https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lKHgUkTH5zI
Welcome everyone to Voices with Verveki and I’m joined again by Ken Lowry and it’s great to see you again, Ken. I’m really patient of previous conversation. And so Ken, I propose to be for this discussion that we pick up basically with the last discussion left off. I’ll put the link in the video. I left Ken with the question. It was intended socratically. It wasn’t intended to be hurtful or anything like that. And Ken, before we turn the camera on, said that had become sort of a kairos for him. And I’m really interested then in what happened and what ensued and just picking that thread up and letting him weave with it for a bit. And so I’m just going to welcome Ken and start however you wish to start. Awesome. Thank you. Stoked to be here again. It’s been pretty wonderful to engage with some new people who have come my way as a result of our last conversation. So excellent. Excellent. Yeah, it’s been really, really fruitful, I think. But yeah, so maybe before I start actually talking about that question, one of the things that in our last conversation I felt I got muddled up in was this kind of it’s very easy for me to turn on kind of an apologetic aspect of Christianity. And I think that like the spirit of that took me over a little bit, which was interesting. It was interesting to feel that because that wasn’t really where I was trying to go. So I don’t want my journey from your question. I took it very socratically. I just took it as, OK, where can I go with this? So any of my thoughts and wherever we go from here is not intended to be a defense of any position. It’s more just here’s the journey that I went on from there. Excellent. Excellent. I’m more interested in that. Interested. I don’t want back of the cereal box apologetics. So I’m interested, though, in ways in which you think you have been transformed towards understanding or wisdom or virtue. So let’s let’s frame it that way. And then let’s let’s let’s begin. Cool. So the my first response to that question was. A little bit of surprise that I hadn’t it hadn’t caused me more issue before. Maybe we should say what the question was again, too. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I basically asked you to reflect upon the words of Jesus on the cross as my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I find that and the fact that it’s an Aramaic probably is really good evidence. And the fact that it’s so disturbing that is probably historically real or authentic. And I also find it to be profoundly in character with how. I sort of see Jesus in the Gospels as not speaking, Pat, things or rehearsing state doctrine, but speaking deeply from within to deeply whatever the situation is. And yet I would take it that. If we take what he’s saying deeply and seriously, it would be problematic to many sort of standard presentations of Christology. So that’s but again, I didn’t we were at the end of the conversation and we had built up rapport. I wouldn’t start a conversation that way because that’s just violent. But instead, I was pointing out so practically, I wanted to hear how somebody who is thoughtfully reflecting on the Christian journey in the way you were. Was confronting that that was the way I posed it, I posed it to you much more existentially, at least that was my intent and my aspiration. OK, wonderful, because that’s very much how it unfolded for me, because I would say that if there was a good way to. Characterize what has become, I don’t know, maybe a mode of being for me is to try to take narrative framework and whatever I can understand from reality on the side of science and all these other things and find how it all fits together in my day to day life. So so for me, I grew up in the Christian story, but, you know, at. Various levels of depth of understanding of it, and thus I kind of that created a sense of separation for me and then. Other things started to afford a sense of reconnection. Jordan Peterson’s work was a big one and then Jonathan Pazios and yours. And so as that started to happen, I would move away from the Christian, what I understood of the Christian narrative and I would move into something much more akin to Buddhism. Mindfulness was has been an incredibly powerful. Yes, I would say fundamental aspect of my journey and. I would go into places and fully let go of the Christian mythos and was a lot more and was allowing it to go away. And then I would turn around and it was behind me again. So that’s kind of been my journey. And so with this question, I I first posed it to I mean, I posted to friends and things, but I also put it in a Q&A for Jonathan Pazio and he referenced the song, Psalm 22 mostly and said, well, you kind of have to get the whole picture of the Jesus thing to get this. And so I looked at Psalm 22 for a while and I found some really fruitful things in there, but I was trying to map it onto my life. Like, what is Jesus saying? Like one of the central ways I look at it is if the lens that Christ is within me is fundamental to the Christian mythos. And so the story of Christ, like there’s the way in which he’s archetypically the ideal man, right, that that kind of union and and Peterson argument. But I think there’s a way that it’s deeper than that, that there’s some kind of constitutive element within me that corresponds to whatever is being presented in this narrative of the whole of Christianity, because I essentially see it as a narrative that. Explains the way in which I engage with reality, if I see it from the perspective. That it’s in my day to day life, OK, I’ve got. I think I feel like I’m packaging data really tight there, so I’m not sure if I’m communicating very well, but do you understand what I’m saying so far? I don’t want to I don’t want to interrupt yet. I think it’d be premature. I want you to say more. I think I’m following the thread. And if I think it goes in a direction I didn’t foresee, then I’ll interrupt. Yeah. OK, awesome. So I have a couple of good friends that I’ve made via Twitter and we did a couple of conversations that we recorded and put on my YouTube channel. And I use this question a few times, kind of getting it around this issue of how the claim that the one becomes an individual and then somehow becomes the one again. And this kind of. Like like the the the through line