Is Spirituality Compatible With Modern Life? - Rob Bell | Modern Wisdom Podcast 245

Rob Bell is a MegaChurch Pastor and an author. When you're compelled to discover why we are here there are a number of potential routes you can go down, becoming the pastor of a church with 10,000 people in it which takes over a mall to fit them all in is one of them. Expect to learn how spirituality can be compatible with a modern rational life, how Rob breaks the preconceptions of pastors, why our emotions feel so spiritually compelling, why we can learn insights from our heart and not just our head and much more... Sponsor: Check out everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (35% off everything with the code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Buy Everything Is Spiritual - https://amzn.to/32ulBI3 Follow Rob on Twitter - https://twitter.com/realrobbell Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #spirituality #rationality #robbell - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You have Google engineers who are the hold comfort of rationalism and would mock anything spiritual or religious. Then can't wait to show you the photos of their weekend at Burning Man, where they ran around half naked in the desert.

• 0:12Chris Williamson?

  Off their face on psychedelics.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Yes, saying, "Oh, man, I was in touch with the universal cosmic oneness." It's funny that you would say that because that's a direct quote from the Old Testament, the Bhagavad Gita. And Buddhism even actually has a very sophisticated 2,000 year old way of naming what you think is just, "I had mushrooms and felt one taste."

• 0:35Chris Williamson?

  Can you tell for the people who don't know, give us your background. How did you end up here?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  How did I end up here? I, from a young age, was utterly fascinated with the big questions of what we're doing here. How does this whole thing work? What is this wondrous, strange experience that we are having on a ball of rock hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour? And in the world I came from, if you're interested in those things, you become a spiritual teacher, a pastor, you help people explore the big mysteries. That's what I did. That's what I've been doing for a long time now. And I love it. So books, tours, films, events.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  However, I can help create spaces where people can discover who they are and what we're all doing here. I'm in.

• 1:36Chris Williamson?

  You could have gone down a couple of routes there, couldn't you? You could have been psychology, philosophy, physics, mathematics, public service in some form or another.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it was interesting. My dad was a judge for 44 years. So he woke up every morning, put on a suit, went to a courthouse and presided over trials. So, so he had

• 2:02Speaker 00

  this, trying to think of the right word, this old school sense of public service. You know what I mean? Like, there's this proper dignified role that you play in society. You know what I mean? Where You you give yourself to the greater good as an act of service, in his case, the administration of justice. So I sort of grew up in this setting where you're here to help contribute. Like, that was like baked into the DNA of the home I came in, came up in. Yeah.

• 2:32Chris Williamson?

  Where are you from? Where is home?

• 2:35Speaker 00

  I grew up in Michigan, so in between Chicago and Detroit.

• 2:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay, is that quite typical to have this wholesome sort of...

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was Midwest. You go to soccer practice, although you properly refer to it as football.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  You take piano lessons, you go to the the public school, which for you all, like, like, the school that everybody goes to, not like a private thing, you just, you ride your bike to school, you know what I mean? Like, there are, like, it was, yeah, you do your homework, you have a dog. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was, yeah, my parents, though, I'm trying to think how to say this, there was a, an intellectual restlessness, an intellectual, spiritual restlessness. They were always reading, having interesting people for dinner, like, giving me, I remember in high school, my dad being like, there's this guy, C.S. Lewis, you might find him interesting. Like, there was this sort of searching, exploring,

• 3:39Speaker 00

  endless conversations about the big things that was sort of just a normal part of life.

• 3:45Chris Williamson?

  It's a good way to instill some curiosity at a young age.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And my dad used to say, you know, he had all these, like, phrases that, like, sort of get etched as a kid, stuff you're told over and over, like, some of it sticks and some of it, you're like, what was that? But there was one thing he used to say, the greatest gift you can give yourself is to find work that you love. So your original question, around the age of 20, I gave my first sermon. And I'd been in a band and the band broke up. And I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do with my life. And I volunteered to give a sermon at, like, this chapel service. And suddenly I saw the sermon as an art form, like a revolutionary, poetic, uh...

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Counter narrative, subversive art form. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna do that. That's what I'm gonna do. That's how it started.

• 4:48Chris Williamson?

  That is not what I would have typically thought of as someone giving sermons. I appreciate that.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:55Chris Williamson?

  My experience in church has been limited since I was in school. Um, I've, I've gone when I've, when I've had to, I suppose, which is usually christenings, christenings and funerals and weddings and stuff.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:06Chris Williamson?

  And also, I don't really know what the equivalent in the UK would be. I'm fascinated by the concept of a mega church. Uh, and I want to kind of

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 5:18Chris Williamson?

  Really delve into that. What, what is a mega church?

