Speaker 1: This mystery of life, death and resurrection is built into
Speaker 1: the cosmic processes. We're discovering that more and more from
Speaker 1: science today. So there's a tremendous law they're about. Don't
Speaker 1: think that our suffering or death is the last word.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people will keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Matthew Fox, who's been
Speaker 1: on the show before. He's an internationally acclaimed spiritual theologian,
Speaker 1: episcopal priest, and activist. He holds a doctorate in the
Speaker 1: history and Theology of Spirituality. Today, Matthew and Eric discuss
Speaker 1: his book, Matthew Fox Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality. I
Speaker 1: love this quote from the Buddha. The mind hard to control,
Speaker 1: flighty a lighting where it wishes. One does well to
Speaker 1: tame the disciplined mind brings happiness. Happiness can often feel
Speaker 1: like an elusive goal everyone seems to strive for and
Speaker 1: never quite achieves, because we seek it outside of ourselves
Speaker 1: rather than going inward, which is something mindfulness teaches us
Speaker 1: to do. And Jenny, yes, Eric, this idea of taming
Speaker 1: the mind is why you named your program the Well
Speaker 1: Trained Mind, right yep. And I'm excited to announce that
Speaker 1: it's open for enrollment now through October eight. In my
Speaker 1: live virtual six week Introduction to Mindfulness program, whether you're
Speaker 1: new to mindfulness and meditation or you're looking to strengthen
Speaker 1: your existing mindfulness practice, I'll teach you the foundations of
Speaker 1: mindfulness so that you can live with more ease, create
Speaker 1: a nourishing and fulfilling spiritual practice, discover how to be
Speaker 1: a friend to yourself, and strengthen your ability to live
Speaker 1: in a more grounded, connected, peaceful way. To learn more
Speaker 1: about the program go to when you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash mindfulness. That's one you feed dot net slash mindfulness
Speaker 1: before October eight. I hope to meet you there. Hi, Matthew,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Eric. Good to be with you again. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a pleasure to have you back on. I
Speaker 1: don't remember when the last time was. It's been a
Speaker 1: good number of years ago, but I love that conversation
Speaker 1: and so I'm really happy to have you on again.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your latest book called Essential
Speaker 1: Writings on Creation Spirituality, which really is bringing together a
Speaker 1: lot of your writing over the years, and it was
Speaker 1: great to see it all in one place. And we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a minute, but before we do,
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second says, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandparents says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do, and I thank you for it and
Speaker 1: naming your program, and after giving it that kind of
Speaker 1: exposure which it deserves. You know, it very much parallels
Speaker 1: the teaching from kicknot Han, the Buddhist monk, who says
Speaker 1: that we have two seeds in us, the seeds of
Speaker 1: violence and the seed of compassion, and you have to
Speaker 1: water one or the other. So you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of wisdom is abroad, thank God, whether we're east or west.
Speaker 1: This is human nature, isn't it That we're capable of
Speaker 1: great beauty and kindness and generosity and forgiveness on the
Speaker 1: one hand. On the other, we're capable of well the
Speaker 1: ground Ukraine, war or denial about climate change and all
Speaker 1: this nonsense. Our capacity for evil. You know, Thomas Aquins
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century said one human being can do
Speaker 1: more evil than all the other species put together, which
Speaker 1: I think is an astounding observation because you made an
Speaker 1: eight hundred years before Hitler or Stalin or whole pot
Speaker 1: or Putin. But it's saying the same thing, really you know,
Speaker 1: don't underestimate our capacity for destruction. And of course this
Speaker 1: is what climate change is all about today. And there
Speaker 1: are many ways. You know, you don't have to be
Speaker 1: dropping nuclear bombs. You can go into denial. You can
Speaker 1: create a whole political life out of denial. An awful
Speaker 1: lot of politicians have been doing that in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: So there are subtle ways of being evil, choosing evil.
Speaker 1: And of course if you kind of back up and
Speaker 1: figure it out, well, why do politicians go into denial
Speaker 1: about climate change? Well because power and ego in money
Speaker 1: and power kinds of money is their god, is their idol,
Speaker 1: and so it's a form of idolatry ready to choose
Speaker 1: that which destroys others. And today, I mean it's been
Speaker 1: wrapped up. Destroying the environment is literally putting millions of
Speaker 1: other species into extinction as well as ourselves down the line.
Speaker 1: So it's a simple parable, and it's a grandfather to
Speaker 1: his grandkid, and that's marvelous way to set a parable.
Speaker 1: But it's so true, and I think we're facing that
Speaker 1: today as a species, and it's more true today than
Speaker 1: it was twenty years ago. Extinction is a real possibility
Speaker 1: for our species. At this time. And you know, I've
Speaker 1: been struck lately by how they've been uncovering, especially in
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, a lot more hormid species are cousins like Neanderthal.
Speaker 1: You know, we knew about them because they are hanging
Speaker 1: around Europe. But now they're just goiving fourteen others that
Speaker 1: they've so far unearthed, and they're going to be more.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is every one of these cousins
Speaker 1: of ours, including Neanderthal and Dennison, are out of business.
Speaker 1: They're all extinct. So we're the last one standing home
Speaker 1: of sapiens. And I mean, if that doesn't ratchet up,
Speaker 1: you know, the stakes that we're living with today, I
Speaker 1: don't know what can you know? So I think all
Speaker 1: these lessons, these parables are really important because they put
Speaker 1: the spotlight on our capacity for divine compassion on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and for destruction and our participation and evil
Speaker 1: on the other. And again we can't underestimate either. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a striking quote from a quientess. I've never
Speaker 1: heard that, but yeah, it seems absolutely true. Particularly to
Speaker 1: come to it at that point, Let's start with talking
Speaker 1: about what creation spirituality is, because I think it's going
Speaker 1: to give us a chance to unpack the parable in
Speaker 1: some other ways also, So let's let's start there. Well,
Speaker 1: that word creation, of course, is a really big word.
Speaker 1: It includes this universe we now know as thirteen pointy
Speaker 1: billion years in the making and still growing, and two
Speaker 1: trillion galaxies. The last time we talked, neither you nor
Speaker 1: I know anyone else knew that there were two trillion galaxies,
Speaker 1: each of hundreds of billions of stars. It was two
Speaker 1: or three summers ago that science discovered that. But it's
Speaker 1: about the sacredness of nature, of creation, of these billions
Speaker 1: of years, and of course of our own existence and
Speaker 1: of this earth, which of course makes our existence possible.
Speaker 1: But to realize how interdependent we are, and all these
Speaker 1: previous happenings, the original fireball, the birth of the of
Speaker 1: the original atoms, and first galaxy, these very things, and
Speaker 1: how that, thanks to our ingenuity as a species, web
Speaker 1: telescope is beaming into our living rooms and on our
Speaker 1: computers today is just amazing. Really, the human capacity for
Speaker 1: questing after knowledge and devising instruments that instruct us. So
Speaker 1: that's the basis of creation is beginning not with the humans.
Speaker 1: See the modern consciousness began with the human decre I
Speaker 1: think therefore I am, well bully for you, but that's
Speaker 1: not right to decar The reason you are is that
Speaker 1: thirteen twenty millionaires gave birth to you, to the Earth,
Speaker 1: to the Sun, to the moon, to everything humans need
Speaker 1: to be here. But that thinking, I think, therefore I
Speaker 1: am I mean, you know, get out of the room.
