Speaker 1: There's something very strange and interesting about us that we
Speaker 1: have an experience of reality and we don't factor it
Speaker 1: into how we expect things to work. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is kind of a growth edge for our species.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: Krista Tibbett, a Peabody Award winning broadcaster, National Humanities medallist,
Speaker 3: and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts
Speaker 3: On Being, which won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet
Speaker 3: and podcasting She leads the on Being project, which produces
Speaker 3: a second successful podcast, Poetry Abound, and is evolving to
Speaker 3: meet the callings of the post twenty twenty world. Emergent
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three is the lab for art of
Speaker 3: living alongside gatherings and quiet conversations to accompany the generative
Speaker 3: people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive.
Speaker 3: Christa grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended
Speaker 3: Brown University, worked as a journal list and a diplomat
Speaker 3: in Cold World Berlin, and later received a Master of
Speaker 3: Divinity from Yale. Her books are Speaking of Faith, Einstein's God,
Speaker 3: and most recently, Becoming Wise, an inquiry into the mystery
Speaker 3: and art of living.
Speaker 4: Hi Christa, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Hi Eric, so good to be with you again.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is such a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4: I was saying to you before we started, you know,
Speaker 4: about ten years ago, when I really start thinking about
Speaker 4: doing this podcast. I was out there looking and there
Speaker 4: were not nearly the number of podcasts there are today,
Speaker 4: but yours was one of the few where I was like,
Speaker 4: that's really what I want to do. Like it's been
Speaker 4: a beacon to us the whole time, So.
Speaker 1: Thanks been lovely to watch you grow this too.
Speaker 4: We'll start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 4: the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild
Speaker 4: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 4: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 4: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 4: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 4: like greed and hatred. And the grandchild stops and they
Speaker 4: think about it for a second. They look up at
Speaker 4: their grandparents. They say, well, which one wins? And the
Speaker 4: grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 4: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 4: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: You know, I was wondering because I was with you
Speaker 1: once before, and it was years ago, and it was
Speaker 1: also what feels like eons ago, because it was Pree
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and I was wondering what I said before,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have time to look it up.
Speaker 4: You know, I have to.
Speaker 1: Tell you that I had this interesting reaction because I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it last night. So this might be
Speaker 1: kind of an unorthodox answer, but I feel like right
Speaker 1: now in my life and in the world. My concern,
Speaker 1: which is for myself and for the world and for
Speaker 1: all of us, is that we can be paralyzed by
Speaker 1: all the choices and reckonings and challenges and callings.
Speaker 5: That are before us.
Speaker 1: You know that I feel like these years have placed
Speaker 1: before us, and you know they were there before, but
Speaker 1: that we've really been given to see in a new way.
Speaker 1: And my fear is that we just get paralyzed and
Speaker 1: even if we feel the good wolf right, that we
Speaker 1: don't know how to nourish in either direction, which ends
Speaker 1: up being a choice of a kind.
Speaker 5: Does that make sense to you totally?
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean I think that there's the sense in
Speaker 4: that parable that you know which is the right one right,
Speaker 4: which I think is.
Speaker 1: And that you have the energy and that you are
Speaker 1: stepping into your agency to do that nourishing in a direction.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think is endangered right now. And
Speaker 1: I don't say it judgmentally. Right there's a lot of
Speaker 1: fragility and there is a lot to be reasonably fearful about.
Speaker 1: It's a different kind of peril that we're in.
Speaker 4: I'm curious about that because you are someone I know
Speaker 4: who tends to think a lot about time, and one
Speaker 4: of the ways that you think about time is to
Speaker 4: think about it in the really long view. And we
Speaker 4: hear again and again and again that these times are
Speaker 4: worse times, or that they're uniquely bad times. And I'm
Speaker 4: kind of curious, from your perspective taking a long view
Speaker 4: of history, in what ways does this feel like a
Speaker 4: more challenging time than say, fifteen oh seven, or I'm
Speaker 4: just making updates. It doesn't matter which, right, No, it's.
Speaker 1: A great question. I've thought a lot in this century
Speaker 1: about how the early twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the kind of teenage years of our century didn't hold
Speaker 1: a candle to the early years of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: and World War you know, the deaths of millions and million,
Speaker 1: millions upon millions, and starvation and a flu that I
Speaker 1: think was at least more catastrophic than ours, so paled
Speaker 1: beside the other, or a virus right beside the other
Speaker 1: catastrophes of the time that it was barely recorded, and
Speaker 1: you know, incredible time of tumult socially economically, great drama
Speaker 1: and heading towards what we know now, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at it backwards, heading towards another war and holocaust. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I think it would be hard to argue that our
Speaker 1: problems are challenges that on some level, that there's nothing
Speaker 1: special about the gravity and the magnitude of what we
Speaker 1: face and of the terrible degrees of suffering. I think
Speaker 1: what is different for us is that some of our challenges,
Speaker 1: particularly the ecological crisis, is it's truly, truly existential, and
Speaker 1: it's an accumulation.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've walked into this.
Speaker 1: Place over hundreds of years, but I think there is
Speaker 1: something singular about the plight of our species in this
Speaker 1: century and the consequences of the way we've lived for
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 5: I think that is new.
Speaker 1: I think the choice we have to make is whether
Speaker 1: we can rise to this moment so that we are
Speaker 1: not at some point merely surviving. I think that's new.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would tend to sort of agree, you know.
Speaker 4: To me, it feels like human suffering for all intents
Speaker 4: and purposes has always been almost infinite. And by infinite,
Speaker 4: what I mean is more than any one human could
Speaker 4: ever begin to comprehend. Like, I think that's just the
Speaker 4: nature of life, and it's always been there, and I
Speaker 4: do think in many, many ways, the world has become
Speaker 4: a better place. You know, we can just look at
Speaker 4: all sorts of measures of well being out there and
Speaker 4: see that, like, it's good that we have less children
Speaker 4: and slavery than we used to, we have higher literacy rates,
Speaker 4: less infant mortality. All those things seem to be good news.
Speaker 4: But I agree with you that climate crisis does seem
Speaker 4: to be sort of like our car is looking good
Speaker 4: in some ways as it's getting ready to drive off
Speaker 4: a cliff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never know what to do with those kinds
Speaker 1: of comparisons. You know, everything is relative, and everything is
Speaker 1: being compared from a certain perspective. But there are things
Speaker 1: I also feel impatient with in some of the catastrophizing, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm impatient with Like I know that the young and
Speaker 1: you know that the whole matter of education, that there's
Speaker 1: been incredible disruption with the pandemic, and that that's fallen
Speaker 1: harder on some children and in some places than others.
Speaker 1: But when I hear people talking about just in the
Speaker 1: context of having some years of school disrupted, of the
Speaker 1: lost generation, I mean, if I think about all the
Speaker 1: children across time who've lost a school or right, I mean,
Speaker 1: so there's some ways in which I.
Speaker 5: Just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard for us to comprehend the ecological
Speaker 1: moment we're in and to actually take it seriously, even
Speaker 1: though it may make everything that we actually obsess over
Speaker 1: just pale in comparison eventually.
Speaker 5: And then there's.
Speaker 1: The way in which we will catastrophize about school being
Speaker 1: disrupted for a couple of years. And again, I know
Speaker 1: there has been a real cost, and I also think
Speaker 1: that I trust the resilience of our young to recover
Speaker 1: from not having what we think of as the way
Speaker 1: education should be.
Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, I'd love to turn to I'm sure we
Speaker 4: talked about this when we talked before, because I think
Speaker 4: it's probably somewhat of an obsession for people like us
Speaker 4: who do this for a living, which is asking people questions.
Speaker 4: And I know that you love the idea of questions.
Speaker 4: And there's something that you wrote that I saw and
Speaker 4: I don't know where, but I loved this line and
Speaker 4: you said, if you are faithful to living a question,
Speaker 4: that question will be faithful back to you. And you
Speaker 4: say more about that.
Speaker 1: The context of that thought is this advice, this counsel
Speaker 1: that rein or Maria Rilka gave to a young person,
Speaker 1: a young poet in the early twentieth century, and this
Speaker 1: was a young person who was full of despair about
Speaker 1: all the answers that they didn't.
Speaker 5: Have and all the things they weren't sure about.
Speaker 1: And Rilka said, you know, you should love all that
Speaker 1: is unresolved in your heart and try to love the
Speaker 1: questions themselves. And that has come back to me in
Speaker 1: this century where I think, and this was true, you know,
Speaker 1: pre COVID in our lives.
Speaker 5: I think on some level, all.
Speaker 1: Of the great challenges before us are just vast, aching
Speaker 1: open questions that are not going to have answers anytime soon.
Speaker 1: And so this wisdom comes to me that when this
Speaker 1: is the situation we're in, then what we're called to
Speaker 1: do is to love and told and to live the
Speaker 1: questions themselves. And this way of thinking has been with
Speaker 1: me for a long time and accompanied me. And you know,
Speaker 1: because we're so in love with answers, and we do
Speaker 1: crave them, and we understandably crave them, but answers are
Speaker 1: not really a feature of the time. We live in
Speaker 1: a time of evolution and disruption and upheaval of things
Speaker 1: that whose time needs has come to an end. But
Speaker 1: it's very, very stressful for us as human beings to
Speaker 1: live with uncertainty. And yet this counsel that when what
Speaker 1: we're given is uncertainty, when to rush to an answer
Speaker 1: would be to deny the gravity and the importance of
Speaker 1: the questions. Then we live the answers. And I've actually,
Speaker 1: across the years, really like taken that up as a practice.
Speaker 1: You know, when I find myself personally at those junctures,
Speaker 1: or even as I think about questions of you know,
Speaker 1: this world we inhabit and what is my place? You know,
Speaker 1: standing before these challenges, all I have to work with
Speaker 1: is uncertainty. Then I really turn to this work of
Speaker 1: crafting a better question, a question that can keep me company,
Speaker 1: a question that can point me to what I need
Speaker 1: to be seeing or moving towards or moving away from.
Speaker 1: And I have had this experience over and over again
Speaker 1: that if I hold a question, if I live a question,
Speaker 1: if I'm faithful to it, it will be a guide.
Speaker 4: I love that idea. You say, commit to having it
Speaker 4: over your shoulder, in your ear as you move through life.
Speaker 5: And it's not just for a day or a week.
Speaker 1: I have to say it's we have this American way
Speaker 1: of thinking, Okay, I'll do that, do that until next Monday.
Speaker 1: It's a longer term commitment.
Speaker 4: Well, And I think a lot of the most important questions,
Speaker 4: if they ever get answered, they are answered in a
Speaker 4: temporary sort of way. Yes, Like I mean a question
Speaker 4: about like what's important to me and what matters is
Speaker 4: a question to me that if I'm not asking it frequently,
Speaker 4: then I'm not doing it right. Because what mattered to
Speaker 4: me two years ago was very different than what matters
Speaker 4: to me today. I mean, I guess I shouldn't say
Speaker 4: very different. There are some core similarities there, but you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot that Bear's looking at again and again.
Speaker 4: We interviewed a poet recently. I don't know if you're
Speaker 4: familiar with it, Rosemary Watola Traumer.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: She's a beautiful poet. I think you would like her.
Speaker 4: But she has a poem called the Question. I'm not
Speaker 4: going to read the whole thing to you, but the
Speaker 4: basis of it is, is this the path of love?
Speaker 4: I ask myself as I rise, as I wake my children,
Speaker 4: as I do the dishes, as I follow too close
Speaker 4: behind the slow blue subaru, right like this idea. But
Speaker 4: that idea of a question like that is not a
Speaker 4: question you ever answer. But it is a question that
Speaker 4: guides your life, right.
Speaker 1: It is a question that orients and reorient It shows
Speaker 1: you what to see and what to pay attention to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, I find questions like that to be really
Speaker 4: really helpful, as like you said, orienting questions ways of
Speaker 4: consistently asking you know, what matters here, what's important?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you talk about something, and you may have recently
Speaker 4: just given a TED talk on this topic. I'm not
Speaker 4: entirely sure, but that you call the generative narrative of
Speaker 4: our time.
Speaker 1: I have been talking to that while and I did
Speaker 1: give a TED talk. It's not in the world yet.
Speaker 1: I don't know when it will be well, and.
Speaker 4: I don't know when we'll release this, so it may
Speaker 4: be in the world by that or not. But what
Speaker 4: do you mean by that, the generative narrative of our time?
Speaker 1: Well, I definitely use that language as a contrast to
Speaker 1: the narrative of our time, the story of our time,
Speaker 1: you know, the story of what happened today that is
Speaker 1: worth our attention. You know, the narrative of what is important,
Speaker 1: which is how these things get translated in our minds,
Speaker 1: and the narrative that we're just really familiar with and
Speaker 1: that we consume thousand ways in the course of a
Speaker 1: day tends to be this narrative of danger and destruction
Speaker 1: and what is failing and what is going wrong and
Speaker 1: what is corrupt and what is catastrophic. And as you
Speaker 1: and I have been discussing, there's certainly reality to that story,
Speaker 1: but it's not the whole story. So there is also
Speaker 1: as part of the whole story, there is this story
Speaker 1: of what is generative, of what is good, of people
Speaker 1: feeding the.
Speaker 5: Wolf of kindness and love and care. Right.
Speaker 1: That is ordinary, it's quiet, it's happening all around us
Speaker 1: all the time. It's happening in moments, it's happening in
Speaker 1: all kinds of lives and all kinds of places. And
Speaker 1: although it is ordinary and omni present, we don't tell
Speaker 1: ourselves that story to be as fining or as serious
Speaker 1: as the things that do get reported right and that
Speaker 1: we do dwell on, which is what goes wrong. In
Speaker 1: wanting to talk about this and just wanting us to
Speaker 1: have more of a consciousness that we let infuse our
Speaker 1: presence in the world and our sense of what's possible
Speaker 1: and our sense of who other human beings might be
Speaker 1: in their complexity. I'm not talking about this in order
Speaker 1: to deny that we have problems to grapple with. I
Speaker 1: am talking about it for us to claim the agency
Speaker 1: of our possibility for goodness and for making better decisions
Speaker 1: and for building and repairing and healing and just seeing
Speaker 1: that we actually know how to do these things and
Speaker 1: we see people doing it around us all the time,
Speaker 1: and let's start factoring that in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think the word there that well,
Speaker 4: I guess both those words, generative narrative both mean a
Speaker 4: lot to me. I mean, the generative part, I think
Speaker 4: is exactly what you're saying, which is, is the story
Speaker 4: the narrative that I'm telling myself one that is actually
Speaker 4: useful or leads to something good or positive? Like is
Speaker 4: it doing that? And the recognition that it's a narrative
Speaker 4: means that we are always telling ourselves some story about
Speaker 4: the way things are. And those stories, you know, none
Speaker 4: of them are accurate, right, none of them are complete,
Speaker 4: none of them cover everything. Yeah, So knowing that, you know,
Speaker 4: I've often thought to myself, like, if I'm making so
Speaker 4: much of this up? Like or I'm giving the meaning
Speaker 4: to all these different things. Doesn't it make sense to
Speaker 4: give meanings to them and versions of them that are
Speaker 4: actually empowering to me, that are actually going to make
Speaker 4: it more likely that I'm going to solve the problems
Speaker 4: that I see, that I'm going to embody the goodness
Speaker 4: that I want to put out there. And I do
Speaker 4: think it is a narrative that is complex, and as
Speaker 4: we said earlier, we don't tend to like that.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about. You know, the power of the
Speaker 1: stories we tell is about a lot more than story, right.
Speaker 1: It is about how we are interpreting the world. It
Speaker 1: is about how we are deciding what matters, and it
Speaker 1: is about the conclusions we're drawing about what's possible and
Speaker 1: what agency we might have to be part of generative possibilities.
Speaker 1: And I think what's interesting about this is that what
Speaker 1: I just said may be something that people are aware
Speaker 1: of or not, but the fact is that all day long,
Speaker 1: we're taking in stories, and we're taking them in sometimes
Speaker 1: taking them in in the form of what we call
Speaker 1: information or what we call news, and they are absolutely
Speaker 1: shaping the way we are not just thinking about the
Speaker 1: world and ourselves, but walking through the world, and so
Speaker 1: part of this is just getting conscious of what is,
Speaker 1: which I think is also a definition of spiritual life.
Speaker 4: That's a little bit of a transition there that might
Speaker 4: be interesting to go to. Which is that phrase you
Speaker 4: just use, spiritual life? What does that mean to you?
Speaker 1: You know, the word spirituality is not a word that
Speaker 1: I use a lot. I try not to overuse it
Speaker 1: because I think it can be very meaningful in any
Speaker 1: you know, given in the life or in the imagination
Speaker 1: of any given person who's using it. But as a
Speaker 1: kind of general word, it's vague. But spiritual life or
Speaker 1: the life of the spirit, to me is really, you know,
Speaker 1: a very basic way to talk about what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is, you know, interior life in our life, and
Speaker 1: it's getting reflective as opposed to merely thinking. It's being
Speaker 1: in discernment, as opposed to merely deciding. You know, it's
Speaker 1: how we think about who we are and what matters,
Speaker 1: as opposed to merely the action will take.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: This is a similar point to the one I just
Speaker 1: was kind of making about the destructive narrative and how
Speaker 1: it shapes us. Now, that's a very active thing, even
Speaker 1: if we're not conscious of it. We actually get a
Speaker 1: lot of active formation in our world in education, outside education,
Speaker 1: in culture, we get a lot of formation of our
Speaker 1: exterior presentation, right We get a lot of training in
Speaker 1: things we do and in ways to behave, and in
Speaker 1: ways to present, and in fact, in ways to be
Speaker 1: successfully performative. And we get so much less formation in
Speaker 1: that experience inside ourselves, that possibility that we have to
Speaker 1: be at home in ourselves, those internal muscles of making
Speaker 1: sense and making meaning, and in that setting priorities and
Speaker 1: shaping not just what we're going to do, but the
Speaker 1: quality of our lives and the quality of our presence
Speaker 1: to other people. So all of that, to me just
Speaker 1: starts to point out what spiritual life is my favorite
Speaker 1: definition of spiritual life at its best. And here I
Speaker 1: want to know, really point at what the great traditions
Speaker 1: offered to us in the human enterprise is really befriending
Speaker 1: reality in all its complexity, walking into the world as
Speaker 1: it is, not as we wish it to be, and
Speaker 1: making a home and making sense and making beauty and
Speaker 1: finding courage and being of service.
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Speaker 4: to one you feed dot net slash habits. I love
Speaker 4: that last part about befriending reality in all its forms.
Speaker 4: I've used the term spiritual for a program we've got
Speaker 4: called Spiritual Habits, but I've used it reluctantly. In the
Speaker 4: longer I've used it, the more reluctantly I've gotten. And
Speaker 4: yet I can't quite find the other word, because again,
Speaker 4: when you're trying to name something you can't have, like
Speaker 4: a seventy four word description is that, like, it's not psychology,
Speaker 4: but it's similar. It's not philosophy, but it's similar. If
Speaker 4: I were to sort of try and describe it, it would
Speaker 4: be about meaning and connection, you know, what matters to
Speaker 4: me and what am I connected to. But again, there's
Speaker 4: not a good word for this, you know, deeper than
Speaker 4: just psychological, because you could say, well, the interior life.
Speaker 4: You know, psychology covers the interior life, And yes it does,
Speaker 4: but maybe not in the same way. And I love
Speaker 4: that you said sort of the difference between discernment and
Speaker 4: decision making, right, because decision making is very much something
Speaker 4: that psychology spends a lot of time on, but discernment
Speaker 4: is a slightly different animal.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Part of the problem is that all of these
Speaker 1: words are inadequate. They will never touch or encompass what
Speaker 1: you and I are wanting to point at. And of
Speaker 1: course you could make the distinction that, you know, psychology
Speaker 1: is dealing with the psyche, and when we talk about
Speaker 1: the life of the spirit, we're dealing with the soul.
Speaker 1: But you know that's another word that kind of dissolves
Speaker 1: even as we say it. You can't define it right,
Speaker 1: And it's a mystery, right, we can't try to talk
Speaker 1: about it, and it's something that we experience that it's
Speaker 1: ultimately in that realm of mystery. These most important things
Speaker 1: at the intersection of interior life and lives in our bodies,
Speaker 1: and our lives within ourselves and our lives in the world.
Speaker 1: We just have to keep reaching for words that can
Speaker 1: only get proximate to those larger truths, much less when
Speaker 1: we're talking about things that are transcendent.
Speaker 4: Yep ineffable.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the things you've done over the last I
Speaker 4: think it's in the last year. I'm terrible with time
Speaker 4: that I saw you do as sort of a project
Speaker 4: that I really loved was contemplative reading.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Can you share a little bit about kind of what
Speaker 4: that phrase means to you and what you did, and
Speaker 4: then there might be a few points within that actual
Speaker 4: work we could dive into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this might sound familiar to you. I have
Speaker 1: just started to realize more and more in recent years
Speaker 1: that conversation is my medium, and by which I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I love being on either side of a conversation, and
Speaker 1: I think conversationally and I learn conversationally.
Speaker 5: There's no better.
