July 17, 2025 • 56 mins
✨ Episode 4: Standing on Nothing — Mysticism and the Illusion of Measurement
This episode was recorded in one take — unscripted, imperfect, and real — just like the mystical life it explores.
Jacob dives into mysticism: what it is, why it arises, and how it appears across spiritual traditions. From the illusion of measurement to the poetic wisdom of mystics like Rumi, Kabir, and Meister Eckhart, this episode takes you on a winding but grounded journey through the conceptual filters that shape (and often limit) how we experience life.
Drawing from personal stories, sacred texts, musical metaphors, and moments of honest doubt, he invites you to consider that the world you’ve labeled is not the world itself. That maybe—just maybe—God, truth, and peace are found not in more thinking, but in being.
The episode closes with Rumi’s The Guest House—a powerful invitation to welcome every part of your experience with presence, compassion, and trust.
Whether you’re overwhelmed by thought, burned out by belief, or simply curious about what lies beyond the mind, this episode invites you to stand nowhere… and remember where you’ve always been.
🕊️
“Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:03):
all right guys welcome to episode four of
standing nowhere i'm your hostjacob And this episode, I wanted
(00:25):
to dive into something that Ifound really interesting over
the last three years, and thatis mysticism.
I don't know what I'm going tocall this episode yet, but it'll
have something to do with thatword mysticism, the mystics,
mystical experience.
What does that mean?
For those who are not familiarwith the word mysticism yet, It
(00:47):
can sound like something out ofa Harry Potter movie, almost
like magic or something, but Iassure you, it is nothing of the
kind.
In fact, it is the most basicthing.
But before we jump in to exactlywhat it is, I thought it would
be helpful to talk about kind ofwhat caused the idea of it to
(01:11):
emerge.
I mentioned on episode two howthere's kind of this dance of
opposites.
You can't have hard withoutsoft, or you wouldn't know what
you meant by hard unless youknew what soft meant.
Well, with mysticism...
It's sort of like if you live inthe desert and it's really hot
out, you're going to need an airconditioner.
It creates the demand for an airconditioner.
(01:32):
So what created the demand forthe mystics, or why did they
emerge naturally from alldifferent various faiths and
backgrounds?
I mean, mystics came out ofChristianity.
They came out of Judaism.
They came out of Islam and theMuslim religion.
They came out of Advaita Vedantaand Hinduism.
(01:54):
The entire path of Buddhism andthe Dharma you could consider
mystical.
Same thing with Zen, especiallyTaoism, Lao Tzu.
So what caused this to arise?
Well, I thought we would startwith that.
So let's dive right in.
(02:14):
The one thing that you have tounderstand about the way that
you see the world is is that weare all taught right from a
young age to start labelingthings, to looking at the world
through a conceptual filter, ifyou will.
(02:37):
If I look at a tree and then Itell my son, look, that's a
tree, his mind is gonna start tolayer over that with tree.
That's a tree.
But a tree is nothing like atree.
of the kind.
When we say tree, that's a word,that's a concept.
(02:59):
But a tree is just what you see.
When you see it, when you hearwind passing through its
branches and leaves, when youtouch the bark of a tree or
maybe feel sap on your fingers,this experience goes beyond
words, but we put words over it.
Another example would be theequator.
(03:22):
We know that the earth hasimaginary lines that we've drawn
all over it, lines of latitude,longitude, the equator, the very
concept of north, south, east,west.
These are all useful, no doubt,but they're not real.
They're not really real.
(03:43):
For example, if we walk to theequator line, I can say, well,
Where is it?
Can I grab the equator?
No, it's not really there.
It's useful, but it's just aconcept.
In the same way, if you look ata ruler, you could say, okay,
(04:04):
this is a 12-inch ruler.
It measures a foot.
But what is a foot or 12 inches?
What is an inch?
You might say, well, it's this.
And you can hold up your fingersapproximately to an inch.
What you'll find, and this mightbe unsettling for some of you
listening to this, but thereactually is no such thing as an
(04:28):
inch or any measurementwhatsoever.
Huh?
How can that be?
I'm looking at my ruler rightnow.
Or whatever.
And follow with me here becauseI'm going to take you on a
little journey to look at whatyou already know and what you
think to be real but is not realat all.
(04:49):
So we all know that you cantheoretically comprehend things
in larger and larger scales andsmaller and smaller scales to an
infinite variable degree, right?
So if you zoom in on an inch,you will find that there is no
fixed starting point for aninch, right?
(05:12):
a starting point of where thisinch begins and where this inch
ends.
For practical purposes, we canmake rulers that all, generally
speaking, have the same inchmeasurement when we put them
next to each other.
And from our perspective, theylook like they match.
Architects can design buildingsusing measurements.
(05:32):
They have to in order for themto stand.
However, again, when we zoom inand zoom in and zoom in, we find
that there is no fixed startingpoint for the beginning or the
end of an inch or anymeasurement for that matter.
So let's see if I can explainthis better.
We've all heard of the quantumrealm or things that you know,
(05:57):
are so small.
They're beyond even us seeingthem.
The smallest practicalmeasurement that we have as
human beings is I think whatthey call the plank scale.
And in order to get to thatscale, you almost have to
create, it takes so much energythat you, you almost create a
black hole trying to look atsomething that small.
So that's the limits of what wecan measure or conceivably
(06:21):
measure.
I think it's like a trillionthof a trillionth of, I don't know
the exact measurement.
UNKNOWN (06:26):
Um,
SPEAKER_01 (06:27):
Perhaps I should have taken some notes and
brought them with me.
But the point is you can keepzooming in and zooming in and
zooming in infinitely.
There is no limit to how smallsomething can get in the same
way there is no limit to howlarge something can get.
There are no pixels in reality.
(06:48):
Like when you zoom in, you'renever going to find, okay,
there's the solid edge of apixel.
There is where an inch begins.
That does not exist.
Astrophysicists, anyone willconfirm this.
All measurement essentially isan illusion.
And what kind of sparked myinterest in doing an episode
(07:08):
like this is I was just browsingYouTube and I saw another
podcaster.
I think his name is AlexO'Connor.
Pretty cool guy.
He has a philosophy podcast,probably similar to this in many
respects.
UNKNOWN (07:20):
And
SPEAKER_01 (07:20):
But he did a YouTube video where he was trying to
stump, not Alexa, but OpenAI.
So he was chatting with OpenAIand he said, if I hold my hands
a foot apart, I can divide thatfoot in half and then I can
divide that half foot in halfand add infinitum.
So if I can divide itinfinitely, how can my hands
(07:43):
ever touch if I bring themtogether?
And OpenAI was really strugglingwith the question.
And the reason is it didn'tcarefully examine the premise of
the question, which in itselfwas false.
There is no...
static foot.
Like if I hold my hands a footapart and I measure it to the
(08:05):
most accurate that we can ashumans, that still is not one
foot.
It's approximately what we wouldcall a foot for usefulness as we
navigate life, but there is nofixed point of one foot.
The idea of that is a fallacyand thus the question is a
fallacy.
So Chatbot was struggling withhim and his argument trying to
(08:28):
figure out how to dividesomething that doesn't exist in
the first place in half adinfinitum until the hands touch.
Another way you could look atthat is that nothing in reality
actually ever touches.
Electromagnetism just pushesthings away as they get close.
When you put your handstogether, it feels like they're
touching, but they're reallynot.
(08:48):
That's another rabbit hole wewon't go into.
But the reason I'm bringing thisup is because we like to put
labels on everything in life.
We sort of, like take the UnitedStates.
There's a clearly outlined, if Isay picture the US in your mind,
(09:09):
you can picture the UnitedStates, the 48 contiguous, and
you can picture Alaska and theshape of it and everything like
that.
But you and I both know thatthere is actually no line in the
sand that is shaped like that.
It is a concept.
It is a filter that we havelayered over the earth saying
everything inside this imaginaryline is the US and everything
(09:33):
outside of it is not the US.
I hope that this is makingsense.
These concepts are useful, butfundamentally, in reality, They
do not exist.
They only exist in our minds.
If all humans were to dieovernight, what would happen to
all the territories that we'vedrawn on the ground?
(09:53):
They would go with us, right?
I mean, there'd still be mapsand things like that, but
animals, they don't give twoshits, excuse my language, about
our idea or concept of a countryor not.
Now, other things that we canpoint out like this would be
(10:16):
Well, let's take another conceptwhich creates division is your
political party, for example.
Some people will labelthemselves as a Democrat.
Some will label as a Republican,Marxist, whatever it is.
(10:38):
These are also labels thattechnically do not exist.
They do point to things, yes.
So it is useful as a socialconvention.
It shouldn't be dismissed.
You know, I'm not saying allconcepts and ideas are false.
They just aren't really real.
I hope you guys are followingwith me here.
(10:59):
Like when we look at the sun, wecall it the sun, but the sun
doesn't call itself the sun.
We just put a label on that, theword sun.
Let's say that out loud a fewtimes.
You ever notice, this is alsowhat I'm getting at.
When you say a word over andover again, it loses its
conceptual value in your mindand suddenly the word will sound
(11:22):
funny.
Right?
Like in that movie Black Sheepwith Chris Farley and David
Spade and some of the nitrousoxide was like leaking from the
back of a cop car that theystole and they start getting
really high and they're likeroads, roads, roads.
That's a funny word.
(11:43):
Roads, roads, roads.
Keep saying any word over andover again and it eventually
loses its conceptual meaning andyou just hear the vibrations.
And it sounds funny.
That's when your mind sort ofgoes beyond the concepts.
It peeks above, or peeks behindthe curtain that we've all, the
(12:03):
veil that we've put overreality.
There's a culture, the Hindus,who have a name for this veil
that we've veiled reality with,and they call that maya or
ma-ya, the illusion of dividingthe infinite into parts.
(12:23):
The Judeo-Christians have atradition as well that calls it
the, well, they call it the fallof man.
