Pete Holmes & George Janko Debate About God | EP. 97

It's better for me to tell you this now than when we're all on our knees looking at him and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] that kid on the podcast is talking about." And he's real aggressive. I was very happy to be an atheist because it meant that there was no hell. His words are greater than mine because my words would push you away, the same way that every Christian man pushed you. I think if Jesus were here, he'd say, "Why are you still talking about me?" We could disagree even more. I disagree with him. I believe Jesus Christ is God. If Jesus is God, who are you? I was a sinner who was saved by Christ. That's a story. Who gives the [ __ ] how you explain it? The mystery of God is right here. Everyone listening, everyone watching, you guys, the three of us, it's right here. Where else could it be? Lovely. George, I love it. For real. Gift to be around. That was awesome. That's a very question. I love you guys. You give me something to think about.

Oh boy, oh boy, do we have an episode for you guys. Uh, didn't think it was going to turn this direction, but, uh, me and Pete Holmes had like a very faithful conversation about his version of spirituality and my version of spirituality. And, uh, to be honest, we do get into comedy towards the ending. Where I kind of wanted to just drive this conversation, but it felt like God wanted to have this conversation here. And, uh, and it, it, it was really fun. I love sitting down with people that do not have my point of views in life and then, uh, me express mine and him express his. If you believe in the gospel or if you believe in a different point of view, this is a perfect episode. Uh, I hope you guys enjoyed. Sit back, relax, and enjoy two gentlemen discussing what they believe and respectfully declining the other person's belief.

