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070: Living The Ultra-Spiritual Life with JP Sears

September 10, 2020/
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One of my favorite online comedians, JP Sears is here to talk about his comedic parodies of living the ultra-spiritual life, and also health and his creative process. JP is an active comedic YouTuber with over 300 million video views; he’s also a standup comedian, an emotional healing coach, author, and speaker. He is also the host of his new podcast, The Awaken With JP Sears Show.

On this episode of Awesome Health, JP and I delve into how he got his start being an online comedian. The first company video he released was back in October of 2014. And at the time he didn’t even know how to make videos or how to deliver comedy via videos! But he started doing it and he learned a lot along the way, including the adaptability and deliverability of comedy online. Since then he has expanded his skills to doing live standup, and says it’s a different method and delivery. He compares it two different instruments playing the same song.

The actual content of his ultra-spiritual life videos has also been a journey and comes from his personal experiences. In his 20s, while living in the spiritually-minded enclave of Encinitas, California, he developed a spiritual practice. Soon, it became an egoic practice focused on fulfilling his own ego rather than spiritual matters. By  his mid-30s he started to become more aware of his ego and that allowed him to see what he was doing and helped him address his ego pursuits. We talk about what that’s been like for him – to put his own dragons out there for everyone to see.

We also dig into his creative side: how does he access it so consistently? JP explains he has three keys to his creativity.

The first key is to show up every day, consistency has been critical for him so he sets aside designated “creative time” every single day. The second is white space. What he means by this is time where he has no tasks scheduled, it is just time that is white space on his calendar. Often the creative ideas just bubble to surface during this time. The third and final key is observing and following emotional charges. If something makes him angry or brings him joy he explores it.

From there we talk about how he fleshes out his creative ideas into content, why he was doing too much in the past and how he’s found a better balance now. You’ll hear JP share his humor, his wisdom and much more when you join us for episode 70 of Awesome Health Podcast!

Watch this episode here:

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Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers and we're here with another episode of the Awesome Health Show. I have one of my favorite online comedians in the whole world. His name is JP Sears. He is ultra spiritual, and he joins us today to drop his innate spiritual wisdom upon us, as well as a few things that you might not know about JP, like how the heck does it all this stuff about spirituality that he compared it, how does he stay so ripped and fit? These are the questions that you may not have known from JP, and we're gonna dig deep today. So JP, welcome to the show.

JP Sears: Thank you for having me brother and thank you for that high energy intro and making me sound like a good person. Not sharing any dirt on me. This is great. Let's keep deceiving people.

Wade Lightheart: So that episode that you were at Jeffrey Epstein's match… No, no, no….

JP Sears: My lawyers told you not to talk about that. You signed it!

Wade Lightheart: It's wonderful what you've been able to do, because I think what's made, and I'm asking this as a question, but it's kind of a statement is, you seem to be able to master and develop comedy for social media. So traditionally you'd go to a comedy show and you see Joe Rogan or you see Joey Diaz or whoever it happens to be that you're involved with and it's kind of a standup show and they work that. But for example, you get on and you create these really nice dualities and polarities through conversation and editing and stuff. How the heck did you come up with that idea?

JP Sears: You know, by starting to do it without knowing what the idea was or even being good at it, the first company video I released was back October 5th, 2014. And at the time,I didn't know how to make videos, I didn't even know how to deliver comedy via videos, but I started doing it and learned a lot along the way. But what I did know is, Hey, I've got a sense of humor. I'm a funny person. So it's been a learning process to essentially learn the adaptability and deliver ability of comedy online. When I started doing standup live comedy shows is like, cool, there's a different delivery. Different method, it's kind of like metaphorically, it's all music, but just two different instruments expressing the same song. Man trial and error and trying to be a student as I go and fumble along and see what works, see a lot of what doesn't work.

Wade Lightheart: One of the things I think that you're most famous for is all your stuff from the ultra spiritual. And it's my personal favorite. You know, as I've been in the meditation culture, I've been in the raw food community, I've been into kind of these quote unquote super spiritual, ultra spiritual I think I'm spiritual, but I'm really not. And you've done such an amazing job of exposing all the BS inside of that. How did you come to the idea to work? Because that seems to get a lot of traction out there in the comedy.

JP Sears: I came to be doing that cause I'm full of BS. You know, my thing, I lived in Encinitas, California…

Wade Lightheart: I'm a yoga Nanda first. And so it's great.

