August 26, 2021 • 57 mins
Inspired by friends, family, and people like Daniel Pinchbeck, who have been so critical of spirituality, I mount a full-throated defense of spirituality, first acknowledging the pitfalls and shortcomings. Spirituality for me is a holistic worldview and set of practices that make us more relevant and impactful in the world, instead of more escapist and checked-out.
Authentic spirituality is becoming a spiritual scientist, making us more discerning, not more out-of-touch. Furthermore, true change cannot come about in the world without first expanding consciousness through spiritual practice.
Finally, spirituality offers a nurturing cosmology that imbues our lives with deeper meaning.
Daniel Pinchbeck articles mentioned in this episode:
Here's my blog post about morphic fields.
Special thanks to Blaire Embrey and Meghan Kemp for providing valuable input as I developed these ideas!
Full show notes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jayadev Woodford (00:02):
What do you think about when you think of
spirituality or spiritualpeople?
hippies,your friend who's a little too
into crystals and astrology,that guy in your Facebook feed
who's constantly postingspiritual cliches, or maybe cult
members. Or maybe you identify aspiritual, I identify as
spiritual. But I also feel likeI have had to defend that I
(00:25):
straddle the spiritual world andwhat burners may call the
default world. It's a strangeand exhilarating place to live.
It's like I'm gazingsimultaneously into what feels
increasingly like two extremes.
So I want to offer this episode,as a way of sort of saying,
like, hey, spirituality isgreat. Take it from your old
(00:49):
level headed friend jayadev.
Because what I've noticed isthat spiritual people have given
spirituality, a bad rap. Perhapslike me, you've personally has
disappointing experiences with ateacher or a community. And for
many, I think spiritual, theword spiritual has come to mean,
escapist, narcissistic, myopicand caught in spiritual bypass,
(01:12):
that kind of thing. Many peopleI know who identify as spiritual
have fallen into conspiracytheories and have seemed to lost
touch with reality. So in thisepisode, I want to recognize the
real challenge of spiritualbypassing, while emphasizing
what's good and even crucialabout spirituality. And when I
say spiritual bypass, what Imean is the use of spiritual
(01:36):
practices and spiritual clichesto avoid feeling painful
feelings or facing distastefultruths. It's also known as
spiritual ego or spiritualmaterialism, these are all
connected basically, it's a kindof clinging tightly to like love
and light, and this like Easternmysticism without balancing it
with Shadow Work or aninstinctual wildness or even
(01:59):
integrity. And it's sometimesasking your teacher to do your
spiritual work for you. And Ithink spiritual bypass spiritual
ego spiritual materialism is abuilt in stumbling block on the
spiritual path. It's like anecessary step you have to go
through, hopefully early andthen quickly, but but sometimes
not. So in these early episodesof the podcast, I want to
(02:22):
continue to define spiritualityand to talk about why it's so
important, not just to me, butfor all of humanity. So today,
we're going to learn whyauthentic spirituality is the
most important human endeavor,in my opinion, especially now.
My goal here is to offer apositive and life affirming view
of spirituality, one thatreflects my personal experience
(02:43):
with it, because it's been sohugely transformational for me
and people I know in my life. Sowhy is spirituality the most
essential and urgent endeavor wecan undertake? Why does it offer
solutions to many of thechallenges that face humanity?
These are the questions I intendto answer on this episode, or at
least try towelcome to spiritual but not
(03:12):
ridiculous, a podcast thatexplores the world of
spirituality, from a groundedand clear eyed perspective. I'm
your host jayadev, a yogateacher, Vedic astrologer,
Attorney, and technologist.
(03:39):
In my opinion, spirituality, thespiritual path and dedicated
spiritual evolution are asrelevant to fomenting social
change as any other means ofactivism, if not more, so. After
all, it was deep spiritual work,faith and dedication to higher
principles that informed thenonviolent civil disobedience
movements of Gandhi, and theReverend Martin Luther King, Jr,
(04:01):
among many others. And afterspending decades of my own life,
looking for the greatest pointof leverage for true social
change, I have landed on yogaand spirituality for myself as a
vocation and a professional tosome extent. So this question is
not only deeply personal for me,but one I have spent
considerable time pondering. AndI make no claim to being more
(04:24):
authentic than anyone. My onlypoint here is that there is a
vital and authentic vein ofspirituality and that there's a
way to find that, and that weneed that more than ever. And I
feel like I am uniquelypositioned maybe to offer this
kind of grounded perspective onspirituality. I grew up deeply
sort of rooted in science, butalso partially Catholic and
(04:47):
partially Taoist. And so I thinkthis combination of these three
sort of traditions, reallyinformed my early views on the
world. And so then when I wentinto adulthood, I I started off
in engineering and was very,very grounded with that, and the
scientific worldview. And thenas I went more into law, I
became more interested inphilosophy, Western philosophy,
(05:11):
and how to make more of animpact in the world and those
sorts of things. And that led meinto yoga. And going deep with
yoga especially has brought meinto a much more deeper
spirituality. And so I havealways, for some reason, had
this natural resistance to blackand white thinking or blind
faith. It's not grounded inexperience. And so I hope that I
(05:33):
can bring that that ongoingperspective to this
conversation. I wanted to startby talking about what inspired
this episode. Over the past fewyears, especially I've had
multiple family members andfriends who seem to be so turned
off by spirituality andspiritual people. In fact, I've
had a few family members whohave banned the topic of
(05:55):
spirituality from conversation.
It seems like they've hadnumerous negative experiences
with spiritual people, which Itotally understand. And we're
going to talk about that in aminute. But all this kind of
made me curious about where,where this underlying resentment
and disappointment andresistance comes from. And then
over the past year, I've beenfollowing the work of this
thinker and writer, DanielPinchbeck, who has been a huge
(06:17):
influence on my life. And he'sbeen writing more about
spirituality too. And he's agood example of somebody who I
deeply respect but who alsoseems to have this very negative
view of spirituality andspiritual people. And so I
wanted to just explore that alittle bit as we as we go into
this topic, but everyone Iwanted to credit Pinchbeck with
basically inspiring thisepisode. Daniel, Pinchbeck has
(06:40):
been a major inspiration for me.
His book breaking up in thehead, which I read about five
years ago, was very eye openingfor me I was I was starting to
work with plant medicine myself,and reading about his
experiences were just soilluminating for me and and so
supportive in a way. And it wasaround that time, actually, that
(07:02):
I started to bump into him in inNew York at different places, at
a friend's Art Gallery in otherplaces. So when his book, How
soon is now which is a deepexploration of climate change,
and the various solutions thatwe may have to this challenge.
When that book came out, it wasvery inspiring for me, and I
(07:22):
went and explored a lot of thethings he proposed in that book.
And so I've been following himfor a while. And I just found it
very interesting that he hadsuch a different opinion about
spirituality than I have. Youknow, I talked to him one time
about the fact that I wasteaching yoga. And he said to
me, that's great. But you know,what else are you doing? How are
you bringing that into theworld? And I think that's a good
(07:44):
question. And it's one that I'vebeen thinking about ever since.
So let me read a couple quotesfrom from Daniel and this will
kind of tee up the discussionfor this episode. So in an email
from November of 2020, called isthe pursuit of truth worth it?
Daniel Pinchbeck says, when itcomes to postmodern
(08:05):
spirituality, we prefer the halftruths served up by useful
idiots like Eckhart Tolle a andDeepak Chopra. If a charismatic
guru comes along, Tony Robbinsis a great example. Or Keith
Ranieri, who tells people withconviction that they can be
super wealthy and have whateverthey want in life. If they
follow his program, that Guru isalmost guaranteed massive
(08:26):
success.
Chad Woodford (08:28):
He goes on to say, how I would love at this
point to transition to the otherteam, to transform myself into a
lifestyle guru who was going totell you how, by using the power
of Wow, some secret mantra, thelaw of manifestation or a series
of Voodoo incantations, that youwill be able to gorge yourself
with everything good anddelectable from now into
(08:48):
eternity. So there's a lot goingon here. I just wanted to pause
and take a moment to comment onthis. You know, first of all,
say what you want about Eckharttotally Deepak Chopra. But I
think they have performed acrucial service of exposing
spiritual ideas to a wideraudience. And for me,
personally, I totally is a newearth is one of the wisest and
(09:10):
most impactful books I've everread. So, you know, it's it's
interesting, because I feel whatI'm getting from this is that
he's been hanging out with a lotof people who identify as
spiritual who are in deep statesof spiritual bypass, perhaps.
That's that's my impression fromthese from these quotes for
these passages. So let me justshare a couple more that will
complete the picture. Pinchbeckgoes on to say in a short book
(09:32):
that he wrote last year, calledconspiracy Euler. Over the last
decades, much of the spiritualcommunity got lost in a
narcissistic self centered haze,spiritual seekers meditators,
Yogi's Neo shamans and festivalgoers seek to avoid the darker
elements of our reality. Theyfocus on the law of
manifestation, the power of nowand the never ending quest for
(09:56):
personal healing and ecstaticstates. One time belief is that
our thoughts create our reality.
People take this to mean that weshouldn't focus on negative
outcomes or malevolent forces,because this will give them
energy. Pinchbeck goes on,instead of just developing a
good yoga practice or chuggingIosco, I would like to see this
privileged and influential groupconfront the social basis of
(10:19):
oppression and exploitation.
Yeah, so again, there's a lotgoing on here. And I agree with
some of his points, you know, Ido understand where he's coming
from, in terms of a lot ofspiritual people being kind of
checked out, or a little selfindulgent or escaping and
(10:39):
privilege and all that these areall valid criticisms for sure.
And I think, you know, I'mcurious again, I'm curious about
what spiritual communities he'sbeen hanging out in, you know,
he's, I know, he's been livingin Toluca, maybe that's part of
the problem. But I think, thesecriticisms, they deny the fact
that first of all, the ShadowWork is part of the spiritual
path. I think that's veryimportant. I'll touch on that
(11:01):
later. And he's sort of, I feellike he's describing this like
Instagram version ofspirituality, right? meditators,
Yogi's Neo shamans, and festivalgoers, those are the people you
see on Instagram, I think,giving spirituality kind of a
bad name. So, you know, inPinchbeck, writing over the past
year, he goes on to suggest thatwe come up with a new eco
(11:22):
centric ethos, and thenconvinced people of its validity
through the mass media, whichis, which sounds like a great
idea. But I think it's a littlenaive and doesn't recognize that
there's this dense state ofcollective consciousness today
that is pretty intractable. AndI don't think that just
appealing to people's higherreason will, will change minds
(11:42):
or motivate different behavior.
But of course, I understand thedesire to grasp for solutions
when everything seems so dire,right? I mean, the world we live
in right now is seems crazy. SoI think we need to resist this
polar revolution, when wehaven't changed ourselves first.
Because I think real lastingchange can only come from the
inside, from the bottom up. Andforcing a solution from on high
(12:06):
will only create more stress,more violence, and it won't last
it won't stick. But again, I getit. You know, it's hard to take
most spiritual people seriously.