Welcome back to the George Janko show. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Are you guys married? Yeah, we just got married. Okay, great. Oh, congrats. Thank you. Wow. Where did you get married? Uh, we actually, so is that Mountain Dew? Cel? Oh, okay. Yeah. By the way, I feel like I've never seen Cel out of a can. Really? You know, I'm sponsored by them. I probably shouldn't even. It out of the can. Where's my magic? Mine. Get it on. Bring it. Bring it. Please. Uh, uh, we got married. So, long story short, uh, we got our dream house. But before we moved in, we felt like it wasn't right for us to move in with all this blessings and like leave God secondary. What? We weren't married yet. So we didn't want to move into. What you thought God would be mad if he moved into the house before you were married? I felt like I, I caught myself always putting him last, but telling everybody I put him first. And so I, I kind of killed the hypocrisy in me. And I turned to her and I said, "Before we move in, let's get married." And then we actually had a beautiful wedding at our house. And then, yeah, yeah. Interesting. But you know, when like we feel like the Rel, like I disagree with that theologically, but go ahead. I'm glad. Christian? Are you guys Christian? Is that the flavor? You guys are so kinky, man. No, but I'll tell you, you know, I think like it's such a kink. I'm not saying it's a bad kink. I'm just saying. You're a form of Christianity though, right? Or no? We better. No, I, I wouldn't call myself a Christian. No, I, but I, I grew up that way. That's why I recognize, like, recognizes like. So I'm like, I used to be that way. God's going to be mad if we move in before we're married. I think that's, I think that's kind of bizarre. So you, God was good with you? Well, he's always good with you, right? Well, yeah. So is that true or is that not true? It is, like, for example, if you're good to me, yeah, and you're always good to me, always and forever, even if I do something wrong to you, you're still always going to be good to me because you're a good guy. Yeah. Uh, I just felt guilty, you always doing good to me and me always doing bad to you. So I just didn't want to do bad to you anymore and I wanted to do good to you. All right, all right. That's fine. I think it's lovely if that's, if that's the way that, um, that you relate to, uh, to God in love. I think that's beautiful. Thank you. You don't need my approval. But you have no, but I want it. I think God blessed us so incredibly much with our relationship and the way that he has, you know, moved us together. And I think that a lot of people put, you know, importance on a lot of like secular and materialistic things when it comes to weddings, you know, how big can my wedding be? All these things taking so much time. And if that's what you love and you look forward to, then you should absolutely do that. But then we realized that the most important thing for us was just for us to be united together with the people that we love closest to us and God. And so we're like, you know what? Instead of keep pushing it and not being married for a whole other year, let's just. But we don't need his approval. Do it intimately. No, I wanted. We don't need his approval. No. Not for approval. It's hard when you grew up this way. If you're feeling any bristle from me, and I, I, I would, I don't like that. I bristle a little bit at stuff like this. Not a little. Cuz I'd like to. A little. No, I don't. Just a little. Just it just my Spidey sense starts to tingle. Um, it just feels like a lot like, I don't know, a little guilty and a little naughty and all these things. Yeah, we better do this. We're, we're focused too much on material. Let's, let's do this for God. And I don't know, it seems transactional to me. I spent so much in my youth being like, I'm in and I [ __ ] up and I'm out. And I'm like, but it's never an out. It should never be an out. Well, that's, I, I would agree with you. Yeah. But that's not the gospel. The gospel never says he's out. If we were made on our works, we would never be saved. It's not about works. And I think that's why a lot of people leave the faith is because they feel like they have to do so much and they have to feel guilty. But there's no condemnation from the Lord. Sure. The Lord came to save, not to make anybody feel guilty or wrong. Yeah. Well, hold on, hold on. We're jumping right in. I want to. Yeah, yeah. We're jumping right in. I do like it. I, I love, I love this sort of stuff and and talking to people that phrase it differently, but that clearly love God is is always fun for me. I just don't want you to feel like I'm, uh, evaluating you in some way. I'm just, I'm just trying to tell you how I think of things. No, I love that. And we can dive right into. But let me introduce you. My man. Yeah. Well, we did jump right in. Uh, well, thank you so much for being here. Um, I, we just watched your special and dude, it is something special. It's really. Thank you. You're not for everyone. Yeah. And by the way, starting to notice it. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what it's called. That's what it's called. Um, I thought it was amazing. And honestly, your material, it's based off of. I love comedians like you where you're able to use the talent that God gave you. I don't know if you believe in God, but because we jumped into this and I feel like you do or don't. I feel like we're going to have some differences in the way that we express this. I think, uh, for example, I don't know, man. Let's, let's keep going with the question. I don't want to dissect everything. How about this? How about this? How about we have fun and we leave faith if it jumps into it? No, I want to talk about it. I'm totally game to talk about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's just, uh, it's just interesting. I'm not, I, I grew up. I was this close to becoming a youth pastor. So I noticed that. That's why I wanted to talk to you about that. I get, um, yeah, but there's a certain degree of PTSD when we start talking about like, uh, you know, labels and saved and Christian and can, can kind of make me a little uncomfortable, I suppose. That's why I kind of wanted to. We hopped into it so quickly. No, I love talking about it. You're comfortable. People. Yeah, sure. Okay. But I just don't talk to a lot of people that are like, uh, we love your special. We love comedians like you. What did you say? God gave you this gift or whatever? Yeah, I believe that God gave you this gift and I think that the way that you're using it is special. I really appreciate that. That's very kind. I'll take it. By the God part, if you makes you feel more comfortable. No, I, I, yeah, yeah. I do. You know, this gift that you've been summoned by nothing, this magical, nothing that gave you everything. It's, yeah, it's tricky. It's just, yeah, I, I'm, I'm honestly kind of taking it back as to why I'm bristling at that. I think it's just because I spent so much of my time, so much of my life, the first 28 years, kind of in that circle and and using these terms. And I haven't spoken to somebody that's just sort of like an overt, uh, Christian that uses these these terms so freely. So I'm like an old man in a young man's body, sort of. Yeah. How old are you? I'm 32 now. Okay. All right. Yeah. One off from the Lord. See, let's go there. You go. The mission started today. You know, I skipped inauguration for this. For this episode. You were going to go? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, but you, something in my heart, I was like, no, I have to be here. Maybe it was the Lord, or maybe it was nothing. We'll get up, we'll get to it at the bottom of it. Well, that's an interesting question. So you're referencing the joke. One of the reasons when we talk about believing in God, I don't believe in God as an object. And that's what I'm talking about in that joke. So when we talk about God existing, we're talking about, well, Rupert Spira, my my favorite teacher, talks about God being like the screen and we're appearing on the screen. But God, the screen doesn't exist to the things on in on the screen. Does that make sense? We are the sub, we're the ground. God is the ground of being. But I don't think there's something called God that's watching us somewhere else. Something else somewhere else watching us. Subject, object. God is the all in all. So it's complete oneness. It's complete wholeness. Holy, whole, one oneness. There's a version of that that we believe in as well. It's called the Holy Spirit. That's interesting. I suppose I always thought of the Holy Spirit as the, the animus, the piece of God that's inside of us. So in this theory that I believe in, there's three forms of one God. There's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the comforter. And I'm believing, if I am, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, but the feeling that you're feeling is the Holy Spirit is like, it's all with around. And people have it as a challenge. And so that the things that I feel and I go through, you will also feel and go through. And we're somehow connected in this realm. That's why sometimes when I meet brothers and sisters, it feels like I've met them this whole time. But it's truly just the Holy Spirit or making, like introducing itself to the Holy Spirit that's in this person. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But if you don't mind, let's take it back. We're going to jump into this. Let's jump into this. Go ahead. Uh, I, I did do my research on you and I did see that you want to be a youth youth pastor. Yeah. Um, and I think that it's something that you're still kind of doing, but not in the form that you wanted to do it in. But I think you have this amazing talent and you're able to express yourself in a way that makes people feel so comfortable. And it's easy on the ears and they could laugh and think a little bit. Cuz that's what I did when I was watching your special. I did laugh, but I also walked away with a dildo ad on my phone. So thank you for that. Um, how? You had to meet one person that was like, I got an ad for a dildo. Well, I did. And I guess I picked something that they don't really do ads for. So we were safe in that regard. Dude, that was really fun. And I like the guy that came back and you were still screaming it when he left to go to the bathroom and he's like, we're talking about dildos now. Like, oh, I don't even remember that part. It was a really funny. It was a really funny cuz I was seeing it from that perspective. I got, I'm so touched you liked it. That's no, it was hilarious. And and to be honest, I love having conversations with people like yourself where you're like, like, hey, I, I, I respect what you, you think, but I disagree. And I think I've been having too many conversations with people that agree with me. So it would be great to sharpen iron versus iron and like learn from your perspective. You're older than I. Yeah. Look at you knowing my book. Hey, hey, get out of my book. What's interesting? That's that actually brings up why I bristled when when you say God gave me a talent. We mean you're God. Yeah. So there's a, there's a slight, you know, there's a bump. You get a bump from it. It's like, your God gave it to me, but it's you. It's like wearing a jersey. Well, that's not true because my God is your God, even if you don't recognize that God. Yeah. And I, I, I hear that. Yeah. So, you know, it's so funny. That's kind of aggressive too. But it's, it's better for me to tell you this now than when we're all on our knees looking at him and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] that kid on the podcast is talking about." And real aggressive. It's real aggressive. But you said you want to have this conversation. No, I do. But I, I'm just going to call that aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. On our knees. So, yeah, yeah. So the gospel says that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. So I'm just bringing a Bible verse up. I wasn't trying to say that. Bring. And when when you read that, you believe, uh, that literally there's like a judgment day and and people are going to go to hell? And, uh, so, yeah, I think you walked away. You walked away from the faith. I'm guessing from the conversation of hell, right? You didn't think that our God. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was certainly the beginning of it. Yeah. That's that's good research right there. I, I went to Israel to study when I when I thought I was going to be a youth pastor. And I ended up going to Jerusalem for a semester. And I became obsessed with, um, the concept of hell. That became like a real, uh, sticking point for me. Yeah. Whether or not that was literally true or what that meant. And what that said about, um, God. All these, all these like, kind of thought experiment questions. Like, why even have a life if one of the options is that you can be tortured forever, eternally conscious? That seems stupid. Like, why play a game if that's one of the, one of the things that can happen? Or annihilationism, do you know that? Where they are just gone forever? Yeah, yeah. The wages of sin is death. I believe that. You believe? So, so the. Don't believe going to oblivion. No, I, I believe that God says in the scripture, it says, "They will be as if they never were." So I don't believe. And by the way, I just talked about this and man, I got an ass whooping in the comment sections. They were mad at me. But I kind of stand on what I believe. And as of right now, that's what I believe. Now, God, correct me if I'm wrong, right? I pray that he does. But when we read about Jesus, he's so loving, and he's so forgiving, he's so merciful. So I can't see my, my merciful God torturing a man for a billion years because he didn't want to marry into his covenant. I don't see that. Um, I do see him saying, "If you wanted to be apart from me, then be apart from me." Like any gentleman. Like if I wanted to go grab a beer with you, and you were like, "No, I'm not going to be." Or well, now I'm going to torture you. Or I'll just be like, as a gentleman, I'm like, "Okay, well, if you ever change your mind, I'd be here and I'd love to share that drink with you." Well, that goes back to the subject object. That's that's God over here and me over here. And God saying, "If you don't want to be with me, you can go and be away from me." Yeah. What I'm saying is, it's not possible to exist. There's only one awareness. We call that awareness God. We call it consciousness. We call it being. We call it knowing. And that's, and that's the only thing that's real. You and I are abstractions of that. We, we're dances of that or of that one being. And I don't think it's possible. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I make my bed in the heavens, you are there. There's only one being. When God, when Moses met the burning bush, the burning bush said, "I am that I am." I am amness. I am beingness. There's no, if you were in hell, you would be animated by God there. That's why I said I don't believe in that. I believe that separation is death. So when somebody dies, their wages of sin is death, which means that they're no longer present. I don't think they have eternal life. I think eternal life is the ones who want to have eternal life with Christ. But if you don't mind, I'd like to just learn a little bit more from your perspective before we dive too much into theology because I don't want it to be a debate. I just want to more learn from your perspective of life. No, I'm, I'm enjoying this. Yeah. So, and pardon me if I, if I poke too much, but I just, from my learning, was it your, it was the divorce that really spun you into a direction where you're like, yeah. Look at you, George. That, that's good research too. I, um, so yeah, I was, I, I went to Gordon College, which is a Christian College outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And that's where I started doing improv and comedy and all those sorts of things. And that's where my trajectory changed from being a youth pastor to being a comedian. Kind of as soon as I thought that that was a possibility to be a comedian, I was like, I'll just be a comedian. Like, as soon as I heard about it as a possibility. And then, uh, did you, were you always funny? Well, I mean, I wasn't the funniest in my friend group. I don't think that's what was going on. I think I just was the most compulsive about it. Being in comedy is like, you know, wanting to make everyone make a certain sound is similar to like wanting to make everyone yawn or something. It's this involuntary human response. Or or or make them, uh, amazed, which is what magic is. You just want, you just focus on this one thing. So there were people that are funnier than me in my high school, but they didn't share the compulsion to like, almost scientifically, but certainly compulsively, break down why do people laugh and what is funny. So like, I'm thinking my friend Tom Catasi, we always used to laugh in high school. He would say something, then I would say what he said louder, and everyone would laugh. And he was very mad. So like, comedy is the ability to think of a thing, but it's also the ability to like, or or the sort of, uh, personality type that would say it really loudly. Yeah. And not worry that you're going to embarrass yourself or. You fell in love with it and you studied it too. And I think that's what makes people great at it. Anybody who's great at something, they study it and they they obsess over it. Like, like that was a, that was a great analogy. Like, oh, not only did I focus on people laughing, but I wanted to know why they laughed and what would make them laugh. So I find that great. And that could also be tricky though, in the faith world, right? We could just nitpick and figure out what, why, hey, how, and so what do you mean? Well, for example, the hell thing. Sometimes when we ponder things, uh, and we get angry at God, um, but I've learned that when I submit, and that's that's kind of the faith, and I know a lot of people have a hard time with it, is I submit myself to the Lord and I say, "I don't know." And I go, "This is." Then I'm very honest, though. I go, "Hey, like, with the hell thing, I go, "Hey, I don't know if I'm right. I'm just going to be quite honest. I don't know if I'm worshiping you because I love you or because I'm deathly scared of you." And so that is when I poured a little bit more wisdom. And he was like, "Okay, I understand what you're feeling, but this is why I love you." And this is why. And so that is where I get my wisdom from. Is just full submission. But you lost your faith a little bit when you got into your divorce thing. And I want to know a little bit about that. But before we get up into that, I do want to apologize because when I meet people like you that have a beautiful heart and a beautiful mind and they reject the biblical truth of what we believe in, it's because of hypocrisy and people not really representing Christ the way they should. And you're smart enough to dissect it. And so when you saw hypocrites and wolves and you tied that into our truth, it was a poor representation. So I just want to say, I really am sorry for how a lot of Christians have represented themselves in your life. Okay. Um, that's very sweet of you. I don't think it's entirely necessary. I mean, um, my biggest stepping, uh, stumbling block, I guess you could say, was first the hell thing. But then, as you mentioned, my wife and I were both, you know, believers. And we got married when I was 22 and she was 24. And then she ended up having an affair and and leaving me. Which, you know, sounds easy to scapegoat her. That's not what I'm doing. What came to the front for me at that moment was, I thought I had a deal with God. That I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't