JP Sears: Yogananda, his self realization fellowship is right there in Encinitas. And for that reason and other reasons that Encinitas California, it's a very spiritually minded place, tons of yoga studios and everybody's wearing hippie stuff and armpit hair, everything. So I lived there for 10 years and my spiritual practice became very important to me. It still is. While I was there, what I didn't realize is, during my twenties as developing that real spiritual ego, which is just another way of saying an ego. So I would get my egotistical needs met for I'm significant. I'm better than them. I would get those met through these noble looking methods where it's like,I'd meditate longer than that. And we're like, look how attached they are to the outcome. And so I was taking noble concepts being egotistical about them, but not recognizing how egotistical I was being because I would rush.

JP Sears: Oh, this is noble. Like, no, I'm not being an asshole. I mean, spiritual right now. But then in my early mid thirties through self-awareness, I started to not be so ashamed of my egotistical nature, which allowed me to become more aware of it, which allowed me to start addressing it. And the altruist's ritual videos, they started out and I think they continue to be this. They started out as a practice of self awareness where I was shining the light of awareness on my own egotistical nature and then portraying that in a video. And it turns out a lot of people resonate with it, which means like, shoot, I guess I'm not the only one that gets egotistical and you know, tries to hide it behind spiritual spirituality self-growth health. So, I do all the things, I make fun of in videos. That's where it comes from.

Wade Lightheart: I'm a student of Yogananda as well as a guy by the name of dr. David Hawkins. And he talks about that. He says what people don't realize is the regular ego quickly evolves into the spiritual ego. And you've done such an amazing job because one of the things that I noticed about almost all advanced mystics or people is they're having an extraordinary sense of humor that they're able to look at themselves and the human condition and all our freakouts and start laughing about it. And you've captured that in such a profound way.

Wade Lightheart: In that process of finding humor within yourself, what have you experienced from that from like maybe a mental perspective or a personal awareness or connected, what has been the result of that journey that you've taken really the world through? Obviously there's an internal journey, but then it's expressed externally. What's that been like for you?
JP Sears: If you use the word journey, it has been a journey and not a mental concept of a journey, but we're like really a passage journey where there's, I wish it wasn't the case, but there's a lot of my personal dragons that I have to encounter. This journey of doing my best to shine the light of awareness for the world to see, for me to see. And you know, some of that, I'm in a pretty solid place with it where I intend for my humor to always help and never harm. And as I, you know, point out a hypocrisy of society or I point out egotistical nature, it's only natural that those who are the most insecure with doing the same thing that I'm portraying, they will get offended.

JP Sears: Like we don't get offended unless we're insecure about what we're looking at. So I'm okay with people feeling uncomfortable. I'm okay with people being offended. I think that's healthy. It means their insecurities are being stimulated. It's like looking in the mirror. I don't like what I see. So instead of acknowledging who I'm looking at and doing something about it, I punched the mirror. That's what the fist of being offended does. So does my way of saying I'm up to help. And I realize sometimes helping means you allow people to be uncomfortable. Now looking in the journey, I have to realize, like at times I'll notice I'm trying to use humor to escape my pain or avoid dealing with something or want to make a video about something in relationships, because I'm afraid of having a conversation with my wife about what's bugging me. So it's like, I got to face the dragon. I got to have that conversation with my life before I make the video. And that might actually dissolve the desire to even make that video. Another thing I'm just going to be a narcissist, and just keep talking about myself with this question for another couple of hours.

Wade Lightheart: Please do. We want to expose that aspect of your ultra spiritual ego.

JP Sears: I would like to say I'm not a narcissist. I'm very humble. I'm actually the most humble person I know.

Wade Lightheart: No, I think I'm more humble.

JP Sears: That's very arrogant of you to believe that.

Wade Lightheart: Well, I would expect a narcissist like yourself to say that.

JP Sears: I've also had to face a lot of dragons and it's really helped me grow facing these dragons of my addiction to approval. You know, I think we're all approval addicts to a degree we grow up and we please our parents or society or teachers, and we get rewarded for that. But when we get disapproval, it feels like rejection, but here's the deal. I think when we're doing our best to shine our light and being in the position of a teacher, a leader, a comedian, an influencer, whatever we want to call it, you can't say anything meaningful while also pleasing everyone to try to please everyone. It just means your words are saying nothing. You know, we've all seen politicians like they're talking for 10 minutes and they're literally say nothing because they're just afraid of getting people's disapproval.

