Speaker 1: Hi everybody. Before we get started, I want to give
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Speaker 1: so much to all of our Patreon members. If you'd
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Speaker 1: dot net slash join. If you look at the relative
Speaker 1: amount of stuff we understand next to the relative amount
Speaker 1: of stuff we don't understand, you know it ain't much
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
Speaker 1: think 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 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 John Maybrie. John is
Speaker 1: one of these guests that has done so much and
Speaker 1: continues to do so much, that it's nearly impossible for
Speaker 1: me to go into all of it, but I'll say this.
Speaker 1: He is a United Church of Christ pastor as the
Speaker 1: director of Spiritual Direction program at the Chaplaincy Institute. He's
Speaker 1: the lead singer of not one, but two bands in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, and he's the author of many novels
Speaker 1: and books on theology, spirituality, and spiritual guidance. And today
Speaker 1: John and Eric will narrow all that down just a
Speaker 1: little bit and discuss his book Soul Journeys, Christian Spirituality
Speaker 1: and Shamanism as Pathways for wholeness and understanding. Hi, John,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. It is a pleasure for me to have
Speaker 1: you on. We'll talk about all the ways that I
Speaker 1: know you here in a little bit and we will
Speaker 1: spend some time talking about your book, Soul Journeys, Christian
Speaker 1: Spirituality and shamanism as pathways for wholeness and understanding. But
Speaker 1: you've written I don't know how many other books that
Speaker 1: we might wander into. But before we do all that,
Speaker 1: we'll start, like we always do, with the parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's tongue with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at 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. The grandson stops and he thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second. He looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. So the meaning that feels the most powerful
Speaker 1: to me relates to my healing journey. So, about twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, I lived in a house that was infected
Speaker 1: with black mold, had black mold in the walls. And
Speaker 1: at the same time I was living there, I was
Speaker 1: experiencing some pretty extreme emotional trauma, going through a divorce,
Speaker 1: and the JUSTI position of those two things created this
Speaker 1: health crisis that I'm still dealing with. You know, even
Speaker 1: after twenty years I got chronically ill. I was living
Speaker 1: a pretty healthy life, and yet I woke up every
Speaker 1: single morning feeling like I had the worst hangover ever.
Speaker 1: I experienced headaches, night sweats, I had this full body
Speaker 1: feeling of being poisoned. But the worst was that I
Speaker 1: suddenly developed reactions chemical and food allergies. So if I
Speaker 1: have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine,
Speaker 1: or take any number of you know, like even an advil,
Speaker 1: I will have a hangover the last four to five days.
Speaker 1: These aren't true allergies. My brain has just decided these
Speaker 1: things are poison and so it reacts to them with
Speaker 1: this this massive discharge of histamine that is is called
Speaker 1: a mass cell reaction. And the only way to fix
Speaker 1: it that I've been able to find, and that the
Speaker 1: doctor that I've been working with has been able to find,
Speaker 1: is through changing the brain through neuroplasticity and literally teaching
Speaker 1: the brain to create pathways around the reactive pathways. And
Speaker 1: what I've come to realize is that my chemical sensitivities
Speaker 1: are all bound up with my anxiety and O c D.
Speaker 1: And I know you've dealt a lot with those things
Speaker 1: in this show, which is one of the things I
Speaker 1: really enjoy about it and find really helpful. I read
Speaker 1: the book Hardwiring Happiness, and that was just a watershed
Speaker 1: book for me, and it talks about how in our
Speaker 1: evolutionary process, we are hardwired to be negative. So you know,
Speaker 1: our system reacts to any possible danger as if it's
Speaker 1: a really big deal, because that's how our ancestors survived.
Speaker 1: So negative thoughts and danger sticks to our brains like
Speaker 1: velcrow and good things positive stimuli that just kind of
Speaker 1: slides off like teflon. So part of the healing journey
Speaker 1: for me, part of rewiring my brain this neural plasticity,
Speaker 1: was making a daily practice out of noticing the good
Speaker 1: and savoring it and then letting go and not dwelling
Speaker 1: on the negatives. So all of that to say, I
Speaker 1: hope I am feeding the wolf of positivity. I haven't
Speaker 1: conquered my food sensitivities just yet. Like I said, it's
Speaker 1: a daily practice. I hope raanging my brain for the
Speaker 1: better a little bit every day. And this is a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice too, you know, it's a mindfulness practice. You know,
Speaker 1: when I noticed that my thoughts have gotten trapped into
Speaker 1: a negative spiral, it's a mindfulness to notice and to
Speaker 1: say leave it, just like I say to my dog,
Speaker 1: and then reorient on something good. So one of the
Speaker 1: most helpful practices has been meditation, because you know, in
Speaker 1: meditation you're just kind of intensely watching your own thoughts
Speaker 1: and letting go of those that take you away and
Speaker 1: and being in that lovely, no suffering zone of the
Speaker 1: present moment. Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm always amazed to hear
Speaker 1: people talk about the challenges in their life when you
Speaker 1: sort of look at their life from the outside and
Speaker 1: you are very impressed with it, And I look at
Speaker 1: your life from the outside and I'm sort of impressed
Speaker 1: by it. Now, full disclosure, people should know you and
Speaker 1: I have worked together in a couple of different capacities.
Speaker 1: You were my supervisor as I went through spiritual director training,
Speaker 1: and I reachedly engaged you to be my actual spiritual
Speaker 1: director because I found those conversations so powerful. So that's
Speaker 1: a sort of disclosure about some of your and eyes relationship.
Speaker 1: But when I look at you, what I see is
Speaker 1: this person who is a writer of nonfiction books, a
Speaker 1: writer of fantasy and science fiction books, a pastor of churches,
Speaker 1: a spiritual director, a leader of a school for spiritual direction,
Speaker 1: a musician. I look at it and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: you do so much. It amazes me that in the
Speaker 1: midst of that, which, of course, in the midst of it,
Speaker 1: life is still life and everyone has its challenges. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people say, you know, how do you do all this?
Speaker 1: And um, how do you have it all together? And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't, you know, I'm a mess. Everybody's
Speaker 1: a mess. And you know that's I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who come to me in spiritual direction, um
Speaker 1: had this kind of feeling of inferiority about their lives,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm so messy. Well, everybody is, and
Speaker 1: that's you know. One of the great liberating things I
Speaker 1: think is that distance distorts. When you're at a distance
Speaker 1: from something, it looks very different than when you see
Speaker 1: it up close. Yeah. One of my favorite spiritual teachers,
Speaker 1: Audio Shanti, said once, if you want a perfect spiritual teacher,
Speaker 1: find a dead one into that that's great, and that's
Speaker 1: been one of the things doing this show has been
Speaker 1: so interesting to me because what I just said about
Speaker 1: you has happened to me over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: which is I get people on the show that from
Speaker 1: the outside, a lot of us look at and admire,
Speaker 1: and we admire their work, and their work is powerful
Speaker 1: and wonderful and life changing for so many people, and
Speaker 1: they are still just messy humans. Absolutely, It's the only
Speaker 1: kind there are. Absolutely. So I want to start with
Speaker 1: your latest book because I always find the thing that
Speaker 1: people put out most recently is often the thing they're
Speaker 1: most excited about, so I want to start there. It's
Speaker 1: called Soul Journeys, Christian Spirituality and Shamanism as Pathways for
Speaker 1: wholeness and understanding. And when I saw that it was
Speaker 1: your latest book, I was a little bit surprised by
Speaker 1: it because you and I have talked a ton of
Speaker 1: times and shamanism has never come up, which again I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not shocked that there's more in your closet. Um, well,
Speaker 1: that might be a term that's a little bit more
Speaker 1: loaded than I mean it to be, but more in
Speaker 1: your cupboard. We'll say, there's more in your coboard, But
Speaker 1: talk to me about shamanism and how you were introduced
Speaker 1: to it and how it ties to your practice as
Speaker 1: a Christian because you are a Christian minister? Is that