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Right, so.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Um, in America, you have this phenomenon where you could say it's just religion, but it's religion, politics, economics, generally, all these things get duct taped together in certain places and you get big churches, like really big.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  And it's a relatively new phenomenon. And when I started studying theology and became a pastor, there were a few of them which were almost like, have you heard about that? You know what I mean? Like, there's one, one state over, you know what I mean? Like, what is that?

• 6:10Speaker 00

  But then, when I was in my twenties, I started a church.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  So I was like, there's gotta be a better way to talk about what it means to have a spiritual vision for life. There's just gotta be a better way to do it. It's almost like basic innovation. There's gotta be some better way to explore spaces where people can grow and learn and become better humans. Um, but I started this church and then it grew into what is called a mega church.

• 6:39Chris Williamson?

  So what defines it? Is it like the number of people?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  I was always the guy who was like, I was like the guy, like the Rage Against the Machine, like, you know what I mean? Stick it to the man. And suddenly, suddenly I was the man.

• 6:50Chris Williamson?

  You are the man. Now you're the man, yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  It's a very strange, I mean, within a couple of years, there were 10,000 people coming on a Sunday. So try to imagine. There were eighty employees within a couple of years. So picture like people with orange vests and those lights that they use at the airport to help guide planes into space, parking cars, and picture, um, people giving money, like, well, you go to a church, you donate, right? Like, all these sort of accustomed behaviors people had, and yet, for me and my wife and friends, we were doing like a giant art experiment,

• 7:31Speaker 00

  like, could you give most of the money away to the poor? Like, could you do giant art shows where you invite thousands of people to make art and display it? Could you write your own music and sing it? Do you know what I mean? Like, for us, it was this, um, do, like, a very DIY, sort of post-punk, keep it lean and mean and low to the ground, and yet, this phenomenon happened. I mean, that was twenty years ago, that we, twenty-two years ago, so it feels like another lifetime, but can ima- imagine a small town in the

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Midwest, and this thing just explodes, like, relatively overnight.

• 8:17Chris Williamson?

  How big's the building?

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Uh, we outgrew the first building, and so I had to start doing the sermon three times on Sunday to fit everybody, and then somebody gave us a mall. So a guy said, "I have a mall, it's not making a lot of money, there's a bunch of empty stores, can I just give it to you and you buy the parking lot?" So we literally took over an American mall. I know. I mean, I'm telling you the story, like, wait, that's what happened? That's what happened. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:47Chris Williamson?

  What's the, what's the biggest number of people that you've sermons to at once?

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Oh, over the whole.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  What an interesting question. I remember speaking in my early 30s. Um, getting invited to speak at like outdoor festivals. And I remember speaking at a festival in between all these bands.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  And you know, like when you're speaking on a stage, people may be familiar with this. But you look to your left and then you sort of look across the crowd to your right. And I remember while I was speaking, a second voice in my head going, man, when you look far left and then you swing over to look far right, that takes a while. This and afterwards.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? I was like, I think this might be a lot of people. I'm not sure. And then afterwards I said to one of the promoters like, hey, just out of curiosity, like, how many people was that? And he's, I remember he said, completely deadpan. I think we sold 120,000 tickets.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Like, like he was a little fuzzy on it. You know what I mean? I think we sold about 120,000 tickets. So I'm sure, I don't know if it was, uh, who knows?

• 10:06Chris Williamson?

  That's insane. So I mean,

• 10:07Speaker 00

  I know.

• 10:08Chris Williamson?

  Again, for, for me, thinking about the way that I would consider like a typical vicar, you know, like in the UK. Like, you know, kind of this, uh, very sort of regal, older gentleman who is, he's got the, the white, the white collar. Um, and you know, is surrounded by oak, everything's oak. And you've got sort of very kind of Baroque architecture. Um, that, that like trying to picture my vision of the guy that stands and gives a talk

• 10:44Chris Williamson?

  at a rock concert is, uh, there's a discontinuity there.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I remember the first time I came to the UK, fall of 2006. I was doing a short tour and somebody had set up little gatherings and the vicars that you described would like show up.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Cause they'd been listening to the sermons or they'd seen the films I was doing or read the books and they would have questions and it was so great. Cause this love, like kind-hearted, lovely folks like, "So, um, is your baptistry look?" And I'd be like, "Mm, you know, whatever you have in your head, man, dude, love you, but like just get rid of everything you have in your head. Cause that's, I'm not gonna have any idea what you're talking about."

• 11:33Chris Williamson?

  What are the, um, what are the, what are the preconceptions of a mega church pastor? I know that in your book, Everything is Spiritual, you talk about kind of subverting those expectations. People come up to you and basically say, "You're not what I expected." What did they expect?

