Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose – Keith Kurlander & Dr. Will Van Derveer – HPP152

Keith Kurlander [00:00:05]:
Thank you for joining us for the Higher Practice podcast. I’m Keith Kerlander with Dr. Will Vandeveer, and this is the podcast where we explore what it takes to achieve optimal mental health.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:21]:
Hey, Keith.

Keith Kurlander [00:00:22]:
What’s up?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:24]:
We’re back.

Keith Kurlander [00:00:25]:
We’re back.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:27]:
So today we’re going to get into the concept of spiritual attachment as opposed to a different kind of attachment we have covered elsewhere and talk about a lot, which is developmental psychology. So this is more of the feeling.

Keith Kurlander [00:00:41]:
Of the attachment to everything.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:44]:
Yes.

Keith Kurlander [00:00:45]:
Versus just attachment to a person.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:49]:
Right. Or a child or apparent.

Keith Kurlander [00:00:52]:
Right, yeah. All right, start us off.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:56]:
Well, let’s get into defining some terms here before we go too deep, because that seems important. When I think about attachment, I think about the suffering that goes with clinging to things in general. Not even necessarily material things, but things, ideas, experiences, even people.

Keith Kurlander [00:01:18]:
Yeah. And let’s talk about what clinging is. Not being open to it changing.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:01:25]:
Right, Right. Yeah. The suffering of grasping a lot. Trying to hold on to something that you think is leaving or disappearing.

Keith Kurlander [00:01:37]:
Yeah. Or something you’re, you know, you’re just attached to. You don’t want it to disappear. You’re attached to the experience that you’re getting from it.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:01:47]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:01:47]:
And that can be a host of different areas of our sort of perception. Right. In terms of what we’re clinging to.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:01:58]:
Any number of things.

Keith Kurlander [00:01:59]:
We could cling to ideas.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:02:02]:
Yeah. Our point of view.

Keith Kurlander [00:02:04]:
Yeah, Our point of view. Kind of concepts. And then mentally, we could cling to outcomes. Right. Like what we want to have happen versus what we don’t want to have happen.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:02:16]:
We could be attached to having a peaceful experience.

Keith Kurlander [00:02:20]:
Right. And that can be kind of all the way down to a sensory experience, but all the way up to sort of a mental experience attached to sort of equanimity in the mind. You know, lack of challenge in the. In our thinking narratives.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:02:37]:
Right. It could extend to feeling suffering around a health challenge. So being attached to your health could be a form of attachment to peace or not being disturbed by something.

Keith Kurlander [00:02:50]:
Be attached to pleasure.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:02:52]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:02:53]:
Security attached to pleasure.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:02:55]:
The things, the symbols that we have in our lives of security, security coming to pleasure.

Keith Kurlander [00:03:01]:
Would you say that the pleasure principle is talking about attachment or not necessarily the Freudian pleasure principle of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? Maybe not.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:03:11]:
Well, I think it maps well the Freudian principle to the Buddhist principle of the ego. And that if you think of the ego as. Again, we’re in. We’re in defining the terms here. Ego as a manager, that’s job is to sort through inputs into our experience and assign valence emotional tags to them. I want this, I don’t want that. And then I’m indifferent to this other thing. So in Buddhism, it’s sort of a filter of what. What are the things that I like that I want that bring me pleasure, what are the things that I feel threatened about or think might bring me pain, and then the things that I don’t even notice or care about.

Keith Kurlander [00:03:50]:
Right? Yeah. And then. So you’re attached to your ego, like that whole construct of what that thing is doing. You’re sort of attached to the whole mechanism and how we understand who we are and our pleasures and our preferences. And there’s like the whole concept of attachment is just sort of embedded in there. An ego?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:04:10]:
Yeah, the ego’s attached to its own operations and its own survival, for sure.

Keith Kurlander [00:04:16]:
I’m attached to being me. I want to be more of me. I don’t want to. Some people are not attached to themselves, actually. Some people want to be other people. I mean, that’s a form of attachment in another way.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:04:30]:
Yeah, that’s an interesting idea. I mean, when you say you want to be more of you, do you want to be more of your ego or do you want to be more of something else?

Keith Kurlander [00:04:38]:
I mean, on some level, I could say I want to be more of something else, but there’s got to be ego in there, right? I mean, I say I want. I’m attached to becoming more of myself. It’s like not attached to, like, disappearing into, like, the higher self infinity state and there being no Keith. I tried that game for a while. I was attached to that game for a little while.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:05:04]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:05:04]:
Actually.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:05:05]:
How did that go for you?

Keith Kurlander [00:05:07]:
It didn’t go that well. I mean, it was. It was helpful on some level, but it also, I don’t know. I think there, you know, I think I sniffed something out there for myself of like, for right now. I. I could just say for like, at some point I was like, at this point in my life, I’m. I’m going to stop pursuing that. I don’t know that I’ll never pursue that again. And that’s. I might actually think you ever pursue, like, full dissolution of attaching to yourself.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:05:35]:
Well, definitely. I mean, I had my own path with that. You and I were in different spiritual traditions, but it was a similar, I think, fundamental kind of teaching around what suffering is and how to not suffer as much.