I think too many are trapped inspiritual bypassing and magical
thinking. They come across asnaive, and they're so easily
falling prey to corrupt anddishonest gurus or conspiracy
(12:29):
theories. And yeah, Iget it. I get it. I agree with
him to some extent. But I thinkhis thinking on this is a little
black and white and a littlereactionary. And I think to the
Pinchbeck is still firmly rootedin this sort of 20th century
like Age of Reason, intellectualtradition, where all you have to
do is apply your mind yourreason to any problem, and you
can solve it. But this remindsme of what Einstein said, which
(12:53):
is that you can't solve aproblem from the same level of
consciousness that created it,right. So I think there's other
ways of being and knowing thatthe spiritual path can reveal I
can offer that would augmentPinchbeck solutions here and to
make and make them more tenable,I think, you know, and again, to
his credit, he does recognizethat the source of our
(13:14):
disconnection and apathy is thegrim materialist worldview from
the 20th century. But I thinkit's a little ironic to that he
seems to be still so kind ofmired in that worldview at the
same time, his arguments are soover intellectualize my opinion.
And so black and white, youknow, it's not either we do
spiritual work, or we areactivists, I think it's that we
do spiritual work and beactivists. I think we need
(13:37):
people on the front lines, butwe also need people doing this
evolutionary Shadow Work ofspirituality, in essence, like
fighting a different battle on adifferent kind of Battlefield.
And hey, I admit that I don'thave all the answers. I mean,
for example, I'm still workingout how to bring spirituality to
the underprivileged in aproductive and effective way.
(13:57):
And that's something I want toexplore in future episodes of
this podcast, I have identifieda few ways for myself, to bring
these things to theunderprivileged, you know, I'm
getting involved in anorganization, the prison yoga
project, which is very exciting.
And I want to find more ways tobring yoga to and spiritual
practices to, you know, troubledyouth, and those are who are
(14:18):
traditionally underserved. Andalso, I want to bring
spirituality into the businessworld in a more meaningful and
substantive way beyond justmindfulness practices, or
helping people manage stress inthe office. For example, I've
been over the past couple ofyears, I've been teaching yoga
and mindfulness to SiliconValley companies. And I want to
(14:39):
find ways to to kind of bringthe spiritual ethos deeper into
the approach to business, youknow, deeper into leadership and
that kind of thing. So that's,that's something else I want to
explore in the future as well.
But back to Pinchbeck. You know,his stated motivation is a
ruthless search for truth. And Ithink that's commendable. And I
think that's actually a gooddescription. Definition of
(14:59):
spirituality to this ruthlesssearch for truth. But again, he
wants to arrive at the truthpurely through the mind. And I
don't think this is possible orthe right approach. I mean, we
can build a new alliance betweenthe working class and the
progressive elite, as Pinchbecksays, and we can create a shared
vision for humanity's future.
(15:21):
But I don't think we can do thisby making the same perfectly
reasonable arguments to bothgroups in the hopes that they
will suddenly wake up to theurgency of the situation without
doing the hard evolutionarywork, the Shadow Work and all
that too. I think it's got to bethe complete package. And
there's also this kind of thrustwithin pinch backs argument that
(15:42):
there's not enough activism ornot enough doing and
spirituality, right. And I thinkthere's, there's more to that,
too. I mean, I think saying thatthere's not enough doing and
spirituality is anoversimplification. And this
attitude is sort of, it soundsvery Protestant and Calvinist
and sort of patriarchalcolonialist, industrialized to
me, you know, it fundamentallymisunderstands what spirituality
(16:04):
is and how it works. I thinkthis attitude of rushing around
frantically fixing everythingstrictly from the mind is part
of what I think has brought usto the brink of global collapse.
Anyways. It reminds me of a Rondas quote, actually, Rhonda
said, I can do nothing for you,but work on myself. And you can
(16:25):
do nothing for me, but work onyourself. So maybe that's too
extreme, too. But I that gets tothe point that I'm making, which
is the inner work is just asimportant as the outer work. And
it's certainly not my intent tocall people out on this podcast.
Pinchbeck has been as much aninspiration for me as a critical
spirituality. And ultimately, Ithink he and I have the same
(16:46):
goal, the same motivations. Weboth recognize how dire our
predicament is. So I onlyinclude Pinchbeck here because I
think we all know people withthis attitude. And I think he
offers some well articulatedarguments that tee up much of
the discussion for today. Andfinally, I hope in the grand
dialectic tradition, thatcontrasting these ideas will
(17:08):
lead us closer to the truth.
Now, let me take a moment toattempt to define spirituality.
(17:28):
More people identify asspiritual but not religious
today than at any time in modernhistory. In his book, American
beta, Philip Goldberg says thatpeople identifying as SB nr, are
somewhere between 16 and 39% ofthe US population. And, as you
can probably guess, thisspiritual but not religious
(17:49):
phenomenon, is the inspirationfor the title of my podcast. So
more and more people areidentifying as spiritual but not
religious. This is exciting. Itmeans we're moving away from
what I think are the two greatills of the 20th century
organized religion, which failsto offer a direct transcendental
experience and materialisticscience, which offers nothing
(18:10):
more than a cold, empty universefull of meaningless random
events. So what is spirituality?
For me, spirituality is anacknowledgement that there is
something more than what we see.
And then a system of differentpractices for tapping into that
something more, because I thinkwe are spiritual beings. And
(18:33):
there's a real power inacknowledging that fact.
Spirituality to for me is anopen and honest inquiry into
what's true. It's sort of thetruest science in that sense.
And this inquiry goes beyondthought, it goes beyond
concepts, it goes into directexperience, as well. So you
(18:53):
could say spirituality is thiscommitment to seeing reality and
ourselves as clearly aspossible, and removing all
impediments to that, and there'spractices for doing that as
well. So it's a deep inquiryinto reality, in a sense,
getting closer to realitythrough experimentation and
observation. So again, like ascience in that way. I mean,
(19:14):
spirituality includes andrequires actually rational
thought, intellectual rigor, andeven the scientific method, you
know, trial and error. Trythings over time to see what
repeats that's, that's very mucha part of spirituality. But it's
also a means for approaching andrelaxing into the mystery of
life. It's a set of practicesfor making you feel more at home
(19:39):
in the world, really. And foraccessing, again, the direct
experience of, of unity, thistranscendent state of yoga, not
to escape, or to avoid reality,but to bring this deeper
expanded state of yoga back intothe world in a very powerful
way. So I think you can bespiritual And discriminating.
(20:02):
Being spiritual doesn't meanopening yourself up to any and
all traditions, beliefs andpractices. Instead, it means
being a spiritual scientist,encountering new systems and
practices, and then testing themin the laboratory of your
experience. I think there's anobligation actually, for
spiritual people to, to havethis kind of rigor to their
spiritual practice this kind ofskepticism even or this
(20:24):
discrimination, this question,this constant questioning, not
just of the outside world, butthe question the questioning of
yourself and the practices. Imean, there are of course,
relevant times and ways to, tohave faith and surrender, but
there's definitely a dance thatyou do with that and your
discernment. And I wanted to sayto you is, is very important,
(20:45):
because because I think a lot ofpeople misunderstand
spirituality to be, you know,all about just love and light
and wisdom. But there are theseother spiritual archetypes that
are part of the larger package.
You know, there's the kind offool energy the the fool Taro
archetype, which is thetrickster. There's the wild,
indigenous hairy man or woman,you know, there's this the dark,
(21:05):
mysterious shadow emus. Andthere's all these different kind
of expressions of what aspiritual person is, I think
it's very broad. It's a wholeway of life. And again, like I
said before, it's it's a, it's alot more Shadow Work than people
think. And in terms ofincreasing our wildness, this is
I think this is a part that getsoverlooked too often. We're not
(21:27):
becoming angels, we're becomingmore deeply human in a sense.
And what does this look like?
Well, it's being fully andpassionately at home in the
human body and in the naturalworld, a true human being
somebody who is enraptured bythe magic and utter mystery of
manifest reality, in touch withyour own mystery and the mystery
(21:50):
of nature. We become comfortablebeing in a sensuous communion
with the world. I mean, when wasthe last time you hug a tree?
Seriously. So I thinkspirituality is it's a comfort
with your emotional body, withletting your feelings full flow
freely, and getting in touchwith animal instincts, not
(22:13):
denying those. In this sense,we're sort of rejecting Freud's
oppressive view of the ID. Andactually, I wanted to read this
quote from dh Lawrence, who's agreat example of this kind of
approach to the spiritualwildness.
Oh, what a catastrophe. What ameaning of love when it was made
(22:35):
a personal, merely personalfeeling, taken away from the
rising and the setting of thesun, and cut off from the magic
connection of the solstice andthe equinox. This is what is the
matter with us. We are bleedingat the roots. Because we are cut
off from the earth and sun andstars. And love is a grinning
(22:59):
mockery, because poor blossom,we plucked it from its stem on
the tree of life, and expectedit to keep on blooming in our
civilized base on the table. SoI just love that that imagery. I
love what he's saying there, youknow that there's this
disconnect in the modern world.
And he was writing, what 100years ago or so. Right? So, you
(23:21):
know, iron john from Robert Blyis another great example, that
the hairy beast at the bottom ofthe pond, you know, making
friends with that kind ofarchetype, or the fierce form of
Shiva and yoga, by dava, is agreat archetype for this
wildness. You've also got fromthe Greek tradition, Artemis,
the Greek goddess of the lady ofbeasts, the goddess of the wild
(23:43):
lands, the mysteries of animals.
You've got Dionysus wood nymphs.
I mean, Robin Hood is one, youknow, Henry Miller even or is
Nin. Gabrielle Roth, you know,these are all great examples of
wild spiritual people. In short,it's a full bodied feeling
spirituality. It's a way ofknowing, you know, it's
(24:05):
intuition. It's emotion, itsbody, its nature, it's all of
it. But ultimately, only you candefine spirituality for
yourself. And that processrequires some sort of spiritual
practice, you're not going tothink your way into a spiritual
state. More thought can onlylead to more concepts. I mean,
this is how we arrived at thecurrent state of Western
(24:25):
philosophy, right? So the kindof spirituality I'm talking
about is a third way, in asense, not blind faith and
superstition or religious dogma.
But a worldview with deaf andsoul and heart and grit, founded
upon truth, and the directexperience of our infinite
nature. And it doesn't have tobe like this enlightened Yogi
(24:48):
archetype or this or a BuddhistYou know, I think it's better if
it's not maybe it's like we werecreating the new spiritual kind
of archetype as we speak.
(25:11):
Now I want to acknowledge thepitfalls on the spiritual path
or the ways that people becometurned off by spirituality or
skeptical of it. So first ofall, there's no denying the fact
that the traditional religions,the Abrahamic faiths of the
world, have become increasinglyproblematic and irrelevant,
(25:32):
right? Christianity inparticular. But when you look at
religion today, it's full ofdogma and Puritanism and
oppression. And these wereclearly tools for controlling
the masses. We see endlessscandals, you know, Catholic
Church scandals. And this isthere's no question that
organized religion as we know,it is flawed and generally more
(25:53):
harmful than not, in my opinion,these these seem like
patriarchal vestiges of a bygoneera to me. But you know, if you
look at the East as well, youcan say similar things about
certain manifestations ofHinduism or Buddhism. Look at
the situation in Myanmar, withthe ringu genocide or parts of
India that are beset by Hindunationalism and violence. It's
(26:17):
very strange to me that yoga andBuddhism can lead to violence
when they're both founded uponnon violence. So I see how all
of this castes, religion andspirituality in such a negative
light, and then you pile on topof that the following gurus and
cult scandals that we've had inrecent history, right. We've
seen the infamous Oshodiscredited and wild wild
(26:40):
country become Choudhry wasexposed as a lecherous megalo
maniacal scammer. TheTranscendental Meditation
organization has been takinghundreds of millions of dollars
from students to questionableends. And more recently, Yogi
budgin, the founder of KundaliniYoga was exposed as a sexually
abusive and egotistical tyrant,not to mention incarcerated cult
(27:03):
leaders like Keith Ranieri,right, so there's these all
these abuses all these scandals.
