Hansa Bergwall, Reminding Us That We Die So That We Live
This episode features Hansa Bergwall, a publicist, writer, and meditation teacher, discussing his WeCroak app. The app reminds users of their mortality five times daily, aiming to foster present moment appreciation, provide perspective, and reduce suffering.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Dealing with Anger Through Meditation
Meditating Without a Guided App
Introduction to the WeCroak App and its Purpose
Hansa Bergwall's Early Life and Introduction to Meditation
Exploring Shamanic Meditation Practices
Understanding Kundalini Yoga and Meditation
Personal Benefits of Meditation Practice
How the WeCroak App Functions
Historical and Philosophical Basis for Contemplating Death
Paradoxical Benefits of Remembering Mortality
WeCroak App's Impact and User Experiences
Memento Mori: Ancient Practice of Death Contemplation
Personal Motivations Behind the WeCroak App
Acceptance of Aging, Illness, and Death
The Future of WeCroak and its Sudden Popularity
6 Key Concepts
Half-life of Anger
This concept, attributed to Sam Harris, suggests that the natural duration of an emotion like anger is inherently short. However, individuals often extend its lifespan through neurotic, obsessive, and compulsive thinking, re-upping the anger voluntarily.
Things Hurt More, Suffer Less
This describes a phenomenon experienced through meditation where increased self-awareness makes one more acutely aware of pain or discomfort (e.g., anger). Paradoxically, this heightened awareness leads to less long-term suffering because one is less likely to act out on the pain, feed it, or make others suffer as a consequence.
Macy's Day Parade Floats (Metaphor)
This metaphor illustrates how many people operate, with their head (thoughts, intellect) acting like a giant balloon disconnected from their body. This represents a state of being completely disembodied and unaware of one's physical presence, leading to a lack of connection with bodily well-being.
Amrit Vela
An esoteric term from the Sikh tradition referring to the couple of hours before dawn. This period is considered an auspicious time for meditation and spiritual practice.
Shamanic Meditation
A style of meditation that utilizes the frequency of drums or rattles to help push the brain into a very light trance state. This facilitates a meditation experience rich in visual phenomena and guided visualization.
Kundalini Yoga and Meditation
A tradition of yoga and meditation originating from the Sikh region of India. It involves a combination of mantra, mudra (hand positions), repetitive movements, and asana (holding specific body positions) to help practitioners focus and manage nervous energy.
6 Questions Answered
Meditation helps you notice anger more quickly and reduces the likelihood of acting out on it or feeding it, shortening its duration and leading to less suffering in the long term, even if the initial feeling of anger is still present.
It's not necessarily problematic or an addiction to use guided meditations frequently; it can be a balanced practice. However, it's beneficial to also practice unguided meditation to develop self-sufficiency.
Contemplating mortality, as practiced in various ancient wisdom traditions, helps align the mind with truth, brings perspective, makes everyday life more vivid and consequential, and increases appreciation for the present moment.
It helps you drop into your body and breath, cherish the present moment, put things in perspective, and can lead to greater happiness and a more accurate understanding of life, reducing suffering caused by avoiding this fundamental truth.
Memento mori is a Stoic philosophical practice of remembering one's own mortality, often by keeping a symbolic object like a skull, to encourage living a more virtuous and present life.
When we accept our own tender parts—that we will age, get sick, and die—it opens the doorway to loving-kindness and compassion, as we recognize that all other living beings share this same fragility.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Contemplate Mortality Daily
Regularly contemplate your own death (e.g., five times a day, as per Bhutanese maxim or Stoic memento mori) to align your mind with truth, cherish the present moment, gain perspective on worries, and make better choices, which ultimately feels better than running from this reality.
2. Embrace Truth for Better Choices
Align your mind with what is true, especially regarding mortality, as running from reality is more painful. An accurate map of reality helps the mind make better choices and generate good thoughts.
3. Accept Aging, Illness, Death
Accept that you are of a nature to age, get sick, decay, and die. This acceptance helps your identity be flexible, reduces surprise at physical changes, and opens the door to loving-kindness and compassion for all beings who share this fragility.
