I’ve done meditation sporadically for years, but in the last 6-months, I’ve been more consistently doing it 2x a day. I came across an article Dean wrote, and then read his book Natural Meditation. I also attended one of Dean’s free online meditation workshops. His work and philosophy based on effortless meditation resonates with me.
Meditation can be nebulous and getting started can be a big challenge. In this podcast, Dean who has decades of years experience doing and teaching meditation shares how to do it and why it can enhance your life.
What You’ll Learn
- What meditation is
- The purpose of meditation
- How to do it naturally in 10-minutes a day
- How long it takes to see benefits
- The myth of the monkey mind
Listen Now
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
Links Mentioned
- DeanWords.com
- Dean Slutyer Youtube
- Natural Meditation Book by Dean Sluyter (affiliate link)
- Fear Less Book by Dean Sluyter (affiliate link)
- Fear Less Guided Meditation
- Free Zoom Session Schedule
About Dean Sluyter
Dean Sluyter (spelled “Sluyter”) has taught natural approaches to meditation and awakening since 1970. His highly acclaimed books (affiliate link) include Fear Less (affiliate link) and Natural Meditation (affiliate link). Dean gives talks, workshops, and retreats throughout the United States and beyond, from Ivy League colleges to maximum-security prisons. He has made several media appearances and has completed numerous pilgrimages and retreats in India, Tibet, Nepal, and the West. He is known for conveying authentic teachings in forms that are relaxed, accessible, and down-to-earth.
Transcript
Marc Perry:
Hey guys, welcome to the BuiltLean podcast, I’m Marc Perry the creator of BuiltLean, which helps men with demanding careers get lean, strong and functionally fit with exceptional vitality. And today, I have Dean Sluyter with me. And so, Dean Sluyter spelled S-L-U-Y-T-E-R, has taught natural approaches to meditation and awakening since 1970, and you heard that right.
Dean Sluyter:
That’s right.
Marc Perry:
His acclaimed books include, Fear Less and Natural Meditation, and Dean gives talks, workshops and retreats throughout the United States and beyond from Ivy League colleges to maximum security prisons. He has made several media appearances, and has completed numerous pilgrimages and retreats in India, Tibet, Nepal and the West. He’s known for conveying authentic teachings in forms that are relaxed, accessible and down to earth. And I’ve done meditation sporadically for years, but in the last six months, I’ve been more consistent doing it a couple of times per day, and I came across an article Dean wrote recently, and that led me to his Natural Meditation book, and I also attended one of Dean’s free online meditation workshops and his work and philosophy, they really resonate with me and I’m just so grateful that he’s able to be with us today. He’s been doing it for a while. We’ll talk more about that in a second. But with that said, thank you so much for joining today, really appreciate it.
Dean Sluyter:
Thank you, Marc, it’s really… Yes, it’s really great to be here.
Marc Perry:
Cool, and so I guess to start out, you were doing meditation before it was cool, like way before it was cool, so…
Dean Sluyter:
I was doing meditation when it was weird.
Marc Perry:
When it was weird. So tell me…
Dean Sluyter:
When I started teaching meditation and yes, you have that right. In 1970, I would start every public lecture I would give with jokes about, No, it’s not about flying carpets and beds of nails and crystal balls, and everyone would laugh, it would be a joke, but I knew I had to tell that joke because people really had that impression or it was some hippy cult stuff. So I’ve seen the whole landscape change on this. Now everybody and his brother-in-law has maybe attended a meditation workshop at the Y, and or used some meditation app, so people have gotten past the block, past the obstacle of thinking it’s weird. The main obstacle that people still run into is they think that it’s hard. And the way it’s taught often it is hard because people, they have the impression, which is often reinforced by the way that it’s taught that, Oh, it’s about concentrating, it’s about clearing your mind. If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “Well, I can’t meditate. I can’t clear my mind.” And as you know from participating in my session and reading my books, it’s not about clearing your mind, that’s… It’s… No one can clear their mind, I can’t clear my mind, but it’s actually… It turns out to be something way simpler, way easier than that.