Speaker 1: But this has been the basis of modern consciousness. This
Speaker 1: has been the basis of education, of politics, of the
Speaker 1: law of religion in in in the last few hundred years.
Speaker 1: Whereas the pre modern people's, including indigenous peoples, but also
Speaker 1: these great pre modernistics like I mentioned a Cladness and
Speaker 1: Hill the Guard and Francis of Assisi who is the
Speaker 1: best known, Juliana Norwich. All these great souls, not one
Speaker 1: of them began with with the human. They began with
Speaker 1: the universe. Hill the Guard is painting pictures of the
Speaker 1: universe right and left because she's listening to the the signs
Speaker 1: of her day. Early in her career, scientists were saying
Speaker 1: the universe is an eight. Okay, she goes ahead and
Speaker 1: paints the picture of the universe as an eight. Then
Speaker 1: they switched and said, oh, the universe as a circle.
Speaker 1: It's it's oh okay, so she starts painting pictures university circle.
Speaker 1: The point is that these great mystical minds and souls,
Speaker 1: like indigenous people, are eager to know our real home,
Speaker 1: and that we humans we stand out in many ways,
Speaker 1: including as you and I just said, in our capacity
Speaker 1: for evil, but also our capacity for intelligence. But the
Speaker 1: point is we are part of something much bigger. What
Speaker 1: hill they are called the web of creation, and of
Speaker 1: course so create. Spirituality is of course a response to
Speaker 1: this anthropocentrism that has brought about climate change, that has
Speaker 1: brought about the destruction of the planet today. This mindset
Speaker 1: of modern consciousness that puts the human first is the
Speaker 1: opposite of that, and it's the opposite. Therefore of a
Speaker 1: religion begins with sin because sin is a human thing.
Speaker 1: What other species is sinning? Know, every other species it's
Speaker 1: just trying to be their best self. You know, the
Speaker 1: best dinosaur. You can be here in the best way,
Speaker 1: or you can be the best tree. You can be cool.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful. It's for humans, who have so many sources
Speaker 1: that we can choose to be unhuman. Other species don't
Speaker 1: choose to be not themselves and Rabbi Heschel says that
Speaker 1: he said sin as a refusal to become who we are,
Speaker 1: because humans, we don't know who we are, and we
Speaker 1: get off the tracks so readily. So we have to
Speaker 1: keep taking stock and in a sense, we define who
Speaker 1: we are. And I think we're in that kind of
Speaker 1: crunch time today in terms of history, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of depression and a lot of confusion, a lot
Speaker 1: of chaos and sadness because I don't think our professions
Speaker 1: are really honoring our capacities for beauty and for compassion
Speaker 1: and for a kindness and for healing. I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: it flashes through, certainly in the COVID and all these
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses and other hospital workers who you know,
Speaker 1: literally gave their lives and certainly put themselves in danger,
Speaker 1: and that was a beautiful thing to see. Really, that's
Speaker 1: humanity at us best. And of course coming up with
Speaker 1: vaccines and record time is a wonderful thing too, But
Speaker 1: still there's so much of the other going on all
Speaker 1: around us and making headlines every day, so humans have
Speaker 1: to work at being human. There's a beautiful teaching from
Speaker 1: the Messia Americans one sentence. I just love it. Says,
Speaker 1: to be human, one must make ruin one's heart for
Speaker 1: the wonders of the universe. That's creation spirituality. That the
Speaker 1: world is full of wonders. We are part of that
Speaker 1: wonder and it is a grace, It is a blessing
Speaker 1: just to be here, and everything else flows from that that.
Speaker 1: As my striker said, if the only prayer you're say
Speaker 1: in your whole life is thank you, that would suffice.
Speaker 1: So we should be saying thank you for our species
Speaker 1: being here, and thank you for being individuals, you know,
Speaker 1: in that circle of overse species, and then asking how
Speaker 1: can we help you know, how can we assist the
Speaker 1: next generation of fall in love with life and and
Speaker 1: make things healthy and beautiful for the next generations. I
Speaker 1: love that Master Eckhart quote, and the earlier one about
Speaker 1: being human is to see wonder. You talk about how
Speaker 1: Western spirituality has two basic traditions, right, So we've got
Speaker 1: the first that starts with the experience of sin and
Speaker 1: develops a fall redemption spiritual motive. And that was starts
Speaker 1: with the experience of life as a blessing and develops
Speaker 1: a creation centered spirituality. So here's creations centered spirituality over here.
Speaker 1: The other is the fall redemption model, and you talk
Speaker 1: about in your book how original sin came about later
Speaker 1: on in Christianity, and I'm curious if you could share
Speaker 1: a little bit about other ways of interpreting what we
Speaker 1: see in the Bible, as you know, known as the
Speaker 1: fall right of Adam and Eve. How do you interpret
Speaker 1: that story in the sense of creations, yourtuality, so that
Speaker 1: you end up with something besides the original sin. Well
Speaker 1: out of rank was a brilliant psychologist in the twenty century,
Speaker 1: and he was Jewish, not Christian, and he came up
Speaker 1: with the term original wound. And I really like that language.
Speaker 1: It's so much more accurate I think a wound. And
Speaker 1: his theory on the original wound was when we leave
Speaker 1: our mother's womb, that is the original wound because being
Speaker 1: separated for nine months, we were very content and very
Speaker 1: at home. Things went along swimmingly, quite literally because the
Speaker 1: water in the room. But when we enter this world,
Speaker 1: you know, usually there's neon lights, you know, in the
Speaker 1: in the operating room, and you get hit on the butt,
Speaker 1: I mean, the first thing that happened, and there's noise,
Speaker 1: and it's just imagine what a shock that was to
Speaker 1: all of us totally yeah, and he goes out the
Speaker 1: original wound that comes back, it's a wound of separation.
Speaker 1: And he says the only resolution is the unio mystica.
Speaker 1: That's the language he uses, the mystical union which we
Speaker 1: experience in love and an art. He said, those are
Speaker 1: the are the healing graces that resolve that problem. And
Speaker 1: it keeps coming up. Let's say you're going through a
Speaker 1: rough divorce or separation or someone you love dies. See,
Speaker 1: separation keeps coming up. It's a motif in human experience
Speaker 1: and that whole issue of letting go and letting be
Speaker 1: that Eckart talks about to return to that place of
Speaker 1: union and communion and peace and so forth that humans
Speaker 1: you yearned for. That. So I find myself vary at
Speaker 1: home with auto rocks naming. Of course, humanity has a problem.
Speaker 1: Look around, read the news, and of course it didn't
Speaker 1: start with us. With Adam and Eve, our closest ancestors,
Speaker 1: the Apes, they make war two. In the fact their
Speaker 1: wars we now know it can be horrible. They're very sadistic.