where the fractal pattern of reality inverts, right, something like that is what started to come up in this sense of like when when Jesus, if Jesus is who the Christians are claiming him to be. And he and he and he is this perfect joining of of God himself and and the one that is beyond the field of nothingness, as it were. Yes, to to the really real material instantiation of the human individual as. Whatever, you know, binding together of reality, we live at any any any fully comes together, but doesn’t get confused and then somehow like in this moment maybe separates and then inverts himself and comes back like I’m not sure. But there’s I’m not sure if that’s what Jesus is is talking about when he’s when he says, my God, my God, where have you forsaken me? That it’s the point at which the two because some separation had to happen for Jesus to die. Like the separation of the material body that is the self, as far as we understand it, has to be disconnected from reality enough to die. But you like if it’s really God, that can’t be fully disconnected. So something like that, does that am I making sense? I I think so. First of all, yeah, the death, you the death has to be a real death or else the the the the resurrection of the body is doesn’t make any sense within Christianity. So it’s like you can’t say, well, Jesus body died and his spirit lived on or something like that, because I think that’s actually very problematic. That problematizes the resurrection, at least as I understand it, because there is great pains taken in the gospel to indicate that Jesus wasn’t a ghost or a spirit, that he was fully embodied and that had been resurrected in some fashion. So I take that point to be important. What I maybe I could get a little bit more clarity from you if I ask this question. What you’ve given me is kind of an ontological statement about sort of the logos and embodiment and then write and somehow there’s emanation and then return, which is part of sort of the whole the whole nepotism framework. But I guess I want to ask this question again, right. And it’s like, yeah, but what’s his psychological existential state when he makes the statement? Is he suffering? Is he agony? Is he feeling alienated from God? Is he unsure about what’s happening? Because I hear all of that in what he’s saying, because taking any of those things makes it a pretentious act on his part, especially to be quoting the Psalms, to doing that and not feeling the anguish of the psalmist. Of course, the psalm ends hopefully, and maybe that’s also in Jesus’s mind. And of course, that’s why Jonathan is referring to it. But I guess that’s what I want to know. I want to know, because I hear that in what he’s saying. And for me. I’ll just put my cards on the table, just because we should be having a really honest conversation here, so it could become the logos for me. That’s where I can understand Jesus as an enlightened being and even a being who has gone through an extraordinary transformation and reveals potentialities for human beings that were hitherto unavailable. He’s able to create a, is able not to create, he’s able to afford provocations towards wisdom and transformation and just a profound way around people around him. So I don’t think of him as just sort of a man. I think of him like Socrates or the Buddha. And all of that can happen, can be the case, and he can still experience this sense of anguish and alienation and a fundamental, like, I don’t know what’s happening, what’s going on here. I’m confused. Because if he is God incarnate, I don’t understand that. So for me, that’s why I brought it up. I’m not asking you or even trying to trap you into agreeing with you. I’m trying to say, for me, it becomes a pivot point. And I find, because I try, I’ve read the Bible multiple times and I try to read the Bible really open-hearted, try to do even less, you know, on parts of it. And of course, I’ve let many people talk to me about it. And so that, for me, that’s a Kairos point for me. For me, like, I want to be true to what’s happened. Well, sorry, to my mind, I want to be true to what I see is happening in him, in that story, authentically and deeply, even if he’s citing the Psalms, because I think even, right, precisely because he, you cite this, you cite that song because you’re in this state, right? And for me, I can, that’s where I say that doesn’t make sense to me if he is God incarnate. It makes sense to me that he’s enlightened. It makes sense to me that he might be, you know, the perfect image of the invisible God, as the New Testament says. He may have embodied the logos, and the logos has to be embodied. And if that’s what you mean by incarnation, maybe he did it in a profound way, which other human beings have. All of that, I am fine with, and I can, because I can even find a lot of biblical support for it, I suppose. But I know what I’m saying is also deeply heretical, like it’s heretical in a profound way. And so that’s where people often ask me, well, John, why don’t you just become a Christian? You know, this is not the only reason, part of it’s, I think, reasons that have to do with trauma, which are not, in a sense, are not epistemologically justified. But there’s also these, which is, well, I’m being true to a, what I think is a deeply authentic reading of a pivotal passage, and it’s not in there by coincidence, and it’s marked because he speaks Aramaic, right? It is a real, like, take this to be really real, is being indicated by the format of the text, and I do, and then that’s how it falls out for me. That’s how it falls out. I can’t come up with a non-heretical response. And so I’m just trying to be honest about how it’s affecting me. And so that all being said, so you know where I’m coming from, I’m trying to be transparent. Like, what do you think? I get the ontological move. You’re trying to say there has to, if it’s going to go down and come back up, there has to be this turning point. And I think that’s very, very, I think that’s very good. I think there’s something right there, but it doesn’t still touch on this dimension that was behind my question when I was asking it sympathically. There’s this existential psychological dimension that is still reverberating in me. Sorry, that was a long speech, but I was really trying to frame where, how I’m trying to be probative with you. Yeah. Yeah, no, thank