Keith Kurlander [00:05:50]:
You think you’ll ever go back all into that?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:05:53]:
Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, I think that it’s a lot more compelling to me to do what we’re doing right now, which I feel like we have big aspirations, big goals of our shared mission for our company is to bend the arc of mental health care globally. That’s a pretty grandiose, you could say, if you want to pathologize it, kind of vision. It’s a grand vision. I’m much more interested in pursuing a grand vision of change, positive change in the world while surfing the edge of attachment and how to accomplish things without getting run over by the clinging to the outcome.

Keith Kurlander [00:06:37]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s a little level of. I mean, obviously there’s a level. Level of attachment to even have a vision like that. It’s not like it’s not devoid of attachment. Right. To just be like, I want to. Want to change mental health care. Well, why, like, what are you. Why are you attached to that? So there’s some level of attachment, I think, in there. And I’m also much more interested in playing the game of attachment isn’t inherently a problem at all. And yet we can get ourselves into heavy, entangled experiences in ourselves when we get very attached to things.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:07:15]:
Absolutely. I mean, you can go into all kinds of extreme states and even mental illness. I mean, I can. I can say, you know, I don’t know if it’s probably not accurate for me to say that I’ve had clinical or diagnosed depression from a clinician, but in these moments that I can get into where I’m extremely attached to something that I think is going away, I can be, you know, out of my mind. Can be.

Keith Kurlander [00:07:39]:
Well, I think it’s definitely fair to say I’ve had plenty of clinical diagnoses in these states. So, yeah, you probably have had some clinical diagnosis at times in your life. I mean, everyone really has. But yeah, I mean, you know, do ulcers count?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:07:59]:
I think so.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:00]:
I think that’s it. I think an ulcer is like the. The body’s signal of you’re too attached to something. Maybe.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:10]:
I think so. I think that’s fair.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:12]:
Yeah.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:13]:
Stress is a symptom of when you.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:15]:
Start the attachment eating away at your own body.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:18]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:19]:
You’re eating your own stomach because you’re. Because you’re. You’re devouring from an attached place.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:26]:
You’re like, gnawing, painful.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:29]:
Yeah. So coming back to the type of types of attachment, obviously you can attach to the body, like, I don’t want to die.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:40]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:08:40]:
I don’t want to. I mean, you could also be Attached to the mind there you’d be like, I don’t want my body to age. I, you know, attached to youthfulness. That’s a huge one. I mean, who’s not attached to youthfulness on some level? We all like age and seen moments where we, where we find out where we were attached to youthfulness over time.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:59]:
Well, and there are different varieties of that. Right. There’s the form of, of pride, subtype of pride. That’s vanity. Right. Which is your appearance, how you appear to other people. But there’s also the youthfulness that when you say that word, I think about energy and vitality, you know, and the ability to do things that a 20 year old can do without thinking about it.

Keith Kurlander [00:09:22]:
Is that an attachment? Maybe, Maybe it’s. So let’s say you’re, let’s actually play with that for a moment just to keep breaking down. Like, what are we talking about with this word attachment? Let’s say you’re playing the anti aging game, longevity game. Right. You’re doing things to try and live longer.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:09:43]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:09:43]:
Isn’t that coming from some version of attachment?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:09:46]:
Arguably, yeah, definitely.

Keith Kurlander [00:09:48]:
I think so. Right.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:09:49]:
For sure.

Keith Kurlander [00:09:50]:
So maybe this is where it’s like this delicate razor’s edge of like, where is that sort of like it’s a healthy. There’s an attachment that leads to generativity for you and others. But then there’s a form of attachment that can actually lead to more destructive energy.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:10:10]:
Well, let’s look at this longevity thing for a moment because I think there’s a spectrum there. Right. And I don’t know why this image just popped into my mind when you said that, but I, I’m just going to, I want to, I want to explore this. Let’s say you’re, you’re a meditator. You, you, you live in a cave, you know, you subsist on the generosity of others. People drop off food for you, whatever. And you have one cup that you can drink your tea from and that’s the only cup you have and it’s made of clay. And then you drop your cup and it shatters and you have feelings about that. Is that person attached to their cup?

Keith Kurlander [00:10:44]:
Yeah, they’re attached to being alive and meditating more. They’re attached to getting to experience meditation longer.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:10:55]:
Right, exactly. Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:10:57]:
Versus just dying.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:10:58]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:10:59]:
And going into some state that’s not that.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:11:03]:
So in other words, attachment to having a human experience or attachment to, to awareness itself.

Keith Kurlander [00:11:10]:
Yeah, I mean, I think these are all out, you know, these are all outlined in different traditions in different ways, you know, states of samadhi and states of, you know, it’s talked about in different traditions of like, transcending different states of attachment. Really.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:11:26]:
When I was studying. Yeah, when I was studying Tibetan Buddhism for about 10 years, we. We studied the. The varieties of attachment. And one of them that really caught my eye and has lived with me is the suffering of change. Just the simple fact that the sun that’s a little bit above the horizon right now above the mountains is going to be below that in an hour is a change that I’m going to feel that, oh, it’s a little bit colder.

