Famous for his role as Dwight Schrute on the Office, Rainn Wilson has brought light to the world through comedy and uplifting spiritual content. Reflecting on his time filming the iconic series, Wilson discusses how comedy has served as a healing force in his life, stemming from his childhood experiences. He opens up about his struggles with depression and the profound spiritual awakening that followed, emphasizing the importance of finding meaning and purpose in life.Wilson passionately argues for a necessary spiritual revolution, advocating for hope amidst the chaos of the modern world. He delves into the true meaning of spirituality, exploring themes of connection to something greater and the release of dogma in favor of genuine spiritual truth. Throughout the conversation, he contemplates profound questions about life, death, and the purpose of pain and suffering, ultimately reflecting on his life and the spiritual practices that guide him.BonCharge Red light therapy:Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro 1:38 The Office: Looking Back at that Pivotal Time4:10 Comedy as a Healing Force9:19 How His Childhood Led Him to Coping with Comedy 15:25 From Depression to Spiritual Awakening19:51 Finding Meaning & Purpose in Life27:39 The True Meaning of Spirituality35:09 Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution40:37 Hope to Find Hope in a Chaotic World43:51 Ad: Boncharge Redlight Therapy - Save 15%46:09 Bahá'í Faith: Releasing Dogma & Yearning for Spiritual Truth54:13 Defining Spirituality & Our Connection to Something Greater1:00:08 What Lives on When We Die1:04:50 Power of Contemplating Death 1:15:47 Purpose of Pain & Suffering on Our Path1:21:57 Polarity on Our Planet1:27:00 Reflecting on His Life Thus Far1:32:53 His Spiritual Practices1:38:33 Conclusion___________Rainn Wilson is a three-time Emmy Award nominated actor, best known for the role of Dwight Schrute in NBC's The Office. He's acted in dozens of other films and TV shows such as (in no particular order): Six Feet Under, The Meg, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Super, The Rocker, Star Trek Discovery, Utopia, Jerry and Marge Go Large, Almost Famous, Backstrom, Galaxy Quest, Blackbird as well as the upcoming CODE 3. He is the host of the new Peacock docu-series "Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss" in which he travels the world in search of happiness. Rainn is the co-founder of the digital media company SoulPancake which created thousands of pieces of content and over a billion video views, including viral hits like Kid President, My Last Days, and The Idiots Guide to Climate Change. His newest book is entitled Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoulBoomInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/rainnwilson/New Book "Soul Boom": https://linktr.ee/soulboom?lt_utm_source=lt_share_link#309753270___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/
Chapter 1: What were Rainn Wilson's experiences on The Office?
is this kind of almost universal belief that things can't get better. There is a way out. We need a spiritual revolution because the ways that human beings have done things for eons are not sustainable. So how can we distinguish the dogma from the beautiful truth of what these spiritual teachers brought?
As a Baha'i, all of these are incorporated into one spiritual canon of truth, of beauty, and of wisdom.
Dude, I told my sister that you were coming on the podcast. She, first off, had a complete panic attack. And then second, broke out into tears. And then she's showing up for a selfie. That's nuts. I love it. That's nuts. Does that feeling of having brought joy to so many people's lives, does that like stay with you? Do you have like a healthy amount of pride with that?
Chapter 2: How does comedy serve as a healing force?
Do you think back about that time much?
You know, it's interesting how time works, isn't it? And memory, because I shared a lot about this when I was promoting the book Soul Boom about a year ago or so. There was some of my most unhappy times in my life. was while I was shooting The Office, which is crazy.
Maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but I went through some rough times, some ups and downs, a lot of what I would call, like, chronic, anxious dissatisfaction while on the TV show because, you know, we're wired as human beings to just want more, and it's kind of like, hey, I'm now a TV star after struggling for, you know, 15 years as an actor. Why can't I be a movie star?
And why can't I make more money? And why can't I get this kind of, he got that kind of deal, why can't I get that kind of deal? comparison and envy and ambition, it's never enough. And it's so funny now, sitting 10 years after The Office has ended, and looking back on it, and like, Rain, it was enough. It was everything you could have ever wanted. It was your dream come true.
