https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=rfVDlrET11E
So welcome everyone to another Voices with Raviky. I’m really pleased here to get to introduce a bunch of you to somebody who does some really valuable work for me in support of my work. It’s Lorcan McSharp, and he is the person responsible for doing my short videos. Some of you might have seen the really impressive one that we released over the holidays, the Christmas break. Lorcan is here because he’s supporting my work and he does these short videos and talk a bit about that. But for him, this is not just work or even interest. It’s a bit of a vocation for him. It’s part of a larger calling that he is engaged in right now. So I thought it would be a good idea for people to meet him and for him to hear his story and to see what he’s hoping to do in helping people awaken from the meaning crisis, to coin a phrase you might have heard before. So welcome, Lorcan. It’s good to see you. It’s great to be here, John. Thanks for having me on. So, I mean, you sent me a video that I reviewed and it made me aware of sort of a journey you’ve been on. And maybe it would be really helpful to start with that journey. And how are you sort of here and why you reached out to me because you reached out to me and why you’re making the shorts for myself and for Jordan. So fill us in a bit. How did you get here and what’s going on for you right now? Yeah, so my life, I suppose, has been a bit of a dance battle combination of the two around trying to free myself from the things that I perceive as putting me in a box. And you and Jordan have talked about those things at great length and this nature of a kind of alienation from culture, from society and an acute awareness of that alienation and wondering where is this coming from? How real is this? How much of this comes from myself? How much of this is a genuine threat outside of me? Right. And the kind of biggest breakthrough moment has been a couple of years ago when I decided to not go the college route, the traditional school route. And just a small story around that. There was a in the school newspaper, there was all the colleges that people are going to be going to, a list of all of them. And there was one little section that said other at the end. And it was just my name. So it was just this kind of encapsulation of this fact that there’s all these people flooding into the traditional way of doing things. And then there’s here’s me trying different. And on that journey, there’s been a lot of ups and downs and confusion that brought me towards your and Jordan’s and this this space in general. Right. It seemed like there was an answering of some of those questions. Like, oh, the meeting crisis, things, things that your elaboration on how there’s different sections of what gives you meaning, what that how you’re mattering and how you’re and meaning and purpose and all those things and how it’s not just that purpose. And that that great purpose was kind of the thing that I had my eye on. But when you’re in this place where you’re young, and you don’t have anything together, and there’s no institution to funnel you through, there’s there’s a kind of there’s there’s a lack of a foundation of that. Right, right, right, right. So I suppose what I’m exploring is how can one build themselves up from themselves from this place of a shaky foundation. And so what comes up when I when I when I say all that for you? Well, what comes up was a bit of a critique that you put in your previous video, because I think what you said is going to trigger something that is somewhat culturally familiar to many people, which is sort of the self help movement. And you pointed out that you got involved with that. But you found out that that was really just sort of a like, a negation of the state you were before, it wasn’t actually getting you where you wanted to be. So I think it would be helpful of you if you address that. Yes, so so that video is on, it’s called self help is cool, but it might break your heart. And it’s great. Thank you. Thank you. And it’s kind of an elaboration on how I went from this place of being quite politically active in 2016 2015. And how, from there, I kind of dove into projecting out all these things that I that I perceived wrong with the world. And and I got pulled in through the podcasting and specifically through Jordan Pearson into this. Oh, I’m, I’m also doing that. I’m moving. I am myself kind of being broken down into this place where I’m now I’m the one who’s has to take full accountability, personal responsibility kind of thing. personal responsibility. And that really captured my attention because it was the opposite of what I was doing. Right. And then that kind of flooded me down into lots of other people. And that slowly built up this kind of reverse projection. Right. Everything was my fault. Right, right, right. And I myself was was responsible for every single, I guess, I suppose, thing that I was doing wrong, that I coined doing well, when really kind of it does into the end of this video and comes to a place of there’s nothing really wrong here. There’s damage, there’s pain, right. And putting that outwards and putting that inwards has the same effect where it’s just voiding the initial kind of whole, you know, that that it’s a cliche of the hole that’s never filled, right, and how self help was acting as that it was acting as an addiction, some sorts. And and and it was deceiving me. Did you get into