Keith Kurlander [00:11:57]:
Yeah. Some people are like, the sun’s going down and it’s like, thank God I get to go in bed soon. And other people, like, the sun’s coming up and they’re like, oh, you know, some people are like, oh, shit, the sun’s coming up. And some people are like, oh, the sun’s coming up.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:12:15]:
So there’s this interesting thing that we do when we start. I’m curious if it’s true for you. For me, when I started learning about the different kinds of attachment, I started getting the idea, and this is a spiritual ego kind of development that was happening is like I started getting the idea of, okay, cool, if I’m not attached to X, Y and Z, then I won’t suffer about that. And so now my project is to not be attached to those things. And then that’s also a problem because now you’re just adding another layer of attachment. I’m attached to becoming not attached so that once again, so I’ll suffer less. I’m still attached to suffering less.

Keith Kurlander [00:12:54]:
My main couple, early teachers taught often about that these spiritual path is narcissistic for a very long time. It’s a very much a path of attachment for a very long time. It is not truly in service of letting go for a very long time. There’s a sort of a. There’s sort of a hint and like some kind of compass and. Or, you know, lighthouse beacon of like, I think I want to let go. But really it’s a narcissistic pursuit of elevating one’s ego’s expansion of experiencing greater states of pleasure.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:13:42]:
Exactly.

Keith Kurlander [00:13:43]:
Actually where it starts, less pain, more pleasure. Well, really where it starts.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:13:49]:
The whole industry of self improvement is based on someone is suffering and something’s being offered to make them suffer a little bit less. Right?

Keith Kurlander [00:13:58]:
Yeah. Almost anybody. I mean, I think anybody that goes on a spiritual path, especially when we’re talking about spiritual attachment, like, you Know, which is on almost every spiritual path. You’re going to be exploring this concept. You’re starting from a place of wanting to get beyond the pain you’re in, of course, but you’re often in the beginning for a very long time. You’re actually just seeking pleasure, attaching to pleasure states. And you’re building avoidance states around the pain that you were already in and you’re already avoiding. You just. Actually there’s a whole delicate process where sometimes you’re just actually solidifying that even more. And like, that’s a long pursuit to sort of unpack that it is.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:14:44]:
And you can get lost in various places along the way.

Keith Kurlander [00:14:48]:
Many people get lost in dissociative spaces, actually, I know many people that did.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:14:53]:
Definitely.

Keith Kurlander [00:14:53]:
You know, they end up in this pursuit of attachment. And, you know, we’re talking about letting go or experiencing more freedom. Many people get lost into a dissociative path where they’re actually dissociating from pain into sort of a pleasurable dissociative state. On the spiritual path.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:15:15]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:15:17]:
Not. Not really letting go of anything along the way. Well, it’s kind of moving your attachments well.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:15:26]:
Or the dissociation can be just an insulation between you and what’s happening outside of your body so that you’re less prone to feeling the sharp edge of the pain.

Keith Kurlander [00:15:37]:
It’s like a desensitization tool.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:15:39]:
Yeah. It’s like wrapping yourself in bubble wrap so you don’t actually feel the pain anymore, but you think, okay, cool, I’m on my way. My spiritual path is I’m climbing the mountain, but what’s actually happening is you’re down at the bottom still with a big bubble wrap around you.

Keith Kurlander [00:15:55]:
Could we wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and walk around one day? Sure, that would be funny.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:16:00]:
If we can run at full speed against each other and then bounce off, that would be really fun.

Keith Kurlander [00:16:04]:
Or just, like, go into the supermarket and bubble wrap. See if it shields us from anything.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:16:12]:
Another thing that can happen. And this is really. It’s kind of shameful to admit this, but at the height of my identity as a Buddhist, and what actually broke it, what caused me to walk away from calling myself a Buddhist? I still meditate inconsistently. But what caused me to leave that identity was a moment where I was practicing. I was on a family visit, so I was on vacation visiting my family. And I used to have a lot of really intense emotions that would come up when I visited my family. And so the way I was using meditation was to, you know, balance myself out Nothing wrong with that. But I was doing this practice and all of a sudden I woke up to. I had separated myself from my family and I was practicing and I realized all of a sudden that I was. That my identity as a meditator, as a Buddhist, was a way for me to feel superior to my family. And that by feeling superior to my family I could feel safe in myself. It’s like I, you know, I got my life figured out over here. I’m a Buddhist, I’m a meditator like you guys. You know, I don’t know what you’re doing but. And it was so painful to observe that a lot of my practice at that time was about establishing an arrogant sense of superiority over the people around me that triggered me. I was like, oh, is that why.

Keith Kurlander [00:17:46]:
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Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:18:57]:
That was a different. That was a different trip.

Keith Kurlander [00:18:59]:
That was a different trip.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:19:00]:
Different trip.