In the Garden of Eden, when Eveand Adam bite into the fruit of
knowledge, this is pointing tothe same thing as maya, the
illusion of dividing things.
As soon as Eve bit into theapple, she became aware of the
(12:46):
concept of herself as separatefrom everything else.
Even the concept of yourself isis a concept and ultimately, on
the ultimate fundamental realitylevel, is not real.
Notice that's why she felt nakedand grabbed clothes and God's
like, who told you you werenaked?
Essentially like, who told youyou were separate from
(13:08):
everything?
Notice that it was when theygained knowledge that they were
thrown out of the garden.
So in the Hindu tradition, theylabel this maya.
So they say maya is essentiallyan illusion.
The conceptual filters, Ipronounce that weird,
conceptual, conceptual filtersthat we've layered over reality,
(13:31):
that fundamentally is not real.
In a way, it is as natural andas organic as a flower, because
we live in a universe that hasflowers, and they came about
organically.
And Conceptual filters also cameabout organically.
(13:51):
When I call myself Jacob, I amnot the word Jacob.
I am beyond words.
Everything is beyond words.
Words are useful.
They point to things, but theyare not the things themselves.
For example, in the Buddhisttradition, there's a saying that
all spiritual traditions arelike fingers pointing to the
(14:16):
moon, but they are not the moonitself.
The moon is not the finger.
In order to see the moon, onemust see beyond the finger.
In the Christian tradition, forexample, when Paul is writing
his epistles, I forget which oneit is, he says the peace that
surpasses All knowledge, allcomprehension, all
(14:36):
understanding, all mind.
That word is basically mind inGreek.
And there are various spiritualteachers throughout the
millennia that point to goingbeyond knowledge to experience
experiencing what is.
And that, my friends, is whatmysticism is all about.
(15:00):
It is the experiential nature ofreality, of the divine.
And notice, when we gainedknowledge, that's when Eve
labeled herself as a separateindividual from the whole, and
she was thrown out of the whenwe try to look beyond the
(15:22):
concepts of self and other, itemphasizes unity and union with
the divine.
And this is echoed throughoutthe millennia from various
mystics of all spiritualtraditions, be it Buddhist,
Taoist, Christian, Islam, youname it, Hindu.
(15:45):
They all point to union with thedivine.
Yoga, for example, means unionwith divine.
And if you read several passagesfrom Jesus in the Gospels, he is
always talking about, may theybe one in us as I am one in you,
and I am in you, you are in me,yada, yada, yada.
(16:05):
It's almost like we're lookingthrough a window or a looking
glass at the sun or at the sky.
But instead of just seeing thesky, we're We've sort of layer
over that glass with an image ofthe sun or an image of the
horizon.
And then we don't actually seethe full light that comes
(16:25):
through the glass.
We're sort of blocked by ourconceptual ideas about reality,
about ourselves.
So mystics and mysticism ingeneral, the emphasis is direct
experiential nature of thedivine.
So how do we do that?
That brings in the processes ofthings like mindfulness and
(16:48):
meditation, looking at the worldwithout filters.
But before we get to that, Iwant to also talk about one of
the major, major conceptualfilters that we put on life.
And this, of course, ties intothe purpose of life.
What is the meaning of life?
And this is where you can put areally dark filter on your life
(17:16):
and yourself if you're notcareful.
There are some who have theconceptual model that the
universe is random, that allenergy is blind and it's bumping
into each other, and somehow outof that randomness, we popped
out of it.
It's a very dark way of lookingat things.
(17:36):
It's echoed in Shakespeare'sMacbeth, a tale...
told by an idiot full of soundand fury signifying nothing
something to that effect likeit's all meaningless what's the
point because we are taught froma young age that there is a
(17:58):
purpose to life that we're goingto get to that end and you've
got to struggle and strive toget there As opposed to just
being exactly where you are withwhat is, each moment is meaning
unto itself.
Let me give you an example fromthis, and I'm going to pull from
Alan Watts again here, where hepoints out when you listen to
(18:21):
music, you are not thinking toyourself, the purpose of this
song is to get to the very finalnote.
You don't think that way at all.
When you listen to music, youare in love with every note.
Assuming you're listening tomusic that you enjoy, you're
enjoying the verses, thechoruses, the bridges, the
solos, whatever is coming up inthe music, you're with it at
(18:44):
that moment.
And it's complete into itself.
A friend of mine and myself, weare huge fans of a band called
Dream Theater.
They're considered progressive,meaning they don't fit into
industry standard three to fiveminute songs on the radio.
They like to play theirinstruments and have fun.
(19:05):
That's another thing.
We say we play the guitar.
We play the piano.
We don't work the piano.
It's not work, it's playful.
So this model, this conceptualfilter that we put over life of
what's the meaning of it, whenyou say what's the meaning of
something, you're basicallysaying, what is this thing
(19:28):
pointing to?
So when you put that concept onlife, you're basically saying,
okay, what is life pointing to?
like it's pointing to somethingelse, what is that else thing
that it's pointing to?
Instead of looking at life likeit's a song or music, and you're
supposed to just be with what isright now at this exact moment.
(19:54):
So my friend and I, we loveDream Theater.
We go to their concerts.
And when we go, man, we're justjumping up and down.
We're having fun.
And what's happening when we'reat a concert?
I mean, To anyone listening, ifyou've been to a concert, you
know what I'm talking about.
There's this feeling that just,it just fills your whole body.
(20:15):
It's like your hair stands onend, you know, and you're just
having a blast.
You can feel it passing throughyou.
And what is it other thanvibrations floating through the
air to your ears?
You know, different frequenciesof vibrations and the variations
of them excite us.
(20:36):
But that to me shows you that inour deepest of deepest self,
that life is a game.
It's a fun play.
It is not meant to be takenseriously.
And I don't mean life isn'tserious, like who cares?
(20:57):
Another word, a better word,which I like again from Alan
Watts when he describes howmusic is not for the purpose of
getting to the end of the song.
But he says that life isn'tserious, it's something that's
sincere.
So you play your part sincerely.
If you're a father, if you'rewhatever position you are in
(21:21):
your vocation in life, that youdo it sincerely.
But it's not serious, it's notheavy.
Like G.K.
Chesterton said, the angels flybecause they take themselves
lightly.
So the purpose of life is not toget to the end of life.
It's to dance while you're inthe middle of it, just like a
dance.
We don't dance to get to thelast spot on the floor.
(21:43):
The dance is the purpose initself, being with it.
you know, when we're at thoseshows, I can just feel myself
letting go, you know, whetherit's bobbing my head or just
jumping up and down.
My daughter, when she was, uh,not even a year, about a year
old, you know, she's, she's,we're all watching frozen with
her and she's doing the cutestlittle bobbing where she like,
(22:06):
she does like a little halfsquat and then she stands up,
half squat, stands up just tothe music, you know?
And, and It's not something thatshe needed to be taught.
She just instinctually knowsthat life is a dance.
It goes up, it goes down.
Even the sound waves that arecoming at you right now from
(22:28):
this podcast are waves, wavesthat crest and then they go down
to the valley or the trough.
They come back up.
Everything is now you see me,now you don't.
But when we try to make sense ofall these vibrations, all these
waves, all these thingshappening in life, we label
(22:49):
everything, which again isuseful because But we can miss
the forest for the trees.
We can take the concepts tooliterally.
And that's sort of the oppositeof mysticism is literalness, too
much emphasis on literalness.
(23:11):
When I was brought up in theChristian tradition, there were
people who would argue thatabout Genesis, the book of
Genesis, whether it was literalor whether it was metaphorical
or more poetic, likemythopoetry.
Some people, when they hear theword myth, they cringe like it's
a falsehood, when really myth isa powerful way of describing and
(23:35):
making sense of the universe,and not in a way where it's
false, but in a way for us tounderstand.
Like, for example, if I...
try to explain the expansion ofthe universe to somebody, and I
use the metaphor of, say, ablack balloon, and I put a bunch
of white dots on the balloon,and then I say I'm inflating the
(23:56):
balloon, and this simulates theexpansion, and you can see all
the white dots are stars, andthey're expanding outward.
That is a useful metaphor ormyth or parable for explaining
reality.
Now, if you look at that and yousay, well, Jake, you're kind of
silly.
The universe is not a rubberballoon, sir.
(24:19):
Thank you very much.
Obviously not, but it's a usefulmetaphor for understanding the
way things are.
In similar fashion, the variousspiritual traditions, they use
metaphor and parable forunderstanding the way things are
in the universe.
(24:39):
In the Judeo-Christiantradition, they look at whatever
you want to call this life as afather.
And why not?
I think I mentioned on anotherpodcast, you had a father, his
father had a father, and so onand so forth, all the way back
to the Big Bang.
So why not look at it as auniverse with a personality?
(25:02):
After all, you are the universeand and you have a personality.
So that personality that is youwas already there, encoded in
the Big Bang.
So let's shift forward a littlebit.
Let's look at some of themystics and see what they've
said.
But before we move on to thenext point that I wanted to
(25:23):
make, is that you can shift yourmindset from life is work and
life is hard, to life is aplayful thing, a playful
presence you can be with.
And yes, sometimes it will havedown moments.
Sometimes there is the minorfall before the major lift in
(25:43):
the song.
That's what makes music sobeautiful.
If the whole song is just all upnotes, high notes, there's no
down notes to contrast it with.
And before I move on, I alsowanted to note that the illusion
of constancy is alsodemonstrated in music.
For example, when you arelistening to a quote song,
(26:05):
that's another concept.
The reality is there are notescoming at you in the present
moment, one after another, thatcreate the illusion of
continuity of a song.
Just like I mentioned, I thinkin another podcast, the flame.
When you look at a candle flame,it looks like a static, solid
thing, but it's nothing of thekind.
(26:26):
It's a constant stream stream ofoxidation of the wick as it is
burned up by the flame.
And it looks constant, but it'snot, just like a song, just like
you.
