Most of us know we spend too much time on our phones. Very few of us know what to do about it, and quitting has not worked for anybody.

Co-hosts Spencer, Wayne and Bryan spend this episode on screen time, phone addiction, and what mindfulness actually asks of us once the novelty of a digital detox wears off. Spencer teaches college students who tell him out loud that they know their phones are a problem and that they cannot help themselves. Wayne gets a screen time report every month and spends the first few seconds arguing with the number instead of acting on it. Bryan has two sixteen year olds at home, one with a healthy relationship to technology and one who is confident they have one.

The turn comes when Spencer stops treating the phone like cigarettes and starts treating it like food. You do not quit food. You get honest about what you take in. Wayne brings the Buddhist teaching on nutriments to meet it, four kinds of food we consume, and the thing about a seed is that it only grows if you feed it.

A quarter of your day is feeding something. This hour is about whether you chose it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spirituality may be hardwired into human biology. That's the research behind this week's conversation... scientists put people in MRI machines and played back recordings of their own spiritual experiences. A region tied to stress and the sense of self went quiet. And the researcher behind it, Dr. Lisa Miller, has spent two decades showing that people with strong spiritual lives are markedly more resilient to depression and addiction.

So after years of dancing around the topic (with a certified spiritual director in the room), Bryan, Spencer, and Wayne finally go there. Where is the line between spirituality and religion? Spencer's answer takes one word. Wayne's runs through Enneagram training, monkey mind, the 110 tabs open in every head, and a practice as simple as following the next breath. The conversation covers religion as the shell an egg needs before it hatches, why even the people the world writes off still need to be fed, and what it might look like to teach inner life the way schools teach math.

If the word spirituality makes you flinch, this episode is for you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.