https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=V-30yuhSPV0
The other practice is specifically oriented towards the learned ignorance that we’ve been talking about in this episode. This is a practice that I call the humble wonder practice. Humility and wonder were both central and integral to the Socratic practices, especially the practice of learned ignorance. How does this practice work? I recommend first centering and rooting and doing two or three minutes of basic meditation. Then bring your awareness to your heart area. You can put your hands on your heart. I won’t put them right there because I don’t want to screw up my mic. Then I say as mindfully, and you’ve been cultivating mindfulness now, I say as mindfully as I can. There is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts. There is so much you do not know about your mind, your psyche, your body. The amount of information available to you is combinatorially explosive. But instead of keeping it as a safe, propositional thing you store over here, you’re realizing it. There is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts. If you want to add all the facts about myself, feel fine. Feel free to do so. Next. There is so much I shall never know about myself because of all of the fate. Fate? What do you mean by fate, John? I don’t mean your cosmic destiny or something written down. I mean fate in the sense that it’s in the word fatal. You were born at a particular time, in a particular place. You’re exposed to particular people, to particular events, none of which you have control over, and they deeply shape you. If you do not acknowledge your fate in that sense, your inherent finitude, then your capacity for really realizing your self-knowledge is truncated and hamstrung. There is so much I shall never know about myself because of all of the fate. Next, and they’re all F’s to help you remember. There is so much I refuse to see about myself because of all of my foolishness. All the processes that make us adaptively intelligent, make us perennially, and sometimes pervasively, beset by self-deception. How often? Be honest. Really honest. Please. How often do you really, not in thought or in belief, but actually in perspective, and in how you participate in your identity, how often do you actually challenge your egocentrism and the way it might be biasing you? Igor Grossman found, he asked people to describe a really hard problem they’re involved in. They inevitably describe it from the first-person perspective without thinking, automatic framing. And then if you say to them, and think about Socrates here, questioning people, if you say to them, well, can you re-describe that problem from a third-person perspective, how your friend might see it and describe it? And when people do this, they inevitably have an insight. They realize, oh, I didn’t see this. I didn’t realize that. You know that what I’m saying is true. Think about how wise you are about other people’s problems. Don’t you realize it, Jim? You’re doing that same self-destructive pattern in your romantic life. I can see it so clearly. And Jim is like, I don’t really see it. And you think, ha ha ha ha. But then the roles are reversed. And Jim is saying to you, hey, you’re doing that thing you do with relationship to your career. You’re doing it again. Don’t you see? You go, I don’t really see it. You know that. Part of what we’re going to learn in these Socratic practices is how to be Socrates for yourself. And that’s inexorably bound up with how can we be Socrates to each other. Okay, so back first. Let’s review. There is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts. Realize it. Don’t just state it. Live it. There is so much I shall never know about myself because of all of the fate. Realize it. Become into deep awareness. Make it real. There is so much I refuse to see because of all of my foolishness. Realize it. And then there is so much I’m unable to see about myself because of all of my faults. You’re probably saying, oh, this is a real downer. Stick with it. Stay with me. It doesn’t end that way. Then you can turn your hands outward like this. We go through the same procedure. There is so much I don’t know about the world because of all of the facts. There is so much I shall never know about the world because of all of the fate. There is so much I refuse to see about the world because of all of my foolishness. There is so much I am unable to see about the world because of all of my faults. Then relax your hands back down to your meditation. And here is now where it flips. We did the humility. And if it was just humility, it could be humiliating. But it’s not just the humility. Now, as I inhale, both inwardly and outwardly, I experience wonder. Not curiosity, where I’m trying to find missing information. We’ll talk more about this. But wonder, where I’m able to call the world and myself into question, but in a way that is positive, that is enriching, that is growing me. As I inhale, I wonder into the center of my mind, outward to the circumference of the world. Inhaling, wondering, and then exhaling, receiving, receiving, being open to receiving from the world and receiving from the depths of my psyche, the depths of the world and the depths of the psyche, receiving, inhaling, wonder, wandering inward, wandering outward. Exhale, receiving, and then exhaling. Exhale, receiving, receiving from the depths of the psyche, receiving from the depths of the world. Do that practice with the breath. At least four times. You may want to do it longer, until you get the sense of the wonder and the receptivity actually interpenetrating, mutually affording and enriching each other, so that you have wonder-filled receptivity, wonderful, wonderful receptivity. You have a profound humility, but a transcendent wonder. And that is the humble wonder practice. I recommend still doing your basic meditation practice, centering and rooting, and then do this practice, both sides of it, the humility practice and the wonder side, and that usually only takes about five to ten minutes. I would say, try to give a little bit off the meditation if you really want to limit yourself to staying under 25 minutes in total, but try it. See if it goes to full length. And it doesn’t bother you if it takes maybe 25 minutes. And you may be saying, John, you’re going to add all these practices and I’m not going to have time for them. I bet you do. Take out your phone. How much screen time have you put in today? How much did it actually make you wiser? How much did it actually make you more virtuous, connect you to yourself, to other people, to the world? How much? I bet a significant portion of it, maybe even most of it, was wasted time. How about fasting a little bit from your phone so that you can feed more from the fount of wisdom? As always, thank you very much for your time and attention.