Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#20 - Dr. Rick Goes on a Silent Retreat

• David Walton

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David discovers his old movie character, Dr. Rick, might be the perfect vehicle for exploring the ego-driven absurdity of modern spirituality.

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Hey, welcome back to Starting Stand Up, the podcast where I point a microphone in my midlife crisis and try to make it funny for the stage. This week I discovered something weird. I spend Wednesday mornings teaching meditation and try to help people in this community in Maine. I live in, find some more peace for their life. And then I spend some afternoons doing cameos as Dr. Rick from the movie The Cult Classic fired up. Dr. Rick is the world's most arrogant douchebag pre-med student and somewhere between those two personas that are in me there might actually be a comedy act. So today's episode we're gonna try to figure that out together. [Music] [Whistle] [Music] Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish. Tip to a big, big fan of the show for pointing out a Bill Burr interview on Smartless. Smartless is a podcast that I'm sure you've heard of most have. They're making hundreds of millions of dollars it seems. But anyway, Bill Burr was on there and it was just listen to it. And it's really kind of my dream really. And he joked that I should be suing them, but I don't think I have a case yet. But really a lot of the Bill Burr interview was about his start and his first open mic, his second open mic in Boston. And it was fascinating and I loved it. And it made me more excited to get into that kind of stuff. I have a dream of being a completely different person and being able to do two shows a week where one's an interview and one's just me talking. One of the things Bill Burr said that was cool was that he's been doing his Monday morning podcast since 2007. Where it's like he had to dial in on a cell phone before the iPhone was invented for the young and listening. And he was uploading episodes into MySpace. And I didn't realize this because I used to listen to his podcast. But it's just him and it started with just five minutes and then it kind of went to 10 minutes. And now he just rants for about an hour. But he doesn't have, he doesn't have guests. And I remember that was the first podcast I ever listened to. I believe it's been so old. And so maybe there's some weird subconscious influence why I also just sit here and talk. Bill Burr is a gift to the world. Incredibly funny, incredibly talented and hardworking and all those things. So my hat's off to you and I love listening to you. And yeah, thanks for subconsciously inspiring me to do this. We've had a some realizations this week. I'll share them with you. One is there was this, I don't know if it was a tweet or something. This idea of asking the MIQ most important question and the value of asking good questions. And when you are overwhelmed in life or you're working on a creative project or you seem to have some sort of dilemma or problem. Instead of searching for a solution, search for the best question to answer the most important question. I did this little exercise and I'll share it with you. I wrote most important question as it relates to this project that you're listening to. How do I improve my stand up act as quickly as possible? That's it. That seems to be the most important question. It gets right down to it. Speed, highest rate of improvement. And my answer was simple. It was three words. Right, right, right. I had some clarity in the sense after my last performance, I watched the tape. And because I've been acting for 20 years, I actually played a stand up comedian on a USA show. I got murdered, but I talked to Kevin Christie, who's a stand up and he said I should take a look at Bill Hicks. If you haven't heard of Bill Hicks, very famous comedian does some really deep stand up. Maybe I'll add a clip here right now, really get going. We're tripping and the car goes, the door is a jar. We pulled over and thought about that for 12 hours. Shit, how can the door be a jar? But I did Bill Hicks and I don't remember the show that I was in USA. It was a blue sky in plain sight. That's it with Mary McCormick. Yay. Anyway, I performed a stand up set. I just, I completely forgot this. I performed a stand up set on camera as a, like an emerging or pretty famous stand up comic on a procedural in 2007 or so. And Bill Hicks was the inspiration. What I'm getting at is that, and I've done hundreds, if not a thousand auditions, I've performed in theater, I performed in high pressure situations, probably the most of which are like wedding toast. But my point is this, I have got to, the best use of my time is just writing. It's obviously getting up there as important, but I would say it's less important. I think my first open mic was just get it out of the way, get up there, have a loose idea of what you're going to do and then just get up there and wing it. And you, for those who've listened for a while, you have heard those. And that's, those are sort of results of not writing and now are writing, but not really crafting. So this is all to say that it's time to craft. And so once again, this episode will be another soup to nuts episode. I'm excited about the topic that is so important to me. It's, if I didn't have to have a career, I honestly will tell you that I would probably meditate all day. And I would probably read Dharma books and research the great saints, it is, and I would just noodle that world. And I do love to guide