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. Well, what happened, like in the book when I talk about

• 11:54Speaker 00

  this, I saw it as an endless discovery, like you're a student. So, um, "Oh, what does quantum physics have to tell us? How about biology? Look at art theory? Look at this ancient text. Look how these people interpreted this ancient text." Um, for me, it was this endless process of evolving and growing and following where it leads. And the expectations of a mega church pastor was

• 12:23Speaker 00

  you're building something and so you say what you say to build it. So, you're not growing or changing. It's stability you're offering people. That's how you build an institution. So, I can, I, I mean, I literally would do interviews and the person would say, "It seems if I look at your work over the past few years, like you're growing and evolving." And I'd be like, "Yeah, that's the job." And the interviewer would say, "No, I think the job of mega," like they just had never, you know what I mean? It was like, "Wait, you're spiritually, you're supposed to be the exact same person you've always been." It's like, "No, the job is to grow. That's, that's what we're doing here." Um, so...

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Uh, I just kept noticing there was a game face that megachurch pastors would often have. Like what you say to keep the organization going in the quote unquote right direction. And then there was the personal life of the megachurch pastor, which was what they were reading, what was happening in their life and generally like a split, almost like they'd step on stage and have a persona and step off the stage and be this other person. And right away I was like, I'm, I can't do that. The only way it works is to have it be this authentic, genuine path of discovery. And I'm sharing with people what I'm learning and you follow it where it goes. That's the only, only game to be playing here.

• 13:53Chris Williamson?

  I get it.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  And it was very difficult, very painful, very.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it, it was very, very difficult to be in this. I'd even created it. So it was very, I don't know what the word is, limber or flexible. And yet it still had all of these cultural assumptions that I couldn't do. Yeah, it was very painful for a while there.

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  I think typically whenever you have an organization that gets large, anything like a big sports team, you know, like you have a big sports complex that's got a bunch of different junior leagues in it and an adult academy and a junior academy and a fourth, second, thirds.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:31Chris Williamson?

  Like when you have that inevitably it's harder to enact change. There's more politics that need to be played around with. And the realm of religion, spirituality, metaphysics, that is not. There is like a, you know, the law of conservation, there's like some sort of fundamental law to do with the amount of bullshit that you're going to have to deal with when an organization gets to a certain size and it gets this kind of critical mass.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 14:59Chris Williamson?

  And you're not, you're not exempt from it either.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I love it. I mean, let's talk about your Premier League right now. Like, look at Manchester United. Ole, all Ole's gotta do is win games, but then is that comment that he made actually a reference to the board? Is he actually saying to Ed, "You need to give me more money in the transfer window"? And then how about the academy? And there is no director of football development who should be developing an academy. That's why we're having to go out. Like, it's like, "No, no, just win games." And he's like, "No, no, no. This thing has got more layers. I've got more pieces."

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the thing gets unwieldy at some level.

• 15:35Chris Williamson?

  It really does.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Very normal thing. So religion is not unusual in that regard.

• 15:40Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all. What does the word "spiritual" mean to you?

• 15:48Speaker 00

  That this experience we're all having here,

• 15:52Speaker 00

  it's dodgy and awkward and heartbreaking and strange and takes all these unexpected twists and turns and failure and pain, and yet there's something just below the surface that never stops inviting you

• 16:11Speaker 00

  to some sort of new creation. So when I ask people, "What are the three or four or five events that have most shaped you into who you are?" What people always, people never talk about, "Well, I got a pay raise," or "I went on holiday." When I say, "What are the events that most affected who you've become?", people always talk about suffering, loss, heartbreak, and pain, and they always witness to something happening in the midst of it. So spiritual

• 16:42Speaker 00

  is the depth of life. It's this animating energy that's been moving the universe forward for 13 billion years as it endlessly expands, present around and in each of us, and never stops inviting us to new futures and new imagination and new possibilities. That's a really short slash long answer.

• 17:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  For many people, spiritual, for many people, when they were told spiritual, they think of something otherworldly. Leaving this place, not, but spiritual is economics, politics, art, earth, soil, regenerative farming, how we care for the vulnerable and on it. Spiritual is the depth of all of life. It's a thing happening just below the surface in pretty much everything.

• 17:33Chris Williamson?

  I think the difficulty that a lot of people have with the word spiritual is that it kind of comes attached with a ton of baggage, right?

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  A word, a word which has grown out, virtuously grown out of established classic spiritual practices and then also more recently kind of just been hijacked by anyone who wants to talk about spooky stuff and you know.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Woo woo.

• 17:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Total woo woo.

• 17:59Chris Williamson?