swear. I, uh, witnessed to people. I believed in the Bible. I read. I prayed. I did everything correct. And then I felt like he had sort of, uh, left me twisting in the wind. I don't think that's correct. Even if you read the Bible, I don't think that's what it's saying. But that was my interpretation. Was that a fair interpretation though? I think a lot of people share it, you know? It's like, our God, you read it in the Bible, people are, uh, representing that it's very tribal. It's like, he's with us and he hates who we hate, and he loves us, and we will win, and we will squash, uh, the others. I disagree with that part, though. I'm talking about the Old Testament. The priests of Baal and the priests of Yahweh, they poorly represented God. That's why Jesus came and corrected the law. For for sure. I agree. I'm, I'm, I'm certainly referencing the Old Testament there. Yeah. I just, the, the whole squashing your enemy, though, it's like, it's, it's what I believe too. And it was like a very wrong mindset. That's why I just wanted to make it known that that is not evil. But I could see why you would be frustrated when you weigh your works out and you're like, this doesn't make sense. This guy's a piece of [ __ ] and he cheats on his wife, but his wife is so good to him and loves him. And yet I'm here and I serve you and I and I go and I preach the gospel and I want to be with the youth and I never even looked at another woman, let alone flirted with her, let alone cheated. And yet you gave me a bride that broke me. So yeah, I understand why you would shake your fist at the Lord. Yeah. There's a lot in your language that is just very narrativized. God gave me a bride. What happened was, I married a woman. And I thought because I had done everything right that I would be protected. And that wasn't the case. And that disillusioned me. And that made me think, well, if I'm paying into this protection service and it's not protecting me, I'm going to have to rethink what God is. Because if it's not a bodyguard, or really maybe a more analogy is like the mafia. It's like I was paying a percentage of my earnings to the mafia, and yet my bakery was still burned down. You know, that's how I felt. And that really freed me in this really strange way to not believe anything. So I kind of emptied the room. There's this interesting Zen story where a teach, a young student finds the greatest teacher in the mountains. And he's really excited to study with him. And he's like, "I've searched far and wide for you, and I've studied with all of the greats, and I know all of the texts." And while he's bragging about everything he's done, the teacher is pouring him a cup of tea. And he keeps pouring it and pouring it and pouring it until the tea is overflowing. And the student says, "What are you doing?" And he goes, "You can't put any more tea in a cup that's already full." Meaning, you have to empty yourself. That's, that's the wisdom pattern. It's death and resurrection. It's not just going to the promised land. You, I had to die. I had to be broken. The seed has to crack for it to grow into wheat. That was my cracking. That was my humbling. I thought I knew the truth. I thought I was a special boy. More importantly than knowing any sort of truth, that I was in, that I was chosen, that I was correct. These people are wrong. These people are wrong. These people are wrong. These people are wrong. I'm right. My wife leaves me. Well, suddenly I have to kind of relook, re-examine my life. And it was actually the worst thing that I thought could have happened. Was to stop believing in God. And I very briefly did. I sort of dabbled in it just as a thought experiment. I was like, "Well, maybe there is nothing." All my friends were atheists. So I kind of just took a vacation. I called it in my book. I, the chapter is called "The Heretic Atheist." I was very happy to be an atheist, a heretic atheist, because it meant that there was no hell. I was like, you know, it might be a big black nothing, but at least we're not going to be tortured forever. So there was a certain freedom in that. And then, as the story goes, now that my cup was empty, I was more open to hearing new ideas. I, I took mushrooms. And it wasn't really what I experienced. Like what I saw when I took mushrooms. It's that I saw that you are seeing with something. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about awareness. In the Upanishads, it says, "Not what the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see." That's what we're talking about. So right now, you're listening to me. Me. That's beautiful. So you're listening, but it's not what you're hearing. It's the listening. It's the hearing that is the miracle. It's the knowing. Everything is known. You're seeing me, you're knowing it. You're hearing me, you're knowing it. When you take psychedelics, it really kind of eviscerates you. Pete goes away. The story of my past, my body, where I'm from, my even my beliefs, all kind of goes away. And all that's left is the light of pure knowing. And even if you're just seeing like a clown or Michael Jordan in the clouds, it doesn't really matter. It gives you a chance to witness that whereby the eye can see, or that whereby the ear can hear. And that is eternal. And that's the I am. That's the ground of being. It's not over there. It's not up there. It's looking out your eyes right now. And there's all these things in the way. And that's, that's why to me, if you really, we can summarize this really quickly. To me, the gospel is The Prodigal Son. Which I always joke is Jesus's closer. He does the Sermon on the Mount. He closes with The Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son, obviously, we know. Son is born into the kingdom. He leaves. He asks for his inheritance early. He goes and squanders it. That's kind of like life. You leave unity. You leave, we could say God, you leave the king, and you go off and you have a life. You make mistakes. You squander it. It's not, it doesn't say that he goes to sex workers or drinks, but it's kind of implied that he, like, has a time. He turned up. He turned up. He had some fun with the money. He did. And then he ends up, you know, working with the pigs. And he's a Jewish man, so he's working with the pigs. That's like, that's like a joke. That's a funny joke. He, he ends up working with the pigs. Jesus is being funny here, saying he's as low as he can be. Now, where you and I might differ, and I don't know, I really don't know, maybe we're the same. What Christianity has become is atonement theory. Is the idea that Jesus died to change God's mind about us. But if you look at the, the story of The Prodigal Son, the son remembers who his father is. Amen. That's all he does. Yeah. And then he goes home. He's, he's like, "Maybe he'll give me a room in the servants' quarters." But he goes home afraid. And what does the father do? He throws a party. Slaughters the fattened calf, gives him new sandals, gives him new robes. They have a party. Amen. That's the good news. Yeah. The difference, and I've said this a million times, but I really love saying it as often as it comes up. Atonement theory. There's no Jesus character as we know him in that story. You know what I'm saying? The Prodigal Son, you could say, is Jesus, or is you. It's us. It's this. It's this. We go off and we live our life. Atonement theory would say, you're working with the pigs, and then another man comes and says, "Let's go home to your father. I know who your father is. He's a king. He's a great king. But I also know he's insane, and he will want someone's head to roll for what you've done. You've squandered your inheritance. You were a fool. You spat in his face, and he will not let that stand. But I will go with you, and I will let him murder me." That's what we've turned Christianity into. Is this idea that you can't go to God. You can't remember who your father is. You need someone to go with you so that God can whip and torture and crucify and bleed out this person because that's what you deserve. But if you look at the story, it really is right there. Our job, the gospel, is remember who your father is and go home. Do you know why Jesus was crucified? In which way are you asking them? The biblical way? Like the way, the way you were about to preach to the young kids, like from like the King James Bible? Like when you read the gospel, do you know why he was even sacrificed? Well, even the word sacrifice, see, this is where we might be where we diverge. Absolutely. The idea of a sacrifice. This is a framing of something that happened. I believe that Jesus died on the cross to say, "I am with you. Look, I know who I am, and I can even face death unafraid." Yeah. And he was saying, "I'm also involved in your suffering." Jesus on the cross is the big me too. I'm with you when you're suffering. I'm suffering with you. I'm not on a cloud. I'm here in the dirt and the mud, and I'm bleeding, and my mother is crying. I'm in this with you. To quote Richard Rohr, Jesus didn't die. This is my theology. Jesus didn't die to change God's mind about us, like a lamb. Like that was our idea. We'll kill a lamb because God hates us. We'll kill something we love to make change his mind. That's what we superimposed on the story of Jesus. I don't think that's what happened. I think that's what got added to the story. And that's why I keep the gospel to what Jesus said, not to how it was interpreted after the fact. When when from a very guilt and fearful place, people were like, "Yeah, he died, but he died because we're bad." When you look at the gospel, when you, what I consider the gospel, Jesus's words, we're looking at Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Jesus's words. He says, "The Prodigal Son remembered who his father was, and he went home." And I think that's all we need to do for saving purposes. I believe Jesus Christ is God. So that's my first differ where we might differ. Well, I believe Jesus Christ is God. So, but I believe it's not, it's not Jesus convincing God himself. That Jesus is God. Who are you? I, right now, was a sinner who was saved by Christ. That's a story. I would say that's a story. Yeah. It's a good story. When you're in deep sleep, and all the thought, even the idea, "I am George Janko, I'm married, I have a house in Arizona, I have a podcast, I almost went to the inauguration," all of that goes away. Who are you in that naked moment when all of it is gone? Deep sleep. That's I am. That's being. And that is, it's not blasphemous to say that deep in our core, the Kingdom of Heaven is within. What's blasphemous is to say, "I'm George over here, and God is over there." That's to say, I sub, I exist apart from God. You. So you're bringing up the Holy Spirit now. The temple of God is within me. No, but that's what you're bringing up. Awareness. What's animating you right now? We could call it the Holy Spirit, if you want. Okay. Um, when you did depart from the, the faith, do you find yourself to be happier? Are you at more peace? Yeah. Um, I laugh because of course. Could you grab my Celsius, please? More Celsius. More. This guy's turning me up. I'm going to need more energy. So, yeah, you're happier? You're more at peace? I don't think an ego can be at peace. Only your soul or awareness or being can be at peace. Peace. This is Ram Dass. Peace exists in the ego. We know the ego, yeah? Peace exists in the ego for the most fleeting moment. You drink that Celsius, you get what you wanted. I drink my coffee, I get what I wanted. We have a good podcast, we got what we wanted. You went on that trip, you had the beautiful wedding. These are all little. And then it goes. You eat a cookie, you want a glass of milk, you want coffee. Now you have too much energy. You eat something to come down. Then you're tired. Then you sleep. Then you wake up. You got to pee. Then you pee. Then you got to eat. Then you got to eat. Then you got to do something. That's the ego. That's chasing these micro hits. You do everything you're saying is biblical. I'm aware of that. It's so funny. But the, but the peace and joy that lasts forever is Christ. It is that relationship with the Holy Spirit. But what does Christ mean? Christ is not Jesus's last name. Christ is a word that means the Messiah. The, it doesn't mean the Messiah either. Christ is a word for the whole thing. Christ consciousness, unitive consciousness, the one. Jesus realized his oneness. "I and the Father are one." Again, where you and I might differ is that I think that "I" is the same "I" that you are. Because what other "I" is there? I think there's only one "I." I think there's only one awareness. You could say there's a great, um, bird talker lyric, "We're one wind distracted by our different sails." There's one God. Bob Marley, "One Love," right? The Jews, God is one. All, all faith at its deep levels seems to agree or seems to point to it's one. And and in my tradition now, non-dual, it won't even say it's one. It just says it's not two. Because calling it one means you're standing apart from it and going, "There's one." We're just going to call it not dual, not one. So Christ is a word that means that realization. So when Jesus says, "I and the Father are one," I think the call is for you to go and do likewise. Is to recognize who your father is and go home. I agree. But what? And maybe maybe you don't. But so much of Christianity is going, "Jesus did it. Let's sing songs about how Jesus did it." I think if Jesus were here, he'd say, "Why are you still talking about me?" Well, then who saved you from your sins? That's atonement theory. That we, we. I didn't mean to roll my eyes. I'm just sort of like, no, no, no. It's fine. And by the way, I don't find anything you say to be hurtful. And I want you to be as comfortable as you want. And and and if you're joking, is like, even if you felt comfortable mocking it, you do whatever you want. I, I feel really safe in you. You're a beautiful person. And I, I don't, I feel totally comfortable. Oh, awesome. Just when you throw in sins, yeah. I would say that a good way to understand sin is a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of who you are. You're not acting or believing in line with. Look, if it's all one, why would I steal from you? Was your wife having an affair and misunderstanding? I suppose. But I don't need my wife to be burned in hell. Or I, I don't need someone to step in. I'm not saying she, her home. I would just saying, but like, do you think that was a misunderstanding when she sinned against you? I think she might have been. Well, actually, frankly, no. I think I was an immature person and she married the wrong person. And she did the thing that she needed to do to get out. We'll quote Bob Dylan on that one. I always have respected her in doing what she did and getting free. We were kids. We shouldn't have gotten married. I respect her. I don't think she did something wicked and naughty. Who her vagina was involved. No, I'm, I'm not. I think she sinned against you. I think she hurt you. I'm not you, so I can't speak for you. But I think that if you promise to be forever and always with somebody, your partner, and she decided to lay with another man, I think that would hurt me a lot. With another man. I think it would. Knew him in the biblical sense. Yes. She broke your promise. You know, it's kind of like, you know, when something really bad happens in your life, and in the moment, it's so incredibly hard to deal with it, right? And it's awful, and your world is falling down. But would you say that through those terrible hurdles that we have to overcome, there's always like such a big learning curve from it, and then you're so much better for it now? Absolutely. It's, it's with the pigs. Would he have thought, "Who is my father?" If he wasn't broken to the point of working with the pigs? So my wife leaving me was me working with the pigs, and I was broken. And I was, when I say humiliated, the word "hume," it's from human, the prefix "hum." It's also from humble, right? Humiliation is a good thing. It's a humbling. It's a humaning. And it also comes from the word for the soil. Gets you low. So I was low with the pigs in the dirt. And that did lead me to where I am. And to your generous question earlier, so much happier. There's no condemnation. I was going to say, there's no comparing them to me. Spirituality can be measured by things like spaciousness and ease and gentleness and joy for no reason. A lot of us can be joyful because we go to the Super Bowl and we get tickets right next to Taylor Swift. That that's [ __ ] I've done a lot of stuff like that. It's [ __ ] The only joy, going back to the only peace, you ask me if I'm more peaceful now. The only peace is identifying yourself and recognizing who you really are and knowing yourself to be your Father's son. Meaning what? That essentially is the big picture. Christ. Essentially, I am the Kingdom of Heaven will not come by expectation. They will not say, "See here, see there." The Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and men do not see it. So what, what are we talking about there? When Jesus says, "There's, I'm a spring of living water." Yeah. Have you ever gone in and just said, "Who or what is aware of my experience?" That's the spring. What is the spring? It's, it's water that generates seemingly from nowhere, and it's gushing forward. Close your eyes and say, "Who am I?" When I say "I," what am I referring to? It's not my body. I used to be a child. It changed. It's not my circumstances. Not even my beliefs. We're talking about that. I used to be a, a fundamentalist. Not, I don't believe that anymore. So everything's changing. Spirituality is the pursuit or the, the dedication to that which does not change. There's only one thing that doesn't change. It's being. It's the knowing with which you know everything. 10 years, you might be different people, but the knowing, like 10 years ago, the knowing that you knew your experience, and the knowing that you know your experience now, is it the same knowing, or is it a different knowing? Completely different knowing. The knowing, not what's known. That which knows. My knowledge is completely changed. I'm not even the same person. Not the knowledge. What knows? Could you break that down for me? It's hard, I guess. Are you talking about what knows? What learns? No. Okay. Talking about consciousness. I'm talking about awareness. Yeah. Talking about being. Yeah. So right now, you might have the thought, "I want a sandwich." Who or what is aware of that thought? You are not a thought. Thoughts come and go. Yeah. You are not a feeling. Feelings come and go. You're not a body. Your bodies change, grow, evolve. Every seven years, cellularly, you get a different one. Yeah. But what doesn't change? There's a through line, like a string of pearls. The experiences and your thoughts are like the pearls. 10 years ago, different pearls. What is the thread? The knowing. The being. You might call it your soul. That, that, that which knows your experience. Know that to be Brahman. That's eternal. That's "I am the Father are one." That's waking up. That's salvation. That's conversion. I like this. Where do you get your doctrines from? Like, where do you learn? Who's your, like, mentor? That's a nice question. I, well, I, that pearl thing is Rupert Spira. The screen thing is Rupert Spira. I really love him. He has a lot of stuff on YouTube. He's wonderful. But after I took psychedelics, I found, um, Ram Dass, uh, was Richard Albert at Harvard. Got kicked out for doing psychedelics. God, he changed my life. I love him so much. And and times of tumult, it's really nice to have him. And I still feel him very much. Then I found Joseph Campbell. Anybody, uh, that is interested in the Bible story and Jesus, and when I say myth, I don't mean things that aren't true. I mean things that are so true they can.