you. That was amazing. And I’ve been looking at that exact topography, you might say, for a while now. And I don’t know what to make of it, frankly. Right? I don’t know what to make of it, really. I can go a lot of different places in it. And I can kind of, I don’t know, I feel as if I can gesture towards things occasionally. But I don’t have a sense of it, really. I can’t, I don’t think I can really speak words around that that will not be less true than they are, less than 50% true, even as I say them, maybe. Yeah. So maybe, so let’s talk about maybe the existential aspect of it. Because for me, the journey to that was deeply existential. Right. Because I started to see, I started to see the ways in which, the ways in which there were all these levels of patterns in my life that the more I started to, oh man, I’m going to say this, the more I started to map the patterns that I was seeing in pursuing this question. Because this is like this deep ontological question, right? Like you’re, you’re like on this, it’s like you’re traversing from mountain peaks. And from there, you can just see so many things. And so one of the things that I started to see was the way in which the patterns of my life, as I started to orient them correctly or allow for integration within the patterns of my life, whether it’s my specific relationships or my routines in my day or the way I speak, like in my thoughts even, right? If I’m very honest in my thoughts, if I’m very straightforward and transparent, if I can channel this thing, like whatever this spirit of God thing is, I’m going to try to channel that through. And so let me say it this way. I like that I’m here and I’m really listening with a very open heart, a very open mind. I want you to take your time. There’s no judgment on my part. I really want you to give your best in the sense of the most authentic and articulate answer you can. So please just like go at the pace you need to go in order for this to unfold from you. Okay. So I had to, every step I took on the journey was a step down through the layers of what I mean when I talk about the self or what we mean when we talk about the self. I watched the elusive eye. Like that was elusive. It was unbelievably helpful in doing some of this work of looking at, so everywhere I seemed to find virtual engines. And when you change the virtual engine at whatever level you’re looking at, of affording constraint and selective constraint, and you look at, you just try to analyze maybe what those are and pattern them in a way that they seem to work so they’re adaptive. And you do that through layers. I started to peel away. And what I came down to at the bottom is that there’s this sense in which this word agape, where you have the level below providing space for the level above. That is a space that’s dependent on the level below. So it’s in no way, the thing that is held up is in no way, like the space which it inhabits is in no way dependent on itself. And it receives this like energy of agape as it were. Yes. And the receipt of that is grace. Okay. And it experiences that grace. And then the grace is like fuel or gasoline for this thing we call faith, which is the ability to something like release your relevance realization in order to dynamically adapt properly. Yes. Through the environment that you’re in. Yes. Yes. And as you do that, like that faith allows you to see higher levels of patterns. Yeah. Jonathan’s bang on about this, I think. Yes. And then the higher patterns, the higher the pattern you can see of whatever thing you’re looking at, the more beautiful it is. And so that now you can see the beautiful and you can look through the beautiful and you can see the good. Yes. Yes. And the point at which all the goods come together. Yes. Yeah. That through line of the goods. Yes. That’s like the logos. That’s like. I, yes, I agree with all of this very, very deeply. So that’s, we can jump off anywhere from there, but that’s kind of, if I could sum up the existential, like if you can translate that into kind of an existential sense of moving upwards of the level of the self from the point of awareness in that way, that’s kind of. Yeah, there’s two things. There’s two ways in which you’re responding to my question. And both of them are important and legitimate. One is there might be some content in what you’re saying that maps on to sort of the ontology of orthodoxy in some way. And we can explore that. But before we do that, there’s this other thing you did that I found really, really important. You said, well, my response to this wasn’t to come up with an argument or a theory. My response was to let this, this, I don’t know what to call it, this provocative myth. And I mean, myth in a neutral sense, right? Mythos, just like, like, you know, in Zen, they talk about the Cohen as the ball of iron that you swallow and it just burns all the way down until the bottom falls out. And then when the bottom falls out, you actually reconnect. And so you took this and I’m stretching things a little, but it’s not too far because Jesus spoke in parables and parables are to narrative what Cohen’s are to questions. You sort of turned it almost like into a Cohen and it just sort of burned its way through you. And you’ve got you had all kinds of realizations about sort of the layers of the self and reality. Is that a fair thing to say? Yeah, absolutely. So I just want to stop and savor that because that’s a profound way. And I mean, it’s complimentary. I don’t mean I’m not trying to do something. That’s a profound way of responding without answering. If you know what I mean, you didn’t answer, you didn’t say, well, here’s your problem. And then here’s how I can manipulate propositions such that the problem is now alleviated. You said, here’s my existential response and here’s what it did for me. And here’s how it opened things up for me. And that’s why and perhaps this was implicit. Well, and if I can really quickly, like I can like that exactly is what I think the core of Christianity is about. Ah, that’s like, that’s what I wanted to ask. Yeah, like you don’t approach anything in reality with a desire to answer a question. You don’t approach any question with the desire of reaching a totalizing explanation. You approach everything, every, every thought, every, every aspect of reality that comes up to you, you just you relate to