense things, feelings, memories, especially if you have trauma or anything heavy from the past. So you're kind of exposed to these things over and over every day you sit. And it's almost like you're exposed to it so much it's not so intense anymore. You can handle it kind of better. And then if you keep doing it and you keep handling it. Handling it and handling it, this kind of warm feeling starts to develop. I'm breaking it down to its most simplistic sense here. But like everything feels lighter, warmer. You feel part of the world, not separate from the world. I don't view all the temporary things happening in the world as permanent anymore. Like my culture, uh, war, all of these things that environmental problems, all of these things can really start to weigh us down, you know, as human beings. And I think it is wearing us all down because there's more information and we're more aware and we're more connected with one another all over the world. Those things can really wear you down. But I think this kind of feeling of warmth, and it's it's it's kind of passed on in we, you know, we say compassion. But what is compassion? Compassion is kind of, for me, it's passing on. I feel at home. Like I could leave here and go to Bangladesh tomorrow and feel at home. You know, it doesn't mean I wouldn't be maybe a little nervous and certain in the boosties of Calcutta, you know, I probably would be a little nervous, you know, just uh as a human being. But generally, I feel kind of loose and warm and paying attention. And I'm not like going out trying to spread compassion and help people. I don't think that's a good idea, you know, forcing it. But it's just kind of like it makes everything lighter, and I feel kind of like a kid again. You know, I used to bring my dog Trixie. We had this uh oil refinery, Sun Oil. We had this big oil refinery, like you know, there was it was kind of intimidating, especially it blew up once. But the only good thing about sun oil is they had their pipelines and they kept it like you know, woods, like forest a little where their pipelines were, at least. God knows what pollution was there. But I used to take I used to take my dog back there, and it was just such a free feeling. And that's kind of you know, to me, Zan and meditation isn't this strict walking around like a a Japanese monk, all this formality. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not putting it down. But for me, it's like a kid with uh with their dog in the woods. That's what it feels like to live this life.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Can you tell

Meditation As Warmth And Belonging

SPEAKER_00 24:34

me about some of the really, really powerful meditations that you've had that you can that you can really remember? Whether it's like you could feel something really physical, different, like a a change in you physically, or whether it's like you could feel you could sense something, you could feel something, you could see something in your meditation that was really powerful to you and momentous.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Well, I can say I'll give you a few stories, but the first one I'll say is when I help someone establish a meditation routine, I don't teach them, I just show them how to do it, and then they got to teach themselves, and if they have any questions, I'll I'll give them a hand. But I'm not their authority figure, you know, by any stretch of the imagination. But when they'll say, and this always happens, oh, I sat for 30 minutes last night and Buddha came to me, and uh, I just had this total feeling of um, you know, well, I always say, Oh, that's great. Uh, forget about that. Just wake up tomorrow and do it again. Do it again. Yeah, just don't get too attached to it. No, no, no, no, don't worry. That's great. That that's common, that happens to all of us if you meditate long enough. Don't worry about that. You know, it it's just as important to focus on um, you know, your bowel movements. But I have had, for lack of a better term, mystical experiences. Uh I'll I've had a lot of them, but I don't emphasize them. I do mention them in my book just to show that you can have these experiences and not chase them and not emphasize them. But they do give you a sense that you're part of something, some grand mystery that you'll never understand, which is always good to realize, you know, you're not in control. So they they are valuable, but I wouldn't suggest hallucinogenic drugs or any of those ceremonies because what do you do with that when you come back to real life? But anyway, not to get off the subject. This Kung Fu uh guy, he owned these studios, and he realized that Kung Fu started with the Bodhidharma. Um, and he wanted his students who were always moving and fighting to sit still, which was a pretty smart thing. So he's he asked me if I would come and do some classes in his studio. And he said every other week I could have the studio for free and do like a public one, and he would, you know, invite people, and I was like, cool. So I did it for a whole year, maybe even longer. But sometimes I would go on a Wednesday at noon and nobody would be there. And at first it kind of bothered me, like I'm driving 45 minutes, and but then I ended up loving it. I loved when no one showed up because I didn't need to do, you know, I could just focus on my own practice. But one day, and I never do this, you know, like you said earlier, you fix your eyes on something or the wall, you you just kind of you don't see anything, to be honest.