Speaker 1: the right term? We would use your pastor? Up, sure,
Speaker 1: minister pastor? That's kind of interchangeable. Okay, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to acknowledge that I had
Speaker 1: two terrific co authors on this book. So Daniel Practeal
Speaker 1: is an Episcopal priest who does shamanic journey work, and
Speaker 1: Katrina Leathers is the dean of the chaplain's institute, the
Speaker 1: Interfaith Seminary where I teach, and her primary spiritual practices shamanism,
Speaker 1: and so we each wrote chapters for the book. Um,
Speaker 1: but a large part of the book is a conversation
Speaker 1: between the three of us about our experience with shamanism
Speaker 1: and at least for Daniel and I, how that experience
Speaker 1: contrasts and compares with our spiritual experiences as Christians. So
Speaker 1: how I got introduced to shamanism was through my therapist
Speaker 1: who was studying to be a shraumatic practitioner, and I
Speaker 1: was going through some pretty major life discernments and she
Speaker 1: suggested that it might be helpful to take a shamantic journey,
Speaker 1: and I had never done anything of the sort, but
Speaker 1: you know, it was pretty desperate and was open to anything,
Speaker 1: and so she really kind of took me step by step,
Speaker 1: and the experience was really really powerful. Shamanism provides a
Speaker 1: framework for imaginally engage ing the spiritual world. The journey
Speaker 1: of the shaman is to go into the other world,
Speaker 1: the spiritual world, in order to find medicine that will
Speaker 1: heal either a person or the tribe, or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that's out of balance. And medicine isn't
Speaker 1: usually a physical substance like a you know, like a
Speaker 1: drug or an herb. It's usually information, it's wisdom. To
Speaker 1: go to the other world to find the wisdom that
Speaker 1: is going to bring balance, restore health and harmony, and
Speaker 1: to bring that wisdom back into this world for healing
Speaker 1: and restoration. Explain a little bit about what a shamanic
Speaker 1: journey is, you know, just in sort of a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes summary of what a standard sort of practice
Speaker 1: of this would look like. Sure, well, first, the person
Speaker 1: who is going on the journey um would usually have
Speaker 1: some assistance. So in some cultures that's through lucy genic plants,
Speaker 1: but most often is certainly in the practice of core
Speaker 1: shamanism is through drumming or rattling, so you've got some
Speaker 1: kind of persistent kind of beat going on that helps
Speaker 1: a person enter into an altered state of consciousness. And
Speaker 1: once a person has you know, reached that state of
Speaker 1: person engages what you would call active imagination and chooses
Speaker 1: to go usually to one of three places, either the
Speaker 1: upper world, which is where one can meet enlightened beings
Speaker 1: people who have lived before, ancestors and so forth, and
Speaker 1: ask their advice and their opinion on things, or the
Speaker 1: Middle world, which is kind of like our world. But
Speaker 1: let's just say the moral ambiguity of the entities that
Speaker 1: you find there isn't quite as ambiguous as it is here.
Speaker 1: There are dangerous beings that one should be wary of
Speaker 1: in the Middle world, So one doesn't usually go to
Speaker 1: the Middle World unless someone is going in order to
Speaker 1: specifically bring healing to someone or something in that world.
Speaker 1: But the other option is to go into the lower world.
Speaker 1: Lower world is a realm of earth and stone and mountain.
Speaker 1: This is the place where one encounters power animals and
Speaker 1: can really seek out the deep wisdom of the earth yourself.
Speaker 1: So you on your first journey sort of assumed your
Speaker 1: power animal or right. I've also heard him referred to
Speaker 1: his spirit animals. You would find your spirit animal and
Speaker 1: it would be a dog. But that's not quite what happened. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: You know I I asked to meet my spirit animal,
Speaker 1: and I don't consider myself a cat person. But guess
Speaker 1: who showed up. Panther showed up. And you know, power
Speaker 1: animals are generally thought of as the collective spirit of
Speaker 1: the entire species. So the spirit of Panther came to me.
Speaker 1: And he's a surly fellow, I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: not talkative, doesn't suffer fools, doesn't crack jokes. But I've
Speaker 1: really come to see him as my protector. So when
Speaker 1: I am feeling like I need protection, I've got a
Speaker 1: fetish of Panther and keep it in my pocket. And
Speaker 1: of course I can go and talk to him anytime
Speaker 1: and ask for help when I am feeling threatened. I
Speaker 1: have met other power animals. Fox is a great healer,
Speaker 1: but I got a soft spot for Panther. You say
Speaker 1: that you asked the panther, why are you so surly?
