https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Xg1NEcV_eHM
Welcome everyone to another voices with Reveki. I’m here with Ken Lowry. Now Ken is a patron of mine and Ken reached out to me a while ago and said he found some important similarities between my background and his and bridges that he was building between my work and his rapprochement with Christianity perhaps is a way of putting it or something like that. I’ll let him speak more specifically about it. So we had a couple of off camera off recording conversations. I was really impressed with Ken and what he had to say and the way in which his work, sorry, he’s taking my work into his life in a way that is very important. I like to talk not only to the theorists and people, but I also like to talk to people who are trying to put things into living practice and I was very impressed when I talked to Ken. So Ken, welcome to Voices with Reveki. Thank you. Yeah, that’s very kind of you. I appreciate it. Yeah, I’ve found your work to be incredibly helpful to me in trying to make sense of the world that I’m living in. For me, I was raised with a kind of fundamentalist Christian frame of reality. So that is a similarity that we share. I don’t know too many specifics for you, but you’ve mentioned it was a traumatic kind of experience for you. I felt a little bit less of that for me, but I certainly had a deep sense of kind of dissatisfaction coming out of that. Just I was missing something and for me, my journey out of that, and it’s interesting because it’s not exactly something, it’s one of those things that as I’ve come out of it, I’ve also gone deeper into it in a way and I mean that about Christianity overall. But yeah, my journey out kind of started with Jordan Peterson and two ideas specifically from him that really changed my life. The first was tell the truth or at least don’t lie because I didn’t understand the connection between me actually speaking truth and my own experience of reality and that every time I didn’t engage forthrightly with my speech, that I actually created a disconnection between my sense of reality and the real itself. So from that point on, I started to try to not just avoid speaking lies but to actually purposefully articulate the world as accurately as I could and then the second point was treat yourself like someone worth caring about because I think one of the damaging things for me from my upbringing was the sense of always trying to put the self to death. Right, right, mortification kind of idea, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah and the deep sense of guilt that just over read everything. I remember that. And the interesting thing was it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I was always wanting to want the thing. Right, right. You know, I wanted to want you know salvation and God and connection to the real. I didn’t really know what that meant but I never knew how to actually want it. So you were like something like an aspirational impasse. It was actually an aspirational project but this is something that we share. There’s this aspirational project but there’s not much understanding of the nature of aspiration in that framework. And so it’s mostly stick and very little carrot and that tended to be, as you said, it tends to be very disabling of people in a powerful way. And so those two things actually took you out. Like did you start attending church? What did that mean when you said they took you out of that framework? So for me the framework looked very much like you’re not allowed to ask questions. Right, right, right. So that’s really the big frame for me that I came out of was that this is the way, this is the only way, don’t question these things. I still attended church for a while. I do occasionally sometimes. I’m kind of in the midst of finding my way in that space. But anyway, fast forward, I ended up bringing some meditation into my life which ended up having a very powerful effect. Yes, again very similar. Yeah and then I came across your work following your podcast with Jordan. That was maybe a year or two ago now. I guess so, yeah. But then I’m not sure exactly, I guess all of these things played in but there was a point and I believe it was last September where suddenly there was a coalescence of a lot of these frames and I had paid some attention to the story of the fall previous just in my life but never deeply questioned any of the pieces that you know I just kind of accepted the model I was handed and then following engagement with your work in the meaning crisis and Jordan Peterson’s work and working through those stories and then my own experiences in meditation there was like a moment. It was a crazy moment that I was that all of it just kind of slid into place and I was like aha like that’s what’s going on here and so since then I’ve just been exploring this space so that’s kind of this particular perspective of that whole idea and and the story of the fall and kind of that story is part of what I’d like to talk about with you. Sure so yeah I’m interested about this. We’ve talked very well together before but for all of our similarities there’s a difference in that you have in some sense returned to Christianity and I don’t find that personally viable but nevertheless I was I want to I want to provide this space for you to articulate how you’ve been returning and reinterpreting and restructuring because I found it powerful and helpful so but you take the lead now. Can you take us how you want to proceed into the conversation? Cool yeah I mean one thing as a caveat I don’t even know what it means to be a Christian exactly. Yes yeah I try one of the things that I’ve found is I try to not identify with anything and that will that will come to be clear when I talk about this but yeah so