Speaker 1: Way for me to kind of clarify my own thoughts
Speaker 1: than in in exchange with someone else. In addition to
Speaker 1: there's no better way for me to really have my
Speaker 1: mind opened and take in new knowledge than in a
Speaker 1: conversation with someone. And last summer, the summer of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, I went away. You know, we had had
Speaker 1: a big year, we'd made a big change, and I
Speaker 1: we'd ended up our weekly radio show that I've done
Speaker 1: for twenty years. We're still in production on the being
Speaker 1: but we're doing seasons. So we did two seasons a year,
Speaker 1: and we just did the first one. But that was
Speaker 1: a big transition out of that life of fifty two
Speaker 1: weeks a year. And I'd just been running hard for
Speaker 1: a long time. So I add some time away as
Speaker 1: kind of a sabbatical, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: resting to do, but I felt like I had a
Speaker 1: lot of thinking to do too, and I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to write, but I also felt at a loss
Speaker 1: about where to begin. And I started getting up in
Speaker 1: the morning and reading books that were interesting, and you know,
Speaker 1: that stretched me. And actually, I know, given my work,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're like this, but I do
Speaker 1: read a lot of wonderful stretching things for work. But
Speaker 1: when I'm not working, because that's what I do for
Speaker 1: my work, I read a lot of fiction. I want
Speaker 1: to take my mind away, but in this instance, I
Speaker 1: was away and I was able to kind of read things.
Speaker 5: So we're stretching my mind for pleasure.
Speaker 1: And then I just kind of got in conversation with
Speaker 1: what I was reading and let that be the springboard
Speaker 1: for journaling and writing. And I kind of just clearing
Speaker 1: out my head and figuring out what was in there
Speaker 1: and what wanted to come out and what I needed
Speaker 1: to figure out. And it felt like prayer, It felt
Speaker 1: like a form of meditation. It was very pleasurable and grounding,
Speaker 1: and so I just started calling what I was doing,
Speaker 1: you know, contemplative reading conversational reading. I have actually thought
Speaker 1: about so, you know, in my kind of mourning practice,
Speaker 1: which has varied a lot across the years, sometimes what
Speaker 1: I do is just read just a little something and
Speaker 1: really save or something, you know, a poem or some
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual text, and I've always thought of that
Speaker 1: as contemplative reading. This was just kind of a step farther.
Speaker 1: It was reading contemplative and then really getting into conversation
Speaker 1: on the page with what I was reading, and it
Speaker 1: was just a beautiful experience. And I came home and
Speaker 1: started talking about it, and maybe this is where you
Speaker 1: heard about it. I started writing about it and kind
Speaker 1: of shared some of the fruits of this contemplative reading
Speaker 1: in this newsletter.
Speaker 5: We have the pause.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that you said
Speaker 4: in there that resonate with me. Since this is what
Speaker 4: I do for work. When I'm not working, I like,
Speaker 4: you go to fiction. I'm going to be taking a
Speaker 4: lot of June away from interviews, and so now I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: now I'm going to read fiction. And it's almost an
Speaker 4: existential crisis as to what to read because I don't
Speaker 4: get to do it that often. And I'm like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, this is a big decision. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I love that idea of having the chance to, you know,
Speaker 4: read something that stretches you and taking it much more slowly,
Speaker 4: you know. I know, in my zen practice, you know,
Speaker 4: with my teacher, I began reading, but unlike my current
Speaker 4: pace where I'm reading like a book a week or
Speaker 4: something for work, I might read the same thirty pages
Speaker 4: for six months, and it was just a totally different
Speaker 4: way of engaging. But I love the way you sort
Speaker 4: of took it one step further, which is the conversational element,
Speaker 4: because I've learned the same thing that you're sort of saying.
Speaker 4: I've realized, like I'm working on a book, I'm a
Speaker 4: first time writer. I don't have the chops yet. I've
Speaker 4: said to my partner a couple of times, like, I
Speaker 4: wish I could just record me responding to people's questions,
Speaker 4: because like, yeah, that's where I feel like I'm mad
Speaker 4: that way very best. I know in my mind, I
Speaker 4: can pretend I'm talking to somebody else, but there's something
Speaker 4: about the actual element of it that is special. But
Speaker 4: I love that idea of writing back and forth with
Speaker 4: what you're reading and asking those questions, and what came
Speaker 4: out of it was really lovely. And you did it
Speaker 4: with a book by someone that I was not familiar with,
Speaker 4: James Bridle, and the book is called Ways of Being Animals, Plants, Machines,
Speaker 4: the Search for a Plan Panitary Intelligence, which sounds like
Speaker 4: a fascinating book, And so I thought maybe we could
Speaker 4: pull just a couple of things out of there that
Speaker 4: you wrote that we're intriguing, and we could talk about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that would be fun.
Speaker 4: I mean the first one was this general idea, I'm
Speaker 4: summarizing Bridle in this case instead of resolving into order
Speaker 4: and clarity. Ever, closer examination reveals only more and more
Speaker 4: splendid detail and variation. And you followed that by saying,
Speaker 4: isn't that true in life as well as in science?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's true of a person when we come
Speaker 1: to know them. It's true of ourselves that the closer
Speaker 1: you get, the more you're able to see, the picture
Speaker 1: always gets more complicated, right, Yeah, it doesn't get simpler
Speaker 1: or clearer. And in that complexity, and even in our contradictions,
Speaker 1: is such richness and all of our opening for growth
Speaker 1: and for prizing each other and for continue to evolve.
Speaker 1: And what I just said is something that we all
Speaker 1: experience all the time. But we walk around, you know,
Speaker 1: with our ideas about how things should be, how my
Speaker 1: life should be, how I should be, how that other
Speaker 1: person should be, how much less complicated our organization should be.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's something very strange and interesting about
Speaker 1: us that we have an experience of reality and we
Speaker 1: don't factor it into how we expect things to work.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is kind of a growth edge
Speaker 1: for our species, and I feel like, you know, people
Speaker 1: like James Bridle and all the kind of new science
Speaker 1: and understanding of the natural world that he was kind
Speaker 1: of looking at in a very holistic way is giving
Speaker 1: us the language for making this move.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was just having a conversation with my partner
Speaker 4: Jenny this morning about how anytime anyone is too certain
Speaker 4: of anything will argue the counterpoint, even if I mostly
Speaker 4: believe them, there's something in me that just comes up.