meditations. I have felt like a complete imposter beginning, but now I don't. I don't think I have got anything together, but I think I've, I'm so passionate or I'm so interested in the subject that I end up just passing along the wisdoms that resonate with me. And one of my frust, deep frustrations, when you study, I'm at the great yogis or spiritual leaders that are long gone way before the internet existed or the people who sort of brought Eastern philosophies to the States starting in the 60s and 70s, people like Muktananda, you know, flowing robes, Maharishi, and then Ram Das picks up the torch and that whole Eastern world begins spreading like wildfire through all these sort of acid taking, calm hippies, but the sort of consciousness expansion of the 60s that we're still riding that wave now. And I am, it's fascinating stuff for me, figuring out or or contemplating ultimate reality, contemplating this idea that your self or ego is sort of vapor is an illusion, which is a very hard thing to wrap your head around, thinking about this idea, concepts and words, really just being like not the thing itself, but just boxes around reality. We're doing our best with these words. It's all we have. But come on, I mean, think about what is intuition? What is this these deep layers of wisdom that we seem to be born with these personalities that just seem to download into our babies? I find it completely fascinating past lives. And ultimately, what I find the most fascinating or the most interested in is transcending my humanness almost is just sort of elevating my vibe, if you will, like living with as much integrity, love, connection, compassion, and trying to live in that place, but getting completely sideswiped by life and by pressure and by career and by just the simple fact that I have chosen a profession that is so look at me. And in this weird ironic twist, I spent 20 years acting where your career gets better and better, the more famous you are, the more people are just blowing sunshine up your ass. Oh my God, you were amazing in that show. And all it is doing is reinforcing this ego, this sense of, oh, I am so special. And I think a lot of people at middle age begin to shift where there's an old saying where you spend the first half of your life trying to become somebody, and the second half trying to become nobody. And that resonates extremely deep with me. Ram Dass's documentary Becoming Nobody is I recommend, but you begin to intuit that your life and all the suffering that you're experiencing and all the unhappiness you're experiencing may be connected to your attachment to this concept of a self and how being in this important thing that wants things and will only be if only I had those things and I'd be happy. You've heard this all before. So the irony that I am now doing probably the most look at me art form is not lost on me. However, it tracks, and I think I mentioned this in earlier episodes, it tracks only because there are ways to express yourself. There's ways to explore the dilemma of trying to be somebody in order to make a living while also trying to be nobody. And the trick here for me is to somehow take these potentially confusing thoughts if you're still following me and perform and somehow make this the topic of my stand-up sets. Because otherwise I don't have interest. Like I said a couple weeks ago, airplane jokes just aren't going to do it for me. And I was happy with this mindfulness stuff. It's obviously a topic I'm extremely obsessed with. It's talked about ad nauseam. There's apps for mindfulness. Mindfulness is a word that is many different definitions and misunderstood and has been commodified and people are trying to profit on it. And a lot of it just makes me sick. This idea of like, oh, I'm going to be this like enlightened person and just extract money from people by branding my enlightenment online. That's sort of the negative view of it. The positive view is, hey, if I'm learning things that are helpful for me, why wouldn't I share them in case they're helpful for other people? And you can look at everything like that. Oh, they're just sharing something that's important to them on Instagram or TikTok. And we can benefit from it. If you want, if you don't just swipe away. But there's that dark side of just self-serving, profiteering off of a faux spirituality. So I've been writing about this and I've been thinking a lot about it. And I was really encouraged and happy that that premise I stumbled into where mindfulness doesn't make you enlighten it. It just sort of makes you fully aware of what a disaster you are. I'm excited to perform that, but we're going to hone that, get those jokes tighter. So the soup to nuts today is a callback to a rant I did months ago where I was pretending to be a bully who was bullying school kids for not believing like profound spiritual truths where like a bully is like roomy has a quote. The wound is the place where the light enters you. Other contemplatives have said that, you know, like God enters where the, when your heart breaks, you know, these sort of sangs, inspirational sangs that you'll hear on Instagram now. But like a bully being like, Jimmy doesn't believe the wound is the place where the light enters you. Let's get him. And that's a weird idea. And there's, if you just did that, if I just did that on stage, people are just going to look at me like, well, you, what's, what's wrong with this guy? So, but I didn't want to give up on any sort of popped into my brain. And I'm glad I didn't give up on it because I ended up discovering something, which was I played a beloved