I’ll try to lay out my model a little bit so one of the first things that I realized I was working with identification of self because I was trying to understand where can I actually stand because I realized no matter where I was holding my beliefs I was standing somewhere but then every time I turned around that wasn’t a good place to stand and so finally I came to the sense of realization that what the only place I can actually identify myself is in awareness and that everything else you know kind of a Cartesian doubt thing but yes beyond that like everything I interact with is a model and a construct of reality and so I put so that’s the lens that I used to start to think about the story of creation in the fall and so I thought well if what I am is awareness and what it means to be human is to be made in the image of God and there’s this you know the scene where Adam’s created out of the ground and then God breathes the spirit into Adam right so I figured I think that’s awareness I think that that is awareness and that you know God this whole idea of God and creation we’re always trying to get a grip on what that means and postulate it in different ways but ultimately we’re always still looking through our own lens so for me I the question of who God is I realized I have to understand who I am first interesting very Augustinian move very kirk of guardian move actually yeah very Socratic move actually too I think that’s where it ultimately goes back to please continue Ken so open that up for us a bit more what do you mean I’m getting a sense and maybe also pick up on where the fall fits into this emerging emerging picture yeah so I’ll just walk through the symbolism of the story real quick so I view the the whole story as a symbolic one not as a literal one and so very much Jonathan kind of framing yes and so if what I am is awareness my interaction with reality is by means of a construct that is presented to me through this interface and if what I am is the image of God and my awareness is the image of God then God is something like awareness as such hmm this is a David Bentley heart move of consciousness as such is go ahead yeah yeah and you know God creates with words and so in this sense like creation becomes the communication of God’s construct to us and and so in in Adam and Eve they’re created and they live in the garden and the garden is the representation of the flowing of life right life in flow state and it’s also importantly symbolic of the in the internal self right and but they live in the garden and one of the things that bothered me for a while is the idea that maybe there was some something about Adam and Eve before the fall that is different from Adam from human beings now in terms of kind of a qualitative move and I don’t think that’s right because Adam names the animals and I think that’s kind of the fundamental so there is the sense of subject object dualism prior to the fall but Adam isn’t isn’t stuck there so when the in the fall you have two you have the two trees in the gardens tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and these represent things that are always available for us there a tree is a is a stable life form that is ever present and Adam and Eve see the tree they know about the tree God tells them don’t eat the tree so it’s not until they actually participate until they eat the thing and it becomes a part of them until you until you engage with the things such that it becomes a part of you whatever this knowledge of good and evil is you can see it you can even relate to it but you can’t participate in it because when you do you will die and then so then the other important point was they’re naked and they’re not ashamed and they walk with God and that the nakedness implies an absolute lack of any kind of disconnection there’s there’s no sense of I and thou there’s no sense of holding holding piece of the self that is not connected to the whole right yes yes and so so then when they go to eat when they go to look at the tree and they’re tempted by the serpent and the serpent says to Eve you know God told you will die you’ll not surely die but then he says God doesn’t want you to eat the tree of the fruit or the fruit of the tree because in the day that you eat of it you will become like God and then when they as soon as they do eat the fruit they now have to clothe themselves and there’s this sense of disconnection there’s a sense of fear and and I realized that it’s the it’s the identity of the self it’s the identification of the self in a place such that I can say this is good and this is bad in order to do this in order to take the knowledge I have to contain within myself some kind of standpoint of the real I have to become the arbiter of reality yes and thus and thus instead of having a standpoint where God is here and I’m an explorer that is this like projection out of out of the fullness of consciousness of God that is exploring reality now I invert that to say this is me I’m here reality’s out there right and it has to fit onto my model and and so this is this is that there’s so much more here so I’m trying to condense it down but no just keep going step by step just follow it as it goes that move into subject object dualism that move into this is me now Adam and Eve are trapped in their own bodies they’re trapped in their own bodies in such a way that if their body dies their construct dies their perception of reality the world they’ve built dies and this is now the real world and so they must protect it unless you have the putting on of the clothes the very next story is the Cain and Abel story but before we go on what yeah what does that mean for you like so how like what did how did that translate into your own self-awareness and self-knowledge is it that you were reinterpreting