  Precisely, which, and when you, that's like a kind of a double ended attack, like a pincer movement of two different groups, one which is completely entrenched in tradition and unchanging and has set this very kind of firm foundation for what it could or should be. And then you have this total new wave version of it that's kind of throwing the establishment upside down and you're suspicious of the old, the old guard because maybe they haven't updated their thinking in quite a while and you're suspicious of the new guard because they've been around for so long that how the hell can they know what they're talking about?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  You have just done a brilliant job of summarizing a world of philosophy and current thought. Yeah, the one says, this is how it works. There is nothing new or innovative or adaptive, just follow these rules, come to our services at this time, obey. And it misses the adaptive, ongoing, inviting aspect. It doesn't know what to do with quantum physics. It doesn't know what to do with what we now know about the condition of the earth. It, it is sometimes paralyzed in the face of the great questions of the day. The other rejects that completely and often rejects any depth. It surfaces. It is reductionism. It is, you are just.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  A collection of cells, neurons and synapses. Get over it. Your brain created all of this anyway. It's just a series of impulses firing up there. But the problem is that leaves a person disconnected from the depths and a little bored. And it doesn't know what to do with the great mysteries of life. Consciousness itself. You and I are aware that we're aware. That is the mystery at the heart of the human experience that continues to be an elusive mystery. So there is an integrative path that takes the strengths of both of what you just pointed out, leaves behind the weaknesses and duct tapes them together, which is what I'm trying to do in the book.

• 20:07Chris Williamson?

  I think especially in the 21st century, I'm on this flex at the moment, a lot at the moment, thinking and talking about this particular viewpoint. The value of being cerebral in 2020 is so high that I think it can disconnect us from the, the, the sort of magic that we have around. Now, I'm not someone who is religious. I would class myself the worst, like the absolute worst classification, which is someone who's non-religious but spiritual, which just sounds like somebody, somebody who wants, wants to have all of the enjoyment of sitting on a meditation cushion, all of the wonder of looking at the night sky, but none of the discipline of having to stick to any commandments.

• 20:52Chris Williamson?

  Like, that's what it sounds like I want to do, which isn't the truth. I promise you it's not the truth.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  No, it's not what you want to do. No, no, no.

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  The sad thing is that I think enjoying the fact that you can have transcendent experiences, even if they're just biochemically produced, even if the only reason that I feel a sense of awe or a sense of wonder or a sense of connection, the connection's the oxytocin and the sense of awe's the dopamine and da, da, da, da, da. Like, you can just deconstruct it all the way back down, but it doesn't help anyone that isn't you to understand phenomenologically what that sensation feels like. And that, that is the challenge, that you, you've got to rely on people who are the best wordsmiths on the planet to get 1% of the way there to explain what awe or dread feel like.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. There is something about this experience we are having that

• 21:51Speaker 00

  the intellect can follow it a certain distance down the road, and then it always transcends your cognitive capacities and you're into some other space, which is why poetry, art, you think about all of

• 22:09Speaker 00

  the most helpful expressions generally move you beyond the narrow parameters of linear logic. I love how you were about to say you're spiritual but not religious. You were already throwing up in your mouth that you were going to be the guy saying this, and yet it is how you would describe this experience. Yeah, I get it. I get it.

• 22:32Chris Williamson?

  But the problem with that, the fact that I have to say it identifies the fact that spirituality has been a carabiner hooked onto religion. That if you say I'm spiritual, people presume if you're not wearing elephant pants with dreadlocks, i.e. new wave religion, that you must, you must be just like a slightly non-normal, non-religious-looking religious person. So the caveat there again is more really just a semantic one that is part of the etymology of where that word has grown up through the years.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, what's interesting though, if I come, like last summer, I was on tour in, in your fine land. And um, I was, and I'll, I will interact with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. And some of them are rooted in a lineage, the Christian mystical tradition, Judaism, Buddhism. Some come out of yoga, some are acad, come out of academia, but have a sense that there's something about the soul that is transcendent and timeless.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  There is a common space where all these people meet, exactly what you're describing. And some came in through science because they were like, wait a second. This can go pretty far, but then there's something else going on here. Some came in through religion, some came in through Joseph Campbell and mythology. And look at this experience we're having and look at the ways in which people have named this. Some have just have had an intuitive sense their whole life of what you're saying of the transcendence. So they're just like, just give me a cushion, let's talk about that. Yeah, yeah, there is a new space with all sorts of people who are exactly what you are describing.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  And it's not weird and it's not woo woo and it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that is, um, it's a pretty exciting thing happening.

• 24:42Chris Williamson?

  I think so.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  But your analysis, your analysis is spot on.

• 24:45Chris Williamson?

  Good, I'm glad.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  You would also, you know, you might, um, I was thinking when you were just talking, you made an interesting point. I do these sessions where people, um, I was doing them in person now with the world the way it is on Zoom. Where people tell me what they're working on and how they're stuck. And then I sit with them and, and watch while they get unstuck. And the whole premise is I don't know who they are or what they do or any background on them. So they just tell me, hi, I'm so and so, this is what I'm working on. And it might be an artist, it might be a CEO, it might be a heart surgeon, it might be a guy who has a podcast like you.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  And then they generally takes them about two minutes to explain what, what's the stuckness. But what I think what you might find fascinating is when I invite them, sometimes I'll even use an image like to sink down from head into heart. Because there's all this chatter in our heads, there's self doubt, there's criticism. There's the voice of the expert on our shoulder telling us how it's supposed to be done. But you would find it fascinating how many people, when all I say is, so sink down into heart. Whatever that means to you, and tell me what you find.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  How many people instantly find clarity? Like, it's almost like they go into a deeper part of their being than just that lovely synapse firing. You know what I mean?