I mean, to spend nine years, 200 episodes, playing a really memorable comic character. You've kind of trained and groomed your entire life to play memorable comic characters and from theater school and from being a nerdy teenager and onwards. And, you know, getting paid well, you can pay off your student loans, even buy a house, travel, meeting new people, getting new work opportunities.
Like, this is it. That's it, you know? And... So it's interesting being in it and being dissatisfied and being past it and looking back on it and being so grateful for the experience. Because that's all I feel right now is like, we're really tight, the whole office family, we text all the time, joke around all the time.
And, you know, when I hear about how much that show has meant to people, it really moves my heart.
Yeah, it's interesting how at that time you were struggling so much and yet while so many other people were struggling, that character, that show was like really solace. It was like a healing balm for so many people. And I know levity and comedy really does just give us some reprise and just like break from our own solipsism often, you know?
And so what do you think about comedy as a healing force?
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Chapter 3: What led Rainn Wilson from depression to spiritual awakening?
And comedy was my way in. Like, I was never gonna be popular. I was never gonna be good looking. I was never gonna be a jock. I was never gonna be... you know, smooth and charming, but I could do weird impersonations and I could do funny pratfalls and I could tell jokes. And that allowed me to fit in.
And it's funny, the professor and author, Arthur Brooks, talks about that in terms of comedy, that you can't... Two things can't exist in the brain at the same time, which is like, you can't live in comedy and laughter, and you can't live in depression at the same time. They're like pistons working like this.
Like gratitude and fear, almost.
Yeah, exactly. Or love and fear can't occupy the same brain space at the same time. You can literally try and feel love and fear at the same time. You can't do it. You know, they're an antidote for each other. And laughter and sadness are the same way. It's like the drama masks, you know. It's the smiling and the crying drama masks from ancient Greece. And...
You know, out of a really difficult childhood that was incredibly challenging in its own way. We've all had very challenging childhoods, I'm sure. There are ones far worse than mine. Mine kind of was centered around a loveless marriage and a lot of like suburban ennui. You know, I wasn't like...
beat, you know, there wasn't like, you know, grotesque things happening to me like happened to a lot of people in the world. So I want to I want to couch it in that. But again, comedy was my way out. Comedy was my way of soul searching. So All of a sudden, I signed up for an acting class. I found I was pretty good at it. I made people laugh. I played characters. I did funny walks.
I did funny voices. I told jokes. I did improvisation. I got a lot of accolades for that. These tools that I had learned in this kind of pressure cooker of a really... kind of disconnected, loveless child space, all of a sudden came in very handy. And then I went to acting school, and then all of a sudden I was working as a professional actor.
But then I got onto some TV shows, and here I was on one of the all-time great comedies. But again, while I was on the show, very little awareness of the healing properties of comedy. And I think it's something really worth exploring and digging into because, you know, the way the world is right now, It's very interesting. There's not many good comedies on television anymore.
And they're hard to find. You have to sift through a lot to kind of find them. And we need them more than ever. And one of the reasons I heard that a lot of like the streaming services and TV networks are not picking up new comedies is because people keep turning back to the old ones. They're watching Seinfeld and
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Chapter 4: What is the true meaning of spirituality?
Yeah, it was a coping mechanism for me. I loved the classic American sitcoms of the 70s and early 80s. I grew up and watched every episode of MASH. I watched... Cheers, Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore reruns, Bewitched and Dick Van Dyke and F Troop. And the list just goes on and on. I just devoured anything having to do with half hour comedy.
Then I discovered Saturday Night Live when it first came out in the late 70s and Money Python around the same time, which they would run on PBS all the time. You couldn't just go to YouTube and watch clips. You had to really search for great comedy out there. And Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine. And these got me through my childhood. I just was drawn like a moth to a flame.
And I think because of this kind of alienated emotional desert that I lived in, in suburban Seattle, that was a healing balm for me. Then, you know, I remember talking about, I don't know if it was in Soul Bloom, I also wrote a book called The Bassoon King that was kind of my comedic memoir. And I was such an odd child.