the fall as the loss of non-duality and that returning to non-duality was how you were interpreting the participating in God am I am I understanding you correctly is is that what is that what what what happened for you yes so I missed a big point here okay so as soon as I reify my construct which is the claim of knowledge right as soon as I say I know and I have to hold on to this thing yes my rel my relevance realization in that moment becomes constrained to this thing yes yes yes and and thus I can’t pay attention in the way that I that I do when I’m in flow state right when I’m free before the fall I’m you know Adam is able to commune with nature you know in enter um interpenetrate in a sense yes the very reality itself in such a way that his attention is never constrained his relevance realization is never constrained yes so but as soon as as soon as the claim is made my relevance realization becomes constrained and I lose the ability to be in harmony so I mean this has a lot of similarities with aspects of Vedanta and Zen were you reading any eastern philosophy at this time as you were doing the the mindfulness practice a little bit and also at the moment one of the my model of talking about this my language is constantly changing and shifting and I just finished reading uh religion and nothingness by nishatana so oh my gosh one of the all-time great books astonishing book astonishing book um yes and that’s very much um his notion that religion is the real self-realization of reality um yeah very much I see what you’re so for you then um god it it and I’m basing this on something like this god is more of a verb than a noun for you that’s why it sounds to me yeah I mean I guess you know one of the ways without claiming identity of it my lens through which I see reality is very mystical yes very much yes like a christian mystic yes so yeah right so in what way did this let me try differently I want to be really responsive and responsible to what you’re saying why did the christian imagery hold your attention and not the imagery provided by vedanta or buddhism or things like that um so for example nishatani doesn’t speak well he does speak about something like the fall but he speaks more of shunyata than he does of god although he will speak of god um and so the metaphors tend to be different the symbols tend to be different so was the attraction to the christian mythos was there something special about it for you or was it just and I don’t mean this derogatory or was it just that what you had been brought up within and so that was the myth of mythology that you had most internalized I’m trying to get about how these things are coming together for you yeah I think the biggest reason for me is that I see the christ story and the story of the death and resurrection of christ as being the direct inversion of the fall right so I think that’s the biggest reason for me right so unpack that then that’s great that’s helpful yeah so one of the ways a metaphor that I like to use in talking about this is the metaphor of a mushroom where the mycelium is underground right and the individual fruiting bodies pop up in different places right and while it’s not perfect I think that’s a good metaphor of thinking how we relate to god that that we are like individual points of awareness coming out of the hole to experience the hole in a way right and at with the fall with the shift of the self as becoming the reference point of reality we dis we sever something of that disconnection we cloud our construct we cloud our relevance our construct we cloud our relevance realization yes and and um so this would be the fruit failing to realize its participation in the mycelium am I am I understanding the metaphor correctly yeah yeah and then you get some kind of disconnection right but you have to have some level of connection or you just die yes because it is reality itself and so then the whole old testament is that the movement of individuals gaining insight both eminence and emergence through these connections and and trying to act out and learn and codify some kind of way in which to relate correctly to this greater whole and then in christ you have the the coming like christ is the last atom right so it is it’s the the reinstanciation of adam but he’s presented explicitly with the primary temptations that are temptations within the within the ego self within the self yes as understood by itself you know he goes into that into the wilderness he’s totally broken down he’s totally laid bare in terms of his physical or maybe human defense mechanisms his awareness is laid bare by 40 days of hunger and loneliness and all these things and then he’s tempted with preservation of your own individual incarnation and then with trust are you going to trust to the goodness of life the goodness of the plan of god yeah regardless of all and then finally the temptation of virtue yeah which is if you claim to be if you claim to know what’s best in yourself you can you can enact positive change in the world and he resists them all through the just the simple faith right the simple i will not make myself the reference point then he and there’s this you know this important claim that god is that christ is fully man and fully god and he is he lives an entire lifetime shorter so i lifetime but lives an entire lifetime in that in that frame such that that connection is never severed there’s no clouding ever of the construct there’s no obstruction of relevance realization and then eventually he’s killed by the two formalized systematized means by which man’s ego attempts to gain control of the world the jews on one hand with the attempt of religion codified religion and laws and the romans on the other with attempt of physical force these two means come together to kill the the