A Beginner's Journey to Jhana, Personality-Change, and Forgiveness in 100hrs (Zach Lauzon)

[00:00:00] Stephen: Welcome, Zach. We've been looking forward to speaking. You and I met on the most recent journey retreat where I know you had some Jhana experiences and I've been looking forward to getting to chat to you a bit more about those, how things have gone since the retreat and You're a little bit about your backstory and how you got into this in the first place.
[00:00:23] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. I've been looking forward to this excited about chat about everything.
[00:00:27] Stephen: Why don't we start with jumping right in to the, we can take either a palpable John experience that you had, or the first John experience that you had, maybe the most surprising and give us a little bit of a play by play.
What was that? Yeah
[00:00:45] Zach Lauzon: let's see.
Yeah, I'll go, I'll describe one of my earlier Jhana experiences during the first couple days of the retreat the [00:01:00] sort of blends together in my memory something that I think is a common experience on retreat where time sort of melts and the experiences become more fluid. Totally.
[00:01:10] Stephen: But During the retreat, it's every day is two days long and morning is wildly different from the afternoon and after retreat, it's all just one big pile of mushy memory.
Yeah,
[00:01:21] Zach Lauzon: exactly. Yeah. I would yeah, the meditation would start with sitting down and working up a feeling of loving kindness in my heart. I think of my cat or, my grandmother, a dear friend of mine and I would just bring my attention like to my heart and feel like that sort of like softness there when you're really, when you're thinking of someone you wish really well.
And,
And I would, as I would, distractions would come up and I'd release them[00:02:00] over and over again after about like 20 minutes or so, um, there'd be this like shift that would happen. And I would notice this sort of like energetic quality in my experience like my body feels more alive.
And at first, like this would be like this would scare me off and I would become attached to it and notice Oh, what was that? And it'll go away. Okay. All right, let it come and just let it be there. And after a few cycles of that, it would like swell and expand.
This like feeling of like energetic joy would like swell out through my body largely like in my head and my chest but also like sometimes like in my hands and on my mouth. And. It was just like so nice and like [00:03:00] it's a it's hard to explain like just how pleasant it is but it's it's this it's oh wow this is great like I don't suddenly there's no thought of getting up and leaving the meditation like like You just want to be there and rest in that.
And this was this would be like very energetic and exciting at first. And if I'm able, as I was able to sit with that feeling, it would simmer down a bit and to a more, just like happiness. Like it's the words are so difficult. But almost like you're like basking in the sun, and you've got nowhere to be and you're just so happy to be there in the present, which is something that I was just not used to before, like, it feels so rare to have a moment in life where, like, you're not like expecting the next thing you're not, like anticipating something, ruminating, no, here in this time my [00:04:00] mind was just, Completely settled on the feeling of what is in that moment and there's just like a pure contentment.
It just does. So nice. It's
[00:04:15] Stephen: nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could you give us some sort of benchmark like You said it's so nice. It's rare. For somebody who's maybe not familiar with these states what's the degree of pleasantness that you associate with it? It's,
[00:04:41] Zach Lauzon: it was like the joy and excitement of getting my dream job. Getting that that, like, huge opportunity that I've been, like, working to for years, and so excited about, but always felt out of reach. The feeling of that moment, [00:05:00] that just Overwhelming like happiness, joy, excitement.
It was that, but it was like stable. YEah. bEcause it's easy to like be overwhelmed by that and then start like thinking about logistics and things like that, what comes after this, but it was there's like this calm quality to it. While maintaining that like super high level of like pleasant pleasure, like joy.
[00:05:26] Stephen: Yeah, that's a really interesting example. I once heard somebody say the feeling of getting into a a prestigious university turns out to be something that you can have at any time in any place indefinitely. And I think that is similar to the dream job. I think that's a really interesting.
Example, because it's not the first thing that people think of, it's not the first thing that comes to their mind when they think of like really high pleasure. They think of like sex or drugs or rock and roll, like some [00:06:00] sort of like something with a bit more of an indulgent quality, but you're picking you and but you pick something that was like your example, your thought experiment would be like years in the banking.
Yeah.
[00:06:13] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, like we put like far away from us, it's like this like high attainment was so it was so fascinating to feel that level. I'm just like there within me, just waiting to be found. Yeah, it was a shocker
[00:06:33] Stephen: that it sounds is on shocking. That's
[00:06:37] Zach Lauzon: really cool. And I have narratives about like how much
is between us and like feeling that great like it should require like a lot of work and effort and maybe some luck and like we want to put ourselves like put separation between us and like the experiences we want to have.
[00:06:56] Stephen: Huh. There's part of the shock value [00:07:00] is that it doesn't seem like it should be that available without Such effort or such work, right?
Yeah. Yeah. There's I've, I recently have read separately about how there's often a narrative that like big payouts must come with lots of effort or lots of work. And in this context, it was more of a professional context, like selecting the right opportunity carefully will break that paradigm because the right paradigm, the right opportunity may yield a big payout without a lot of work.
But I think it makes a lot of sense in this personal context too. It turns out that sort of how you write size, your internal landscape and your relationship with your own thoughts may also yield a massive payout without the years or more of work and effort and toil required to, to get yourself to that kind of place.
That's neat. Is there anything that anything else that really struck you about this experience that you might share with a younger you or a [00:08:00] someone who's not that familiar with these States to either on the one hand, I think we'll get in and break down how it is you learned and what it is that you did a crack into these, but to give people a sense for what this is and why it might be valuable.
[00:08:15] Zach Lauzon: Yeah let's see. One of the things that I felt at the end of the retreat was I would not have been able to explain this to the me that entered this retreat like knowing what I know now, it's almost like difficult to relate to because of just how profound and surprising it was, and how Anyway, it very much shifted my worldview in a way that I didn't see coming.
And what I mean by that is I feel that it's completely life changing to have the direct realization that being comes from within um, to [00:09:00] know that there's like this like infinite resource within me that is like accessible without like external conditions, it is just crazy. But you can't unsee that.
Yeah. And knowing that has brought confidence to my approach to life that was, like, unfamiliar before. And that's maybe far in my past before traumas I had a different approach on life, but that's been much grayed out and covered over. So it wiped that away and thought, wow, yeah, there is so much to life and things will be hard.