I remember watching other kids in school to be like, how do normal people behave? You know, I'm gonna watch people in the lunchroom. I'm gonna see how they behave and then I'm gonna copy them. And my parents were very odd, very odd people. So I knew I was not gonna like behave like my parents. So what do you do? So I'd go in the lunchroom and then I'd see Mike Wentzel
go up to John Valadez and say, hey buddy, how was your weekend? Give me a bite of that. And then like take his French fry or something like that. I'd be like, oh, okay, great. And I would literally, maybe not literally, but I would almost exactly copy that kind of behavior. But, of course, when you're trying, it's like an alien trying to fit into, you know, a human guise.
You know, when you try and go up to someone then and say, hey, buddy, how's it going? How was your weekend? Clap on the back. Take the french fry. It just, it rings hollow. And it was out of that and out of that oddness that, again, that coping mechanism of comedy came out so that I found that when I would be the cut-up and the goof-off, It worked for me.
I found when I took an improv class or took an acting class that I could make people laugh. And there was a kind of a, it's the cliche of the sad clown. There's a lot of cliche in and around what we're talking about. We're talking about comedy and tragedy. We're talking about the sad clown. We're talking about, you know, crying and laughing at the same time. But there's truth in that.
That's one of the reasons that they are cliches.
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Chapter 5: Why do we need a spiritual revolution?
do you think about your childhood led you to feeling like you needed to manufacture like you know interactions and not not being as natural in that aspect i'm curious
I wanted to fit in, you know, more than anything else. I didn't even want to be popular. I just so didn't fit in. I really felt like I was an alien plopped down in human form trying to understand kind of normal human interaction. And it took me a long time to get out of that.
But I remember my very first acting class, I was a junior in high school and I had just moved to this new high school and we did this exercise together. And I made everybody laugh. I was kind of the new kid at the school. And then I sat down afterwards, and all of these young, attractive high school girls that I hadn't met before came over and, like, patted me on the shoulder and punched me.
Like, that was so funny. Oh, my gosh, you're new here? Like, come sit at our lunch table. And, oh, my God, you made me laugh. Oh, he's funny. And... And when you're 16, I felt this glow and I was like, that's it, this is what I'm doing. I had been a colossal nerd before that point. I had a chess team and played the bassoon and- Yeah, you didn't tell me you were on the chess team.
You saw the chess board walking in. All right, we're gonna have to get it after this.
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Chapter 6: How can we find hope in a chaotic world?
Okay, all right, we'll get into it. But I was never very good on the chess team, and that was a long time ago. But yep, chess, Model United Nations, Computer Club, ceramics club, you name it, every nerdy pursuit you could do. But once I got that kind of validation for making people laugh, I was like, that's it. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gone. I'm, you know, I'm a drama nerd now.
You know, come hell or high water. And my path was set at that point. So that's, that's how it works.
So Around 25, you're getting into these. And if you had to kind of pinpoint down the spiritual awakening, I know that originally, early on, you had ties with the Baha'i faith and you kind of turned away from that and went rebellious and to explore your own hedonistic impulses and push that to the side. What was the moment you realized you needed some sort of spiritual life out of necessity? Yeah.
I... speak about this a little bit in Soul Boom and also in The Bassoon King. When I got out of acting school, I was 23, 24, 25 years old, trying to make it as an actor. You know, really broke, barely getting by. And I became very unmoored in a lot of ways. There were certainly a lot of hedonistic pursuits going on.
I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith, like you mentioned, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And I learned and was kind of educated in so many beautiful true, wise teachings that I think foundationally stayed with me and ultimately really helped me. But I needed to rebel. I needed to leave that world of my parents behind and go to New York City and make my own way.
I wanted to be an artist in New York City, and I didn't want anything to impede that. So what I encountered, when I look back at it now, was a real severe mental health crisis. And I was in my early mid-20s. And in the 90s, people were not talking about mental health crisis. There were no books on mental health crises.
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Chapter 7: What is the Bahá'í perspective on spirituality?
The word anxiety was not in the lexicon other than, you know, it was something you felt if, you know, you were afraid you were going to be late for a movie. You know, there wasn't... It wasn't an idea kind of entrenched that, you know, there's an epidemic of loneliness and anxiety and depression and addiction. So I started facing those demons without any help, without any money.