it. And and you can you can build beautiful propositions. And I mean, you can do whatever you want with them. But it’s not until you try to hold on to them and and make them a specific thing like. Yeah. Okay. So this great, great tyranny of the proposition. Right. Right. Yeah, I get it. You’re burning below the propositional. You’re you’re experiencing liberation from it. You’re also transforming, right? How you’re participating in your very selfhood and how you’re participating in reality. I get that. And then you and then you’re making this additional claim that treating the story in that way. Such that it. You know, just rocks through you and opens you up. That’s actually for you, the Christian message. Yeah. And this is and I would take it like I don’t I’m not going to stand on any ground because I don’t have to stand on. But I would I would submit that there’s a real argument to be made that to the degree that Christianity has been untrue to itself and to the degree that it has. Failed us and been seen as untrue. Not that it has totally, but in ways it has because we are where we are and that’s not the Christian goal. Right. And the Christians held sway, but to the degree that we are where we are. In our religious sense that way, it is because the church has engaged in the tyranny of the proposition. Right, right, right, right, right. Because I mean, one of the things like one of the aspects of my job is to be a Christian and my journey is like. There’s a way there’s a way in which Christianity for me wasn’t real until I engaged with your work. So that says something to me that says, OK, if Christianity has become a realized in my life as a consequence of your work and your work is deeply genuine and it’s deeply authentic and it’s deeply. It’s not trying to sell anything, right? You’re trying to take you’re trying really trying to pursue the truth and you do it well. And if that is the case, right, the comment you made in the conversation with Jonathan on rebel wisdom where he said, really, I’m a lover of the good, true, the beautiful. Right. And you’re really pursuing that. And it’s like, OK, if that’s not like if that doesn’t count for the thing. That we’re all trying to get at and it’s the entirety of the message. What are we doing? Because it’s not like our whole propositional structure rests on a structure of. Of functioning that’s that’s deeper than it, right? Like our participation in the world is deeper than our ability to put it into propositions. Just by nature of the thing, you can’t condense it like that. First of all, before we go on, I just want to say that this is a profound response and I’m glad I’m glad we’re talking. I. I. I. First of all, I agree with everything you’re saying and thank you for what you said about my work. I hope and aspire and commit myself to trying to. Practice that way and I. All the people who consider themselves my friends to keep me true to that. I. I’m wondering them. I think what you said is profound for me. I’ll respond now. This is not an argument. It’s a response. For me, that drops below Christianity. It drops right. It can like it. Here’s Christianity and Neoplatonism and Buddhism. It drops below because right. The Co on right or in Neoplatonism various practices that do the same thing. And so for me, we’re getting at something that’s. I almost want this isn’t quite the right word, but I’m asking for you to follow with me charitably as I try to use it. It’s sort of trans religious. I don’t mean perennial like all the religions are saying the same thing. I don’t mean that. I mean something like that. Yeah, but. The maybe all all the religions in their depth. They sort of they bottom out in like they drop in some way. I’m really struggling here, Ken, but you’re nodding. So you at least we’re resonating about this struggle. Now I’m wondering. I don’t know. And so I’m asking a question. Is that the case for you or do you still feel that what we’re what we’re talking about here? And and I can see how it could be the case. So I’m not trying to prejudice by the way, framing the question. Do you still feel that that? Living that still allows you to have proper allegiance to Christianity. I mean, that’s a really challenging question. And so if you I don’t like I really don’t want to box you in or trap you. If you if you just want to resist or say, no, I don’t want to go there. That’s fine. But I don’t know. Yeah, this is this is this is the right question, I think, because. The question is, can you participate in the thing and not be trapped by it? Yeah, yeah, yes. Because because really what I’m getting at is that Christianity is a story that points us towards the real thing. Yes, yeah. And and. When you get too stuck in the story, aka the propositions or whatever. You can’t see through it. And you and so this is I mean. I don’t I mean, I don’t know how to evaluate the kind of the question of how am I able to participate with it, because the strange thing is like all the Christians have all kinds of different ways in which they perceive participating Christianity. So it’s like, I don’t know what is that what that means. But I mean, I go to church occasionally, not very often. And the reason for that is actually because. And the reason for that is actually because I have found many times in the journey that I’ve become trapped again by the thing. On account of going to church. Right. So so there’s a way in which I had to I had to not go to church in order to be a Christian. Oh, wow, that’s interesting. I wonder what Jonathan would say to that. Yeah, I mean. I know that’s a big claim, but like overall, I’m making the claim that you this if for this thing to be true, it has to point to a level of reality that transcends the words fundamentally on every level. And you can’t and and therefore, if you’re stuck in the words in the propositions, if you’re. You’re not doing it right. Like, it’s not it’s not realized for you. And I’m not saying the church doesn’t do that. There’s a lot of the church that does it. But for me, the way I had internalized Christianity, it was so propositional. And the propositional was disconnected from my own participation. I’m not saying I’m not saying don’t go to church. Yeah, yeah. Right. Like, I would love to be able to go to church and participate. It’s my problem. It’s my problem because my my triggers, maybe, if you will, or