only be told with with lies, with things that aren't necessarily literally true. You get that from Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth." It's a series on PBS. It's unbelievable. It will absolutely change everything.

So I found him and Ram Dass, uh, and then Richard Rohr, later. But Richard Rohr, especially if you want to keep, um, hold on to Christ's language and and and you love the gospel and you have a heart for the gospel, um, Richard Rohr is your guy. "The Universal Christ" will change your life. "Everything Belongs." Um, he's a Franciscan. That is absolutely gorgeous.

I like that. I, uh, there's a Bible verse that was just popping up in my heart and I wanted to kind of talk to you about this. Did you ever read the gospel where it says, uh, and by the way, if at any point you want to move on from spirituality, I love this stuff. Okay, thank you, George. Thank you for asking. Of course, I want you to be as comfortable as possible. No, I want you to know as your guest, I'm having a great time. Okay, people always want to talk about comedy and stuff, and I secretly love talking about this sort of stuff. And I love both of your smiling, kind eyes just being like, huh, even if it's not exactly how you would phrase it right now.

Is what I'm talking about. It's not an idea. Who gives a [ __ ] how you explain it? The mystery of God is right here. Everyone listening, everyone watching, you guys, the three of us, it's right here. Where, where else could it be? What we call the moment is the only thing that's real. The mind perceives it as time. It's eternal. It's always here. And whether or not my language of like, "Oh, be the knowing," and I understand that might not be the clearest thing, but you are having the experience of being alive. And the three of us are sharing that and talking about it.

I'm one of those people that goes around going like, "Why aren't we always talking about this?" Bro, I talk like this in elevators. Some people I've never met, I'm like, "So Buddhist, huh, man?" We'll talk about that. Like, I just love it. Like, here's the thing. I, I could never go and look you in the eyes and be honest and say, "I know everything." And I can only bring to you at your feet what I think is wise. And you bring to me what you think is wise. And then we can sit here and ponder them. And I think, uh, two men sitting here, uh, telling the truth of what they believe, I think it's the kindest thing a man could do. So I appreciate conversations like this.

Yeah, and also, I'm 45, remember? So I'm older than you. And I'm not saying you'll end up where I am. I'm just saying there's like, life is always a turning trip. Enjoy it. Buckle up. Enjoy it. And I, I would add to that, don't take it too seriously. And, uh, I think there's something, you know, I want to write another book about spirituality. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. But I, I hope you like this. I think there's something about your spiritual intuition that is to be listened to. You might call that the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

But, you know, on the internet, where every once in a while they'll ask people to draw Shrek. What? Like, draw Shrek from memory. Like, don't look at a picture of Shrek, just draw it. And people do it. They don't do it with just Shrek. They might say Stewie from Family Guy or whatever it is. People do it horribly. And what's so funny is the three of us all know what Shrek looks like. And the three of us probably couldn't draw Shrek. Not at all. But what's funny is all of us would know a wrong picture of Shrek. We would know immediately, this is wrong. Yeah. Even though you can't draw it, you know it's wrong. And I think there's something spiritually profound about that. I think that would be the Holy Spirit. Or how you feel would be one with God. In, in, in, I would say it's the wellspring of my knowing. When I, I love talking about these ideas, but the truth is silent. The truth is silent. "Be still and know that I am God." Right. Amen. That's it. All of this stuff, all of this petness, yeah, comes in. It's window dressing. It all needs to go. That's why I was bringing up deep sleep. You can also bring up a meditative state, or or just a moment of quiet, or or looking at a sunset, or climbing a mountain, or whatever it is. So many things silence the story of who we think we are. And what's left is, "I make my bed in the depths, and you are there. I make my bed in the heavens, and you are there." Something is pouring out your eyes and out your ears. It's grabbing and knowing the touch of this sofa, the sound of my voice, the sight of this room. Yeah. And your thoughts and your feelings. Something knows all of that. That is what I think Christ is pointing us to. "I and the Father are one."

I, I feel sad. What is the "I" that notices the sadness? And is it sad? Does it learn? Is it a Christian? Is it a non-Christian? Or is it pure, naked light? Is it who you really are? And all you have to do is remember who your Father is. I like that. Let's do some ketamine. Okay, read it. Pull it up. I knew we were going to need this. Uh, the Bible verse that I, I like, I wanted to bring up to you is, uh, "Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be open." Right? You know, like, and that Bible verse, broken down in the best form possible, it's, it's basically whatever you truly want to see, you will see. I don't know if you noticed this, but like, have you ever, uh, got a new car and you're like, "I love this car. No one has this car." And then you get into it, you're like, "What the hell? Why does everybody have this car?" And then you notice that so many other people have this car. And it's because you invested in it. And you know it a little bit more.

Um, not to be disrespectful or say what I think your theory is wrong or right. I'm just saying, have you ever feared? Now, I know that you don't like that word. But have you, have you ever feared the fact that when you were hurt and broken, you searched for the absence of God, and God let it happen? And let you lead to things that really try to open up your heart and mind because you asked? So then you received it. You wanted to believe that no, there is no, uh, Holy Spirit. There's this type of lifestyle. No, there is no condemnation. It's this. But if we hypothetically, in a world that Christ existed in the way the biblical form is, if God's word says a thing and human's word says a thing, who is to be true? Then it would be God. So then the connect between man and God would be full submission of, "We don't know anything, so we would trust in your word." Yeah.

But you're talking about a book. Yeah. I'm talking about stripping away everything and going right to the source of your experience. What's the source of your experience? Where do, where do you, like, draw that conclusion? You need to ask that question. I do ask that question. What's that? I do ask that question. I ask it all the time. And then I find answers. Let's not think about what our source is. Let's, you can't know it. You can only be it. So I just, for fun, I take issue with taking a Bible verse because people did this my whole life. A Bible verse like, "Knock and the door shall be open unto you. Seek and he shall find." And applying that to everything. I, I think that's dangerous. I also think it's dangerous to say, "This Bible is what God said, and these other things aren't what God said." I'm over here saying, "This is all God's dream, and everything everybody says is what God is saying." I don't mean that's true. I don't, I don't think that's really what we're doing. Yeah.

But one has historical evidence, an actual backed artifacts. And one is really tricky, man. That's, that's not tricky at all. If we, if we walked hand in hand to see all the things and all the places that Christ walked, touched, saw, there's cities that are like, explored because of the Gospel. I, I don't want to take that away from you. I couldn't, to be honest. That's arrogant for me to say. I don't want to take that away from you. I wouldn't even want to if I could. Yeah. You have to consider that the people that wrote the Gospels weren't journalists. It's not a history textbook. Nobody had a tape recorder. In fact, the, the stories of Christ weren't written down for 50 years until after he died. 150 years. That would be like if you or I decided to do an oral history of the Civil War today, and no one had written anything down. So when we talk about literal truth, and we talk about places where Jesus went, and finding the Pharaoh's armor in the Red Sea, which it wasn't the Red Sea, it was probably the Sea of Reeds, and hinging our faith to that sort of conquering, "Look, we found it! Okay, we found the cross. And if you touch it, you speak in tongues. We have it." So you're saying, regardless, it needs faith? No, I'm saying that's beside the point. Not what you know, that with which you know it. Finding and having a firm foundation, being like, "We know this is real," is so beyond the point. It's, it's, it's gone. It's the boy in the mud with the pigs, remembering who his father is. How do you remember where you come from? Go in and ask. It's not about saying, "Look, you can find." I, I remember people used to be like, "Buddha died. He wasn't resurrected." Like, what is this? It's tribalism. Yeah. You, you don't like the, it's in, out. It's us, them. It makes you feel good. But remember when you said the Shrek thing? When you look at a picture of Shrek, and it's wrong, but you know it's wrong? Yeah. Do you not feel that the things that God said were wrong, biblically, you don't feel in your heart it is wrong?

I just think we're looking at it differently. You're, you're saying if it's in the Bible, it's real. It's God's word. Yeah. I'm saying John chapter 1 says that the word became flesh. I'm aware. What? Yep. So that's why I believe it so hard. I don't think that's what John meant. John had no idea there was going to be a collection of letters and essays called the Bible. Neither did Jesus. Well, yeah, the gospel says that the word is forever. I don't think the person who wrote that knew that that book wasn't put together until like 1054, which makes it even crazier. A thousand years later, bro. But they all are congruently on the same page. That is so wild. I know. That's crazy. No, we're having a different conversation. But but to put your faith in a book? Jesus is saying, "Drink of living water." Living. Let's stop talking about an ancient text and arguing whether or not our ancient text is real. You realize if we were in Saudi Arabia right now, we'd be talking about the Quran. Or if we were in China, we'd be talking about the Tao Te Ching. Do you understand? It's not a book. "I and the Father are one." Okay. So let's, let's stick there. How do you, how do you connect with your Father? Well, I, I'm, we're doing it right now. I don't go to church. You never leave church. We're doing it right now. I agree. I think praying without ceasing is to keep in touch with what I'm talking about. It's like, what is hearing? What is speaking? This is a trip. I'm feeling the carpet. We're alive. We're on a space rock. This dude's got a good vibe. Now, I know you're lying. No, I, I like him. Is that your kids on your shirt? It's so, it's getting in, staying in your inner room when you pray. "Go into your inner room and close the door." That I think is a metaphor. Go into your inner room and close the door. Stop thinking about God as an object and be consciousness without an object. And ask yourself, how could this naked being be any different from the naked being that you are? And you are a pig. Christ was. It's here and now. And talking about a book and looking for historical sites, dude, that's, look, I respect it. That's why I went to Israel. I wanted to see it. I wanted to touch the stone. You get there, guess what? 150 years between Christ's death and, uh, basically them declaring Christianity the official faith. Nobody knows. That's a heartbreak. Church of the Holy Sepulchre is where he was crucified. No, it's over here. This is where he was buried. No, this is where he was buried. Nobody knows. It's like going to Six Flags. It's a disappointment. Speaking of our sponsor. Uh, no. Uh, okay, cool. Well, dude, first of all, I love conversations like this. And, and to be honest, what we're doing right now is something I pray that our, our, our legitimate country keeps doing. Like the fact that me and you do have very, very different opinions, but I so much respect you. And I could tell by the way you talk to me that you respect me. I do respect. And I really do appreciate your time. The kindest is recognizing what we share. Yeah. We could disagree even more. I disagree with her. No, no, that's hilarious. What I'm saying is, Jesus said, "Love your neighbor." He didn't say, "Like your neighbor." And he didn't say, "Agree with your neighbor." Love is recognizing. Namaste. Right? Namaste means when I'm in the place in my heart, and you're in the place in your heart, we're the same. It's, it's, I'm saying if we can turn all of these thoughts down, and all these stories down, to just naked, it's like, this is Richard Rohr. Talks about if someone were to ask you, "What's in this room?" Right? We'd say, "There's a lamp, there's a soundboard, there's three, four people, there's a TV, there's a plant." Tony Robbins' book. Exactly. Almost nobody would mention the empty space. Nobody would mention the empty space. But this is the Tao Te Ching. They say, they people celebrate the shape of a vase, but it's the inside, it's the empty space in the vase that makes it valuable. That makes it work. That makes it hold water. That's us. We're getting lost with the contents of the room. Oh, well, I have the Bible, or you have the Bible, and I don't have the Bible, let's say. And, uh, I have this, and I have that, and I have these pants, and I have these beliefs, and I'm in this tribe, and you're in that tribe. It's the empty space that we share. In the middle of the night, I'm going back to deep sleep. When you are deep, deep asleep, and I'm deep, deep, deep asleep, that naked being, I'm saying that's both of us tasting what we essentially are, and it's the same. So the love that I feel for you guys isn't just, "Oh, what a nice house. You, you offered me a, a Celsius." You know, that's what I think Jesus means. I, I spend so much of my time as a Christian going like, "Love your neighbor." Okay. Uh, "I love your, your Nike shoes." Even let's say I hate you, and you're an [ __ ] and I really can't stand you. I'd be like, "He's got great hair though." You know, like I try to find. And that's where you get that, um, that churchy phoniness where people. What I'm trying to go is like, look, some people aren't for me. Some people, you don't have to have lunch with everybody. Yeah. But don't kick anyone out of your heart. I have problems with people in my family. Like, we just don't get along. Deep down in their essence, meaning what's essential to them, what meaning what can't be taken away from them, which isn't a thought, a belief, a feeling. What's essential to them is what's essential to me. Namaste. It's the same. That's when Jesus is like, "What you do for the least of these, you do for me." Cuz deep down, it's the same. We're the same. I do agree with you. There's so, there's like little lines and light that me and you kind of like poke through and see through. I think that life is a perspective, and it's where you stand and kind of see. It's like if we're underneath a tree, you're like, "Dude, look at this apple." But I'm over there, and you're like, "I don't see an apple." But you have to kind of stand where he is and like, "Oh, no, I kind of see it." So there's some perspectives that we do see. Um, I'd love to get to know you a little bit more. How did you get, how did you meet your new, your, know, beautiful wife and you had kids? And how did you, you really got me smiling. Cuz Val and my daughter Leela are the joys of my life. And I love them so much. Um, Val at, at a show. Yeah. Um, I do stand-up, and I was performing in San Francisco, and I met her after the show. Um, and I, I said in my book, I was like, "Later, when I'm old and I don't care as much, I'll just say it was love at first sight." It basically was. It basically was. Cute. Were you on stage and you were looking down? No, that would be real cool. That would be real cool. She was just way in the back. Didn't buy the nice tickets, but it's okay. We'll talk about that later. The nice tickets. So much more to sit in the front these days. Um, but yeah, no, I, I used to do meet and greets and, uh, pre-show and all that. I think just after COVID, I never stopped doing them again. And but back then I did. And I met her, and she was wearing a blue dress with polka dots on it. And we were just there in San Francisco. And we went to the bar where we, we didn't meet at the bar, but we went. And I asked her to get a drink with me. And she was like, "Oh, I, I just assumed you were asking every woman to go." But then that later that night, uh, we held hands. And we always joke that we like held hands like this, like we were walking around San Francisco holding hands. We felt like we knew each other right away. I love those type. That's how we felt. That's awesome. You just can't stop talking and like, everything just flows out of you and you just work so beautifully together. It's effortless. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's. I have a joke about that right now where I'm like, find a, find a friend. Like, I feel like a lot of people are trying to, I don't know what they're trying to do. They're trying to work out some deep psychological issue and they need a partner to like bounce it off of. And look, I've done that too. That's why I'm saying, I think from a place of, I'm like, I've done it both ways. Be good to yourself. Find someone that's easy to be with. Someone who you are more yourself when you're with them. And if you listen to my podcast, uh, we do the Friday episodes together. And we never plan. Just like you guys. This is. I actually think this is a beautiful relationship hack to have something on the calendar where you're hanging out together, you're doing the same thing, and you share that experience. Every Friday, Val and I just turn on the microphones and we just start. That's, that's a weird flex. What I'm just saying is like, we don't outline it. We're not like, "We'll talk about." And we talk for an hour, two hours, and we're laughing. And she's whip-smart and deeply funny. And I respect the hell out of her. And, uh, and I'm really glad I found her. Yeah. That's beautiful. She's a gift. And, and we have a six-year-old daughter. And she is absolute joy. Our first kid. Yeah. How is that? Like, it's amazing. It's beautiful. What's kind of what we were talking about. The chapter in my book. I wrote a book about this, by the way, about my spiritual journey, called "If You're Not Going to Like My Book, I'm Not Going to Like Your Book." What do you mean? Like on social media, whatever. My conscious is, I'm liking it. What is the name of your book? Uh, no, I was talking about the Bible. It was that. That's your book now. See, that's the problem. That's the joke. That was the joke. I liked it. I liked it. My book. I thought you wrote a book. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. I was like, "What's your book called?" You're like, "The Holy Bible." Dude, that's so funny. I, uh, but if I ever do write a book, I'm bringing you back on and we'll talk about it. Yeah. I hope you, I hope you do. I'd love. How many books have you written? Just the one. I, I have sketches for the second one. That's where the Shrek thing. And, oh, right. You're a cartoonist. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's unrelated. But yeah. I'm not, not unrelated. That's just not what I meant by the Shrek thing. But I did do cartoons for The New Yorker as well. Either people think that's cooler, they don't. I think it's really cool. I think it's cool at all. But back to the book. You wrote a chapter about your wife? Oh, I know. About my daughter. And the name of the chapter. So my daughter's name is Leela. And Leela. Leela means, um, it's so hard to not sound like you work door-to-door for Goop when you say this. Leela is a Sanskrit word. I think of Lilo every time I hear it. Oh, and Stitch. Well, we didn't know. But that would have been more appropriate. Cuz my daughter is a wild child. Like, like Lilo. And she loves Lilo. She has a Lilo onesie. And it's perfect. It's like her spirit animal. So does anybody nickname her Lilo? I think she'd answer to it. You came by and said, "Hey, Lilo." I don't think she'd correct you. But Leela means the dance or the play of the universe. And that's sort of my joke is, I, I named her what my understanding is of the meaning of life, which is that this, this big, spacious, empty, eternal, infinite, yes, that is God. It's its nature to spill over. It spills over. It can't help it. You know what I mean? Some of it's horrible. I'm not saying some of this world isn't horrible. But it just can't help but, yeah, and overflow. And it's like a dance or play. That's what Leela means. It means the dance of the universe, or the play of God, you could say. It's like, it's doing it for its own pleasure. And it hides in each of us as a, as a focal point, as a point from which to see it. But the whole thing. So when you're stressed, it's helpful to say, "Relax. It's, it's Leela. It's God's Leela. Relax. It's Leela. It's okay. It's Leela." Just like when you dream at night, you dream. This is also Richard Rohr, who I can't recommend enough. But you dream at night. You dream you're on a beautiful beach, right? In order to experience it, you need to localize yourself in the dream as a point, as a subject. Really, the whole dream is you. The sky is you. The beach is you. It's all your mind. Whatever mind is, it's all your mind. And then you put yourself as a subject in the dream so you can experience it. Then you populate it with others. That's kind of what I'm saying. I think this whole thing is, is God is having multiple points of, of reference in the same. But the only thing that exists, you could say, is God's mind. And that, that mind is dancing or playing because it's its nature to express itself. It's almost tripping over itself to just abundance, more and more. It's, it's almost like wild. It's, it's, it's hard to describe. I think it's really cool that you, you say she's wild and that her name is to be playful and dance, and so it's really cool how that's so fitting together. It did, right? Isn't that weird? Mmm. Yeah.