But we take things to be solidand constant and forever lasting
when they're really not, atleast in the material world.
So the etymology of the wordmysticism, it implies going
(26:52):
beyond what can be said.
quote unquote, shutting up inorder to truly see.
It's the same root as mystery,and even the colloquial mums the
word.
Mystics in various traditionshave often used those who use
words against themselves.
That is, they speak, but only toprompt you towards what lies
beyond speaking.
Think of them as guides who say,don't take my word for it, look
(27:15):
for yourself.
So I want to read to you, I wantto read to you guys a a couple
of verses from the Tao Te Ching.
This is a book written by a mannamed Lao Tzu, who is considered
a mystic.
So the first verse that I wantto read says, and Tao means the
way, the way of things.
(27:36):
Kind of like if you watch waterroll down an object or a
mountain, it takes the path ofleast resistance.
There is a way of things in allthings in reality, including
you.
So the Tao that can be describedis not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken isnot the eternal name.
(27:59):
The nameless is the boundary ofheaven and earth.
The named is the mother ofcreation.
Freed from desire, you can seethe hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can onlysee what is visibly real.
Yet mystery and reality emergefrom the same source.
(28:22):
This source is called darkness.
Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of allunderstanding.
And when it says darkness here,he's not talking about literal
darkness, like scary darkness.
The darkness he's talking aboutis that...
(28:45):
How do I put this into words?
Because it's beyond words.
It's the mind when it's notthinking about anything or
thinking at all in terms ofconcepts, labels.
It's just experiencing what is.
And he calls it darkness becausethere's really no description
(29:06):
for it because it goes beyonddescription.
Description beyond description.
So I wanted to read anotherverse from this guy.
This is written about 500 BC,and this touches on what I was
talking about earlier, how youwouldn't know hard without soft,
et cetera, the play ofopposites, which I think I
mentioned in episode two.
(29:27):
So he says here, and this isverse two, when people see
things as beautiful, ugliness iscreated.
When people see things as good,evil is created.
Being and non-being are produceeach other.
Difficult and easy complementeach other.
(29:52):
Long and short define eachother.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.
Fore and aft means front andback for those who didn't catch
that.
Therefore, the master can actwithout doing anything And teach
(30:13):
without saying a word.
Things come her way and she doesnot stop them.
Things leave and she lets themgo.
She has without possessing andacts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she takesno credit.
That is why it will lastforever.
(30:35):
And then I only want to read onemore from Lao Tzu.
And I'm going to read...
In this segment of the episode,I'm going to read from a couple
of different mystics just so youcan see how they all point to
the same thing.
They all say the same thingthrough their various
traditions.
Here's the other verse I wantedto read.
This is verse 11.
And this is really key becausethis is the point of the show,
(30:57):
essentially.
When you see the cover of thisshow and you see those two feet
standing on nothing, that'ssomething that you can actually
experience firsthand.
I can talk about it.
But me talking about it andputting it into words is a
concept.
I have to point to it and youhave to try it.
If you can maintain continuityof your mindfulness, of your
(31:21):
day-to-day activities, you willstart to feel like you are
floating, just like that image.
And it feels really good.
I'm just forewarning you now.
I don't mean to tell you howyou're going to feel.
You'll feel it when you feel it.
When you make...
spiritual practice or a practiceto stay rooted in your
experiences throughout the day,essentially to lessen your
(31:45):
thinking and your conceptualmind, you'll start to feel like
you're floating, like you havethis great energy in you.
And I think in the Zentradition, they have a saying,
the student who experiencesSatori, which is a word
describing that feeling, goes tohell as straight as an arrow.
And what they mean by that is,your first attempts to kind of
(32:07):
take flight experiencingmindfulness, especially when you
start to lengthen thecontinuity, essentially how long
you're mindful, longer andlonger bouts, you'll start to
feel that weightless feeling,almost like you're floating a
few inches off the ground andeverything is just, you're in
that flow state.
(32:27):
But when you feel that, It canbe exciting, and that will pull
you back into conceptualreality, like, whoa, that felt
really good.
Oh, darn, I'm thinking again.
Anyways, that's why they call itpractice, spiritual practice.
And this is really pointing tothat, this next verse.
It says, there are 30 spokesjoined together in a wheel, but
(32:52):
it is the center hole thatallows the wheel to function.
We mold clay.
into a pot but it is theemptiness inside the pot that
makes the vessel useful wefashion wood for a house but it
is the emptiness inside thatmakes it livable we work with
(33:17):
the substantial but theemptiness is what we use so you
see what he's saying is Conceptsare useful.
The spokes on a wheel, they makethe wagon move.
But it is that spaciousness inthe center that makes the entire
(33:40):
wheel possible.
In the same way, if you don'thave that spaciousness inside of
you, life's gonna be rough.
You gotta work on creating thatspace.
And the way you do that is bytethering yourself to the
experiences of every singlemoment.
(34:00):
Wherever you are, whateveryou're experiencing right now is
exactly what you need to getfree.
And this might seem like we'reputting thoughts down or saying
that thoughts are bad, andthat's not what I'm trying to
say.
This is a countermeasure.
(34:23):
Like I said in the beginning ofthe episode, I wanted to talk
about what created the need formysticism or why mysticism
naturally arose out of eachspiritual tradition.
And that is because in eachtradition, people get lost in
the words and the concepts toomuch.
(34:44):
They get shackled by them.
There's verses all throughouteven the Christian Bible, for
example, where it says Godlaughs at the wisdom of men or
the wisdom of man makes Godlaugh or something in that vein.
And I had pointed out in episodetwo how some Christians love the
smell of their own Bibles.
That's any spiritual faith, notjust Christianity.
(35:05):
I want to make that clear.
I grew up in a Christianbackground, so I have a lot of
experiences I can share fromthat background, but I am not
bashing Christianity as opposedto other faiths at all.
I'm pointing out how all of themhave these traditions, and we
lose the...
thing that they're pointing tofor the words themselves.
(35:29):
And I'm really hammering thishome because even this podcast
episode, you can hear it and itmight ring a bell of truth in
you, but if you don't make aneffort to tether yourself to
your experiences on amoment-to-moment-to-moment
basis, you're going to keepgetting sucked up back into your
skull and and thinking aboutconcepts and things like that.
(35:52):
Think of a child.
We put them in a school, andwhen you walk into a school,
what do you see?
Letters and numbers lined aroundthe ceiling.
The whole idea of school is tolabel everything.
And again, that is useful.
But we are not taught anywherein life to slow down breathe.
(36:12):
You'll hear bits of it try tocome through in the culture,
like stop and smell the roses,or our grandparents when they
used to just sit on the porch inthe front yard and just kind of
watch the trees sway in thewind.
We've lost touch with that.
And now we have smartphones inour pocket, for the love of God.
(36:33):
You can pull up anything in yourpocket at any time.
You know, I don't know if youguys have ever struggled with
this, but I'll be watching amovie and I'm like, I got to
know how old this person is.
I got to know who that actor is.
Let me pause the film and lookit up.
It's real easy to get dominatedby the conceptual mind.
And if you don't flex yourexperience muscle, your
(36:57):
spiritual practice muscle,you're going to live a life
that's very stressed out andvery dark and very depressing
and And that is what all thesepaths point to.
Like, if you read the book ofProverbs, for example, Solomon,
who wrote the book of Proverbs,talks about just watching every
(37:19):
step you're taking and lettingYahweh handle the rest.
And you'll notice the name ofGod, Yahweh, means to be, to
exist, I am, being.
In other words...
When he says trust in Yahweh,he's saying you can literalize
that and personify that, liketrust in the person God, but you
(37:43):
can also look at it from themeaning of his name, because all
Hebrew names have a veryimportant or deep meaning,
typically, especially the nameof God from Exodus, I believe,
3.14, when he says,"'I am that Iam.'" I don't think that ancient
Hebrews could simply write I am,but that's what that means.
(38:03):
I am, to exist, to be.
So when you hear Solomon saytrust in Yahweh, trust in your
being.
Trust the moment.
Be completely with what is.
I had another thought on thatand I lost it.
Or take Jesus' name.
His actual name is Yeshua, whichmeans Yahweh saves or is
(38:27):
salvation.
So if you look closely at whatthat name means, to be, to
exist, I am, is salvation.
And oh, that's what I was goingto say.
Jesus, he evoked the name of Godas, in Aramaic, as a way of
stating this.
Like you can look at I am theway, the truth, and the life,
(38:49):
which many people love to use asa conceptual model of we're in
the in-group, everyone whodoesn't believe in Jesus is the
out-group.
But another way you can look atthat is Jesus was speaking from
the I am, the being in him thatwe all share, which he's said
many times in the gospel, I am.
is the way, the truth, and thelife.
(39:11):
To be, to exist, to rest intoyour being will guide your
steps, as it says in Proverbsand every other book in the
Bible.
And he also uses that I amstatement in many other ways.
Like, I am the vine, you are thebranch.
Being is the core vine ofeveryone.
And our various masks that wewear I'm Jacob, you are Joe, and
(39:35):
he's Bill.
These masks that we wear are thebranches that all extend from
the same being, the indivisiblebeing.
Because going back to what wesaid earlier, all measurement is
illusory, including the idea ofyourself being separate from all
of everything that is.
(39:55):
And that's one of the greatthings about mysticism is the
more you rest in being and yourexperiential nature, the more
you grow the continuity ofmindfulness, the more you will
feel intuitively beyond wordsthat you are absolutely one in
the same with everything elsethat is.
You are one with God.
(40:17):
You're not separate from him.
Some people might hear that andsay, well, does that mean I'm
God?
better way to say it would be,there is only God, or whatever
word you want to use for God,and that you, technically you
exist, but just like an inch, aninch doesn't really exist.
(40:37):
It's a useful social convention.
You can consider when I say I,it's a point of view, it's a
perspective.