whatever. Will like. It will trigger a defensive posture of myself toward the world. If I if I get hooked in the apologetic kind of nature. Yes. Yeah. On the story. And so, yeah, yeah, in order to in order to hold that at bay. For me, I can’t go to church right now, but it’s not because I don’t think people should go to church or that people who go to church can’t participate offensively. No, that’s just a personal. But I mean, and first of all, yes, and I want to acknowledge that. Hold it up for a moment. Let it remain salient. And I am now also understand your preamble at the beginning of this conversation about I don’t want to do the apologetics thing. That’s even more clear to me now. I get the existential import of it. But you also have said. It’s not just your problem. I mean, I think you’re being very gracious because there’s also implicit. Well, you said it in fact, explicit a few minutes ago, but the Christianity is is often guilty of promoting a kind of propositional auto automaticity and propositional tyranny. And so that also the Christianity, or at least the Christianity you were exposed to also bear some responsibility for the problems you’re facing to be fair to you to be fair to you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that’s been my personal journey. Absolutely. And I think I think it seems very common for a lot of people in the West. Yes. Yes, it has. And this is part of why I would ask people because I get comments. Well, just read the Bible. Right. Or, right. Or, you know, just believe and it’s and it’s like. And so, you know, and I’m not saying this is all these are all trolls of this. Some of them, it’s being expressed with affection and respect. And first of all, I want to acknowledge that again, hold that, let it be acknowledged. But on the other hand, it’s like, but if that was all there is to it, like there’s why so many people feel trapped in exactly the way you’re expressing it. And I mean, I think. I think that question really needs to be answered. And this is really interesting for some for me, somehow those two questions, that question and what’s going on in Jesus when he says, my God, my God, why you forsaken me. Those questions are deeply connected in a way I can only intuit right now. I don’t know if that’s coming through for you, too. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, maybe that maybe part of that was precisely to make a space for this within Christianity. I don’t know. Well, so there’s this would be this is a bit of a tangent journey, but it’s one I’ve been going on recently. If you want to go on it. Sure. Well, I want to ask you one thing. Can we put. Sure. Your journey. Keep it like a moment. Make sure the narratives. Sure. That’s I’m working some some, you know, got. For of realty in your, your, your memory is laid out. Why don’t you just get clear about one thing and maybe actually help on the reflection on the journey. So when you said look through the propositions, there’s two different senses. One is look through them as if they were illusions and they go away, or look through them as if they are a lens. You have to see beyond them, but they help you to see beyond them. I take it you meant the second, but I want to make sure that that’s how you intended. Yeah. Right. It’s not it’s not the realization. Oh, I see through all these propositions. They’re all bullshit. I didn’t think that’s what you were saying. It’s like, I don’t want to just look at them. I want them to be a lens for me that I see beyond it by means of it. I want to make sure that that’s that I understand you correctly. Is that right? Yeah. So that I have my YouTube channel I called climbing on Mount Sophia. And for me, this is kind of what Mount Sophia is, is. The way in which the propositions. Stand in relation to each other. Such that. Such that they lead you upward. Yes. Yes. Yeah. To the higher propositions and. And it’s a strange thing, but it’s like. And this maps there. So there’s a correlation here with the Tower of Babel story. But you have the Tower of Babel, which is essentially the building of this mountain of propositional knowledge on the grounds of the human subject. And then Mount Sophia, as I would call it, because wisdom and that there’s all that. And it is the building of the propositional from the point at which the self is realized to be embedded in the world. So the Tower of Babel is dead and Mount Sophia is alive. Right. You’re in it and what you can do is you can look around and you can shift things. Right. And you just look at them. And if you don’t, and if you see a tension between some ideas and words, right. Like you brought up in this whole question with what is Christ saying on the cross, right. There’s a tension there. And so then you just kind of look around and you go, you follow these. I don’t know, layers, how the conceptual maps stack on top of each other. And you just, you look at the tensions and they resolve something like that. Right. Because it’s a tension, like it’s by means of attention that it operates. Yes, I agree with that. It’s attention to tension. I like the Greek word, tonos for that, because it has a sense of tone, but also tension, but also living and resonance and all music and all that stuff in there. Sure. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yes. So, now I just wanted to get clear on that before you sort of, because it helped me better understand as you now go back to the journey that you were about to unfold. And so also as a caveat to finish that is, I’m not meaning to be disrespectful to the propositional here. Like this is the level at which I see the proposition. That’s precisely why I asked the question. You’re not being dismissive or disrespectful. You’re trying to enter into right relationship to the propositions. That’s exactly what I think how I would put it. Yeah, well, and it’s kind of been self-evidently the case that that’s the right way to do it in some sense, because they’ve all become stronger by means of it. Yes. Right? And that’s kind of like, how else do you know that something is right? Yes. Does it afford you more reality? Does it afford you more life? Excellent. Like, so in some sense, it seems to be right. I don’t know. I agree with that. I think that’s profound. If it’s not affording you more reality, if it’s not affording you more life, then, you know, it’s