The Chase Beneath Our Goals

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Everyone of us is chasing something. The right job, the right partner, the right version of a life we can finally call ours. And we tell ourselves, once I have this, I'll fail it. Once I'll get there, something will quiet. But there's a quieter story inside that chase. A story about what we are really looking for underneath the thing itself. And sometimes the object of our search is just a doorway to something much deeper.

Meet Richard Perry And His Quest

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I am your host, Yusuf, and this is the space where we slow down and look honestly at what is quietly shaping our inner lives. My guest tonight is Richard Perry. Richard is a writer, a lifelong seeker, and a lover of sound, silence, and meaning. His upcoming book, In Search of the Perfect Guitar, releases later this year, and it is about awakening through sound. On the surface, it begins with a simple question many musicians ask. What is the perfect instrument? But as Richard spent years searching, the search itself became the teaching, and the guitar became his doorway into something much larger. With that, I welcome my guest, Rick, to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Ah, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Perfect. Eric, it's so good to have you here. And before we get into the book and the bigger ideas, I want to ask you something simple.

A Retreat Sound That Stopped Time

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Do you remember the very first time a sound, a chord, a voice, a note held a little longer than expected? Like stopped you in your tracks the first time music became something more than entertainment for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, of course. It's a great question. It's it happened on a retreat in 2009. A friend invited me to a meditation retreat, and there was a singing bowl, a Tibetan singing bowl made of metal that was used to start the meditation sessions. And they rang the bowl. And you know, the some of the similar tonal qualities as the singing bowl. And I played the single note and just let it fade. And it just rested in the silence after the note had been played, like I did in the retreat after the singing bowl. And we began a meditation. Then I began a meditation after the note that I played on my guitar and realized that my guitar could serve as a meditation tool. And as a lover of guitar and music and meditation, I was pretty blown away as to the possibilities. So that became a journey that has become a book that I'm in the third edit of right now.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Wow.

Contentment Versus The Perfect Thing

SPEAKER_00 4:29

And you know, let's begin with something I think is quietly true for a lot of us. You know, we tell ourselves we are searching for a thing, the right guitar, the right house, the right title. But underneath, we might actually be searching for a feeling. You know, a version of ourselves, we hope the thing will unlock. Rick, is that one of the biggest misconceptions about the search itself that it is about the object?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I believe that's a hundred percent true. It's it's really the object, in my case, the guitar. In the beginning, I was searching for the perfect tone, the perfect guitar. And really, it was the journey all along. You know, I think we are all searching for contentment. We may believe that we're searching for happiness. We're certainly not searching for sadness, but this middle place of contentment where we're satisfied, I think is the key. And I was looking for satisfaction in my in my life, in my day. It's filled with chaos and business and a lot of the things, in fact, most of the things that we all encounter. And when we really stop and just listen, we can hear really clearly all the chaos that's around us.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yes, true. And that is such an honest reframe because the cheese is not wrong, it is just pointing somewhere the mind does not always realize.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

We're always looking for for something. I'm well, I speak for myself. I'm always my personality type is always wanting to create, and I'm always you know, looking outward as a habit to find something to create, to think

Silence As The Creative Source

SPEAKER_01 6:44

something up. It's enjoyable, but it's also a distraction. The most comforting place, the most creative place, and perhaps the birthplace of all thoughts is a silence, what I call the space between the notes. And it's in that space that has provided an immense amount of insight. And the guitar has served as a tool, as a doorway to open. So to play a note, let it fade. I stay in the space between the note. But also while I'm playing guitar, mindfully and more consciously, and more mindfully, the more that I pay attention to the note and the space in between it, the more aware I am of playing. And as a result, just playing the guitar itself, and this could be true of any instrument, played mindfully, slowly, and with focus, at least as one part of the playing practice, becomes a tool for helping support awareness.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah.

Awakening Through Sound For Anyone

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Not I would say not every listener tonight is a musician, some haven't picked up an instrument in years. But everyone has a relationship with sound. The first song they remember from childhood, the one they played on a hard night, the hum of a room that felt like home. So, Rick, how does the idea of awakening through sound show up for someone who would never call themselves musical?

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Another great question. I love that. Just sitting in a room or being somewhere where you have the opportunity to just close your eyes and listen to all the sounds and to pick one sound out of it, something that's constant that you can focus on is a practice that anybody can do without an instrument. And it's a practice I do. I find myself like in the waiting room at the dentist's office, and I'll just sit there and listen to all that's going on. People checking in and the door opening and closing, the shuffling of clothes and all these different sounds. Anything that I can find, and like you said, you use the word hum. When I can find a hum, I'll focus in on that hum. And it's just so calming. It's a bit unusual, I'll admit. Probably not that there's in the waiting room or doing that. Sometimes I'll just open a magazine and I'll look down at it, and I'm not even reading it, but I'm using it as maybe it's my self-consciousness. You know, oh, this fellow is just like the rest of us. Just reading a magazine. The only thing is, that fella's not turning the pages. So I'm really not reading, I'm focusing on sound. Forever, you know, the breath has been used as the focus, as a key focus, a primary focus for meditation. Thought arises, you go back to the breath. In this practice, a thought arises and you go back to the sound, to the hum. Anything that's constant, it can be something at home. It's a beautiful thing in the forest if you're on a hike or something and you can sit and hear the breeze or follow the chirp of the birds, but just to isolate the sound and to focus on the sound helps strengthen awareness. This has been my experience.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

I see. And you know, I love that because listening is not a skill we are born with or without, it is a practice that anyone can return to in any moment, which leads me to something practical.