Speaker 1: They eat each other's fingers, they eat each other's genitals
Speaker 1: in their wars, and so you know, violence is part
Speaker 1: of our family tree. But again, it's like you're a
Speaker 1: parable There are ways you can choose other than the violence,
Speaker 1: but you have to work on it. Like Ticknutoun says,
Speaker 1: you have to water the plants of justice and plants
Speaker 1: of peacemaking. I think that's a fine way of thinking
Speaker 1: about our fall. But also I've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: dualism being the fall. Hill. The garden paints a picture
Speaker 1: of Adam where he's sniffing the flowers, and she says,
Speaker 1: this is what Adam's failure, his fall was that he
Speaker 1: only sniffed the flowers, that he didn't stick around longer
Speaker 1: to take in their full beauty. So she is saying
Speaker 1: that humanities struggles are from a failure of eros, a
Speaker 1: failure to really enjoy the beauty of life. And I
Speaker 1: think there's so much truth in that that it's so
Speaker 1: much easier to go running off and doing our thing
Speaker 1: rather than to stick around and learn not to take
Speaker 1: for grant the healthy air and the healthy soil, and
Speaker 1: our healthy bodies and the healthy waters. You know, all
Speaker 1: this we abandoned to extract from the earth and build
Speaker 1: up empires and all the rest. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what hill the guard is saying that it's easy for
Speaker 1: us to forget to savor the beauty of existence. And
Speaker 1: many people in their deathbeds, you know, Koba Rassai, there
Speaker 1: are two ways that people die. One is happily and peacefully,
Speaker 1: and those remember the joyful times in life. Then those
Speaker 1: who die kicking and screaming, she says, are those who
Speaker 1: never really learned to enjoy life at all. So there's
Speaker 1: still haven't learned the deeper lessons. So I think that's
Speaker 1: another insight. And then the duelism part, well, you know,
Speaker 1: patriarchy is built on dual is a matter versus spirit
Speaker 1: for example, and this whole I think that everything is
Speaker 1: in competition the us, the reptilian brain, I win, you lose.
Speaker 1: So I think that the patriarchal consciousness, which has dominated
Speaker 1: human awareness for at least six years, I think that's
Speaker 1: another foundational split that goes on in the human We
Speaker 1: have to recover that sense of both and instead of
Speaker 1: either or, And that's a struggle for a lot of
Speaker 1: people and a lot of philosophies, a lot of religion
Speaker 1: and so forth. But again it's back to the idea
Speaker 1: of the circle and the circle we're all equal. We
Speaker 1: can see each other's eyes, can see each other's suffering
Speaker 1: and one another's joy. And that's how you mitigate the
Speaker 1: temptation to be the winner and make others losers. That
Speaker 1: reptilian brain consciousness that is obviously so prevalent in the
Speaker 1: world today. We treat the earth that way. Men are
Speaker 1: often talked to teach women that way, or the oldie's
Speaker 1: young that way. I mean, there's so many rualisms that
Speaker 1: we build up and and of course between religions and
Speaker 1: all that that battle that we project onto one another
Speaker 1: and UH participate in. So I think all those ways
Speaker 1: are ways of understanding the flaw of our humanity. That
Speaker 1: the East talks a lot about ignorance and illusion, and
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean, all those things are illusory, that
Speaker 1: that we were here to conquer others and to be
Speaker 1: on top and so forth. B number one, that's false thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back to this idea of you know, Adam sniffing the flowers.
Speaker 1: You say that falling in love with earth and life
Speaker 1: and all our creaturely companions all over again and on
Speaker 1: a daily basis is the first response of Spirit working
Speaker 1: in and through us. And I love that idea of
Speaker 1: truly falling in love with the world around us. Is
Speaker 1: that wonderful quote from Derek Walcott, the Caribbean poet who
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize for Poetry in the seventy two
Speaker 1: He says, the fate of poetry is to fall in
Speaker 1: love with the world in spite of history. I just
Speaker 1: love that because it's so realistic. History isn't always pretty,
Speaker 1: but the world is much bigger than human history, thank God.
Speaker 1: That's why I talked about cosmology and the earth and
Speaker 1: these bigger realities that are part of our world and
Speaker 1: it should be part of our history. So we're learning
Speaker 1: through a tough time of history now, but that sentence
Speaker 1: from walk comes back to me all the time, to
Speaker 1: fall in love the world in spite of history, and
Speaker 1: then the implication, okay, and then we can remake history.
Speaker 1: We can do history differently. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: Jesus was teaching, what Isaiah was teaching, that the Buddha
Speaker 1: was teaching, but Mohammad was teaching, and that is that
Speaker 1: you know, we're capable of compassion, we're capable of changing
Speaker 1: history that way and times running out. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the work you did in creation spirituality,
Speaker 1: was defining sort of for haths of creation spirituality. And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if we could just talk briefly about each
Speaker 1: of them. I'm going to read what the four are
Speaker 1: just so people get the whole picture, and then maybe
Speaker 1: you and I can sort of deconstruct them one at
Speaker 1: a time. The first path you call the Via positiva,
Speaker 1: which is the positive path positive experiences of awe and delight.
Speaker 1: The Via negativa, which is communing with the divine through
Speaker 1: silence and loss suffering, third path via creativa, and the
Speaker 1: last is the Via trance for tiva. I may have
Speaker 1: pronounced all those wrong to how do you say your Latin? Okay?
Speaker 1: All right, so yeah, let's just walk through them. I
Speaker 1: love this idea of thinking of these four different paths.
Speaker 1: It makes me think a little bit about the four Yogas. Right,
Speaker 1: there's some crossover there also where they talk about the
Speaker 1: four paths. There. Let's talk about the first one, the
Speaker 1: Via positiva. Well, I think in a healthy situation, such
Speaker 1: as a child with healthy parenting, this comes first that
Speaker 1: you excitement, the wonder of the universe, and of first
Speaker 1: of all, your toes and your fingers and all this.
Speaker 1: I often worked with scientists, and I loved to ask
Speaker 1: scientists this one question, when did you know he wanted
Speaker 1: to be a scientist? And there's always a pause and
Speaker 1: they scratched their head. And I remember one chemist I
Speaker 1: asked that question of here's an old guy, and he
Speaker 1: said why, he said, I haven't thought about this in
Speaker 1: twenty years. But the same thing happens everyone tells me.
Speaker 1: Asked Popert Sheldrake, the British ballatists that once and he said,
Speaker 1: h He said, I fell in love with the bush
Speaker 1: when I was five years old. My father was a naturalist.
Speaker 1: You showed me to this one bush. And then he said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I never thought of this. I did
Speaker 1: my doctorate thesis on that bush. But every time they
Speaker 1: say I fell in love with the star, I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the worm. I remember woman scientists said
Speaker 1: it when I was six. She said, it's a love affair,
Speaker 1: and so love comes first. I mean, how important is
Speaker 1: a love affair with the bush when you're five? And
Speaker 1: then your life becomes a life of a biologist. And
Speaker 1: all the wonderful work that Rupert Shelter has done as
Speaker 1: a for thinking biologists. I mean it's amazing that our
Speaker 1: vocations come from falling in love. So our capacity to
Speaker 1: fall in love is there from the beginning. And you know,
Speaker 1: with good parenting, you know you are encouraged to follow
Speaker 1: your your loves and your interests and to develop the skills.