But at the end of the day. Things get better by approaching what's hard. And I understand now that the way through difficult things is through them. And[00:10:00]
now I see that I have an ability to approach what's difficult for me on my terms. Like almost as if I'm like performing therapy on myself. Which is like I think we might always like hope that like meditation might do something like this. But this experience like made that very real for me. And that's something that like, I find extremely valuable and didn't quite expect going into this, that it might be like, feel like that as, as explicitly as it did.
[00:10:41] Stephen: Yeah. Wow. So cool. And so much there. I feel there's a few things I want to unpack. So one is the change in worldview. Another is explicitly that the way to tackle hard things is through them. I think it's a little bit of a surprising comment to conclude after having spent a few hours in your own head.[00:11:00]
So there, there seems to me like some sort of specific insight there. And then three, this notion of how this ties to therapy. If so if and how. Let's start with the worldview. The, say, say, yeah, say a few more sentences about your, is it that like, you imagine yourself 10x bolder or, 2x happier or making different decisions in some way.
What is it that's really changed about this worldview?
[00:11:28] Zach Lauzon: Yeah
I Think there's certainly a multiplication on happy. Quantifying it is challenging. Sure. Yeah. But there is definitely
an effect of whatever happiness is there. I'm able to, well, just experience way more fully. There's also no effect of, there's so much less fear. Within me. Because a big part of my journey, my retreat journey, [00:12:00] was, um, getting a clock closer to the difficult things. And the experience coming out of that every time was that, wow, I feel so much lighter after doing that.
For once, instead of avoiding whatever it is that I was fearful of getting right up into it showed me time and time again that yeah, that might be difficult, but when you actually get down to whatever it is that's there, it disappears and your view towards it changes. And taking that insight into the rest of my life shows me that it's actually the fear that's causing the problems.
And not whatever it is that I'm actually fearful of. And so that's what's taken the screen away. Because I think it's easy to see life as like, all of these like problems, and things I have to do, and things I'm worried about, [00:13:00] and everything. But knowing that whatever is there, I can go up there, I can get close to it, and transform my relationship with it.
It allows me to live with less fear, and make different decisions in my day to day. And ones that create less fear as well. Cause the more you resist something, the stronger it becomes. Yeah. So instead of feeling like everything gets worse, I can feel like that I actually have a tool to make things better.
And that's been pretty profound.
[00:13:31] Stephen: That, that sounds profound. This phrase that you just use, get up close and change your relationship to it. What does that mean?
[00:13:39] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. It's
the way that I see things that I'm meditating is that I need to. Things will come up that will keep me from focusing on, what I'm setting out to, to bring my attention to [00:14:00] and whatever those things are, like they might be like actual pain, or they might be like a memory or something difficult.
Those things need to be understood, accepted, and loved, because ultimately they're a part of me. And if there's a part of me that I'm resisting and pushing away, that creates internal conflict, it'll make the meditation worse, but also, well, it makes my mind state worse because I'm not able to find resolution internally.
And we can talk about that more later. But basically it means but I want to distinguish like what happens in like a normal meditation and what might happen if. I decide that I have something that I like really wants to work through explicitly and like a more like [00:15:00] therapy Yep there's like the light version of meditation and then there's like The more deep intentional very, that's like more akin to like self therapy.
[00:15:10] Stephen: Yeah, this is great. I was just actually, starting to think about these two, two different experiences myself and I want to more. Why don't you, I would love to get the light version, as you say, the sort of deep intentional and maybe more therapeutic version and then how Janna's tie into these two things.
[00:15:29] Zach Lauzon: Yeah so the light version is treating any hindrance, distraction, pain, thought, memory, whatever it's coming up during the meditation, treating that as a part of you that is not agreeing with meditating right now that needs some love. It's, it's a part of you that's upset about something.
It wants something or it wants to push away something, resisting something. And [00:16:00] if the natural reaction to that during meditation, it'd be like, oh, that's a distraction. I should be meditating, bring my attention back to what I am, but the way I see it more is that actually, that's a part of you.
That's not feeling served right now. And the best thing that you can do is. Appreciate that you noticed it like, oh, thank you for coming and making yourself aware instead of lingering in the subconscious. I I seek to appreciate that it showed up and that I also seek to understand that it's a part of me that finds something important.
And it's ultimately trying to serve me in some way that it feels is important. And so that it needs to be understood that it's doing something important and it needs to be loved. sO welcoming it in, appreciating it okay, I understand that, yeah, you are hungry right now and food is important and you don't want us to starve.
That's great. I love you for that.[00:17:00] But right now, and then I'm just going to let you hang out here in my awareness, and I'm going to come back to the feeling of loving kindness. And I find that a real, a really effective way to let this hindrances and distractions peter out and just fall into the background and not grab awareness all the time.
So that's like the
[00:17:23] Stephen: light version. Yeah. So the light version you're a lot of what you're doing. I know certainly what we did on retreat is you've got this meditation object of loving kindness. And then this. What I'm hearing from you is this you're doing this move over and over again, where every time you're distracted, you're taking just a minute or just a moment really with that distraction and extending it some loving kindness, like extending the distraction itself, some loving kindness and that part of you that might have been distracted before returning to the meditation object.
I see. And that, that, that makes a ton of sense to me and [00:18:00] strikes me as as such a, like essential move. To learning to navigate into the genres and I suspect I'm curious to hear what you'll say next about the deeper states. It also strikes me as something that's probably pretty opposite what a lot of us do when we sit down to meditate, especially early in our meditation journey.
It's probably a bit more likely that we're drill sergeants with ourselves. It's dammit, I got distracted again, get back here, like focus on the breath. And here you're doing almost exactly the opposite. Cool. Okay.
[00:18:29] Zach Lauzon: Thanks for coming.
[00:18:30] Stephen: Exactly. Thank you. My distraction. You're hungry. Oh, thank you for being hungry.
Yeah. Very cool. Okay. Yeah. So how does this tie then to a John is into this sort of deeper, more intentional version of meditation that you mentioned?
[00:18:48] Zach Lauzon: Yeah the Jhanas are like the,
[00:19:00] what do I want to say here, when I have something like deep that like I want to work through, I'll often use like access to the Jhanas, like getting to a Jhana state as like the foundation, the platform for sort More volitionally thinking and bringing up something that's difficult and that I want to work through so I'll Bring myself to a jhana or at least a collected state Maybe like slightly before it if it's if that's not working out at that time But then what I'll do is I will bring out whatever it might be that's that I want to work through and I will
If there's, if it has a personification, which they often do, often they're people something to do with like guilt, or shame, or regret, or something like that, I will, [00:20:00] I'll summon them in my mind's eye, like I'll visualize them, and I will talk to them, and be it another person, or it might actually be a representation of me.
That is, at that the root of some issue that I want to work through like the part of me that is anxious about this situation or something like that. So what I mean to say is I bring up the entity, the part of me, either about me or representation of some other, and I will begin conversing with them, seeking to.
One, accept them as they are. Two, to understand whatever it is that is problematic. I understand that you're anxious about this thing because of all these reasons. That makes a lot of sense. And um, and I'll, I love you for, seeking to protect me[00:21:00] from, whatever it is often there's like an understanding that this anxious pattern formed out of a context in the past, things happened that were really bad and they felt really bad, so this part of me is going to work really hard to identify the conditions that lead to that.
And fire, fire the alarms when that happens, like seeking to understand that pattern in a relationship. They're like, oh yeah that was really bad, we don't want that thank you for looking out for us. Now, after seeking to understand it, then the next move is to bring awareness to the situation which I mean to say, it is Here's what I need you to understand about the situation as it is now you might have been doing this because of something that happened in the past, but actually, the conditions are different now and we understand something new that you're not [00:22:00] accounting for in your, in your algorithm.
Maybe it's that, well, actually, we know a better way to address the situation. Or we might see that reacting anxiously. might actually cause problems, and that really what I want you to do in this situation is bring some awareness to what's happening, some presence, and try to notice something instead of anxiously spiraling and protecting.
Basically, after seeking to understand the behavior, trying to tell the behavior what I want it to understand. So this is what I mean in terms of like self therapy. Is first accepting and understanding what's there and then having a dialogue with it after bring coming to a mutual understanding and making explicit what you want to change and then showing your love.
[00:22:53] Stephen: Wow, that is really neat and very clear. [00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Zach Lauzon: It sounds great. I walked over my words.
[00:23:05] Stephen: And it sounds to me like so a few. A few big differences between this like kind of deeper version of meditation and this just follow the loving kindness and address distractions that come up. The first is that you're proactively pulling up memories or like looking for some experiences in your mind's eye to, to work through.
And then the second is that it's like a more extended. Engagement with the things that come up they're particularly charged or challenging memories or dynamics that are playing out on an ongoing basis with a loved one or something. And then you have your three parts, your acceptance, your understanding, and then your dialogue, your exchange.
I think I read somewhere the value of negotiating with your own feelings. Some ways there's like negotiation has this sort of adversarial connotation to it, but here in this case, after [00:24:00] you like accepted and understood, you're reappraising, there's, here's how we might navigate this from a different lens in the future.
[00:24:08] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. Showing okay, I understand why you're doing what you're doing, but you need to understand how that actually causes us a lot of pain and we might do better. Instead of just being like, I don't like that you do that and pushing it away which just further alienates that part of you and makes it more difficult, seeking to do the opposite of that.
Yeah.
[00:24:30] Stephen: Yeah. And when you describe, I now understand why I think it's, I think it's clear why you jumped into things like. Used words of the hard or the way through thing, the way through hard things is through it to change my relationship to it. And also like this idea of therapy and self therapy, it does seem to overlap a lot with things I've heard about like parts work and a few different like somatic therapy modalities.
Is this something that you've had experience with prior to the retreat, or is this. These kind of novel or relatively novel [00:25:00] ideas.
[00:25:01] Zach Lauzon: Relatively novel, I've, I'd heard of things like internal family systems, but really didn't know anything about it. This, I don't know, it just came out during retreat as we talked about like the modular model of the mind.
Seeing like your, yourself as like a collection of like parts that are like serving different goals. I'd gone into the retreat already. feeling like that. I was calling them like agents or sub agents. Yeah. Or part of you with different goals. It seemed as I became, as I was meditating and working on a releasing, I was like really I'm just trying to get all the agents to agree on something.
So how do I how do I do that? And that sort of informed like both the meditation angle as well as the well, how do I work with a part of me to, be more harmonious. Yeah, I didn't have any like formal experience in these modalities, [00:26:00] thinking that developed over time of exposure to these things.
[00:26:05] Stephen: And this kind of like introspective process. Is this something that you do outside of meditation or only inside meditation? And why do it inside meditation as opposed to outside?
[00:26:19] Zach Lauzon: I guess it brings up a, an interesting question of what is meditation.
I guess it can be hard to draw the line.
But I wouldn't say I only do it in meditation, like there are times where I'm like reflecting and in some like emotionally charged moment where I'm not like, sitting meditating, but things happen and, you do end up in these places. So I do it whenever it feels right, but often I feel the most well equipped to do it during [00:27:00] meditation because of well, The more you can quiet the mind, the less the mind, I find, the less the mind will distract me from what I'm trying to do.
Like the mind can become like defensive and this can come up in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I'll try to do this and my mind will just keep distracting me. I'll try to get something difficult, and it's like a black hole. Before I know it, I'm like, off thinking about something completely different.
It's like, how did I go from this intention to work through this thing and end up just continually being distracted away from it? And it feels like the mind is defending itself. It's oh no, I don't want this painful thing to be accessed. So I find that meditating can really help get in there to get through that line of defense.
[00:27:54] Stephen: I see. Yeah, there's some, so it's not just that it makes it like more it, [00:28:00] it eliminates distractions and so therefore keeps you on task. It somehow makes it have a different flavor or different quality to it
[00:28:08] Zach Lauzon: as well. Yeah, it very much seems to affect like how the thinking, how the process unfolds based on the state that you enter.
One other thing I want to say is especially with some of The deeper Jono states having that of emotional resource that positive undercurrent, as well as the sort of unshakable emotional quality that happens and toward the formless, I I do find that extremely helpful with the more traumatic, painful things.
Being in those like deeper jhana states makes it a lot easier to pull up something really traumatic and not just be like emotionally overwhelmed by it.
[00:28:53] Stephen: Yeah, that's so that's such a common. That's such a [00:29:00] common I feel like kind of core experience here. I'd be curious. No need to share anything that you wouldn't want to share, but I'm curious to know if you have a concrete example of how the genre makes a difference and how you go through one of these navigating with one of these tougher challenges.
Yeah,
[00:29:22] Zach Lauzon: for sure. Yeah, the biggest example in my life is losing my best friend. He had committed suicide about seven, seven, seven years ago now. And my immediate reaction was just an emotional deadening. It was just so overwhelmingly painful. That it, I just became like there were times of like pain, but especially around like the funeral and all, but like following that is just I just iced over and it, I didn't even, there were many times where I just [00:30:00] didn't even realize the effects to which this had happened and how it was affecting me.
And even like going to therapy and stuff, there'd be times where it's just not feeling like I'm making any progress or accessing anything. Due to I'm not sure How useful does to try to explain the mechanisms? But the point is that it was like this is something that was like very hard to access for me It would often just result in like pain and anxiety and avoidance Without even really being aware of it.
I would just go into this
[00:30:40] Stephen: weird place So something would come up that would remind you of your friend, or you would try to address it explicitly in therapy, and then you just end up like, anxious and uncomfortable and not thinking about it, huh? Yeah.
[00:30:56] Zach Lauzon: Like I couldn't just get in my mind to get up there and just think about it.[00:31:00]
Interesting. There's too much, cause Yeah, there's this huge part of me that felt like guilty and like it was my fault and wow I'm a huge part of me that like, you know didn't want to accept that it could have happened or that yeah if that like it wasn't something that I could have done anything about like it's just like that This could have even happened There's a cease it's like it just violated these axioms in my reality that were just far too painful to ever update and whatever they did is this Yeah, just like avoidance, pain, anxiety.
And something that was happening as I was accessing the jhanas during retreat was I found myself really drawn to listening to music. And In particular, [00:32:00] I found myself drawn to listening to the music that I would listen to with him um, which we would, and this was like our emotional release, we would drive around in the car, like screaming System of a Down and the Day to Remember and just being absolutely reckless teenagers.
Just letting all our feels out. And for the first time in years I just wanted to go there again. And I was just, I just wasn't listening to that music at all for, since that happened. Cause it, it didn't do anything and it was too painful, but here I wanted to. And that was a cue for me that, Oh yeah, like I need to go and like access this stuff now.
And so I would go down to meditate and. I would get into a genre and then I would pull him up in my memory and I would start talking with him and, [00:33:00] ask for forgiveness about the things that I felt so terrible about and forgive him for the things that I was like, just couldn't let go of.
And that was something that was just like unfathomable to do outside of these states and like that place. Yeah, like
it was,
Yeah, it was quite profound. Sounds profound. I found myself wanting to go back to these memories and places and think of him and share things with him in my memory. Or just, I don't know, I I always understood that I could do things like that, but it just never felt real or possible.[00:34:00]
[00:34:00] Stephen: What do you think, what do you think unlocked that? What was it about the, what was different about these states?
[00:34:19] Zach Lauzon: It's, there's just something about the,
that like equanimity that's brought about, that like a true feeling that everything is okay, that, just to not feel real before like, Wow. Like something like the mind could always like doubt like, but like directly experiencing that feeling was just different. So you're,
[00:34:53] Stephen: you found yourself in a place where you just in the moment live, wasn't something you were thinking, [00:35:00] but it was something you were feeling everything's deeply okay.
And from that place of okayness for the first time in maybe seven years, you were finding yourself eager to turn to the memory of. Your closest friend and revisit and explore and maybe work through some of the things that had been left undone or unprocessed Wow
Zack I admire your courage. That's It sounds brutal man and incredible and heartwarming and Brutal with the happiest of endings
[00:35:47] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, that's coming through all this. I can just say that's life. It's not like I wanted to do it anything different I'm so grateful for all the experiences and memories we've [00:36:00] had, and I'm so grateful now that I can see it that way.
Wow. Yeah. Knowing that all things end where does the denial if we're not, but yeah, we got to keep going. There's really only one thing to do,
feel the pain and then. Open your heart again. Yeah.
[00:36:22] Stephen: Wow. It's so interesting. There's a way of saying everything that you just said. There's only one thing to do. Keep going. That can be like nihilistic. And yet like the way in which you say it is clear that from like your body language and tone of voice that it's anything, but it's like a levity and and like a heart opening this to it.
That's really neat. Yeah.
[00:36:41] Zach Lauzon: It certainly has been neat.
[00:36:45] Stephen: It's like an understatement.
So I think I'd love to for anybody listening, I think there's some sort of like context we need to paint, which is like, what are the genres to use or what do they feel like? And. [00:37:00] So maybe your own words, like educate the novice here, the uninitiated to what these states are what they feel like.
And then I think that will provide some color as to like how you've used them to, in such like really profound and meaningful ways. Yeah.
[00:37:16] Zach Lauzon: Sorry, can you repeat the last part of that?
[00:37:18] Stephen: What are the genres? What do they feel like? So that we can paint the context for why it makes sense that you've used them in the ways that you've used them.
Right.
[00:37:28] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. Yeah. What are the Jhanas? To me, they feel like
states of harmony within the mind that are probably experienced by people in everyday life. With there's, I think there is a family, a familiarity to these states. It's experienced. That's Oh, huh. And I know what that's that [00:38:00] I think is, I don't know, not talked a lot about enough, I think.
Interesting. But yeah, it's,
the genres feel like you've brought your mind to a state of unification, where there's just, there's no like dissonance or like conflict within, and The mind becomes coalesced around like different feelings and perceptions about the way things are. That's probably as good of a definition as I'm going to get to.
So I'll talk more about what they feel like in my experience. There are generally
[00:38:54] Stephen: before we do that, let me make sure I have it. So there's like states in which your mind is coalesced [00:39:00] around some feelings and like certain perspectives it seems so maybe your perspective is one that's a bit more relaxed or a bit more.
Distant or a bit closer, these are the kinds of perspectives that you're talking about.
[00:39:15] Zach Lauzon: Like feelings in terms of like relaxed and happy, joy, content, all those out perspectives in terms of the way reality is um, which gets like more abstract, but yeah, sounds like it.
Maybe.
And they're often broken up into stages, but I think that makes them more discreet and separate in people's minds than I think they are. I see them more [00:40:00] as
more like a progression and there are some elements that are added as you go along the different states, but really what was clearly apparent to me was that the later states include all of the qualities of the early states. So I'll get into the, like the, like my descriptions of them and yeah, please make more sense.
So to me, the first genre is distinguished by
having this distinct feeling of aliveness. If you ever felt like totally present in your body, like maybe like you're playing a sport or something and you're like really in the moment, or if you're playing a piece of music and you've really. lost your sense of,[00:41:00]
if you're playing music and you're feeling truly feel at one with the music
essentially I feel this like energetic quality with this, like almost like joyfulness. Like it's very, like, there's there might be like tingling sensations. Or I I feel like the blood in my nerves, like throughout my body and. Like I'm perceiving like pulsating, like a wave to them almost, and it has a really nice excited quality to it.
And it makes me want to smile. That definitely happens. It's a super pleasant, joyful, happy, exciting um, that was nice. Yeah, that's great. For me, this doesn't tend to last very long. As. As like this like happiness or excitement is like [00:42:00] you like really marinated in that and just like really enjoy it.
It's that sort of enjoying that becomes like the dominant factor of the experience. so That's more of just like this really sweet happiness. You,
like there's nowhere to go, nothing to be, nothing to do, you're just like really happy with things as they are. There's still like that like undercurrent of like joy and energetic quality if you go looking for it. It's still there, but it's not in the foreground anymore. The foreground is just happy.
[00:42:45] Stephen: Also sounds nice.
[00:42:46] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, it's quite blissful. And some of the other qualities that happen in this state are distractions just aren't as distracting anymore. Your mind really wants to rest on this [00:43:00] happiness. It's not, it's really not pulled away by other things and other things are still happening.
Like your mind will still be making thoughts and there might be some of that pain in your back is still there. And, you're still aware of it, but. It's just not as important. It doesn't pull your attention away from this experience of happiness.
[00:43:23] Stephen: Is that what you meant by perspectives earlier, or is that different?
That
[00:43:28] Zach Lauzon: plays into it, yeah. Yeah, like you're, the way you're seeing your mind's movements
[00:43:33] Stephen: like It's not as grabby or something.
[00:43:37] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, exactly. You feel less like you're, you are your mind, and more like You are aware of your mind and body and all of that. Yeah, more about feeling like you are the awareness instead of you are the parts that comprise you.
[00:43:56] Stephen: Oh, I like that. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. [00:44:00] Yeah.
[00:44:04] Zach Lauzon: After time is spent here in this It's happy bliss. Where does it go from there? Like it seems like a pretty good stopping point, right? Yeah. But
it continues to evolve. And into this, just my best way of describing it as content like you, you have everything you need. You've got all the happiness. It's there. It's in the background. But more than that you're just so content and still tranquil. There's no desire to get up and leave meditating.
It's just, you're there and you want to be. You're, your mind is resting on this feeling and it wants to. It's, I don't know, it's just like a more calm version of the previous state.
[00:44:59] Stephen: [00:45:00] I see. And at this point is it, I don't know. I think sometimes it's counterintuitive that calm would be better than bliss.
And did you feel that way? Do you feel like you would have always wanted to go back to the bliss? Or was it like you were sated and you're like, I could go back to the bliss, but it's like I've had my fill. So I'd like to hang out
[00:45:22] Zach Lauzon: here. Yeah. I totally had that like counterintuitive, feeling toward them, like going into it.
But coming out of it yeah, like you, you do feel like you have enough. And I think that's what kind of defines it? It's you've had your bliss and you're happy and you don't need any more. So now you are content. You're not lacking something. Yeah. You have. It's awesome. Yeah.
After that, it made sense.
[00:45:49] Stephen: Yeah. And and to your point about familiarity earlier, it makes a lot of sense to me that euphoria would calm down into, this is something I think I have conversations with people a lot, it would make a lot of sense to [00:46:00] me that euphoria would calm down to the happiness, which could then calm down into the sated contentment.
Yeah,
[00:46:08] Zach Lauzon: for sure.
[00:46:12] Stephen: So this also seems like a good stopping point. Where to from here?
[00:46:16] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, one other thing I'll say that happens around here is feeling of the body starts like fading like the sensations of the body are just less intense especially ones with like pain yeah, they just start fading out, like the hurts in your back is like really starting to not even be there. It's still there, but uh, much less present. But yeah, what's next?
After this, that sense of still and calmness just goes way up. My best way of describing this is pure, just tranquility. [00:47:00] You just feel unshakable and this is at that state where I describe this as so much equanimity that I can go and deal with the hard things, because like, emotions just seem to lose their charge here.
I don't know it, it just feels like everything is totally okay nothing's good, nothing's bad, it's just pure tranquility. yEah. And that's. It's at this point that the body really fades and it's like still there, but it's just not, you're not really sentencing it anymore.
[00:47:45] Stephen: Yeah.
It's interesting hearing, hearing you describe it. I, like you have found this state to be so valuable. I'm putting myself in the head of the someone who hasn't been there before. And the [00:48:00] idea of, oh, we have a little, a friend here. Our cats arrived. So I'm putting myself in the head of someone who hasn't been there before.
And I'm struck that something like not, nothing is good. Nothing is bad. Or like emotions lose their charge. Doesn't sound like a great place. And so I'm wondering if there's a way we can describe it. That makes a bit more intuitive sense to folks who haven't been there before. Maybe I'm curious to know what you're thinking.
One of the thoughts that comes to mind is like the feeling of safety, like, and when you were just feeling completely safe, or actually maybe like the feeling of Power not like in a, like I'm holding it over you kind of way, but just I am, I'm, I'm at ease. I'm top dog here. There's no threat that's going to, there's in that sense, like emotions lose their charge.
And, um, things feel perfectly okay. It's not like I'm jumping up and down with joy. It's that [00:49:00] everything is okay. Nothing is like that good or that bad. And yet oozing out of my bones could be this just. sense of ease and safety.
[00:49:08] Zach Lauzon: Yeah I really like that. Feeling of safety is definitely a positive connotation label.
That definitely describes how it feels as well as like a feeling of power and that everything's okay. Nothing's going to shake me. Like I know ultimately things are fine. And there's this I don't know. Feelings of any undercurrent of like fear, doubt, or unease or anything like that.
It's just
[00:49:32] Stephen: not there. It just doesn't, it almost doesn't even make sense. Yeah, maybe confidence, like this is the confident side of power, not the like, something like self indicating side of power. Yeah. Yeah. Confident
[00:49:43] Zach Lauzon: and
[00:49:44] Stephen: assuredness. Assuredness. That seems good. Yeah. Okay. So hopefully it is, this is the trickiest one in my mind to explain to someone who's never experienced before where it's like already it's hard to imagine, like, why would you go on from euphoria and bliss to something [00:50:00] like contentment?
And I'm like no. Like the peace. The stillness. It is. You have to kiss that. It's so good.
[00:50:13] Zach Lauzon: I'm glad you brought this up because as I was ascribing, I was like, God, it doesn't even sound great.
[00:50:18] Stephen: Yeah. What about, what Alex, who, who, sometimes uses the word like emotionally dead. How is
[00:50:23] Zach Lauzon: that good?
[00:50:26] Stephen: That's really
[00:50:30] Zach Lauzon: underselling it.
[00:50:32] Stephen: Great. Okay. So I've mapped, I've now got this mental map of having moved from this spectrum of the euphoria into the happiness, into the contentment, into the peace, stillness, the equanimity that you said share for us. Can you give us like a, I think a sense of magnitude, like you mentioned earlier that these things are familiar, maybe people have some notion of these in their day to day.
And yet the genres are often talked about as like profoundly altered States that would suggest they're not [00:51:00] thing. And you were saying earlier, like it broke your worldview. So I'd love to reconcile this idea of familiarity on the one hand and breaking worldview on the other. And then too,
I'd love to close the loop for how you use these states to, and why it makes sense to use these states to revisit this really trying time that you went through with your friend and his suicide and how you're so much lighter afterwards.
[00:51:27] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. Yeah. How do we reconcile something being familiar, but also profoundly altered like to the point of changing my world view. That's a lot to unpack. I think it's the connection between these that is that what makes this so profound to me, in that
this [00:52:00] experience doesn't feel like cultivating these states as much as finding something that's always been there. It feels like this was just within me the whole time. And in fact, I can find parts of this experience. that shared qualities with moments in my past moments are really special. And to understand that, Oh, those are special because that was accessing that part of me, the part of me that comes about when I really get my mind out of the way and that, Oh, this is something I can invite to happen.
Through my own will and through my knowing that my approach to my mind and what's coming about can actually bring me into these places. That is like what is [00:53:00] so crazy to me. And that's what has shifted my worldview is that knowing that I can access this like profound well being and that it's just within me.
[00:53:09] Stephen: Wow. That, yeah, that, that is quite the reconciliation. The, these sort of profound states have been hiding in plain sight the whole time and thus the broken worldview.
[00:53:20] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. It's I feel a sense of confidence that I've been in these early states when uh, at concerts in the mosh pit. Screaming my favorite music or performing a piece in an orchestra or of course all my examples are music.
That's
[00:53:39] Stephen: great. Music is a special place.
[00:53:48] Zach Lauzon: Let me grab some water. Take a pause. Oh, sure.[00:54:00]
[00:54:11] Stephen: Got it. So I think then the story is coming together for me. We have these states that are really profound that you speak about on the order of. Something that so profound of an order of magnitude that seems like it should be years in the making, like the release of getting your dream job after trying for years to do and yet they are the same quality of something that is familiar in day to day life.
Or if not day to day life, like some of our peak experiences when we're in flow in the mosh pit or in flow with a piece of music or something and finding just a completely imperturbable, fundamental, okayness, peacefulness, and stillness in one of these states that you brought about by loving the different distractions and parts of you and to ease, yeah.[00:55:00]
makes for a powerful and maybe even like attractive and effortless platform to turn to tougher things, including in your case one of the toughest things that has happened to you, maybe in a lifetime and something that you hadn't turned to in over seven years. Wow. Yeah. Thanks for sharing Zach.
That's. I'm so delighted and heartwarmed that kind of really meaningful experience was possible on the retreat that we shared together. That's a, that's
[00:55:36] Zach Lauzon: really neat. Thank you for your part in making the rich breed happen and allowing me this profound experience. I'm so grateful.
[00:55:48] Stephen: Yeah I like you, look at these states and I'm, I will bring broken.
It's just wait, what? Like such fundamental cadence and at easeness [00:56:00] is available. That seems it seems like something to dig into. And to find ways to share a bit more broadly. That's terrific. This has been awesome. This has been a great really fun to hear all that, Zach.
Is there anything that you think we should close with?
Let me check my notes.
tHere's two questions actually that, that are top of mind for me. And maybe I know we're coming up on time here. But one of them is in the spirit of helping folks. So in, in many ways we've been talking to the imaginary uninitiated. What are these dates? Like, why are they valuable?
There's another kind of a person who's, okay, I'm sold. I would like to explore this what do I do? And I'm curious to hear from you if you think that you have any special tips. Or, one way of coming up with [00:57:00] special tips is if you had to guess, what do you think is something you did differently than the next 20 people who are attempting to do these things?
It's in the spirit of positive deviance. And then separately, I think maybe a little bit about your specific backgrounds. I know you're an engineer and a musician but we can talk a little bit about that too.
[00:57:17] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, I'm glad you asked. I said that does touch on what I wanted to talk about, I think.
So I feel that I'm a bit unique in my experience because I didn't really, I haven't been meditating for very long at all. I only like interested in meditation and it's around March or April of this year when my when I was like, reading like papers about the neuroscience and getting really excited about oh look at all these effects on like stress and being and [00:58:00] happiness and look at the reduction of fear and i'm like oh this is meditation is really great i better get into this and my partner tino is really interested too and she said she started like like feeding a little bits and things she finds me on Twitter and I credit her like she showed me like, Oh, I've heard about these genres.
What is that? I look into it. I'm like, this sounds crazy. And absolutely fascinating. And I want to try. But I had also got all this information about oh, this like warnings and skepticism and conflicting views oh, the jhanas are advanced states that are only accessible to like long time meditators.
Yeah. And also it's a distraction from the path to enlightenment and you really shouldn't bother you're just going to end up a jhana junkie and yeah, just you're hedging. It's just yeah. Here I am excited about something wanted to do it and then all these people that supposedly know better [00:59:00] like against us and I don't understand why.
And so I was like I'm an office I don't have 100 hours of meditation under my belt like what am I doing, but part of me really wanted to believe that it was possible to get there like way sooner than people might believe with the right approach. Yeah, and so I. When Tina tips me off to the John stuff and Burbea retreat available free of in line was like, this is really cool.
Like I want to, I started like listening to them and trying and
[00:59:36] Stephen: these are recorded Burbea lectures on the
[00:59:38] Zach Lauzon: Johns. Yeah, they're got recorded lectures available freely online. I think Hermes Amara foundation, you can find them with transcripts. They're great.
[00:59:47] Stephen: Yeah, fantastic
[00:59:47] Zach Lauzon: resource. Fuck. Hey. So I started listening to them and started trying some of 'em.
And I got this, like during one of the meditations that was [01:00:00] going well, and I got this like tingling feeling in my lip. I'm like, whoa, what the hell? But , that's what he is talking about. That's,
[01:00:06] Stephen: that's what this guy says will happen, . It's oh,
[01:00:10] Zach Lauzon: something real here, . So that got me really excited, but.
It didn't go that far. But then with totally serendipitous timing, Tina's Oh, this company that's trying to teach people the jhanas is doing this retreat. And I'm like, Oh my God, I have to do this. So only having meditated for a few months. I'm like, I have, I'm going to do this. And I'm so glad I followed this.
Like Excitement about it. Yeah. And like feeling that it wasn't like inaccessible because I think I really could have just screwed myself. . Yeah. So what I wanna say to people is they're not as hard to access as you might've been made to believe. Another thing I want to say about um,[01:01:00]
like what will be helpful. Is paradoxically,
Actually no, the first one I want to say is, the practice being enjoyable is extremely important it should be nice to sit and meditate, and during your meditation you should be noticing whatever qualities that are there that are pleasant and enjoying them I think many people meditate in a quite austere fashion, thinking that it's hard and that they're training, like they're going to lift weights to get stronger and that it's going to be painful, but it'll, they'll be
[01:01:37] Stephen: better for it.
Yeah, so true. I don't
[01:01:41] Zach Lauzon: agree with that perspective. To that end. This keys in nicely with my view about distractions and I welcome them because I want to reward my mind for being aware of things. And I also want to make my [01:02:00] mind feel that part of me is cared for. So that it is able to quiet down.
I love that. And I think that really helped my progress to reward my mind for bringing me distractions and bringing loving acceptance to what the distractions are.
[01:02:16] Stephen: I love that. That is such a, I that's such a contrarian take. And I think it's exactly in in contrarian takes that you will see contrarian results.
And then you can explore whether or not they are desirable results. And in this case, it seems like it's been really
[01:02:34] Zach Lauzon: profound. I would have been ecstatic if I could have reached like J1 or J2 during the retreat, and I ended up at J5, and
[01:02:47] Stephen: So you had less. Yeah, I'm sorry, say that again.
[01:02:51] Zach Lauzon: That was totally unbelievable to me.
[01:02:52] Stephen: Totally unbelievable. And so you ended up with, you, you came into the retreat with less than a hundred hours of total meditation practice and ended [01:03:00] up. Going to the first five genres and what was in, in what did your meditation practice look like before this? Were you mostly using headspace?
Was it 10 minutes a day? Was it 20 minutes a day? What did that look like?
[01:03:10] Zach Lauzon: There's a whole smattering of things. Like at first it started with, there's a poster on the street saying free meditation classes. So I, I went and ended up being like a spiritual community like centered around guru teaching like how to meditate and also some of those, Specific like a devotional spirituality things related to the group.
Oh interesting. Yeah, like I started with that And that was a lot of like open eye meditation almost like fire casino. I'm like on a candle. Yeah watching the little field blow out. Yeah, I did there was also some
[01:03:46] Stephen: are you doing that like an hour a day or like now? We're a week That was like,
[01:03:52] Zach Lauzon: when I was consistent, like 20, 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes a day.
That was like, [01:04:00] quite consistent.
[01:04:01] Stephen: Yeah, and that was for a few weeks or a few months? That was like,
[01:04:06] Zach Lauzon: for a few months, but there would definitely be periods where I'd just drop off for a few weeks. Sure,
[01:04:10] Stephen: sure. But that started in April or May this year, so that took you to the summer, through the summer maybe.
Yeah. And
[01:04:16] Zach Lauzon: you had There was also like, the Burbeo lectures I was doing like One of his practices counting within the breath where you like breathe in and count up to nine and then breathe down back to one as you exhale. Yeah, I would do some of that. There's also like another random practice I did, which was actually pranayama which is like spinal breathing you shift your attention along your spine as you inhale up and then like exhale down.
Later learned that's. A practice that's like adjacent to meditation, but not quite the same thing and like really is like a good compliment. But really what I'm trying to say is, I tried a lot of different things and couldn't align on [01:05:00] anything. And I was quite confused with them. You were quite confused?
Quite inconsistent
[01:05:05] Stephen: inconsistent.
[01:05:06] Zach Lauzon: Okay, because I couldn't, I didn't have any clarity. I didn't know what I should be doing. I was very confused about this whole meditation space because there's all of these different practices and all these different things and different goals and qualities are cultivating.
And I just, I found it very frustrating. Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah. And I wish I had something like this at the time because yeah. Then I could have just started with a practice like this back then and made more progress. Oh, I also found the mind illuminated by Chuladasa. It was like working with that for a little while.
Found that very helpful. I found a lot of overlap there. Yeah. But yeah, I was, what I was hoping for the retreat was like, can I find a practice that I like feel good about and I understand and I want to stick with. Yep.
[01:05:54] Stephen: Got it. So I had this, I now have this like timeline in my head of you going through a number [01:06:00] of different things.
Doing 20 to 30 minutes a day, sometimes diligently for weeks at a time, sometimes falling off for weeks at a time. But you ended up with less than a hundred total hours and had really been only at it for, I guess that would have been six months, less, maybe a little less than six months when you joined us on retreat in September where it was your first meditation retreat and you went from 20 to 30 minutes a day to I'm guessing six to 10 hours a day, depending on the day and X and experienced the first five genres.
[01:06:33] Zach Lauzon: I don't think it's ever 10 hours. It's probably six or seven.
[01:06:35] Stephen: Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. Don't let me get ahead of ourselves here. Yeah. Yeah. But going from 20 to 30 minutes a day to a willing and even excited six to seven hours, I think is also something that strikes people as shocking. But so much happens when you're finding techniques that are resonating with you.
Yeah.
[01:06:55] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. Yeah. I was definitely intimidated by that, but then That very quickly [01:07:00] dispelled as I like sunk into the practice and saw the benefits that I was getting.
[01:07:05] Stephen: Yeah, that's great. And so then to recap some of your thoughts for novices. Number one is that the genres are a lot easier than many people think in your experience.
Number two is it's so valuable and important to enjoy. And lean into the pleasantness of your practice. Number three, maybe is this like explicit, learn to love your distractions and those parts of you, like even maybe even look forward to them because that will bring your awareness to a new part of the experience and something that you can extend that little, that generosity towards.
Is there anything else that you would leave with a novice?
[01:07:41] Zach Lauzon: Vaginas are a path, they're not some distraction on the side, you can make this to your practice and make progress and go to the top at least that's what I hear. Yep. And I get the personal experience that but I it's left me with the confidence of that.
I'm [01:08:00] going into these places of consciousness and like having insights.
[01:08:04] Stephen: Cool. Very cool. And then let's close with. I'd love to get a brief overview of your background. I know that you're an engineer and a musician. Tell us a little bit about your professional background, some of your like deep personal interests, and maybe how this blended into your first interest in meditation, if at all.
Yeah.
[01:08:28] Zach Lauzon: Let's see. I was born and raised in Maine. Grew up spending a lot of time on my family business just a, an ice cream shop and a mini golf course. I love that.
[01:08:40] Stephen: That's cool.
[01:08:42] Zach Lauzon: I was around a lot of happy people, but
[01:08:45] Stephen: that's great.
[01:08:48] Zach Lauzon: I
don't want to say spent a lot of time, like reading and growing up My very, my [01:09:00] nose is always buried in comic books for like my childhood but then proceeded to spend my entire life on the internet like video games and, just buried on Wikipedia I was just always just following my interests be it in music, games, comics um, naturally found myself like drawn to like computer science As I spent all my time on a computer and like feeling like the empowerment of being able to create things it was like really tantalizing to me to feel like I have this like open slate and that I can create whatever I can imagine.
Yeah, I had to do it that immediately drawn to that. So when I studied computer science at RIT and upstate New York, Rochester. Their co op program is awesome because it allows you to have like experience, like working at different companies, like around the world before you graduate. So I use that to [01:10:00] do a bunch of travel.
Got to work in Japan, which is great. And like out in Seattle. What am I missing along the way here? I know you
[01:10:11] Stephen: fell in love with music at some point.
[01:10:13] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. That started very early on. I was. There was like this little like seminar thing at the elementary school like targeting third graders and like for some reason I'm like, I want to play violin. So my mom and grandmother like, yeah, do it.
Yeah, started playing from a quite young age. Always like in an orchestra and doing like private lessons. But yeah, I, that really instilled like a love of music in me and my brother always loved music. So I was got like a lot of inspiration from him. And I just always loved just throwing an album on and going through like a journey.
And I think surrendering yourself to the experience of music [01:11:00] in many ways reminds me of like the experience of meditation, totally just like giving yourself to the moment. And letting your mind quiet that to me strikes as a very close relationship I have to say that I lied about starting meditating six months ago in that I did karate lessons as a child and Though the way we was to start our classes was counting our breaths to six It's honestly possible Like I just could not make it to six ever it's
[01:11:38] Stephen: amazing how that's the case
[01:11:42] Zach Lauzon: This is unreal how difficult it was.
I was like I guess that's not for me. But I would, if I was ever like anxious before a performance or a test or interview or something, I would do that technique of counting my breath to six because I found it helpful. And I think that plants either that's, there's something there that should be [01:12:00] understood.
That's cool. So yeah, lots of concerts and shows growing up really loving those complete surrender experiences, like you're at like a hardcore punk show and, fists are flying and the crowd is moving and like pushing into a wave and you're like, I just always loved those complete experiences where my mind was just completely
[01:12:24] Stephen: off.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. iT's telling how some of these phrases are like. Yeah. Mind is off. He's out of his mind. Yeah. He's in the zone. He's in his body. Yeah. These kinds of flow states, it's like the trailhead is buried in our language and how we talk about it, but it's also very easy to miss that like feeling tones in some ways, like proceed thoughts and the game of meditation is played in that space.
Not in the other.
[01:12:51] Zach Lauzon: For sure. Speaking of flow states reminds me of like when I'd get really into coding and just. [01:13:00] The thinking doesn't work as it normally does in that realm, it becomes like more abstract and, I don't know, the qualities remind me of, those states.
[01:13:12] Stephen: Yeah. Yep. The flow and coding makes a ton of sense.
Yeah. This is great. And then just, so just to round it out you said a computer science and we're a long time musician at RIT and have largely been a software engineer since. Is that right?
[01:13:28] Zach Lauzon: Yeah. Coming out of college. I had done three internships with Google by that point. So they took me on as full time in New York city.
Largely the, my, Like professional experience has been with Android development, but I spread out to a generalist and that time. Yeah, I do full stack development ended up taking a stint at a startup spare labs out in Vancouver, BC, they do they do micro transit, which is like a software platform to enable Cities, organizations, companies to [01:14:00] build their own like versions of Uber or Lyft or like a small bus service or things like that.
Cool. Very cool. I bet. That was really fun. But then ended up down back in the States or back at Google which is where I'm at now in Seattle.
[01:14:12] Stephen: Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back at Google. It's a great place to be as an engineer. Yeah. Awesome. Zach, this has been super fun. Thanks for sharing all this.
And. Yeah, looking forward to continuing to chat about your meditation journey in the in the months to come.
[01:14:30] Zach Lauzon: Yeah, sounds great.