Marc Perry:
Okay, so I guess let’s actually start off… And I appreciate that we’re gonna dive into more detail, but can we start off… Like how did you even get into… How did you start meditation and get into it, and then also just make this your career? How did that all come about?
Dean Sluyter:
Right. It started for me with a few childhood experiences, which I think a lot of people, maybe even most people have experiences in childhood, maybe, where you were sitting out on the lawn on some long afternoon by yourself and things got quiet and you know, just some sense of, “Oh, everything’s fine for no particular reason.” [chuckle] Nothing has changed on the outside, but somehow it’s kind of like an opening up. And I don’t know, these days if kids ever sit out on the lawn just being by themselves anymore and not playing games on their phone or something, so I hope they’re still getting the opportunity for that to happen.
Anyway, I had some really clear dramatic experiences like that in childhood, and then when I was in high school, it was California, it was the ’60s, and the information was starting to be available for the first time, “Oh, here are these books from thousands of years ago from India and from Tibet. Other people experience this stuff.” And of course, there was the whole psychedelic revolution going on. “Oh, take this substance and 45 minutes later, you’re really in the place where everything’s fine for no particular reason,” except the little detail that you took a drug and it wears off in a few hours. And so here were these books by these ancient sages saying, the place that you’ve been bumping into by accident is… It’s real and it’s called Satori, Samadhi, Grace, enlightenment, the Kingdom of Heaven within you, right both the Eastern traditions and the Western traditions.
And there are ways of systematically, not just accidentally once in a while, but systematically just letting go and settling into that. Every day, every day, so more and more you’re living there, and you’re… And more and more you can start kind of moving in your furniture. So I started looking for teachers, the first teachers that I found were Zen teachers, but the Zen approach usually is very kind of rigid and very much about you sit, you’re not allowed to move, you can’t budge, which was not gonna be me, I was way too squirmy for that.
And it was about concentrating and trying to clear the mind, and I thought there must be something wrong with me, and then I found teachers who said, “No, it’s not you, it’s… You’re just normal, just regular people are not gonna be able to sit without ever moving a muscle, but that’s not necessary.” The regular people can’t push away all their thoughts, but it’s not necessary. And I did have a day job, actually for 33 years I taught English at a fancy prep school in New Jersey, but by then I was teaching meditation, and so I wound up setting up meditation programs for these kids who were getting ready to go to Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth, and a lot of them still, they’re in government, they’re in the arts, they’re in the film industry. One of them in the last couple of years was a nine-time Jeopardy champion, and I got to sit in the studio audience and watch him wipe the floor with his opponents and… Yeah, it was really great.
Marc Perry:
That’s awesome. And so in the beginning of our discussion here, you talked about, and you’ve alluded to it here. It’s just… It’s like a natural… Meditation is a natural effortless thing, and so can you answer the general question, and this is what your book is all about. What is meditation?
Dean Sluyter:
Meditation is settling down into yourself, it’s not going outside, it’s not contacting something exotic, something other than you. It’s settling into what you are, we could say settling down into the level of your core beingness, we could think of things in terms of on the most outward level, there’s all this activity, all the stuff that you do. And then we get a little bit more inward, there’s all the stuff that you think that’s not active… You can’t from the outside see a person thinking, now we’re getting more inward. And then if we settle down even closer, we get down to what you feel, your feelings. Alright, which… And notice each, as we take each step, things become less active, and it feels more like what I really am. Now for most people, the feeling level is the deepest that they get, the deepest that they contact, so that’s what… You know why we, I identify so strongly with those feelings, they become so important to us and they are important. But there’s one more level beyond what we do, what we think, what we feel, there’s what we are, just this level of pure beingness, just is-ness, we could say.