Speaker 1: And for the rest you know, and you know at
Speaker 1: different ages their sports or there's flowers, or there's cameras
Speaker 1: or ideas, their study is interacting with others. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's such a wonderful diversity of human interests. But the
Speaker 1: point is that we do fall in love. I say,
Speaker 1: the first commandment in the creation traditions, who fall in
Speaker 1: love at least three times to day. And that takes
Speaker 1: falling in love outside the circumstance of anthropocentres of not
Speaker 1: just about finding your mate till death to your part.
Speaker 1: That phrase following in love is a big concept. And
Speaker 1: you can fall love with wildflowers, you can fall love
Speaker 1: with planets, you can follow with poetry and with music
Speaker 1: and with trees, and there's no limit to it. That's
Speaker 1: our capacity for goodness and so that's what the real
Speaker 1: positiva is. It's about coming face to face with goodness.
Speaker 1: And you know, love and goodness and joy. They're like
Speaker 1: a trinity. They go together. You fall in love with
Speaker 1: something you perceive as good, and the good speaks back
Speaker 1: to you and then joy happens. So there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: relationship that goes on. Then in the video Positive and Now,
Speaker 1: Rabbi Hashol talks about ah is the beginning of wisdom,
Speaker 1: and OH is very important for him, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: he defines on one place this way. He says, AWE
Speaker 1: is the human mind encountering the universe. It is the
Speaker 1: act of the human mind encountering the universe. Well, I
Speaker 1: love that because once again we're back to that cosmic awareness,
Speaker 1: back to creation, that this capacial of all love is
Speaker 1: built into us. We're hard wired for the via positiva,
Speaker 1: and you have to return to when things get tough,
Speaker 1: when there is grief and when there is suffering, you
Speaker 1: have to keep in minding yourself. I say, it's like
Speaker 1: being a camel. You have to store it up on
Speaker 1: the via positiva as you head out into the desert,
Speaker 1: and there's plenty of desert in life, and you have
Speaker 1: to call on that big hump of that source of
Speaker 1: water that you're carrying with you, which is the via
Speaker 1: positive of the love of life as you come across
Speaker 1: struggles and challenges along the path, and we all do so,
Speaker 1: that's via positiva. Well, it makes me think a little
Speaker 1: of the wal cut quote you just said, which is,
Speaker 1: not only do we fall in love with life in
Speaker 1: the world in spite of history, right, it's important to
Speaker 1: fall in love with life in the midst of our
Speaker 1: own suffering. You know, I fall in love with my
Speaker 1: two dogs three times a day easily, right, But that's
Speaker 1: because I'm consciously I mean, hey, they're adorable, but be
Speaker 1: I'm you know, consciously cultivating that that idea of falling
Speaker 1: in love three times a day is is similar to
Speaker 1: gratitude practices, or appreciation practices, or lots of different things
Speaker 1: which are all about simply saying, look, all of it's here.
Speaker 1: Let me try and train my brain to look for
Speaker 1: the beautiful. Because there's a poem I'm memorizing right now
Speaker 1: in the last line of it is as if this day,
Speaker 1: with its tentative light, were not enough, as if joy
Speaker 1: were not strewn all around. You know that's always the case, exactly,
Speaker 1: But as Mary Alverst says, you've got to pay attention. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, that's just what you're doing, is you're saying,
Speaker 1: but I love that phrase. Train my brain to look
Speaker 1: for the beautiful. Yeah, so true, And in theological language,
Speaker 1: that's training your brain to look for God, because the
Speaker 1: beauty and God are the same things according to the mystics.
Speaker 1: China says, God is the most beautiful, the super beautiful,
Speaker 1: and all beings participate in the divine beauty. So the
Speaker 1: quest for beauty is the quest for God. Joy too,
Speaker 1: says sure, Joy's gods in this demand's companionship. So the
Speaker 1: whole idea for him then, is that the universe exists
Speaker 1: because of joy, and we're here together because there's a
Speaker 1: built in hardwire to share the joy. You know. That
Speaker 1: is a different way to look at the world, and
Speaker 1: it could change a lot of things. So I could
Speaker 1: stay on the positiva all day, because who doesn't want
Speaker 1: to stay there? Right? It's a lovely place to me.
Speaker 1: But we've got four paths, so let's keep moving here.
Speaker 1: The second path the via negativa. Well, as you pointed
Speaker 1: out in your brief naming of these pasts, there are
Speaker 1: two parts of the via negative, but one is silence itself.
Speaker 1: So this is what meditation does, for example, teaching us
Speaker 1: to let go of noise and input and just be still.
Speaker 1: And there's that line from the Psalmist and be still
Speaker 1: and learned that I am God. So this invitation is
Speaker 1: stillness is what a lot of meditation is about, and
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful thing. And of course there are practices,
Speaker 1: especially the East is very rich in these practices. But
Speaker 1: there's also so ways to find stillness. For example, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of men go hunting and even fishing
Speaker 1: for the stillness of it, for the contemplative experience. That
Speaker 1: they don't tell anyone that they are'm going out to
Speaker 1: catch a big fisher. I don't understood the DearS of
Speaker 1: but really they want to go out to get away
Speaker 1: from the everyday noise of life and work and all
Speaker 1: the rest and the household, and to experience this deep
Speaker 1: connecting in silence with the silence of nature. My starec
Speaker 1: Card says, nothing in all creation is so like God
Speaker 1: as silence. So that too is a tremendous affirmation of
Speaker 1: our capacity for stillness and silence. And again all traditions
Speaker 1: say that this is a doors, not the only door,
Speaker 1: but it is a door into the divine and distill
Speaker 1: the mind, as they say, the mockey mind and the
Speaker 1: busy mind. You know that we're often in a state
Speaker 1: of problem solving, and silence is kind of forgetting the
Speaker 1: problems for a while and just to be with being.
Speaker 1: And we have to find how we do that. And
Speaker 1: as I say, there are practices that get you there,
Speaker 1: but there are also other ways to put yourself in
Speaker 1: any circumstance. And sometimes it just comes to even are
Speaker 1: we talked about awe and via positive but all itself
Speaker 1: when you think about it, Ah shuts us out. By definition,
Speaker 1: when you are awe struck, you shut up. There's a
Speaker 1: great story in the Book of Job that says that
Speaker 1: your job is talking on telling God what he should
Speaker 1: be doing. You shouldn't be here. And then guys said,
Speaker 1: where were you job when I created the earth and
Speaker 1: the foundations of the earth? Were you there? And did
Speaker 1: you teach the mountain goat how to make love? And
Speaker 1: all this stuff? He goes on and on, and then
Speaker 1: the Bible said, Joe put his hand over his mouth.
Speaker 1: He shut up, because there are a lack of greater
Speaker 1: things going on than our busy little minds and our
Speaker 1: opinions about things. So that's part of the via negative
Speaker 1: is silence. But the second part that you spoke of
Speaker 1: briefly is of course suffering and grief. And they have
Speaker 1: something common silence and suffering it but they have in
Speaker 1: common is letting go and letting be. So think of
Speaker 1: being sick in the hospital. Let's say you're usually busy
Speaker 1: and accomplishing that, and then you're stick in the hospital
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't even know you know how long
Speaker 1: you'll be there, or if you're gonna get well again,
Speaker 1: or what you learn to let go. You're just to
Speaker 1: being in hospital, who someone has to feed you, Maybe
Speaker 1: you can't do a thousand of things you usually do
Speaker 1: for yourself. I mean, that's just an example of how
Speaker 1: real letting go and letting be can be. Or of
Speaker 1: course you lose a friend to death or to sickness,
Speaker 1: or or you have a breakup with a friend or something.