We see all these sexual abusescandals in the various Buddhist
organizations to entireorganizations and spiritual
communities have been rocked tothe core by these scandals. And
you can see why people areturned off by spirituality with
all this right. It makes abuseof power and egomania seem like
(27:23):
an inevitability on the path ofyoga or spirituality. And I
think part of the challenge too,is that we in the West are
bringing all sorts of strangeand outmoded ideas to the
spiritual path or to a spiritualteacher. For example, we project
all our unresolved parentalwounds onto teachers. It's like
there's something about thespiritual path that makes people
(27:46):
lose their discernment. peopleconfuse spirituality with
religion, and they bring allthis baggage that religion
brings like dogma or a lack ofcritical thinking. Another
pitfall is that many you havedeveloped a strange attraction
to a specific archetype of aspiritual person, or especially
a spiritual teacher. Forexample, you have the classic
(28:08):
stereotype of the old indianguru with a beard and flowing
robes. But you also have the fitblond and blue, the lemon doing
Asana on Instagram, or the darkand hairy guy in a Burning Man
top hat, a leather vest, beadsand harem pants living in a
camper van, you know, we it'slike, we want our spiritual
(28:28):
authority and spiritualauthenticity, to arrive in a
specific package. And I thinkwe're too attracted to the
presentation over the substanceof the teachings and the
practices. And this is why myopinion, spiritual materialism
is so rampant, it's so easy tolook spiritual, and to attract
followers by by doing so. Also,too often, I think we seek to
(28:50):
outsource the hard work ofspiritual practice and Shadow
Work by looking for a teacherwho will do the work for us
without asking too much of us.
Or we subconsciously seek aparental figure because we seek
love that we never received as achild, or we miss direct
romantic love to a guru. See allthe scandals that I just
(29:10):
mentioned. Or we simply justwant to belong somewhere that's
totally understandable as amotivation. So again, I think
this is where we needed todevelop discernment, and to
learn to listen with our heart,to follow our gut. And to trust
ourselves Above all, we need toget out of our head and burn
through our past conditioning.
And so spirituality can actuallyoffer practices that do all
(29:32):
these things. You just have tobe committed to a certain
tradition or a certain set ofpractices. And also, having a
teacher is important at certainpoints on the path anyways, but
I think so is moving away from ateacher and becoming your own
guru, listening to your higherself and following your own
intuition, or doing what TerenceMcKenna advocated and following
(29:54):
plants instead of gurus. So it'salmost like there's a There's a
spiritual approach for everyseason of your life, right?
Sometimes you want to teacher,sometimes you just want to
follow your own intuition.
Sometimes you want to work withdifferent traditions or try
different approaches. It'sagain, it's like a science and
(30:16):
you want to be a spiritualscientist. The other thing I
wanted to just come back tofirst for a moment here is I've
been really fascinated by thephenomenon of what seems like
rampant conspiracy theorieswithin the spiritual communities
that I'm a part of. I know somany people who are anti COVID
vaccine, for example. And so Iwant to explore this more
(30:37):
deeply, I find this reallyfascinating, I'm gonna I'm gonna
dedicate a whole episode of thepodcast, to this topic in the
coming months. But in themeantime, if you want to listen
to more about this topic, youcan find some great discussions
on the conspiratorial IIpodcast. So I'm here to tell you
that there are authenticteachers and powerful
(30:58):
transformational spiritualpractices out there, I can
personally attest to the deepand lasting transformation that
can come from a dedicatedcommitment to authentic
spiritual practices. But thespiritual path is hard. Any
spiritual teacher will tell you,it's not a walk in the park.
It's hard work. But the rewardsare worth the effort, in my
(31:20):
experience. So now we come tothe thrust of my argument, the
thrust of my defense ofspirituality, and why I think
it's so powerful as a lifestyle.
(31:52):
Spirituality for me, is a way ofbecoming more relevant in the
world more dynamic. Myunderstanding of yoga and other
spiritual practices is that theyare ultimately designed to make
you more dynamic and effectivein the world, to punch through
to reality as one of my teacherswould say, because spiritual
practice strips you down to youressence, so that you can act in
(32:14):
the world with greater purpose,Authenticity, and integrity.
spiritual practice can make youfearless, but also
compassionate. It shouldfundamentally change you in this
way. There's a sort of strippingaway and expansion, a maturation
and, and an integration. Thatthen makes you a natural leader.
(32:36):
For example, in the BhagavadGita, Krishna is not teaching a
renunciate. You know, he's notteaching a monk who lives in a
cave, he's teaching our Juna,the most powerful warrior. So I
think there's an importantlesson here an important
reminder. Of course, the Indianspiritual tradition offers the
ascetic model, but I think we'veseen this development over
(32:57):
recent history coming coming outof the yoga tradition of this
householder model, going back acouple 100 years, at least, even
the Buddha rejected asceticism.
So as a spiritual person, yourefine your state of
consciousness, and then you acton the world, in business, in
family, and in friendship. Agreat succinct way to define
(33:18):
spirituality and the spiritualpath actually is, it's a process
of learning to transcend fear,and then to move towards fear as
a practice. And then to helpothers do the same thing.
Because when you becomefearless, you make better
decisions. And you operate froma place of love, and a place of
service. Spirituality is so muchabout being of service. So
(33:40):
instead of surveying the worldthrough a rational lens, and
deciding rationally, whatproblems need to be solved, the
spiritual approach to beingrelevant in the world and making
lasting change is to firstliberate and center yourself,
and then simply actspontaneously and intuitively in
collaboration with intuition, ina total state of flow. Because I
(34:01):
think a person with the bestintentions, may decide they want
to make a difference or changethe world or help people. But
the challenge is that they showup with all these unresolved
personal and emotional issues,plus heavy layers of societal
conditioning. And they're inthis mode of material realism,
bringing industrial solutions toproblems and patriarchal
(34:23):
thinking, and seeing natureseparate and all these these
things are preventing them fromtruly making change or impacting
the world. They might enter acommunity that does not conform
to their ideas of utopia. Andthen they take charge, and they
impose their limited worldviewonto an existing community who
may have both problems andsolutions that don't fit their
(34:45):
paradigm. I mean, I think we'veseen this time and again, in
developing countries or withindigenous communities. This
deeply flawed colonialistpatriarchal industrial paradigm
disconnects us from nature andSoul. And I think this is how
the entirety of humanity hascome face to face with his most
intractable challenges, whetherthat's climate change or
(35:07):
inequality. So again, actingfrom a deep place of inner
stillness will, in contrastresult naturally in a non
violent, selflesstransformational approach to to
true change in the world. It'sfull of empathy and compassion,
and love. So going back toDaniel Pinchbeck was saying, at
(35:28):
the top, there is urgent,important work to do right now.
But there is also a lot of innerspiritual work to do for all of
us. So I don't think it's youhave to choose one or the other.
I think it's both I think we cando both at the same time. And I
do think it's relevant for somepeople to play the role of
teacher and to remain in thatrole. There is a deep need in
this world for people who arefocused on helping others to
(35:49):
expand their consciousness, andwe need that desperately to find
Finally, it's important to ceasehabitually seeing problems
everywhere, I think. The deepestchange can only come from a
person who has first totallyaccepted the world as it is
completely, then change can comefrom a deep place of stillness
instead of ego. Okay, we lookedat how spirituality can make you
(36:15):
more relevant and impactful inthe world. Now let's explore the
importance of expandingconsciousness and developing
discernment. And how spiritualpractices can help with that.
(36:48):
As I've said before, nothingwill change the long as a
majority of humanity is livingin a dense state of
consciousness, living theselives of quiet desperation to
quote Henry David Thoreau.
Daniel Pinchbeck has suggestedthat we develop a new vision for
humanity that is so compelling,inspiring and true that the
multitudes can't help but beattracted to it, and change
their behavior collectively. ButI think this puts the cart
(37:08):
before the horse, I think weneed to change minds. First, we
need to expand consciousnessfirst. I mean, yes, there's work
to do, we should do both. Butthis, this inner work is so
crucial, in my opinion. And whatdo I mean by dense state of
consciousness? Well, I thinkthis is a relative sort of state
of ignorance or fear, or it's alack mentality. You know, it's
(37:29):
an ignorance of our true nature.
It's an ignorance of history ofscience to other cultures of
other people, other communities.
And so because of this densestate of consciousness, I don't
think appeals to reason canwork. And I think conspiracy
theories will continue toproliferate, as long as we all
have this dense state ofconsciousness. And I recognize
(37:50):
again, that spirituality can toooften be a process of adopting
new misalignments with realitythat are packaged as the truth.
It seems like most people whenthey encounter the spiritual
path, abandon all discernment,right. And so, and I think this
is understandable, becausespirituality, by its very nature
(38:11):
often does require a deepquestioning of beliefs, and
especially mainstream beliefs.
But then spiritual people, soeasily fall victim to the sort
of deepest trap of all, which isblack and white thinking, you
know, it's like, well, if I'mquestioning mainstream beliefs,
then I need to questioneverything. And I need to adopt
(38:34):
these alternative views that areprepackaged for me by this
community, or by this thespiritual tradition, right,
instead of, instead of being aspiritual scientist, as I was
saying before, but it's tricky,right? I mean, how do we know
something is true? It's verysubjective, in a sense. But I
think if you're taking thisspiritual scientist approach, we
(38:54):
observe over time and testagainst reality. But this, this
process requires an ability toto see very clearly. And so all
of this is coming from spiritualpractices. But I think, yeah, we
need to cultivate and maintain ahealthy balance between our
curiosity, and our openness, andskepticism. I think we need to
(39:15):
maintain our skepticism withinall. And part of this process is
refining the intellect,developing discernment. And
again, there are practices forthese things, and I'll be
talking about that and anepisode coming up that's focused
on this process of discernment.
But a lot of this is justbecoming self reliant, to some
extent. I mean, having communityand being connected deeply with
(39:38):
people in community but alsobeing self reliant at the same
time. We need to transcend ourfamilial and societal
conditioning, our samskaras andeven our karma. This process is
often called polishing themirror in yoga and Buddhist
traditions. And these are partof the practices that I share.
Part of this practice too, isreleasing past trauma from the
(39:58):
body. So all these things areimportant. For example, solving
climate change or inequalityrequires a large number of
people to change their behaviorand their mindset, right? We
need to stop investing incertain industries, or we need
to start making different buyingdecisions, or we need to change
our lifestyle in pretty profoundways. And all these things
(40:20):
require a new outlook, right?
And so I think, again, asPinchbeck might say, you can you
know, you can sort of make wellreasoned arguments to this
effect, but I think peoplearen't going to change their
behavior until their minds arechanged through spirituality.