well, it goes against what Jesus himself promised, which was the abundant life and the peace that passes all understanding. Those two things should be taken also very deeply and very seriously. And yeah, I think if you’re not getting those, then the propositions are becoming idols. Yes, exactly. And that’s exactly why they don’t serve you. Yes. It’s because you have to, like, you stand on top of them. Yes. If you’re not looking through them, you’re somehow standing on top of whatever your little island of reality is in some sense. And then yourself gets isolated from your real experience in the world to the degree that you’ve you’re like, no, I can’t look at that because it has to be this way. And so it limits your ability to integrate data into your life, limits your relevance realization. Like, it’s the move of original sin. Well, that was powerful. I like that. It limits your relevance realization and it’s the move of original sin. I think that’s a powerful connection. It’s a fundamental sort of warping, you’re saying, of your relevance realization that’s going to infect everything else you’re doing in some profound way. Yeah. And you won’t realize it because you think you’re living in the real world. So is this part of what you meant by the journey that you’ve been on? Oh, I mean, this all tied in, but. Yeah. Please. I made you digress for a moment. I want to return things back to you. Oh, I didn’t know if you wanted to go back to what I had mentioned earlier, but if you wanted to pick up on something more there, that’s fine. No, I mean, I think the point, the point about the proper, the ratio religio to propositions, I think that has been well answered. And so that’s why I’m happy to go back to the other point you wanted to develop. Yeah. Well, so there’s a way in which if I allowed the story of Adam and Eve and the creation story to be disconnected from the scientific story. Yes. Yes. So that’s a hard tension point to allow for a lot of Christians because they think it disconnects the truth of the Bible from reality. And so, but I kind of just allowed it to be the case. To be the case. And then that allowed me to kind of like take some of the tools of science and evolution specifically and apply maybe you could say the virtual engine of affording and selective constraints from the lens of the evolution of material. Right. On the Christian story. Oh, that’s interesting. And then map it, map it with that engine. And it’s pretty, that’s a pretty powerful and interesting way of, I mean, Jordan Pearson does this, certainly, but doing it from a perspective of maybe the evolution of consciousness between the primate to the human. Yes. Yes. And it being a narrative form that is compacted, you know, relative to how dense it is from its earliest points. And it kind of like blows up in your face. Does that, so like you start with. Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think it’s not only phylogenetically. I mean, the discussions I’ve had with Greg, Greg and Rikas, it’s also auto genetically. We’re all primates that are becoming persons. And that, and we also move through, you know, we’re not originally self conscious. We’re only conscious and we have to acquire metacognition or develop or cultivate it. And same thing with self consciousness and a sense of self. Yeah, I tend to take that interpretation as being the correct one. And the fact that it’s all around the knowledge of good and evil and it’s about the emergence of a kind of self awareness. That’s what those are even in the story. So we’re not sort of just throwing things out the story. We’re pulling things out, you know, and I don’t think either Jonathan or Paul Vendick, they would resist what you’re doing here as a way of trying to revivify the relevance of that story for you both mythopoetically and existentially. Is that a fair response to what you want? Yeah, I think so. Because I mean, it’s actually been helpful in reading. I’m reading a book now on St. Maximus the Confessor. It’s Hans von Balthasar’s. Yes, yes, yes, I am too. Oh, awesome. It’s a great book. I’m really enjoying it. Yeah, I’m reading his book. I’m reading also his book Love Alone is Credible because he was an influence on DC Schindler who is having a profound influence on me. So I’m trying to understand that lineage. And then there’s a book on St. Maximus I want to read called Ever Moving Repose, which I have, which is supposed to be quite good as well. Sorry, that was just yes. Yes. Okay, so what you know, the sense of a cosmic liturgy, is that what you’re alluding to by bringing in that book? Yeah, yes. And that his lens looking through the lens of Maximus appears very consonant with that understanding of the unfolding of the evolution of consciousnesses, if you will. Yeah, so there’s two things that I think are being foregrounded. One, of course, is the idea that there was multiple levels of reading or interpretation and the literal was maybe first in time, but that was its only priority. There was sort of like the literal, the allegorical. There’s different scales, but there was often you move from the literal to sort of the allegorical, to the moral, to the theological or the spiritual. Like I say, there’s other, but that’s one of the common things. And that’s clearly the case in Maximus. And that was taken from, and it was basically taken from Neoplatonism. The Greeks were doing this on their own myths and perfecting all of this before Christianity existed, right? And then they were developing all this and it gets taken up. And of course, it gets taken up also within a metaphysical lens of Neoplatonism, which is deeply informing Maximus. So you’re using this ascent of readings to afford the Neoplatonic Anagagia. And there is a deep connection between Anagagia and the ascent in the readings. And so I think that is something that, all right, my Jonathan would be fine with that because he’s Eastern Orthodox. But a lot of Christianity has lost touch with this deep history. And because of that, there might be people watching here who are finding difficult or maybe antithety towards what you’re saying. But I think it’s fair to point out that, you know, no, there are church fathers who are talking in a way very consonant. So I do not think you’re finding yourself consonant with Saint Maximus is some kind of mistake or misapprehension on your part. I think it’s