Speaker 1: All these are experiences of letting go. Of course, So
Speaker 1: suffering itself is not something we need to manufacture. It
Speaker 1: happens to us, and how do we respond. That's the question,
Speaker 1: you know, which they say we go into shame and
Speaker 1: beat ourselves up for it. For example, you know, in
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century there's great bubonic plague, much worse than
Speaker 1: our recent coronavirus, and they had no science to deal
Speaker 1: with everything. But many men created flagellation clubs. They went
Speaker 1: around beating themselves from village to village. Why because they
Speaker 1: said it must be their sins that have brought on
Speaker 1: this this destruction. It's really kind of weird, but that's
Speaker 1: how people can be. We flatter ourselves that we think
Speaker 1: that we can bring out a coronavirus. But there were
Speaker 1: so many of these men's clubs doing this, the Pope
Speaker 1: had it say, hey, chill, this is not going to
Speaker 1: solve our problem, you know. So there's just many ways
Speaker 1: in which the human imagination goes overboard and beating ourselves
Speaker 1: up and wallowing and shame and guilt, and this too
Speaker 1: is part of letting go and letting be. The suffering
Speaker 1: is a reality, all being suffered, as a Buddhists like
Speaker 1: to remind us, and of course, as you know, having
Speaker 1: two dogs, dogs suffered too, you know. And of course
Speaker 1: as a caretaker, you you don't want to see that.
Speaker 1: You want everything you can to relieve it. But how
Speaker 1: to deal with suffering, that's part, and of course the
Speaker 1: grieving and today we're in great grief as the species,
Speaker 1: of course we are. I mean, just this week we
Speaker 1: saw pictures of the Rhine River drying up, in the
Speaker 1: Danube River, and the Tamans is drying up, and the
Speaker 1: Colorado River in America is driving up, and in China
Speaker 1: the great rivers are drying. I mean, it's scary and
Speaker 1: a shocking totally. And of course it does come back
Speaker 1: on us as to what we're doing about climate change
Speaker 1: and not doing so. The suffering of the world and
Speaker 1: our own suffering is a teacher for us, and that's
Speaker 1: part of the of the Via negativa. And of course
Speaker 1: in the Christian world, the Cross is an archetype of that,
Speaker 1: because here was an innocent man, a good man, out
Speaker 1: there preaching compassion and working with the poor, and he
Speaker 1: ends up being not just killed, but tortured. And because
Speaker 1: that was the purpose of the Cross by the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: that's just an archetype of how in fact, as bad
Speaker 1: as good Fridays can be, as bad as our destruction
Speaker 1: of our souls and egos can be, it's not the
Speaker 1: last word. That death itself gets recycled in something like resurrection,
Speaker 1: and that that's really a cosmic habit we can see
Speaker 1: because sons live full lives and bursts and all this,
Speaker 1: but then they too die, but they sent on this
Speaker 1: as stars. They send down their elements to feed other beings,
Speaker 1: and this happened with supernovas. It's this mystery of life,
Speaker 1: death and resurrection is built into i think, the cosmic processes.
Speaker 1: We're discovering that more and more from science today. So
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous law there about don't think that our
Speaker 1: suffering or death is the last word. And that allows one,
Speaker 1: i think, to go through it with some grace. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Buddhists talk a what about suffering and how all
Speaker 1: being suffered, and how practices of meditation and so forth
Speaker 1: allow you to not dwell overly much on the suffering itself,
Speaker 1: but to move through it. Yeah, I think so much
Speaker 1: of that. Working with suffering sort of leads us to
Speaker 1: the third path in a way, right, which is the
Speaker 1: via creativo. To me, one of the things is how
Speaker 1: is suffering transformed? Right? How is it transmuted into something
Speaker 1: beautiful or at least less negative. So talk about via creativa,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite things that you've really
Speaker 1: unearthed as part of these four paths. I really love
Speaker 1: making this a central part of a spiritual path. I'm
Speaker 1: glad nice direct her at the Great fourteenth century Dominicanistic said,
Speaker 1: I once had a dream, even though a man I jumped,
Speaker 1: I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness, and out of this
Speaker 1: nothingness God was born. It's a powerful, powerful dream. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the via negativist takes us into nothingness, maybe become that
Speaker 1: emptied by all these difficult experiences in life. But as
Speaker 1: you say, the next step is creativity. That's what that
Speaker 1: CRITI is saying that Again, as I said earlier, it
Speaker 1: doesn't end with the via negative, it doesn't end with
Speaker 1: death there with nothingness. In fact, this is a beginning
Speaker 1: for new life. And so creativity becomes all important. And
Speaker 1: notice what he's saying. We actually give birth to the Christ,
Speaker 1: we give birth to God. In a Christmas sermon, he said,
Speaker 1: what good is it to me if Mary gave birth
Speaker 1: to the Christ years ago and I don't give birth
Speaker 1: to the Christ and my own person and my own
Speaker 1: history and my own time and culture. And then he said,
Speaker 1: God is always needing to be born. We are all here,
Speaker 1: we are God birthers, We are all mothers of God.
Speaker 1: And this is a man talking what an affirmation of
Speaker 1: the work of the artist. And he applied see story
Speaker 1: of the Nunciation of the Angel telling marriage he was
Speaker 1: going to have a child to every person and every artist.
Speaker 1: He says that we all take in the Holy Spirit
Speaker 1: when we commit to our creativity. Acquinus before him said
Speaker 1: that the same spirit that hovered over the waters at
Speaker 1: the beginning of creation hovers over the mind of the
Speaker 1: artist at work. It's so beautiful that you know, this
Speaker 1: is how powerful creativity is. We are are tapping into,
Speaker 1: this is co creation, We're tapping into the powers of
Speaker 1: the universe. And of course this is scientifically supportable. Today.
Speaker 1: One cosmologist, Brian Swim says, you know, the fireball burned
Speaker 1: out after seven fifty years, but in fact it is
Speaker 1: present in the light waves in our brains, and when
Speaker 1: we get into a creative state, the light in urin
Speaker 1: is really shooting away. And so we are literally the
Speaker 1: inheritors of the original fireball physiologically a king. So I
Speaker 1: find that the fact that the four paths put creativity
Speaker 1: at the center of the spiritual journey is so important
Speaker 1: in our time because we're living in this postmodern time.