Keith Kurlander [00:19:01]:
Slightly different trip. It probably had a little quality of sort of I’m free to do what I please.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:19:10]:
Oh, now I understand what you mean by trip. I thought you were talking about which location.

Keith Kurlander [00:19:15]:
No, talking about the mind trip.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:19:18]:
The mind trip? Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:19:20]:
Well, that’s interesting. My early journey was abstaining from attachment. I didn’t do a very good job at this journey, just to be honest here, but I was on that sort of concept in my head of like withdrawing is this concept in yoga, withdrawing from your senses, withdrawing inwards, withdrawing from attachments. And my early journey was like create as Few attachment as possible, not necessarily to, like, a partner, but just in general material objects, pursuit of outward goals, material goals, all that kind of stuff. And sort of. So I was kind of on the abstinence train on some level. And then I. At some point, what happened to me was I said, well, I’m not actually good at this abstaining game. Like, I’m not gonna ever become a monk and really, truly do this. Like, it’s just not. I’m not good at it. Like, I. I don’t like it. I’m not ready to fully commit. And I think that somehow I kind of was realized, like, well, what if I, instead of abstain from attachments, I pursue attachments and make that the dojo of, like, in the game of attaching, can I also let go and find freedom? Is there a way to do this? And so then it’s like I sort of changed my whole perspective and I stopped, you know, going really deep in practice, and I started having to use a lot of that time pursuing attachments, really. Right. I mean, you only have so much time in a day. You know, there was a time where I got to, like, meditating four to six hours a day regularly in my 20s, and I was like, you know what. What if I just spent all this time pursuing attachment and can I somehow grow there? And can I somehow also let go and not get too attached? And I think the current status is I’d rather I’m producing an outcome in the world that I don’t feel like I will let go of right now. And it’s working on some level, and there’s still a lot of attachment suffering in me. I’m being honest with myself. I think I get better at it and kind of loosen the grip more and more over time. But attachment’s attachment, and there’s some level of suffering with that cycle.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:21:55]:
One dimension of that attachment and going into it and trying to surf the wave is this question that I’ve had a number of times with a friend of ours, Tammy Simon from Sounds True. And it has to do with this percentage of what actually you’re responsible for or the actual amount of influence that you have on the outcome of a particular situation personally versus with your effort, versus, you know, what’s actually coming together in a complex and difficult to understand soup of different things coming and operating and cooperating together to make an outcome happen.

Keith Kurlander [00:22:43]:
Yeah.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:22:44]:
And so I wonder how you’re thinking about that in your life. Do you think the things that you apply yourself to, you get all the credit and all the blame, whether it happens or not. Or is your sense that you’re cooperating or dancing with something, the universe or however you describe it?

Keith Kurlander [00:23:07]:
I definitely think I’m dancing with natural laws, that’s for damn sure. I don’t think that I have complete control over natural laws. I can’t completely change physics and things. I think that there’s things outside of myself that are out of my control. Definitely not in a belief that if my mind is just in the right enough place then everything will happen and come, you know, the outcomes will happen. So you know whether I believe in like the next sort of level beyond what we know scientifically about the universe and laws. And is there another organizing principle that’s outside of my control? I think there’s something that’s an organizing principle that I don’t understand that I’m also dancing with. Yeah, I don’t know that that organizing principle knows that I exist, but in the way that I imagine it does. But whatever that means, I think I have a little more self reflective thought over it. But with all that said, I do think I’m dancing to things outside of my control. And I don’t know what percent of control I have, but I think when you bring that conversation into attachment, let’s say it’s an outcome, let’s say you want to get married this year, you want to have a kid this year, or you want to earn X amount of money this year or you want to have this amount of impact, you want to have this many influencers in your social media or whatever it is. Right. I think it’s actually an important part of the conversation of attachment of like to control, like how much are you attached to controlling the process? And then, and then part of I think the letting go is can you align with reality of how much control you actually have? Are you taking that in? I don’t take that in all the time. I mean I definitely don’t. I get into modes that I don’t even realize I’m doing where I’m in high anxiety states and stress states because I actually think I can completely control the situation when I know when I. In reality, if I just let in more I would be like I can’t completely control the situation which means I can’t control the outcome completely.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:25:37]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:25:38]:
It’s, it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to forget that simple easy truth that everyone knows or most people know. I mean some people don’t believe that.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:25:49]:
Well, it’s this sleight of hand. I think that the ego is famous for, I would say, is the idea that having total control would mean that the ego doesn’t need to be anxious anymore. But of course, we never have total control. And so the fantasy that we could or that somehow if we acted, if we did the right things, we could get there. If other people did the right things, if they acted the way we want them to act. This is a big one. The attachment to control and the fantasy.