What is, uh, what's been your favorite part about fatherhood? What's been your biggest learning curve? Well, that's, that one's easy. Is, is, you know, I'm trying to remember. I'm not good with time or, or, um, ages and stuff. But when Leela was born, she was born in 2018. So whatever that is, I'm 45. Someone else do the math. But from me, not me, not me going to need another Celsius to do that. I'll tell you that right now. Um, I had just been really focused on myself. This actually, in a really sweet way, that's actually softening my heart to what you guys said at the beginning about wanting to get married before you moved into the house. This is kind of has an echo of that. I had been so, uh, self-obsessed for so long that that's by when you make yourself your business, when my business is Pete Holmes and selling out Pete Holmes shows and making Pete Holmes projects, it's really slippy, slippy. It's slippery. Yeah. And it can be dangerous too. Dangerous. So that when I say that can be a sin, I can be, that can be a type of unconsciousness, that can be a missing the mark where I'm like, "The world is about me." Right? Nothing really wicked about it. It's just missing the mark. Then you have a child, and you are instantly in love. In love. I don't mean romantic. I just mean like, you in a bubble of love. Your, my Val and Leela were in the space of love together. And all of a sudden, um, you ain't [ __ ] in the best way. Right? Right. In the in the holiest way. You're just, "Oh my God." I think everyone would love to love. We love to love. There's just so many things in the way. Padillas, maybe this person's wrong, maybe this person disagrees with me, maybe this person talks too loud, or drives too fast, or whatever it is. And when you have a baby, everything lights up green. And you're free to love them. And it's great to be loved. But loving somebody is really where it's at. It's like when you get older, you realize giving a gift is better than getting a gift. Like, "Oh my God, I've done it. I am love." When it comes to my wife and daughter, and that feels so good. You wish you could do it for everybody. And I try to do it for everybody. But with my daughter, it's effortless. So the chapter I wrote about my daughter in my book, and the name of my book is a comedy. It's a comedy name. It's "Comedy Sex God" because those are the three things it's about. But it says "Comedy Sex God," so it's kind of a dumb joke. But my, the chapter about my daughter, and I wrote it probably sleep-deprived and my deadline is up. And, you know, "Little Girl in the House was Luminous Emptiness." And that's what it is. When you have a baby, Jesus said, "Lest you be like a little child." Yeah. Child heart. That made so much sense to me. I was like, this baby doesn't know it's a baby. It just is awareness. It's just aliveness. You could say it's just life. It's just life. It's, it's life. It's like I was in Italy once, and I saw a ladybug. And I was like, "This ladybug doesn't know it's Italian." Right? What if you're like, "What? What are you talking about?" Hey, to you, very, very funny. You know, I've said this same thing. Remember about ants? I was like, "You know, there's American ants, there's Japanese ants." I literally. He knows. Wild. Well, yeah. Well, you're, you're starting to see. Eckhart Tolle, who's another great, I'm not claiming him as my teacher, but he's another great teacher for me, talked about like, when a fish dies, we can be like, "Oh, it's, it's, it's just the way of the ocean. It's going to decompose. It's going to become kelp." We get it. But he's like, "But what if you named the fish? What if you celebrated its birthday every year? What if you, what happened? You just lost a fish. We buried it right outside." Well, see, exactly. What if it had a birth certificate? What if you have photos of it? But like, that's what we do as human beings. We go, "This is an Italian ladybug." Yeah. And worse, we go, "Italian ladybugs are better than American ladybugs. They have a certain." It's fact. That's fact. When it's due, you got to give that. That's the thing we agree on. But so similarly, to there is no Italian ladybug, and there is no birth certificate for a fish. If you can follow this train of thought, my baby was, it was luminous emptiness. She's not, you know, Alan Watts has this beautiful image of of a lake, and it's all kicked up. There's all this dust and sediment, so it's murky. You can't see anything. It's like, all the lake needs to do is be still, and all the sediment falls, and now it's clear. So now you can see. My baby had no MC. It had no agenda. It wanted to be fed. She wanted to be touched. You know, sleep, that sort of stuff. But it had no story. And that's a great. You talk about, "How do I, how do I merge with my Father? How do I participate with being a great one?" Is to close your eyes and to pretend that you've just been born. This is also Rupert Spira. It's like, without reference to thought or the past, tell me about yourself. And you just go, "Okay, I'm boundless. I can't find an edge to me. I'm peaceful. I'm spacious. I'm alive. I am." You could just say, "I am." That's that's how you engage. And that's what my daughter was doing effortlessly. That's what we all did for a long time. Then around seven, I think. I'm not Catholic, but I think the Catholics are onto something. Baptizing at seven, even though that's not the tradition I was raised in, or confirming at seven, excuse me, because around seven, you start to forget the garden. You, you start to forget that, uh, inoc, the innocence. But also just the, yeah, innocence is a nice way to put it. But the purity, the naked, the luminous emptiness. And you start becoming a separate thing. As Rumi would say, you've pinched yourself. And then you pinch the couch. And you go, "Well, I feel this. I don't feel this. So I'm this. I'm not this." When Leela was a baby, she just was. "I am." She was pure "I am." And so she was a profound teacher for me. But then to answer your question more directly, and a little bit less in the clouds, it's been so helpful as a husband and a father to just have the privilege of caring about somebody, two people, more than you care about yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a vacation.

Do you, do you think that there would be anything that she could do that would separate you from her? Well, I mean, you know, going back to my Christian college days, I remember this teacher, Professor Barkley, used to tell this story that we can let go. Like God is like a father holding your hand. That's what I'm circling it with. What's that? That's what I wanted to circle with you on that. It's the same thought process. This idea. Yeah. Well, that we can let go of God's hand, but God won't let go of our hand. So would there any, would there be anything that your daughter does that you would let go of her hand? Well, I, of course, I, I would say no. But I mean, I'm sure there are fathers that are like, "Have you seen my kid? I should have let go a long time ago." The reason I don't, I mean, I'm going to say no. I'm going to say absolutely not. That. But would you let go of her if she said, "Daddy, let go of me"? What does that mean? If she looked, let her go to Europe? No, she's like, "I want to go see the Italian ladybug." All right. And, you know, that if she goes to Italy, that she's not safe because Italy at the time is being conquered by the ladybugs right now. I see. Okay. In this hypothesis, would I let her go if she said, "Dad, let go of me"? Yeah. Would you let go of her? Well, yeah. I'm, I'm looking forward to bestowing independence on that. That's my circling thought with the relationship. And I think that's why he says, "I am the Father." And that is why the parable of the son. Before he even reached the land, the dad was seeing him from afar. That. I love that too. Yeah. The Father says to him, "Do you remember the punchline?" The punchline. The punchline, dude. It's a joke. You can hit me with it. The Father says to the son, "I am always with you, and everything I have is yours." That is a very good highlight of where we're not exactly aligned. But I think we are. But we are. I'm saying when the man was with the pigs, he was no less the Father's son. Yeah. When he went home. But he let go the Father's hand. Exactly. It seems ignorance is ignorance, right? We're ignoring the Father. We're. But it only seems to veil our our unbreakable bond. God is pouring out your eyes right now. It is the knowing with which you are hearing the words that I'm saying. And nothing you can do can sever that tie. And it's blasphemy to say you could stand apart from him. So if you said, "God, let me go." Where could you go? I'm asking you, where can you go that God would not be there? He's a merciful, merciful God. He, where could you go? Where could you go and know that you are, and God would not be there? Is there darkness? Who is noticing the darkness? Knowing the ones who are not in the light. But the knowing with which they are seeing the darkness is the knowing. It's. But there cannot be light if there's no dark. This is dual. That's very. Okay. There, there's no. I don't know if we're going to get there, George. But I'm saying there's nowhere you can go that God isn't. Because that's what this is. Can I ask you? You have a dream. I like that. Watch. And there's a, it's an Apollo. There's a, there's a child in your dream that says, "Let me go." And we're talking about, would I let this phantom of my own mind go? Yeah. Where could it go? Yeah. Away from the presence of you. Okay. So it flies to China. Yeah. China is my mind. Yeah. That's fine. We're in my dream. Yeah. But it's away from you, the physical form of you in the dream. In the physical form of you, though. But I'm saying it's like a dream. There's nowhere it could go that it would be animated, that it would exist, that it would know that it is the knowing that you are is God. Yes. "I am that I am." So if you are somewhere and you say, "I am away from God." Yes. That "I am" is God. I agree with you. Everything you're saying, I agree with you. For example, like, and this is just bringing it up, I'm not trying to be like, pointing the finger, you walked away from the biblical truth. I stuck with it. And I'm like, "Yeah, I love God. God in heaven doesn't see you as less of in a relationship than me." I see that because you are from his image. I am. I see this. All these labels. It's like talking to hashtags. It is good hashtags or bad hashtags. We're having this conversation about the. I can't give you my thoughts. It would be pointless to give you my thoughts. But it, it would be pointless because it's, it's not worth anything. But yes, it is. No, no, it's not. Because His words are greater than mine. Because my words would push you away. The same way that every Christian man pushed you away. I'm saying we're like, we're looking at light. Yes. It's like an overhead projector. Remember those? Are you old enough to remember an overhead projector? Yeah. Actually. And every time we talk about this, and I feel like we're grooving, yeah, you then put a transparent piece of paper with all these words. Like, "Got it. This is the best way I could put." Why say, "God forbid something happened to you?" Because even saying like, "What can I get to this point?" But you, I want to talk about something. You already said, you were like, "You walked away from the biblical truth." That is so presumptuous that you have it. But I, before I said that, go, "I'm just bringing this up." Not you to be disrespectful. I'm giving a like a hypothesis thought. But but don't you see how you're trying to own the birthright of everything that is and saying, "You..." No, I'm just defending my point of view. I'm not saying. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. Which Christianity is the real Christianity? Goel. There's a lot of Greek Orthodox that would disagree with you. And I agree. There's a lot of people that yell at me all the time. I'm not say, like, and by the way, I'm still a student. I might be stupid. I'm just giving you my perspective. All right. I'm just saying like, we're putting a whole lot of superimposed stuff. Because I feel like we are getting somewhere. But I don't get angry at you when you bring up the people that you mentored from. I don't say, "Why do we keep bringing that guy up?" That's not really what I was doing. There's a lot of like, "Here's the reason why." Say, "God forbid something happened to you," and Leela was for some reason somehow put in my possession, I had to look after her. But before God forbid something happened to you, you gave me a book and you're like, "Hey, I need you to give this to Leela. These are my words." It's everybody's poops. It's everybody poops. Sorry, my wife keeps texting me. Okay, keep going. So would it be wrong of me if you gave me that book and I just kept telling her my perspective of the book? Or would I just read her your words? Because I think that would be the right thing to do. You wrote her a letter. Mhm. So that's the only reason why I do that. It's not to disrespect you or. Well, now we're back to the idea that God wrote the Bible. That's the perspective coming from, right? So it might be worth scratching that one. Might be worth digging a little bit deeper on that one before you live your entire life. I prospered pretty well from it. Even that. So it's transactional. It works well. I think you can't be in the light and not have the sunshine in your face. Oh my God. All right. All right. But do you get what I'm saying? Just give it a little dig. Oh, I am. I'm hearing your perspective. I'm just giving you my perspective. Didn't fall from the heavens on a parachute. It was written by people in a time with a perspective. It's history overlaid with Semitic storytelling. I don't know if you've ever met a Semitic storyteller. They're not super interested in the literal truth in the way that you're really going, "This is it. This is it. We got it. We found it." If a Semitic person wants to tell you a story, it's about the feeling, not the fact. So if, if I'm talking to a poor person, I'll say, "I lost $10." If I'm talking to a rich person, I'll say, "I lost $100 million." It's a really shaky place to be like, "This is it. We got it. We found it." And if it wasn't canonized, have you read the Gospel of Thomas? That was just inconvenient to the overall agenda. It was, it was chopped out. There's whole things. I mean, I look, I'm not the scholar. You could. I think you should. That would be very interesting to have like a historical scholar guy named Wes on the podcast. I'm excited about that. To talk about the like art. He has like artifacts and show me like how like the chapter of Luke was identical to the our chapter of Luke that was in. That doesn't exactly sound what I'm talking about, but I'd love to hear you talk to somebody that's like, "Did you know this is how the Bible was put together?" Yeah. And not in a negative way. Yeah. Different perspective. But again, I say it's not about the book. The book is literally true. The book isn't literally true. Whatever is eternal, infinite wisdom, real truth, it's here right now. Going to say it again. It's looking out your eyes right now. It's closer than your breath. It's sitting in the seat next to you. Your heart and my heart are very old friends right now. And whether or not it's this or that, or if the Gospel of Thomas should have been in, we're taking a long walk around a barn. You hear the story about the beggar sitting on the box, and he's asking for gold. Nobody gives him anything till somebody says, "What's in the box you're sitting on?" He looks. It's filled with gold. This is, this is it. We get lost in this. I get lost in it. You got me pretty animated. We get lost in it. [ __ ] stop. Remember who your Father is. Everything else that has to do with the gospel, I don't understand what else is commentary and it's taking us away from it. Right here.