like, it sounds almost a little bit like Luther, did you get into a place of like almost self loathing at some point, like, that during this whole process, a lot of the underlying emotions were completely invisible to me. Oh, and that’s why it’s kind of hard to talk about really, because it’s there’s so much of it is I’ve noticed how much I am building stories around these ideas, and around these feelings. So when I talk about it, I go, is that true? Right? Or is that just more of the woven tangled story that right, right, this place to begin with? So, so there’s confusion here, you know, and it’s, and I’m coming to the point where I’m like, Oh, it’s okay, it’s okay to be confused. It’s okay to feel these things. And, and it’s okay to feel, you know, that that’s that was one of them, for sure, self loathing, just this, this externalized screw culture, right, and flipping and going on must be me. Right. And there’s no Yeah, yeah. So, like, what, what broke you out of the the, like, I get it, they’re, they’re, they’re sort of locked into each other. One is just the negation of the other. They’re just locked in like that. What broke you out of that sort of inward spiral, if I can put it that way, like, what, what, what, what, like, what woke you up from it? So it was actually a breakup. But I know you were in a relationship and you broke up with someone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That really, I suppose, brought my attention to the way that my internalized viewpoints were externalizing. Oh, right, right, right. So it wasn’t about personal responsibility. It was about, Oh, it’s, and this isn’t a critique of the ideas themselves. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the way in which they fit it to me. Right. I get that. That’s good. And, and, and the way in which they fit it to me was within a bubble. Right. So, so all this development was me hibernating, right, getting ready to come back out again. But before I could, I saw that I wasn’t in a bubble. Right. And everything I was doing was coming outside of me. And I kind of knew that all along. So, so it’s, it’s an odd, it’s an odd dynamic, really. And I wonder if you’ve had, you know, your work delves into these kind of things in one way or another. So I’m wondering if that for you comes from a, from a personal place also. It comes from a personal place. And it also comes from a philosophical place. And the two come together. In the work of somebody you’ve heard me mention in this series, who’s had a deep influence on me, Paul Tillich. And Tillich does this thing where he talks about a kind of inevitable existential tension between these two poles, that both have to be satisfied, but they pull in opposite directions from each other. And one is individuation, which he, and he means that very much in a Jungian sense. And one is participation. And he means that very much in like Buber’s sense of the, you know, the I that relation belonging to something outside of yourself, committing to something bigger than yourself. And Tillich talks about the fact that we, if we spend too long in one pole, we start to long for the other pole. If we participate too much, the need for individuation has not been met. And so we’ll, there’ll be a countervailing drive. But if we individuate too much, we’re, we long for the world and we long to be connected to something outside. And so we’re, we’re, we’re pulled back. And how that, and that, how that sort of impacts my life, or how that points to things that impact my life is I very much, especially with somebody who wrestles with social phobia and attachment in the psychological sense, not the Buddha sense, and attachment issues. I’ve seen that dynamic play out very, very powerfully in my own life. In almost like tides coming in and out sort of existential tides of my life have been falling. And trying to get that Tillich talks about the possibility of sort of a creative tension, a tonos, t-o-n-o-s, between these, which I think I’d have to make it more of an argument for this, but I think is sort of similar to what I talk about when I talk about opponent processing, getting them, although they’re pulling in different directions, getting them fundamentally bound to each other, and bound together to an overarching project of ongoing self correction on ongoing adaptivity. So that’s, that’s sort of the project that I’m in. There’s, I’m engaging in it very personally right now, therapeutically, existentially, philosophically, spiritually, about trying to get that, getting that tearing turned into, you know, opponent processing. Yeah, the, what’s coming to mind is kind of an image of two, it’s almost like a double helix. Yes. And that’s the two, there’s the two strands and they can so easily just turn into a knot. You want that, like, you want them to be perfectly knotted so that they could become kind of a rope. Yeah. And that’s something strong, right? That’s something you can hold on to. Nice. Alkmaar. So. That’s very nice. I see why you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re doing the thumbnails and the short videos for me. That’s a, that’s a very good translation into a pictorial metaphor. That’s very good. Yes. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and well, it’s, it’s an image that’s been, so I, you know, I presented, I said it, it’s a battle and a dance. Right. And that seems to be the, the theme of it because it’s, it, maybe it is somehow both. Right. And maybe one of them is aggressive and one of them is, you know, masculine and feminine. It’s these two. Yeah. It’s put in so many different ways. For me, it comes in the domain of control and surrender. Right. And, and, and the playing out of letting things happen, but while making them happen, making yourself let things happen, it’s very tricky. Yeah. I’ve been trying to get across that with these two interrelated ideas of transjectivity as the relation and participation, because in participation, we’re neither acting on the world sort of like, you know, in a romantic fashion or just, you know, receiving the world in kind of a passive empiricist fashion. But in fact, we’re transjectively bound to it in a dynamical coupling. Yeah. I’ve been, that’s, and I, that’s why, that’s why those ideas are very central to my work. I’m trying to get people to find that place. And that’s why I’m so critical of the, you know, people say, I over-criticize the romantics, but they pay attention. I, I, I criticize the romantics and the empiricists often together. Right. I, I criticize the blank slate of the empiricist and the blank canvas of the world of romanticism. And instead we have to think about participation in a transjectivity as a more appropriate way, both of recognizing how we live and affording how we can live more wisely. Okay. So break down the, the romantic world for me. I mean, so that’s, it’s a complex worldview, but the basic idea of romanticism is the idea of the imagination’s capacity to create meaning and to, and we use this word a lot, to express, to press out, to express it on the world and that the world is basically there, almost empty of any meaning or any structures or any limitations so that we can just express our meaning onto the world. And empiricism is the other, it’s that the, right, the world is, is completely sort of a finished entity, ontologically finished. And what it does is my, my mind is basically a blank slate and I just passively receive the information from the world and that’s how meaning comes to me. And I’ve been arguing throughout all of the awakening for the meaning crisis that those two modes radically misrepresent our relationship to the world and also how meaning is made. And the thing about them, there is, they are the two dominant modes in our culture right now. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re locked together, right. And they need each other because they define each other in contrast to each other. What’s coming to mind is the self-help world. Right. There’s two ways of going about it. There’s the, you need to get up at this time and you need to get up at this time and do all these habits in the morning and fix your morning routine and do this before you go to sleep. And it’s like a series of habits. Right. Right. And there’s the, you don’t need to do anything. You’re the creator of your own world. Like everything’s coming to you at divine timing and everything will be in effect. And all you have to do is think about it. And there are these two, and this is what happens to my algorithm, my YouTube algorithm. It is filled with one person saying, you need to wake up at 630 and the other person saying, wake up whenever you need to, because it’s who you are. So it’s the sculpting and that like you’re making a, you’re making something, a sculpture of some kind and someone shouting and you’re over here telling you to make it look this way. And the other person telling you to make it look this way. And it just ends up right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. It’s, it’s both the horse and the human, but it’s not quite a centaur. So what, what, what do you propose is the way of being where you can take in both without taking in both? Yeah. So, I mean, I think there’s a continuum and I try and outlay that, outline that in the series and lay it out. You know, there’s a, and Daniel, Greg and I talk about this continuum going from like optimal grip through to insight to flow to, you know, transformative experiences to awakening experiences, potentially to enlightenment. But the theme throughout is, is, is that, right. That capacity to get into a participatory relationship that’s exemplified by things like the flow state and the flow state, you are at one time at one in the same time, you’re highly active. You’re putting in a lot of effort. You can feel that metabolically usually, but it’s paradoxical because it’s often called effortless effort. So although you’re putting in all this, you also feel like the world is coming to meet you. It’s disclosing itself to you. Right. So there’s, there’s this at one minute, you are both, you’re, you’re both highly active and you’re highly receptive and they’re forming this dynamical coupling cycling with the world. So you’re dynamically at one with the world. And we find that experience the most rewarding, both in the sense that we really enjoy it. And it’s where we do our best performance. It’s where our agency is at its fullest. And this also sounds paradoxical, even though our sort of egocentric narrative, it drops away. Yeah. Yeah. And so those states are, are states that are particularly conducive to enhancing insight, intuition, optimal grip, um, and training, you know, a lot of the capacities that go into making one wiser. And they seem to contribute also to people’s sense of connectedness, meaning in life. So trying to get people to remember how to get into onto that continuum and get into these states, not just as sort of wonderful experiences they