E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”

**Jim George** (0:00)
Do you really need a narration? That chatter becomes normalized. The cost, in a nutshell, you're not there. At the end of a life of that, there's a kind of strange vacuum. I missed it. Most of the noise originates from the limbic effort to survive, and we'll go into that. But much of what we're responding to is no longer out there.
It's in the mind. The cost of not letting this stuff quiet down is immense, which leads to our stillness practice. Shut up, and just watch what happens.
Otherwise, this idiot, this Jim, is going to get in the way.

**André Duqum** (0:46)
I often say, when you get quiet, what needs to be heard grows loud.

**Jim George** (0:50)
When it's revealed what's actually important to you, it's shocking, horrifying, disappointing. You've been deceiving yourself. As reductionist as that sounds, it's actually very liberating. The noise stops, and you begin to perceive what's actually there. It's just here.

**André Duqum** (1:09)
What are you really doing with your body, your mind, your breath?

**Jim George** (1:12)
So, you just relax the body, breathe, and more importantly...

**André Duqum** (1:22)
Hey guys, André from The Future here. I think you're going to absolutely love this podcast with Jim George. I am not in the studio right now, and that's because I forgot to record this. So, I'm putting it in now. I just wanted to say that we have an amazing retreat upcoming next month, September 11th through the 13th in Los Angeles. Three days in nature, six workshops, live music, shared meals, all the in-between magic moments. I'm really excited to be with you. It's going to be 70 of us. And if you want to learn more information, just head to the link in the description or on screen, and I hope to see you there. I'm so excited. This is the first of many. Enjoy the episode with Jim George.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast. Our guest today is an ex-animator and stillness coach.
Descriptions, I feel, often reduce people down to a set of words, but I've known this man as somebody who emanates stillness, love, compassion, and after a life filled with inquiry, wisdom. Jim George, thank you for being here.

**Jim George** (2:27)
André, thank you.
I absolutely love what you're doing from top to bottom and bottom up. I genuinely do. It's an honor to be here.

**André Duqum** (2:39)
Thank you. It's truly an honor to have you. We just wrapped up a community call with the Know Thyself Collective before this.
And you guided us all through our meditation. And it was a beautiful conversation within everybody. We'll leave a link if people want to get a snippet of that in the description.

**Jim George** (2:56)
What a great group. Cool.

**André Duqum** (2:59)
It's cool to see and connect with everyone, you know?

**Jim George** (3:01)
It is.

**André Duqum** (3:02)
Instead of these cameras in the room, you know, it's like it makes it more real. So I love getting to share that space. To set the framework, you know, you were one of the first podcast guests I ever had on the show, way back when, almost four years ago now? Yeah. Yeah. Back in Venice.

**Jim George** (3:16)
Yes.

**André Duqum** (3:18)
And this podcast and this format has opened my eyes up to so much. I try to return back to what's most essential, what I'm most curious about and what I feel like will serve people the most in their life.

**Jim George** (3:29)
Yeah.

**André Duqum** (3:31)
I love the way that you describe practical spirituality, and I thought that we could start with just asking, what is the cost of normalizing a level of internal noise in our life? What does that cost us when we are preoccupied with the mental dramas and the noise, and that becomes just the way we live?

**Jim George** (3:54)
First of all, thank you for asking that question. It's an incredibly important question. The cost, in a nutshell, you're not there.
You aren't in each present moment. And if we can look at a lifetime, especially a life well lived, as a series of present moments, if you're not present for any of those moments, let alone most of them, you look back on it and realize there's a kind of strange vacuum. I was in the past or the future, which is a construct in my own mind, and I missed what was right here. And I wish I could just bottle what it feels like to be in this room with you right now with undivided attention. There is no what are we doing afterwards, what happened before, it's just here. At the end of a life of that, you've literally rung it dry, and it's like lying down at the end of a very, very fulfilling day, and going to sleep. It's like death is like the most incredible gift. Instead of spending a lifetime sort of aversively referring to your own death, if at all. And so the cost of not being present, not letting this stuff quiet down, is immense. And it impacts your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, and your spiritual health.