You know, a In the same way thatyou can cover your right eye and
then look through your right eyeand see darkness and then close
your right eye and look throughyour left eye and see what your
left eye is seeing, you can openboth eyes and one eye can see
(40:59):
one thing and the other eye isseeing something completely
different.
In the same way, all of the eyeson Earth or any other planet are
all seeing, which is in thefield of awareness of one single
thing that is aware ofeverything at all times,
everywhere, all at once.
Great movie too, by the way.
(41:22):
But again, everything I'm sayinghere is conceptual.
So the best thing you can do isnot take my word for it.
That's where doubt becomesuseful.
See for yourself.
That's why I did in episodethree kind of a little bit of a
mindfulness meditationwalkthrough.
See for yourself.
Try to rest in the spacesbetween words, between thoughts,
(41:46):
and rest in that and experiencethat.
And don't try to conceptualizeit.
You cannot grasp this withknowledge.
Just as water cannot exceed thelevel, its maximum level, The
mind cannot conceive of itsmaximum level.
The only thing you can do is letgo and trust.
That's why the word faith is thesame meaning as trust.
(42:09):
Trust what is.
You came out of it.
If you look at the universe asseparate and other than you,
that conceptual layer, thatmodel, will make you very
fearful in life.
You'll feel very small in a biguniverse.
But let's read some of the othermystics here because I think you
guys are going to love these.
So I've read to you Lao Tzu inthe Taoist tradition.
(42:33):
Now let's look at Jalal al-DinRumi, a 13th century Sufi from
Persia.
I'm going to read a poem fromhis later in the podcast.
But for now, I want to read alittle bio description and only
take a moment.
It says, Rumi is one of theworld's most beloved mystical
poets.
He was born in 1207 inpresent-day Afghanistan, which
(42:54):
was then part of the PersianEmpire.
He was an Islamic scholar who,after meeting the mystic Shams
of Tabriz, became a passionateSufi, a lover of God in the form
of beauty and love.
Rumi's poetry overflows with theidea of union with the divine.
He saw God in everything, everyperson, every experience, even
(43:17):
the painful ones.
One famous Rumi saying, quote,out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing, there is afield.
I'll meet you there.
See, this captures his sensethat truth lives beyond our
dualistic judgments.
(43:37):
We draw lines betweeneverything.
So let's fast forward.
I'm going to come back to Rumi.
I have a really great poem Iwant to read you from him called
The Guest House, which some ofyou who are familiar with him no
doubt have heard that poem.
And it's wonderful.
It's a great philosophy for youto live your life by.
Honestly, just hearing the poemcan change the way you live your
(43:58):
life.
It's literally life-changing.
Let's see.
Another one I wanted to talkabout was Kabir.
He was a 15th century mysticpoet from India.
And some people argued whetherhe was Hindu or Muslim.
He claimed that he was neither.
There is a quote from him thatsays, the Hindu says Ram is
(44:21):
supreme.
The Muslim says Rahim issupreme.
Then they kill each other.
And then he says, but tell me,brother, who created Ram and who
created Rahim?
UNKNOWN (44:33):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (44:34):
It says, in Kabir's eyes, God was one and found in
all.
He says, quote, I am not a Hindunor a Muslim am I.
He sings, I am this body, a playof five elements, a drama of the
spirit dancing with joy andsorrow.
So he describes, or he declaresthat he identifies only with the
(44:54):
fundamental reality common to usall, the lila, the play of life,
right?
So let's pull another quote ofhis.
He says, quote, all know thatthe drop emerges into the ocean,
but few know that the oceanmerges into the drop.
(45:18):
In other words, we typicallythink of the individual soul
dissolving into the infinitelike a drop into the sea.
But the mystic realizes theinfinite also resides within the
individual.
The entire ocean of divinity canbe found inside each drop of
creation.
Such words beautifully conveythe non-dual idea that God is
(45:40):
not separate from the world orfrom us.
Great stuff.
And this really mirrors, Ibelieve it's in the Mahayana
tradition, something calledIndra's net or Indra's web.
So if you picture a spider webwith morning dew drops all over
it, each drop reflects all ofthe other drops within it.
(46:02):
And all of the drops reflectedin it all reflect the other
drops.
So it's like this infinite...
You get the picture.
It's a great way of describingreality.
Now, the mystics from theChristian faith have wonderful,
wonderful things to say.
And I want to read to you thislittle description of Meister
(46:25):
Eckhart here.
It says, from the Christiantradition, Meister Eckhart
stands out as a bold voice ofmysticism.
He was born around 1260 in whatis now Germany.
Eckhart was a Dominican friar.
and a mystic who taught theradical idea of the soul's unity
with God.
Preaching in the vernacularGerman, he urged people to look
(46:47):
within for the divine reality.
Some of Eckhart's statementswere so daring, borderline
heretical to the authorities ofthe time, that they got him in
trouble with the church.
For instance, Eckhart taughtthat there is an innermost spark
of the soul that is one withGod, and that our task is to
realize this inherent oneness byemptying ourselves of all ego
(47:11):
and image.
You see the language he's usingthere?
empty yourself.
When you hear emptiness inBuddhism to the Western mind,
that sounds scary.
I don't want to be empty orvoid, but all that really means
is selflessness.
You're just with what is withoutthe conceptual filter of you.
How dare he do this to me?
(47:32):
He writes here in a quote, myeye and God's eye are one eye,
or I'm sorry, It says, the eyewith which I see God is the same
eye through which God sees me.
My eye and God's eye are oneeye, one seeing, one knowing,
one love.
This stunning quote illustrateshow in mystical union, the
(47:53):
distinction between lover andbeloved disappears.
There is only one.
In his sermons, this is anotherinteresting thing.
It says he spoke of the needfor, and I'm mispronouncing this
possibly, gelassenheit, whichmeans letting go-ness, a
complete yielding of oneselfinto God's presence.
(48:14):
Let God be God in you, headvised, meaning that we should
stop clinging to the small selfso that the divine self can
express freely through us.
He even said, Whoa, what doesthat mean?
(48:35):
He's basically saying that areideas of God.
must also be discarded for thetrue God beyond all ideas to
manifest.
And this echoes what the ancientHebrews talked about with the
word idol or hevel, which isvapor, vanity.
Idols, some people think, aresimply old statues that people
(48:56):
bow down to.
Not at all.
They can also include conceptsor thoughts.
And when the Bible says no idolsbefore God, they are saying no
concept of God whatsoever.
Just like Lao Tzu said a momentago when I read to you from the
Tao Te Ching, the Tao that canbe named or described is not the
eternal Tao.
(49:16):
The ancient Hebrews knew this aswell.
They called the Tao God, andthey would refuse to write his
name entirely, not only out ofrespect, but because it's
impossible.
You can't write down theunwriteable.
They would write as they writetoday, G-D, but back then it was
the Tetragrammaton, Y-H-W-H,Yod-Heh-Wah-Heh, and the most
(49:40):
educated guess as to how topronounce it is what we know as
Yahweh.
Was Yahweh the actualpronunciation?
We don't know.
We will never know.
It is the best guess that wehave, but we know that his name
ultimately means I am or to be.
Now there's other Christianmystics, wonderful ones, like
(50:02):
St.
John of the Cross.
I want to read a quote from himreal fast.
All that the imagination canimagine and the understanding it
can receive and understand inthis life is not, nor can it be,
a proximate means of union withGod.
So here he's saying thatanything you can possibly think
(50:23):
of is not God.
So it's easy to misunderstandthe mystics or mysticism in
general for putting downconcepts or putting down
theology.
There's another quote that'sattributed to Meister Eckhart
(50:45):
that says, theologians argue,but mystics all speak the same
language.
But what they're doing is notputting down beliefs or
concepts, they're saying thatbeliefs are ladders, concepts
are ladders to be climbed up andthen let go of when you reach
the roof.
Or in Buddhism, they sayspiritual traditions are like a
(51:10):
boat that you use to cross tothe other side of the river, to
reach the other shore.
When you get to the other shore,you don't pick up the boat and
carry it on your back.
You just live the reality of it.
Like I mentioned in episode two,I believe it was, when Jesus was
asked, how will they know we areyour disciples?
(51:31):
He said, they will know you aremy disciple by the love that you
have for one another.
So he didn't say by how manyverses you memorized.
They didn't even have the Bibleback then.
The Gospels weren't writtenuntil many decades after him.
Even Paul's epistles, you know,Jesus just said, love everyone.
(51:52):
Or John Lennon, all you need islove.
It's not complicated.
It's Take an active interest inyour life and what you are.
We're pulling close to thefinish line here, guys.
So I am going to leave youwith...
A wonderful poem.
This is my first episode doingan outline, so please go easy on
(52:15):
me.
I'm trying to pace myself.
I'm trying to be spontaneous andfree-flowing from my own brain
here, but also follow an outlinewhich will constantly derail
your train of thought.
No pun intended there.
But before I read this poem toyou, I just wanted to give you a
little call to action.
(52:35):
If this episode has spoke to youor any other prior ones, please
consider following the show,leaving a review, or sharing it
with someone who might need it.
You can also support the podcastat patreon.com slash
standingnowherepodcast.
And you can connect with us inour growing Discord community or
by email.
All the links are in thedescription.
And we're also on the socials ifyou want to follow along there.
(52:57):
So let's close out with a Rumipoem.
And this is a...
kicking my desk here.
This is a poem that couldpossibly change the way you
experience your life.
So listen close.
The Guesthouse by Rumi.
This being human is aguesthouse.
(53:19):
Every morning, a new arrival, ajoy, a depression, a meanness.
Some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all,even if they're a crowd of
sorrows who violently sweep yourhouse empty of its furniture.
(53:43):
Still, treat each guesthonorably.
He may be clearing you out forsome new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, themalice.
Meet them at the door laughingand invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comesbecause each has been sent as a
(54:04):
guide from beyond.
Thanks for tuning in to StandingNowhere, guys.