Speaker 1: And he said life is hard? So true. So you
Speaker 1: and I as we've sort of gone through my training,
Speaker 1: my spiritual direction. But you know, I'm more of a
Speaker 1: than Buddhist, you're more of a Christian. We sort of
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, what we trust in. Trust has
Speaker 1: been a big issue that's come up. And when I
Speaker 1: hear this, right where I go is Okay, I'm tapping
Speaker 1: into some realm of consciousness that exists and I'm not
Speaker 1: actually contact in a panther spirit. How would you phrase
Speaker 1: what's happening or would you simply just say, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a mystery, but I know that I have an
Speaker 1: experience that's powerful. Well, mystery certainly is a part of it,
Speaker 1: and it's not something that I can explain. But it
Speaker 1: also feels like Panther has subjective reality, that he's not
Speaker 1: just a figment of my imagination, that he is an
Speaker 1: actual entity that I go into the journey state in
Speaker 1: order to talk to. And I think most people who
Speaker 1: do shamanic practice would agree with this. The imagination really
Speaker 1: gets short shrift in our culture. If something is imaginary,
Speaker 1: people discount it, they equate it with fantasy. But I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that our ancestors knew that
Speaker 1: we kind of really need to rediscover is that the
Speaker 1: imagination is an organ of perception, you know, no, no
Speaker 1: different from the eye or the ear. It is a
Speaker 1: way that we perceive reality that is not ordinary reality.
Speaker 1: But the things that we perceived there are no less real.
Speaker 1: They may not be physically real, but certainly they have
Speaker 1: spiritual reality. And it's you know, through the practice and
Speaker 1: the training of our imagination that we can become adept
Speaker 1: at contacting um these spiritual realities and conversing with them
Speaker 1: and forming relationships with them. You say in the book
Speaker 1: at one point that shamanism recognized is there's an ordinary,
Speaker 1: consensual reality which is socially agreed on. All of us
Speaker 1: would say this is reality, but there's another dimension of
Speaker 1: reality which can be perceived. You also say that taking
Speaker 1: shamanism seriously teaches us that real things happen that are
Speaker 1: not physical. And I think that's a really interesting perspective.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, reading the book sort of
Speaker 1: open my mind a little bit too, maybe letting go
Speaker 1: of having to come up with a rational reason why
Speaker 1: certain things occur. Well, you know, if you have to
Speaker 1: rationally understand everything, then you're not going to understand much.
Speaker 1: You know. I think if you look at the relative
Speaker 1: amount of stuff we understand next to the relative amount
Speaker 1: of stuff we don't understand. You know, it ain't much.
Speaker 1: You know. Leaving some room for mystery I think is
Speaker 1: pretty vitally important. And that mystery is real. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff we don't know is real. It's big.
Speaker 1: We just don't know what it is. So we can
Speaker 1: choose to ignore it and pretend that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: any veracity or import for us, or we can enter
Speaker 1: into relationship with us somehow, you know. Shamanic practice is
Speaker 1: one way of entering into that relationship. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting because I think the more that I,
Speaker 1: over the course of my years, moved into what we
Speaker 1: might consider a rational or materialistic mindset, I think the
Speaker 1: harder I made it to contact the mystery. Well, sure,
Speaker 1: because we discount it. You know, we reinforce this notion
Speaker 1: that we've got. You know that really our culture pushes that,
Speaker 1: you know, only what can be measured and explained is real.
Speaker 1: You know, there's really no acknowledgment to that that vast
Speaker 1: area of mystery out there are things that we can't
Speaker 1: measure and explain, and so we we just ignore them,
Speaker 1: which I think really cuts us off from a lot
Speaker 1: of life, and certainly a lot of what we might
Speaker 1: call spiritual life. And you might see in fact, spiritual
Speaker 1: life as a way of acknowledging and being in relationship
Speaker 1: with that massive mystery. Yeah, And I think that the
Speaker 1: challenge is and this is my own challenge, and I've
Speaker 1: had some experiences that have led me beyond that to
Speaker 1: a certain degree. Is that again, is that mystery becomes
Speaker 1: harder to contact, it becomes harder to believe. Right, It's
Speaker 1: this reinforcing cycle. I don't believe it, so I can't
Speaker 1: feel it. Since I can't feel it, it must not
Speaker 1: be there. Thus I believe it's not there, and onward. Right.