• 26:22Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, man. I mean, you know.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  I see it again and again and again and again and again. There's all this clarity right there in the person.

• 26:31Chris Williamson?

  Again, to, to drive home the point that I made earlier on, so reflecting on it as you, as you speak. I don't, and you don't need to either attach some otherworldliness if that's not your inclination. You don't need to attach something in order for this to not be effective and real. It can be an accurate representation of the way that we operate within the body to say that if you are able to mindfully reduce chatter, like you could reflect it as going from the, uh, what's it called? Not the typical network, what's the thing that you switch off when you meditate?

• 27:17Chris Williamson?

  People are going to be screaming into their, into their AirPods. Uh, there's, there's two, there's two systems that work in the brain. And when you meditate, you turn off one and you turn on another one. That is a, um, a way that a neuro, a neuroscientist would look at you and say, this is what is specifically happening in the brain. The fact that you have created a narrative, you've like personified the, um, thought process, right? Into kind of words that seem a little bit easier for people to understand. If they're to say, right, I need you to switch off your autonomic nervous sense and, you know, do, like, we, we need to really focus on getting the, the parasympathetic response moving and we need to blah, blah. Like, you know, people don't know what that means.

• 28:02Chris Williamson?

  And we live, we live our lives in stories. This is something that Jordan Peterson talked about on a live, a live event I went to see him at. He said, Thomas the Tank Engine has a face. Why does Thomas the Tank Engine have a face? He's a tank engine. He doesn't need a face. But we gave him a face because we personify things, you know? You think, you talk about your car in that way. You say, oh, you know, she doesn't like being in the cold like, or, you know, you talk about the cooker in that way as well. Like you give things, you bestow upon them personalities. And I think that rejecting that, rejecting the fact that we have to use, we are storytelling creatures. We have to use things that are narrative based.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 28:46Chris Williamson?

  In the face of scientific truth, you know, in an enlightened world, I think that you lose a competitive advantage there. Because it's quicker and easier for me to know what you mean when you say sink down into your heart than for you to try and explain to me how the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous response works.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, and that is absolutely well said. And that, if you can, if a person can read that not through the lens of frustration, how come there are all these different ways of naming these experiences? And see it as, this is like, this is part of the joy of life. Look at how those people named that. Look at how the scientists named that. This poet over here, there's a 12th century Sufi mystic named Rumi. Look how Rumi names this. Listen to the latest Radiohead album. Look at this, um, look at this architect, how this architect imagines this physical space and what that says about what it means to be human. And obviously you have a massive history of religion, some of it really, really destructive and divisive,

• 29:52Speaker 00

  but some of it extraordinarily helpful stories about how to interpret this experience we're having. What does matter? Is it headed somewhere? Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it.

• 30:05Chris Williamson?

  Good. When do you see?

• 30:06Speaker 00

  And actually, to be honest with you, this is what happened to me. Going back to that mall and all those people is I kept noticing, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This whole giant machinery, this thing that I'm a part of. It's actually at its heart about having a fully human experience. That's actually the thing that that I'm trying to do here. Do you know what I mean? And it's got all these layers of stuff, but underneath it all. What's it mean to be human? What's it mean to be fully alive? Where is the joy and meaning and satisfaction? And that all of this apparatus and tradition lineage I come from, if it doesn't help that and serve that.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Then I'm not bringing it with me. It became this like, does it help? Does it? Okay, great. Otherwise, not interesting. But yeah, that was a huge thing that happened to me.

• 31:05Chris Williamson?

  Where do you see most people going wrong on a spiritual journey?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Wrong? Probably stuck in categories that it's right or wrong. Versus. Who are you? What has?

• 31:26Speaker 00

  What's in front of you? What's the next step? What's it look like? So, okay, let's use the phrase wrong. My experience, most people, it becomes way too complicated. They get stuck in their head. And they literally argue their way out, argue themselves out of.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  The next step, which is generally fairly straightforward. So oftentimes they have a script they were handed. Family, authority figures, professors, mentors, experts, their boss. That's like, this is, this is how you play the game. And yet something within them.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Knows they're here to do something slightly different. So there's this tension. Or they simply kept going. And the people around them at some point stopped and settled. Uh, they kept exploring, kept growing, kept searching. And most of the time, that's what's interesting. So your path, if we were going to why you're doing this today, talking to me. I imagine there were key moments when you were like, um, I sense this is how Chris does it. And there were probably key moments when you were like. I know everybody around me is like, this is the direction to take, but. Something within me knows this is the direction to take.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  And you either don't take that direction and something within you dies, or you take it. And all the risks and pleasure and everything that comes with it. Yeah, that's how, that's why I would say. For many people, it got way more complicated than it actually is.