quite possible and probable that it’s totally legitimate and authentic. Yeah, I mean, it seems to resolve tensions. You could say it that way. I’m certainly not right about that in any kind of professional sense. But I think it’s a gesture towards the way in which maybe things actually map. I think it’s right. I made it a practice to try and find philosophers who were prescient and wise about things that I did not know. And then trust them in areas where I did not know. So, you know, Spinoza is really prescient about this and he’s really seeing things. Okay, so maybe I should pay attention to he might be foreseeing or have it the kind of insight that I’m not capable of. And so in that sense, I’ve sort of. That my life on this sort of post nominalist taking it to the next level. And I think that’s the kind of thinking into account science, neoplatonism that I am trying to live deeply informed by Buddhism and Taoism. I toy with calling it Zen neoplatonism. But yeah, that’s where I’ve placed my bets precisely because of the power it has to resonate affordances into existence for me in a way that nothing else does. It allows me to enter into the dialogue that often becomes dialectical and then gives birth to deal logos with people of different faiths and wisdom traditions. And for me, that speaks well of of it as a place that I place my existential bets. So, and in the end, there I don’t think there’s there’s a deeper place from which people I think it’s pretense. To think that you have some sort of a priori justification for your existential stance in your ontology. I’ve read enough pragmatism and postmodernism and post analytic philosophy and continental philosophy and practiced enough within Zen and Taoism and Buddhism and neoplatonism to just I just I don’t I just. It doesn’t grab that proposal just know I find it in the pejorative sense of the word incredible I just know it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t I don’t see it as viable. So I think. I think I resonate with you, I guess, one of the differences is for me, although neoplatonism really makes aspects of Christianity sing and in many ways I prefer Christian neoplatonism over the other. Or pagan neoplatonism. I also find that it does the same thing for me with Islam and Sufism and it does the same for me when I’m talking to like Zevi Slavin about Jewish mysticism and and some of the resonances that other people like DT Suzuki drew between it and Zen Buddhism. And so, for me, I don’t find it lands in one tradition specifically. Yeah, I mean. I think this is a little bit hard to talk about without being confused at what level we’re talking because if we’re talking if we’re not gesturing if we’re not gesturing beyond the propositional then it becomes you know. Like I don’t if if we’re trying to move beyond the propositional. Yes, and move beyond the tyranny of the propositional and move beyond point which and I think I can make quite a good argument that that that. Yeah, that actual functional way in which we we talked about the fall of man in original sense, so put on Christian theology hat and go down to the bottom of Christian theology and make and. You know, you have to start with original sin if you don’t start there the whole thing like it doesn’t make any sense and if you really get real like because my question is always what does that mean right what does it mean for me to commit original sin now. Yes, yes, and I think you can make quite a good case that what it means to commit sin in the original sense of the word point at which all sin enters life. What it means to do that is to arbitrarily place an artificial constraint on my relevance realization. Yes, yes, by the prior by the prioritization of you know. Holding a form of a pattern at the expense of of real data intake that I’m receiving from the world. So I think like, I think we can technically say that that’s what that is and then I think you can technically say that what it means. Like, I think you can trace a line through that ontology of Saint Maximus about Christ that maybe that’s the way in which reality actually gets bound together again, so it doesn’t quite matter exactly how you perceive the narrative because you’re already past the proposition. I totally agree with this and and I think I think I misrepresented what I wanted to say and I think you’re right to point to confusion. I agree with everything you just said and I agree that sort of the I think that sin as the failure to love wisely is always a kind of idolatry. And I think that I deeply agree with that. I guess I guess sorry so let me let me try and shift and put it back into existential mode. Because of course Christianity isn’t just a way of life. That way of life is bound to a homing by committing to a community. That’s what I was talking about right and I was talking about. For me and and I’m not trying to impose anything on you because you are doing some very profound. Like exploration and existential wrestling right. But for me to call myself a Christian without committing to a community is pretentious and inauthentic. And not being true to Christianity and so that’s what I meant when I said. That’s why I used the word allegiance earlier I was trying to get that. So I I’ve said this before I I I it’s. I have loyalties to. Deep loyalties well placed loyalties to Siddhartha and Spinoza and Socrates. And those I I I can’t divorce from them. Because anything I would use to divorce from them would have been given to me by them. And that would be just a way of life. And I think that’s what I was trying to do. I think that’s what I was trying to do. And so that’s what I meant by why I can’t do that. Sure sure sure and I mean I. That’s a whole thing that’s hard for me to make a case on the same level as the case that I just made before. Yes yes and and if you get like again I’m not trying to box you in if you want to say no totally. And I think about it some more and come back again because I want to talk with you again. That’d be well oh yeah are we out of if we’re out of time because. No no no no no no we can talk again we’re not out of time I’m not trying to just sort of close things down. I know like I want I always I know I don’t want people to ever feel trapped I want them to feel their space. Oh totally okay well I mean this is like I don’t know why I don’t go to church to be honest with