You could think of it like an ocean, on the surface of the ocean, there’s all these waves, all this activity, and then we get a little deeper and there’s still activity, but it’s more under the surface, there’s the currents of thinking and feeling, but then we get a little deeper and it’s just… Just silent ocean of beingness and…
Marc Perry:
It’s a beautiful description. Continue. No, continue.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah. And the thing is, see, the mistake that most people make when they approach meditation is they understand, Oh, meditation is about settling into some kind of silence, and we all want that silence because that’s peace. We all want peace, our head goes around around all this stuff and pandemics, and now we’re getting… And so that’s what our activity is maybe messed up or challenging at best, or thoughts, what to think about, our feelings. Now, in the quarantine times, there’s these huge spikes in anxiety and depression, so we all want this quietness, we all want this peace. So the mistake that people make is they say, “Well, I want quietness, there’s all these waves here, I gotta flatten out all the waves.” It’s like I’m gonna take a big mallet or I’ll take something. Wham! Wham! Wham! Flatten out all the waves, but that’s a bunch of additional activity, that’s what I call trying to meditate. People say to me, “Well, I tried to meditate but it was hard.” And I say, “No, no, no, no, no, no. You tried to meditate, and so it was hard.” So what I show people how to do is rather than try to flatten out all the waves, you allow gravity to pull you down into the deeper levels of the ocean, and what you discover is…
You and I, Marc, living near the Pacific Ocean, you just dive in there and you can experience… You only have to go a couple of feet below the surface, and it’s always quiet down there. We don’t have to create quietness, we just settle into the quietness that’s always there. Let gravity… Instead of… We don’t do it, we let it do us, we let the gravity pull us down. Now the gravity in this case, what do human beings always gravitate towards? What are we always looking for? We’re always looking for fulfillment, happiness, peace. Whether we’re standing in line at the Ben and Jerry’s deciding which flavor we want, what you really want is peace, but it ain’t on the menu, so you settle for Cherry Garcia or something. Whether you’re deciding to get married, deciding to get divorced, what you’re looking for is peace, happiness, fulfillment, we’re just naturally attracted to that.
So what we do in natural meditation, as you’ve experienced, is we allow gravity to take over, and it’s hard to describe, not ’cause it’s complicated, but because it’s so simple. It’s hard to describe, easy to experience. And so my specialty… And I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve gotten to work with the super smart brainiac kids at this top prep school and work with guys in maximum security, a lot of whom never finished grade school, and just find out how to lead people just into letting gravity take over, how to just pull the rug out from under their effort.
Marc Perry:
So how do you do that?
Dean Sluyter:
Well, okay, let me look at my watch here. [laughter]
Marc Perry:
Yeah, no worries, yeah.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, so there’s two ways we can do this. One way is I can just describe it a little more without actually doing it and that might be better if people are listening to the podcast while they’re driving and so forth, and then what we can do is send them to my website where I’ve got just about everything there is free, and I’ve got videos and audios there that just will lead them straight into the meditation in like 12 minutes, 15 minutes.
Marc Perry:
Cool. I just did The Fearless Guided Meditation about 20 minutes ago, so I can include that in the article. So every time I publish this, I have an article that corresponds with it and we can have everything there.
Dean Sluyter:
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
Marc Perry:
Okay, cool.
Dean Sluyter:
Now, there are a few things that I teach that we could do right here that will give people a little taste of going in that direction, the core practice of natural meditation where you’re closing your eyes, so we don’t wanna do this while people are driving, operating heavy machinery. But there are things that you can do while you’re driving, while you’re making that difficult phone call, it’s a business phone call or a tough relationship situation or something, things that you can do right there in the moment that kind of bring some of the flavor of that silence, of that peace right into the middle of the activity. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. The whole point of meditation ultimately is to not have to meditate anymore, is to just be totally living from that silent ocean even while you’re up at the surface rocking and rolling in the waves. That’s what’s called enlightenment. You know all that stuff you hear oh enlightenment, self-realization, nirvana, it’s nothing mysterious. As I said at the outset, this is, it’s you, it’s what you really are, it’s your own being, this only now you’re experiencing it, kinda shining through all the feeling and the thinking and the doing, it becomes never lost, you’re always anchored in that silence no matter what’s going on.