Keith Kurlander [00:26:23]:
Well, that’s interesting. It’s like, so whether you have an attachment to living or an attachment to not losing your partner, or an attachment to earning X amount of money or an attachment to pleasure or an attachment to your home, if you really let in that you have a lot of. There’s a lot of things outside of your control around keeping any of that stuff, what happens to your attachments if you really let it all in? What happens to your attachments to all those things? If you actually got aligned with reality, do the attachments start to fall away?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:26:59]:
Well, two things happen for me, and it doesn’t always happen this way. So there can be like a. A terrifying version, and I can go into that in a minute. But the two things that happen to me that actually feel healthy, arguably, I’m just calling something pleasurable healthy here. But what feels good in the moment to me is I have a sense of humor when I acknowledge that things are out of my control. And I may never. This could be the last time that I see my friend again. That thought can enter my mind when I’m saying goodbye to someone that I care about, and that helps me be more present. And then I feel more gratitude. So I. I have more gratitude and more of a sense of humor. And that actually feels like a healthier place for the ego to be, is more flexible and more. More grounded in the fact that we don’t really know what the hell is going on ever. Or.

Keith Kurlander [00:27:50]:
Or what’s going to happen, what’s going to change.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:52]:
Yeah, exactly. Ever.

Keith Kurlander [00:27:55]:
And.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:55]:
And. And then. Yeah, exactly. Ever. And so then any moment. That’s right.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:00]:
We don’t even know if we’re going to be here in a second from now.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:04]:
That’s right. That’s exactly.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:05]:
No clue.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:06]:
No idea.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:08]:
We want to attach to the fact that we will. Yeah, we do attach to the fact that we will.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:12]:
Yeah, we’re operating on that assumption all day long.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:14]:
That’s right. I am.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:16]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:17]:
And any sign of sickness or.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:19]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:19]:
You know, with my surgery this summer with the tumor, I got like, oh, my God. What I thought I was Going to be here in this moment. Now I’m saying I might not be. Am I going to wake up from surgery?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:33]:
Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:28:33]:
So we all face this deep dilemma in ourselves. So I’m saying gratitude. The person helps me too.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:28:43]:
Okay, cool. But then when things get ripped away in a violent way, right? Like you get a diagnosis of a tumor on your spine, or I find out that something, you know, I need to go get a test, a medical test for something, and I don’t know what it means, if it’s going to be okay or not. It’s very interesting because it’s. It’s similar, I think, in a lot of ways to what can happen with a psychedelic. Right. You. You could have a really pleasurable, blissful. Okay. It’s not just me. I’m not alone. I’m attached to everything. My sense of separateness, my sense of self is open and flexible and fuzzy and it’s warm and it feels great. Or you could be having the most terrifying, annihilating, maybe interpretation of a very, very similar. Yeah, shattering.

Keith Kurlander [00:29:39]:
Shattering.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:29:39]:
It could take a year or two to come back from, right?

Keith Kurlander [00:29:43]:
It could.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:29:45]:
And.

Keith Kurlander [00:29:45]:
Yeah.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:29:46]:
So. But at the end of the day, are those just two different versions of responding to something? Really a lot of change all at once.

Keith Kurlander [00:29:58]:
Say the two versions.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:30:00]:
One is like the blissful. In psychology, we call it ego syntonic. Right. Something pleasurable. I’m melting into the universe. I’m melting into God. I’m living. I’m. I’m finally feeling my inner divinity and divinity’s everywhere. And my boundary of myself is just like a very thin veil and so on. Or my identity is shattered and I can’t even find myself anymore. I don’t even know what I am, who I am, how to be.

Keith Kurlander [00:30:33]:
I think they’re both versions of attachment, for sure. I mean, there’s no doubt that you can be attached to not experiencing pain and attached to experiencing bliss, right?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:30:48]:
Yes, definitely.

Keith Kurlander [00:30:49]:
So they’re both versions of attachment. And then again, there are. These are described in the states of meditation. As you get to higher and more open states, you’re burning through, sometimes you’re burning through the attachments to the pleasure in those states you don’t want to let go to the observer.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:10]:
Right, Right.

Keith Kurlander [00:31:12]:
So like the highest state is the observer is completely dissolved. There’s no distinction anymore. You’re gone. You don’t even get to experience it.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:23]:
Exactly.

Keith Kurlander [00:31:24]:
It’s over.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:25]:
Exactly.

Keith Kurlander [00:31:26]:
You don’t. There is no you experiencing anything anymore. And I mean, that’s a very rare state. It can happen. On psychedelics. But I mean, that does happen. Those windows. No observer.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:36]:
It can happen in often. It can happen in advanced meditative states, practices, for sure.

Keith Kurlander [00:31:45]:
And so there’s sort of these levels. And so it’s like we’re sort of dancing with where do you want to play? I mean, unless you’re really, truly going after. I’m dissolving the observer entirely. Why I’m alive. I’m going to go for it. Whether it happens or not, I am going for that. And maybe you do that now. If that’s really your only mission in life. You’re probably sitting in a cave, I would think. I mean, maybe somebody can do that while they’re like, being a family and going to work. But it seems unlikely that you’re really going to pull that one off. Right.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:32:24]:
Too many discussions.