Speaker 4: We were joking because it's almost just so common in
Speaker 4: the way I respond that it's almost become predictable. But
Speaker 4: it ties into that core idea, which is, instead of
Speaker 4: resolving into order and clarity, right when we work closer,
Speaker 4: we only get more detail and variation and complexity. And
Speaker 4: that just seems to be kind of the orientation that
Speaker 4: I just naturally kind of have. They go on to say,
Speaker 4: every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the
Speaker 4: central questions of our existence, who are we? Where do
Speaker 4: we come from? Where are we going? The answer comes
Speaker 4: back clearer everyone everywhere I know.
Speaker 1: Isn't that fantastic? That's just one of my favorite lines
Speaker 1: of the book and my favorite thoughts to just walk
Speaker 1: around with.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And you have a phrase you use called
Speaker 4: life together, which I think you're trying to point at
Speaker 4: the same thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like there's a wildness that is
Speaker 1: appropriate to the subject, to the way Bridle kind of
Speaker 1: framed it, and what we're learning about just how entangled
Speaker 1: and in kinship and inextricable not just from each other
Speaker 1: we are, but from all of life. I do always
Speaker 1: come back to this idea of what interests me is
Speaker 1: I mean, I am very interested in the human search
Speaker 1: for meaning and interior life, and I'm very interested and
Speaker 1: passionate about what is the connection between the investment we
Speaker 1: make in that, the nurture we get to that, and
Speaker 1: our ability to participate generatively in our life together, our
Speaker 1: life with others, with our beloved and with strangers. I
Speaker 1: guess that's kind of my focal point, is that intersection.
Speaker 4: Right right, Because I think one thing that sort of
Speaker 4: modern again, I'll use the word because I don't have
Speaker 4: a better or when the modern sort of spiritual movement.
Speaker 4: I think there's been a lot of really great things
Speaker 4: about sort of having all these different traditions on the table,
Speaker 4: and so many different teachers and all these things. But
Speaker 4: one of the ways that I often feel like it
Speaker 4: falls short is it almost becomes a narcissistic tendency in
Speaker 4: that it's always only directed inward. And while inward direction
Speaker 4: is half the equation, so is the outward.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Ideally, the way it works, at least for me, is
Speaker 4: that that what's happening interiorly finds a way out into
Speaker 4: the world, you know, that is generative, and then that
Speaker 4: feeds back and it's a loop. But when it gets
Speaker 4: stuck kind of only inside, you know, to me, that's
Speaker 4: when we go from sort of like self awareness to
Speaker 4: like self obsession.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think about this a lot. I mean, I hold
Speaker 1: it with a sense of compassion towards myself and others
Speaker 1: that you know, it is a time in the life
Speaker 1: of the world where a lot of times we're just
Speaker 1: trying to hold it together, right, And I think that
Speaker 1: spiritual teachings and gifts and practices and certainly meditation there's
Speaker 1: a lot on offer, and it's a great gift. But
Speaker 1: when we're in this kind of survival mode, what we
Speaker 1: imbive is really a diminishment of how those gifts really right,
Speaker 1: the context in which those gifts appear, and the fullness
Speaker 1: of what they're meant to bring, which is not just
Speaker 1: about holding it all together inside yourself.
Speaker 4: I like that rephrasing. Saying that sort of narcissistic is
Speaker 4: a little bit of a harsh way to phrase the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a spectrum, and I think there's an
Speaker 1: idea that spiritual practices will have the range of human
Speaker 1: possibility as well. Right, And just because you pray doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you are a moral person, and just because
Speaker 1: you meditate doesn't mean that you are not a great narcissist. Right,
Speaker 1: These are not silver bullets.
Speaker 4: Looking at the number of scandals you see in spiritual
Speaker 4: communities as a clue to that last one, I've noticed
Speaker 4: that tendency in myself, right, which is that it becomes
Speaker 4: just this interior focus, and for me, that tends to
Speaker 4: be a place where when that goes too far, I
Speaker 4: find myself in trouble. Because as a recovering alcoholic, I mean,
Speaker 4: one of the very first lessons was it's by helping
Speaker 4: others that you stay sober, you know. And so let's
Speaker 4: move on from there to a topic that if you'd
Speaker 4: asked me two weeks ago, I would have said, I
Speaker 4: don't see this showing up on my agenda to discuss
Speaker 4: with Christa, which is AI. And the reason is because
Speaker 4: you said something about it that in typical fashions, you
Speaker 4: really sort of just arrested my attention, and you said,
Speaker 4: the bedrock fact lost in all the spectacle and speculation,
Speaker 4: is that what we are marveling at when we marvel
Speaker 4: at chat GPT is ourselves. It is a student of
Speaker 4: a mirror on all the kinds of intelligence we possess, good,
Speaker 4: bad and ugly, and all the ways we interact. And
Speaker 4: that is a fascinating way to sort of think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was fortunate, and this wasn't very
Speaker 1: long ago, because I mean we all know now that
Speaker 1: there have been places in people that were working on this,
Speaker 1: but I think it kind of really burst into public
Speaker 1: view very suddenly for most of us. And I was
Speaker 1: very fortunate in those weeks when this was unleashed to
Speaker 1: be with some people from the tech industry who kind
Speaker 1: of just help me understand at a really basic level
Speaker 1: what this is. And then I have found that to
Speaker 1: be lacking. I mean, there's so much to pull apart
Speaker 1: and react to and on some level, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that I understand it, right, I mean, there's so much
Speaker 1: that is incomprehensible now even to the creators, which is
Speaker 1: one of the things that's fascinating and terrifying, but just
Speaker 1: understanding as I did come to do that this would