Okay, one other question. Sure. I, I, I want to, I do. I think I, what you're saying, just to kind of do, have you, when touch your shoulder gently, in a in a brotherly way. I give you no consent. Uh, well, I didn't do it. Well, even in your mind, you pictured it. Mind consent. Yeah. Don't, don't, even though it's yours, and even me in your mind is you, don't do it. Uh, um, you've been saying, "Let's take the gospel out." I think you want to take the gospel out. So let's just take the gospel. I want to take the gospel out. You looked at me and you're like, "Stop. Take that gospel out." I love the gospel. I just think. Go on. Okay. The Bible. We're just going to put it aside for now. And let's just go to the consciousness that you think is within you and God. And I believe it is the Holy Spirit. Have you ever, um, where does the Holy Spirit end and God begin? Where's the boundary? Yeah. What do you mean? Like, how separated are they? Or you and the Holy Spirit? Where, when you close your eyes and experience this aware field, yeah, where does it, do you find a wall and go, "Okay, here's the wall, and now we're in the Holy Spirit"? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Can't map this terrain. That's what I'm saying. So the flesh and the spirit are two different things. The flesh would always fight against the spirit, and the spirit always against the flesh. It's like, my desires are evil. I have a very evil heart. And so the spirit will guide me, and it will comfort me, and it'll show me the way of truth. And the truth, scriptural, is the way, the truth, and the life is Christ. And so his behaviors and this moral standpoint that he bestowed in front of me is like something that I try to be like. And every time I reject myself and I follow more to his purpose, I prosper. Not in an exchange, but it's just the reality of what happens. Yeah. I understand that. You articulated that well. I, the way that I would phrase that is when I live in line with this understanding, I'm, I, I won't even say rewarded, but, you know what I mean, rewarded with peace, love, and happiness, friendship, and, and that type of prosperity for sure. But I do love this. I can't not say this. Jim Finley, James Finley, who's a mystic, and I love him to death. He says, "I believe in a God who protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything." And that is what I'm talking about. So what do you do with your relationship with God? Like mine would be like obeying, worshiping, praying, fasting, uh, doing maybe the Ten Commandments, failing at them all the time. But what is your relationship with your God? What do you do to have, build a stronger? Well, to me, peace and happiness are the nature of our being. This is Rupert's, by again. That's my experience. When I close my eyes and pretend that I'm a newborn baby, I can taste my luminous emptiness. I can taste my naked, my true nature. I can taste the ground of being. And I can see that it's both, both peaceful, happy, it's boundless, it's timeless. Wasn't born, doesn't die. So I would say that.

When you ask me if I'm peaceful, the peace that I experience is from strengthening that groove, going back to myself. That's that's what I think Paul means when he says, "Pray without ceasing." Keep going back in the midst of this conversation, not saying a prayer, but staying in touch with the ground of being. And that is peace, and that is happiness. Any other peace and happiness is, I would say, [ __ ] really. Of course, I'm surprised that you're surprised. I'm talking about eating an ice cream cone. It makes you happy in the moment, and then it's gone. Yeah. And again, spirituality is the pursuit of these things that don't go away. And when we asked if I'm more peaceful or happy, I I started to say that Ram Dass says that an ego can't be happy for more than a moment. But even as we're talking right now, trying to keep an anchor in my being, in the the spring of living water, that's my engagement with God. Coming down here, listening to music. I'll drive away from here, probably listen to some music, and just kind of do you pray? Settle. Well, that that would be to me the truest prayer, is trying to stay in touch with my being.

What about like the Father, though? Like, do you do you believe in the Father or no?

I think there's one God thing. But does he listen and hear you or no?

It's an interesting question. I mean, like, we hear each other. Well, I I don't. It's almost like I don't really want to get into that. It's so hard to talk about. But maybe that would enlighten me a little bit more from your perspective.

Well, this is not, I wouldn't put this as something that I can easily explain. Meaning, I might not even understand it myself.

Fair. And by the way, that's me with the Bible. But if God is one, that ultimate Oneness knows only itself. It's aware of itself. Like the sun shines on itself. And Oneness has no uh direct relationship to twoness. So if it's one, it can't split. George, off that ruins its Oneness. So you are God?

No, God is God. All that is is this one being, and we are it. It's like a screen, a TV screen. Yeah. And we're on the screen, and the screen is God.

The screen is God. Got it. Okay. So it's kind of like a dream, and the dream is God?

Exactly. Kind of like that song from Kanye. It is a God stream. I love that song.

I bet you do. I'll light beam. Are you like working out? You like, he gets it. He gets it. I'm not trying to be funny. I I think people that have manic episodes, some might taste things. Like, I'm not, I'm not making a commentary on Kanye. I'm just saying when I hear that song, I'm like, I know the place he's in. I've been to that place, and it's, and it's beautiful.

So anyway, it gets a little weird when you say the screen doesn't know what's happening in the movie. The way that the screen does know what's happening in the movie is in the apparent reality of the dream characters. I know about you, so I can love you, I can help you, I can serve you. We can be kind. We can make God's dream a beautiful dream. But does the screen know about the movie? Not technically.

I would say so. I don't spend a lot of my time praying for parking spots. I believe in a God who protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything. Meaning, if something goes real goofy later today, and nothing is going my way, unlike me when I was 28 and my wife left me, I wouldn't say, "God, why have you totally after me?" Over. I would go in and go, "Ah, even in this, I am sustained." Even in crucifixion, Jesus was sustained by God. That's the message. Me too. Here to this too. All of it.

Cool. Thank you for sharing that. And I know sometimes, like, when you don't really know how to like express it, it can get uncomfortable. And you did an amazing job expressing that. I appreciate that. Thank you. It was fun talking with you. Let me just check the time. George, just cuz I have another pod.

Oh, I know. We did have a heart out. We did kind of cross. Cuz like, uh, it's okay as long. Where are we? We're at our the valley. Yeah, North Hollywood. I think, uh, I think I'm good if we wrap up in like 10 minutes.

I think absolutely. Let's land the plane in a little bit. Something, uh, easier cushion to to drop off on. And by the way, like, if you ever wanted to like have these conversations off camera, or maybe even back on camera, I love these conversations. This is wonderful. Thank you for having me on. A fantastic guest. Thank you. I really appreciate. I I've been awkward this whole time because I've been trying to remember your name.

Don't worry about it. My name is Shauna. Shauna. And what does he call you again? Cuz this whole time I wanted to be like, "What do you think, Shauna?" Super confusing. I know. I'm sorry. But I didn't because I couldn't remember your name. Shauna. Shauna. Shauna. Shauna. Got it. Now it's forever. Now it's forever. And now in the last 10 minutes, I can go, "And what do you think, Shauna?" Cuz I I just, I I don't know. I just, uh, I'm curious your perspective as well. Anyway, keep going, please.

Um, I want to get into something, some like fun. I I know we just dabbled into something so deep.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, I want to talk about your standup, man. Like, like, like, what's going on with that right now? And how much do you love live performance versus like podcasting? And like, yeah.

No, it's, it, it is wonderful. I I tour. I go on the road one weekend a month, which is the right cadence for me. Um, I mentioned that that's an important issue to me. Is is there's so many of my friends, and it's fine, but they're really burning it at both ends. And I'm just sort of like, enjoying it. Oh, man, you're, let's, let's do both. Let's find balance. There aren't a lot of people advocating for balance, moderation, man. It's a big thing. Yeah. When I share that, it's not with pride. I'm just sort of like, if there's any comic that looks up to me, that'd be like, "Get to a place where you can go once a month." That's a wonderful. And you know what else it does? Is it keeps standup fresh for me. Is if I perform too much, it starts to feel just like a job, and I start just saying the words. And what I'm doing is, what I'm really trying to do is engage and connect with the audience. I love, even if the joke is old or new, it doesn't matter. It's like the jokes I would say, "Go see now, I'm all in the meaning of life." But like, everything is is an excuse to love, I would say, is one of the re-meanings of life. And with standup, the words are an excuse to hang out. The laughter is an excuse to hang out. So I try and stay in that place. And when a show is really cooking in that way, you can have it both ways. You can really be merging and connecting, and you can be getting this wonderful, fun feeling of sharing how you feel about the world and hearing literally getting feedback, like, "They get it. They understand. I'm not crazy." So it's wonderful therapy where you just go like, "Big time." Oh, they get it. I said, like, I did a new bit a couple nights ago about the things my wife thinks you can recycle. And I was just ranting about it. I was like, "Styrofoam, you think they get Styrofoam?" And they're just like, "Oh, thanks for returning this." Like, "You should put a mirror in the trash so you can see yourself [ __ ] over the Earth as you throw that Styrofoam away. It's gone. It's going right into a landfill. There's no recycling Styrofoam." It looks like neither of you knew this. "Pizza boxes are way too dirty to." No, I just learned about this. "Coffee cups are lined in plastic." Like, and then I go, "It's 50/50 whether or not recycling is real anyway." And it gets this big laugh, and I'm just like, "I love this." I really do think it's one of the things that's keeping me just as a as a as a personality from losing it. Like, it's, you, you get this confirmation. You're not alone. You're not alone. The audience gets confirmation. "I'm not alone. I'm not alone." And we all kind of leave feeling less afraid. So I love it. I really worry the kind of, not, not that I'd be wicked or something, I just worry the kind of person I would be if I didn't have it.