you. But I don’t so it’s I don’t I don’t I don’t have to hold something here. Like yes I’m not going to be excommunicated from my church for heresy if I say something wrong right now. Right I don’t it’s not it’s not a big deal for me. But there so there’s a way in which you like again the. The the participative tradition has a way of orienting you upward in a pattern like. Johnson’s articulation of the pattern of the things coming together upwards towards God. And through the narrative I think that’s really cool but that’s the ideal of the church right. And the problem that we all have is the existential state of the church obviously. And like you know there’s a lot of people that have very well made the case for how much. Evil has been wrought by the existential church. And that’s I mean it’s a very easy case to make. And so so there’s a tension there you know and straightforwardly so. And I mean like there’s a lot of different ways to come at that. One of my favorite ways to come at that is if you take the evolutionary lens. And put it on the Christian story and then project it forward to the eschaton. You have I mean. I. Eschaton there’s so many different weird things in there but. Like you have this sense in which things. Things supposedly fall apart and then come together and there’s the coming of Christ to Earth and I don’t know what that means. You know I don’t I don’t I don’t know how to take that but. If you do what you do with the rest of the story where you just take it and you map it onto your life and say what would that mean. It’s like if I take all this machinery and drill it down like what does it mean to follow Christ what does it mean to sin what does it mean to like. Oh there’s this way in which if I drill everything down I get these tools that are unbelievably power in my existential state of being. Yes yes yes yes. And so so okay but. Like so there’s something powerful about this story but it’s not the fact that you can quote the story line for line or like you know stand up or say the right words when somebody tells you to say the words that they don’t really know what they mean. Like if you go and really ask somebody like what does it mean to be safe. What does it mean what is salvation thing what does it mean for you. In your life day to day people don’t have answers for that. Yes yes I found that I found that within the Pudimellas church that I grew up in. They would quote things to you but but yes but like but yes but how does that show up in my life and I don’t see it in your life. And that wasn’t a condemnation I wanted to see it I wanted to belong. I deeply did but it wasn’t there. Yes yes yes. There was so much talking and invocation of salvation and so little demonstration and exemplification of it. Yes yes yes because when you start to like when you start to disconnect up when you play the tyranny of the propositional and you and you disconnect but you do it on a really significant stage right. Every time the church engages in in emanation at the expense of emergence. Right right. Jesus Jesus is Jesus is the first shall be last and last shall be first. He’s pointing to the fact that the emanation always is in service right. When Jesus washes the disciples feet yes yes yes. God coming down is in service to man coming up. I totally agree I totally agree. And so that’s St. Maximus right. God became a man so that man can become God. Exactly exactly and so and so if you take that. Whenever the church has done that on a systemic level and they have they’ve done I mean if anyone would any I mean Bishop Barrett in his conversation with Lex Friedman just the other day would say this straightforwardly that there’s been many times in which the church is systemically you know in like brought evil into the world brought sin into the world and like you pay for that. Yes like like there’s things are not lost there is not lost energy in this world right. Like when when the when an idea yes you know because it’s the ideas it’s the ideas that are running on the thing of the human consciousness right and and when the ideas become parasitic right this whole like these movements of the spirits right and they’re like these things that get broken off they don’t disappear in the same way that like if you have a trauma in your life until you integrate it it’s not gone. Yes and so there’s a way in which collectively like we have to reintegrate this trauma. Yes that’s well said well said. Yeah and and my passion a minute ago which perhaps got the better of me I apologize for that but it but it indicates that trauma is also bound up with genuine observation right genuine observation like like like there is no there’s no lived meaning behind these words there’s no there’s no lived meaning behind these words there’s words there they are words that are sucking the meaning and the life out of people and that’s real trauma of the soul. Yes yes and this is the idea of karma is helpful yes I think so too in the sense of of inheritable patterns that a person they get propagated yes very much yes and the way in which we pushed against each other yes you know and then you know this goes into all the ontology of living in the ground of each other yes and all of that stuff but okay well I think this is now a good place this has been just just been wonderful I mean I think I like the meta dialogue is growing between us and you know it’s it’s picking up momentum and I find it personally helpful to talk to you and I also find I find it profoundly I think relevant to people who would be watching this video so I wanted to thank you and I do want to talk to you again I like it when you go away for a bit and the and then you and then and then you come back and there’s been stuff happening and further reflection and we do this I really you’re it is wonderful if you to sort of walk along with this journey and talk to you as you’re going along so I want you to come back if you want but I right now I want to give you any you know any final word you want to say before I shut the recording off yeah no that’s that’s incredibly kind of you to say I can’t it would be it would be very improper of me to say that any of the conversation we just had would have occurred for me that did not been for my engagement with your work so that is that that’s deeply appreciated so thank you thank you very much Ken and we will talk again