So that’s when life really starts becoming fun and it really does happen for people. You don’t have to go to India and sit in a cave. You can, I’ve done that and that’s pretty cool, but most people are not gonna do that, but I’m a bit of a fanatic about these things, so I’m gonna…
Marc Perry:
Oh, that’s great.
Dean Sluyter:
I’m gonna be pushing the envelope. I gotta do the R&D for other people, so find out what’s really necessary here. So some of the things we can do for instance very, very simple thing is breathe through your feet. This is a really good one when you’re feeling stressed, you’re feeling anxiety, you gotta make the tough phone call, or you’re sitting there feeling your anxiety level rising ’cause you’ve been in quarantine for too long or whatever. Now, very simple. Let me lead you into this a little bit for a moment, and everyone watching listening can do this. If I say to you, your left shoulder. Notice right away your attention goes to your left shoulder, no effort involved. In fact, you can’t help it, right? If I say, “Don’t think about your left shoulder, still your attention goes there.” Okay, “Right elbow, attention goes to the right elbow.”
Okay? Now, soles of your feet. Now, the attention is on the soles of the feet. Perfect. Now, keeping the attention on the soles of the feet, and of course other stuff’s going on, you’re hearing my voice, your thoughts going on whatever is going on in the room, all that’s fine. We don’t try to concentrate, we don’t try to push anything away. So have some attention on soles of the feet, and now as you breathe in just imagine you’re breathing in through the soles of the feet. So here we go. And now as we breathe out, breathing out through the soles of the feet, and in through the soles of the feet, and out through the soles of the feet, and in through the soles of the feet, and out through the soles of the feet. And that’s it, done. How are you feeling Marc?
Marc Perry:
I feel relaxed.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, yeah, me too. [chuckle]] And so, it’s stupid simple. That’s what I love about it.
Marc Perry:
No, it’s awesome. And so Dean, before, I definitely wanna get into some counter points. Some of the people who are like, “Hey, what are you doing in the meditation?” We’ll go there, but why do this? Why just sit down and do nothing? Why do that? Why?
Dean Sluyter:
Because it makes suffering dissolve. Because it makes… And I know most of your listeners are men, and being a man, I know that men in particular are often very reluctant to admit that they have anxiety, they have depression, that they’re lonely, and we can engage in all kinds of stuff to distract ourselves from them, and even if you’re feeling… I’ve had a very lucky life, mostly I’ve not had great disasters, there’s a certain amount of depression that runs through my family, and I’ve had some experiences with that, but mostly not been a mental health basket case, so I just wanted to be happier, and as I said earlier, I got… Early on in my life, bumped into the fact that there’s this kind of maximum state of being happy, of being okay, called enlightenment. And I got very interested in that. So the thing is that… Remember when you were a kid and you did something and you realize… And maybe your friend or maybe your… If you had… I was one of three brothers, and later on, a sister, this was the thing, you do this thing, and then your friend or your brother would say, oh, “You are in trouble.” Remember that feeling of being in trouble, it was like, “Oh, no,”
Marc Perry:
The whole world’s caving in on you.
Dean Sluyter:
Exactly, like the whole world is caving in on you. You are doomed. There’s no way out. It’s just the ultimate doom, right?
Marc Perry:
Right.
Dean Sluyter:
Okay, what is your question? Why meditate? What does meditation do for you? Essentially, you become more and more living in the situation, that’s the opposite of that, it’s the opposite of, “You’re in trouble,” instead of, all the world caving in on you, it’s like taking off a tight shoe. And we can look at specific manifestations of that. The fact that your relationships become smoother, we find ourselves in relationships, sometimes we fall into patterns, we fall into like flying off at the handle at certain things, and then later we go oh god, why did I do that. Why do I keep doing that? I know it’s dumb, I know I wind up regretting it every time. I do work in prisons with guys that one moment of getting caught up and now they’re spending 30 years locked up as a result, one moment of just stuff that we know is stupid and the consequences can just go on and on. So why do we get caught up because of stress? Because the stress that’s built up in the system is still there, even though the mind knows it doesn’t make sense to do this, the feelings say, “I don’t wanna do this,” but the stress is there and it has a real…
It’s physiologically real. Neurologically real, it’s like the neurological footprints of those old dramas and traumas, they’re in there, they’re in there, there’s no amount of beer that will dissolve those, but it turns out that meditation does dissolve those. And so more and more… It’s this simple. When I first started going to these weekend meditation retreats, just… They were nearby. They were local, I was growing up here in LA, and I was in my late teens or early 20s. I was living with a girlfriend at the time, and after I came back from about my fourth or fifth weekend retreat, my girlfriend said, “Every time you come back from one of these, you’re a little bit nicer.” That simple. That simple.