have, but as in terms of an overall process of education by which they get an optimal grip. Uh, you know, they get that, they turn that tearing, as I said, into an ongoing adaptive opponent processing. So that you’re going into the flow store and you’re engaging with the world and you’ll see, you’re seeing things in a place where the helix is a helix and it’s coming together and you’re like, Oh, everything makes sense. Is, is there a tension that can be created by being so in the zone? So in that flow state where you put the flow state on a pedestal, you know, so clearly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let me talk about that in two ways. The first thing is it’s not just the flow state. I’m talking about any state. The way we get into participation is when we get into reciprocal opening where I’m, I’m, I’m sort of structuring myself. So with cognitive flexibility, so the world discloses itself more to me. Right. And then that allows me to again, further restructure myself, get more fitted to the world. And it’s like when you’re falling in love with somebody, there’s that reciprocal opening. So it’s more generally that phenomenon that I think puts you into, uh, into proper participation. Now, the specific question about flow. And I talked about this yesterday when I was at, uh, rebel wisdom is part of their sense making course. Um, so the way to talk about that is to relate a bit of a personal story that, um, I use when I’m teaching my students. So I’ve been doing Tai Chi Chuan religiously for about two or three years. Um, and, you know, and I was getting into the flow state while I was doing it, it was all wonderful and I was enjoying it. Um, but then my, my, my, uh, my fellow grad students came to me and they said, what, what are you doing? What’s going on? And at first I was like, oh no. Um, and then I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, you’re, you’re changing. You’re much more balanced and flexible when your presentation of ideas and your argumentation and discourse. And I hadn’t realized how much the practice was sort of permeating through all of my cognition and it was becoming very pervasive, uh, often, you know, I wasn’t conscious of that. And then, and it’s so much so that I often recommend to my students when they ask me, well, how am I, I know I’m on the path. Well, and I’ll say when other people who don’t know you’re doing the practice notice change, notice consistent patterns of change in you. That’s a way of fun. That’s a way of getting good feedback. And I, and I noticed that and I noticed that. And so, and I’ve done some work with some people about this. It’s like, you want to make sure, and this goes towards, you know, wise flow. Um, you want to make sure that you’re flowing in circumstances and conditions and in a manner that will actually afford it permeating through your life. So I often hold up as contrast, Taoism and video games. That was figured out ways of doing this, doing these movements and practices and in putting it within a, putting it within, you know, an overall philosophy and ecology of practice. So it’s, it permeates your life like this. And video games typically do not do that. In fact, they, they typically do the opposite. They can, I’m not, I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible. I’m talking about typically, typically for most people, they entomb people and we get what’s called the virtual Exodus. People, like they are fleeing from the real world into the virtual reality where they find all the meaning missing, where they find all the missing meaning structures. And when that’s happening, your flow state, although you’re getting a local flow state, you’re actually disconnecting, um, right from the world in general. So you, you want, you want like, you want more, you want more of the Taoist model than the video game model. You want it, you want to choose where, when, how, and in what kind of ecology of practices, the home, right within your doing, within which you’re finding flow such that it germinates and permeates through your life. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a, you’re not locked into where the meaning is coming from. It’s something that stems out of every moment. It’s, it’s when you go on a walk and you notice the flowers versus thinking about this purpose driven quest that you have, that you don’t see anything around you. Yeah, exactly. You can get locked in that locks you out from the very connections you’re, you’re seeking with yourself, with each other, with the world. Exactly. And it’s fascinating what you said about people seeing the differences outside of you. Yes. Because in that place, there is a reciprocal open. There is a, the people are opening up to you because they see you in a different light. Exactly. That’s well said. That’s well said. That’s well said. Thank you. Yeah. It’s, I’ve been doing the circling practice recently. I took a workshop a couple of weeks ago and it’s really brought me into awareness about how I wasn’t listening. Yeah. Really listening, really being there, really paying attention. And I’m noticing myself sometimes in this conversation, thinking of something to say. And in the past, I would have held onto that thing locked onto it in the same way that lose presence and then not listen to the rest of it and then jump back. And then it’s like this weird wonky, like getting back to the thing. Yeah. Whereas when I let myself let that go, if it was important, it comes right