The Blue Light Grief Story

SPEAKER_01 27:33

But this particular day, there was this big glass window. It was cool watching people like that were going to get their nails done, or at the tile store look in and see me sitting there. They'd always be like, What is this guy doing?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

I can imagine you too.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah, it was so cool. It was like people would they couldn't believe their eyes. It was like, is that guy really there sitting that still? But anyway, one day there was this big truck. You know, we have big trucks here in Florida, and there was this beautiful blue light, like the sun was hitting it in the right spot, and it was like a tinted window, and there was this beautiful blue light, and I couldn't help but notice it. So I was meditating, but I was like playing with the light. I was like moving with it and dancing with it and having just a grand old time with this light, you know, one with the light. Yeah, and all of a sudden the door opened, and it was this little senior citizen lady, she had to be like 80, and I noticed that she saw my shoes placed neatly, and she took her shoes off and put them next to mine. And I was like, Wow, she's paying attention. So that caught my attention right away. And I said, Hi, and she said, I'm here to meditate. And she said, and I told my friends that if I didn't come home today, that I've been abducted by a cult. So she said, I'm a Catholic from Chicago, I've never meditated in my life. And I said, Wow. She's like, I want to get down like you. I said, Okay. So I put her on my mat. She got down on her knees in the position like she's been doing it her whole life. And she said, When I walked in, you were looking at something. You didn't look up right away. What were you looking at? And I looked up because my mat was in the same spot, and the blue light was still there. And I said, Do you see that blue light right there? And she looked. She was like, No, I don't see it. I said, right there on the truck window. And then she saw it and she broke down and she started crying. And I was like, Whoa, what's happening here? She said, You're not gonna believe this. My son passed away at 50 years old. It was a shock. It was sudden. He left a wife and two children. My husband, he has dementia, so he's her home with the nurse right now. She said, So a lot of stuff has been going on in my life. And my son had always told me that I should give meditation a try. And I never listened to him until now. I came here today because of my son, who's deceased. And she said, at his funeral, I released a hundred blue balloons because his favorite color was blue. His nickname was blue. We called him blue. That was his identity. And she said, I knew it wasn't good for the environment or the birds or anything, but I released the balloons anyway. And it was an overcast day, and just as I released the balloons, the sun came through the balloons and shined on everyone, and everyone knew it was blue, my son. And she said, and that light, that blue light is blue. He's here with us. He sent me here, and he's here with us. And I was like, Whoa! You know, I started crying, and it happened. There's no doubt about it. You know, that's a real thing. It happened. And then we sat for she sat perfectly still for 30 minutes, like she's been doing it her whole life. And she ended up doing sitting groups for grieving mothers and spouses with dementia who have uh partners with dementia. She credits me, and we both well, we both credit her son, you know, because her son's what brought us together, and he was there that day.

Signs Guided Practice And Skepticism

SPEAKER_01 31:15

So little things like that, mystical things like that, happen all the time now, like with me.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Just to kind of send a message, and it's like your openness to receiving that or to recognizing, you know, that this is a message from a higher being, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Well, it's just too coincidental to be coincidental. But then again, you know, after we cried and I was like, okay, let's sit now. Like I, you know, I segued right back over to the to the point at hand. So I think the key is to maybe be open to them when they happen, but don't, you know, if you're looking for a sign, you're gonna get the sign you're looking for every time. Yeah, but if you're open and not looking for a sign, sometimes you get some signs, you know. So I say don't look for a sign, otherwise you're gonna get what you're looking for, you know. And you talk about guided meditation and different forms of meditation. I think the same principle applies. I'm not knocking them, and whatever works and helps someone get balanced and have a purpose and establish a practice is good. But if if you're guiding someone or you're planting something in them before they even sit, it's gonna affect them, it's gonna influence them. So I'm very careful how I influence people. I don't want to get in the way of the balance of nature. I want them to, if they can, receive it, you know, in their own way because it it's far beyond me. So anything I can imply would be, let's just say, partial at best.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Yeah, yeah. Um, what does that sort of like balance of nature that you you've mentioned so many times, what does that look like? What does that feel like? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Well, it's simple. And when you overthink the balance, you're gonna get wobbly, you know. Balance is just balance. So meditation is the same thing. It's exactly like riding a bike or playing football year after year after year, and then your thinking starts to get balanced, your emotions start to balance with your body, with your thoughts, and everything starts to come together kind of like when you're riding a bike. It comes together. I mean, I don't know how you describe that. A scientist could, but I can't.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Yeah. It's like you kind of finally learn the you master sort of the art of being able to do it in a in a slope sense, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Well, you never master it.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

I'm not, I'm not uh the Tour de France of meditation, you know. I'm not I'm not uh a master. Uh I just keep learning and practicing, and you know, I help where I can. I think it's important for anybody. You know, I'm wearing a robe, I'm on your podcast, so I am presenting myself a bit as an authority here, but uh I always say remain skeptical, don't listen to a word I say, besides the balanced zazan posture, that you you can take at face value, you don't need to because you're just sitting there doing nothing. There's nothing to distrust besides yourself, you know. But anything else I may say, take with a grain of salt, because I'm just a human being and a flawed one at