Keith Kurlander [00:32:25]:
You could become a teacher, obviously of meditation or something. I mean, I don’t even know at the highest level of samadhi, like, what happens there. But. But. So we’re talking about the dance of this huge spectrum of, well, where do you want to play? Can you play in some way where you sort of are aware you’re attached and you’re working with the fluidity of trying to move from attachment to freedom, openness, attachment to letting go. You’re just like. You’re playing in that fluid space slowly kind of the slow burn down of the observer, the slow burn down of the attachment of the ego. Just like very slow. It’s a slow burn. The karma. It’s called the karma yogi. And it’s actually a slow burn for the karma yogi.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:33:15]:
It’s a slow burn.

Keith Kurlander [00:33:17]:
And you know, the slowest burn in yoga among the types of yogis is the philosophical yogi. You know about this, the philosophical yogi. I think it’s called a nana yogi. I might have that pronounced wrong. It’s the yoga of philosophy. And philosophy is a path. Philosopher is a path to liberation. It’s the slowest path, one of the slowest paths. But it takes you there. It can take you there.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:33:43]:
That’s funny.

Keith Kurlander [00:33:44]:
I might be one of those characters.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:33:46]:
You might be.

Keith Kurlander [00:33:47]:
I think I’m one of those guys. Actually. I’m sort of a blend of the slow. You know, I’ll take my time at this and be a little karma yoga, but also some philosophy mixed in there.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:34:01]:
I think the current level for me is acknowledging that the Human Apparatus has quirky and sometimes very ridiculous claims and weird needs that pop up out of nowhere and, you know, all kinds of, like, cravings or, you Know just negative thinking or whatever the thing is. And, and to, to be able to. To be with my own, like to hold my own ego with, with care in the way that I might experience even delight with like a three year old child like who’s just discovered language is asking all these crazy questions like why is the sky blue? And like having that kind of attitude toward the insanity of the ego is Right. Really is a really high state for me right now. I don’t know what comes after that. But anyway, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a state of like you said, delight or play. You know, it’s like a playful way of just being with what is. It’s like. Yeah, there’s a thing here and there’s awareness itself too. And that there’s this, you know, if you will, flawed human that’s. Aaron, that doesn’t need. I don’t need to be all perfectionistic about the fact that the human is not enlightened.

Keith Kurlander [00:35:25]:
Exactly. I mean, we’re not enlightened and as a species by any means. I mean we’re not. We’re a very attached species. Our attachment level is. If you kind of take the species as a whole, the attachment level in the consciousness of the species is pretty high in terms of, you know, this concept, the spiritual attachment.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:35:50]:
I don’t. Yeah, I don’t think that the ego can do enlightenment. I don’t.

Keith Kurlander [00:35:55]:
It’s not a. Yeah, it’s actually not the function. Yeah, no, the whole thing of, of liberation is dissolving that. So. But yeah, and that’s also just probably where we’re at in the evolution of our species. I mean, hopefully, you know, maybe this gets more fluid and loosens a little over time if we last long enough. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it gets worse. Maybe we don’t know where this is all going. Right.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:36:24]:
It feels very unclear which which way.

Keith Kurlander [00:36:27]:
We’Re going to fear. It’s like we’re definitely. It definitely seems like it’s hard to know which way it is going already. Are we getting more attached?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:36:35]:
Yeah, yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:36:36]:
You know, I, I would imagine. I mean when you take more like integral philosophy, you start from a place of. With no self reflective object. There’s no, there’s no right. There’s no observer as you go far enough back into the species and then the observer starts to develop over time of like, I am here, I am, I exist. And so there’s, you know, a thing that’s evolving over time. And I would say like we’re in kind of the meat and potatoes stage of like, we’re very attached as a.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:37:11]:
Species and to exist. I mean, given what we were just talking about, of how painful change can be and is, we’re going through faster and faster change every year.

Keith Kurlander [00:37:22]:
Right.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:37:23]:
We’ve got all kinds of environmental instability, we’ve got political and, you know, financial instability. There’s all kinds of problems with the haves and the have nots getting further apart from each other. I mean, it’s. It’s just really. It’s just an intense time to live right now. So it makes sense that, you know, we’re seeing more mental illness or more, you know, anxiety, stress, depression and so on.

Keith Kurlander [00:37:51]:
Totally. So it’s a. It’s a delicate balance of riding, riding the horse, of attachment, taming the wild horse.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:05]:
Yeah, yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:38:06]:
You know, having desire, pursuing outcomes, letting go as much as we can in that pursuit. It’s nothing balanced.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:17]:
Yeah. I mean, striving for what our friend Robin Carter Harris calls psychological flexibility. Right. To. To have the. That I’m referring to him for people who don’t know his name. He’s a psychedelics researcher who is showing that inflexibility and psychological stiffness, if you will, is something that you can see on brain scans that can open up and relax during a psychedelic experience. And then if you meditate like Keith did in his 20s, you might be able to establish a. A more flexible mindset through hard work and practice.

Keith Kurlander [00:38:54]:
In your 20s.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:55]:
In your 20s. But then you lose it when you.