JP Sears: So I've had to face the fire walk of cool. I have something to say, I feel it in my heart, it's authentic. I'm being called to make this piece of comedy about this topic. And I know it's gonna piss some people off. That's not my intention, but I know it will yet it's for a greater good of helping wake people up and hired a visa afraid of disapprovals. So I've had to learn to just own that, like cool, I'll step into that discomfort rather than trying to avoid it. Like I spent so much of my life avoiding the discomfort of a disapproval, but being somewhat in the spotlight regularly, putting content out there that has been such a catalyst of growth where, and I still have a long way to go, but now more than ever, I'm able to be way more unapologetically, true to myself, rather than just becoming a chameleon, trying to get approval

Wade Lightheart: Very well said. I think it was Alan Watts who once illustrated the traditional pathways was being a Yogi, a Fakir, but he also has a really great discourse on the joker and the person who has a beautiful, you can listen to it and you do it the whole thing's about three hours. And howin the olden times they had the court jester who could make fun of all the people who had their hands on the levers of power and in today's world. What I see, when the Me Too movement kind of came out, I saw your next movement. And we've seen that kind of emerge that comedians can't go a lot to a lot of universities. They're worried about saying the wrong thing. You're seeing this in the political movement. Everything has been curated and whitewashed. And, you know, out to the max, if you will, it comes to slogans of nothingness.

JP Sears: Such a good sane right there? I didn't have nothing.

Wade Lightheart: You know, how are you navigating this crazy world of cancel culture where I believe the foundation of freedom of speech is the right to offend people. This whole concern that everybody has about everybody trying to not offend somebody or people saying that's offensive and we've seen this whole crazy political movement that's happening in the loss of freedoms and stuff. How does that impact you in determining what you're going to say or how you're going to say it, or what the blow back is against you?

JP Sears: Well, I would say as a great question, I don't let it impact me. I think it was two years ago. I was doing live comedy shows in Philadelphia and at the comedy club there, you know, in the green room, oftentimes when comedians come through, they'll sign the wall and sometimes they'll write a little something on it. Well, there was a signature that jumps straight out at me, and I think he is one of the greatest philosophers of our time happens to go under the profession of a comedian. And that's the signature of Dave Chappelle jumped right out at me. I was like, What's Dave Chappelle out to say, and on the wall, he wrote, dear comedians, you have one job and that's to keep telling the truth, Dave Chappelle. Now that stuck with me, I've always been trying to do that, but like that landed on me.

JP Sears: You know, since two years, things have only gotten more nuts with canceled. Culture's more intimidating, but seeing that message, it was like if Jesus wrote that or Yogananda wrote that. It's like, that was a message for me. I needed to see that and hear that. And I need to live by that. So when I look at those who, and this is not a criticism, it's my observation, when I look at those who are trying to avoid the heat, that comes from a very angry people, their actions, their words in their way of living or being of a profession, it becomes rooted in fear. Like what they're doing and not doing is based on fear of an attack. Now I know like I'm not out harassing people. I'm not out me tooling, anybody I'm not doing, I'm not doing things harmful.

JP Sears: So I don't have anything to hide or I hope people don't find out about this. Cause like, I'll go to prison. So, you know, I'm not worried about that because it's not there. What I am worried about is speaking the truth that I have to speak. It's not everybody's truth. It's mine. And then when I look at those who have become kind of sewers of outrage, always looking to be offended by something, cancel someone look for problems where they're not sometimes there's real problems. And as we know, a lot of times not when I look at those people, my assessment of them is they are people who get a sense of significance by victimizing themselves, which means they're hurting themselves while pretending someone else is hurting them. They blame another person for how they feel. Then they try to cancel this person.

JP Sears: How they try to cancel them is through anger, rage, and being hurt and offended. Like I have feelings, that's hurt because you didn't recognize them in actual dolphin inside. How dare you, which means they're getting a sense of significance by banking themselves, the biggest victim, which means they have a sense of empowerment. The more they truly disempower themselves. I don't want to feed that. I don't want to reward that nor do I want to do my life's work out of a fear based mentality. I also know there's one more thing. I'm not out there trying to be an asshole. Like I'm not out there, like let's just piss people off and then hide behind this Trump card. I know my intentions with what I have to say. So you can tell I've thought about it yet. You know, I don't try to do anything different other than just speak my truth. And then also I can't worship the comments, I just can't or you just lose your mind.