And I said, “I am?” Because I hadn’t noticed it. Because it’s so natural, it’s just like your rough edges are getting sanded off, it’s like the stress that was… Like I used to smoke. I used to smoke cigarettes. How’s that for stupid? And I never quit. It’s just one day I lost the desire. Because what makes us… What drives us to do things that we know are destructive to our health, like smoking, is that no matter how many attitudes we try to strike for ourselves, we know it’s stupid, but we do it because the stress is there, it’s they’re alleviating the stress. Now, when the stress dissolves, just one day, you find yourself not drawn to it anymore, so this is why to bother, it’s not because… It’s not for the sake of… And you don’t have to meditate for a long time when you’re doing it in this natural way, 10-15 minutes a day is fine. The reason that you hear people say, oh, you gotta meditate for an hour a day, two hours a day, is because they’re doing that kind of effortful meditation, and they gotta bang their head against the wall for 45 minutes till finally they get tired enough of doing that, and then the last 10-15 minutes they settle into effortlessness.
So what I was so lucky to learn from my teachers and what I teach is how to go straight to that last 15 minutes, so we do that for some 10, 15 minutes a day and… Yeah, it’s generally enjoyable. It’s peaceful. But that’s not the point. The point is, is the carry over. The point is, it’s like you take a dry sponge, you throw it in a bucket of water, it comes out wet. So we take our dried out nervous system, throw it into the bucket of peace, clarity, and it comes out kinda sopping with that.
Marc Perry:
That’s a really great description, Dean. And so I was just thinking, as you’re going through this, about my own personal experiences, and then I also was thinking about famed kind of self-help guru Tony Robbins, okay. And so I recently came across a video where he was in… He was talking about his morning routine, and he said, “Now, some people get up in the morning and they meditate, and I think meditation is wonderful, but I haven’t met many people who cannot think thoughts.” This… And of course, I know we potentially never gonna go with this, but, “This is a different outcome. This is about priming yourself.” And so his idea is like, “You know what, I get in the morning, I wanna prime myself and get ready for the day and that sort of thing.” And I’m kind of curious like, what do you think about what he said? And just to be clear, he says, “Now, some people get up in the morning and they meditate, and I think meditation is wonderful, but I haven’t met many people who can not think thoughts.” This is a different outcome. This is about priming yourself.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, so he’s totally misunderstanding what meditation is. He thinks meditation, like most people, he thinks meditation is sitting there, not thinking thoughts. I’ve been doing this stuff every day since 1968, I started in the… What was that? The Johnson administration or the Nixon administration. And I’m always, I always have thoughts there, but it doesn’t matter, the thoughts are up there on the surface, I’m settling down here into the quiet parts. So he is just… He is just… And great, if there’s stuff that you learned from Tony Robbins that works for you, God bless. But clearly, he’s not the authority on meditation, I’m the authority on meditation.
Marc Perry:
I love it. And that’s why we’re talking. I really love that. And so here’s another thing, and I’m just giving a counter point because there’s this go-getter kind of perspective, and it’s like, you know what, massive action is the cure all. Why is non-action sitting down and doing nothing going to be of help?