And I don't think we can havemore conscious, more elevated
(40:44):
leaders or politicians too,until citizens first change
their minds and change theirworldview. Another example is,
you know, seeing, seeing theextent of systemic racism in our
culture in our society, requiresan ability to overcome our deep
biases and, and to discernrhetoric from truth, right.
(41:06):
I mean, determining, in general,what's really going on requires
discernment and self reflection.
It's fascinating to me, this,this, this topic of conspiracy
theories, in particular, I'msympathetic to to this
phenomenon, because I understandhow, when you're facing the
mounting challenges that wehave, as a humanity, it can be
stressful, right? And I can seehow psychologically, adopting a
(41:29):
conspiracy theory can give yousome relief, right? If If you
feel totally helpless, becausethere's a secret society who's
who's running everything, thenit sort of relieves you of
responsibility, I think, and Ican see the appeal of that. But,
but again, this is a topic foranother episode. So I want to
just kind of tee that up forfuture discussion. But in short,
(41:52):
I don't think we can drag peopleinto a progressive future
without a shift inconsciousness. And we we expand
our consciousness, not toselfish ends, but to reduce our
suffering to some extent, butalso the suffering of those
around us. And to make us morerelevant, and more capable of
(42:13):
truly being of service in theworld. Of course, we have to
practice and expand, while alsotaking direct practical steps to
help people and be of serviceyou know, so it's, it's like
we're practicing, we'respiritual, and we're activists,
and we're taking direct actionin the world at the same
time. Another important point Iwant to make about spirituality
(42:53):
in this kind of defensivespirituality is that you can't
measure your impact. And thereare these ripple effects that
come from transformation, we canbecome indirectly impactful as
well, or even unintentionallyimpactful, just through
spiritual growth and spiritualpractices. Changing ourselves
(43:14):
increases our impact by settingan example for those around us.
This kind of impact and rippleoutwards. Changing ourselves
also changes the way we relateto people, and our relationships
in general. And this can alsocascade beyond our immediate
network. When you're holdingbetter space for yourself, you
can hold better space forothers. And this can come from
the spiritual path. It makes youa better and more mature, more
(43:37):
whole person who acts fearlesslyand purposefully instead of
reactively, or out of fear. Andthis kind of change in behavior
can positively impact everyoneyou know, I mean, it has to
right. And I think as you startto radiate love more
consistently, and frequently, asyou start to make decisions
based on love instead of fear.
Other people pick up on thisboth consciously and
(44:00):
unconsciously. As we open andexpand our nervous systems, this
change can radiate outward inmyriad ways. And as more people
do this, this effect increasesexponentially. And again, I'm
not talking just about yoga hereor meditation, but all this
deep, dark shadow work that weall must do, and also expanding
into our inherent wildness to soit's all of it. And it all I
(44:25):
think, creates a positiveenergetic field that radiates
outward, and it can uplift thosearound you. And I'm not just
talking about the power ofpositive thinking because that's
just bypassing. I'm talkingabout the power of an expanded
fearless and love filled heart,soul, and mind. So the more free
we are of our past karma throughspiritual practice, the less
(44:52):
reactive we become. And the morewe can consciously choose to
make every interaction one ofselfless Service, whether that's
in a business, a social setting,or in a personal context, Carl
Jung talked about thisphenomenon with his collective
unconscious. Like witheverything he did, he was way
ahead of the curve with thisidea. This young young scholar
(45:13):
Marie Louise von Franzsummarizes his view this way.
Whenever an individual works onhis own unconscious, he
invisibly affects first thegroup. And if he goes even
deeper, he affects the largernational units, or sometimes
even all of humanity. Not onlydoes he change and transform
(45:34):
himself, but he has animperceptible impact on the
unconscious psyche of many otherpeople. Conversely, whenever an
individual engages in practice,extensively intended to affect
collective transformation, hehimself is also inevitably
transformed. By participating inthe practice, he contacts a
source of healing wisdom thatcannot help but positively
(45:57):
affect his own consciousness. Sowe see here how Jung was so far
ahead of his time, and obviouslya student of many practices,
including Kundalini Yoga andspiritual practices from India
that he studied when he wastraveling in India. But yeah, so
what he's saying here is, orwhat you know, what von Franz is
(46:19):
saying here is that it's a twoway street, you know, your is a
positive feedback loop at workas well. So you're transforming
yourself, you're engaging withpeople who are also doing the
work. And then this kind ofbuilds into a positive feedback
loop. Part of what I'm gettingat here is captured so well by
this theory of morphic fields,which Rupert Sheldrake does a
(46:42):
great job explaining, I won'tget into that here, because it
would take too long to explain.
But if you're curious, I'll putsomething in the show notes. And
you can check that out. So as wecan see here, there are so many
ways that simple improvements orsimple transformations within
you can ripple out and createpositive effects throughout your
(47:04):
community and throughout theworld. And I don't think you can
measure this kind of impact,oftentimes, you're not even
aware of it. But cumulatively,it can have an enormous
potential for change. I'vepersonally been pleasantly
surprised over the years whenpeople tell me how they were
inspired by some small thing Idid that I didn't even think
twice about. So it's a greatreminder that just living your
(47:25):
life as authentically as youcan, in itself can be very
powerful, and verytransformational for the world.
Because you never know how farreaching and profound your
impact is on the people you mayknow, or the people they may
know.
So much positive change andinfluence can flow from just
living your own life andauthenticity, courage, integrity
(47:47):
and love. Maybe this is enoughto tip the scales of the world
towards true positive collectivechange.
(48:11):
The final point I want to makehere is that a spiritual life
and the spiritual path imbuesyour life with greater meaning.
And I think this can be verysupportive and nurturing and
transformational to. In contrastwith the hopelessness and sort
of moral acuity of scientificmaterialism, spirituality offers
a much more rich and lifeaffirming kind of ethos, or
(48:36):
cosmology. I talked a lot aboutthis in my recent episode about
astrology, where I took thelistener through the history of
European thought over the past200 years and how materialism is
empty and not capable ofproviding meaning. Because you
know, when the universe is seenas a cold, empty space, then
(48:57):
it's much harder to feelgrounded and aligned in the
world. In contrast, when weexperience the cosmos as alive
and intelligent, and evennurturing this empowers us to
have more trust, which I thinkcan lead to more authenticity
and to taking bigger positiverisks, and living in alignment
with our higher selves. When wesee the world imbued with
(49:19):
meaning, this emboldens us tolive with more purpose, in
alignment with the evolution ofthe cosmos. And you don't have
to take my word for it. I mean,through specific yoga practices
or plant medicine experiences oror certain spiritual rituals,
you know, ecstatic dance,anything you can experience this
(49:39):
deep intelligence of nature,firsthand. And when you have
these experiences, you start tounderstand that life is
meaningful and imbued withmeaning and mystery, and that
there's nothing to fear. Havinga spiritual ethos allows us to
live without fear, to surrenderand embrace all of life. As a
(50:00):
great mystery, there is no needfor intellectual argument here
because it's it's a directexperience that you can have,
relatively easily with thesespiritual practices. I want to
end this section with a quotefrom Rick tarnis, which I think
encapsulates this beautifully.
The primal world isn't sold. Itcommunicates and has purposes,
(50:21):
it is pregnant with signs andsymbols, implications and
intentions. The world isanimated by the same
psychologically resonantrealities that human beings
experience within themselves. Soonce you start to have this
experience, that the primalworld isn't sold, it's deeply
empowering, and deeplynurturing, and deeply inspiring.
(50:43):
And before we wrap up, I justwant to once again, acknowledge
the fact that there's a lot ofwork to do for all of us in
finding ways to make thesespiritual practices and a
spiritual path more accessibleto more people. I want to
dedicate at least one episode toexploring this question and this
topic. But having said that, Ido think it to some extent, you
(51:08):
can only start where you areright. So there's no reason to
wait. Until we're all able toreach every person on the
planet, I think there's a hugebenefit to practicing yourself,
and sharing these things withother people and building
community from where you are.
And I think I think there's anargument that the most
privileged people needtransformation more than
(51:30):
anybody, maybe. But again, thisis a topic for another episode.
And I invite any and all ideasthat you may have around this
question of making thesepractices and making
spirituality more accessible tothe traditionally underserved
and underprivileged. And like Isaid before, I'm actively
exploring, bringing yoga intoprisons through the prison yoga
project, and finding other waysto bring spiritual practices to
(51:55):
historically underservedcommunities. And I'm also
actively exploring deeper waysto bring spirituality into the
business world, in a moremeaningful and substantive way.
That's not just mindfulness, buttransforming the way business is
done. And I've been deeplyinspired by the work of debit
Patnaik, and especially his bookbusiness sutra. So I'll put a
(52:18):
link to that in the show notesas well.
So just to wrap up here andconclude In this episode, we
looked at spirituality fromdifferent perspectives, we
explored the various ways thatspirituality has kind of gotten
a bad name and, and why that'shappened and some, maybe some
(52:38):
ways to rectify that. I tooksome time to define spirituality
from from my standpoint, and my,my vision of kind of a holistic
spirituality that's not justyoga, but also includes Shadow
Work, and cultivating our animalwildness, and, you know, drawing
from different spiritualtraditions, without watering any
one tradition down too much. Andrecently, I've been deeply
(53:02):
inspired by the work of BillPlotkin, I've been studying his,
his approach to spirituality andto soul work for about four or
five years, and I love how hehas this framework of the
cardinal direction. So in thenorth direction, there is the
sort of nurturing benevolentqueen or king archetype. And
(53:23):
that's one expression ofspirituality really. And then in
the south, we have this wildindigenous Green Man or green
woman. And then in the West, wehave the dark, beloved muse. And
then in the east, we have theAnson sage, which is, I think,
is this Eastern, you know, sage,Yogi, Buddhist archetype, I
(53:43):
think, that most people think ofwhen they think of spirituality.
So I like the idea that we needto sort of be even more holistic
than just holistic yoga, we needto be truly holistic in our
approach to spirituality. Andthen we looked at ways that the
spiritual path and spiritualpractices can make you more
relevant in the world and moreimpactful and more powerful, in
contrast with the stereotype ofThe Escapist spiritual person,
(54:06):
spirituality is not justescaping to a cave in the
Himalayas, but it's, it's it'sbecoming an activist from this
deep place of stillness. Andthen we talked about the
importance of expandingconsciousness, raising awareness
and developing discernment, andhow you can't really measure
your impact. And then finally,we looked at how having a
(54:27):
meaningful cosmology ormeaningful ethos, a meaningful
kind of spiritual approach tolife is so important to because
it can help to sort of hold youor create a container in life
that you can sort of Nestle intoas you as you go out into the
world and act more relevantly.
Because I think life again, isis deeply meaningful, and imbued
(54:50):
with mystery. Having a spiritualapproach to life allows us to
live without fear and tosurrender and embrace all of
life. Life and all of itsmystery. So thank you so much
for joining me on this episode.
I hope it's been as fun for youto listen to as it was for me to
put together. Obviously, I lovetalking about this stuff. And
(55:12):
this was a big one for me. I hadbeen working on this for about
six or nine months, and thinkingabout it deeply. And it's sort
of this that this episode islike, it's like an expression of
everything I believe. And so Ihope I hope you got that. Hope
you got that. That Baba for me.