Wade Lightheart: What do you feel has been one of the challenges of being kind of thrust recently as quite an influential public figure? You know, living about your life, you're obviously very healthy and fit and you have a practice we're going to get into what your daily life is. People might not know, but what has been some of the challenges I know you recently got married with Amber. Amber actually interviewed me years ago at a Raw Food. I thought that was so, so ironic. So it was really neat when I saw you guys got together. What has been that like, to kind of move through that. And then of course what's happened for you, but there's also the impact, when you have a partner, that's interacting and some of the challenges and the opportunities that presents. And then how does that maybe come into your comedy?

JP Sears: Yeah, great question. So, you know, I'm a big challenge on myself than anything ever could be. My inner idiot lives strong in me, but I think one of the challenges that I have is I love to make people happy. So in other words, the challenge I have is I try to be everything for everybody. So whether that's like, a thousand DMS, I can spend my whole weekend responding to them and then have zero room for me or my wife. Or I might get to three of them and the rest are going to be like I can't be exactly what I'd love to be for everybody all the time. So there's that. And then, you know, there's the challenge. This is such a great first world problem to have, but looking at opportunities that are they're mostly great on paper yet tuning into which ones are in my heart.

JP Sears: Sometimes I say no to great things offered by great people, because I realize I need to prioritize my mission and my purpose first and foremost. Then there's another first world challenge at times where maybe we're out somewhere, my beautiful wife and I, and you know, people might keep trying to get my attention, whether just want to say or share joy I've brought with him or grab a picture, which I love. Like I so welcomed that yet. You know, I'm out on date night with Amber, I I'll say she handles it like a champ. She's so gracious and kind to everybody and supportive of me. You know, a challenge is like, I'd love to give a hundred percent of my time and attention to my life right now. So you'll never hear me complaining about that yet. It's that kind of thing can be a little bit of a challenge that comes up.

Wade Lightheart: So let's talk about switching gears from that is you're obviously extraordinarily fit…

JP Sears: Say more, say more.

Wade Lightheart: It really shows you have literally low body fat. You're also some of your spoofs that you do show a very high level of awareness in order to make something a parody. You have to have a high level of awareness. That's one of the beauties I've never met a non-intelligent comic, they're some of the smartest and most insightful people in the world. How is it that you've been able to maintain such a great physique? What are the practices or things that you do? I see you've got an Oura ring. It's kind of like the symbol of the biohacking. You're one of us. What was your readiness this morning? Your REM sleep, hat are the things that allows you to have such level of physical vitality?

JP Sears: That is the foundation is what I pay attention to the most. And by foundation, I mean, sleep, that might be the most impactful thing on my energy and health. If I have crappy energy, cause I have crappy sleep, then my ability to actually do a workout goes down. So 85% of the time, I'm making sure to get really good sleep.

Wade Lightheart: Are you a long sleeper? You're an eight hour sleeper kind of?

JP Sears: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, nutrition is essential to me and, and I am not dogmatic about anything other than clean, mostly whole foods. I notice like my nutritional needs seem to change at different times. Sometimes I seem like I am doing more meat right now, or a little bit less meat here and like higher fat, lower fat. So I think the wisdom of the body can give us a lot of guiding light. So I do my best to pay attention to that. And of course workouts, I've got my home gym set up in part of the garage doing a lot of functional stuff, free weights, kettlebells pull-upsa lot of the basics and I'll cycle my training methods. I just went through a phase of cross fit style training. I'm going into a phase of more hypertrophy style training, slower movements, just getting more time under tension. So being what I find for myself, because at times I get having super busy and especially if I'm traveling, I'll find prioritizing, being consistent with the workouts is the most important thing over duration of the workouts. So if it's going to be a 20 minute workout, I will prioritize just do what I can, but ideally it's like, cool. I have a full hour to play around and do what I want.

Wade Lightheart: Right. Any particular were you always kind of a athletic person or a fit person or did that was always in your life or did that something come in later in life?

JP Sears: Yeah, it's always been a thing for me. I've always been into sports and I also remember being 11 years old when I started working out and I was completely driven by insecurities. It's like my arms skinniest ones in the class. And you know, so I started to try to escape my sense of weakness through outer physicality and awareness about that now. I love moving and I've got to say like for me the idea of keeping our peace of mind high and stress low, that's so important. And I find I can meditate all day, but if I don't get physical, I'm just not going to have the peace of mind. So, you know, working out is great for the body, but for me, it's one of the best things I do for my mind as well.