I love you.
Blessings to all.
SPEAKER_00 (54:12):
This voice might feel like dust on the dial But
I'm standing over Just a whisperthat won't be afraid Standing
(54:50):
nowhere and it feels like homeNo flags to wave, no need to
roam The silence speaks louderSo understood The static is kind
(55:24):
It leaves me alone No orders tofollow No king on the throne The
sky's turning amber The clock'sall reset I haven't stopped
(55:47):
walking just yet.
Standing nowhere, air wide andfree.
No chains, no Nothing.
all right guys welcome to episode four of
standing nowhere i'm your hostjacob And this episode, I wanted
(00:25):
to dive into something that Ifound really interesting over
the last three years, and thatis mysticism.
I don't know what I'm going tocall this episode yet, but it'll
have something to do with thatword mysticism, the mystics,
mystical experience.
What does that mean?
For those who are not familiarwith the word mysticism yet, It
(00:47):
can sound like something out ofa Harry Potter movie, almost
like magic or something, but Iassure you, it is nothing of the
kind.
In fact, it is the most basicthing.
But before we jump in to exactlywhat it is, I thought it would
be helpful to talk about kind ofwhat caused the idea of it to
(01:11):
emerge.
I mentioned on episode two howthere's kind of this dance of
opposites.
You can't have hard withoutsoft, or you wouldn't know what
you meant by hard unless youknew what soft meant.
Well, with mysticism...
It's sort of like if you live inthe desert and it's really hot
out, you're going to need an airconditioner.
It creates the demand for an airconditioner.
(01:32):
So what created the demand forthe mystics, or why did they
emerge naturally from alldifferent various faiths and
backgrounds?
I mean, mystics came out ofChristianity.
They came out of Judaism.
They came out of Islam and theMuslim religion.
They came out of Advaita Vedantaand Hinduism.
(01:54):
The entire path of Buddhism andthe Dharma you could consider
mystical.
Same thing with Zen, especiallyTaoism, Lao Tzu.
So what caused this to arise?
Well, I thought we would startwith that.
So let's dive right in.
(02:14):
The one thing that you have tounderstand about the way that
you see the world is is that weare all taught right from a
young age to start labelingthings, to looking at the world
through a conceptual filter, ifyou will.
(02:37):
If I look at a tree and then Itell my son, look, that's a
tree, his mind is gonna start tolayer over that with tree.
That's a tree.
But a tree is nothing like atree.
of the kind.
When we say tree, that's a word,that's a concept.
(02:59):
But a tree is just what you see.
When you see it, when you hearwind passing through its
branches and leaves, when youtouch the bark of a tree or
maybe feel sap on your fingers,this experience goes beyond
words, but we put words over it.
Another example would be theequator.
(03:22):
We know that the earth hasimaginary lines that we've drawn
all over it, lines of latitude,longitude, the equator, the very
concept of north, south, east,west.
These are all useful, no doubt,but they're not real.
They're not really real.
(03:43):
For example, if we walk to theequator line, I can say, well,
Where is it?
Can I grab the equator?
No, it's not really there.
It's useful, but it's just aconcept.
In the same way, if you look ata ruler, you could say, okay,
(04:04):
this is a 12-inch ruler.
It measures a foot.
But what is a foot or 12 inches?
What is an inch?
You might say, well, it's this.
And you can hold up your fingersapproximately to an inch.
What you'll find, and this mightbe unsettling for some of you
listening to this, but thereactually is no such thing as an
(04:28):
inch or any measurementwhatsoever.
Huh?
How can that be?
I'm looking at my ruler rightnow.
Or whatever.
And follow with me here becauseI'm going to take you on a
little journey to look at whatyou already know and what you
think to be real but is not realat all.
(04:49):
So we all know that you cantheoretically comprehend things
in larger and larger scales andsmaller and smaller scales to an
infinite variable degree, right?
So if you zoom in on an inch,you will find that there is no
fixed starting point for aninch, right?
(05:12):
a starting point of where thisinch begins and where this inch
ends.
For practical purposes, we canmake rulers that all, generally
speaking, have the same inchmeasurement when we put them
next to each other.
And from our perspective, theylook like they match.
Architects can design buildingsusing measurements.
(05:32):
They have to in order for themto stand.
However, again, when we zoom inand zoom in and zoom in, we find
that there is no fixed startingpoint for the beginning or the
end of an inch or anymeasurement for that matter.
So let's see if I can explainthis better.
We've all heard of the quantumrealm or things that you know,
(05:57):
are so small.
They're beyond even us seeingthem.
The smallest practicalmeasurement that we have as
human beings is I think whatthey call the plank scale.
And in order to get to thatscale, you almost have to
create, it takes so much energythat you, you almost create a
black hole trying to look atsomething that small.
So that's the limits of what wecan measure or conceivably
(06:21):
measure.
I think it's like a trillionthof a trillionth of, I don't know
the exact measurement.
UNKNOWN (06:26):
Um,
SPEAKER_01 (06:27):
Perhaps I should have taken some notes and
brought them with me.
But the point is you can keepzooming in and zooming in and
zooming in infinitely.
There is no limit to how smallsomething can get in the same
way there is no limit to howlarge something can get.
There are no pixels in reality.
(06:48):
Like when you zoom in, you'renever going to find, okay,
there's the solid edge of apixel.
There is where an inch begins.
That does not exist.
Astrophysicists, anyone willconfirm this.
All measurement essentially isan illusion.
And what kind of sparked myinterest in doing an episode
(07:08):
like this is I was just browsingYouTube and I saw another
podcaster.
I think his name is AlexO'Connor.
Pretty cool guy.
He has a philosophy podcast,probably similar to this in many
respects.
UNKNOWN (07:20):
And
SPEAKER_01 (07:20):
But he did a YouTube video where he was trying to
stump, not Alexa, but OpenAI.
So he was chatting with OpenAIand he said, if I hold my hands
a foot apart, I can divide thatfoot in half and then I can
divide that half foot in halfand add infinitum.
So if I can divide itinfinitely, how can my hands
(07:43):
ever touch if I bring themtogether?
And OpenAI was really strugglingwith the question.
And the reason is it didn'tcarefully examine the premise of
the question, which in itselfwas false.
There is no...
static foot.
Like if I hold my hands a footapart and I measure it to the
(08:05):
most accurate that we can ashumans, that still is not one
foot.
It's approximately what we wouldcall a foot for usefulness as we
navigate life, but there is nofixed point of one foot.
The idea of that is a fallacyand thus the question is a
fallacy.
So Chatbot was struggling withhim and his argument trying to
(08:28):
figure out how to dividesomething that doesn't exist in
the first place in half adinfinitum until the hands touch.
Another way you could look atthat is that nothing in reality
actually ever touches.
Electromagnetism just pushesthings away as they get close.
When you put your handstogether, it feels like they're
touching, but they're reallynot.
(08:48):
That's another rabbit hole wewon't go into.
But the reason I'm bringing thisup is because we like to put
labels on everything in life.
We sort of, like take the UnitedStates.
There's a clearly outlined, if Isay picture the US in your mind,
(09:09):
you can picture the UnitedStates, the 48 contiguous, and
you can picture Alaska and theshape of it and everything like
that.
But you and I both know thatthere is actually no line in the
sand that is shaped like that.
It is a concept.
It is a filter that we havelayered over the earth saying
everything inside this imaginaryline is the US and everything
(09:33):
outside of it is not the US.
I hope that this is makingsense.
These concepts are useful, butfundamentally, in reality, They
do not exist.
They only exist in our minds.
If all humans were to dieovernight, what would happen to
all the territories that we'vedrawn on the ground?
(09:53):
They would go with us, right?
I mean, there'd still be mapsand things like that, but
animals, they don't give twoshits, excuse my language, about
our idea or concept of a countryor not.
Now, other things that we canpoint out like this would be
(10:16):
Well, let's take another conceptwhich creates division is your
political party, for example.
Some people will labelthemselves as a Democrat.
Some will label as a Republican,Marxist, whatever it is.
(10:38):
These are also labels thattechnically do not exist.
They do point to things, yes.
So it is useful as a socialconvention.
It shouldn't be dismissed.
You know, I'm not saying allconcepts and ideas are false.
They just aren't really real.
I hope you guys are followingwith me here.
(10:59):
Like when we look at the sun, wecall it the sun, but the sun
doesn't call itself the sun.
We just put a label on that, theword sun.
Let's say that out loud a fewtimes.
You ever notice, this is alsowhat I'm getting at.
When you say a word over andover again, it loses its
conceptual value in your mindand suddenly the word will sound
(11:22):
funny.
Right?
Like in that movie Black Sheepwith Chris Farley and David
Spade and some of the nitrousoxide was like leaking from the
back of a cop car that theystole and they start getting
really high and they're likeroads, roads, roads.
That's a funny word.
(11:43):
Roads, roads, roads.
Keep saying any word over andover again and it eventually
loses its conceptual meaning andyou just hear the vibrations.
And it sounds funny.
That's when your mind sort ofgoes beyond the concepts.
It peeks above, or peeks behindthe curtain that we've all, the
(12:03):
veil that we've put overreality.
There's a culture, the Hindus,who have a name for this veil
that we've veiled reality with,and they call that maya or
ma-ya, the illusion of dividingthe infinite into parts.
(12:23):
The Judeo-Christians have atradition as well that calls it
the, well, they call it the fallof man.
In the Garden of Eden, when Eveand Adam bite into the fruit of
knowledge, this is pointing tothe same thing as maya, the
illusion of dividing things.
As soon as Eve bit into theapple, she became aware of the
(12:46):
concept of herself as separatefrom everything else.
Even the concept of yourself isis a concept and ultimately, on
the ultimate fundamental realitylevel, is not real.
Notice that's why she felt nakedand grabbed clothes and God's
like, who told you you werenaked?
Essentially like, who told youyou were separate from
(13:08):
everything?