When Your Mind Wanders You’re Doing It

SPEAKER_01 34:35

that.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

So, what do you then say to a person who's probably tried this? You know, I mean, I have read and spoken to people, read posts of people who've been like, I've been trying this whole kind of form of meditation of just like thinking of nothing for months, for years, but my mind keeps wandering and it just leaves me flustered. How do you get a person then to bring their mind into sort of that one singular point? Or do you or do you believe that it's okay to just let the mind continue to wander? Because the goal is to sort of be focused, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Well, they're if they're aware that their mind is still wandering and they're aware that they get flustered, perfect. They're they're doing it. Now, they might want to focus on the flustered part. How does it feel to be flustered, as opposed to judging it and saying, My mind wanders? Well, every mind wanders, even a master's mind wanders sometimes. So get past that judgment, you know, your mind wanders. Uh, everybody's mind wanders. Great. Uh, you're aware of that. You get flustered because your mind wanders. Well, that's interesting. What does flustered mean? How does it feel to be flustered? So the goal is just to go over all the possibilities. You know, do you move on? Do you go into it? Maybe try them all. So it's kind of like experimentation. It's more of a creative, artistic process than any fixed idea of what you're trying to achieve. Now I can say, and it certainly wasn't my goal because I would have never even understood that this was possible. So that's the thing with goals. You got to be careful because you limit yourself.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Yeah. So are you saying that you are processing it and releasing it and letting it go from your body, or are you simply just noticing it and saying that's going to pass too?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yeah, it's not permanent. And it's an instantaneous thing. Like I don't even think about it now. The balance takes care of it. I don't even really need to worry about it. But I notice that I'm irritated on a particular day. I kind of comes back to that compassion, that lightness, that warmth. It's like, oh, that guy, Uncle Fluster's funny. Wow. And it's kind of like instantaneous. Yes, I feel irritated. I feel tense, but I'm not going to let Uncle Fluster be the center of my universe today. I'm going to let Uncle Balance or Uncle Coach. For me, I just come back to my breathing. Breathing is such, you mentioned it earlier. It's probably, you know, I don't go into meditation focused on my breath. Although in Zen they do say you, you know, you can focus on your breath. It's a good way to kind of get direction of your attention again.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

But the breath really can, it's amazing when you get over years and years and years, when you pay attention to your breath. And it's just part of it. It's not like my central focus. It's just part of that balance has made me realize. Like when Messi lines up for a penalty kick, the first thing he does is take a couple of deep breaths. Anyone, you'll see them when they're about ready to kick. They take those deep breaths.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

It's key. And your breath is a very, very powerful thing. But it's not going to make much sense unless you focus on it for years and years and years.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

And you can't focus on it with the idea that it's going to do anything for you. It's almost like if you want to watch a bird in its natural habitat and you're constantly analyzing what it's doing, and you're and you're trying to predict what it's going to do next. And then you're saying, oh, when the bird sings, it's singing to me. It's a message from the universe. You know, everything's going through you. Like, oh, this beautiful sunset. It's for me. Well for me, I got to get out of the way to actually hear the bird sing. You know, I gotta hear it's singing for itself or other birds. It's not singing for me. So this is kind of the same concept, you know. I'm breathing and I'm paying attention to my breath, but it's not necessarily for me. It's hard to explain, but it's kind of like, you know, breathing is what everything does. It's kind of the central uh process of life, right? So it's got some kind of primordial wisdom in it uh beyond my understanding, but can I actually listen to it without getting in the way of my own breath?

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah. This actually really does remind me of that Vipassana meditation because I I went for one of those retreats as well, and they really did start off by telling us to focus on the breath. And we because we because we spent so many hours doing that, I become hyper-aware of every small tiny sensation that the breath was was giving me. Um but yeah, in your waking day when you're doing things or when you're in an argument or you're doing some having a you know disagreement with someone or or you're having a stressful moment. That is the first thing that happens to you physiologically. You are you f you find yourself breathing faster, you find yourself having shorter breaths, but we just don't pay attention to it. But that is the absolute beginning and end of all of the sensations that we experience in our body and all the emotions that we feel in our body.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

So yeah, I mean, like I was talking about being able to listen to the bird song.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

So in order to do that, your mind has to be emptied. So I kind of think in that particular instance, when you're talking about microanalyzing the breath, almost the purpose of it is I can't speak, I don't do that kind of meditation, I have done it, but I would think that the root purpose of all that would be to kind of think the breath out so that you've considered it from so many different angles that you could empty all that out and consider it anew almost. So I think there is some good quality and really microanalyzing everything and theory. Like for me, I needed to read everything I could, try everything I could, do everything I could to get back to just, you know. I think if you meditate every day with an open mind, beginning again, emptiness, you'll have a whole session where you are checking out your breath like that. It'll come naturally as opposed to it being planted in you. Like in some sense, I think for me, that's kind of like trying to take a shortcut.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

When you could have taught yourself that if you stuck with it long enough. But on the other hand, it depends on how a person learns. I mean, I'm not knocking it.