Speaker 1: not have been possible without the Internet. This is about
Speaker 1: kind of unleashing sure that artificial intelligence is not going
Speaker 1: to be what we call this like five years or
Speaker 1: an hour time. I'm so curious to see what we
Speaker 1: come up with. But it's basically about computers, robots, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. Artificial intelligence like being able
Speaker 1: to take in the fullness of human communication and knowledge
Speaker 1: and interaction as it has become represented on this bizarre
Speaker 1: canvas that is the Internet, and then kind of giving
Speaker 1: that back to us. But what AI can do that
Speaker 1: we can't do is that we all function in our
Speaker 1: silos of our passions, our knowledge, our worlds. Right, You
Speaker 1: and I know about a lot about something and absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing about others. What the AI can do, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just looking at us, it's looking at human intelligence,
Speaker 1: it's drawing on human intelligence, but it's able to see
Speaker 1: all of it at once, so it can work with
Speaker 1: all of these different ways of knowing and things that
Speaker 1: we know, and ways that that is communicated, and different
Speaker 1: ways that human beings relate to it, and it's able
Speaker 1: to take it out of all those boxes and see
Speaker 1: it all together. So, you know, it is an incredible
Speaker 1: testament to the brilliance of humanity, just as the invention
Speaker 1: of these you know, these ideas I don't know, like
Speaker 1: are they device I don't know, or software devices, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, is also a testament to human brilliance. What that
Speaker 1: does is it invites us. I mean, it forces us
Speaker 1: on some level, but I prefer to say it invites
Speaker 1: us to get really curious about, precisely about this question
Speaker 1: of what it means to be human and what intelligence
Speaker 1: means to us and how we wish to deploy it.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I were talking about questions a
Speaker 1: minute ago, and it's very clear to me that the
Speaker 1: quality of what comes back from AIS absolutely joined with
Speaker 1: the quality of the questions that are being asked of
Speaker 1: it and what is being asked of it, and this
Speaker 1: ability to formulate a question is a human superpower. And
Speaker 1: I do think that these technologies kind of invite us
Speaker 1: to step up to that in a new way.
Speaker 4: It's really astounding the quality of the question you ask
Speaker 4: depending on what you get back. I mean, it is
Speaker 4: such an almost real time mirror of that in a
Speaker 4: way that is even beyond what we see when we
Speaker 4: ask each other questions, because the results range from straight
Speaker 4: out insane depending on how you answer the question, to
Speaker 4: very ordinary and vanilla to mind blowingly. I hesitate to
Speaker 4: use the word profound, but maybe that is the right word,
Speaker 4: but I love the idea that you share there of
Speaker 4: if we step back from the fear and the utility
Speaker 4: and the I would say certain degree of you know,
Speaker 4: maybe greed that can come around it when we step
Speaker 4: back away from those sort of normal human things and
Speaker 4: we just look. You know, My overall feeling is just
Speaker 4: one of astonishment, is just like, holy mackerel, How on
Speaker 4: earth did we build something like this? Because we did
Speaker 4: build it. Now I know that its ability to teach
Speaker 4: itself as part of what causes it to sort of
Speaker 4: outstrip what we're able to think about. But it also
Speaker 4: brought me back to align from your contemplative reading with
Speaker 4: James Bridle, where they say, what if the meaning of
Speaker 4: ai is not to be found in the way it competes, supersedes,
Speaker 4: or supplants us. What if, like the emergence of network theory,
Speaker 4: its purpose is to open our eyes and minds to
Speaker 4: the reality of intelligence as doable in all kinds of
Speaker 4: fantastic ways, many of them beyond our own rational understanding.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I understand that there are dangers and that this
Speaker 1: is something really powerful that's been kind of unleashed on
Speaker 1: the world that we can't be naive about and that
Speaker 1: we have to be responsible steward of. But I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything naive about also naming what is astonishing,
Speaker 1: and you know, to use that word generative, like what
Speaker 1: it is inviting us to see and to do that
Speaker 1: is generative, that can actually you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: improve is a big enough word that can actually bring
Speaker 1: us to a different level of our humanity, our intelligence.
Speaker 4: I love the idea in that bridal quote of the
Speaker 4: different types of intelligence because I mean, one of my
Speaker 4: favorite sort of like mind games to play in my
Speaker 4: own brain is like trying to imagine, like what sort
Speaker 4: of intelligence might an octopus have? Now, I know I
Speaker 4: can't do it right, but it's a fascinating way of
Speaker 4: thinking about the world and recognizing that it has intelligences
Speaker 4: that are so far beyond mind. And I think that's
Speaker 4: the idea of you know, some of the very interesting
Speaker 4: is to bland a word aspects of AI is that
Speaker 4: it may discover and be able to convey types of
Speaker 4: intelligences that we don't have, and that can be very scary,
Speaker 4: but could also be very beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in the moments in which you can
Speaker 1: set aside what is terrifying if you think too hard
Speaker 1: about absolutely fascinating. I think we get to allow ourselves
Speaker 1: in moments to be in wonder.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I think that's a beautiful way you think
Speaker 4: about it. If we go back to the generative narrative
Speaker 4: of our time, right, AI is a part of the
Speaker 4: narrative of our time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to actually say, you know, they're calling
Speaker 1: it generative AI, and I'm a little bit annoyed by
Speaker 1: that because really, I really think this word generative is
Speaker 1: important and I always hate it when words get captured
Speaker 1: in a context that actually, you know, really constrained them.