Notice that it was when theygained knowledge that they were
thrown out of the garden.
So in the Hindu tradition, theylabel this maya.
So they say maya is essentiallyan illusion.
The conceptual filters, Ipronounce that weird,
conceptual, conceptual filtersthat we've layered over reality,
(13:31):
that fundamentally is not real.
In a way, it is as natural andas organic as a flower, because
we live in a universe that hasflowers, and they came about
organically.
And Conceptual filters also cameabout organically.
(13:51):
When I call myself Jacob, I amnot the word Jacob.
I am beyond words.
Everything is beyond words.
Words are useful.
They point to things, but theyare not the things themselves.
For example, in the Buddhisttradition, there's a saying that
all spiritual traditions arelike fingers pointing to the
(14:16):
moon, but they are not the moonitself.
The moon is not the finger.
In order to see the moon, onemust see beyond the finger.
In the Christian tradition, forexample, when Paul is writing
his epistles, I forget which oneit is, he says the peace that
surpasses All knowledge, allcomprehension, all
(14:36):
understanding, all mind.
That word is basically mind inGreek.
And there are various spiritualteachers throughout the
millennia that point to goingbeyond knowledge to experience
experiencing what is.
And that, my friends, is whatmysticism is all about.
(15:00):
It is the experiential nature ofreality, of the divine.
And notice, when we gainedknowledge, that's when Eve
labeled herself as a separateindividual from the whole, and
she was thrown out of the whenwe try to look beyond the
(15:22):
concepts of self and other, itemphasizes unity and union with
the divine.
And this is echoed throughoutthe millennia from various
mystics of all spiritualtraditions, be it Buddhist,
Taoist, Christian, Islam, youname it, Hindu.
(15:45):
They all point to union with thedivine.
Yoga, for example, means unionwith divine.
And if you read several passagesfrom Jesus in the Gospels, he is
always talking about, may theybe one in us as I am one in you,
and I am in you, you are in me,yada, yada, yada.
(16:05):
It's almost like we're lookingthrough a window or a looking
glass at the sun or at the sky.
But instead of just seeing thesky, we're We've sort of layer
over that glass with an image ofthe sun or an image of the
horizon.
And then we don't actually seethe full light that comes
(16:25):
through the glass.
We're sort of blocked by ourconceptual ideas about reality,
about ourselves.
So mystics and mysticism ingeneral, the emphasis is direct
experiential nature of thedivine.
So how do we do that?
That brings in the processes ofthings like mindfulness and
(16:48):
meditation, looking at the worldwithout filters.
But before we get to that, Iwant to also talk about one of
the major, major conceptualfilters that we put on life.
And this, of course, ties intothe purpose of life.
What is the meaning of life?
And this is where you can put areally dark filter on your life
(17:16):
and yourself if you're notcareful.
There are some who have theconceptual model that the
universe is random, that allenergy is blind and it's bumping
into each other, and somehow outof that randomness, we popped
out of it.
It's a very dark way of lookingat things.
(17:36):
It's echoed in Shakespeare'sMacbeth, a tale...
told by an idiot full of soundand fury signifying nothing
something to that effect likeit's all meaningless what's the
point because we are taught froma young age that there is a
(17:58):
purpose to life that we're goingto get to that end and you've
got to struggle and strive toget there As opposed to just
being exactly where you are withwhat is, each moment is meaning
unto itself.
Let me give you an example fromthis, and I'm going to pull from
Alan Watts again here, where hepoints out when you listen to
(18:21):
music, you are not thinking toyourself, the purpose of this
song is to get to the very finalnote.
You don't think that way at all.
When you listen to music, youare in love with every note.
Assuming you're listening tomusic that you enjoy, you're
enjoying the verses, thechoruses, the bridges, the
solos, whatever is coming up inthe music, you're with it at
(18:44):
that moment.
And it's complete into itself.
A friend of mine and myself, weare huge fans of a band called
Dream Theater.
They're considered progressive,meaning they don't fit into
industry standard three to fiveminute songs on the radio.
They like to play theirinstruments and have fun.
(19:05):
That's another thing.
We say we play the guitar.
We play the piano.
We don't work the piano.
It's not work, it's playful.
So this model, this conceptualfilter that we put over life of
what's the meaning of it, whenyou say what's the meaning of
something, you're basicallysaying, what is this thing
(19:28):
pointing to?
So when you put that concept onlife, you're basically saying,
okay, what is life pointing to?
like it's pointing to somethingelse, what is that else thing
that it's pointing to?
Instead of looking at life likeit's a song or music, and you're
supposed to just be with what isright now at this exact moment.
(19:54):
So my friend and I, we loveDream Theater.
We go to their concerts.
And when we go, man, we're justjumping up and down.
We're having fun.
And what's happening when we'reat a concert?
I mean, To anyone listening, ifyou've been to a concert, you
know what I'm talking about.
There's this feeling that just,it just fills your whole body.
(20:15):
It's like your hair stands onend, you know, and you're just
having a blast.
You can feel it passing throughyou.
And what is it other thanvibrations floating through the
air to your ears?
You know, different frequenciesof vibrations and the variations
of them excite us.
(20:36):
But that to me shows you that inour deepest of deepest self,
that life is a game.
It's a fun play.
It is not meant to be takenseriously.
And I don't mean life isn'tserious, like who cares?
(20:57):
Another word, a better word,which I like again from Alan
Watts when he describes howmusic is not for the purpose of
getting to the end of the song.
But he says that life isn'tserious, it's something that's
sincere.
So you play your part sincerely.
If you're a father, if you'rewhatever position you are in
(21:21):
your vocation in life, that youdo it sincerely.
But it's not serious, it's notheavy.
Like G.K.
Chesterton said, the angels flybecause they take themselves
lightly.
So the purpose of life is not toget to the end of life.
It's to dance while you're inthe middle of it, just like a
dance.
We don't dance to get to thelast spot on the floor.
(21:43):
The dance is the purpose initself, being with it.
you know, when we're at thoseshows, I can just feel myself
letting go, you know, whetherit's bobbing my head or just
jumping up and down.
My daughter, when she was, uh,not even a year, about a year
old, you know, she's, she's,we're all watching frozen with
her and she's doing the cutestlittle bobbing where she like,
(22:06):
she does like a little halfsquat and then she stands up,
half squat, stands up just tothe music, you know?
And, and It's not something thatshe needed to be taught.
She just instinctually knowsthat life is a dance.
It goes up, it goes down.
Even the sound waves that arecoming at you right now from
(22:28):
this podcast are waves, wavesthat crest and then they go down
to the valley or the trough.
They come back up.
Everything is now you see me,now you don't.
But when we try to make sense ofall these vibrations, all these
waves, all these thingshappening in life, we label
(22:49):
everything, which again isuseful because But we can miss
the forest for the trees.
We can take the concepts tooliterally.
And that's sort of the oppositeof mysticism is literalness, too
much emphasis on literalness.
(23:11):
When I was brought up in theChristian tradition, there were
people who would argue thatabout Genesis, the book of
Genesis, whether it was literalor whether it was metaphorical
or more poetic, likemythopoetry.
Some people, when they hear theword myth, they cringe like it's
a falsehood, when really myth isa powerful way of describing and
(23:35):
making sense of the universe,and not in a way where it's
false, but in a way for us tounderstand.
Like, for example, if I...
try to explain the expansion ofthe universe to somebody, and I
use the metaphor of, say, ablack balloon, and I put a bunch
of white dots on the balloon,and then I say I'm inflating the
(23:56):
balloon, and this simulates theexpansion, and you can see all
the white dots are stars, andthey're expanding outward.
That is a useful metaphor ormyth or parable for explaining
reality.
Now, if you look at that and yousay, well, Jake, you're kind of
silly.
The universe is not a rubberballoon, sir.
(24:19):
Thank you very much.
Obviously not, but it's a usefulmetaphor for understanding the
way things are.
In similar fashion, the variousspiritual traditions, they use
metaphor and parable forunderstanding the way things are
in the universe.
(24:39):
In the Judeo-Christiantradition, they look at whatever
you want to call this life as afather.
And why not?
I think I mentioned on anotherpodcast, you had a father, his
father had a father, and so onand so forth, all the way back
to the Big Bang.
So why not look at it as auniverse with a personality?
(25:02):
After all, you are the universeand and you have a personality.
So that personality that is youwas already there, encoded in
the Big Bang.
So let's shift forward a littlebit.
Let's look at some of themystics and see what they've
said.
But before we move on to thenext point that I wanted to
(25:23):
make, is that you can shift yourmindset from life is work and
life is hard, to life is aplayful thing, a playful
presence you can be with.
And yes, sometimes it will havedown moments.
Sometimes there is the minorfall before the major lift in
(25:43):
the song.
That's what makes music sobeautiful.
If the whole song is just all upnotes, high notes, there's no
down notes to contrast it with.
And before I move on, I alsowanted to note that the illusion
of constancy is alsodemonstrated in music.
For example, when you arelistening to a quote song,
(26:05):
that's another concept.
The reality is there are notescoming at you in the present
moment, one after another, thatcreate the illusion of
continuity of a song.
Just like I mentioned, I thinkin another podcast, the flame.
When you look at a candle flame,it looks like a static, solid
thing, but it's nothing of thekind.
(26:26):
It's a constant stream stream ofoxidation of the wick as it is
burned up by the flame.
And it looks constant, but it'snot, just like a song, just like
you.
But we take things to be solidand constant and forever lasting
when they're really not, atleast in the material world.
So the etymology of the wordmysticism, it implies going
(26:52):
beyond what can be said.
quote unquote, shutting up inorder to truly see.
It's the same root as mystery,and even the colloquial mums the
word.
Mystics in various traditionshave often used those who use
words against themselves.
That is, they speak, but only toprompt you towards what lies
beyond speaking.
Think of them as guides who say,don't take my word for it, look
(27:15):
for yourself.