Yeah, yeah. There's something, uh, really loved in your special when sometimes you'd say certain jokes and you, I think you'd feel the crowd like that they'd be like, "Oh, those are a little inappropriate." And you'd be like, "You guys are such sweeties." And I just really love that.

So Shauna, you're absolutely right. That's the show. Yeah.

Con. Think they tune in for the bits, the new material. They tune in to hang out in a, not to be too hippie, but a frequency, a type of energy, a space. It's like having a sleepover, and I'm I'm the host, and I'm trying to get everybody in a certain way. And sometimes I am a little naughty or whatever, and they back away. And I love being like, "[ __ ] you guys. Like, you don't like, you don't think that like I can't." That will not stand. We're all going to love ourselves, even our bad thoughts, even our selfish thoughts, or whatever. We're all just going to in this hour be okay. That's really what I'm going for.

I love it. I love when you, uh, you break that wall between the performance and like, uh, the the audience. Like when you were like, "I feel like some of you guys didn't understand that joke." And you go, "You cannot walk away. That will not stand."

I say that a lot. I go, "I just taped a news special, uh, that we're editing now, and I have a joke about, I go, 'How sad is it to have obligatory Valentine's Day sex with your wife?'" And I'm like, "I just find that to be pathetic. I won't do it. I I I won't do it."

Dude. Yeah, yeah. Do it. I told her, I go, "Don't look at me for Valentine's Day. I'm not a puppy. I'm I'm I'm not a puppet. I go, 'No one's going to tell me when to go and pamper and take out my wife.' That's it. I go, 'I don't like that. That's a holiday. I take you out every week. Why the freak am I doing it on a day where they bump up the prices? The flowers I buy you are eight times more expensive. What? What am I? Consumer?'"

Yeah, no, that's right. Well, then you'll like this bit. But I go, uh, "How sad is it to roll on top of my tired wife? Like, it's the middle of February. Open up." And then I go, "A fat flying naked baby told me to get in there." And then they laugh. But sometimes they don't laugh. And I go, "Cupid, a lot of you didn't get that. That will not stand." And I love just, to me, it's, it's, I look at my relationship with the audience like this. Like, it's, it's like a cat batting at a string. And every energy is there for you. There's the the boy who wrote a good joke who just wants to delight you. But there's also kind of the rascal who wants to [ __ ] with you and mess with you. It's like, and then out of nowhere, a joke about God. And I have a new joke about God that I think you'll really like in the new special. And then I I'll have a joke about death. And I I look at it like a psychedelic experience or a weird dream. If you've never, if psychedelics aren't your thing, you know how your own subconscious can delight you, and then scare you, and then and then make you laugh, and then whatever it is. That's what I want a good hour of standup to be. To be as, uh, unpredictable as like our own inner worlds, you know what I mean?

When you left the college experience and you were like, "Maybe youth isn't for me." Standup is a new lane. I really like this. And then all the way up until right now, I know that standup, it takes time for you to find a voice. Like, who you really are on stage. Oh, this is me. This is how I express myself. At what point in your career, you like, "Aha! This is my voice."

It's a great question. I I don't know. I I would say if you, so this is my sixth hour. If you count my first record, that's crazy. And the first record was a tenure in like your first album. And when I listen to that album, which I don't, but if I did, I would be like, "All right, he's probably like 65% who he is." It's not bad. That's not bad. That's not bad. 65% not bad. D. Like a solid D. If I bring home a D to my parents, you know how excited they'd be? They'd be thrilled. And that's when you record your first record is when you're about 65. And then even my first hour, um, I was probably like in the 70s. And then somewhere around, "Silly, silly fun boy." Oh, I'm sorry. Not silly. The new one might be called "Silly, Silly Fun Boy Faces and Sounds." My first HBO special was the first one where I was like, "I think I know what I sound like." Literally, a voice. Like literally what my voice sounds like. But also literally the kinds of jokes I do. And then when I did "Dirty Clean," um, which was the one after that, I was like, "Oh, I know this guy. I get this guy."

That's awesome. Yeah. Really, what I could have said without saying all the names of the specials was like, it takes a long time. And and it's surprising how long it takes. But now when I, I might write a joke. Here's how I know I think I understand my voice. I might write a joke and I go, "That's a great joke. It's not my joke." And I'll give it to someone else. By the way, all of the jokes I read are not mine. I cannot write something. Cuz now I'm trying to be a little cleaner. And so all of my material just got thrown out the window. It's like it's almost impossible. I'm just trying to still figure out something I'm I would be proud of that I leave behind. And I just keep cringing at the stuff that I that I'm producing.

When, uh, when you write a joke, are you sitting there with a notepad and you're like, or are you just getting on stage and writing?

We have to. I think it's important. I've been doing it for 20, I don't know, almost 25 years. So when I was starting, yeah, I would write it. One year old. Say what she was like, one year old. Yeah, exactly. I've been doing your whole life. That's makes me sound so old again. When I was Sean, Sean, I've been doing it. One Shauna. That's how long I've been doing. I like that. You should use that from now on. It's one. It's a unit of time now. Yeah. Um, when I was starting, I would write it out. I would type it out, um, with spaces for the pause and all this stuff. Hilarious. And now I go up and I go like, when I did that recycling joke, and I'm not saying it's like fire, I'm just saying like, I know how I feel about my wife's recycling. And I trust my my talent enough that I can go up now. I I don't look for like a clever joke anymore. I look for something that I feel really strongly about.

That's how I know. Something that's such a good tip. Thank you. I'm going to take that. If you don't mind.

Of no, please take it. Yeah.

I like it. Is there any other tips that you would, cuz I'm, I'm so new, man. I'm so new.

Yeah. Um, I I was blessed with, uh, the ability to like be learned or mentored by like Joe Koy and got tips from like Chris Rock and stuff like that. And, uh, I just, I'm trying my best to absorb as much knowledge because that's your guys' experience that you could just pass over to me. Uh, what would, what was that one thing that helped you get over the fear of like, uh, failing? I guess, like, I don't want to go on stage and practice sometimes because I get so nervous that like it's going to bomb and they're going to not look at me like, "You suck," but I just wasted their time.

That's that's the job. And if it sucks, that's how you know you're doing it right. And you're on a long, honorable, ugly path. It's okay. Everyone went on Bill Burr. Everyone was on that horrible path. And that's the job.

I just get so uncomfortable. I get so uncomfortable with it. The reason why I feel uncomfortable is because, like, truly, like, I see it this way. I I have no business being on the stage that I'm performing at. The only reason I did is because of who I knew.

Or the, well, then get on different stages, bro.

No, no, no. I know. But like, it's like, go get on a real stage. Like, what does that mean? Get out of the stadiums. Like, you probably don't. I don't know anything.

No, I'm not doing the stadium. Do. But I just mean like, if you're opening for Joe, you're opening in large. Right? Get off that stage and just open. You have to know that. I have I have no, uh, I didn't know you as I knew you did standup. So I'm not saying this to you. I'm saying this to anyone who's trying to do standup. If you feel like, "I don't belong on the stage," get on the stage you belong on, which is probably The Comedy Store. Go do a regular set. You're out swinging your ax with Paul Bunyan. Get in the gym and work on your forearms, you know what I mean?

I guess, I guess that's a, that's a fair point. I I just, by the way, again, I'm not saying that to you. Maybe you're fantastic. Maybe you should stay on that. I'm just saying anybody. And by the way, the reviews that I have gotten, I'm not just toting my own horn. Like, I've had, I'm not going to mention that. They can mention it for me. But people that I look up to, and they're like, "Thoroughly impressed with my material." That's great. And so, but it's just fact. Have a great time in the gym. Yeah. Yeah.

I just feel like sometimes, like, it's, I I think that like some comics look at me like, "Dude, you, you didn't earn to be here." And that kind of like, I know that you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. But I would say, "Just go practice at the gyms that I belong in." Yeah. That's the job. It's like, you can be a celebrity who tours in these places that you didn't earn, or you could go [ __ ] get it. Yeah. What would you do if you were me?

I'd go [ __ ] get it. I'd get in at the store. I'd go up at the store. Cool. And I'd follow some heavy hitters. And I'd perform. You perform for 10,000 people. You tell a joke. That's, a thousand people are going to laugh. That's pretty loud. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's going to bolster you. And that's going to give you. Imagine out one. I've been there. I've been there. But like, get, if you love standup, and it's for you, and maybe it's not. I'm again, this is not based on you at all. Then you will love it in a real place, in the belly room, in the original room, just [ __ ] grinding it. You will love it. You will love hanging out with comics. You will love giving each other tags. You love talking [ __ ]. You'll love it. You get up and you're really with an audience when you perform in a place like that. That I'm, I'm talking to me now. Like, I, I open for Chappelle at Radio City, 7,000 people. That's not comedy, man. That's like a meet and greet. That's like, it's like a circus. You know what I mean? I'm not saying Chappelle does it. Chappelle makes that room was K. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm not saying what he does isn't comedy. I'm saying me opening for him isn't comedy. That's like, I won a contest or something. Yeah. I get what you, you see what I'm saying? That's, I I definitely understand what you're saying there. I'm doing the store tonight because you go and you do it for the people, and you live and die by the jokes. And then even when I tour, just at a small theater club, I still have to take him into account that they're my fans, and they're pretty excited to be there. Go to the store. They don't give a [ __ ]. You just followed you know someone incredible. See how the jokes are.

What's your favorite place to go up and just do what you said, like, where it's not your audience?

The store. Yeah, for sure. It's gonna, I think it'll be really fun.

I hate that I have to go.

No, no. I was just about to land the plane. Thank you so much, dude. I look at, Shauna, you asked one question. I was like, "I gotta go, man."

That's okay. That's okay. If she's gonna start talking, I'm done here. No, I I should have left at 3:15, but I feel fine. But I got it. I got my own podcast. More talking. Crazy. You're going to do another episode? Yeah. But interviewing someone is different. Being interviewed. This was easy. You made it a pleasure. And thank you to you both for having me. Interviewing someone else, I I'll just get them to talk.

Well, thank you guys so much for watching. And, uh, I really do appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Check out Richard Rohr if you guys are Christians and you're interested in how to read the Bible. Richard, I'm just kidding. Remember when you said my book?