Keith Kurlander [00:38:57]:
Decide when you get, when you stop. It’s not like a bike where you just hop back on and go. Actually, like with meditation, you try and hop back on later and you just fall off the bike.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:39:09]:
Yeah. You’ve got a wheel missing that somebody took or.

Keith Kurlander [00:39:13]:
Yeah, yeah. Your chain’s broken, your frames bent. You gotta repair the whole thing and build it up. Speaking from experience of. I mean, I actually, I was actually more. It was longer for me than just my 20s, but it was well into my 30s. It’s really in my 40s that I completely. My mid to late 30s and 40s that I was like. Then I just thought, do that for a little while. Yeah. So now when I meditate, which is not often, it’s, you know, my 20s. We were talking about this earlier in my 20s, like hitting very low level samadhi states. Like, you know, there’s very advanced samadhi states, but like low level, like discursive thinking cessation. Like. Sure, I was experiencing that.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:40:05]:
Yeah, same here. Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:40:06]:
You know, and man, that was fucking Powerful back then. And I was going there a lot. Now, like, I’m just practicing thinking when I try and meditate, that’s what I’m practicing.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:40:19]:
I know, I know.

Keith Kurlander [00:40:21]:
It’s like. It’s like a whole different game now, you know? So it’s interesting, like, how that changes too. You know someone, Reggie Ray, I met with him in. When I was like, 35, 34. I wasn’t in your sangha, but I wanted to talk to him and I was asking him about these states. I was going into a meditation of thought cessation and these different states. And I was like, tell me about it. And I described the state and he said, Trungpa calls that mahavapashana. Those states and, you know, the state of limitless, it’s like being in a sky of just like limitless, no clouds in the sky is how he described. And he’s like. He’s like. But I will tell you something. Reggie told me this. Then he said, you will lose this and it won’t come back potentially for a very long time. And at the time, I was like, I know how to do this. I lost it. I totally walked away being like, no, I’ve got that. You don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not me.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:41:36]:
That’s funny.

Keith Kurlander [00:41:37]:
Completely gone. I haven’t been in that state in decades at this point. Isn’t that interesting?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:41:45]:
Would you say that the memory of that state still has impact on you?

Keith Kurlander [00:41:51]:
Yeah, I think so. I think very much so. For sure. I mean, I think it altered my ego and my perception of reality big time.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:41:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say the same thing about when I was studying with Reggie, one of the. We used to do a lot of group retreat, but we also did a lot of solitary retreat and I spent in my 30s. I added it up one time. It was over a year of my life in retreat across a bunch of different retreats. And once I. I was in for two weeks in the mountains of Colorado by myself, and I had this experience of no self that was just very hard to describe. But it was so vast and there was nobody there, and it was getting late in the day and I was just. I didn’t want to get up off the cushion because I was having this experience and I didn’t want to interfere with it. And then I got up and made my dinner and it continued. And then I went back to the cushion after dinner. It was still there. And it was this really. It was impactful, not just in the moment, but also it continues to be something that I touch into when things get very nasty in my mind. And I need to remember that there’s a bigger context inside of my experience than just what I’m thinking about or what I’m feeling.

Keith Kurlander [00:43:10]:
Totally. I think that I actually have sort of a kind of visceral memory of those states. It just pops in often. But it’s not the state. No, it’s not the experience. It’s more of the memory, actually. Yeah, you have that too.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:43:30]:
And of course, memories are distorted as we. Yeah, we know that. Just on a physiologic level, they get altered every time you call them up. So that’s an interesting problem as well.

Keith Kurlander [00:43:40]:
Yeah, yeah. Non attachment. Right. I mean. Yeah, the deepest. I’m just having this memory, since you’re asking about this stuff, like memories, like the deepest. My memory of the deepest state I ever went in. I was in Oroville. Did you ever go to Oroville, India?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:43:58]:
Yeah, I’ve been there. Yeah, I passed through there.

Keith Kurlander [00:44:01]:
You know the dome, what is that called? It’s almost always closed anyways. Yeah, so it’s closed. But I went and meditated near it and I was like, oh, maybe this will. Whatever. And somebody was playing John Denver in the background. And so I’m sitting there and I’m meditating to John Denver. And so just meditating John Denver. Like, this is great. Like, and, and then it was like I dropped into the deepest state of the observer, you know, dissolving. And the, the, the. The. It was like, I remember like a heartbeat of openness, of just like the energy pulsing and in this open, you know, limitless space. And it’s like I. That literally comes into me often, that memory. So these things matter. And this happens with psychedelics, where people have an experience of psychedelics and the memory comes back.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:44:58]:
Yeah, definitely.

Keith Kurlander [00:44:59]:
And people have, you know, scary experiences on psychedelics and the memory comes back too.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:45:03]:
Yeah, true.