So I want to read to you, I wantto read to you guys a a couple
of verses from the Tao Te Ching.
This is a book written by a mannamed Lao Tzu, who is considered
a mystic.
So the first verse that I wantto read says, and Tao means the
way, the way of things.
(27:36):
Kind of like if you watch waterroll down an object or a
mountain, it takes the path ofleast resistance.
There is a way of things in allthings in reality, including
you.
So the Tao that can be describedis not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken isnot the eternal name.
(27:59):
The nameless is the boundary ofheaven and earth.
The named is the mother ofcreation.
Freed from desire, you can seethe hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can onlysee what is visibly real.
Yet mystery and reality emergefrom the same source.
(28:22):
This source is called darkness.
Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of allunderstanding.
And when it says darkness here,he's not talking about literal
darkness, like scary darkness.
The darkness he's talking aboutis that...
(28:45):
How do I put this into words?
Because it's beyond words.
It's the mind when it's notthinking about anything or
thinking at all in terms ofconcepts, labels.
It's just experiencing what is.
And he calls it darkness becausethere's really no description
(29:06):
for it because it goes beyonddescription.
Description beyond description.
So I wanted to read anotherverse from this guy.
This is written about 500 BC,and this touches on what I was
talking about earlier, how youwouldn't know hard without soft,
et cetera, the play ofopposites, which I think I
mentioned in episode two.
(29:27):
So he says here, and this isverse two, when people see
things as beautiful, ugliness iscreated.
When people see things as good,evil is created.
Being and non-being are produceeach other.
Difficult and easy complementeach other.
(29:52):
Long and short define eachother.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.
Fore and aft means front andback for those who didn't catch
that.
Therefore, the master can actwithout doing anything And teach
(30:13):
without saying a word.
Things come her way and she doesnot stop them.
Things leave and she lets themgo.
She has without possessing andacts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she takesno credit.
That is why it will lastforever.
(30:35):
And then I only want to read onemore from Lao Tzu.
And I'm going to read...
In this segment of the episode,I'm going to read from a couple
of different mystics just so youcan see how they all point to
the same thing.
They all say the same thingthrough their various
traditions.
Here's the other verse I wantedto read.
This is verse 11.
And this is really key becausethis is the point of the show,
(30:57):
essentially.
When you see the cover of thisshow and you see those two feet
standing on nothing, that'ssomething that you can actually
experience firsthand.
I can talk about it.
But me talking about it andputting it into words is a
concept.
I have to point to it and youhave to try it.
If you can maintain continuityof your mindfulness, of your
(31:21):
day-to-day activities, you willstart to feel like you are
floating, just like that image.
And it feels really good.
I'm just forewarning you now.
I don't mean to tell you howyou're going to feel.
You'll feel it when you feel it.
When you make...
spiritual practice or a practiceto stay rooted in your
experiences throughout the day,essentially to lessen your
(31:45):
thinking and your conceptualmind, you'll start to feel like
you're floating, like you havethis great energy in you.
And I think in the Zentradition, they have a saying,
the student who experiencesSatori, which is a word
describing that feeling, goes tohell as straight as an arrow.
And what they mean by that is,your first attempts to kind of
(32:07):
take flight experiencingmindfulness, especially when you
start to lengthen thecontinuity, essentially how long
you're mindful, longer andlonger bouts, you'll start to
feel that weightless feeling,almost like you're floating a
few inches off the ground andeverything is just, you're in
that flow state.
(32:27):
But when you feel that, It canbe exciting, and that will pull
you back into conceptualreality, like, whoa, that felt
really good.
Oh, darn, I'm thinking again.
Anyways, that's why they call itpractice, spiritual practice.
And this is really pointing tothat, this next verse.
It says, there are 30 spokesjoined together in a wheel, but
(32:52):
it is the center hole thatallows the wheel to function.
We mold clay.
into a pot but it is theemptiness inside the pot that
makes the vessel useful wefashion wood for a house but it
is the emptiness inside thatmakes it livable we work with
(33:17):
the substantial but theemptiness is what we use so you
see what he's saying is Conceptsare useful.
The spokes on a wheel, they makethe wagon move.
But it is that spaciousness inthe center that makes the entire
(33:40):
wheel possible.
In the same way, if you don'thave that spaciousness inside of
you, life's gonna be rough.
You gotta work on creating thatspace.
And the way you do that is bytethering yourself to the
experiences of every singlemoment.
(34:00):
Wherever you are, whateveryou're experiencing right now is
exactly what you need to getfree.
And this might seem like we'reputting thoughts down or saying
that thoughts are bad, andthat's not what I'm trying to
say.
This is a countermeasure.
(34:23):
Like I said in the beginning ofthe episode, I wanted to talk
about what created the need formysticism or why mysticism
naturally arose out of eachspiritual tradition.
And that is because in eachtradition, people get lost in
the words and the concepts toomuch.
(34:44):
They get shackled by them.
There's verses all throughouteven the Christian Bible, for
example, where it says Godlaughs at the wisdom of men or
the wisdom of man makes Godlaugh or something in that vein.
And I had pointed out in episodetwo how some Christians love the
smell of their own Bibles.
That's any spiritual faith, notjust Christianity.
(35:05):
I want to make that clear.
I grew up in a Christianbackground, so I have a lot of
experiences I can share fromthat background, but I am not
bashing Christianity as opposedto other faiths at all.
I'm pointing out how all of themhave these traditions, and we
lose the...
thing that they're pointing tofor the words themselves.
(35:29):
And I'm really hammering thishome because even this podcast
episode, you can hear it and itmight ring a bell of truth in
you, but if you don't make aneffort to tether yourself to
your experiences on amoment-to-moment-to-moment
basis, you're going to keepgetting sucked up back into your
skull and and thinking aboutconcepts and things like that.
(35:52):
Think of a child.
We put them in a school, andwhen you walk into a school,
what do you see?
Letters and numbers lined aroundthe ceiling.
The whole idea of school is tolabel everything.
And again, that is useful.
But we are not taught anywherein life to slow down breathe.
(36:12):
You'll hear bits of it try tocome through in the culture,
like stop and smell the roses,or our grandparents when they
used to just sit on the porch inthe front yard and just kind of
watch the trees sway in thewind.
We've lost touch with that.
And now we have smartphones inour pocket, for the love of God.
(36:33):
You can pull up anything in yourpocket at any time.
You know, I don't know if youguys have ever struggled with
this, but I'll be watching amovie and I'm like, I got to
know how old this person is.
I got to know who that actor is.
Let me pause the film and lookit up.
It's real easy to get dominatedby the conceptual mind.
And if you don't flex yourexperience muscle, your
(36:57):
spiritual practice muscle,you're going to live a life
that's very stressed out andvery dark and very depressing
and And that is what all thesepaths point to.
Like, if you read the book ofProverbs, for example, Solomon,
who wrote the book of Proverbs,talks about just watching every
(37:19):
step you're taking and lettingYahweh handle the rest.
And you'll notice the name ofGod, Yahweh, means to be, to
exist, I am, being.
In other words...
When he says trust in Yahweh,he's saying you can literalize
that and personify that, liketrust in the person God, but you
(37:43):
can also look at it from themeaning of his name, because all
Hebrew names have a veryimportant or deep meaning,
typically, especially the nameof God from Exodus, I believe,
3.14, when he says,"'I am that Iam.'" I don't think that ancient
Hebrews could simply write I am,but that's what that means.
(38:03):
I am, to exist, to be.
So when you hear Solomon saytrust in Yahweh, trust in your
being.
Trust the moment.
Be completely with what is.
I had another thought on thatand I lost it.
Or take Jesus' name.
His actual name is Yeshua, whichmeans Yahweh saves or is
(38:27):
salvation.
So if you look closely at whatthat name means, to be, to
exist, I am, is salvation.
And oh, that's what I was goingto say.
Jesus, he evoked the name of Godas, in Aramaic, as a way of
stating this.
Like you can look at I am theway, the truth, and the life,
(38:49):
which many people love to use asa conceptual model of we're in
the in-group, everyone whodoesn't believe in Jesus is the
out-group.
But another way you can look atthat is Jesus was speaking from
the I am, the being in him thatwe all share, which he's said
many times in the gospel, I am.
is the way, the truth, and thelife.
(39:11):
To be, to exist, to rest intoyour being will guide your
steps, as it says in Proverbsand every other book in the
Bible.
And he also uses that I amstatement in many other ways.
Like, I am the vine, you are thebranch.
Being is the core vine ofeveryone.
And our various masks that wewear I'm Jacob, you are Joe, and
(39:35):
he's Bill.
These masks that we wear are thebranches that all extend from
the same being, the indivisiblebeing.
Because going back to what wesaid earlier, all measurement is
illusory, including the idea ofyourself being separate from all
of everything that is.
(39:55):
And that's one of the greatthings about mysticism is the
more you rest in being and yourexperiential nature, the more
you grow the continuity ofmindfulness, the more you will
feel intuitively beyond wordsthat you are absolutely one in
the same with everything elsethat is.
You are one with God.
(40:17):
You're not separate from him.
Some people might hear that andsay, well, does that mean I'm
God?
better way to say it would be,there is only God, or whatever
word you want to use for God,and that you, technically you
exist, but just like an inch, aninch doesn't really exist.
(40:37):
It's a useful social convention.
You can consider when I say I,it's a point of view, it's a
perspective.
You know, a In the same way thatyou can cover your right eye and
then look through your right eyeand see darkness and then close
your right eye and look throughyour left eye and see what your
left eye is seeing, you can openboth eyes and one eye can see
(40:59):
one thing and the other eye isseeing something completely
different.
In the same way, all of the eyeson Earth or any other planet are
all seeing, which is in thefield of awareness of one single
thing that is aware ofeverything at all times,
everywhere, all at once.
Great movie too, by the way.
(41:22):
But again, everything I'm sayinghere is conceptual.
So the best thing you can do isnot take my word for it.