Speaker 1: And Newton he thought the universe was this one galaxy,
Speaker 1: and he thought it was done and we just had
Speaker 1: to fit in, whereas Einstein broke that open of course
Speaker 1: when he talked about the expansion of universe and all
Speaker 1: the rest. So creativity, I think, is what most distinguishes
Speaker 1: postmodern from modern science. And here we have our mystical traditions,
Speaker 1: saying that creativity is a lynch pin between the mystical
Speaker 1: experience of the via positive and via negativa on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and prophetic experience of compassion and justice and healing,
Speaker 1: which is the work of the via transformativa. And but
Speaker 1: creativity is the bridge because it is about imagination. Isn't
Speaker 1: it moral a man generation to think of a better world,
Speaker 1: to think of, say, inventing ways to defend us against
Speaker 1: disease and all the rest. All that is imagination at work,
Speaker 1: but with the purpose, the purpose being to heal one
Speaker 1: another and make life more livable for more people. So
Speaker 1: via creativa is the real bridge. And William Hocking says,
Speaker 1: the profit is a mystic in action, and the profit
Speaker 1: is via transformative of work. So we are all mystics.
Speaker 1: We all go through positive via negativa and learning to
Speaker 1: love life and to let go. But we're also all
Speaker 1: here to serve one another into interferes as what my
Speaker 1: intent says with the forces of injustice and evil that
Speaker 1: we're all exposed to. So creativity is at the heart
Speaker 1: of things in this tradition, and I love it. I
Speaker 1: think it's very apt for a postmodern understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: You say that art as meditation becomes the basic prayer
Speaker 1: or practice in the creation spirituality tradition. But just a
Speaker 1: minute ago you gave some examples of creativity that are
Speaker 1: not the usual definition of art, and so I'm curious
Speaker 1: for people who are, you know, focused on their spiritual
Speaker 1: growth and development, do you recommend some sort of what
Speaker 1: we would traditionally think of as a creative practice, whether
Speaker 1: it be music, drawing, painting, but what we would traditionally
Speaker 1: think of as some sort of artistic practice. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's an important thing for people to cultivate as
Speaker 1: part of their spiritual journey. Absolutely. There's a good book
Speaker 1: done in Meditation in the seventies by Norando and Ornstein,
Speaker 1: two psychologists, on the psychology of meditation, and they talk
Speaker 1: about two kinds of meditation introvert and extrovert. Introvert is
Speaker 1: the kind of sitting meditation where you empty your mind
Speaker 1: of thoughts and which has this place. But what they
Speaker 1: called extrovert meditation I've renamed as artist meditation because when
Speaker 1: you do pottery, for example, like M. C Richard wrote
Speaker 1: a classic book called Centering, and she was a potter,
Speaker 1: and it's brilliant book. And that's exactly what we mean
Speaker 1: by artist meditation. In the act of dealing with clay
Speaker 1: on a wheel, you're learning to center things. Actually calls
Speaker 1: a centery. But the key is focusing, and you do
Speaker 1: that whenever you you do art. It's a focusing project.
Speaker 1: Many writers have to turn off the radi and all
Speaker 1: the rest to focus on their writing and to listen
Speaker 1: with inside of them. The same is true of painters
Speaker 1: and the rest. So it is meditation. It comes in mind,
Speaker 1: and it puts you in a state of creativity very
Speaker 1: often where you get carried away. As I say, if
Speaker 1: you've just said where did the time go, you've just
Speaker 1: had a mystical experience. And I know artists painters who
Speaker 1: stay up all night never look at their watch once
Speaker 1: because they're just in a flow and that's meditation in
Speaker 1: the highest sense, is co creating. You were working with
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit, if you use that theological language. A
Speaker 1: guard has a wonderful sermon about a line from the
Speaker 1: Psamas who talks about the Holy Spirit as a great
Speaker 1: rapid river. And I love that image because my experience
Speaker 1: of creativity is often that you're on a river, on
Speaker 1: a raft without oars, and you're being carried along. And
Speaker 1: that's what creativity is. You know, you've been carried along
Speaker 1: with something worthwhile and something bigger than yourself. So people
Speaker 1: have these states of consciousness like this when they're being
Speaker 1: created of And the key, though, is to realize that
Speaker 1: we're always being creative, that all day long we're making decisions,
Speaker 1: may be about what meal the cook or you know,
Speaker 1: how to address the kids, or something how to balance
Speaker 1: your checkbook. That the modern consciousness shrunken the meaning of art,
Speaker 1: but pre modern thinkers art as everything. In fact, many
Speaker 1: Native American languages do not have a word for art
Speaker 1: because it's just presume that we're all here to make beauty,
Speaker 1: and you're supposed to be doing this all day on.
Speaker 1: We do do it all day are you know, even
Speaker 1: combing your hair or what clothes to wear. So the
Speaker 1: whole idea that art is just for professional artists is
Speaker 1: really materialistic and capitalistic, and it carries a lot of
Speaker 1: the weight and the boredom of modern consciousness. A Crientis
Speaker 1: talks about the art of riding a horse, the art
Speaker 1: of saving a ship. So his pre modern understanding of
Speaker 1: art is just so broad. It's indigenous, like the indigenous US.
Speaker 1: It's not this modern version of art. And of course
Speaker 1: David Paladin, a wonderful Navajo painter, said one day he said,
Speaker 1: I'm sick and tired of hearing white people tell me
Speaker 1: they're not artists. If you can talk, you're an artist.
Speaker 1: You're translating your experiences into language that's art. So you know,
Speaker 1: get over it, step up to the plates, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a postmodern way of looking
Speaker 1: at the world in a premodern way. It is certainly
Speaker 1: not modern, though, So I think this is a big contribution.
Speaker 1: And I think when you look at Western history that
Speaker 1: artists have given us so much and still do, whether
Speaker 1: it's music or poetry or architecture and so forth, and
Speaker 1: kind of to relegate this to bleachers or something, when
Speaker 1: in fact, here we are what three years after modes
Speaker 1: art and we can still be sitting in all of
Speaker 1: two thousand people and being touched and moved profoundly by it.
Speaker 1: How can we put art off in the corner. And
Speaker 1: of course we love to watch young artists son YouTube
Speaker 1: and all the rest, and our young people grow up
Speaker 1: and express themselves that way and create new art forms.
Speaker 1: So art is really how you can find a human being.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book on curativity and it begins with
Speaker 1: the whole idea that the anthropologists when they're looking for
Speaker 1: our ancestors, they don't like to find just a biped,
Speaker 1: but a biped with artifacts next to them, like Julie
Speaker 1: and stuff. Then we know there are ancestors. So the
Speaker 1: human being is a biped who makes things. It's not
Speaker 1: that no other species make things, but we we go overboard.
Speaker 1: We make lots of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are prolific.
Speaker 1: And that beauty that you talked about earlier, we're in
Speaker 1: hot pursuit of beauty and wanting to share it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think one of the things that's interesting about
Speaker 1: art as a spiritual practice is that we so easily
Speaker 1: get hung up on the thing that is being made
Speaker 1: versus the process of making. I think this is where
Speaker 1: so many people get shut down, is because if I
Speaker 1: sit down and start working on a symphony, my experience
Speaker 1: up till date tells me I'm not going to produce
Speaker 1: a Mozart quality symphony. I play guitar and I love
Speaker 1: doing it, but I'm not going to be anybody's professional guitarist.
Speaker 1: And for me, I've done a lot of internal work
Speaker 1: on trying to reclaim the guitar for myself as simply
Speaker 1: something that I love to do for what it brings
Speaker 1: to me internally. But to your point about capitalism, I
Speaker 1: mean so much today, like if you become even marginally
Speaker 1: good at anything, your friends suddenly start going you should
Speaker 1: start a netzi shop. You know, we're constantly encouraged that
Speaker 1: if it's either a not really good or not sellable,
Speaker 1: that it's not worth doing. And I think that blocks
Speaker 1: a lot of people using art as a spiritual practice. Now.