Dean Sluyter:
It’s not either/or. It’s not either/or. And effective action has to be rooted in non-action, there’s an old… These questions, by the way, are ancient. The one of the first text that I read about this, the classic text on meditation in action from ancient India is called the Bhagavad Gita, and the teachings are given there not to a monk sitting in a cave, it’s to a warrior, Arjuna, he’s the great archer. And he’s in the middle of the battlefield, just before this huge cataclysmic battle is about to begin, and he sits down with his charioteer, who happens to be like symbolically an incarnation of the infinite of the beingness who straightens him out about everything, talks to him for 18 chapters about this stuff, and what… And he explains, first, settle into the beingness and then shoot forward into the action. And the great example, Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita, is a warrior. In archery, what do you wanna do? You wanna propel the arrow forward toward the target, so what’s the first thing you do? You pull the arrow back away from the target.
When you pull the arrow back away from the target, you’re investing it with, what do they call that in physics? Potential energy, and also makes it a lot easier to aim. If you’re just throwing arrows… So you pull it back, your aim becomes true, and you’re investing it with potential energy, and then instead of having to push it, you just kind of let it go, and then it goes forward with kinetic energy and hits the target.
Now, more and more, this is what happens by sitting, meditating for 10-15 minutes a day, and then going into action, it’s like drawing the arrow of the mind back within yourself, and then more and more you come out… And I hear this from people all the time that I teach, ’cause I teach people in the film industry, people in… The whole in internet stuff, everything. It’s like more and more, they say, “I feel like I’m getting all this stuff done but it feels like I’m not doing it.” You know that’s… You must know this, ’cause you’re an athlete, you know when you’re really in it, that sense of flow that you have where it’s like you’re watching it being done. And isn’t that always when you play your best game, and there’s a joy to it, an exhilaration to it, that’s like nothing else when you’re right in the zone. So what this is about really is… And when that happens, you always think, “Well, it would be so nice if I could always play my game in the zone. And even better, what if I could just every moment be living my life in that zone?” And that’s what happens, that’s what enlightenment is. It’s life in the zone.
Marc Perry:
And so in terms of when to do it, where to do it. Can you talk a little bit more about that? In terms of like practical steps. So like there’s a guy listening and he’s like, “Listen… ” It’s like, “I like the idea of meditation, it just seems like, how do I even fit this in my day? Number one, and how do I notice the benefits?” As you’re saying, it’s like kinda watching grass grow.
Dean Sluyter:
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, it’s a pretty fast grass growth in this case, in my experience.
Marc Perry:
Cool.
Dean Sluyter:
Again, I’ve been teaching people forever in all kinds of situations, we have… You mentioned at the beginning, we have these Zoom sessions, I lead Zoom sessions, they’re free, they’re open to everyone when we’re not off for a holiday or something, they’re twice a week, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday. All this information is available on my website, you can sign up to be on the mailing list on my website. And what I find on the Zoom sessions, it’s great because I get to lead meditation and we have… We chat, we have discussion, and people tell me about their experiences, and I hear it again and again. “This thing happened and like this one woman who lives right over here in Venice, and she’s such a dear soul, and she… Her husband had a massive stroke, I think 15 years ago, and her whole life has just had to be round the clock caring for him ever since, and frequently he has medical crises and goes into the hospital and she’s…
And she started meditating with me, I think two years ago, and just the other day, she was saying to me in one of the sessions, “You know, he just went into the hospital again,” and she said, “I swear if it wasn’t for the meditation, I would’ve been… I would’ve been in the bed next to him.” And that… So I keep hearing about the results. Okay, how to fit it in? Think about… Anyone hearing this, think right now, what’s the time when… Well, think about brushing your teeth. Alright, do you look for a time to fit in brushing your teeth? No, you just… It’s in your schedule. You get up in the morning, you do it. Alright, so the best way to meditate, the best time to meditate is when you will actually do it.
Marc Perry:
That’s my advice for exercise. [chuckle] Like it’s…
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s all about setting habits and not thinking, “Am I in the mood today? Am I too stressed today? Am I already feeling happy so I don’t… ” No, you just don’t go through that stuff, you just do it as the saying goes, it’s a simple concept, just do it. And it’s nice to have a nice quiet place, most of us these days are mostly at home anyway, but it’s not necessary, you can… When I’m on the road, when I’m traveling, and… I’ve meditated in churches, I’ve meditated in airports. Fortunately, just as you don’t have to get rid of the thoughts, you don’t have to get rid of noise, so fine, if you’re in a… I love me… I love going to New York City and meditating in the subway. Right, ’cause I love the contrast. I get a kick out of that, all this noise and chaoses on the outside and the inside of you.