Keith Kurlander [00:45:05]:
Or you’re fighting. You’re clawing your nails into the universe to not let go. I actually have many of those. I think I have more of those memories than the memory of openness. But I actually think I get more flashes of kind of the clinging and holding on. No, I don’t want to go. Stop this. I don’t want to go.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:45:35]:
Well, what I, What I loved about meditation and, and. And what you know is, again, is a parallel with psychedelics is how it amplifies what is there in your mind. Like, you. You slow down enough to see what’s going on there and what’s. What’s inside of you. And that’s a huge blessing. It’s a huge opportunity.

Keith Kurlander [00:45:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing, too, with attachment. It’s like, you know, letting go. I think one thing with psychedelics for me is, like, at the. At the most primitive level, in some of my scariest moments, I’m like, I don’t, you know, that I matter. Like, I don’t want to go. I matter. You know, I actually matter. Like, I’m not ready. I matter. And. And people think I matter, and I matter to them. And, you know, it’s like I’m basically screaming at the top of my lungs, I matter.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:46:22]:
You do matter. You matter to me.

Keith Kurlander [00:46:24]:
Well, yeah, but then, like, a psychedelic sometimes shows you there are ways you don’t matter.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:46:30]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:46:31]:
You know, and like, talking about attachment to mattering, like.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:46:35]:
Right, totally.

Keith Kurlander [00:46:37]:
Like, on very sort of primitive, simplistic parts of the ego, it’s like, I matter is. It’s not just, I am, like, there’s an attachment there, but it’s also like, I matter. That’s the next thing.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:46:48]:
Sure, sure.

Keith Kurlander [00:46:49]:
And it’s like, we don’t want to let go of that attachment. No, that’s a hard one to let go of.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:46:54]:
That’s a really hard one.

Keith Kurlander [00:46:56]:
I’ve even spoken to people, you know, in their 80s that are like, they’re not ready to go. It’s like they. They matter still. Like, I still want to matter. I still want to be here. I still want to experience my family, whatever. Other people matter. It’s a hard one to let go of.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:47:12]:
Yeah. I mean, especially in. In the framework of not knowing what’s next after death. Right, right. We have no clue. There’s a lot of stories you could tell yourself. Right. You could. And I think those stories matter, too, about how we feel about our attachment. People that I meet who are 1000% convinced that what happens after death is better than this have very little concern about the end of this. There are not many of them. I haven’t met many of them that.

Keith Kurlander [00:47:43]:
Think what’s next is better will be better.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:47:46]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:47:47]:
Do you think that there’s many people who think it will be easier?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:47:52]:
Easier? I mean, there are people who think that not having a body will be easier if there is such a thing as not having a body and still existing.

Keith Kurlander [00:48:01]:
And people who think that not existing will be easier than existing.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:48:06]:
Of course, yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:48:07]:
I mean, I think that many spiritual traditions will tell you not existing is easier than existing.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:48:14]:
Well, a lot of people with suicidal thinking think that, you know, they’ll be better off dead and so will the people who love them.

Keith Kurlander [00:48:24]:
Yeah, well, one thing that’s helped me with all of that is that, and it’s partly an attachment, but it’s also just like a reality check of like, I get a blink of an eye in the age of the universe to come here and reflect on the fact that there’s an experience here of some kind and just create meaning about that. And maybe we’re the only people doing that. We don’t know. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:48:49]:
What do you mean? We’re the only.

Keith Kurlander [00:48:51]:
With the only beings that are self reflective, actually creating meaning out of any of this. We don’t.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:48:59]:
On this planet or anywhere in the universe.

Keith Kurlander [00:49:00]:
Anywhere. Anywhere.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:49:01]:
Okay.

Keith Kurlander [00:49:02]:
Maybe this planet is it. We don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is like, okay, I get this blink of an eye to where I get to just create meaning. Like, I’d like to, like, try and extend that blink a little bit longer since I have it, to like, try and get through this meaning game to something that’s really cool and, you know, impact meaning in some way for others that has this blink of an eye. Be better.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:49:39]:
Yeah. A little bit richer, a little bit.

Keith Kurlander [00:49:41]:
A little bit richer, a little bit deeper, a little bit more fulfilling, a little bit less struggle, less strain. Maybe strain’s a better word than struggle. Less strain. So that helps me with, you know, if times are really hard in my life or I’ve been through some waves of. Not many, but some waves of suicidal thinking and stuff, but it’s like, yeah, we get a blink of an eye. It’s going to come very soon. It’s coming soon. So you might as well play the game and try and find your way through the strain and create some meaning that matters. Since you were given the gift of meaning making. We were given the gift of meaning making.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:50:24]:
You’re going to tell a story. Tell a good story.

Keith Kurlander [00:50:27]:
Yeah. Create some cool meaning.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:50:30]:
Yeah.

Keith Kurlander [00:50:31]:
Well, should we wrap up?

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:50:33]:
Yeah, it seems like a good time to do that.

Keith Kurlander [00:50:38]:
Till next time.

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:50:39]:
Till next time. Thanks, Keith.

Keith Kurlander [00:50:41]:
We look forward to connecting with you again on the next episode of the Higher Practice podcast, where we explore what it takes to achieve optimal mental health.