As always, I invite questionsand feedback, you can reach me
at the links in my show notes.
(55:38):
And so I leave you with thisquote from Max Planck. Science
cannot solve the ultimatemystery of nature. And it is
because in the last analysis, weourselves are part of the
mystery we are trying to solve.
Until next time, how do you ownTazza
What do you think about when you think of
spirituality or spiritualpeople?
hippies,your friend who's a little too
into crystals and astrology,that guy in your Facebook feed
who's constantly postingspiritual cliches, or maybe cult
members. Or maybe you identify aspiritual, I identify as
spiritual. But I also feel likeI have had to defend that I
(00:25):
straddle the spiritual world andwhat burners may call the
default world. It's a strangeand exhilarating place to live.
It's like I'm gazingsimultaneously into what feels
increasingly like two extremes.
So I want to offer this episode,as a way of sort of saying,
like, hey, spirituality isgreat. Take it from your old
(00:49):
level headed friend jayadev.
Because what I've noticed isthat spiritual people have given
spirituality, a bad rap. Perhapslike me, you've personally has
disappointing experiences with ateacher or a community. And for
many, I think spiritual, theword spiritual has come to mean,
escapist, narcissistic, myopicand caught in spiritual bypass,
(01:12):
that kind of thing. Many peopleI know who identify as spiritual
have fallen into conspiracytheories and have seemed to lost
touch with reality. So in thisepisode, I want to recognize the
real challenge of spiritualbypassing, while emphasizing
what's good and even crucialabout spirituality. And when I
say spiritual bypass, what Imean is the use of spiritual
(01:36):
practices and spiritual clichesto avoid feeling painful
feelings or facing distastefultruths. It's also known as
spiritual ego or spiritualmaterialism, these are all
connected basically, it's a kindof clinging tightly to like love
and light, and this like Easternmysticism without balancing it
with Shadow Work or aninstinctual wildness or even
(01:59):
integrity. And it's sometimesasking your teacher to do your
spiritual work for you. And Ithink spiritual bypass spiritual
ego spiritual materialism is abuilt in stumbling block on the
spiritual path. It's like anecessary step you have to go
through, hopefully early andthen quickly, but but sometimes
not. So in these early episodesof the podcast, I want to
(02:22):
continue to define spiritualityand to talk about why it's so
important, not just to me, butfor all of humanity. So today,
we're going to learn whyauthentic spirituality is the
most important human endeavor,in my opinion, especially now.
My goal here is to offer apositive and life affirming view
of spirituality, one thatreflects my personal experience
(02:43):
with it, because it's been sohugely transformational for me
and people I know in my life. Sowhy is spirituality the most
essential and urgent endeavor wecan undertake? Why does it offer
solutions to many of thechallenges that face humanity?
These are the questions I intendto answer on this episode, or at
least try towelcome to spiritual but not
(03:12):
ridiculous, a podcast thatexplores the world of
spirituality, from a groundedand clear eyed perspective. I'm
your host jayadev, a yogateacher, Vedic astrologer,
Attorney, and technologist.
(03:39):
In my opinion, spirituality, thespiritual path and dedicated
spiritual evolution are asrelevant to fomenting social
change as any other means ofactivism, if not more, so. After
all, it was deep spiritual work,faith and dedication to higher
principles that informed thenonviolent civil disobedience
movements of Gandhi, and theReverend Martin Luther King, Jr,
(04:01):
among many others. And afterspending decades of my own life,
looking for the greatest pointof leverage for true social
change, I have landed on yogaand spirituality for myself as a
vocation and a professional tosome extent. So this question is
not only deeply personal for me,but one I have spent
considerable time pondering. AndI make no claim to being more
(04:24):
authentic than anyone. My onlypoint here is that there is a
vital and authentic vein ofspirituality and that there's a
way to find that, and that weneed that more than ever. And I
feel like I am uniquelypositioned maybe to offer this
kind of grounded perspective onspirituality. I grew up deeply
sort of rooted in science, butalso partially Catholic and
(04:47):
partially Taoist. And so I thinkthis combination of these three
sort of traditions, reallyinformed my early views on the
world. And so then when I wentinto adulthood, I I started off
in engineering and was very,very grounded with that, and the
scientific worldview. And thenas I went more into law, I
became more interested inphilosophy, Western philosophy,
(05:11):
and how to make more of animpact in the world and those
sorts of things. And that led meinto yoga. And going deep with
yoga especially has brought meinto a much more deeper
spirituality. And so I havealways, for some reason, had
this natural resistance to blackand white thinking or blind
faith. It's not grounded inexperience. And so I hope that I
(05:33):
can bring that that ongoingperspective to this
conversation. I wanted to startby talking about what inspired
this episode. Over the past fewyears, especially I've had
multiple family members andfriends who seem to be so turned
off by spirituality andspiritual people. In fact, I've
had a few family members whohave banned the topic of
(05:55):
spirituality from conversation.
It seems like they've hadnumerous negative experiences
with spiritual people, which Itotally understand. And we're
going to talk about that in aminute. But all this kind of
made me curious about where,where this underlying resentment
and disappointment andresistance comes from. And then
over the past year, I've beenfollowing the work of this
thinker and writer, DanielPinchbeck, who has been a huge
(06:17):
influence on my life. And he'sbeen writing more about
spirituality too. And he's agood example of somebody who I
deeply respect but who alsoseems to have this very negative
view of spirituality andspiritual people. And so I
wanted to just explore that alittle bit as we as we go into
this topic, but everyone Iwanted to credit Pinchbeck with
basically inspiring thisepisode. Daniel, Pinchbeck has
(06:40):
been a major inspiration for me.
His book breaking up in thehead, which I read about five
years ago, was very eye openingfor me I was I was starting to
work with plant medicine myself,and reading about his
experiences were just soilluminating for me and and so
supportive in a way. And it wasaround that time, actually, that
(07:02):
I started to bump into him in inNew York at different places, at
a friend's Art Gallery in otherplaces. So when his book, How
soon is now which is a deepexploration of climate change,
and the various solutions thatwe may have to this challenge.
When that book came out, it wasvery inspiring for me, and I
(07:22):
went and explored a lot of thethings he proposed in that book.
And so I've been following himfor a while. And I just found it
very interesting that he hadsuch a different opinion about
spirituality than I have. Youknow, I talked to him one time
about the fact that I wasteaching yoga. And he said to
me, that's great. But you know,what else are you doing? How are
you bringing that into theworld? And I think that's a good
(07:44):
question. And it's one that I'vebeen thinking about ever since.
So let me read a couple quotesfrom from Daniel and this will
kind of tee up the discussionfor this episode. So in an email
from November of 2020, called isthe pursuit of truth worth it?
Daniel Pinchbeck says, when itcomes to postmodern
(08:05):
spirituality, we prefer the halftruths served up by useful
idiots like Eckhart Tolle a andDeepak Chopra. If a charismatic
guru comes along, Tony Robbinsis a great example. Or Keith
Ranieri, who tells people withconviction that they can be
super wealthy and have whateverthey want in life. If they
follow his program, that Guru isalmost guaranteed massive
(08:26):
success.
Chad Woodford (08:28):
He goes on to say, how I would love at this
point to transition to the otherteam, to transform myself into a
lifestyle guru who was going totell you how, by using the power
of Wow, some secret mantra, thelaw of manifestation or a series
of Voodoo incantations, that youwill be able to gorge yourself
with everything good anddelectable from now into
(08:48):
eternity. So there's a lot goingon here. I just wanted to pause
and take a moment to comment onthis. You know, first of all,
say what you want about Eckharttotally Deepak Chopra. But I
think they have performed acrucial service of exposing
spiritual ideas to a wideraudience. And for me,
personally, I totally is a newearth is one of the wisest and
(09:10):
most impactful books I've everread. So, you know, it's it's
interesting, because I feel whatI'm getting from this is that
he's been hanging out with a lotof people who identify as
spiritual who are in deep statesof spiritual bypass, perhaps.
That's that's my impression fromthese from these quotes for
these passages. So let me justshare a couple more that will
complete the picture. Pinchbeckgoes on to say in a short book
(09:32):
that he wrote last year, calledconspiracy Euler. Over the last
decades, much of the spiritualcommunity got lost in a
narcissistic self centered haze,spiritual seekers meditators,
Yogi's Neo shamans and festivalgoers seek to avoid the darker
elements of our reality. Theyfocus on the law of
manifestation, the power of nowand the never ending quest for
(09:56):
personal healing and ecstaticstates. One time belief is that
our thoughts create our reality.
People take this to mean that weshouldn't focus on negative
outcomes or malevolent forces,because this will give them
energy. Pinchbeck goes on,instead of just developing a
good yoga practice or chuggingIosco, I would like to see this
privileged and influential groupconfront the social basis of
(10:19):
oppression and exploitation.
Yeah, so again, there's a lotgoing on here. And I agree with
some of his points, you know, Ido understand where he's coming
from, in terms of a lot ofspiritual people being kind of
checked out, or a little selfindulgent or escaping and
(10:39):
privilege and all that these areall valid criticisms for sure.
And I think, you know, I'mcurious again, I'm curious about
what spiritual communities he'sbeen hanging out in, you know,
he's, I know, he's been livingin Toluca, maybe that's part of
the problem. But I think, thesecriticisms, they deny the fact
that first of all, the ShadowWork is part of the spiritual
path. I think that's veryimportant. I'll touch on that
(11:01):
later. And he's sort of, I feellike he's describing this like
Instagram version ofspirituality, right? meditators,
Yogi's Neo shamans, and festivalgoers, those are the people you
see on Instagram, I think,giving spirituality kind of a
bad name. So, you know, inPinchbeck, writing over the past
year, he goes on to suggest thatwe come up with a new eco
(11:22):
centric ethos, and thenconvinced people of its validity
through the mass media, whichis, which sounds like a great
idea. But I think it's a littlenaive and doesn't recognize that
there's this dense state ofcollective consciousness today
that is pretty intractable. AndI don't think that just
appealing to people's higherreason will, will change minds
(11:42):
or motivate different behavior.
But of course, I understand thedesire to grasp for solutions
when everything seems so dire,right? I mean, the world we live
in right now is seems crazy. SoI think we need to resist this
polar revolution, when wehaven't changed ourselves first.
Because I think real lastingchange can only come from the
inside, from the bottom up. Andforcing a solution from on high
(12:06):
will only create more stress,more violence, and it won't last
it won't stick. But again, I getit. You know, it's hard to take
most spiritual people seriously.
I think too many are trapped inspiritual bypassing and magical
thinking. They come across asnaive, and they're so easily
falling prey to corrupt anddishonest gurus or conspiracy
(12:29):
theories. And yeah, Iget it. I get it. I agree with
him to some extent. But I thinkhis thinking on this is a little
black and white and a littlereactionary. And I think to the
Pinchbeck is still firmly rootedin this sort of 20th century
like Age of Reason, intellectualtradition, where all you have to
do is apply your mind yourreason to any problem, and you
can solve it. But this remindsme of what Einstein said, which
(12:53):
is that you can't solve aproblem from the same level of
consciousness that created it,right. So I think there's other
ways of being and knowing thatthe spiritual path can reveal I
can offer that would augmentPinchbeck solutions here and to
make and make them more tenable,I think, you know, and again, to
his credit, he does recognizethat the source of our
(13:14):
disconnection and apathy is thegrim materialist worldview from
the 20th century. But I thinkit's a little ironic to that he
seems to be still so kind ofmired in that worldview at the
same time, his arguments are soover intellectualize my opinion.