Wade Lightheart: Talking about meditation. What's that practice, obviously you have some sort of practice, what's been the kind of the nature or how has that developed in your life or what's that been the impact?

JP Sears: You know, lately my meditation has been five minutes in the morning and ideally five minutes at night. Now Yogananda would probably be laughing like only five minutes, but that was the deal there's times where I would meditate longer, like 20 minute periods. But I found man much like the workouts being consistent with it as a priority. And I was just finding like, I could make easy excuses. Oh, 15 minutes. I'll believe my excuse, why I can't do that. But five minutes is my cheesier. I noticed the power of meditation when I fall off the bandwagon in four or five, six days go by that I haven't meditated. There's just like a low grade anxiety feels like a little bit of broken glass in my body mind where it's just like, there's a little bit of an edge of anxiety, even small that creeps back in. So it's like meditation sometimes when I'm on a great stretch, I don't notice how powerful it is until I quit for four or five days. And just let, business get the best of me.

Wade Lightheart: Before we got started on the interview. We kind of talked about a little bit about a video did with us and kind of the creativity that you kind of threw it out there. I think a lot of people would wonder how are you able to access that creative side? So do you find that you have to get into the weeds a little bit, maybe feel some of that anxiety or do they just drop into the Zen space or is it an interaction in life that triggers the thing . How do you capture how you're going to flesh out maybe some of your creative processes or do you have a static system?

JP Sears: There's three primary keys to consistent creativity. At least for me, I don't know if they're keys for other people. One is showing up every damn day with creative time. Kind of like if someone's trying to get into a new relationship and you give that perspective partner zero of your time, you know, there's literally just not space for that person in your life. That relationship it's not going to grow, develop and create love and beauty. So I think it's Steven Pressfield's super famous book called the War of Art, where he talks about show up every damn day. That's become essential to me where I have dedicated creative time every day, because now there's space for it to show up. And I think there is something so true about training the mind, the muse training it.

JP Sears: When we come up to the computer to write a video ideas, we're training that to happen. Sometimes it's a grind, sometimes it's grace, but it's gotta be the time. The second thing for me with creativity is white space. So for me, a lot of the prime, like, Oh, that's a super exciting idea. Those ideas don't feel like I think of them. It feels like kind of like the ideas come to me. And I find there's gotta be some level of white space. And usually that's when they show up. So white space for me is I just don't have to be doing tasks on a schedule right now. Yesterday for example, as you know, my first day in about two and a half weeks with a decent amount of white space, I've just been so much going on lately.

JP Sears: And I'm like, I'll have like half the day off to just chill. But the freaking potent ideas kept coming to me, which is such a joy. So white spaces and ingredient. And then the third one, and this one's super practical in a tangible way is following emotional charges, right? The wise man, Carl Jung once said feelings are the language of the soul. So I think oftentimes the umbilical cord from the creative news or our soul the creative, the umbilical cord is constructed out of feelings. So for me, I notice when I get a big emotional charge, whether something pisses me off or something brings me in speakable joy or any other emotional charge in the middle, I've trained myself. I want to pay attention. What just stimulated us emotional charge. Was it something I saw in a meme on Facebook? Is it something going on the news? Was it something I observed with my wife or a friend or something I just noticed with myself. So those three things observe emotional charges have white space and show up every damn day, making the creative time. Those have been the three things that I've took a while to learn are necessary to be the garden where creativity can grow.

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. I think in today's kind of like always on word world. It's really hard to carve out. And especially the more successful quote unquote, a person becomes in the world of form. It's almost like the essence of what got you there now, because everybody's trying to glom for that time. And there's like some kind of duty to this, like the gremlins of success , when you're talking about maybe capturing those moments in white space. So what's your process around that? Let's say you get that thought drops, do you put it on your iPhone and then take it back to the workspace or how does that whole system work or is there a system at all?

JP Sears: Pretty much just nailed it 80% of the time. Oh, this idea for a video or a stand up just like the big picture idea. I'll get my phone out, make a note because man, ideas can be like dreams we have on average six dreams at night. But if we don't write those down within one minute of waking up, we forget 90% of the dream content after a minute. Ideas are dreams that want to live through us. So I've got to make the note and then I'm not necessarily looking to like, okay, let's write this whole script right now. And the moment that idea comes to me, usually it's been in the morning where I've got the one hour set aside for creative writing show up every damn day. Now I'll start to develop the script or the standup concepts around that idea that hit me while I was taking a poop in the woods.