bully in a movie called fired up. And there was a very funny comment, I think I posted something and a guy goes save it like some guy heard like an excerpt from the podcast. And he goes, well, you just save us a whole lot of load of time and just go up on stage as Dr. Rick. If you haven't seen fired up Dr. Rick is this very arrogant douchey, he thinks he's a doctor even though he's premed and he's a despicable human being. He's an absolute idiot, but he thinks he's amazing. And for whatever reason, that character, I do cameos for people using Dr. Rick. And it has always been something that's fun to do. And, and the attitude is just in me. I can't explain it, but it's funny to me that I'm sitting in a meditation class sort of espousing this idea of like relaxing around your heart and like opening to beauty and connection and love and just letting yourself be filled with wonder. And then like five minutes later, I'm doing a cameo as Dr. Rick where I'm just like ripping on someone who just had a baby because they like did the wrong. They like didn't have a, they used a doula. So there are a bunch of pussies. But the way we got there was me sort of thinking back to like silent retreats I've been on and realizing that my ego and my inherent like competitiveness like never goes away even there. Not to bore you, but the last time I was at a silent retreat, it was my second one was a seven day at the insight meditation society in Barry, Massachusetts. And you show up but there's probably 80 people there. And you don't talk for seven days. And you're just alternating but about 45 minutes of sitting meditation, 45 minutes of walking, do that all morning, eat lunch, go for a walk, do your chores like I sweep, swept the floors and then you go back and do sitting, walking, sitting, walking, sitting, walking. It's basically sort of seven a.m. to eight 30 at night meditating and eating and a little bit of work. And for whatever reason, the second one I did about a year ago, I was just very locked in meaning I almost couldn't stop meditating where they ring the bell, everyone go to lunch and I just stay. And I remember, I remember feeling this like pride, like, Oh, wow, dude, you're like locked in, man. You're like crushing it like, Oh, look at all these pussies going to lunch and you're just going to keep going. You know, and then I would be like, Jesus, you're so aware of your thoughts that you're like, Oh, yeah, look at that. And you could sort of personify that person. You'd be like, Oh, there's like Dr. Rick at the silent retreat. And then I was like, Oh, Dr. Rick at a silent retreat. There's something there. And that connected then to the bullying because Dr. Rick is a bully. And I think ultimately what I want to the larger premise is that everyone is like trying to win at being spiritual, even, you know, that your intentions are good, but your humanness, no, you can unless you fully, you know, turn into a rainbow, you're still going to be a dick sometimes and you're still going to be and I think I think ultimately, why spiritual people can be so intolerable for so many and why someone like Donald Trump can be so fascinating and become this like cult leader for so many is that Donald Trump, while never admitting a mistake or and is obviously lies and never admits it, he kind of owns being a bullshit artist, whereas spiritual people pretend not to be full of shit. And I think ultimately what everyone is just responds to intuitively is someone owning their light and their dark and not pretending that they're not judgmental when they are or not pretending when they aren't selfish when they are because we all are we're all judgmental, we're all selfish and the people who are just owning it and not beating themselves up for it and are can laugh at it are ultimately the people that you want to hang out with and are charming and are fun and the people who are intolerably insufferable are like the prigs who think they're they're self-righteous or they think that they're higher than you or more evolved than you and unfortunately the sort of mindfulness world is filled with those people that you know I don't talk to anyone there but there's no question that people brag about their how many silent retreats they've been to people brag about how much they meditate the ego that the ego is so subversive and it's just going to come in and it does it with me and so I want to get on the stage and basically just rip on myself about this subject while also which will then give me license to rip on the kind of entire spiritual world that I am you know relatively intimate with what do you think have I lost you all right we're going to take a break um right after these words Kirkland signature organic raw and unfiltered honey has become a staple in my pantry I am currently on an all-sugar honey diet where I tube honey deep into my system all afternoon while also eating b1 vitamin b1 thiamine and magnesium glycinate this protocol is not recommended and I am not sponsored by Kirkland and this is not a real advertisement but I am tubing so much honey these days but that's for another time I just wanted to practice being having sponsors okay back to the show so we spitballed some like this idea of the humble brags in spiritual life like it's challenging sometimes being so sensitive to other people's energies you know like like I can literally feel when someone isn't doing their inner work like I just feel so blessed that my daily 4am meditation practice has allowed me to transcend the need for caffeine you know uh since I started micro dosing I I just can't relate to people