Speaker 1: I have always taught spirituality in my programs. Night had
Speaker 1: programs masters and doctored and then inner city high school
Speaker 1: kids for over forty five years. And we all have
Speaker 1: artists meditation, and sometimes you have people there with real
Speaker 1: talent and experiences and mostly you don't. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I remember one talented artist came and he was questioning, well,
Speaker 1: which course should it take. I said, take the course
Speaker 1: that scares you the most. He said, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't do my photography, I can't do my painting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what scares the most he said, dancing? He said, I
Speaker 1: have two club feet when it comes down. I said,
Speaker 1: take dancing. So he did, and it changed his life.
Speaker 1: The rest of his life, he's been teaching circle dancing
Speaker 1: and so forth. But the point is that I have
Speaker 1: seen conversion after conversion happening with people taking clay as meditation,
Speaker 1: or dance as meditation, or painting his meditation who never
Speaker 1: painted or never did clay and sore. And as you say,
Speaker 1: that's not the point, because the point is the process
Speaker 1: and what happens to you the process, and if you
Speaker 1: produce a product that's secondary. And again, a capitalist version
Speaker 1: of art is to produce something that's salable. As you say,
Speaker 1: artist meditation is not about that. It's about centering. It's
Speaker 1: about commuting with clay, communing with colors. I remember the
Speaker 1: very first year I taught the master's program. Forty two
Speaker 1: year old Francis consists of caning me in the spring
Speaker 1: and she said to me, this is the first spring
Speaker 1: of my life. I said, what, you're forty two years old,
Speaker 1: are you talking about? She said, I took this painting class,
Speaker 1: and she said, it's so opened me up to shade
Speaker 1: and color and everything I haven't seen before. This is
Speaker 1: the first spring of my life at forty two. This
Speaker 1: conversion happened just by painting. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And there were a million stories like this. So again
Speaker 1: we have to step out of the capitalist version of
Speaker 1: art and recover art as a spiritual practice, says a
Speaker 1: spiritual experience. And I want to put out what Gabriel Marcel,
Speaker 1: a wonderful French claspher says. He says arts is not
Speaker 1: just producing a painting or a song or dance. It's
Speaker 1: those people who look at the painting and listen to
Speaker 1: the music. They are artists too. When you're taking in
Speaker 1: beauty from others and other people's art, you are being
Speaker 1: an artist too. So are the artist is both giving
Speaker 1: and receiving. And again that has not taught us in
Speaker 1: a capitalist version of art. So I think all this
Speaker 1: is I'm so glad we're talking about it because I know,
Speaker 1: this is transformative, that people get radically changed through artist meditation.
Speaker 1: Here's one concrete example. A forty one year old guy
Speaker 1: came to meet in our program and he was taking
Speaker 1: massages meditation, and he told me that he was sexually
Speaker 1: abused by his aunt. Every Friday, she would come over
Speaker 1: and abuse him for a year when he was six
Speaker 1: years old. And he didn't know this until the massage class.
Speaker 1: Imagine how much energy his psyche and body put into
Speaker 1: covering that up for thirty six years. And then he
Speaker 1: graduated about a month later, and I swear he lost
Speaker 1: at least fifteen years in our program because that truth
Speaker 1: came out of his body. And that's the thing. All
Speaker 1: art is bodily, and it carries our experiences within it.
Speaker 1: And of course our bodies literally carry the history of
Speaker 1: the universe in them. Our bodies there are thirteen point
Speaker 1: eight billion years old. Literally, they're carrying the original hydrogen
Speaker 1: and helium atoms from the fireball. So that this guy
Speaker 1: had this amazing conversion and awakening and without having to
Speaker 1: go to a psychiatrist, just because his body was listening
Speaker 1: and was being called on to, you know, let the
Speaker 1: truth out. It was you know, an amazing experience. I
Speaker 1: remember the day of graduation. I looked at him from
Speaker 1: afar and it was like he was skipping back into
Speaker 1: life again. You know, he was like a child again.
Speaker 1: It was so beautiful. And of course that's part of
Speaker 1: the artist too, is recovering the child. I'd like to
Speaker 1: practice other people massaging me as meditation. Can I do that?
Speaker 1: Is that a Is that a spiritual path? Of course? Right?
Speaker 1: It works both ways that Gody Machel says, All right,
Speaker 1: now let's move on to the fourth path, the via transformativa.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that. Well, that is the way
Speaker 1: of compassion in healing and justice and celebration. It is
Speaker 1: the community coming together and are working for that coming together,
Speaker 1: because it's injustice that keeps us apart. And one thing
Speaker 1: abstruck by is how all the religious traditions agree on
Speaker 1: so many important things, and one of them is this
Speaker 1: word compassion. So the Dalai Lama says, and it's a quote.
Speaker 1: We can do away with our religion, but we can't
Speaker 1: do away with compassion. Compassion is my religion. Well, Jesus,
Speaker 1: and look sex be you compassionate? Creating Heaven is compassionate.
Speaker 1: And of course he's Jewish and he got that from
Speaker 1: the Jewish tradition, and the Jewish tradition compassion is the
Speaker 1: secret name for God, and Jesus was compelled to let
Speaker 1: the secret out of the big if you will, and
Speaker 1: then Mohammed the Koran. More frequently than any other ad
Speaker 1: jective for Allah. In the Koran is Allah the compassionate one.
Speaker 1: So there's teaching how compassion. It's everywhere, but it's a
Speaker 1: big hurdle. It's not easy. Compassion isn't easy. And make
Speaker 1: Dreker says compassion means justice, so he's not separating compassion
Speaker 1: from the social structures that we have to critique continually
Speaker 1: and improve on continually. And of course we're going through
Speaker 1: that as a country at this time, of course, with
Speaker 1: the latest news about how terribly the Native American children
Speaker 1: were treated and government schools and religious schools and in
Speaker 1: Canada to of course, which the Hope flew over for
Speaker 1: a week to try to apologize for, and of course
Speaker 1: the truths of slavery and so worth, and there's backlash.
Speaker 1: Now we actually have states telling teachers they can't teach
Speaker 1: them that there's racism in American history or something. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just beyond the pale. But this is a live
Speaker 1: issue of course today and it's not easier to hear
Speaker 1: that our founding fathers, so hallowed, had slaves, many of them,
Speaker 1: and made other big mistakes and had clay feet. Oh,
Speaker 1: but that does make them human, because we're all humans.
Speaker 1: So the point is in taking down the Confederate statutes
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. So this, this is a big
Speaker 1: deal at this very moment in history. And of course
Speaker 1: to realize how many sins the churches have committed over
Speaker 1: the centuries, such as the Discovery Doctrine, which two popes
Speaker 1: came up with publishing three paper bulls in the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: which gave carte blanche to Christian kings, beginning with the
Speaker 1: Portuguese king and queen, to go to Africa and take slaves,
Speaker 1: and go to Americas and do whatever they want, because
Speaker 1: these continents were not quote Christian, part of the Christian Empire.