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. How do you like maybe categorize or flesh those things out of that creative space? Because I think the creative process is one that is so important to the human condition and there is a process to it, but there's also, like, let's say you've captured that idea. You come to your workspace typically, what's it like developing that out and you know. I suppose you kind of maybe go back to things or abandoned lines or how do you sort all that kind of creative energy out in a process where you can actually bring it to like, Hey, let's use this and go for it.

JP Sears: With all that is looking at videos for first is just my example out of like whatever, the 10 video ideas right now that are yet to be fully written. When I show up to do writing in the morning, usually it's a matter of what one excites me the most to work on now. And then I'll work on that and the process can be different for me for different videos. I allow myself as much freedomduring that creative time as possible while still taking action. I'm not talking about freedom. Like I wrote a word and now I just want to look at the birds, man. It's like going to write for that hour. But sometimes I'll sit down and within 30 or 45 minutes, the whole video is just written.

JP Sears: Like maybe an eighth of it is written onthat session. And it feels like here's a lot more, but it just feels like let's let this ferment for a day or two or until the next time I'm inspired to pick it back up. That seems to work pretty well for me and I don't have the problem of being a perfectionist like that just sits around. It's not done yet because it's perfect. I think done is always better than perfect. So that's a system which worked pretty for me.

Wade Lightheart: Great stuff I always say the pitfalls of perfection and of course we now live in a demanding world. Content is King so you've got to keep producing content. And then what's the quality of that or how do you work that all out for yourself? Cause I think a lot of creative people get paralyzed either with perfect or massive production and they don't know how to find the balance. How have you found that balance? And it kind of the digital world, because really you're quite prolific when it comes down to it. So it's obviously you've figured out this process in a very digital world.

JP Sears: First, you know, I'm not perfectly balanced yet. I'm grateful for the pretty nice level of balance I've created and how I found that is getting pretty damn out of balance and directions. In the beginning, it's like, Oh, I'm putting out a video, a new video anywhere from every three to eight weeks. And then you get what was it probably three years ago. I started watching too much Gary Vaynerchuk, but that dude is funny all the time.

JP Sears: If you're not creating 23 hours of content every day someone's running. And you know, Gary Vaynerchuk is himself yet. I was out of balance, like trained to do things too much. Gary's way which art isn't my way. But so I got out of balance there and now I'm finding my balance and I'm producing two new comedy videos every week. A podcast writing standup, I'm performing standup shows now down during the quote unquote pandemic doing stand up shows when I can, which has beenless frequently than before. And I work a lot because I love what I do yet. I'm just like, cool, this is a great balance, there's enough stimulation where it's like two videos a week to write those and film those.

JP Sears: So it's stimulating enough where I have enough pressure to really helping show up yet. It's not. So over the top where it's like, dude, like the creativity feels like it's being ground down. That's been a cool balance, but also something I just had to share this and I think it's super relevant for people. No matter what they're doing. I found a big part of being imbalanced while producing at a pretty high level. It is delegating things that aren't in my creative genius zone. So that's been putting together a team over the past few years where like now I don't edit my videos. I'm not going through the mechanics of uploading them and tagging them on YouTube and then Facebook. And then IGTV and formatting it for this. So having that guy in place,my executive assistant to handle all the things so I can spend the most amount of time possible, not only doing what I love, but also from a business perspective happens to be what produces the income and the opportunities.

JP Sears: You said something 5–10 minutes ago about creativity, it was just about how it's beneficial for everybody's life. And that was so important. I just wanted to throw my hand up and say, amen, I think in 10 years, we're going to look back at this time where we actually considered creativity to be an option. The creatives are creative, but most people aren't. I think we're going to look at that the same way. Like we'd look back today at the 1950s and be like, dude, people didn't exercise like you. How could you not do that? So I think creativity, sleep, great nutrition, great exercise meditation. I think creativity is one of the essentials.

Wade Lightheart: Is there any particular areas that you draw inspiration? Cause I've known a lot of different creatives in my life, whether it's been artists and musicians and things like that. And many of them feel that they need to kind of fill up the well. So do you have a practice or people or things that you draw inspiration from other than just maybe your own emotional states or whatever, or maybe processes from other comics or creative types?