operating at lower frequencies anymore that kind of vibe and I'm guilty of commodifying ancient wisdom for my bathrobe company Wakanichi Romdoss and I don't think I can I don't think he came up with this but do less be more which is an ancient wisdom I just slapped it on a luxury bathrobe you know because nothing says transcend materialism like $120 actually I was with a family and friends discount $200 terry cloth costume I think there's some potential for mindfulness products you know mindfulness mattress you're basically taking a 2600 year old person like the Buddha and you're just trying to milk him for cash and there's something funny and dark about that make start a crypto coin mine coin my mine coin manifestation needs blockchain technology um so back to the bully thing so this idea was writing about bullies and then this idea that bullies have sort of there's bullies everywhere and that there are bullies in wellness you know and that you can kind of tell when someone has just got like a ton of like rage inside them but are pretending to be peaceful you know you you know those people just a lot of dark shit that they're not in touch with like I could see a fun act out where I notice someone at retreat who's not in touch with their rage and they're like acting all peaceful but I can see the pain and the bitterness and the anger and the misery underneath it and I just want to say them oh it's okay let out your inner bully let it go let it out let's do an exercise and then I would encourage these people to bully people in retreat and then I can act out their spiritual bullying yeah like and you could set it up in a in an act like you can always spot someone at a retreat who's suppressing their rage under a peaceful veneer like their namaste sounds like it's being said through gritted teeth you know um and I don't have any really great jokes about this yet and then I was like I was exploring you know basically other people being bullies and then I was like wait a minute what if what if I brought some dr rick bullying to a mindfulness retreat and then and then it and then it kind of went like get all these fucking amateurs go straight my spine is dude your posture is giving me spiritual acid reflux man spine straight like you actually respect the Buddha this isn't nap time at burning man man hey Darth Vader you're not gonna reach nirvana through your mouth the breath goes through the nose bro the nose most of skip meditation 101 dude like some guy's just shifting around are you having a seizure are you trying to meditate dude pick a position and commit this isn't spiritual musical chairs and I like high five the mindfulness teacher I get annoyed when people are doing you know it's being my parody when they're listening to a speech and they really resonates we get it dude you're having profound insights why don't you profound insight your way into some actual silence man I don't think any of that's that good but um and I think ultimately we're we're trying to figure out what it the core truth to explore is what that it's hard it's genuinely depressing to spend years doing spiritual work like thousands of hours at this point on the cushion meditating teaching others about peace and acceptance and just being and then still having this judgmental asshole living inside of you just dr rick waiting for my blood sugar to drop before he just takes over and it can connect to the the pulling of the trash can in the snow and screaming and turning into jack torrance from the shining it's really the futility of trying to transcend our human nature the fragility of spiritual progress and that's our show I mean look I went for it I try to transcend being human and I tried to do it through comedy and I still failed just as a note if you do know me personally I don't want you to think that I'm judging you even though I am no I'm not I mean look I really do love I have a lot of love in my heart for people and their struggles and their shortcomings it's all good it's all good you're good you're okay everything's okay everything's gonna be okay everything is perfect just doesn't seem that way that's my message everything's perfect it's all good all love all the time I'm just so curious about how everyone's doing how are you doing you're driving right now are you walking are you cooking what else is going on are you feeling satisfied physically spiritually and emotionally probably not yeah I get it look it's a grind man it's such a grind but I'm here for you I really am and I'm gonna figure out how to make you laugh and I really do apologize if I didn't today but stick with me we will figure it out I'm gonna reliably do it all right lots of love I'm gonna lead a quick meditation here just because I want to reward you for your your hard work let's do a brief guided meditation okay bring awareness to your breath notice how your chest rises and falls and now bring gentle attention to that review button that you haven't clicked yet just feel the resistance arising and the excuses forming and notice how your ego wants to just close this app and move on with your day but then remember that paying forward is the key to life and that the only way that I'm actually gonna get a Kirkland organic honey raw and unfiltered advertisement to continue this journey is quest is if it spreads and is shared and enjoyed by more than you by others so thank you and I appreciate you now go tell someone you love them hold them tell them just how much you love them and if appropriate make love to them you you you you you you you -Police. -[ pm finishes direct notification ] [ Cheers and applause ]