And so black and white, youknow, it's not either we do
spiritual work, or we areactivists, I think it's that we
do spiritual work and beactivists. I think we need
(13:37):
people on the front lines, butwe also need people doing this
evolutionary Shadow Work ofspirituality, in essence, like
fighting a different battle on adifferent kind of Battlefield.
And hey, I admit that I don'thave all the answers. I mean,
for example, I'm still workingout how to bring spirituality to
the underprivileged in aproductive and effective way.
(13:57):
And that's something I want toexplore in future episodes of
this podcast, I have identifieda few ways for myself, to bring
these things to theunderprivileged, you know, I'm
getting involved in anorganization, the prison yoga
project, which is very exciting.
And I want to find more ways tobring yoga to and spiritual
practices to, you know, troubledyouth, and those are who are
(14:18):
traditionally underserved. Andalso, I want to bring
spirituality into the businessworld in a more meaningful and
substantive way beyond justmindfulness practices, or
helping people manage stress inthe office. For example, I've
been over the past couple ofyears, I've been teaching yoga
and mindfulness to SiliconValley companies. And I want to
(14:39):
find ways to to kind of bringthe spiritual ethos deeper into
the approach to business, youknow, deeper into leadership and
that kind of thing. So that's,that's something else I want to
explore in the future as well.
But back to Pinchbeck. You know,his stated motivation is a
ruthless search for truth. And Ithink that's commendable. And I
think that's actually a gooddescription. Definition of
(14:59):
spirituality to this ruthlesssearch for truth. But again, he
wants to arrive at the truthpurely through the mind. And I
don't think this is possible orthe right approach. I mean, we
can build a new alliance betweenthe working class and the
progressive elite, as Pinchbecksays, and we can create a shared
vision for humanity's future.
(15:21):
But I don't think we can do thisby making the same perfectly
reasonable arguments to bothgroups in the hopes that they
will suddenly wake up to theurgency of the situation without
doing the hard evolutionarywork, the Shadow Work and all
that too. I think it's got to bethe complete package. And
there's also this kind of thrustwithin pinch backs argument that
(15:42):
there's not enough activism ornot enough doing and
spirituality, right. And I thinkthere's, there's more to that,
too. I mean, I think saying thatthere's not enough doing and
spirituality is anoversimplification. And this
attitude is sort of, it soundsvery Protestant and Calvinist
and sort of patriarchalcolonialist, industrialized to
me, you know, it fundamentallymisunderstands what spirituality
(16:04):
is and how it works. I thinkthis attitude of rushing around
frantically fixing everythingstrictly from the mind is part
of what I think has brought usto the brink of global collapse.
Anyways. It reminds me of a Rondas quote, actually, Rhonda
said, I can do nothing for you,but work on myself. And you can
(16:25):
do nothing for me, but work onyourself. So maybe that's too
extreme, too. But I that gets tothe point that I'm making, which
is the inner work is just asimportant as the outer work. And
it's certainly not my intent tocall people out on this podcast.
Pinchbeck has been as much aninspiration for me as a critical
spirituality. And ultimately, Ithink he and I have the same
(16:46):
goal, the same motivations. Weboth recognize how dire our
predicament is. So I onlyinclude Pinchbeck here because I
think we all know people withthis attitude. And I think he
offers some well articulatedarguments that tee up much of
the discussion for today. Andfinally, I hope in the grand
dialectic tradition, thatcontrasting these ideas will
(17:08):
lead us closer to the truth.
Now, let me take a moment toattempt to define spirituality.
(17:28):
More people identify asspiritual but not religious
today than at any time in modernhistory. In his book, American
beta, Philip Goldberg says thatpeople identifying as SB nr, are
somewhere between 16 and 39% ofthe US population. And, as you
can probably guess, thisspiritual but not religious
(17:49):
phenomenon, is the inspirationfor the title of my podcast. So
more and more people areidentifying as spiritual but not
religious. This is exciting. Itmeans we're moving away from
what I think are the two greatills of the 20th century
organized religion, which failsto offer a direct transcendental
experience and materialisticscience, which offers nothing
(18:10):
more than a cold, empty universefull of meaningless random
events. So what is spirituality?
For me, spirituality is anacknowledgement that there is
something more than what we see.
And then a system of differentpractices for tapping into that
something more, because I thinkwe are spiritual beings. And
(18:33):
there's a real power inacknowledging that fact.
Spirituality to for me is anopen and honest inquiry into
what's true. It's sort of thetruest science in that sense.
And this inquiry goes beyondthought, it goes beyond
concepts, it goes into directexperience, as well. So you
(18:53):
could say spirituality is thiscommitment to seeing reality and
ourselves as clearly aspossible, and removing all
impediments to that, and there'spractices for doing that as
well. So it's a deep inquiryinto reality, in a sense,
getting closer to realitythrough experimentation and
observation. So again, like ascience in that way. I mean,
(19:14):
spirituality includes andrequires actually rational
thought, intellectual rigor, andeven the scientific method, you
know, trial and error. Trythings over time to see what
repeats that's, that's very mucha part of spirituality. But it's
also a means for approaching andrelaxing into the mystery of
life. It's a set of practicesfor making you feel more at home
(19:39):
in the world, really. And foraccessing, again, the direct
experience of, of unity, thistranscendent state of yoga, not
to escape, or to avoid reality,but to bring this deeper
expanded state of yoga back intothe world in a very powerful
way. So I think you can bespiritual And discriminating.
(20:02):
Being spiritual doesn't meanopening yourself up to any and
all traditions, beliefs andpractices. Instead, it means
being a spiritual scientist,encountering new systems and
practices, and then testing themin the laboratory of your
experience. I think there's anobligation actually, for
spiritual people to, to havethis kind of rigor to their
spiritual practice this kind ofskepticism even or this
(20:24):
discrimination, this question,this constant questioning, not
just of the outside world, butthe question the questioning of
yourself and the practices. Imean, there are of course,
relevant times and ways to, tohave faith and surrender, but
there's definitely a dance thatyou do with that and your
discernment. And I wanted to sayto you is, is very important,
(20:45):
because because I think a lot ofpeople misunderstand
spirituality to be, you know,all about just love and light
and wisdom. But there are theseother spiritual archetypes that
are part of the larger package.
You know, there's the kind offool energy the the fool Taro
archetype, which is thetrickster. There's the wild,
indigenous hairy man or woman,you know, there's this the dark,
(21:05):
mysterious shadow emus. Andthere's all these different kind
of expressions of what aspiritual person is, I think
it's very broad. It's a wholeway of life. And again, like I
said before, it's it's a, it's alot more Shadow Work than people
think. And in terms ofincreasing our wildness, this is
I think this is a part that getsoverlooked too often. We're not
(21:27):
becoming angels, we're becomingmore deeply human in a sense.
And what does this look like?
Well, it's being fully andpassionately at home in the
human body and in the naturalworld, a true human being
somebody who is enraptured bythe magic and utter mystery of
manifest reality, in touch withyour own mystery and the mystery
(21:50):
of nature. We become comfortablebeing in a sensuous communion
with the world. I mean, when wasthe last time you hug a tree?
Seriously. So I thinkspirituality is it's a comfort
with your emotional body, withletting your feelings full flow
freely, and getting in touchwith animal instincts, not
(22:13):
denying those. In this sense,we're sort of rejecting Freud's
oppressive view of the ID. Andactually, I wanted to read this
quote from dh Lawrence, who's agreat example of this kind of
approach to the spiritualwildness.
Oh, what a catastrophe. What ameaning of love when it was made
(22:35):
a personal, merely personalfeeling, taken away from the
rising and the setting of thesun, and cut off from the magic
connection of the solstice andthe equinox. This is what is the
matter with us. We are bleedingat the roots. Because we are cut
off from the earth and sun andstars. And love is a grinning
(22:59):
mockery, because poor blossom,we plucked it from its stem on
the tree of life, and expectedit to keep on blooming in our
civilized base on the table. SoI just love that that imagery. I
love what he's saying there, youknow that there's this
disconnect in the modern world.
And he was writing, what 100years ago or so. Right? So, you
(23:21):
know, iron john from Robert Blyis another great example, that
the hairy beast at the bottom ofthe pond, you know, making
friends with that kind ofarchetype, or the fierce form of
Shiva and yoga, by dava, is agreat archetype for this
wildness. You've also got fromthe Greek tradition, Artemis,
the Greek goddess of the lady ofbeasts, the goddess of the wild
(23:43):
lands, the mysteries of animals.
You've got Dionysus wood nymphs.
I mean, Robin Hood is one, youknow, Henry Miller even or is
Nin. Gabrielle Roth, you know,these are all great examples of
wild spiritual people. In short,it's a full bodied feeling
spirituality. It's a way ofknowing, you know, it's
(24:05):
intuition. It's emotion, itsbody, its nature, it's all of
it. But ultimately, only you candefine spirituality for
yourself. And that processrequires some sort of spiritual
practice, you're not going tothink your way into a spiritual
state. More thought can onlylead to more concepts. I mean,
this is how we arrived at thecurrent state of Western
(24:25):
philosophy, right? So the kindof spirituality I'm talking
about is a third way, in asense, not blind faith and
superstition or religious dogma.
But a worldview with deaf andsoul and heart and grit, founded
upon truth, and the directexperience of our infinite
nature. And it doesn't have tobe like this enlightened Yogi
(24:48):
archetype or this or a BuddhistYou know, I think it's better if
it's not maybe it's like we werecreating the new spiritual kind
of archetype as we speak.
(25:11):
Now I want to acknowledge thepitfalls on the spiritual path
or the ways that people becometurned off by spirituality or
skeptical of it. So first ofall, there's no denying the fact
that the traditional religions,the Abrahamic faiths of the
world, have become increasinglyproblematic and irrelevant,
(25:32):
right? Christianity inparticular. But when you look at
religion today, it's full ofdogma and Puritanism and
oppression. And these wereclearly tools for controlling
the masses. We see endlessscandals, you know, Catholic
Church scandals. And this isthere's no question that
organized religion as we know,it is flawed and generally more
(25:53):
harmful than not, in my opinion,these these seem like
patriarchal vestiges of a bygoneera to me. But you know, if you
look at the East as well, youcan say similar things about
certain manifestations ofHinduism or Buddhism. Look at
the situation in Myanmar, withthe ringu genocide or parts of
India that are beset by Hindunationalism and violence. It's
(26:17):
very strange to me that yoga andBuddhism can lead to violence
when they're both founded uponnon violence. So I see how all
of this castes, religion andspirituality in such a negative
light, and then you pile on topof that the following gurus and
cult scandals that we've had inrecent history, right. We've
seen the infamous Oshodiscredited and wild wild
(26:40):
country become Choudhry wasexposed as a lecherous megalo
maniacal scammer. TheTranscendental Meditation
organization has been takinghundreds of millions of dollars
from students to questionableends. And more recently, Yogi
budgin, the founder of KundaliniYoga was exposed as a sexually
abusive and egotistical tyrant,not to mention incarcerated cult
(27:03):
leaders like Keith Ranieri,right, so there's these all
these abuses all these scandals.