That's where doubt becomesuseful.
See for yourself.
That's why I did in episodethree kind of a little bit of a
mindfulness meditationwalkthrough.
See for yourself.
Try to rest in the spacesbetween words, between thoughts,
(41:46):
and rest in that and experiencethat.
And don't try to conceptualizeit.
You cannot grasp this withknowledge.
Just as water cannot exceed thelevel, its maximum level, The
mind cannot conceive of itsmaximum level.
The only thing you can do is letgo and trust.
That's why the word faith is thesame meaning as trust.
(42:09):
Trust what is.
You came out of it.
If you look at the universe asseparate and other than you,
that conceptual layer, thatmodel, will make you very
fearful in life.
You'll feel very small in a biguniverse.
But let's read some of the othermystics here because I think you
guys are going to love these.
So I've read to you Lao Tzu inthe Taoist tradition.
(42:33):
Now let's look at Jalal al-DinRumi, a 13th century Sufi from
Persia.
I'm going to read a poem fromhis later in the podcast.
But for now, I want to read alittle bio description and only
take a moment.
It says, Rumi is one of theworld's most beloved mystical
poets.
He was born in 1207 inpresent-day Afghanistan, which
(42:54):
was then part of the PersianEmpire.
He was an Islamic scholar who,after meeting the mystic Shams
of Tabriz, became a passionateSufi, a lover of God in the form
of beauty and love.
Rumi's poetry overflows with theidea of union with the divine.
He saw God in everything, everyperson, every experience, even
(43:17):
the painful ones.
One famous Rumi saying, quote,out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing, there is afield.
I'll meet you there.
See, this captures his sensethat truth lives beyond our
dualistic judgments.
(43:37):
We draw lines betweeneverything.
So let's fast forward.
I'm going to come back to Rumi.
I have a really great poem Iwant to read you from him called
The Guest House, which some ofyou who are familiar with him no
doubt have heard that poem.
And it's wonderful.
It's a great philosophy for youto live your life by.
Honestly, just hearing the poemcan change the way you live your
(43:58):
life.
It's literally life-changing.
Let's see.
Another one I wanted to talkabout was Kabir.
He was a 15th century mysticpoet from India.
And some people argued whetherhe was Hindu or Muslim.
He claimed that he was neither.
There is a quote from him thatsays, the Hindu says Ram is
(44:21):
supreme.
The Muslim says Rahim issupreme.
Then they kill each other.
And then he says, but tell me,brother, who created Ram and who
created Rahim?
UNKNOWN (44:33):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (44:34):
It says, in Kabir's eyes, God was one and found in
all.
He says, quote, I am not a Hindunor a Muslim am I.
He sings, I am this body, a playof five elements, a drama of the
spirit dancing with joy andsorrow.
So he describes, or he declaresthat he identifies only with the
(44:54):
fundamental reality common to usall, the lila, the play of life,
right?
So let's pull another quote ofhis.
He says, quote, all know thatthe drop emerges into the ocean,
but few know that the oceanmerges into the drop.
(45:18):
In other words, we typicallythink of the individual soul
dissolving into the infinitelike a drop into the sea.
But the mystic realizes theinfinite also resides within the
individual.
The entire ocean of divinity canbe found inside each drop of
creation.
Such words beautifully conveythe non-dual idea that God is
(45:40):
not separate from the world orfrom us.
Great stuff.
And this really mirrors, Ibelieve it's in the Mahayana
tradition, something calledIndra's net or Indra's web.
So if you picture a spider webwith morning dew drops all over
it, each drop reflects all ofthe other drops within it.
(46:02):
And all of the drops reflectedin it all reflect the other
drops.
So it's like this infinite...
You get the picture.
It's a great way of describingreality.
Now, the mystics from theChristian faith have wonderful,
wonderful things to say.
And I want to read to you thislittle description of Meister
(46:25):
Eckhart here.
It says, from the Christiantradition, Meister Eckhart
stands out as a bold voice ofmysticism.
He was born around 1260 in whatis now Germany.
Eckhart was a Dominican friar.
and a mystic who taught theradical idea of the soul's unity
with God.
Preaching in the vernacularGerman, he urged people to look
(46:47):
within for the divine reality.
Some of Eckhart's statementswere so daring, borderline
heretical to the authorities ofthe time, that they got him in
trouble with the church.
For instance, Eckhart taughtthat there is an innermost spark
of the soul that is one withGod, and that our task is to
realize this inherent oneness byemptying ourselves of all ego
(47:11):
and image.
You see the language he's usingthere?
empty yourself.
When you hear emptiness inBuddhism to the Western mind,
that sounds scary.
I don't want to be empty orvoid, but all that really means
is selflessness.
You're just with what is withoutthe conceptual filter of you.
How dare he do this to me?
(47:32):
He writes here in a quote, myeye and God's eye are one eye,
or I'm sorry, It says, the eyewith which I see God is the same
eye through which God sees me.
My eye and God's eye are oneeye, one seeing, one knowing,
one love.
This stunning quote illustrateshow in mystical union, the
(47:53):
distinction between lover andbeloved disappears.
There is only one.
In his sermons, this is anotherinteresting thing.
It says he spoke of the needfor, and I'm mispronouncing this
possibly, gelassenheit, whichmeans letting go-ness, a
complete yielding of oneselfinto God's presence.
(48:14):
Let God be God in you, headvised, meaning that we should
stop clinging to the small selfso that the divine self can
express freely through us.
He even said, Whoa, what doesthat mean?
(48:35):
He's basically saying that areideas of God.
must also be discarded for thetrue God beyond all ideas to
manifest.
And this echoes what the ancientHebrews talked about with the
word idol or hevel, which isvapor, vanity.
Idols, some people think, aresimply old statues that people
(48:56):
bow down to.
Not at all.
They can also include conceptsor thoughts.
And when the Bible says no idolsbefore God, they are saying no
concept of God whatsoever.
Just like Lao Tzu said a momentago when I read to you from the
Tao Te Ching, the Tao that canbe named or described is not the
eternal Tao.
(49:16):
The ancient Hebrews knew this aswell.
They called the Tao God, andthey would refuse to write his
name entirely, not only out ofrespect, but because it's
impossible.
You can't write down theunwriteable.
They would write as they writetoday, G-D, but back then it was
the Tetragrammaton, Y-H-W-H,Yod-Heh-Wah-Heh, and the most
(49:40):
educated guess as to how topronounce it is what we know as
Yahweh.
Was Yahweh the actualpronunciation?
We don't know.
We will never know.
It is the best guess that wehave, but we know that his name
ultimately means I am or to be.
Now there's other Christianmystics, wonderful ones, like
(50:02):
St.
John of the Cross.
I want to read a quote from himreal fast.
All that the imagination canimagine and the understanding it
can receive and understand inthis life is not, nor can it be,
a proximate means of union withGod.
So here he's saying thatanything you can possibly think
(50:23):
of is not God.
So it's easy to misunderstandthe mystics or mysticism in
general for putting downconcepts or putting down
theology.
There's another quote that'sattributed to Meister Eckhart
(50:45):
that says, theologians argue,but mystics all speak the same
language.
But what they're doing is notputting down beliefs or
concepts, they're saying thatbeliefs are ladders, concepts
are ladders to be climbed up andthen let go of when you reach
the roof.
Or in Buddhism, they sayspiritual traditions are like a
(51:10):
boat that you use to cross tothe other side of the river, to
reach the other shore.
When you get to the other shore,you don't pick up the boat and
carry it on your back.
You just live the reality of it.
Like I mentioned in episode two,I believe it was, when Jesus was
asked, how will they know we areyour disciples?
(51:31):
He said, they will know you aremy disciple by the love that you
have for one another.
So he didn't say by how manyverses you memorized.
They didn't even have the Bibleback then.
The Gospels weren't writtenuntil many decades after him.
Even Paul's epistles, you know,Jesus just said, love everyone.
(51:52):
Or John Lennon, all you need islove.
It's not complicated.
It's Take an active interest inyour life and what you are.
We're pulling close to thefinish line here, guys.
So I am going to leave youwith...
A wonderful poem.
This is my first episode doingan outline, so please go easy on
(52:15):
me.
I'm trying to pace myself.
I'm trying to be spontaneous andfree-flowing from my own brain
here, but also follow an outlinewhich will constantly derail
your train of thought.
No pun intended there.
But before I read this poem toyou, I just wanted to give you a
little call to action.
(52:35):
If this episode has spoke to youor any other prior ones, please
consider following the show,leaving a review, or sharing it
with someone who might need it.
You can also support the podcastat patreon.com slash
standingnowherepodcast.
And you can connect with us inour growing Discord community or
by email.
All the links are in thedescription.
And we're also on the socials ifyou want to follow along there.
(52:57):
So let's close out with a Rumipoem.
And this is a...
kicking my desk here.
This is a poem that couldpossibly change the way you
experience your life.
So listen close.
The Guesthouse by Rumi.
This being human is aguesthouse.
(53:19):
Every morning, a new arrival, ajoy, a depression, a meanness.
Some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all,even if they're a crowd of
sorrows who violently sweep yourhouse empty of its furniture.
(53:43):
Still, treat each guesthonorably.
He may be clearing you out forsome new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, themalice.
Meet them at the door laughingand invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comesbecause each has been sent as a
(54:04):
guide from beyond.
Thanks for tuning in to StandingNowhere, guys.
I love you.
Blessings to all.
SPEAKER_00 (54:12):
This voice might feel like dust on the dial But
I'm standing over Just a whisperthat won't be afraid Standing
(54:50):
nowhere and it feels like homeNo flags to wave, no need to
roam The silence speaks louderSo understood The static is kind
(55:24):
It leaves me alone No orders tofollow No king on the throne The
sky's turning amber The clock'sall reset I haven't stopped
(55:47):
walking just yet.
Standing nowhere, air wide andfree.
No chains, no Nothing.
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