• 33:01Chris Williamson?

  I think this loops back to what I was saying before about how much we value being cerebral. Um, you know, I, I love you being a utilitarian. I love the, um. The cold comfort of rationality, as Pierce Brown puts it in his fantastic Red Rising series. Um, I, I like the, the comfort blanket that having input process output gives me. Because it allows me to try and bring some sort of order to chaos that's going on in the world. But what you've touched on there is a very easy test for people that are listening and are thinking, yeah, this sounds good, mate. But I'm not really for that whole kind of spirituality thing. Many of the best decisions that we've made are built on gut instinct.

• 33:44Chris Williamson?

  Now gut instinct is like this weird bizarre aggregate of all of the subconscious experiences and the, the wisdom that we have accrued. You know, you, you're speaking to someone and you, if you just feel something's off. I don't know what it is. I just don't feel walking down the street. You see some guy on the right hand side, you're just not really too sure about what it is. And if I said, why did you cross the street? What was the reason for you crossing the street? You would say, I don't know. I don't know. The reason that I crossed the street, I just felt something was wrong. Right, okay, so what are we talking about here? Are we talking about super spooky plasma energy like Rhonda Byrne in The Secret? He was giving off the magnetism that was negative to my polarity?

• 34:26Chris Williamson?

  Or are we just talking about the fact that your body is able to sense things that the prefrontal cortex, right at the beginning, the front of your head, isn't able to rationalize and isn't able to articulate? Now, really, that, I think, helps us to redefine spirituality away from all of the trappings that it perhaps had before. And it's something that's a little bit easier for us to understand.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Abs, you have done a lovely job of summarizing my work for the past 25 years.

• 34:58Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Some call it, some call it, uh, trans-rational. This is the rational and the logical, fully engaged, fully, all systems go. And yet, trans-rational also allows for those other ways of knowing that can't be measured with the standard metrics and data of cold rationalism, and yet are just as real. Namely, you crossed over the other side of the street. Something within you knew something. You can rationally explain it to me to a certain point. And then, what you're going, and especially the person who's like, I'm just about the facts. Yeah, you just told me that you know so and so is lying.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Give me the facts on how you know they're lying. I don't know, it's just a feeling. Oh, it's interesting, you pride yourself on your facts, but actual lived experience, you dip into something you just called feelings, which sounds a little squishy to me. So apparently what you're actually doing is integrating these different modes that are present within you. And sometimes you're going to move to that town because the rent is cheaper and you got a better job and you can be closer to people you love. And there's a very rational process. And sometimes you went there because you just knew, dear God, it's time for a new start.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  And spiritual is the acknowledgement that all that is in play with all of us. It's just a degree to which you own it.

• 36:31Chris Williamson?

  That's a nice, that's a nice way to put it.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And this is the problem in the Western world and particularly in the intellectual traditions that so prized the one way of knowing over other ways of knowing that you end up with super smart people with two PhDs who literally don't know how to have a relationship. Because what is the data on that? Show me the research on that. It exists in different categories. Or in the America, we, uh, you have Google engineers who are the hard, like you said, the cold comfort of rationalism and would mock anything spiritual or religious, but then can't wait to show you the photos of their weekend at Burning Man,

• 37:19Speaker 00

  where they ran around half naked in the desert.

• 37:22Chris Williamson?

  Off their face on psychedelics.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Acknowledging a burning effigy. Yes, saying, oh, man, I was in touch with the universal cosmic oneness. It's funny that you would say that because that's a direct quote from the Old Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and Buddhism even actually has a very sophisticated 2000 year old way of naming what you think is just, I had mushrooms and felt one taste. So that's why anytime someone starts banging on about religion, but then tells me about their transcendent experiences of freedom and liberation. I'm like, you realize that in the Book of Exodus, 3000 years ago, they were telling a story to try and name the emptiness and boundarylessness of the formless divine.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  And that's where it gets real fun.

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  There's a quote from Naval Ravikant, which I absolutely love. And he's talking about smart people. And it's very similar to what you've just brought up there that we spend a lot of time, we dedicate ourselves to expanding our cerebral capacity. And Naval's question is, if you're so smart, why aren't you happy?

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  That's great. That's great.

• 38:39Chris Williamson?

  It's a killer.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 38:40Chris Williamson?

  It's a real killer and it reminds us again as well of the fact that there is an upper bound. I believe that there is an upper bound on how much utilitarianism and rationality can give us because again, there are boundaries to how well we can rationalize our own experiences. The phenomenological experience of being a human is

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:05Chris Williamson?

  It is. It is so beyond what our genes are doing. And this is completely compatible with evolutionary psychology, which has been a huge influence on me over the last couple of years.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 39:17Chris Williamson?