Marc Perry:
That’s great.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, and you mentioned… Let me just mention my book because I do go into all these details in the book, this is my award-winning book, this one, the prize for the best body mind spirit book of 2015, Natural Meditation.
Marc Perry:
Congratulations. That’s amazing.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, all that stuff is in there, or come to the Zoom sessions, there’s a lot of good stuff to read and links to videos and audio stuff on my website.
Marc Perry:
Cool, no, I think that’s…
Dean Sluyter:
Which is Dean… Oh, you’re gonna post my website?
Marc Perry:
Yeah, sorry, we’ll do it. It’s DeanWords.com, we’ll get into that in a second. And then in terms of when to do it and in terms of the results, as you’re saying, I think what’s particularly compelling, and it just… Is that we all have these patterns. And we’re like, Oh, why would we do that? Or anxious patterns and meditation can help those dissolve potentially.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, it helps you, you know everybody likes to be free, just think of all the stuff we go through to be free. And what you can be, and this is a favorite topic when I’m with my guys in northern state prison in Newark, New Jersey. It’s a rough town, rough prison, and I got these guys, we sit, we meet… You know, it’s not quarantine days. These days I meet with them via video, but we sit in this, what they call the chapel, which is the cinder block bunker, and they’re in the middle of a really chaotic situation, and these guys are just… They’re freer on the inside than most people who are walking around on the outside, and they know it, they’re free… When you’re free from those punishment, you’re free from your own anger, when you’re free from your own fear, there… Nothing else is more precious than that, and then that… And of course, our families are precious, our loved ones are precious, but when you’re able to really be with them and really share yourself without it all being filtered through your fear, your anger, your defensiveness, it’s such a joy.
Marc Perry:
That’s so fantastic, Dean, I really appreciate. And so where can people… I think we’ve talked about it in terms of finding you, go to DeanWords.com, right? That’s kind of where you have a lot of information. Anything else you like to mention?
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, and I’d like to say that slowly so everyone can hear it. DeanWords.com. DeanWords.com and… Yeah, and they’ll find… There they can read chapters from all my books, and then if they wanna read further, they can link… Get the books on Amazon. Most of them are also in Kindle and audio. They can hear the stuff narrated by my velvety baritone.
Marc Perry:
Absolutely.
Dean Sluyter:
Yeah, yeah, that’s the key, that’s the portal there is my website.
Marc Perry:
Cool. And actually one more question I had for you is kind of the length of the meditation, right? So as… And you taught transcendental meditation for years…
Dean Sluyter:
Yes, I did.
Marc Perry:
And typically two times a day, and then I’ve actually done a program myself where it’s like, Hey, get in the chair two times a day, it’s gotta be two times a day, it’s gotta be two times a day, and you’re kind of saying, Hey, it’s natural, and why not just do 10-15 minutes? It’s actually a remarkable thing, what you’re saying, it’s just 10 to 15 minutes, which is a speck of time can create all these dramatic changes, so… Can you talk a little bit…
Dean Sluyter:
And then if you… And then if you wanna, say, Hey, this is good. Let me double the pleasure, double the fun. You wanna meditate twice a day? Great, God bless. But when I find this… And yeah, I taught TM for years and people were… People got a lot of great results from it. Many people, not all of them, the ones that didn’t don’t come back, and I get now with the way I teach, which is a more open way, it doesn’t have… Certain aspects of the way TM is taught is kind of, in my opinion, a little bit rigid, and plus the main reason I left the organization was they just started charging just way too much money, I felt. I mean, the whole reason I got into it was, Hey, this stuff is doing such great stuff for me, I wanna share it with as many people as possible. And to have these barrier, monetary barriers, it just… For me, doesn’t make sense.