back. Yes. And if it wasn’t, it’s gone. It’s okay. The new thing will be more affording to you because it’s in this present moment. Yeah. Learning to trust your trained relevance realization machinery is a very important thing to do. And also just to a second response, circling is an example of what I was talking about before. Circling, you get it into, you get into the flow state, you get into the flow state with other people, but you get it into, you get it within a context in a situation that easily germinates and permeates through your life because it has to do with conversation, personal interaction, encountering other people. Yeah. I think Gysenstock circling is, I think it’s a work of genius. It’s a brilliant psychotechnology that does help to create flow in a way that’s sort of spreads and forms the rest of your life and potentially transforms the rest of your life. So that’s a good example. That’s a good example. And there is, it’s interesting because I can feel it downloading into me slowly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s the, the, what you talk about with the, with the propositional and the participatory, right? I sometimes like, because I’m new to it, I know about it propositionally. I know it in my head. I know what it is to be in that place. Yet sometimes I’ll be in a conversation with my family and because there’s more, we know each other more in that way and you’re more comfortable around your family. You’re more letting, it’s more easy for you to let yourself slip. So there’s a new thing that’s happening. And I’m noticing it now in this context of the self-help world, which is applying things. You’re not, you’re applying things to other people when it comes to love. I don’t love you until you get your act together. I don’t love you. That’s the, that’s the unconscious kind of effects that that has on other people. Right. Right. Right. Right. I’m noticing that flip to, I don’t love you until you listen to me. No, I don’t love you until you’re healed. And I’m like, Oh no, it’s happening again. Right. Right. Right. Right. But that’s okay. Cause it’s the awareness is there right before, but it’s, it’s the same way that these positive forms of course, Oh, and can, can misdirect. They can misfire. Yeah. That’s an excellent connection. I agree with that. That’s a very good connection. Thank you. Yeah. I, I suppose what we’re all looking for is the, well, not all of us, but many of us in this space is the place where it’s not just presence. It’s presence with yourself and openness to the other consistent place. It’s very difficult. Yes. It’s a, it’s a balancing act. Right. It is. It’s that we’re back to that balancing act between individuation and participation again. And I guess the thing that can be helpful to people is the time of this is kind of tricky, but this goes to a lot of the work that I do with Christopher and with, and with guy and with Jordan Holland and Peter Lindberg and is that, that process, that, that dynamical system of sort of reciprocal opening and getting, you know, that, that creative tone-offs between, you know, participating in others and individuating and right. You get to a place where, because people often start using very religious and spiritual language in circling because they start to, they start to get a sense of, of the dynamical system itself. People call it the we space. I sometimes call it the logos. You get a sense of the collect, the, the actively present collective intelligence of the dynamical system as something above and beyond your intelligence plus my intelligence, et cetera. And that, and I’m going to use this word very carefully. I’m going to use it like an Attalic in sense that’s very encouraging. It motivates you, but it also gives you a kind of courage to deal with a lot of the ways in which we have been wounded. And we get into this weird state where we crave an intimacy of relation and we are equally hostile to it and trying to get the encouragement that breaks us out of that is also something that people should look forward to in these kinds of practices. It can help them because initially you’re sort of pushing into the practice. But what will happen is you’ll get a place where it flips and it’s much more that you’re being drawn along by the practice than pushing into it. Yeah. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Looking at that. There’s something really interesting about that phrase, looking forward to it and the courage and how these play into that. Right. And, and I’m imagining this balancing act being on a tightrope in, you know, big long distance down. You do need courage and you do need to look forward to get into the other side. But it’s nerve wracking. And it is within that anxiety. There was something Guy said, it was the capacity to be in a relationship, the capacity to really get someone is to be intimate with yourself in the intimate with them. And he’s better than I do. But, but it was being in anxiety. The capacity to be in the anxiety is what increases the intimacy. Yeah. Is the relation. Because Guy talks a lot about a kind of transformation and it’s, it’s a perspectival and even participatory transformation you have to engage in. So he talks about that anxiety and he’ll often use the term exposure. And think about the person on the high wire and how exposed they feel. Right. Yeah. And then he says, what can happen with good practice in this practice is you can get that shift where you, you go from seeing it as