  The fact that let's say, let's say that you have got some bad news, like someone's, your girlfriend's message, your girlfriend that you've cheated on has messaged you and said, we need to talk. Like that's, you know, that's the single worst message to get from anyone, but like, we need to talk. And that sensation where it feels like all of your internal organs have dropped to just above your pelvis. And you start sweating and it's cold. That sensation there does not feel like some genetic response, which is you preparing yourself for flight or flight. It feels like a curse bestowed on you by a higher power. It feels like some sort of personal

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  bizarre torture method that has been fired from, from some heavenly body that is able to enact bizarre change on your internal state. Like that is phenomenologically what it feels like for that sensation to occur. Now you can tell me that it's some different mix of chemicals that go on in the brain, but that still doesn't actually show us, it doesn't explain to me how that feels.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely, and what you're pointing out is when the person just keeps saying to you it's chemicals. It's that desire to reduce the experience. It's funny because the person would say, "I'm just sticking to the science." But then if you look at the history of science, all science has ever done is show us how much more is going on, how much more complex it is. We discover the Higgs boson, we get our first picture of a black hole, and no scientist says, "Well, been a good ride, and now we're done." All that does is just take us into new territories of learning and exploration.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  So the person says to you basically, "No, no, that experience, we need to talk. Let me just tell you all that was going on there. These were the chemicals, these were the neurons." They reduce it, and what you are pointing out is, yeah, but that same mindset, all it ever tells us about this experience we're having is an expanding thing. It's the opposite of reduction. It's an opening up to all the things that are happening. And that, my god, you follow that, and now you're back around to something called spirituality. Openness, discovery, exploration, the two are not. The best scientist, the best mystic, the best poet, the best analyst,

• 41:57Speaker 00

  at some point, if they do their jobs, you arrive at wonder and awe. And you may have gotten there through different rooms, but you all end up, you end up in the same room of the house. Which is very, yeah, that's the game, that's the game to be playing right there. "We need to talk." I love that example.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, big style. What insight do you wish more people knew about life?

• 42:28Speaker 00

  That there is more going on in any present moment than anybody is actually aware of. In all the great wisdom traditions, take every yogi, mystic, sage, monk that went up and lived in a cave. You know what I mean? The image, they went up and lived on a cave to find the real answer to life. They never, ever come down from the mountain. A friend of mine has this great story where she says, "None of them ever came down and said to everybody in the village, "Hey, I got the message. I figured it out. And here's the thing, we're totally fucked."

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Like, no one ever comes down. They only ever come down and say, "Here, now." Like, right here. And my work in some ways for 20 years has been creating spaces where people can discover how much is in this present moment. The fact that you and I have made it through everything we made it through and can have this conversation. Like, you and I could just take one step back and be like, "God, that's pretty awesome." Or everybody who listens to your podcast. You're here. You're breathing. You're alive. That can sound simplistic and sort of...

• 43:52Speaker 00

  No, no, no. You're here. Whatever it is, you made it through it. Every fear you've had about finances, you're here. Every fear you've ever had about health, you're here. You're thinking. You're engaging. Like, there is a mystery to consciousness, an extraordinary paradox that is never not true. And especially as everything feels more complicated, that becomes even more interesting.

• 44:23Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I was reading-

• 44:24Speaker 00

  I mean, she texted you. She texted you and she said, "We have to talk."

• 44:28Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, no, Rob. That was a hypothetical. That was a hypothetical thing. That wasn't me. Thank you, okay? Stitch me up from the other side of the internet, mate, come on.

• 44:40Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the fact that one of the primary jobs that our brains have is not to allow us to perceive things, but actually to stop us from perceiving things. There's far too many signals going on for our brain to allow us to take them all in. And one of the arguments for why psychedelics are so successful at giving people these transcendent experiences that are life-changing is that these blockages, the restrictions upon what you sense are dropped away.

• 45:16Chris Williamson?

  So by its very nature, your brain is kind of already playing this reductionist game. And one of the things that I'm quite keen to try and do,

• 45:28Chris Williamson?

  this is me rolling on the crest of an hour, trying to talk about something that isn't fully formed, so it might come out messy. But my goal is to try and experience as much as I can in the moment, to try and get rid of that reductionist funnel, to try and permit myself to experience the color as vibrantly as possible, to feel the wind on my skin as fully as I can, to smell the trees as I walk past, but to do them all at the same time, not to just pick on one and pick on another and pick on another, to constantly have that sense, that immersion in experience, the immersion in being alive. And

• 46:07Chris Williamson?

  one of the things that was really interesting to me was a cue given by a guy called Mark Walsh, who runs the Embodiment Conference. And he said, "A lot of the time when we're looking at something, we'll narrow our vision." And one of the cues that he gives people is to just allow their peripherals to open up. So you're looking at whatever's in front of you, but you allow your peripherals to open up. And you can see that, I know that's a very kind of basic example, but that's a perfect representation of what happens when you just realise that there's more beyond the realm of senses that you have at the moment, if only you had the mindfulness to be able to let it in. And as soon as he gave me that cue, the penny dropped. And I was like, holy shit, I'm doing that with all of my senses.