There was no therapy available. You know, therapy was outrageously expensive. No one I knew was in therapy or had ever been in therapy. And so what do you do?
when you're desperately unhappy, unmoored, off track, having anxiety attacks, feeling depressed sometimes for weeks on end, questioning everything, like why am I alive, why am I here, dealing with addiction issues, drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, whatever, you name it, whatever's there. And, You know, what do you do?
So the only thing that I knew to do was to start exploring spirituality and a spiritual path. And Julia Cameron, in the artist's way, not in the artist's way, but in an interview, said, I come to spirituality not out of virtue, but out of necessity. And that's what forced me to turn toward a spiritual path was seeking a balm for the amount of anguish that I was in as a young man.
And I won't say that I was lost and now I can see. I won't say that I was like immediately saved. It wasn't immediately, it didn't bring immediate clarity and peace or serenity or anything like that for me. It has been a long process, a long unfolding process, but it has been the richest, most rewarding process I've ever experienced.
And I'm now, again, like The Office, looking back on it, I'm so grateful. And isn't that interesting? how oftentimes the times in our lives we go through the greatest anguish, you get out a few years, especially five, 10, 15, 20 years, look back on it and go, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful I went through that. I'm so grateful.
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have found kind of the rich, rewarding path of spiritual discovery.
Do you think that through time you're able to take that hindsight in a way that your future self will be looking in your current struggles, like as if they have purpose, does that alleviate current pain and struggle?
Well, yeah, that's an interesting question. You know, I'm much more balanced right now, but it's a different set of challenges at 58. You know, it's kind of like What should I be doing? What is my life really about? Am I on the best possible path for myself? A bit more existential? It's a little more existential. You have a little bit more of a sense of the end zone is up here.
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Chapter 8: How does one find purpose amidst suffering?
Take it where you will, but in terms of what matters most to you currently right now or what you think is important to reflect on for most people to realize that matters most, what comes up for you?
Well, great question. And it goes to the thesis of my book. And it's something I'm madly passionate about. We sit here across from each other in Topanga Canyon. Is that okay for me to show away Topanga Canyon? It's all right. In a secret hideout in Topanga Canyon, California.
which I would say in a lot of ways is the epicenter of so much incredible healing modalities, spiritual ways of thinking, perspective shifts. But there is a certain kind of contemporary Southern California limitation to spirituality where spirituality is used as a expedient tool to fight one's current anxiety or depression. For instance, I'm crazy busy with my life,
whether I have a job, whether I work at home, I'm raising kids, what have you. Oh my God, I feel so flustered. I feel so overwhelmed. I know I'll listen to a spirituality podcast. I'll go to a yoga class. I'll burn incense. I'll get this app. I'll read this incredibly wise person and it'll recenter and recalibrate my mind
my thinking, my being, my breath, my heart energy, and this will make my life better. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I wish everyone would do that. I wish the world would do that.
If we had, instead of hundreds of thousands or millions of people doing that every day, if we had billions of people centering around their heart every day, taking deep breaths, being in the moment, undergoing a spiritual practice, the world would be a much better place. But
That journey can become very solipsistic, and it can become very navel-gazy, and it can become very consumerist, where I'm going to pay X amount for this podcast, and X amount for this app, and X amount for this audiobook, and the X amount for this yoga class or this, you know, healing practitioner. And in return, I want X amount of anxiety reduction.
so that I can go about my crazy, busy, flustered, overwhelmed life more effectively, then essentially you're just trading dollars for a result. And that ultimately is not a shift. in a kind of a greater awareness, right? So there's another aspect to spirituality which really comes from the Baha'i tradition that isn't talked about as much in the spirituality world. And that has to do with
collectively, where are we going as a species on this planet? And how can we harness and use spiritual tools to make our collective life better? When you really start unpacking Buddhism, for instance, and especially if you read the Dalai Lama, especially if you read Thich Nhat Hanh, but go to the source, the Buddha himself, The main awareness that one is cultivating is compassion. Why?
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