JP Sears: What comes up for me about that is interacting with life, is that's what creates a lot of inspiration and idea generation. And that might be like I'm out traveling. Or it could be like I'm having conversations with friends or meeting people. In other words, like getting outside of my own little head bubble and even like my bubble at my house where it's like, dude, if I could be here for like a year straight and I'm like, I'm pretty good. So I've got to just interact with life. I've got to live it. I've got to jump off bridges here into water and do things that scare me so whole live life in the three dimensional way and interact with people. That's an important element for me.

Wade Lightheart: Do you find in that process that there's always kind of a filter for what's transpiring that you have that maybe other people don't leverage to the same extent.

JP Sears: And could you say more what you mean by filter?

Wade Lightheart: I always say that, if you brought three people to the front of a house and one's an engineer and one's an artist and one's a plumber, they're going to see different things with that house right. Based on their reference. Like, so comedy and creativity to me is, a framework and one that is really socially under attack right now. And so how are you, is that a conscious filter? Is it something that's just innate with you or do you flip it on or flip it off, or is it own random thing? That's kind of a question.

JP Sears: You know, it's honestly all of that. I mean, first off for me, I think it's innate and I'll because I act actively work with this innate thing. It becomes also pretty conscious. And I think it's just like a muscle you keep using it, it's going to grow bigger. So oftentimes I'm interacting with life, I'm looking through the comedic lens and seeing irony, seeing hypocrisy, I'm seeing the obvious pain driving dysfunction or I'm seeing the unspoken truthwith comedy. There;S always gotta be at least two things, truth and pain and just like our homie, Alan Watts would say, nothing is, as it seems when you're looking at how things seem. It's not funny, but when you present an alternate reality for however, it seems what's really going on that starts to approach the funny. So I'm usually looking for things like that. Or at least that's the lens that I'm perceiving through often.

Wade Lightheart: Well, that is the quote Alan, that that is exactly what the jester kind of does is he looks at the tragedy of the human condition, which is full of its suffering and pain and unrealized goals or dreams or emotions that are gone haywire or whatever happens. It's yet as able to draw out the ironies and the funny parts and which makes it such an important role in the human condition, as well as that is the role of wisdoms. It's the full becomes the master.

JP Sears: Amen to that. And you know, the first video we released together with BiOptimizers, the video called The left versus right. To me it is just hilarious watching these two polarized sides and then people who conglomorate on each side, be angry at each other for doing the exact same thing that they're doing. Now, I know there's literal differences, but these two sides are a perfect match for each other, but we pretend like they're different, but it's like, no, they're the same. So for that video, for example, I was doing my best to shine, shine the light and help expose like the way that seems.

Wade Lightheart: If you read Warren Buffeit in the World of Investing, he says, I never give myself the convenience of an opinion until I've considered it's opposite to an extreme that's that's led him to be one of the greatest investors in history. And I find that interesting what's unique, for example, many videos when you're doing that, the common element is you. So even though you're wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt, the brain is saying, Hey, it's JP taking this side and JP doing this side, it's kind of like the angel devil inside the voice. And that theme runs through things because I think we all have based on circumstances, social conditioning or responsiveness, or how we're curating our human interface. As I say for that moment, we all have kind of those opposing forces within us. And you do such a great way of exposing it. What's where do you see kind of comedy going in the digital age and when I listened to Joe Rogan talk about, or him and Joey Diaz talking back and forth, or what's happening to comedy in the dangers of maybe not being able to speak on university campuses or speak in certain places or say certain things, what do you think the consequences of that might be?

JP Sears: I'll say this weak comics will let their comedy go away. Strong comics who don't succumb to fear their comedy will be more prolific. People want to listen to the truth and I realize truth is relative, but oftentimes a comic is speaking a truth that someone believes so they can connect with that. There's a friend of mine named Tim Kennedy used to fight in the UFC army ranger. Greenbrae used to be an ISIS third, most one and for the kill list, it was behind George W. Bush, some other guy than Tim Kennedy. When Tim Kennedy found that out, FBI knocked on in store. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he was home rather than deployed at the time. And they said, Tim, our intelligence shows us, ISIS has recruiting someone to kill you and your family. Tim said, good, tomorrow I'm going to go on national Fox news and give out my home address.