• 46:50Chris Williamson?

  I'm choosing to only smell the things that I'm expecting to smell because I live the world through mental models. I don't live the world through experience because it's a shortcut. Our brains are there to make life easier for us. We don't need to make the choice of what am I going to do with this? How am I going to think about that? No, no, no, this situation is similar to the one that you had five years ago. So just use that model. You don't need to think about this. I don't need to learn something new. I can just do this. You've walked, you've walked down your street a thousand times before. You don't need to look at the color of the trees. You don't need to feel the wind on your skin. You don't need to be able to hear the birds in the trees because you've heard them before. You've seen them before. You've felt it before. And I think one of the goals that I have certainly over the next few years is to try and work my mindfulness

• 47:35Chris Williamson?

  practice and my ability to be present up to the point at which I feel like I'm feeling more in the moment.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And there's something really interesting you pointed out. There's a, there's a subtle, a subtle energetic posture that he invited you in that actually is radically different than the dominant energies of the modern world. Because what he did is he invited you to allow. And what's interesting about allow is he didn't say create, make, hustle, force, dominate. He said allow, which is counterintuitively a letting go. It's losing your life to find it. And the dominant energies of the modern world have often been mastery.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  So like this is the thing, most motivational speakers, as lovely as they can be, underneath it all, the message is try harder. It is do more. It is reach within you and when sometimes very, very helpful, but nevertheless also can be destructive, override whatever you're feeling in the moment with energy, passion, whatever the language is used. But what's interesting is counterintuitively, he said to you,

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Allow yourself to have an experience of that which is already present and requires less energy, which is the really interesting thing happening now. So this man inviting you that at that conference is people are realizing this modern project that taught us how to achieve, how to build podcasts, how to talk to each other across the ocean, how to build hospitals and airports and put an iPhone in your pocket. Man, we did all this great stuff. And yet, there is something in that that formed these neural pathways of the answer

• 49:43Speaker 00

  is always do more, try harder, network, hustle, and yet, there's also sit, become aware, allow, and there's a world of wonder and mystery. So being in nature, psychedelics, meditation. I hit my head when I was 30, I had a closed head injury. I was doing backflips water skiing and I hit my head. And I had a concussion closed head injury and I was introduced to my kids. So I saw my life outside of my life.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  And when they brought me back from the hospital to my house, my wife gave me a tour of our house. This is 30 years old. And then they brought our two boys into the room and I met my kids, even though I knew that they were mine at some like cellular level, the brain was perceiving. And then I would, seriously Chris, I would say to Kristen, my wife, for, it took about a week for my brain to go back to normal. I would ask Kristen, like, how did we meet? What is my job? What do I do? And I had an altered state of my brain couldn't do the past, that was too much energy and past is where regret is, and my brain couldn't do future, which is where all the worry is.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  My brain could only be here. And like you're saying, all the brain could do was allow the moment to be what it is. And it changed everything for me. It was, that was right when the mall thing was like at its sort of fevered peak. And it was like, oh my God, this whole thing that I'm doing over here. There's these present moments that I'm in endlessly, because the only place you can be is now. And there's more than you could ever handle. Right here. I should probably be talking about that.

• 51:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, man. I mean, again, to, to, uh, how to paraphrase Naval Ravikant's quote about the hustle porn people, like, they wouldn't have put the wick all the way through the candle if you weren't supposed to burn it at both ends. If you're working so hard, why aren't you happy?

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 52:06Chris Williamson?

  Like, if your, if your work and the volume of work that you're getting done is some form of achievement, why aren't you happy? Surely you should be more happy. You're working harder. Like, the work should be in service of something which is fulfilling and enjoying. So if you're working so hard, why aren't you happy?

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Whatever that graph is, they don't just follow each other neatly. There's some way in which they start, wherever, and then they just fly off in different directions. Your X, Y graph just goes to, just, yeah, just gets shredded.

• 52:35Chris Williamson?

  I get it. Rob, man, I've really enjoyed today. People want to check out your work. Obviously, everything is spiritual. Who we are and what we're doing here will be linked in the show notes below. Anyone wants to go and check that out on Amazon, where else should they go?

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Uh, my site, robell.com, has all the episodes of the Robcast. We just released a film called An Interception to Joy, which is about the pain and suffering and temporal fleeting nature of life. And then there's all sorts of sessions and there's a new writing class coming and all that stuff. So robell.com.

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. I'll link that below. Rob, thank you for today.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  I loved it. I loved it. Yeah, I, you had such wonderful things to say. I'll be thinking of them all day.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.