So yeah, once a day is great, twice a day, and occasionally I go on retreats and occasionally I lead retreats where we’re meditating a bunch of times a day, which is great. This is where you can really just kind of stay in the cooker. You come out of the… You dive into the ocean, you come out, and then instead of going back on the surface and living your life, then you know you have maybe a little meeting or do a little stretching, some yoga or some whatever, and then take another dive and then come out, you might be taking a dozen dives in a day, and then you come out of just a weekend of that, and it’s like, “Man, I just got my oil change and my tires rotated.”
Marc Perry:
That’s really cool. And one more thing before we run Dean is, some people are gonna be resistant to it and say, “You know what, I just don’t feel it working… It’s not working.” And by the way, I came across this one, as you know, if you search anything online, you’re gonna find broccoli is bad, everything’s potentially bad for you. And so one person was talking about how they meditated for 20 years. And I know you have a feeling about this word, the monkey mind was always there, and she didn’t see or understand, I guess, the perceived benefit. So, I guess…
Dean Sluyter:
At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me say… Send her to me.
Marc Perry:
Interesting.
Dean Sluyter:
Because I work with people like that all the time. People come to me and they’re like braggy, “I’ve got the worst monkey mind in the world.” I hear that so much. I’ve got a chapter in this book called The Myth of Monkey Mind. This idea, this is one of the worst myths out there, and you hear it all the time that, “Oh, the mind is like this naughty monkey. It’s always jumping around. And what you have to do is grab it… ”
Marc Perry:
And put it down.
Dean Sluyter:
With a net, hold it down, and that becomes straining and that becomes… Look, any effort to create a non-agitated state of mind is itself a form of agitation. That’s the catch-22, that’s why trying to meditate is always self-defeating, and that’s why… And it’s not just me making this up really. I’ve got this from just wonderful, wise enlightened teachers show me, this is how to do it without trying, how to let it do you, this whole idea… Essentially what, in terms of monkey mind to say, Okay, if the mind is a monkey, it’s not jumping around from branch to branch aimlessly, it’s looking for a bunch of bananas, point him toward the bananas, he’ll settle right down there with that banana very happily. So, that’s what I show people.
Marc Perry:
Cool. And so Dean, again, I really appreciate all this, and I think it’s one of those things where you just commit to being consistent and just believe in it and then do it, and then over time…
Dean Sluyter:
Don’t believe in it. No, I don’t believe in it. Don’t believe in it, don’t believe in it, be… I tell people this, hold on to your skepticism for as long as you can until you’re just… But just do it, you don’t need a different attitude, you don’t need to believe anything, you just sit down and do it. And I say, Okay, you do not have to commit for the rest of your life, how long you’ve been living life the other way, 30 years, 40 years. What’s reasonable to give this, 30 days? Sit down, do it for 30 days, and then see if you feel like stopping. It’s called scientific method.
Marc Perry:
Love it, love it. Well, Dean again, I’m super appreciative. And the man has been doing this since 1970s, he’s had a tremendous experience, you can read obviously much more about his background, I gave you a very little in the beginning, and we certainly dove in. Again, I’m just super, super appreciative Dean that you could come on and share insights today. And as I said, we’re gonna have way more information on the actual article, we’re gonna have a full transcript of this podcast as well. And again, I know where… You’re in Santa Monica, I’m in Santa Monica, hopefully when this, the COVID thing dies down a little bit, I’d love to check out some sessions and all that kind of stuff.
Dean Sluyter:
Great. Good.
Marc Perry:
Alright. Well, enjoy the rest of the day, Dean, I really appreciate it.
Dean Sluyter:
You, too. Okay, thank you so much, Marc.
Marc Perry:
Alright, bye bye.
Dean Sluyter:
Take care.
Another great interview
Thanks. I appreciate it!
Outstanding interview, Marc! The book is ordered and I’m on my way. Don’t know how I missed Dean Sluyther to date. I’m on my way now! My appreciate to Dean for making this so simple.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the interview, Mark!