exposure to seeing it as vulnerability. And what he means by that, I think, and I, you know, I’m in regular conversation with Guy. And the way I, I’ve been talking about it recently is that you’re reshaping this space of exposure into, right. Instead of it being sort of a lack or a threat, it is now reconfigured as an open, like as a sensitive receptivity. Right. What you’ve done is it’s like, so what he means is the anxiety can be transformed is if the exposure can be transformed into vulnerability such that you start to appreciate the openings in you, because that’s what exposure is, as actually apertures through which you can sort of see beyond the prison wall of your own ego and potentially see people more as they are, or perhaps if you’ll allow me to extend the metaphor, reach through those gaps and potentially come into a more intimate contact with them. So I think that’s what he means by this process of, you know, if you have good faith engagement in the practice, it will actually transform exposure into vulnerability. And then that will really afford us getting out of this block where we crave intimacy. And it’s also the thing we most fear at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like those holes, right? You’ve got the holes here and the holes in the other person and that you’re picturing it so that the holes match up. They line up. The light goes straight through and you both see people see past each other behind there. You go behind everything that they’re portraying. Yeah. The reality of the person and all the everything that they’ve been through and you go, Oh my God, you are the same as me. You have struggles, grief, all these things. And maybe it’s not that maybe it’s not the same extent, but it feels the same. I think there was a conversation between you and Jordan. Why it’s like Jordan said, I don’t know your grief, but I know grief. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Another image, very analogous to the one you just used is getting the two mirrors and the mirrors are open, right? Got to get them so that they are properly aligned. And then you get the infinities going in both directions because of that resonance. Yeah. And then the thing about it, if you’ll allow me that metaphor, it’s also in your beam of light, is that not only discloses the two people in depth, it discloses the depth of being itself. Yeah. Yeah. Discloses the depth of being itself. Yeah. Because it is that place of confusion. Yeah. In front of clarity. Yeah. Yeah. And then you’re like, Oh, everything is clear. And if everything is clear with you and everything is clear with me, then everything must be clear. It helps. It does that. It really does. So one way Chris and I talk about it, Christopher, Master Pietro and I, is there’s the three intimacies in things like circling. You get intimate with yourself. And as you said with Guy, that intimacy with yourself is coupled to the intimacy with the other. And then there’s a third thing. You become both of you together and individually become intimate with the process of intelligibility itself. Yeah. Break that down for me, the process of intelligibility. So what you’re doing is, so for example, when people ask me about dialectic and the elogos, one of the ways I talk about it is we get into that right relationship, that dynamical coupling, so that you get to a place you couldn’t get to on your own. And I get to a place where I couldn’t get to on my own. And what that does is we have sort of coupled insight machinery going like this. And of course, that opens you up, it opens me up, but insight that you also act as a mirror for me and I act as a mirror for you. We’re also seeing the process itself reflected in the other person and we’re reflecting it to each other. So we’ve become more and more aware of how this meaning making is working and the levels and the complexity. And we get an increasing sense, an explicit focal awareness of the sense of it, of the presence of it. And then we start to feel an intimacy with that process, not just with ourselves and with each other. Yeah. And the words that have been coming to my mind, I’m seeing them, confusion is one. And it’s interesting that that is a repeating thing. But within that and behind that, again, the clarity behind that, with reality itself, you’re seeing reality itself, you’re seeing the flow, you’re seeing the way we can couple together. Yeah. And it’s not in your mind, it’s somewhere else. And it completely, the confusion just evaporates. Yeah. Because you’re out of that place and you’re into this, you’re into the engagement. Exactly. You’re not confused anymore, right? Things have been pulled apart into proper relation so that they light each other up to pick up on your light metaphor. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the, well, it’s easy for me to go, that is the answer to what I’m looking for. Yeah, I think that’s a little too simple. Yeah. It is a little too simple. And that doesn’t need to be an answer around it, because it’s a continual. But the way I would put it is the way we were talking about earlier, right? You want to be able to get that in a way that germinates and permeates through your life. So perennial patterns and idiosyncratic patterns of self-deception and self-destruction are ameliorated. And your ability to connect yourself to the world and to other people is afforded. I mean, so you, right? It’s the answer if it is wisely cultivated into an awakening, right? As opposed to just gathering these sort of wonderful experiences. But like I said, they have to be wisely curated and cultivated so that they permeate into an awakening experience in which you’re getting sort of freedom from and healed from, right? So there’s this sort of retrospective therapeutic aspect. You’re getting freedom from and healing from the ways those self-deceptive, self-destructive patterns have cut you and wound you and cut you off. And then you also get a prospective affordance of aspiration, how you can connect to a more virtuous self in a more meaningful, deeper world. Yeah, the pieces of the pie, whether they be nutrition and exercise and therapy and work and social life and intimacy and all these things, they stop being individual parts of your life and they start coming together. Like the planets coming together kind of thing. And in that, the clarity isn’t this is the answer you were looking for and now listen to this and you will be fine. It’s stay here. Yeah, very much. Like when Jordan and I are talking about the idea of the sacred as a continuity of contact with reality is an inexhaustible source of new intelligibility, new connection, et cetera. Yes. Yeah, staying, balancing, staying on that line. Yeah. Okay. So let’s say you’ve got someone now who is in the position that I was in, who’s who but sees this, but they don’t, it’s not clear. They just have a feeling, right? That’s something that they can get to this space and that when they do, things will usually work out. The alignment within will probably align outside. And I think within your experience and mine, that is what tends to happen. Yes. So if they have been wounded and they have been damaged by culture and things have have put them in this place where they are, the planets are all over the place and the holes don’t line up with anyone. What do they do? Cultivate an ecology of practices that has at least three pivotal poles to it. One is pro you know, practices of self-correction, not in the self-help sense, but in the sense of becoming intimately aware of your patterns of self-deceptive behavior. You need to have practices of healing that are designed to explicitly get you to engage with the ways you’ve been wounded and bring about, well, healing, bring about a reintegration or bring about a restructuring, you know, different therapeutic modalities have different language and I don’t want to privilege anyone, but you want a self-correcting, but also, right, but again, I’m not quite happy with that word because it sounds puritanical, but I mean in the sense of something that really affords you becoming aware of self-deceptive patterns, you want the healing pole, the therapeutic, and then you want an aspirational set of practices, practices that are designed to afford you self in self-transcendence, afford you enhancing meaning in life, enhancing connectedness, and you want to get them in complementary relationships with each other, checks and balances. Don’t worry about your belief system right now, I mean don’t adopt weird conspiracy theories or anything like that because, right, concentrate more on the perspectival participatory changes and then, you know, read the philosophy broadly construed, but try and read good stuff that helps with that continuity of contact, helps you to get to the place where you’re not so much pushing into your ecologies of practices as you are being drawn into them and they are unfolding around you. Yes, yes. Wow, okay, so within that place, there’s, so the most recently, my most recent circling event was a Thursday, and the insight I came to was that I had seen this, seen that I was pushing, pushing, pushing, and in that place, I’d gone, oh my god, this is exhausting, I’m putting myself together and I’m finding all these wounds, I’m finding all these things that I’m trying to heal and it is exhausting. Sometimes it’s okay to just sit on the side of the road and look back at all the progress you’ve made. You should, you should. Yeah. When I’m teaching people, you know, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, you definitely need the Dharma, you need the teaching, and you need the Sangha, you need the community, but you also need the Buddha, you need to celebrate, recognize, and you got to do this very balanced, yes, you can get into narcissism, right, you have to sort of, the middle path between narcissism and being puritanical, you have to, and this is the metaphor that I use, it’s a Buddhist metaphor, you have to befriend yourself, you have to befriend, how would you relate to a beloved friend, right, you don’t inflate them, and, but you’re not puritanical with them, you try to get them into right relationship with themselves, right, you’re doing the same thing with yourself, and what you want to do is the Buddha part, and I’m not trying to make anybody a Buddhist, I’m not trying to make anybody a Buddhist, right, but what that means is those, you know, remember and encourage yourself with those moments where your Buddha nature, or maybe it’s the Christ within you, or you’re the sage within, whichever works for you, because I’m not committed to one of these having exclusive claims, theoretical claims, right, you celebrate it and you realize it in both senses, you become aware of it, and you also help to actualize it, make it a more real factor within, you know, your psyche, yes, you need to do that, you need to, and we do this, like, you know, you think about in religious ritual, we have times where we just