4. Overcome Separation with Mortality Reflection
Reflect on your own mortality and the shared condition of all living beings to overcome the feeling of separation from the universe, fostering a sense of connection that feels good.
5. Prepare for a Serene Death
Engage in practices (like death contemplation or meditation) and prepare yourself ahead of time to cultivate a ‘sublime acceptance’ of death, aiming for a serene and less painful dying experience.
6. Self-Awareness Reduces Suffering
Cultivate self-awareness through meditation; while it may initially make you more aware of pain, it ultimately leads to less suffering by reducing the likelihood of acting out or feeding negative emotions.
7. Observe Anger’s Physical Sensation
When you feel anger, notice its physical sensations in your body, which can make you less likely to immediately yell, scream, or say something snide, fostering non-judgmental awareness.
8. Shorten Anger’s Half-Life
Be aware that neurotic, obsessive thinking re-ups anger; by not feeding it with these thoughts, you can shorten its natural, brief half-life and reduce prolonged suffering.
9. Quicker Anger Recovery
Through consistent meditation, you can catch anger more quickly even if initially overtaken, allowing you to apologize or stop negative behavior sooner.
10. Basic Meditation Steps
To meditate, close your eyes (or keep them slightly open), sit with a reasonably straight back, bring full attention to the feeling of your breath (in and out, picking a prominent spot like nose, chest, or belly), and when distracted, gently start again.
11. Connect with Your Body
Practice meditation to drop into yourself and notice your presence in your body and with your breath, which can recur throughout the day, leading to increased happiness and well-being by counteracting a head-disconnected state.
12. Meditate Without Guided Apps
If you rely on guided meditations, try practicing on your own by setting a timer (even an analog one) and following the basic meditation steps, which helps build independent meditation skills.
13. Kundalini Yoga for Nervous Energy
If mindfulness meditation is frustrating due to ’nervy energy,’ try Kundalini yoga, which involves mantra, mudra, repetitive movements, and holding positions to help focus and channel that energy.
14. Utilize Shamanic Meditation for Visualization
Explore shamanic meditation using drums or rattles at a certain frequency to induce a very light trance state, facilitating vivid visualizations and cathartic experiences.
15. Joseph Goldstein’s Death Contemplation
Practice a 3-minute death contemplation exercise nightly: reflect on past generations who have lived and died, then systematically consider the finite lives of people you know, and finally, reflect on your own mortality.
16. Use Tech for Mortality Reminders
Utilize an app like ‘We Croak’ (or similar methods) to receive randomized, frequent reminders of your mortality throughout the day, which can help interrupt distracting or unhelpful thought patterns and bring you back to a larger perspective.
7 Key Quotes
The natural half-life of any feeling emotion is actually kind of short, but we tend to re-up our anger through neurotic obsessive compulsive thinking.
Sam Harris (quoted by Dan Harris)
Things hurt more but you suffer less.
Dan Harris
Remembering that you're going to die is really important.
Hansa Bergwall
The mind actually likes being aligned with what is true.
Meditation teacher (quoted by Dan Harris)
Sometimes that's all it takes to take a deep breath, change the program and do something different, feel something different.
Hansa Bergwall
It's probably almost certainly more painful to run and hide from this reality than it is to turn around and face it squarely.
Dan Harris
We are of a nature to get sick, we are of a nature of a nature to age, to decay, to die and accepting that helps in our sense of our own identity of what we are as people and human beings.
Hansa Bergwall
2 Protocols
Basic Meditation Steps (Unguided)
Dan Harris- Close your eyes or maybe keep them open just a little bit.
- Sit with your back reasonably straight.
- Bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, picking a spot where it's most prominent (your nose, your chest, your belly).
- When you get distracted, start again, and again, and again.
Joseph Goldstein's Turbocharged Route to Enlightenment (Death Contemplation Part)
Joseph Goldstein (described by Dan Harris)- Think about how many generations have come on the planet before us and how they've all come and gone.
- Systematically go through the people you know and think about how they have finite lives.
- Finish with contemplating your own finite life.