JP Sears: And that's something he actually did by the way. This guy that you're going to be, I don't want to go over there and knock on the door. He's got Bulletproof glass, like he knows he's a high profile army Rangers. So of course the enemy would want to take them out. But this guy's butt can cash. The checks that his mouth writes anyway, I've hit. I was having a conversation with Tim not too long ago and he said, we live in with censorship and where an ass don't wear a mask and our civil liberties being infringed on. He said a couple things. One, you can only be controlled if you're afraid. If you're not operating under fear, you're not going to be controlled. The other thing he said is you have two choices live in peaceful slavery, or live in a sense of dangerous freedom. So the danger of I'm going to say some real shit, but will it piss people off? Will they cancel? Will YouTube censor me?

JP Sears: I don't want to succumb by to fear. Of course I have fear, but for me, the warrior inside is the one that says this scares me and I'm doing it anyway. So look at a Dave Chappelle. He is probably the most warrior comedian I've ever seen. He doesn't live in peaceful slavery of Oh, let me make jokes about like observational crap that doesn't touch anybody's heart or help anybody wake up. Dave Chappelle saying some real stuff. They tried to cancel Dave Chappelle. Sky's just too big to cancel. You can't do it. But you know, in his wake, if you will, I'll be doing my best to be a warrior enough to be a comedian living in dangerous freedom saying stuff, because I care some comedians and people they're too afraid.

JP Sears: So they'll choose a sense of peacefulness. That's born out of slavery because if you're not saying what you have to say, you're a slave to the fear and therefore whoever you're blaming your fear on. So by the way, and some of those people will spell, operate as comics, but they won't let their lights shine bright. They'll say, Oh, of hundreds Watts I'll do 20, because that feels safer to me. And they won't be flocked to as much as the Dave Chappelle's, who said, dammit, if I got 150 Watts to shine, turn them all on. Cause this is me and I'll apologize to nobody for it. To be real, will there be some casualties probably, you know, will there be people that are canceled beyond repair? Like I hope not, but maybe like Dave Chappelle, I doubt you could ever cancel him. They try but it's like they could cancel me if the right forces got together. Yet I'd rather be true to myself and live and give my gifts to the best of my ability and quote unquote, die in the process rather than living mice, living my life in a cage in order to preserve my life and play it safe. So, anyway, I don't know if I'm getting too dramatic, but I love it. It's a philosophy which does not kill comedy.

Wade Lightheart: Maybe it's stronger with that. I know we're going to come at the top of the hour. Is there any final, last words that you'd like to share with our audience that you would like to communicate from ultra spiritual, from JP, from your insights that you've developed or cultivated or what you'd like to get out to the world.

JP Sears: I would love to advocate everybody double down on a virtue thatI think you embody so well, brother, you just greeting me with his large smile. You're such a child dressed up in a human suit, playfulness like man, we could all use more playfulness. I think seriousness is a psychological posture of fear, but I think seriousness is what ages us, seriousness what takes the quality away from our life. And I know there's a time and place to be serious, but so many of us, we're serious everywhere all the time. So becoming young again, letting ourselves to be playful, even looking at what we take most seriously and getting playful with that, to me it beats the alternative of just living in a encrusted serious, stressful, fearful place. So everybody's got the playful faculties inside of them. It's just a matter of inviting them out, be joking around with friends. Can you learn to laugh at yourself? I'm doing my best to grow that. And I invite everybody else to join me on the playfulness movement.

Wade Lightheart: Where can devote he's of the ultra spiritual route, we join your comedic cult and practice the Nietzschean philosophies of truth dissemination across the planet. Where can they reach you? How do they find out more about you and where they just send you mad amounts of money? So you can drive around in Rolls Royces and find jet planes and show your holiness to the world.

JP Sears: That's what God wants of me. Thank you. Very elegant, complex sentence I've ever heard, put together. The best place to find me if you'd like to connect ismy YouTube channel and all my social media. My handle is Awaken with JP. So I'd love to connect in with you there and be playful with each other every week.
Wade Lightheart: Well, there you have it folks. Be playful, stand in your truth and double down on your virtues with none other than JP Sears, the King of ultra spiritual. That's it for another episode of the Awesome Health Show. All the show notes and the references of all the deep, deep spiritual truth that was revealed today in the show, will come out to you. And of course, make sure that you check in with JP Sears and Awaken with JP Sears. I'm Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers and this is the Awesome Health Show. Be funny, be happy and see you next week. Take care.
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