Speaker 1: I know what the distinction is. It's being made with generative,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm a little dismayed by that.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, personally, have you checked to see whether you have
Speaker 4: that term train mark?
Speaker 5: Even if they don't, I'm sure they'll be able to
Speaker 5: buy it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, they have deeper pockets in too. We're nearing
Speaker 4: the end of our time. But I spent a fair
Speaker 4: amount of time in your most recent book, which is
Speaker 4: still I mean at this point, what's seven years old, Becoming.
Speaker 5: Wise, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 4: I loved it. And there's a term in there that
Speaker 4: you use, and I wanted to bring it forth because
Speaker 4: it's a term I happen to also like and think about.
Speaker 4: And that term is virtue. Say a little bit about
Speaker 4: what that word means to you and why it feels important.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's other language for talking about the wolves, right,
Speaker 1: it's other language for these capacities that we have and
Speaker 1: practical capacities that we have to rise to our highest
Speaker 1: humanity to be good human beings, to lead lives that
Speaker 1: are worthy and I think also pleasurable. And virtues are
Speaker 1: you know, there's a philosophical tradition of virtue Jews, and
Speaker 1: I think that virtues are what our spiritual traditions have,
Speaker 1: these spiritual technologies to cultivate. I think that virtues, you know,
Speaker 1: to be kind, to be generous, to be compassionate, to forgive.
Speaker 1: I don't know all the ways that we kind of
Speaker 1: again rise to our best of our humanity. They don't
Speaker 1: always come naturally. They're not always the reflexive move, but
Speaker 1: there are things we can practice. They are actually muscles
Speaker 1: we can flex. And the spiritual traditions have all this
Speaker 1: sophistication about that, and it happens through ritual, and it
Speaker 1: happens through wise community, and it happens through teachings. And
Speaker 1: then I'm just so fascinated that neuroscience has come along
Speaker 1: not that long ago and you know, shown that what
Speaker 1: we practice, we become. And that's also true for just
Speaker 1: deciding to act like a compassion person and becoming a
Speaker 1: more compassionate person. And to me, that's really just a
Speaker 1: beautiful discovery and so emboldening because I think, at least
Speaker 1: in modernity, there's been this kind of idea that you know,
Speaker 1: these are qualities you're born with or not. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm that kind of person or they're that kind of person,
Speaker 1: and I'm not like that. And the truth is we
Speaker 1: can decide what will be like and we can become
Speaker 1: that and these are better ways to live, and that's
Speaker 1: why there's so much tradition and thought and reflection and
Speaker 1: traditions of cultivation around them. But it's kind of an
Speaker 1: old fashioned word. Having said that, but I kind of
Speaker 1: like it for that reason too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is an old fashioned word, but I tend
Speaker 4: to like it also. And I think when we take
Speaker 4: it in this phrase that you use, which is moral
Speaker 4: imagination something that's different than moral perfection, I think that
Speaker 4: shines a light on them in a slightly slightly different
Speaker 4: way that perhaps can move Although the fact that we're
Speaker 4: using the word moral there is going to make some
Speaker 4: people again sort of be like WHOA hold on? But
Speaker 4: I think those words are still really useful because they
Speaker 4: speak to something important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think moral imagination for me is language
Speaker 1: that I feel for me and for a lot of
Speaker 1: people kind of helps open it up again.
Speaker 5: It's not moralizing.
Speaker 1: You know, it is expansive and it is creative, and
Speaker 1: it is about being centered and grounded and tethered and
Speaker 1: choosing choosing where we're centered and grounded and tethered. But
Speaker 1: you know, it honors the life of the mind, and
Speaker 1: it is creative.
Speaker 4: There's a virtue you don't name it exactly, but I
Speaker 4: would say it sort of sums you up to a
Speaker 4: large degree. And I'm just going to read a couple
Speaker 4: of sentences that you wrote and then i'll trot out
Speaker 4: the potential word. Right, but you're talking about growing older,
Speaker 4: and you say, as I watched my children move through
Speaker 4: the primal metamorphosis of adolescence, I made a decision to
Speaker 4: be fascinated rather than terrified. I'm trying to impose the
Speaker 4: same discipline on my reaction and myself on this end
Speaker 4: of agent's metamorphosis. And I think the virtue there which
Speaker 4: shows up and I think you know, it shows up
Speaker 4: in the same way we were just talking about AI, right,
Speaker 4: which is to be fascinated rather than terrified. Is maybe
Speaker 4: this is oversimplifying it, but a deep curiosity.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's hardly anything in human life that is more powerful
Speaker 1: or more possibility opening than curiosity. And it's something that we,
Speaker 1: you know, we're basically equipped to be, but it's also
Speaker 1: something that you know, again very kind of stealthily, is
Speaker 1: trained out of us. And so it's something that's so
Speaker 1: natural and so powerful, but we have to relearn it.
Speaker 1: We have to actively seek it out, and it is
Speaker 1: liberating and it opens all kinds of space for us
Speaker 1: to keep growing. Well.
Speaker 4: I think that is a beautiful place for us to
Speaker 4: wrap up. Christa, Thank you so much for coming back on.
Speaker 4: I always enjoy talking with you, and I obviously love
Speaker 4: your podcast and your newsletter, and it's just always a
Speaker 4: pleasure to interact with you in your mind. So thank you.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you so much. Eric.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and I'm your fan as well,
Speaker 1: and I'm really honored to do this again and I'm
Speaker 1: always cheering you on.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Blessings.
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