Speaker 1: And I think that people of our generation and UH
Speaker 1: and those who come after us, you know, have such
Speaker 1: a an ingrained cynicism that belief comes really hard to us,
Speaker 1: so much so that I found that it's not a
Speaker 1: very useful word. The word that I think makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense to me as trust. I knew it
Speaker 1: was going to come up. You know. You can ask
Speaker 1: me do I believe in God? And I would say
Speaker 1: I think believe is the wrong word. I trust that
Speaker 1: there is a God and I choose to trust that God.
Speaker 1: Do I believe that there's a God? You know, Belief
Speaker 1: assumes a kind of knowledge that none of us have,
Speaker 1: but trusting is an act of will. Trusting is something
Speaker 1: we choose to do. So I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: a God or not, but I choose to trust and
Speaker 1: that works. I interviewed a gentleman yesterday about a book
Speaker 1: he wrote about William James, and you know, William James wrote,
Speaker 1: among other things, an essay called the Will to Believe,
Speaker 1: and he talked about an idea that essentially was, like
Speaker 1: you just said, we make a decision and active will
Speaker 1: to believe, and then we judge that by the fruits
Speaker 1: of its results. So if I choose that I'm going
Speaker 1: to trust in God and I act that way, what
Speaker 1: are the results that come from that? I don't know
Speaker 1: his work well enough to say whether he would say
Speaker 1: as a measure of the veracity of that claim, he
Speaker 1: may not say that. But the usefulness of that I
Speaker 1: think the biggest usefulness of it is the ability to
Speaker 1: acknowledge and enter into relationship with that mystery. Like we
Speaker 1: were talking about, so um, I'll tell you a story.
Speaker 1: For many years of my pastoring. I considered myself a
Speaker 1: Christian agnostic, basically that I was culturally a Christian and
Speaker 1: certainly a Christian pastor by training and practice. But you know,
Speaker 1: did I really believe, you know, not so much. So
Speaker 1: it was a pretty surface faith. And then I was
Speaker 1: studying to be received into the United Church of Christ
Speaker 1: and we had to actually read Martin Luther, which I
Speaker 1: had never done before. And so I started reading Luther,
Speaker 1: and he blew me away. You know, you were thinking,
Speaker 1: a medieval theologian doesn't sound that interesting. Well, Luther is
Speaker 1: like reading absolutely nobody else because he swears, he calls
Speaker 1: people's names, he he's over the top emotional. He is
Speaker 1: just a hell of a lot of fun to read.
Speaker 1: But what I got from reading his works was that
Speaker 1: he trusted in Jesus as a personal friend, that there
Speaker 1: was an intimacy there and a love there that I
Speaker 1: hadn't ever actually experienced before. And as I continued to
Speaker 1: read Luther, I realized and when he said we are
Speaker 1: saved by faith, he wasn't talking about faith as in
Speaker 1: intellectual assent to a list of metaphysical propositions like the
Speaker 1: Nicene creed or something. You know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people in Christianities think that we're saved by believing
Speaker 1: the right things. But that's not what Luther was talking about.
Speaker 1: The word that he was using to mean faith again
Speaker 1: is better translated trust. We are saved by trust. And
Speaker 1: the moment I got that, a light switch turned on
Speaker 1: I and I heard the voice of Jesus say, I
Speaker 1: don't really care what you believe. Can you trust me?
Speaker 1: Will you trust me? And I went, wow, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't have to believe all this stuff. Can I trust him? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm going to choose to do that. And instantly I
Speaker 1: entered into a kind of relationship that has continued to
Speaker 1: grow and has become very intimate and very dear, mostly
Speaker 1: because I believe that I could, you know, and I
Speaker 1: gave myself permission to, you know, every now and then
Speaker 1: I'll do a shamanic journey. But what I did is
Speaker 1: I took what I learned from doing shamantic journeys and
Speaker 1: I brought it back to my own faith. And I
Speaker 1: do now what I call imaginal prayer. So every morning
Speaker 1: I get up, and if the sun hasn't come up yet,
Speaker 1: then I will meet Jesus in his carpenter's workshop, and
Speaker 1: if the sun is up, then I know he's down
Speaker 1: by the beach and I'll meet him there. But wherever
Speaker 1: it is, I meet him. You know, this is all
Speaker 1: active imagination, you know. I give him a big hug,
Speaker 1: he calls me love. We sit down together. He asked
Speaker 1: me what's on my heart, and I just kind of
Speaker 1: pour out how I'm feeling, what I'm worried about, what
Speaker 1: I hope for, all of the things that I am
Speaker 1: kind of carrying around with me, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of lay it before him, and mostly he just listens.