We see all these sexual abusescandals in the various Buddhist
organizations to entireorganizations and spiritual
communities have been rocked tothe core by these scandals. And
you can see why people areturned off by spirituality with
all this right. It makes abuseof power and egomania seem like
(27:23):
an inevitability on the path ofyoga or spirituality. And I
think part of the challenge too,is that we in the West are
bringing all sorts of strangeand outmoded ideas to the
spiritual path or to a spiritualteacher. For example, we project
all our unresolved parentalwounds onto teachers. It's like
there's something about thespiritual path that makes people
(27:46):
lose their discernment. peopleconfuse spirituality with
religion, and they bring allthis baggage that religion
brings like dogma or a lack ofcritical thinking. Another
pitfall is that many you havedeveloped a strange attraction
to a specific archetype of aspiritual person, or especially
a spiritual teacher. Forexample, you have the classic
(28:08):
stereotype of the old indianguru with a beard and flowing
robes. But you also have the fitblond and blue, the lemon doing
Asana on Instagram, or the darkand hairy guy in a Burning Man
top hat, a leather vest, beadsand harem pants living in a
camper van, you know, we it'slike, we want our spiritual
(28:28):
authority and spiritualauthenticity, to arrive in a
specific package. And I thinkwe're too attracted to the
presentation over the substanceof the teachings and the
practices. And this is why myopinion, spiritual materialism
is so rampant, it's so easy tolook spiritual, and to attract
followers by by doing so. Also,too often, I think we seek to
(28:50):
outsource the hard work ofspiritual practice and Shadow
Work by looking for a teacherwho will do the work for us
without asking too much of us.
Or we subconsciously seek aparental figure because we seek
love that we never received as achild, or we miss direct
romantic love to a guru. See allthe scandals that I just
(29:10):
mentioned. Or we simply justwant to belong somewhere that's
totally understandable as amotivation. So again, I think
this is where we needed todevelop discernment, and to
learn to listen with our heart,to follow our gut. And to trust
ourselves Above all, we need toget out of our head and burn
through our past conditioning.
And so spirituality can actuallyoffer practices that do all
(29:32):
these things. You just have tobe committed to a certain
tradition or a certain set ofpractices. And also, having a
teacher is important at certainpoints on the path anyways, but
I think so is moving away from ateacher and becoming your own
guru, listening to your higherself and following your own
intuition, or doing what TerenceMcKenna advocated and following
(29:54):
plants instead of gurus. So it'salmost like there's a There's a
spiritual approach for everyseason of your life, right?
Sometimes you want to teacher,sometimes you just want to
follow your own intuition.
Sometimes you want to work withdifferent traditions or try
different approaches. It'sagain, it's like a science and
(30:16):
you want to be a spiritualscientist. The other thing I
wanted to just come back tofirst for a moment here is I've
been really fascinated by thephenomenon of what seems like
rampant conspiracy theorieswithin the spiritual communities
that I'm a part of. I know somany people who are anti COVID
vaccine, for example. And so Iwant to explore this more
(30:37):
deeply, I find this reallyfascinating, I'm gonna I'm gonna
dedicate a whole episode of thepodcast, to this topic in the
coming months. But in themeantime, if you want to listen
to more about this topic, youcan find some great discussions
on the conspiratorial IIpodcast. So I'm here to tell you
that there are authenticteachers and powerful
(30:58):
transformational spiritualpractices out there, I can
personally attest to the deepand lasting transformation that
can come from a dedicatedcommitment to authentic
spiritual practices. But thespiritual path is hard. Any
spiritual teacher will tell you,it's not a walk in the park.
It's hard work. But the rewardsare worth the effort, in my
(31:20):
experience. So now we come tothe thrust of my argument, the
thrust of my defense ofspirituality, and why I think
it's so powerful as a lifestyle.
(31:52):
Spirituality for me, is a way ofbecoming more relevant in the
world more dynamic. Myunderstanding of yoga and other
spiritual practices is that theyare ultimately designed to make
you more dynamic and effectivein the world, to punch through
to reality as one of my teacherswould say, because spiritual
practice strips you down to youressence, so that you can act in
(32:14):
the world with greater purpose,Authenticity, and integrity.
spiritual practice can make youfearless, but also
compassionate. It shouldfundamentally change you in this
way. There's a sort of strippingaway and expansion, a maturation
and, and an integration. Thatthen makes you a natural leader.
(32:36):
For example, in the BhagavadGita, Krishna is not teaching a
renunciate. You know, he's notteaching a monk who lives in a
cave, he's teaching our Juna,the most powerful warrior. So I
think there's an importantlesson here an important
reminder. Of course, the Indianspiritual tradition offers the
ascetic model, but I think we'veseen this development over
(32:57):
recent history coming coming outof the yoga tradition of this
householder model, going back acouple 100 years, at least, even
the Buddha rejected asceticism.
So as a spiritual person, yourefine your state of
consciousness, and then you acton the world, in business, in
family, and in friendship. Agreat succinct way to define
(33:18):
spirituality and the spiritualpath actually is, it's a process
of learning to transcend fear,and then to move towards fear as
a practice. And then to helpothers do the same thing.
Because when you becomefearless, you make better
decisions. And you operate froma place of love, and a place of
service. Spirituality is so muchabout being of service. So
(33:40):
instead of surveying the worldthrough a rational lens, and
deciding rationally, whatproblems need to be solved, the
spiritual approach to beingrelevant in the world and making
lasting change is to firstliberate and center yourself,
and then simply actspontaneously and intuitively in
collaboration with intuition, ina total state of flow. Because I
(34:01):
think a person with the bestintentions, may decide they want
to make a difference or changethe world or help people. But
the challenge is that they showup with all these unresolved
personal and emotional issues,plus heavy layers of societal
conditioning. And they're inthis mode of material realism,
bringing industrial solutions toproblems and patriarchal
(34:23):
thinking, and seeing natureseparate and all these these
things are preventing them fromtruly making change or impacting
the world. They might enter acommunity that does not conform
to their ideas of utopia. Andthen they take charge, and they
impose their limited worldviewonto an existing community who
may have both problems andsolutions that don't fit their
(34:45):
paradigm. I mean, I think we'veseen this time and again, in
developing countries or withindigenous communities. This
deeply flawed colonialistpatriarchal industrial paradigm
disconnects us from nature andSoul. And I think this is how
the entirety of humanity hascome face to face with his most
intractable challenges, whetherthat's climate change or
(35:07):
inequality. So again, actingfrom a deep place of inner
stillness will, in contrastresult naturally in a non
violent, selflesstransformational approach to to
true change in the world. It'sfull of empathy and compassion,
and love. So going back toDaniel Pinchbeck was saying, at
(35:28):
the top, there is urgent,important work to do right now.
But there is also a lot of innerspiritual work to do for all of
us. So I don't think it's youhave to choose one or the other.
I think it's both I think we cando both at the same time. And I
do think it's relevant for somepeople to play the role of
teacher and to remain in thatrole. There is a deep need in
this world for people who arefocused on helping others to
(35:49):
expand their consciousness, andwe need that desperately to find
Finally, it's important to ceasehabitually seeing problems
everywhere, I think. The deepestchange can only come from a
person who has first totallyaccepted the world as it is
completely, then change can comefrom a deep place of stillness
instead of ego. Okay, we lookedat how spirituality can make you
(36:15):
more relevant and impactful inthe world. Now let's explore the
importance of expandingconsciousness and developing
discernment. And how spiritualpractices can help with that.
(36:48):
As I've said before, nothingwill change the long as a
majority of humanity is livingin a dense state of
consciousness, living theselives of quiet desperation to
quote Henry David Thoreau.
Daniel Pinchbeck has suggestedthat we develop a new vision for
humanity that is so compelling,inspiring and true that the
multitudes can't help but beattracted to it, and change
their behavior collectively. ButI think this puts the cart
(37:08):
before the horse, I think weneed to change minds. First, we
need to expand consciousnessfirst. I mean, yes, there's work
to do, we should do both. Butthis, this inner work is so
crucial, in my opinion. And whatdo I mean by dense state of
consciousness? Well, I thinkthis is a relative sort of state
of ignorance or fear, or it's alack mentality. You know, it's
(37:29):
an ignorance of our true nature.
It's an ignorance of history ofscience to other cultures of
other people, other communities.
And so because of this densestate of consciousness, I don't
think appeals to reason canwork. And I think conspiracy
theories will continue toproliferate, as long as we all
have this dense state ofconsciousness. And I recognize
(37:50):
again, that spirituality can toooften be a process of adopting
new misalignments with realitythat are packaged as the truth.
It seems like most people whenthey encounter the spiritual
path, abandon all discernment,right. And so, and I think this
is understandable, becausespirituality, by its very nature
(38:11):
often does require a deepquestioning of beliefs, and
especially mainstream beliefs.
But then spiritual people, soeasily fall victim to the sort
of deepest trap of all, which isblack and white thinking, you
know, it's like, well, if I'mquestioning mainstream beliefs,
then I need to questioneverything. And I need to adopt
(38:34):
these alternative views that areprepackaged for me by this
community, or by this thespiritual tradition, right,
instead of, instead of being aspiritual scientist, as I was
saying before, but it's tricky,right? I mean, how do we know
something is true? It's verysubjective, in a sense. But I
think if you're taking thisspiritual scientist approach, we
(38:54):
observe over time and testagainst reality. But this, this
process requires an ability toto see very clearly. And so all
of this is coming from spiritualpractices. But I think, yeah, we
need to cultivate and maintain ahealthy balance between our
curiosity, and our openness, andskepticism. I think we need to
(39:15):
maintain our skepticism withinall. And part of this process is
refining the intellect,developing discernment. And
again, there are practices forthese things, and I'll be
talking about that and anepisode coming up that's focused
on this process of discernment.
But a lot of this is justbecoming self reliant, to some
extent. I mean, having communityand being connected deeply with
(39:38):
people in community but alsobeing self reliant at the same
time. We need to transcend ourfamilial and societal
conditioning, our samskaras andeven our karma. This process is
often called polishing themirror in yoga and Buddhist
traditions. And these are partof the practices that I share.
Part of this practice too, isreleasing past trauma from the
(39:58):
body. So all these things areimportant. For example, solving
climate change or inequalityrequires a large number of
people to change their behaviorand their mindset, right? We
need to stop investing incertain industries, or we need
to start making different buyingdecisions, or we need to change
our lifestyle in pretty profoundways. And all these things
(40:20):
require a new outlook, right?
And so I think, again, asPinchbeck might say, you can you
know, you can sort of make wellreasoned arguments to this
effect, but I think peoplearen't going to change their
behavior until their minds arechanged through spirituality.
And I don't think we can havemore conscious, more elevated
(40:44):
leaders or politicians too,until citizens first change
their minds and change theirworldview. Another example is,
you know, seeing, seeing theextent of systemic racism in our
culture in our society, requiresan ability to overcome our deep
biases and, and to discernrhetoric from truth, right.