properly celebrate those things in our life that are supporting us and guiding us, the moments, another metaphor that’s used in the Buddhist tradition is you’re watering your little Buddha, it’s like you have these seeds and you don’t overwater them because you’ll kill them, but you don’t underwater them or you’ll kill them, you water them appropriately because you’re trying to grow that, because you’re trying to grow into, and that’s what I mean by the aspirational pole, you have to understand that sometimes stepping back and watering your Buddha is as important to your aspiration as trying to take the next step on the journey. Yes, yes, stepping back and watering your Buddha, that is a great way to put it, wow, yeah, and it’s, what I noticed is that there was a flip, there was a flip in, okay, let’s celebrate a little bit too much, and it’s like, okay, and then we’re back on the pole, we’re back into the balance, yeah, exactly, yeah, and it’s good though, whereas in the past it used to be, oh no, I’ve fallen off the path, right, that there’s a real importance in the fact that they’re falling off of the path is the very thing that gets you back onto it. Exactly, this is a very complex dynamical skill, and you know, this is why Tai Chi Chuan and other things, or riding a bike, or a rider, like you have to learn it, you have to weave between until you pick up that very, very, you know, that very sensitive sense of finesse that means you closer and closer, right, into, but even when we’re walking around, bipedal organisms, you know, we’re perpetually falling, even when we think we’re standing, it’s just that our cerebellum and our have picked up how to do this on, that’s why when people get damaged and they have to go through rehab, it’s actually a challenge, it’s actually a challenge, or if you have a child and you watch them trying to take their first steps, and it’s like, how are they ever going to stand, right, okay, like it’s, they’re just going to fall over no matter what. Oh, why standing? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there’s this, and there’s the, I think it’s defined by being, this being lost, this restricted, what my video is about, it’s defined by permanently trying to fix your posture, where you’re going inside yourself, and you’re going, oh, my back isn’t perfectly aligned, and my shoulders aren’t back, and I need to be sitting, and in going into that place, I lose you, and I’m back into me, and I’m restricting myself, and I’m perfectly trying to sit properly, whereas if I’m really engaged in the conversation, I might come down, and I might not have good posture, I relax into it. When I’m teaching people meditation, and I’m teaching them posture, I don’t tell them to take it, I actually had them go through this exercise, where they close their eyes and feel themselves forward and back, and they slowly come in until they feel aligned with gravity, and then they can relax into it. That’s how I teach them to find their posture. That’s a great, I’m going to do that from now on. That is, that’s a fantastic way of looking at it, because otherwise it is that idea of, I know where I’m going, yes, I’m going to plop myself into it, and then I’m going to be enlightened. I talk about people, I use the language of finding your center, rather than making your center. Yeah, find your center. Yeah, I get people to do this way. So if you go on like meditating with John Verbeke, lesson one, this way, then this axis, and how to, yeah, how to find your center. Because I made this video a couple, couple weeks back, where I asked people, and it’s all within this theme, do we make life happen, or do we let life happen? And it’s, you find your center, you find life happening. Yeah, exactly. You discover life happening, and it’s a mixture of both. That’s why I’ve been trying to really resurrect, and I got this from Philip Carey in his book on Augustine, this Latin word inventio, which means to simultaneously to discover and to make. And we don’t have an English equivalent, but the Latin word is perfect, inventio. Inventio, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard you use that one a couple times. Yeah. All right, well, well, this was a wonderful talk. I’ll give you a little bit of time to get ready for your meeting. And yeah, just give you any any last words. What would you like to finish this with? Just again, gratitude to you. I mean, first of all, this was wonderful. Hopefully, we can do it again at some point. Yeah, me too. And again, I’m glad I got to know you more, and I can get a sense, like I can more deeply appreciate the good work you’re doing and putting together the shorts and the thumbnails. And just thank you for that. That’s what I would like to end on. Thank you. Thank you, John. I was struggling in coming into this, how much to thank you, how much to show gratitude, because this whole finding your work and doing these clips has been the education that I’ve been missing. It’s been a really fascinating way of using my time to be educated, to learn while not being in any school. So thank you for that. And I couldn’t, you know, maybe I can craft find a bunch of professors all over the place and craft my own little school. I’m glad my work has been helpful to you like that. I wish you good luck in your search. Yeah, and to you to you too. So all right. Great talking to you. And I will maybe we can do this again. Take good care. Bye bye. Take care. For sure. We’ll do it again. Bye bye. Bye bye.