incarnation of god himself into reality but of course because he never he had never disconnected he never severed that connection in any way that the transcendence of the awareness of the spiritual of god himself was able to re-envelop the physical so this is very very interesting when you were describing jesus in the desert that for me resonated with some profound meditative experiences i’ve had where you get down to this bare awareness bare attention and then the temptations to project the world from an egocentric narrative become very prevalent in the mind was is that yeah you’re nodding and smiling so there’s that resonance for you so when you’re when you’re doing this symbolic interpretation what i what i what i’m hearing is often you’re taking this the myth and then you’re finding a way of interpreting it so you can actually participate in enacting it within your meditative practice wow so you’re not interested so i i it sounds like i’m getting it right i’m understanding yes yes and ideally actually just in in my moment to moment life yes yes yes i mean one thing that was transformative for me was the realization and learning of the term theosis right yes yes and recognizing that that’s you know there’s this there’s this pathway such that it’s there’s there’s legitimate potential for my whatever this is you know because i don’t i don’t know um there’s all kinds of models but i don’t i have no idea how this actually works or where i am in relationships this thing but to the degree that there’s potential for you know god himself or reality itself to find connection through this experience i actually have the potential to engage in that so you often do a spinozistic thing which i like um you often transpose god with reality or ultimate reality back and forth and you said there’s something going on in reality that’s now um it’s not clear what you’re saying so i’m going to turn it into question you’re saying so sort of consciousness as such with date which is like i said something that david bentley hart has done from actually neil platonic perspective although he’s aware of eastern philosophy but i assume you don’t mean that consciousness as such is anything like our egocentric consciousness or even like anything like our temporally bounded consciousness um is it more that there’s something analogous in reality to relevance realization here let me let me and i don’t mean analogous in disappointing sense i mean they’re both participating in a shared thing so let’s go back to nishatani defines religion as the real self-realization of reality right and so there’s and he’s playing with the fact that realization can be making real and also becoming conscious of something i play with too and and so there’s something like reality is doing a kind of self-realization and we are doing a kind of self-realization in consciousness that’s exactly how you described your journey i came to realize that whatever i am i am somehow bound up with this awareness and there’s something there they’re they’re they’re the same but they’re not um categorically or numerically the same it’s like the way reality is realizing it’s if the way reality is self-realizing and the way you are self-realizing are somehow the same or they can at least conform to each other is that what you’re saying is it something like that because i don’t hear you saying idealism or panpsychism that everything’s just in the mind or everything’s made out of consciousness i don’t hear you saying that so i’m trying to find out the third thing i’m worried that i’m imposing my own thing but i’m trying to use something that we’re we’re reading together which is nishitani and is it something like that it’s it’s like there’s relevance realization and right the way consciousness is a self-realization and the way reality is a self-realization there’s something deeply the same about them even though they’re not numerically or categorically identical is that is that does that feel like it’s landing for you yeah i think it maps i think it maps one of the ways that i have thought about this is it’s as if before i lived in a space where i was never sure what was exactly real because i was identified in my map of reality i was identified in my construct yeah and then i moved to a space where and this is mostly where i am now where i recognize that it the map is the map yes and that realities real reality is beyond the map yes but but in so far as i am interacting with real reality it’s mostly through the map yes it has to be it has to be exactly so so then go ahead oh sorry well i just wanted to propose something it’s actually talking about consciousness and the cog-sci class this morning so it’s uppermost in my mind um think about a map is it’s representational and the thing about a map is it actually is this here is pointing at that there right and then what what i hear you saying is you’re trying to drop below something that’s representational in nature and more like equal participation the world and you are both participating in something you’re not you’re not up right they so there there is well i would say there’s a kind of participatory knowing that’s underneath any kind of representational map we’re making and that is what actually allows the map to be true or false or accurate or precise or something like that am i am i am i playing with your metaphor well yeah yeah i think so and i think this is where that the participatory aspect of the relationship to god comes in you saw jesus as epitomizing that take uh um so i mean and i there’s there’s there’s parts in the new testament where you know jesus is described as the icon of god or the the icon of the invisible god that right that um and you know to see jesus is to see god but it doesn’t mean you’re looking at jesus you’re looking through jesus like right i and the father are one i’m in the father you’re in me jesus is making all those kinds of participatory union moves um which of course are getting misinterpreted uh by the jewish i think calling them the jews is really unfair it’s probably a group of people associated with the sadhu she’s associated with the synagogues and to break away from any anti-semitism we said sort of the the religious organ the religious authorities of that period in place and they are interpreting it as blasphemy and then interestingly enough of course the romans are upset when they’re when they are understanding it as a claim for divine kingship of being an emperor and so these are the two misinterpretations of the participatory relation a relation no it’s blasphemy because right no no there’s this absolute difference or no no it’s a threat because there there are god men’s there right right and and they are the divine kings and how dare you threaten the existing power structures and i see jesus as i think and this is where the the the the crucifixion is this the crucifixion not the crucifixion and the resurrection but the crucifixion is essential because jesus is actually willing to die to say both of those models of i and the father are one are wrong models i mean he he has to die to show that now here’s the one part i bump up against in this um and i so now i’ll ask you a question um so on the cross he says my god you forsaken me and um you know and he’s quoting a psalm and the psalm is actually ultimately a psalm of you know of the of the of the salvation of god uh but nevertheless so i’m not i’m not claiming he was right that he was saying that he was forever lost or anything like that but there seems to be the declaration of a profound sense of separation because he uses the language forsaken or at least the aramaic equivalent of it so what do you make of that what do you make of that because i’ve always found that i mean for me that’s that’s the pivotal moment and for me that’s the pivotal problem for any sort of oh i don’t want to be dismissive oh i don’t know i’m searching for an adjective but any sort of rather automatic trinitarian interpretation it’s like what’s going on there what’s going on there so what do you think what do you think ken i mean and if you don’t have an answer you don’t have an answer that’s fine i certainly wouldn’t say that my answer is is um satisfactory on on any level beyond just my own understanding but yeah i guess the way i think of it is i realized that for me the the picture of christ of the incarnation was so focused on christ being god or jesus being god that i never was able to map jesus as a man onto it very well right so you can’t really identify with it in any fashion yeah that that that’s exactly sort of my experience within the fundamentalist frame i was brought up into it’s like in the end it’s like i don’t care about jesus because i can’t possibly be jesus and so that’s perpetually irrelevant to me um and like you it’s only i was only able to come around to understand i sorry this sounds so hubristic but understand jesus in a way into which i could enter into a a right relationship with him again by moving towards the kind of thing you and i are talking about this idea of jesus as being the pristine participation in god that’s how i often think about it and so that to the best the best way to see god is to look through in both senses of the word through jesus well but then okay so go ahead go ahead but there’s this there’s this way in which my myself as i understand myself is not ultimately real like my ego as a self-consciousness that is conscious of itself yes it exists within the map how so because probably go ahead well because presumably you need some awareness of the map in order for the map to be a map i’m not sure i follow it either so i say that one more time well let me let me try let me try and step into it step by step rather than just sort of pointing it at you right yeah yeah yeah so john sirl uh and in discussions about consciousness makes an important distinction between intrinsic or inherent attributes and or properties let’s use that so we don’t get confused and attributed properties uh so we’ll talk about identities uh being money is something that’s attributed so it’s not ultimately real because there’s only money if there’s entities that are willing to treat pieces of paper or pieces of metal or marks on computer screen as if there are uh exchanges for labor right so that’s why currency from well the american confederacy is not money because there’s nothing there’s no group of people that are willing to trade it as money is that so it’s attributed whereas being gold is presumably intrinsic even if there are no human beings there’s gold and it would have the properties of gold yeah right and here’s the thing that’s problematic uh i understand to some degree what people say when they say things like they say the ego isn’t ultimately real because the ego is some sort of attribution of reality to a particular kind of narrative is that fine you’re saying this narrative is is is really real and what you want to say is no it’s a narrative and narratives can’t exist unless there’s consciousness is that is that okay sure now the one thing that can’t exist in a purely attributed fashion is consciousness because consciousness is the thing that does the attribution right and what i find and which is and this is a long thing about when and chris and greg and chris master pietro and greg and rickerson i did a lot of it in the elusive eye is when people say things like like that this that the self isn’t real they are ultimately then they’re they then sort they then transpose a lot of the function of the self the locus of identity the locus of causality etc back into consciousness so it isn’t that big of a move right it sounds like a big move in it and then when you realize oh self-consciousness is a big part of the self and self-consciousness is a big part of our experience of consciousness our knowledge of consciousness then the the attempt to dissolve the self into nothingness becomes very problematic that’s why you see this weird paradox in a lot of the eastern traditions even in zen i’ve heard zen people say well the no self is actually your true self and weird language like that because they’re trying to get to that point so that’s why i wanted to challenge you that’s the main challenge yeah and i mean this is i may have said it poorly and i may not have it very well in my own head so okay can don’t don’t we don’t you don’t like don’t be apologetic like i’m certainly not here to try and dispute you or refute you i’m trying to like we are working together we’re just going to work together on this i think what i mean is something like any point at which i say this is me and that is not me yes is ultimately not real so i can i can sit here and i can say this is me and that’s you right but only on a specific level of understanding and and in a specific framework is it and and there’s this you know deep interpenetration of like you know maybe for example i use my marriage my my wife and i are like if i try to talk about myself in any important way it’s bound up with her it’s definitely because you’ve internalized her and you indwell her and you internalize her and she indwells you and internalizes you and that’s just a very particularly powerful instance of a general fact that we are constantly indwelling the world and internalizing the world do i understand you correctly yeah yeah so what i’m trying to get at is is that the attempt to hold on to any particular concrete identity of the self yes that that’s where there’s this real um well i’m ultimately i would claim that’s something like original sin is used so this is now you’re sounding and and in this is no way an insult right you’re sounding very much like vedanta the when when when the ego forgets that that it is actually grounded in atman and that atman is brahman that is the source of all suffering and what we need is moksha to release us from the ego into the atman and realizes its identity with brahman it sounds very much like that is that yeah one way i would talk about it is like you know what is my life really it’s it’s it’s a whole you know string of of frames of time yes my friend steve has a wonderful way of talking about this where you know that to the degree that my awareness inhabits each frame of time but does not hold on to them and lets it lets the last one go it doesn’t hold on to any frames then that i’m fully present that i’m and there’s a sense in which all of reality then is bound up in that particular moment of experience of time well i was going to ask you and this is again nishatani that argument you made about you and your wife and then we extended to talk i mean that is the case for every thing right all of the universe is you know uh going into this object and this object is bound in relationship and white has a similar model right in the net of indra like this is something that and and spinoza scanty intuitiva so across many different epistemological cultural and ontological backgrounds you get this same kind of thing coming out so are you then and so you know and you invoke jordan peterson are you then something like a perennialist that all of the religions are sort of saying this um and maybe you know and then they have to say it and we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll put in a dash of young they ultimately say it mythologically because you can’t say it literally because literalism bounds you into propositional logic and propositional logic can’t deal with these kinds of identities we’re talking about is it something like that that’s happening i think there’s a lot of that um you know i i look at the different religious frameworks as different paths up the mountain yes mount analog yeah yes yes yes yes yes yeah and i think you know i i remain it’s again i i try to not hold any any identification of self with anything but i i remain primarily in the christian frame because i think that in the model that i see it i think there is something particular about the and i know i didn’t answer your question about the christ on the cross but i think there is something particular that happened there with um that that binds all of reality back together in an important way yes i heard jordan i’ve heard jordan make this argument too and i think jonathan makes this argument and variations and paul vanderkley make this argument they make it in different ways paul talks about finesse and the personalization of the of the of ultimately reality allows that triggers the best of our finesse machinery um and then jordan says something to the effect that the christian mythos is the best one because it gets um it gets suffering uh that bastard like it so and i i don’t want to put words into jonathan’s mouth but jonathan makes arguments about christianity seems to be the best at getting how the ultimate is in the lowest level and the lowest level is taken up into the ultimate level a kind of neoplatonic agapic argument i make an argument about christian christian platonism is really special in the way that it integrates the accounts of the logos and accounts of agape together but unlike them i don’t give that a priority for the following argument uh i prior you know i prioritize certain things according to certain virtues so for example i’d say to jordan peterson well why why why make why make the best account of suffering the epitome why not make the best account of mindfulness your epitome and then you should be a buddhist or why not make the best account of flow the epitome and then you should be a dallas that’s the kind of problem i have with these arguments now jonathan has a bit of a better case with me because i think there’s an independent argument to be made for neoplatonism um but i’m i’m interested in that’s what i tried to capture when i said sort of a pristine participation there’s something especially beautiful about christ’s exemplification of participation that can can attract me much better than this cat in some fashion um i think for me also and this is my personal journey yeah there was there was a radical flip that happened for me and like i had the particular moment where this started to come together for me that i mentioned earlier and then i i i went in the shower and i was showering and thinking about the fall and this stuff and then all of a sudden it hit me what what christ and the resurrection and redemption meant in terms of the flip back yes to to and and the you know the the crucifix crucifixion of self and it’s no longer i who live but christ who lives in me and all these kinds of things and it just like it all just clicked for me and i remember you know praying in a very kind of uh christian classic christian way of like oh i want to be saved like i want to be redeemed i want not not and and it was no longer it no longer did it have any anything to do with any sense of self as as you weren’t getting metaphysical fire insurance right that’s not that was not what was motivating this right exactly right so oh wow so i want to i want to stop and zoom in on an unsavor that so what was fundamentally different is you actually experienced a metanoia before you wanted to want it but now you found that you actually wanted it from the inside if i can put it that way and that’s the metanoia and for you that is the central thing that has to happen for christianity to be realized it might am i that’s that’s i think you’re okay with that’s for you that’s what it means to be born again is it something like that yeah because that’s how i experienced it i mean i was a totally like my experience of myself my experience of reality my experience of everything like fundamentally shifted i mean this is a very powerful model right um because what what i’ve been seeing you doing and we’ve already talked about this and you said it lands is you take you’ve been take you’ve been taking this mythos and then you’ve been finding a way of i’ll use your language of mapping it into fundamental things that are happening within your mindfulness practice in a profound way and when they take that’s when you had the metanoia and that’s when you found you no longer wanted to want you actually wanted salvation and for you that’s the moment in which christianity becomes realized do i do i do i am i getting you yes very much and one of the biggest senses of how it shifted was i no longer had any fear about whether i was right about something right yes like especially in a propositional way and this is one of the things that bothers me with the whole argument like who’s better and whose way is better because when when christ says i am the way the truth in the life no man comes to the father but by me i think what he means there is that he is the personification of truth yes and that to to engage with truth especially in the way that i talked about earlier from jordan peterson’s perspective is to engage with christ like you know i there’s this there’s this deep issue that i felt where for a long time i had this model about what christianity and god was and it was somehow over here and then reality was over here yeah as yes if if this is actually real it’s embedded in the thing yes yes yes well that’s what i was going to say to you part of what it sounds like also happened is your understanding of truth fundamentally changed it went from you know a mapping between a representation and the reality to no no what you just did with your hands no truth is all this is the heideggerian point this is the platonic point no no that propositional truth is dependent on the trothing the binding together the the confirmation uh the conformity not the confirmation the the conformity which we turned into confirmation right that right all of that uh that’s what i hear you saying that also what happened was a fundamental shift in your understanding of the truth of what truth is i should say yeah and that it’s something that i cannot have oh oh that’s beautiful say more what do you mean by it’s not something you can have it’s something that i can explore it’s something that i can engage with it’s something that i can only the being mode never the having mode exactly yes yes yes you can only participate the truth you can’t hold it as propositions yes exactly and thus every proposition that i ever say is held with a really significant and you know the weird thing about propositions is that’s also the map right yes and so so anything that i’m holding is held with a certain degree of of of knowing that it’s also not yes this is i i please pay attention to the adjective the adjective is paramount here this is kirk a guardian and socratic irony this is not what we typically mean by irony when you know in the postmoderns but this is yes exactly it’s that that kirk a guardian socratic irony that right i i cannot do without it but i’m always trying to see through and beyond it yeah yeah and it’s it’s and now i just you know part of the reason we’re talking now is because i’m i’m just trying to figure out well how do i play in the world now because now now i can like like i have this voracious desire to learn and i read all the time and i watch videos and it’s amazing but it’s like okay where do i engage because i don’t necessarily have a something to tell people or something to come participate in this is just hey like wake up a little bit you know like well you you you you want to be in fellowship celebrating with other people is what is what it sounds like well i’m glad you’re reading books like uh religion and nothingness like that’s a powerful i’ve got a lot of recommendations from you and i i have yet to uh i’ve yet to find one that doesn’t deliver more than i expected to well thank you for saying that and uh that’s due to the people who wrote the books i’m just privileged enough to have been able to study them and hopefully to a significant degree appreciate them um this so ken like i’ve i’ve watched you also come sort of progressive i mean part of it you’re just getting more comfortable but you’re also becoming more progressively more alive and you’re like starting to light up and glow and something is starting to shine through you um if you don’t mind me asking and feel free to say just to me john i don’t want to talk about it but like what does this metanoia for you mean for your relationship for example to your wife or two people that you you previously worshiped with etc what what has that meant for you if you’re comfortable with answering that question yeah absolutely i find that i don’t have uh so one thing that i find is that i notice frequently patterns of speaking and behaviors that get in the way of what i actually mean to convey right yes yes i am aware yeah i’m really familiar with that too and and i’m often in the midst of speaking i’m already uh realizing i don’t want to continue the proposition that i’m uttering yeah i i get that totally i get that yes yeah so that’s been one big that’s that’s the place that i pay attention to and attempt to provide space to change but overall it’s been profoundly helpful in every area um because that i don’t have a thing to project anymore so i it’s it’s been deeply affording um just to connect to connect with people whether it’s i’m very fortunate that my uh my work is in medicine and so i talk to people every day as as you know a medical provider who’s sharing decisions with them decision making that’s life or death for for lots of them in many ways and the ability to room to be there with them but not attached to any particular thing has been just really really wonderful to engage with so so let’s play with this because you brought it up um because i i think it’s really important we don’t have much more time and so maybe we’ll just initiate the conversation and we’ll pick this up when you when you come back i’m hoping you’ll come back to voices with wiki i’d love to so a lot of time when people hear that the language you’re using you’re not attached they get a sense of detachment which is a often a translation of a buddhist term and then and then they hear the english sense of detachment which means i don’t care uh it’s it’s irrelevant to me um one way or the other i’m not attached to it right and that certainly can’t mean well i’m presuming it doesn’t that’s not what you mean when your relationship to your patients i don’t care what happens to the one way or the other you know that’s presumably not what you mean am i am i right so yeah what do you mean then what do you mean then what i tried to say this well i find that when i go to speak with a patient especially if it’s if i’m trying to help them orient towards some issue that they’re facing in a way they’re not currently oriented if i am attached to the fact that they look at it the way i want them to look at it then as soon as that doesn’t happen because invariably it doesn’t there’s there’s a sense of uncomfortability i’m not able to meet them where they are friction and frustration yeah yeah yeah so i think by detachment what i mean is i am open to the process unfolding however it unfolds and that i’m i see myself not as a as an an agent of of trying to make a specific formation of information but rather an agent of trying to just open up a relation ability between it between a person in a space so i i propose to you that you’re what you’re saying is you want to participate in the logos and follow it however it goes in the gathering together of the sense making and so what you mean by this you know detachment but not attack is actually you’re in dialogical relationship with the person dia logos through and through and that both of you are you are trying to come into a stance that allows both of you to co-participate in the logos and then within that of course there’s a agape because to properly participate in the logos is to love this the the creation of meaning beyond one’s egocentric perspective yes absolutely yeah that’s fantastic okay ken this this is this is not done i just have to end because i have to go to another meeting so i would like to invite you back and we’re just going to continue on you still haven’t answered my question about christ on the cross but this has been unfolding wonderfully but i would like to give you the last chance to you know briefly have the last word yeah i guess overall i’m just i’m grateful i am very much i’m grateful for your work i’m grateful to talk to you and to all the people who are engaged with your work as well that helps make it what it is and i’m very grateful for that i’m just somebody out here and trying to follow the logos as you said so i do i’ve started a youtube channel just to talk to people i don’t have any particular bent with it but if anyone has found any of this interesting and wants to engage with it you can make a comment on this video and i’ll i’ll try to reach out well not only that ken can send me the link to his youtube channel and i’ll put it in the description of this video wonderful thank you and yeah great to great to see you well thank you so much ken and i’m looking forward to us continuing to this this this deal logos together we’ll talk soon all right see you