(41:06):
I mean, determining, in general,what's really going on requires
discernment and self reflection.
It's fascinating to me, this,this, this topic of conspiracy
theories, in particular, I'msympathetic to to this
phenomenon, because I understandhow, when you're facing the
mounting challenges that wehave, as a humanity, it can be
stressful, right? And I can seehow psychologically, adopting a
(41:29):
conspiracy theory can give yousome relief, right? If If you
feel totally helpless, becausethere's a secret society who's
who's running everything, thenit sort of relieves you of
responsibility, I think, and Ican see the appeal of that. But,
but again, this is a topic foranother episode. So I want to
just kind of tee that up forfuture discussion. But in short,
(41:52):
I don't think we can drag peopleinto a progressive future
without a shift inconsciousness. And we we expand
our consciousness, not toselfish ends, but to reduce our
suffering to some extent, butalso the suffering of those
around us. And to make us morerelevant, and more capable of
(42:13):
truly being of service in theworld. Of course, we have to
practice and expand, while alsotaking direct practical steps to
help people and be of serviceyou know, so it's, it's like
we're practicing, we'respiritual, and we're activists,
and we're taking direct actionin the world at the same
time. Another important point Iwant to make about spirituality
(42:53):
in this kind of defensivespirituality is that you can't
measure your impact. And thereare these ripple effects that
come from transformation, we canbecome indirectly impactful as
well, or even unintentionallyimpactful, just through
spiritual growth and spiritualpractices. Changing ourselves
(43:14):
increases our impact by settingan example for those around us.
This kind of impact and rippleoutwards. Changing ourselves
also changes the way we relateto people, and our relationships
in general. And this can alsocascade beyond our immediate
network. When you're holdingbetter space for yourself, you
can hold better space forothers. And this can come from
the spiritual path. It makes youa better and more mature, more
(43:37):
whole person who acts fearlesslyand purposefully instead of
reactively, or out of fear. Andthis kind of change in behavior
can positively impact everyoneyou know, I mean, it has to
right. And I think as you startto radiate love more
consistently, and frequently, asyou start to make decisions
based on love instead of fear.
Other people pick up on thisboth consciously and
(44:00):
unconsciously. As we open andexpand our nervous systems, this
change can radiate outward inmyriad ways. And as more people
do this, this effect increasesexponentially. And again, I'm
not talking just about yoga hereor meditation, but all this
deep, dark shadow work that weall must do, and also expanding
into our inherent wildness to soit's all of it. And it all I
(44:25):
think, creates a positiveenergetic field that radiates
outward, and it can uplift thosearound you. And I'm not just
talking about the power ofpositive thinking because that's
just bypassing. I'm talkingabout the power of an expanded
fearless and love filled heart,soul, and mind. So the more free
we are of our past karma throughspiritual practice, the less
(44:52):
reactive we become. And the morewe can consciously choose to
make every interaction one ofselfless Service, whether that's
in a business, a social setting,or in a personal context, Carl
Jung talked about thisphenomenon with his collective
unconscious. Like witheverything he did, he was way
ahead of the curve with thisidea. This young young scholar
(45:13):
Marie Louise von Franzsummarizes his view this way.
Whenever an individual works onhis own unconscious, he
invisibly affects first thegroup. And if he goes even
deeper, he affects the largernational units, or sometimes
even all of humanity. Not onlydoes he change and transform
(45:34):
himself, but he has animperceptible impact on the
unconscious psyche of many otherpeople. Conversely, whenever an
individual engages in practice,extensively intended to affect
collective transformation, hehimself is also inevitably
transformed. By participating inthe practice, he contacts a
source of healing wisdom thatcannot help but positively
(45:57):
affect his own consciousness. Sowe see here how Jung was so far
ahead of his time, and obviouslya student of many practices,
including Kundalini Yoga andspiritual practices from India
that he studied when he wastraveling in India. But yeah, so
what he's saying here is, orwhat you know, what von Franz is
(46:19):
saying here is that it's a twoway street, you know, your is a
positive feedback loop at workas well. So you're transforming
yourself, you're engaging withpeople who are also doing the
work. And then this kind ofbuilds into a positive feedback
loop. Part of what I'm gettingat here is captured so well by
this theory of morphic fields,which Rupert Sheldrake does a
(46:42):
great job explaining, I won'tget into that here, because it
would take too long to explain.
But if you're curious, I'll putsomething in the show notes. And
you can check that out. So as wecan see here, there are so many
ways that simple improvements orsimple transformations within
you can ripple out and createpositive effects throughout your
(47:04):
community and throughout theworld. And I don't think you can
measure this kind of impact,oftentimes, you're not even
aware of it. But cumulatively,it can have an enormous
potential for change. I'vepersonally been pleasantly
surprised over the years whenpeople tell me how they were
inspired by some small thing Idid that I didn't even think
twice about. So it's a greatreminder that just living your
(47:25):
life as authentically as youcan, in itself can be very
powerful, and verytransformational for the world.
Because you never know how farreaching and profound your
impact is on the people you mayknow, or the people they may
know.
So much positive change andinfluence can flow from just
living your own life andauthenticity, courage, integrity
(47:47):
and love. Maybe this is enoughto tip the scales of the world
towards true positive collectivechange.
(48:11):
The final point I want to makehere is that a spiritual life
and the spiritual path imbuesyour life with greater meaning.
And I think this can be verysupportive and nurturing and
transformational to. In contrastwith the hopelessness and sort
of moral acuity of scientificmaterialism, spirituality offers
a much more rich and lifeaffirming kind of ethos, or
(48:36):
cosmology. I talked a lot aboutthis in my recent episode about
astrology, where I took thelistener through the history of
European thought over the past200 years and how materialism is
empty and not capable ofproviding meaning. Because you
know, when the universe is seenas a cold, empty space, then
(48:57):
it's much harder to feelgrounded and aligned in the
world. In contrast, when weexperience the cosmos as alive
and intelligent, and evennurturing this empowers us to
have more trust, which I thinkcan lead to more authenticity
and to taking bigger positiverisks, and living in alignment
with our higher selves. When wesee the world imbued with
(49:19):
meaning, this emboldens us tolive with more purpose, in
alignment with the evolution ofthe cosmos. And you don't have
to take my word for it. I mean,through specific yoga practices
or plant medicine experiences oror certain spiritual rituals,
you know, ecstatic dance,anything you can experience this
(49:39):
deep intelligence of nature,firsthand. And when you have
these experiences, you start tounderstand that life is
meaningful and imbued withmeaning and mystery, and that
there's nothing to fear. Havinga spiritual ethos allows us to
live without fear, to surrenderand embrace all of life. As a
(50:00):
great mystery, there is no needfor intellectual argument here
because it's it's a directexperience that you can have,
relatively easily with thesespiritual practices. I want to
end this section with a quotefrom Rick tarnis, which I think
encapsulates this beautifully.
The primal world isn't sold. Itcommunicates and has purposes,
(50:21):
it is pregnant with signs andsymbols, implications and
intentions. The world isanimated by the same
psychologically resonantrealities that human beings
experience within themselves. Soonce you start to have this
experience, that the primalworld isn't sold, it's deeply
empowering, and deeplynurturing, and deeply inspiring.
(50:43):
And before we wrap up, I justwant to once again, acknowledge
the fact that there's a lot ofwork to do for all of us in
finding ways to make thesespiritual practices and a
spiritual path more accessibleto more people. I want to
dedicate at least one episode toexploring this question and this
topic. But having said that, Ido think it to some extent, you
(51:08):
can only start where you areright. So there's no reason to
wait. Until we're all able toreach every person on the
planet, I think there's a hugebenefit to practicing yourself,
and sharing these things withother people and building
community from where you are.
And I think I think there's anargument that the most
privileged people needtransformation more than
(51:30):
anybody, maybe. But again, thisis a topic for another episode.
And I invite any and all ideasthat you may have around this
question of making thesepractices and making
spirituality more accessible tothe traditionally underserved
and underprivileged. And like Isaid before, I'm actively
exploring, bringing yoga intoprisons through the prison yoga
project, and finding other waysto bring spiritual practices to
(51:55):
historically underservedcommunities. And I'm also
actively exploring deeper waysto bring spirituality into the
business world, in a moremeaningful and substantive way.
That's not just mindfulness, buttransforming the way business is
done. And I've been deeplyinspired by the work of debit
Patnaik, and especially his bookbusiness sutra. So I'll put a
(52:18):
link to that in the show notesas well.
So just to wrap up here andconclude In this episode, we
looked at spirituality fromdifferent perspectives, we
explored the various ways thatspirituality has kind of gotten
a bad name and, and why that'shappened and some, maybe some
(52:38):
ways to rectify that. I tooksome time to define spirituality
from from my standpoint, and my,my vision of kind of a holistic
spirituality that's not justyoga, but also includes Shadow
Work, and cultivating our animalwildness, and, you know, drawing
from different spiritualtraditions, without watering any
one tradition down too much. Andrecently, I've been deeply
(53:02):
inspired by the work of BillPlotkin, I've been studying his,
his approach to spirituality andto soul work for about four or
five years, and I love how hehas this framework of the
cardinal direction. So in thenorth direction, there is the
sort of nurturing benevolentqueen or king archetype. And
(53:23):
that's one expression ofspirituality really. And then in
the south, we have this wildindigenous Green Man or green
woman. And then in the West, wehave the dark, beloved muse. And
then in the east, we have theAnson sage, which is, I think,
is this Eastern, you know, sage,Yogi, Buddhist archetype, I
(53:43):
think, that most people think ofwhen they think of spirituality.
So I like the idea that we needto sort of be even more holistic
than just holistic yoga, we needto be truly holistic in our
approach to spirituality. Andthen we looked at ways that the
spiritual path and spiritualpractices can make you more
relevant in the world and moreimpactful and more powerful, in
contrast with the stereotype ofThe Escapist spiritual person,
(54:06):
spirituality is not justescaping to a cave in the
Himalayas, but it's, it's it'sbecoming an activist from this
deep place of stillness. Andthen we talked about the
importance of expandingconsciousness, raising awareness
and developing discernment, andhow you can't really measure
your impact. And then finally,we looked at how having a
(54:27):
meaningful cosmology ormeaningful ethos, a meaningful
kind of spiritual approach tolife is so important to because
it can help to sort of hold youor create a container in life
that you can sort of Nestle intoas you as you go out into the
world and act more relevantly.
Because I think life again, isis deeply meaningful, and imbued
(54:50):
with mystery. Having a spiritualapproach to life allows us to
live without fear and tosurrender and embrace all of
life. Life and all of itsmystery. So thank you so much
for joining me on this episode.
I hope it's been as fun for youto listen to as it was for me to
put together. Obviously, I lovetalking about this stuff. And
(55:12):
this was a big one for me. I hadbeen working on this for about
six or nine months, and thinkingabout it deeply. And it's sort
of this that this episode islike, it's like an expression of
everything I believe. And so Ihope I hope you got that. Hope
you got that. That Baba for me.
As always, I invite questionsand feedback, you can reach me
at the links in my show notes.
(55:38):
And so I leave you with thisquote from Max Planck. Science
cannot solve the ultimatemystery of nature. And it is
because in the last analysis, weourselves are part of the
mystery we are trying to solve.
Until next time, how do you ownTazza
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