Speaker 1: Often he has amazing things to say that I never
Speaker 1: in a million years would have come up with. But
Speaker 1: what I come away from that with every single morning
Speaker 1: is a feeling of being heard and loved and held.
Speaker 1: And that is a really wonderful way to start every day.
Speaker 1: And that relationship doesn't get old, it just gets deeper
Speaker 1: and more. Dear. Charles Williams wrote about theology of romantic love,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very like that. I really love the
Speaker 1: the evangelical uh contemporary Christian music that some people call
Speaker 1: Jesus is my boyfriend music. But I love it because
Speaker 1: it really speaks to where my heart is and as
Speaker 1: far as my relationship with Him. And you know, when
Speaker 1: I first started preaching that at church, it made a
Speaker 1: lot of people kind of uncomfortable because the only context
Speaker 1: they had for that kind of talk was that it
Speaker 1: sounded very evangelical. I'm about as progressive a pastor as
Speaker 1: you can find, but I think this is one thing
Speaker 1: that the evangelicals get right, is the personal relationship with
Speaker 1: God and for Christians, that comes to us through the
Speaker 1: person of Jesus. Yeah, that sort of talk makes me
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable because it's so different than my world view,
Speaker 1: and yet it does awaken a yearning. You know, I
Speaker 1: laugh when you brought up trust because from uranized very
Speaker 1: first conversation, it seems like whatever issue I have brought
Speaker 1: to you, even while what we were talking about was
Speaker 1: my guidance of other people, it always went back to this.
Speaker 1: It always came back to trust, and it came back
Speaker 1: to what do I trust in? And that is an
Speaker 1: ongoing work in progress for me because what I have
Speaker 1: learned to trust in ore myself, which is a good
Speaker 1: thing to have some trust in, right, It's positive to
Speaker 1: have some trust in yourself. I began to have trust
Speaker 1: in spiritual principles like kindness and silence and love and
Speaker 1: you know, those sort of things. But a deeper level
Speaker 1: of trust is hard. And I don't know if i've
Speaker 1: shared this story with you. I don't want to turn
Speaker 1: this into a spiritual direction session, but I feel like
Speaker 1: this this is an important topic, and I think it's
Speaker 1: probably important to a lot of listeners. When I got
Speaker 1: sober in a AT, I came into an a a
Speaker 1: in Columbus, Ohio, and God in higher power was very
Speaker 1: much defined sort of as God in Jesus, and it
Speaker 1: didn't resonate with me. I didn't really believe it, and
Speaker 1: yet I tried to do what you're describing, which was trust.
Speaker 1: I went, you know what, I have to do this.
Speaker 1: I have to believe this. I have to believe in this.
Speaker 1: I have to trust in this. And you know what,
Speaker 1: It worked, and I got sober. But then my life
Speaker 1: fell apart in that my wife left me for another
Speaker 1: guy in a Our son was two years old, and
Speaker 1: I fell apart. And what I realized was that my
Speaker 1: spiritual belief or understanding was this sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: if I do good, good things will happen to me.
Speaker 1: My trust was God will protect me. And when that
Speaker 1: didn't appear to happen, the whole thing sort of shattered
Speaker 1: and it set off a series of events that led
Speaker 1: me to eventually go back to a drinking It took
Speaker 1: several years, but that's where it all sort of led.
Speaker 1: So when I came back to a second time, I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I felt like I had to construct
Speaker 1: a higher power structure of faith that felt really solid
Speaker 1: to me. And so the idea of trust was, yes,
Speaker 1: I know I need to trust, but boy, I want
Speaker 1: to be really careful that what I'm trusting in has
Speaker 1: the power to support me in rough seas. And so
Speaker 1: it became this, I trust in myself, I trust that
Speaker 1: I can ask and receive help from other people. I
Speaker 1: trust that spiritual principles. But it became hard for it
Speaker 1: to go much beyond that. And that, I think is
Speaker 1: where my spiritual journey has sort of led me now,
Speaker 1: because it comes up over and over again, which is, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I trust in? And I think I I
Speaker 1: gravitated towards Buddhism because it made rational sense to me. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of suffering in life, and now you know,
Speaker 1: I recognize what that's caused by here's what the cure is.
Speaker 1: Boom boom boom. Right. But that sort of led me
Speaker 1: deeper into awakening type ideas and which led to some
Speaker 1: actual awaken, strong mystical awakening experiences. And so I went, Okay, Wow,
Speaker 1: I've got this rational piece and I've got these mystical
Speaker 1: experiences that are speaking to something deeper. How do I
Speaker 1: sort of put all that together? And I would say
Speaker 1: that's kind of where we are. So that was a
Speaker 1: long confessional um about trust because I do think that,
Speaker 1: as you've pointed out, and I think that as I've
Speaker 1: looked at lots of different problems that people face, this
Speaker 1: idea of what do we trust in? You know, in
Speaker 1: a a it's a higher power. In Buddhism, it's we
Speaker 1: take refuge. Where do I take refuge? And I think
Speaker 1: taking refuge in something is really important and your sense
Speaker 1: is I trust and thus that makes things possible. I'm
Speaker 1: still a little bit more on the like I want
Speaker 1: to take refuge in a shelter that I've had a
Speaker 1: chance to check out, Like I'd like to go and
Speaker 1: do a little I'd like to go and get a
Speaker 1: little structural engineer to come in here. Can you check
Speaker 1: this shelter. Is it gonna hold up? But you got
Speaker 1: to kick the tires. Yeah, but that's not quite trust.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm gonna stop talking now. Uh yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know that the the thing about that trust is it
Speaker 1: takes time to build, and it takes effort. It's spiritual practice. Yep. Um.
Speaker 1: I often talk about building up trust muscles that you know,
Speaker 1: it takes exercise, it takes practice. But you know, if
Speaker 1: we work on building up our trust muscles, then when
Speaker 1: you know, life pulls the rug out from under us,
Speaker 1: we have some support. Yep. And what's funny is in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I look back at that story I just told you,
Speaker 1: and the support was there. The support was never not there.
Speaker 1: I had to change some beliefs about things, but but
Speaker 1: support was still available. Sure, I just didn't necessarily choose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe you didn't know how to come at it.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a better way. That's a better way
Speaker 1: to say it. You know, one of the great wisdom
Speaker 1: literature the Jewish tradition, is the Book of Job, in
Speaker 1: which you know, Job gets everything taken away from him
Speaker 1: and he still doesn't give up on God. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that job shows us. That
Speaker 1: is that God makes a terrible superhero, but he makes
Speaker 1: a terrific traveling companion through hell. If you're going through
Speaker 1: a rough time, there's no better support. Now you're using
Speaker 1: the term God. You've used the term Jesus here, right,
Speaker 1: So those are terms that are very meaningful and important
Speaker 1: to you, and yet you're also talking about getting guidance
Speaker 1: and support from a panther. You are part of a
Speaker 1: inner faith spiritual chaplaincy program. You chose to go to
Speaker 1: India and walk in the steps of Buddha. You've tran
Speaker 1: related the dowd a ching. So to say that you
Speaker 1: are progressive, you're absolutely right. Right. You may use some
Speaker 1: of the phrases that evangelical Christians have, and you may
Speaker 1: have some of the borrowed the personality that the personal
Speaker 1: relationship with Jesus there, but you certainly don't have any
Speaker 1: of the closed mindedness there. What led you and what
Speaker 1: continues to lead you to seek this mystery or divine
Speaker 1: in other places? Well, I think what led me to
Speaker 1: seek it out was my experience of spiritual abuse growing
Speaker 1: up in fundamentalist Christianity. I had to leave the faith
Speaker 1: altogether in order to heal. But one of the things
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do was to find out how
Speaker 1: other people experienced God, how other people entered into relationship
Speaker 1: with this mystery, and what that was like. And so
Speaker 1: I did my PhD in philosophy and religion, specifically in
Speaker 1: world religions, with special concentrations in Hinduism and Taoism. And
Speaker 1: it was incredibly healing and really, you know, revelatory, because
Speaker 1: every time I would find a new teaching or a
Speaker 1: new practice. When I came back to my own Christian tradition,
Speaker 1: if I dug, I found that teaching and I found
Speaker 1: that practice, and it just made me realize that the
Speaker 1: version of Christianity that I had been given was really
Speaker 1: narrow and not at all representative of the great tradition
Speaker 1: that I come out of. And so I started to
Speaker 1: explore that great tradition, and that was healing. That was
Speaker 1: really life for me. I wouldn't consider myself very much
Speaker 1: a believer, but I was certainly an agnostic practitioner of
Speaker 1: the faith. Whatever that means. It certainly meant something to
Speaker 1: me at the time. But it was really healing, and
Speaker 1: and I took away a lot of ideas and teachings
Speaker 1: from other traditions that have really really impacted my spiritual life.
Speaker 1: You know, for instance, in Hinduism, they believe there's only
Speaker 1: one God, but that God has a million faces, and
Speaker 1: to be a good Hindu, you just find that face
Speaker 1: that speaks to your soul more than the others and
Speaker 1: then serve that face with devotion. And that really has
Speaker 1: become my theology. That's my approach. You know, there is
Speaker 1: this one great mystery in the universe, and that mystery
Speaker 1: has a million faces, and you find the face that
Speaker 1: resonates with your soul the most and then love that face.
Speaker 1: So for me, that faces Jesus, and for others you know,
Speaker 1: that mystery is pointed to by the Buddha, and for
Speaker 1: others that face is Krishna. And none of these faces
Speaker 1: are less than the other faces, but the relationships that
Speaker 1: they help facilitate are real and their life changing, and
Speaker 1: they are transformative. So in my book The Christian Walks
Speaker 1: in the Footsteps of the Buddha, I talk about the
Speaker 1: Great Mystery being like a computer and Buddhism being like
Speaker 1: the user interface, the way you interact with the computer,
Speaker 1: the way you interact with the mystery. So likewise, Christianity
Speaker 1: is a user interface. It's a way of interacting with
Speaker 1: the mystery, a way of interacting with the with the
Speaker 1: computer there. And I think that's a good way of
Speaker 1: looking at it. You know, I am a Christian and
Speaker 1: I love Jesus and I trust him for my salvation.
Speaker 1: We can talk about salvation another time. That's a whole
Speaker 1: another subject, and I think one that I could go
Speaker 1: on for quite a quite a bit about um, because
Speaker 1: we all need saving from something. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: my faith is better than other faiths. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like my tradition is better than other traditions. But I
Speaker 1: love my faith more than other face and other traditions
Speaker 1: because it's mine and it's the same thing as my family.
Speaker 1: I don't think my family is better than other families,
Speaker 1: but I love my family because they're my family. And
Speaker 1: I love to go and eat dinner at other people's families.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I always love to come home,
Speaker 1: and just so, I love to go and worship in
Speaker 1: a you know, a sick gudwara. I love to go
Speaker 1: and worship in a Hindu temple. But you know, it
Speaker 1: always feels good to come home and go to church
Speaker 1: because that's where my heart lives. You know, these Christian people,
Speaker 1: these are my people, This is my family. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I don't love to visit, so you know,
Speaker 1: invite me over. Well. I think that is a great
Speaker 1: place for us to wrap up. I love that idea.
Speaker 1: There's one mystery with a thousand faces, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that it's inspired me about
Speaker 1: Hinduism also is that idea. You know, there's the Godhead
Speaker 1: and then there's all these ways it shows up, and
Speaker 1: I think we find the one that is most accessible
Speaker 1: to us or speaks to us most strongly at the time.
Speaker 1: And you know, I know that you are a person
Speaker 1: who has a great faith in art and creativity as
Speaker 1: a way in you know, as a face. You know.
Speaker 1: So there's lots of them, there's lots of them. You
Speaker 1: and I are going to continue talking in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation where I am not going to be able
Speaker 1: to resist asking you about salvation because that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about. Listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 1: the post show conversation, the great one that's about to happen,
Speaker 1: all the others that have occurred, as well as ad
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Speaker 1: of which is supporting the show you care about. You
Speaker 1: can go to one you Feed dot net slash Join John.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate you and you spending the time with
Speaker 1: us here. Thank you, it was a real pleasure. If
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