Breath Practice And Simple Sound Tools

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Let's say someone listening right now feels drawn to what you are describing, they want to use sound or silence as a way back to themselves. Surik, where would you invite them to begin? Not a complicated regimen, just one honest first step they could take tonight or maybe tomorrow morning.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, the breath is always reliable. It's not particularly a sound, but actually it can be. You can hear the breath come in through your nostrils, you can breathe it out through your mouth, and you can focus on the sound of your breath. When a thought arises, you just bring the focus back to the sound of the breath. So that's always a reliable sound and sensation that's always with everyone. A singing bowl, it's you don't have to run out and buy a singing bowl, but anything that you can use or find that has a constant sound. There's a lot of recordings and things that you can find online. But to have a constant sound, I mean, you can take so here's a couple of creative ideas. I don't know how creative this is, but like a metal mixing bowl. You can use a metal mixing bowl, you can ring it with, you could use your knuckle, you could use a small pebble or a rock or something. It doesn't have the sustain, the sustained quality as a singing bowl will have, but it is actually effective. I've used it before. You can use a pot, the bottom of a pot. Again, these don't have long-lasting notes, but it could just be a beginning point, it could just be something just to try, and just what feels okay.

Finding Quiet In A Loud Life

SPEAKER_00 12:59

And and for the person whose life is loud, like kids, meetings, notifications, who says I don't have enough space or enough silence. So what would you say to them? Because I suspect the people who need this most are the ones who feel they have no room for it.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Use the bathroom. Find a place. There's always a space. There's always a place. And in that moment, before you give a presentation or you're going to be talking, you can take just a few seconds with your eyes open and just focus on the chaos of all the sound and the movement around you, and try to just isolate one thing and just breathe into it. This has been really helpful for me because I find myself as a business owner in those environments. And it's always handy and helpful to take a few moments alone. And the bathroom is like the perfect spot in a in a stall in the bathroom. It's like your own personal meditation cubicle. And to sit there, I know it sounds a little crazy, but it's true. You sit on the phone in there, and you just quiet the mind by focusing on a single sound. It's there, there's always a single sound there. But you can use the breath, of course. And the breath can be that single sound because if we listen closely enough, we can hear our breath.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yes.

Dry Seasons Triggers And Coming Back

SPEAKER_00 14:50

But the spiritual path, the creative path, the inner life, none of it is clean state line. There are long stretches where meaning goes quiet, where the practice falls away, where we forget why we started. So how do you keep returning, especially in dry seasons? And what would you say to someone listening who feels like they have lost the thread of their own search?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Well, you can use being lost as a trigger to do something. So when you feel lost, you can look at what are your options and use being lost as a trigger to waking up, to doing something about it. I mean, I think being in these states, I mean, there's causes and conditions that cause us to be in these very states that we're in, but there are things that can help. They may not be the perfect end solution, but it's I find triggers are incredibly helpful. Even the trigger of hearing someone being angry or someone upset, a lot of times those triggers are just emotional reactions, but you can develop a trigger, various triggers that can help remind you to just stay in the present moment. This person's getting upset. I'm not going there. I'm gonna breathe. And it's a little hard to focus on a single sound when you're in a conversation like that, or you're in a moment, you know, and you don't really want to, you know, look for a sound. I get that. But the idea is just to find a way, just to relax for a few seconds before you respond. And I use the breath for that, and I love the to hear the breath, because if I'm in a conversation or about you know about to react to something, it takes effort to hear the sound of the breath rather than just using the breath. Like if I do it right now, I can hear the breath, and the breath becomes a trigger. Hearing the breath becomes a trigger for me to not react to whatever's happening around me. This has been hugely effective for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

I see.

Where To Learn More And Closing

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Richardjperry.com is my website, and on there is information about the perfect guitar, which is not a music book as much as it's an awakening to stay book.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out. Rick, is there any last message that you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Well, I think we all have the the same struggle that our thoughts you know can get in our way. They're not an enemy, but I think once we start to see the thoughts and find tools that can help us look at the thoughts more clearly, I think our life becomes filled with more contentment.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Thank you so much, Rick, for the honesty, for the long search and for the reminder that even the things we chase for years can quietly become our teachers.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

And to everyone listening. Maybe tonight you don't need to find the perfect anything. Maybe you just need to pause long enough to hear what your own life has been trying to tell you. A song you half remember, a silence you have been avoiding, a quiet feeling you haven't named yet. Start there. That is usually where the real search begins. This is Yusuf for Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. Listen gently, stay curious, and we'll meet very soon.