Why is it that we can be doing something, and our mind starts to think about something else involuntarily?

Is this a helpful part of the human experience? A nuisance?

The nature of mind-wandering is something that scientist Arnaud Delorme has been investigating for the past 20 years. In this conversation, we explore what he has learned as well as some of the main questions the scientific community is trying to understand around the nature of mind. Arnaud recently released a book on this topic and his research called Why Our Minds Wander.

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast

There are some people I just love listening to talk.

Today’s episode is one of those people. 

David Perell is an entrepreneur, writer, and creator of the renown online course Write of Passage which helps aspiring writers transform their lives by writing online. 

A lot of people know David on the internet because of his prolific writing and content creation, but what I was interested in learning about is how the shifts in David’s personal and spiritual life fuel his creative endeavors.

In this conversation we talk about David’s journey with his faith and how it’s empowered him to be a better leader and step even more deeply into his purpose. It feels like many people I talk to these days have difficulty feeling aligned with their purpose. A big part of my personal hypothesis is that uncovering this is a process that occurs naturally once you begin to do the inner work and remove the impediments that make it easy to embrace what you love.

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast

Today’s guest is Stephen Zerfas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Jhourney. 

Five years ago Stephen found himself crying tears of joy after stumbling into a prolonged state of ecstatic bliss on a meditation retreat. 

Up until this point, most of the retreat was migraine-inducing so he wasn’t sure how he had landed in this profound place. After the retreat, he was interested in how to recreate this experience whenever he wanted. Through many months of personal experimentation and research, he realized that these states are available to all humans on demand. In fact, you don’t even need to be a long-time meditator!

In this conversation, we discuss the Jhanas and how Jhourney is going about making them more accessible. Interesting ideas include:

• An overview of the Jhanas and why we should care

• How meditation as far as what has been brought to the West is still largely unexplored

• The history of why these experiences went from very popular to obscurity and are now emerging yet again

• The different schools of insight including dry vs. wet insight

• His learnings collecting the largest scientific dataset on Jhana meditators in the world

• How technology can enhance this age-old tradition

• Arguments against pursuing the Jhanas and his response

• How access to the Jhanas has the potential to change the world

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast