https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=2yTFADXCdm8
Welcome to Cultivating Wisdom with John Rovecki. Unfortunately, we are back down to the single camera setup today. We hope to have that problem solved by next week and back to the two cameras. So I’m at this odd angle when I’m in the sitting position. The camera will be more normal when I move to the whiteboard. So I’m going to put my head down. I hope you don’t consider this rude for reasons that we’re primates and we’re supposed to look at each other, etc., etc. So a reminder that we’re live streaming every Saturday morning at 10 AM Eastern time. The Discord server is continuing to have daily meditation sets. I believe they sit twice a day. They do the moving practices. They’re starting to put together the resources for doing the philosophical contemplative companionships. And so Amar and Jason and I are working to try and put together a group of people drawn from the Sangha by which we can film a demonstration of how to do the philosophical contemplative companionship practices for you guys. That’s going to take a bit of time. We also want to put together a compilation video to mark the ending of the daily sits. Please send a clip of no more than 10 seconds about your experience as part of the Sangha community to Amar, Amar at JohnBerbecky1work.com. Amar at JohnBerbecky.com. If you’re joining us for the first time, don’t be put off by this orientation. Like I said, we normally have two cameras. It’ll be better next time. Please see the links in the description. I would strongly recommend you go through the entire Meditating with John Berbecky course. Go and do lesson one right away. Do one or two lessons every week. Continue to meet with us on Saturday, Sangha. Also consider joining the Discord server. I would ask everybody to please like this stream to increase the visibility in the YouTube algorithm. There will be a question period today. We’re going to try and not do what I did last time and make sure there’s a question period at the end. Please limit your questions to anything from either one of the ecologies of practices, the Meditating with John Berbecky, the Cultivating of Wisdom. If you have more general questions, please come to the general Q&A every third Friday of the month at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. We had one yesterday and it was really wonderful. I wasn’t feeling very well, but the Sangha was there, the Sangha of the broader community. And it was just really, really wonderful and I really appreciate that. Okay, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to sit first. As always, we will begin with chanting, then we will go into silent sit. We’ll come out of the practice, potentially reciting the five promises if you wish. I’ll move to the whiteboard. We’ll go through a review of what we talked about with Stoicism. And then we will come back here and we will hopefully do one of the first Soic practices. I’m going to talk about two main ones today, the Cultivation of Active Open-Mindedness through Self-Examination and the View from Above as a meditative, really a contemplative practice. All right, so get yourself in position, please. Set your phones on Do Not Disturb and we will begin together when I say begin. Begin. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Begin your silence. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and community tasks, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you and then practices of self transformation so the biggest practice here we’ve talked about this before is active open mindedness this is the practice I’ll mention these again get one of all of these books you know this I’ll put this I will put the this in the description you want this book biased or the 25 cognitive biases You want this book, Biased, or the 25 Cognitive Biases, or Cognitive Biases, the pocket reference books. What I do is I try to start every day after I’ve done my practices, I read about a bias, I reflect upon it, I think about it, I try, and remember times when I engaged in it, and then throughout the day, and then at the end of the day, I have my journal, and at the end of the day, what I do is I do this. I look for any vice that I committed, any virtue that I omitted, any bias that I remember engaging in, the confirmation bias, the fundamental attribution error, self-centeredness, and then I also remember, so copy, I also remember any virtue that I clearly brought into play, a situation where I was wiser than I normally am, any virtue I brought into play, and do that every day, and every day, and slowly, slowly, this is called prochiron, this is keeping things ready to hand. This is, you slowly, slowly let this permeate and percolate, and more and more, you start to notice the ways in which you are engaging in self-deception, ways in which you’re being foolish. If you just did that, that would be like, ugh, right? That’d be like Protestant guilt or something. That’s why it’s also important to do these practices, because these practices are your response. These are the practices that say to you, like no, this is what you can do to get better, so that you can aspire properly. And we’re gonna use, we’re gonna do about five minutes or so right now of one of these practices. So this is a practice that is designed to transform your perspective, remember how internalization is a perspectival transformation. If you get a chance, I have a talk on YouTube called The View From Above, in which I go into this in greater detail if you want sort of more of the philosophy and the cognitive science behind it. But right now I’m gonna sit down, Jason’s gonna come and change the camera again, and I’m gonna talk you through The View From Above. So here the camera angle actually works, because I’m doing the view from above, but you’ll forgive me, it’s not good for me with my nearest to tilt my head up a lot. So I’ll try and keep it straight throughout. So what I wanna do is we’ll just take a minute or so, quiet, do a very brief, but find the core four. If you’ve been doing it long enough, you can do it in a minute or so. So I’m gonna go ahead and do that. So I’m gonna go ahead and do that. I’m gonna go ahead and do that. Find the core four. If you’ve been doing it long enough, you should be able to get a sense of being centered, have your basic route, basic flow, find your focus. Take a minute or two, so we’ll be in silence for a minute or two, and then I’m gonna talk you through, like walk you through The View From Above practice. Okay, so a minute or two of silence first. Okay. Okay. While keeping your eyes closed, imagine yourself as exactly where you are, the room that you’re in. Imagine it around you. You’re at the center of that perspective. That’s only natural. Imagine that you’re in exactly the place that you’re in. Now, very gently, imagine yourself, at least your mind, floating up above in the room, the roof of your room becoming transparent, and you can see into that room from above. Perhaps you still see your body sitting in the meditation posture. Now imagine yourself gently, no fear, rising higher. You can see the entire city or countryside where you’re sitting, or even wherever you’re standing, where your eyes are where you’re thinking, or your your face. Where you see yourself is mythical remains, and that resembles those perceptions that you know set out in that room to see if you’re playing out in the middle of the page, where you’re living. You can see the house or the building that you’re in, your body’s in, but you can see now the entire city, the countryside. Now rise up even higher, very gently, no jarring, completely fine. Now you can see the entire country that you belong to, spread out below you. Take a moment to really dwell in this. Notice how your sense of what’s salient and relevant, what’s important, is shifting. The sense of self is even shifting. Now rise up gently, no problem with any of this, until you’re now seeing the whole earth beneath you. Very gently dwell here. Note the transformation in your sense of what’s relevant, what’s salient, your sense of self. Now even further and farther, so you’re way back, you’re looking at the entire solar system. You’re starting to feel like you’re no one in particular, and you’re nowhere in particular. Saddle into that, try to enjoy it. Now pull back, back, further and further, until you’re seeing the galaxy that the solar system is within. Now you’re no one, and you’re nowhere. What’s salient and relevant in your sense of self are very different. Now it’s like there’s a time machine. It’s not just this moment. Now you’re not pulling back in space, you’re pulling back in time. You can see back to the beginning of time, the beginning of the universe, and forward, far into the future. Now you’re not only no one and nowhere, you’re no when. Savor this. Notice the alteration in how things feel relevant, salient, what your sense of self is. Now slowly and paying attention to how what’s relevant and salient, the identities of things, the boundary, sense of self change as you do this. Slowly come back. Slowly come back into seeing the solar system. Back in the present moment as well. Now slowly and paying attention to how what’s relevant and salient, the identities of things, the boundary, sense of self change as you do this. Slowly come back. Slowly come back into seeing the solar system. Slowly come back. Back in the present moment as well. Slowly come back to seeing the Earth. Can you feel things taking shape, tightening, sense of self, sense of the moment, what’s important, changing? Now see the country that you belong to. Now the city. Now the building. Now come into seeing the room. Now reimagine yourself where you are. But remember what it was like to be no one, nowhere, no when. Try to integrate those two together. Feel them deeply together like stereoscopic vision. One eye is seeing you here now. The other eye is seeing the no one, nowhere, no when. Let them talk to each other. Let them dialogue. Okay. Okay. Slowly come out of your practice. So you can do that a little bit longer, especially when you’re sort of at the apex of the view from above. You can hang out there longer. But remember to, right, that not just doing the motion and the imagination is much more important to pay attention to. Use that as a platform by which you are becoming aware of and training the transformation of judgment, of perspectival judgment, of perspective taking. What you find relevant and salient, the identities that are being assigned and assumed. And remember when you come back down to see that transformation in reverse. And then use that memory of the transformation up and the transformation down to create a stereoscopic vision of you. So for me, I hear now and no one, nowhere, no when. Seeing the two together. Seeing the two together. That way you are getting this capacity to take a very powerful kind of higher order perspective on yourself. Enhance your meta perspectival cognition and enhance your capacity for self-transcendence. And learning deeply to discern the difference between things and the narratives that we assign to things. Okay. So we’re going to take about five minutes or so for a few questions. So Deborah, White Staff asks, so good to see you, John. How was your sit today? It was very good. Thank you for asking. My ear is still bothering me for those of you who were here yesterday at the Q&A. But thank you for asking. I do think that both sits, the first sit and then the stoic sit, which is a contemplative practice, it’s very much like meta in that it’s a reciprocal opening process. But it’s much more aspirational than meta. But both sits were very good. Thank you for asking. Mark Lefebvre, do the books contain more information on how many rounds? I have two of them on the way so far. I think Mark’s referring to the questions about the philosophical contemplative companionship. And the first book by Lahav talks about how many rounds. I recommend a four by four. Lahav has other things, but I’ve done lots of participant observation and lots of groups. I think four people committing to four rounds is really quite optimal. That’s what I would recommend. Julian Gray, can you please demonstrate philosophical chanting? So we will do that when we film the, because Ruminatio is part of the practice of philosophical contemplative companionship. So we will film us doing philosophical chanting. So that’s definitely coming. Shirano Banerjee, how do I read something that’s a present while straying away in thoughts? That’s a tricky one. That’s part of, I mean, you should read, you should be reading at times for different purposes. Sometimes you’re reading for information and then you’re reading for transformation. When you’re reading for transformation, the way of doing what you’re talking about is to do the Alexio Divina practice that I’ve taught. But when you’re reading for information, then what you have to do is you have to do soft vigilance. You have to constantly be thinking about trying to, it’s like a meditative practice, trying to see what is new in the text. What are the connections? So trying to dialogue with the text, underline the text, make notes, ask it to pause. That sounds like, but that’ll slow me down. Aha, and that’s the ego trick, right? Actually, if you look like you’re slowing down to note things, to do practice soft vigilance, to constantly renew your interest, to make notes, that will actually speed up your reading because you will not be distracted as much. You are more likely to get in the flow state, and you will remember better what you’re reading while you’re reading. Pleasure to doubt. That’s Brad. It’s good to, it’s good, we haven’t talked in a bit, Brad. It’s good to have communication with you. For those not familiar with the works or cultural historical context of the author, can you give tips for how to put oneself in the author’s perspective? So it’s a good idea. This is actually, it’s a very good idea for people to do some preliminary. So when the facilitator chooses who the author is going to be to give a forewarning and people to do a little bit of preliminary study. This is something I hadn’t mentioned before and I should have, and that’s a mistake on my part. So thank you, Brett, for this correction. It’s very important to get some sense of the historical context, like, you know, just a quick Wikipedia scanning, because again, that’s the, that’s very, very helpful. But trying to pick up on even your intuitive sense of the person from the text. So relying on your intuition to try and get a sense of what that person is like from the text is also valuable. So historical education, online intuition. And again, you have to also rely on the convergence of the different people bring to the text for actually invoking the presence of the author. I often say that stoicism gives us a how, but no why. Most seem to agree. Comments. So I tried to say I think stoicism does give us the why, but it’s often not well understood. The why of stoicism is enjoyment and encouragement and flowing with nature. And the idea is to live the kind of life that has the most of that which is always good. So the stoic answer as to what is, what is the good life is a very, sounds like a very simple answer, but I think it’s a very profound answer. The good life is the life that has the most in it of what is most often reliably good. What is most often reliably good is wisdom, where wisdom isn’t mean just saying wise things or having advice, but that discernment that puts us into enjoyment. That puts us into a right relationship with ourselves, with each other and the world. A rational, in the broader sense of rational, right relationship that is enjoyed, not pleasure, but enjoyed for its own sake because that is the good life. That’s the why. So pleasure of doubt. Some have voiced a concern that the philosophical fellowship practice is too advanced for most people on the Discord. That many haven’t yet got down prerequisite skills one and two. Do you think it’s pround or productive for those without an established practice and other skills you’ve taught to move ahead with this news practice? Is there harm in just jumping in? So what I’ve seen, I actually see that the concern that people are voicing is a very legitimate serve for the practice of dialectic, which is a neoplatonic practice. Lahav and I agree with him argues that philosophical contemplative companionship can be started sort of off the street. All it requires is that people have good faith. Now, that being said, I do think having that you shouldn’t do the practice if you haven’t had some experience with the core four of the mindfulness practice, finding your center, root, flow and focus, and some basic practice with lexio divina. So I sort of split the difference with Lahav. I think you should have the core four of mindfulness and lexio divina in hand, and then you can take up the philosophical contemplative companionship. I would say that until you’ve done the philosophical contemplative companionship, you really shouldn’t be undertaking the practice of dialectic. Now, I do things where I get people to practice the dialectic, and that’s still helpful, but those are much more like the clinical trials in an experiment, experimental clinical trials. We’re trying to figure out a practice. I think when you’re in the existential frame that there should be a pedagogical program where you start with philosophical contemplative companionships and then you move into something intermediate, perhaps like the anti-debate, which is a very stoic kind of thing to do. And then we move into the neoplatonic practice of dialectic, but there’s more of that coming. I just wanted to remind people that just like I recommended a book on practice, I recommend getting this book. We’re going to be going through this book. So going forward on Saturday, saying that as we continue the high school of stoicism, we’re going to, of course, be taking use of some of the suggestions in the Mclenna. Read the Mclenna. It’s good. It’s helpful. It’s valuable. But we’re going to be relying on this book as we do more and more of the spiritual exercises, and you’ll see how they plug into the logic, the physics, and the ethics. So that’s everything, I think, for going forward. Again, I apologize for the sort of odd angle. At some point, Amar and Jason are working on it. I’m going to put some more work on it this weekend to get us back to the two camera without all that, some of that lagging that we had. And as always, I want to thank Amar and Jason for all the work they’re doing behind the scenes making this all possible. Please subscribe to the channel to be notified of the next video. Also follow me, please, on Twitter for any updates about these streams. Invite others who might benefit by sharing this series. Definitely join the Discord server to chat with others, to sit with others, to start some of these group practices. Reminder that we’re doing this Saturday, every Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern time. So let’s remember that a condolence of practice is more important than sheer quantity of practice. And that we want to hold ourselves not to a harsh perfectionism, but to a standard of virtuous friendship by which we better in a more discerning fashion, dialogos with ourselves and with others. Because there is no enemy worse than your own mind and body, but there’s no friend, no ally, no philosophical companion on the path better than your own dialogical mind and body. Be lamps unto yourselves and to each other. Take care, everyone. Keep practicing. I’ll see you next Saturday. Bye.