Speaker 1: And I mean the whole idea that christ wanted an
Speaker 1: empire is about as close to heresy as you can get.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I mean, the sins of our fathers are
Speaker 1: kind of being headlined these days. It's it's not easy
Speaker 1: to live with and this is why many people are
Speaker 1: saying I'm spiritual, not religious. The religion is often had
Speaker 1: a shadow aside to it that is immense. All this
Speaker 1: is part of the story of the via transformativa. It
Speaker 1: begins with truth. Like Gandhi said, my religion is truth.
Speaker 1: The meaning of Hinduism to me is a pursuit of
Speaker 1: truth in a non violent way. And notice how much
Speaker 1: false city is in the air of these days and
Speaker 1: on the air in the social media and the other media.
Speaker 1: Lies upon lies. So we have begin to know the
Speaker 1: truth about how dangerous we've been to one another, and
Speaker 1: course the Holocaust, and of course now the truths about
Speaker 1: what we've been doing to Mother Earth and our creatures.
Speaker 1: All this comes out, and so the struggle against evil
Speaker 1: it goes on in all of us. That's your parable
Speaker 1: story we begin with here, isn't it? And we can
Speaker 1: all be participants, even unconsciously we take it for granted.
Speaker 1: That's what privilege means when it's being used in a
Speaker 1: political way, that we don't realize the suffering of other groups,
Speaker 1: groups that are different from us. And of course the
Speaker 1: whole rise of rights for gays and lesbians, that that's
Speaker 1: a minority too, that for centuries has been abused and
Speaker 1: forgotten about, and yet science has now declared as of
Speaker 1: the seventies that it's not abnormal. It's about eight percent
Speaker 1: of any human population everywhere, it's going to be gay
Speaker 1: or lesbian. So you know, give him a break and
Speaker 1: let's get on with more important things than condemning one another.
Speaker 1: And we found four d and sixty four other species
Speaker 1: have gay and lesbian populations, so hey, it's not unnatural
Speaker 1: to a minority. So you know, we can grow an
Speaker 1: awareness and that's a beautiful thing. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what working for justice means. And of course, compassion is
Speaker 1: not just about sharing one another's suffering. It's also about
Speaker 1: sharing one another's joy. Mice Direcker says, what happens to another,
Speaker 1: whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me.
Speaker 1: That is a succinct and beautiful definition of compassion. That
Speaker 1: we are part of one another at the deepest level,
Speaker 1: at the level of joy and at the level of suffering,
Speaker 1: via positive and via eggtivacy. And that's what you bring
Speaker 1: to celebration. Celebration is a gathering of our wounds and
Speaker 1: of our joy at being here. And that's why celebration
Speaker 1: is is fifty of compassion. Suffering is let's relieve the
Speaker 1: suffering that we can and back up if we're making
Speaker 1: suffering on others, but also let us celebrate that we're here.
Speaker 1: That's where I think Ecker just nailed wonderfully the real
Speaker 1: meaning of compassion. And so the V transformative is a
Speaker 1: is a big path, and it ranges from being jailed
Speaker 1: for non violent disobedience to creating rituals for celebration and
Speaker 1: for healing and for grieving together and bringing in all
Speaker 1: the artists and so forth, which is what real ritual
Speaker 1: should be about. Wonderful. Well, I am happy to have
Speaker 1: gone through the four paths. I think they are really beautiful.
Speaker 1: I thought near the end here we could talk for
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes about some of the mystics that
Speaker 1: you love. You've beautifully layered them in through this conversation.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk about Killed the Guard and
Speaker 1: you say that she pictures our life's journey as a
Speaker 1: struggle to set up our tent of wisdom, and I
Speaker 1: just love that metaphor talked to me about what she
Speaker 1: had to say about our tent of wisdom. It is
Speaker 1: a wonderful metaphor prefer that to Young's language about individual
Speaker 1: setting up our tempted wisdom. She says, it were born
Speaker 1: with original stim in us, but we're so tiny that
Speaker 1: it's a small tent, but that life's journey is setting
Speaker 1: up that tent, and she paints the picture of it.
Speaker 1: There are demons along the way, there are obstacles along
Speaker 1: the way. She has a little like cartoon figures in
Speaker 1: about six different pictures where the soul is trying to
Speaker 1: set up his tent, but at the end it is triumphant.
Speaker 1: It sets up this tent and demons are outside. They
Speaker 1: don't get in, but they're still outside shooting arrows at
Speaker 1: the soul. So it is about life's journey. She actually
Speaker 1: gets that image from John One, the first chapter John's Gospel,
Speaker 1: but that gets it actually from one of the Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible books where it says that God has wandered the
Speaker 1: earth wondering where to set up the tent, and set
Speaker 1: out the tent among the Jewish people. And then John one,
Speaker 1: who is Jewish after all Jesus disciples with Jewish, and
Speaker 1: Jesus was himself, and then he applies it to Jesus
Speaker 1: that the Christ is also an expression of having set
Speaker 1: up a tent. But you know, a tent is a
Speaker 1: marvelous image, you know, it's it's a home, it's a shelter,
Speaker 1: but it's portable, you know. You know, it's not a
Speaker 1: mansion to get a camping trip. Maybe hears of it.
Speaker 1: It's fragile in a way. It's it's temporary, you know,
Speaker 1: but that we all have this tent of wisdom, and
Speaker 1: that wisdom is, of course one of the divine feminine
Speaker 1: incarnations of the divine wisdom is feminine and the Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible hawk mouth Hebrew or is feminine, and Sophia the
Speaker 1: Greek word is feminine and the East to Kuanian is wisdom,
Speaker 1: and she's feminine. So it's an affirmation of feminine wisdom.
Speaker 1: And feminine wisdom includes a whole, it includes Cosmos, and
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible and probablys we hear that that
Speaker 1: wisdom was by God's side, playing with God. And that's
Speaker 1: at Eross again, playing day after day. She's there whenever
Speaker 1: there's creativity. That killed the guard, the same who the
Speaker 1: we're talking about. She says that wisdom is involved in
Speaker 1: all creative works, and Hill the Guard herself in quest
Speaker 1: with a genius musician. She was a painter, She painted
Speaker 1: many paintings and her Mandela's, her visions. She was a
Speaker 1: herbalist and a in a healer. She was involved in
Speaker 1: so many art forms, so she knew what she was
Speaker 1: talking about when she said that wisdom is part of
Speaker 1: all creative work. So all that is encapsulated in her
Speaker 1: in her wonderful affirmation that we're all born with this
Speaker 1: tent of wisdom, and usaid life's journey is setting up
Speaker 1: the tent. It's not easy to set up this tent.
Speaker 1: There are obstacles along the way, but we can do it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a beautiful image, beautiful parable. I agree. Well, Matthew,
Speaker 1: that is a great place for us to wrap up
Speaker 1: for today. So thank you so much for agreeing to
Speaker 1: be a guest on the show, for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your work. We'll have links
Speaker 1: in the show notes to where people can find you
Speaker 1: and your work. But again, thank you so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you Eric, and thank you for your work and having
Speaker 1: a platform like this to talk about fun and important
Speaker 1: things that we've been talking about. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly
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