The Five Minute Two Week Start

SPEAKER_00 41:21

How many hours or minutes of meditation do you recommend to a person to do every day?

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Well, if they're just beginning, I would say five minutes for two weeks straight without missing a day. So if you miss a day, like on day 13, you go back to one. So five minutes, and this kind of helps with the feeling of achievement that one may have in the beginning. Out of the thousands of people I've showed how to meditate, only one got back to me and said, I did two weeks straight. Really? And I haven't heard from him. I don't know what if he's still doing it. I hope he is. So he was like the least likely guy I thought. He was a salesman, like a CEO. You know, I thought I thought this guy is not gonna, but he did it. But um, just to get a routine down, you know, get the momentum building, five minutes. It might not seem like much, but it's almost pop impossible for a beginner to do five minutes for two weeks straight without missing a day. Because something always gets in the way. So two weeks for five minutes is all it takes with no expectations, just in the proper form. You know, you can Google search Zazin posture or go on my website or whatever to get the and you can do it in a chair. I mean, there's some disadvantages to doing it in a chair because you're like I've been sitting right now talking to you, and my legs are like, oh man, because it's been over an hour, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, so my when you don't have that leg pain, it's kind of a disadvantage because when I get up and my legs aren't working properly, and then slowly but surely they start working properly, I'm always happy that I can walk. Like I'm like, I don't take it for granted anymore. So it's kind of a disadvantage of doing it in a chair. But you know, in the West, we don't sit on the floor, you know, in lotus or half lotus, or we sit in chairs. So you could, and it was an old Japanese woman who taught me that that you didn't need to sit like that. Because I was showing her Zen meditation, and she looked, she laughed and she said, It's funny that an American guy is showing a good Japanese woman like me how to do Zen. And then she said, And you're sitting on the floor like you're supposed to, and I'm sitting in a chair. And I said, Oh no, no, no. I said, I'm sorry. Your ancestors instructed me better, and I didn't instruct you properly. Sitting in a chair is perfectly fine. And that was the moment when I realized you can sit in a chair to meditate, you can go 40 minutes at a time, 12 times in a day, if you want to give. yourself a little retreat or something. But I would say in the beginning, just gradual, go

The Book And Free Support

SPEAKER_01 44:05

slow.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Mark, just final messages. I'd love for you to share a little a little bit about your book and what what readers can expect from reading your book. What can they learn? What do you have to offer? What do you have to share with our listeners today?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Well the book is called Just Stare at the Wall. And in parentheses it says more than a meditation book, a lifestyle. My friend came up with that. That was good. My book is not a shortcut. It's not a self-help book. It's not anything like that. It's kind of radical. It's wild and you gotta kind of like gradually stick with it. Just like the meditation itself. If you can get through it, uh I think it might help.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

I know you've mentioned a couple of times that you are helping guide people through their own meditation journey. Is it like sessions, classes? Do you charge people for these for these meditation sessions? How does it work?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

No, everything I do is free. I can do it on Zoom. I can do if you're in the Florida area, I can do it in person. And yeah, you know the first thing I do is just show people how to do it and then I give them the two week challenge, let's just say I don't like calling it that, but other people do. And then if they can get through that, you know, it's the Harvard honor system. I don't think there's any point in telling me you did two weeks if you didn't. It kind of defeats the purpose. So it seems like everybody's honest. And uh sometimes I'll get a call like two, three years later someone will say, I did it. I met you in a restaurant two years. I don't even remember who the person is. I take donations of course because even a monastery has to pay the bills. And this is kind of my whole life. Yeah I'd rather not sell anything. That's why I say I'm a teacher of nothing. I'm a a practitioner of nothing and I just stare at the wall that's all that's wonderful Mark.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Thank you so much for sharing that and like the value of meditation and like the power of you know just sort of like pausing for a while and even some of the more practical tools on like how to sit in that form of meditation everything. I think that's really insightful for listeners. And also kind of quite reassuring to know that really you don't have to go from nothing to 10 hours of meditation a day. You can build it and you can take all the time you need so not to feel the pressure of if I do more hours I will achieve something faster that it doesn't work that way. Just all it all it is is just sort of being and being and gradually it'll all kind of come to you naturally and sort of like trusting that it'll happen in its own way.

SPEAKER_01 46:36

It's having faith it really is and then you know it's having faith in yourself that you're balanced. We're all perfectly balanced. We just may not know it. You know we gotta constantly work at it.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Thanks Mark for today I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Closing Thanks And How To Help

SPEAKER_00 46:53

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show please follow and subscribe. You can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description. I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we're human. Also a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen. Lucas Theory, Stefan Menzel The show would be nothing without you. I'm Jennifer, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective