September 3, 2025 • 62 mins
What happens when one of America’s most celebrated pastors dares to question everything?
In this unfiltered conversation, Rob Bell, once dubbed the “punk rock pastor” and author of the explosive bestseller Love Wins, opens up about the controversy that made him Christianity’s most talked-about heretic, why he walked away from his megachurch at the height of fame, and how midlife pushed him to reinvent himself.
From faith and psychedelics to wisdom traditions, AI, and the art of living an unpigeonholable life, Rob’s journey is as provocative as it is inspiring. Whether you see him as a rebel, visionary, or outlaw, one thing’s clear: you won’t walk away from this episode thinking the same.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:35 Meet Rob Bell
02:08 Following a Calling & Evolving
05:16 Early Life & First Sermons
11:04 Starting Mars Hill Church
13:02 Performance Art Preaching
15:01 Controversy & Pushback
16:44 Rise to Time’s 100 Most Influential People
21:10 Leaving the Church & Midlife Transition
26:25 Reinventing in His 40s
29:58 Evolving Faith & Moving Beyond Doctrine
31:46 The Greatest Unlearning
35:00 Surfing, painting & daily rituals
38:15 Reconnecting with Spirituality
40:25 On Psychedelics & Temples
44:57 From Knowledge to Wisdom
51:16 Redefining Intelligence
54:56 Rob’s Wisdom Bumper Sticker
57:47 Closing Reflections
Chip shares key takeaways on creativity, freedom, and living beyond expectations.
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#RobBell #MidlifeChrysalis #PunkRockPastor #LoveWins #SpiritualJourney #MidlifeTransitions #FindingPurpose #WisdomTraditions #SpiritualAwakening #FaithAndCreativity #LeavingReligion #SpiritualGrowth #Unpigeonholable #MidlifeSpirituality #CareerEvolution
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My only job is to be Rob Bell, and I will take the voice of my
friends and I will take the people who inspire and expand
me. And then I'll sit with it and
there will be some sort of clarity and it will only ever
make you more and more you, which just won't look like
everything around you. Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
(00:21):
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, this episode's sort of a different one.
It's a bit abstract. It goes all over because Rob
(00:41):
Bell is unpigeonholable, a word I'd never heard before.
He is somebody who was started achurch what turned into a mega
church, 10,000 people a day going to his celebrations and
his services. And then he went on and did this
in clubs. And he's the punk rock pastor
(01:03):
who toured with Oprah, was one of Time magazine's 100 most
influential people in the world in that issue in 2011.
And he is teaching at the MEA campus in Baja in January.
I think you're going to enjoy this one.
Rob's mind is like going througha labyrinth, but it's a
(01:24):
beautiful labyrinth, so you're not going to get lost.
It only lasts an hour. On the other side of it, you'll
be wiser. Well, Rob Bell, welcome to the
midlife chrysalis. It's great to be with you.
Yeah, I mean, I you're, you're afascinating cat.
Cat. Yeah, no, you know, our our
(01:44):
mutual friend Rich Roll calls you the punk rock pastor and he
said, oh, Chip, you've got to talk to to Robin and Liz
Gilbert, another mutual friend of ours said, oh gosh, you got
to get Rob to come to a workshopand teach at a workshop.
And you'll be doing that at our Baja campus in January, January
19th through the 24th. But I just want to like, say I
(02:08):
am honored to have you here because you are a beautiful
example of someone who is constantly evolving.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, that's one of the words
for it. Yeah.
I never, I someone asked someonethe other day was talking about
having a career and I was like, oh, what an interesting.
Like I never had a sense that I had a career.
(02:31):
I've had a sense that I was following something and I would
move across the country and livein less square footage and drive
an older car and spend whatever money I had to follow it.
Evolution is a good word and it didn't feel like, what's the
business word? I find business terminology be
hilarious. Pivots, which always feel like
(02:51):
feels like a little metal thing in a drawer in the kitchen that
you'd have never felt like pivots or swerves.
That felt like following something and it was just a
depart. It was just an evolution.
It's just a continued following something.
Would you call it a calling? If nothing else, we, we each at
some level have some invitation to be us.
(03:12):
That's goes real deep to the core of like your chipness, some
sense that there's and, and whenI think of such chipness, what's
also so fascinating to me is when you ask people questions
about where they are right now, the decisions they made to get
here, why this matters to them, why they love that, how often
(03:35):
it's this fascinating cocktail of the known and the unknown.
Well, like you with Mea, you canboth clearly articulate why you
do what you do and also, I don'tknow, I just love it.
The way I describe calling is, you know, for those of you who
are watching it, it's like the phone does not stop ringing.
(03:55):
There's no do not disturb. There's no airplane mode it like
in the middle of the night. It's coming through.
In fact, I had one of those nights last night.
I didn't sleep a lot because stuff was coming through me.
We're we're meant to be that receptacle.
Liz Gilbert talks about the the genie, not the genius that
what's supposed to come through us and we're we're supposed to
be a conduit, not the can do it hero, but the conduit and and
(04:20):
you have been a conduit. And I first of all, for those
who don't know Rob very well, Rob was actually listen to this.
He was on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential
people in the world in 2011, partly because his book is best
selling book Love Wins came out there.
It was slightly controversial. The book people loved it or
didn't love it. And within with yeah, there was
(04:43):
nothing in between. And within the clerical and the
religious community, it was verymixed.
I mean, my, my good friend Richard Rohr, who is an MEA
faculty member. And you know, you, you may know
Robbie may know Richard pretty well, but I, I see you as like
the next, the next generation ofRichard Rohr.
(05:05):
He was a huge fan and loved the fact that there was a sense that
someone was stirring things up. So let's go back to your let
that's a little background. We'll come back to that.
But you grew up with a federal judge, Dad, is that correct?
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And then you just had to go off to college and and and
theological seminary where is. So maybe the calling started at
(05:29):
a very young age. But tell us about your
upbringing and what led you to knowing that you wanted to study
and focus on religion. Yeah, I came from a from the
Midwest. My actually one of my dad's
specialties as a federal judge was cartel trials.
Oh well, that could be dangerous, that.
There would be specific times when there would be like an
(05:50):
extra level of death threats andthere would be, I remember him
coming over to the house for Father's Day and there were like
bodyguards in the driveway. So like, he was an absolutely
fascinating man. My mom as well.
Then when I was in college, I was in a band, like like almost
early Talking Heads, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Violet Femmes,
(06:12):
Midnight Oil, sort of back when alternative meant not not Bon
Jovi essentially. And I was the leads singer, but
I didn't really sing. So it was more of a scattered
shot, talky, singy thing. But what happened in I was 19.
I would write these lyrics and then I would we would have a
(06:34):
show and we would do our songs and then we made cassette tapes.
And then over time we would do our shows and people would sing
the songs back. But there was this experience of
giving language to what it was like to be me and then sharing
it with people that shaped me forever.
I talk about creation bias, likemaking something and then
(06:59):
sharing it with people. Shit, it became for the first
time I felt like, oh, maybe there might be something for me
to do here on this planet. Everything else felt like like I
was never the best student, never the best athlete, never
the most cool kid. So everything felt like trying
on sweaters that didn't fit. But the moment I could give
(07:19):
language to experiences and thenshare it with people was like,
oh, yeah. And then the band broke up, as
bands do, because everybody had to get jobs.
But I was always interested in the big questions.
What are we doing here? What is this experience?
And I came, my parents took us to church.
(07:41):
I came from this Christian tradition.
So in that tradition, if you have questions about the big
things, you go to seminary and get a master of divinity, which
no one ever laughed about. Like that is the weirdest.
A master of the infinite. Nobody ever went that.
This is what you all realize is ridiculous, right?
Yeah. So then I went because in the
(08:02):
tradition I came from, if you were interested in the sort of
thing. And then I stumbled into the
sermon. I volunteered to give a sermon,
and I was like, Oh my God, this is an art form.
It's kind of like being the leadsinger, but I don't have to
organize practice with these knuckleheads, you know what I
mean? It was like, oh, this is an art
form. Like like.
Martin, tell us more tell us more about so we so who the
(08:24):
reason I'm asking I want to knowabout this story because there's
a guy named Cecil Williams, famous pastor for Glide Memorial
Church in San Francisco. I was on the board for 10 years
and loved it. And, you know, you do the lift,
lift the offering. So I was in the congregation
every Sunday. And, you know, occasionally, you
know, they have someone from thecongregation come up and talk
(08:44):
about why they should lift the offering.
I heard from his people at the team like, oh, Cecil wants you
on stage again this week. And but they didn't tell me.
He wanted me to give a sermon. True story.
And so my it was 2012. My book Emotional Equations have
come out. And he just thought, like, I
really like the book. And so I got there 5 minutes
before 9:00. This.
(09:05):
Yeah. We call it not the service, but
the celebration in front of 800 people.
And he says, you know, are you excited to give the sermon?
And so truly, I was giving a sermon.
The only time I've ever given a sermon, I at the 9 and the 11, I
gave a sermon quite spontaneously.
How did you give your first sermon?
I was running a water ski show in northern Wisconsin at a
(09:26):
summer camp, and they were like,hey, there's a Sunday morning.
Well, like a celebration in thisChapel that was in among these
trees and this, all the people who worked at the camp got
together on Sunday mornings and someone said some stuff.
And I remember there was like, it was the water people, the
waterfront. It was our turn to organize the
thing. And I was like, I'll give the
sermon. And I remember getting up to
(09:48):
give it and thinking, oh, yeah, I loved it.
But I also had like, oh, I couldgive myself to this.
And I saw it as an art form as opposed to like propaganda or
like the transmission of information, which which nothing
against information, but it was something deeper.
It was some can't. It almost felt like an extension
(10:10):
of cause the job in the band wasto get everybody to the back of
the room dancing. So it was an energetic, almost
harmonic sort of let's get the thing spinning here.
Let's get the whirling dervishesdoing their thing like the like
to the back of the room. We're all in this together.
So this was like 00. And I hadn't ever seen anybody
do that. I just intuitively was like, I
(10:33):
want to see how far I can take this.
I was, I took off my sandals, myBirkenstocks, as soon as I stood
up to talk because I was like, oh, you're on, oh, this ground
is different. This is like, there's something
sacred about this. There's just something holy
about this. So yeah.
And when you're younger, those sorts of experiences, they, they
do something to the psyche. Like they imprint very clearly,
(10:54):
like, oh, I'm going to give myself to this.
So when I went to seminary afterthat, all I, I was just like,
just this is an art form and I'm, I, I, I want to give myself
to this. By the end of your 20s, you had
started the Mars Hill Bible Church or you started.
You started or you take it over.Did you start it I.
Started it in the living room with like 1010 like probably 10
(11:15):
or 1215 people and then somebodyI convinced this guy to let us
use this building he just built for a dollar a year that had
like it's like a warehouse home school.
It was like a multi use building.
And then someone gave us a mall.Then we outgrew that and someone
gave us a mall. I remember that.
(11:35):
Yeah. There was like a loser mall.
You know, the mall where more people go to the baseball card
show and the RV show, then actually buy things.
And whoever owned whoever owned it was like, I'll give you can
buy the land and I'll give you the mall.
And I remember they said that they went through the building
and the the, you know, there's like an anchor store.
And I remember a guy named Bill said, who's in construction,
(11:57):
said you could take all the walls out of the anchor store
and you can make a big room. So it was in the round, it was 3
1/2 thousand seats, but in the round with the stage because I
wanted it to feel like the biggest living room ever.
Wait, wait, wait. You went.
You went from your living room with 10 to 15 people to a space
with 3500 people that you could fit in there.
(12:19):
I had to do the sermon 3 times on Sundays.
You had 10,000 people per day, but that didn't happen
overnight. I mean, it took, it took a
little while, no? Two years.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I lived through I Even
now, at the time, you're aware you're living through something
(12:40):
rare. You, you, you're in your late
20s. You know this doesn't It was
such a phenomenon. There was so much energy.
There was. And right away, when there were
so many crowds, I was like, how could I thin this out?
So I decided to go through the book of Leviticus verse by
verse. So I did the Book of Leviticus.
The Bible the Bible church so. Yeah.
(13:02):
And So what was interesting to me, because my take, my
understanding, the Bible's a subversive document written by a
minority group of people who have been oppressed by one
global military superpower afteranother.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Seleucid, the poemies, the
great like. So I just saw it as this ancient
collection of poems and stories that came from real people in
(13:23):
real places. So, so there's lots of history.
There was lots of philosophy. It was almost like all these
cliches people had heard in thisparticular tradition.
Well, where'd that come from? Turning the other cheek.
Well, turning the other cheek was actually a very powerful
political stance based on how you either punch or slap a
person, which is requires a leftor right cheek.
So I would take apart all of that and show people the history
(13:45):
of it and the context. And suddenly these stories were
not about some future day when you die.
They're loaded political, economic stories about how to
have a spine, how to find hope, how to forgive your oppressor.
I was covering the stage with dirt and setting things on fire,
and I would have people planted in the audience.
(14:07):
It was like it. Was like, it sounds like
performance art. Exactly.
People would come and be like, huh, Because that was history.
That was geography, that was soul meditation.
There was therapeutic elements of it.
There was, it was funny. People would try to they'd be
like, I don't know what that was, but it was quite it was
(14:31):
something that I always felt to me, it did not feel like
building an institution. It felt like a giant art
experiment, felt like a giant experiment in community, in
humanity, in what does it mean to commune with other human
beings and the earth. I remember doing a sermon called
God is green. Any basic to any spiritual
(14:54):
vision of life starts with the earth and proper relationship
with the soil. And then there.
Yeah. So it was all stuff, yeah.
In your 30s, you were you. Were you perceived as a heretic
heretic in the OR were you? There were people early on, I
remember a couple years into it,doing a whole series on women's
(15:16):
equality and a group of people in the church that I had started
organized to have me remove as the pastor.
And I remember being like, but wait, that's I started it.
I can you just the weirdest. There was always I remember
there was a Christmas series I did against the war in Iraq,
which isn't apparently what people want to hear about at
(15:38):
Christmas time. But if you're going to talk
about peace on earth, there werealways a group of people who,
how do you say it, were agitated.
And there was always a group going, Oh, my God, this, this
make like lit up. Oh, yeah, yeah.
A friend of mine said there's always 1000 people coming and
1000 people going. So that of my early 30s, that
(16:01):
just became you. I would not go anywhere.
This was in West Michigan. I would not go anywhere in
public. And there wasn't somebody who
was like, oh, my God, that thingthat you're doing.
I was there two weeks ago. And then there was somebody who
I knew was very not in favor of what I was doing.
That was just a normal part of life.
(16:23):
So. Feels like I'm feel like I'm
talking about 17 robs ago. That's it's.
I know. Well, this is the evolution.
This is the fact that this is your 30s.
You're 54 now, by the way. You are the average age of the
of the normal MEA goer. I waited to get to know you till
this date so that I'd be the themiddle of a demographic.
(16:43):
The timing is. Exactly.
Exactly so by by 2011, you know,you certainly you'd create a
congregation that was enormous. Time magazine was going to do
make you one of the most influential people in the world.
Oprah was going to take you on tour.
But a lot of that also has to dowith the fact that you had a
book, a best selling book that came out called Love wins.
(17:06):
And if I'm getting my my numberscorrect in terms of the
chronology, maybe give us give us just a snippet on what that
book was about. Because quite frankly, that's
where you rocketed to even, you know, beyond West Michigan.
Like the world got to know you because of that book.
I had had this idea for a one man show like a 2 hour one man
(17:27):
show about quantum physics and spirituality called Everything
is Spiritual and a friend of mine is in a band and he I
convinced him to introduce me tohis booking agent.
So I had started touring like clubs and theaters, like punk
rock clubs doing this one man show.
I had a whiteboard that was 24 feet long I brought with me and
(17:49):
I would fill it in with all these drawings.
So I had started removing takingthe sermon talk one man show
thing out of like the church andjust doing it where I So I
remember the first tour was 25 American cities in 28 days where
you live on a tour bus and like a Ticketmaster, like a band
(18:09):
would tour. Just I was so I had been explore
because what had happened is it got itchy for me doing what I
did in a church because my goal wasn't to build a church or to
build a religion. I was interested in what does it
mean to be human? And this tradition I came from
had fascinating, helpful, very grounding, beautiful things to
(18:33):
say about it. But it was about something
larger than a religion. There had been a number of
books, I think the Love Wins wasthe 5th book and that seemed to
and that book was about heaven and hell and how for many people
heaven and hell is where you go when you die, but that heaven
(18:54):
and hell are present states of consciousness right now.
Like why would you talk about where you go when you die when
we have enough Hells on earth right now?
Whether it's an internal misery,resentment, anger that is hasn't
been given its proper expression, or that that's how
you create a world that's in trouble.
I was already chafing against the container might be the best
(19:16):
way to say it. And then that book came out,
Love Wins, which I and it had been normal that I would be on
tour and there would be people out front with bull horns like
announcing that I'm the spawn ofthe devil or something.
And by the way, they don't appreciate it if you order them
pizza. That book seemed to take at that
(19:39):
point, probably a decade of doing what I was doing.
It seemed to bring it to a head in some ways.
And, and the answer to your question, there was a sense of
like, I'm not trying to be like a particular checklist.
Like even the word Christian wasn't interesting to me.
(20:03):
Jesus is fascinating. The Jesus teachings are
articulating a way of being in the world.
So what is that way of being in the world?
That's interesting. And other traditions have a lot
to say about that as well. So I think it was already
integrating. Yeah.
So that was quite that experience was like, oh, I have
to keep going. It was like I have to keep
(20:24):
following this and. Even the people who led the
church, who are beloved friends of mine were like, you realize
when you do stuff then we spend tons of like, our phone rings
like crazy here. And they had said after that
book, So are you going to keep going?
Because we're going to have to make this institution way more
(20:47):
nimble because otherwise, whatever you're going to do
next, can you tell us? No, that that would take all the
fun out of it, but we end up what you're doing.
We end up spending a bunch of energy reacting to.
And so they were asking these really interesting questions
that had me for the first time, like what it, what is next?
(21:08):
And it was like, oh, we'll keep following it.
Well, so you and then you left in 2012.
You. I think you left the church.
2011, yeah. Yeah, left the church soon
around this time, the church youcreate this mega church that was
extremely successful. I, I just want to ask you one of
the things that we talked about at MEA and, and in in this
podcast, the midlife chrysalis is the idea of the ending.
(21:31):
The three stages of any a transition includes the ending
of something, the messy middle and the beginning of something.
And we have transitions happening in our life.
You know, we, you and I talked about one just a few minutes ago
before we got on the air and these transitions happen.
So you often the transition alsois disrobing of an identity.
(21:51):
So what was that like to have to?
You didn't really have a career until you became the punk rock
pastor and then you became famous.
And then you had like, you know,you're on Time Magazine's 100
most influentialist and then youleave your church and your role
and you did. Where was the identity?
Well, who were you then? And this, and this is just so
everybody knows this is your early 40s.
(22:13):
Yes, right, 41 and you're totally, totally correct.
The end one of the ways, you know, the you're ending
something. And in our culture, which is so
disconnected from the earth for a lot of people without an
outward failure or scandal, it alot of people don't have the
(22:34):
muscular to spot and ending something can end because it's
good. So if we say, Oh yeah, yeah,
Wayne just just left that organization, we're like, well,
who do you sleep with or where do you put the money?
Where's the offshore account? Do you know what I mean?
For many people, so and so leaves because something went
wonky as opposed to no, he's leaving because it's good.
(22:55):
She's the CEO and she stepped down because she did what she
came there to do. So for a lot of people, they
only know divorces and not graduations.
And I would argue that's a directly relationship when you
get cut off from the soil cause spring doesn't feel like winter
failed like the seasons just, you know, none of the seasons
(23:18):
have issues with each other. They're like they did their
thing and now it ends. So one of the things is as in
the modern world, for so many people with so much concrete and
separate even the fact that you can get tomatoes in Minnesota at
2:00 AM at an all night grocery store in February.
Well, where were they grown? Like what's in season, what's
out of season even is blurred even terms of food.
So that's one of the things I'venoticed again and again is how
(23:41):
many people who come to Ojai andsit with me.
Something has over. But the external circumstances,
it's, it's actually doing betterthan ever.
And yet something within them islike, sometimes they're just
bored, but they feel like, yeah,I can't say that because people
would kill for this job, to which I always respond,
excellent. And no one has to die.
You know what I mean? So that's part of it.
(24:03):
Well, back to you, But. Where were you?
I mean, you were in this liminalstage and around that time and
how did you find your footing about through this messy middle
and and what was the new identity?
Because what I. Noticed what I've seen with lots
of people. To your question about the.
Identity is somebody had said, well, if you leave this, you
know, you wouldn't be a pastor. I could not have cared less what
(24:27):
I was called and and that isn't a universal experience.
I have now come to see you don'tcare like, well, what would I
say? What just do dinner party at a
dinner party, What do you do? For many people, I wouldn't know
what to say, but what happens issomething is happening within
(24:48):
you where you don't hair anymorebecause The thing is so clear.
Your life is talking to you. The phone is ringing and I do
distinctly remember and someone told me you will always if you
leave this, you'll be a has beenyou'll be the guy who people
like whatever happened to that? Remember when that guy like was
(25:08):
a thing and now he kind of like jumped the shark.
You could go from has. Been to will be well said.
I just didn't. That's when you know, I don't
care how it appears. I wasn't playing that game in
the 1st place. And and I did when I in that in
between, like when I we first left Michigan, moved to
(25:32):
California, I would be out somewhere and someone say, what
would you do? And I would just like I remember
saying to somebody, I have some ideas.
I would just make crap up. I'm working on some things.
I would literally just. Yeah, I didn't.
Know I didn't have a clear I waswriting a book, I was doing some
(25:54):
events, but I didn't it just wasn't that interesting.
That's and that's a huge sign isyou're just like, how would I
present your identity? Something died, and with it the
grasping to that particular title, Prestige, job, office
structure, hierarchy, power, organization, you just don't
(26:15):
care anymore because you're following something that's just
way, way, way more compelling. And it is.
It is. There is like a wobbly.
What am I? Yeah.
Well, this is. So now with the hindsight, you
know, the, the connecting the dots of 13 years later, what was
that you were following? What was it?
What, what if you define the decade of your 40s?
(26:38):
You're 54 now. What would you define that?
What was the theme of that decade?
Because 40s can be a really rocky period.
It's the low point on EU curve of happiness.
A lot of people get confused by it, but you in some ways, you
had your major crazy life quake at the start of the 40s as
opposed to later in your 40s. How you characterize your your
(27:01):
early mid life, your 40s, I do remember.
Thinking, oh, I've heard people talk about this.
I think I'm coming into this earlier.
I I do remember thinking, I think I'm a number of these
feelings. I.
Started doing to me, what was interesting was taking, what
would you call it, spiritual teacher?
(27:23):
How what other spaces can this? Can I take this?
I started doing a residency at Largo, which is a comedy music
club in Los Angeles. It's almost like can we talk
about soul spirit? Creating your.
Life. Ancient spiritual traditions.
What places could I do that? What I do in that aren't
(27:47):
traditionally places where thesesorts of things get explored.
I think that was. Probably out of the container of
Sure. I was already in church world
touring and seeing where it could go.
And this was like Los Angeles, could we go here?
Could we? I remember talking to like a
group of CEOs. I get the weirdest invites and
(28:08):
part of the IT was like startingover with, Oh yeah, I'll just go
anywhere. I'll I remember talking to a
group of CEOs and they had to make 10 million a year to be
around some table. Just some ridiculous blah, blah,
blah. They brought me in to say some
things and like the 1st 25 minutes I'm bombing hard.
I have a bad case of pounds lower back sweat, which is when
you're bombing and you start that like that unique like this
(28:31):
isn't working. And then I remember one of them
said something about he had justhad his first, his wife had just
had his first baby, and suddenlyhe didn't want to be at the
office all the time. And I was like, well, he'd like
to be home with his kid. And I was like, well, you know,
you have a soul. I remember all these CEOs just
all of a sudden, wait, what? No, wait.
(28:54):
It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, you have a soul.
You have an interior life that you can't access with a
spreadsheet. What?
And just having these experiences of going into places
where people didn't talk about interior lives, didn't talk
about all of this accumulated wisdom around knowing who you
are. And.
(29:15):
So that became like, where else could we take it?
Yeah. Like I would rent a club
somewhere and instead of being on the stage, I'd arrange the
chairs and circles on the dance floor and then do a whole day.
Remember the How to Be Here tourwas about being present to your
life and learning to listen to your life.
(29:36):
And it was an 8 hour interactive.
I realize now it was like an interactive sermon.
And I would rent dance halls andart galleries around, like
around the world actually. So I would just keep cooking up.
What kind of experience could wedo that would and then we figure
out how to do it? Yeah.
(29:57):
How has your sense of meaning, and maybe your relationship with
religion evolved since the time you left?
Your the church. Is it the Mars Hill Bible
Church? A lot.
A lot. You know, I, I, I'm curious
about that. Just because you don't have the
structure, you don't have that, you don't have to deal with the
(30:17):
dogma as much. I don't care.
Honestly, straight up, I don't care.
So anybody wants to talk about that?
Great, great. I will just keep asking
questions to get. What's interesting is Yeah,
yeah. OK.
There's that doctrine, there's that thing.
You're part of that group. Fine, fine, fine.
Who are you? What's it like to be you?
Sometimes they. Ask people what they.
Have for breakfast because the week like let's get almost like
(30:41):
the most grounded. Let's start there.
So all that is lovely. Also, who are you?
What are you? You're listening to your life.
What's it telling you? What's next?
So that can be wonderful and andcan be grounding and can have
all sorts of insight and yet. Who are you?
(31:04):
What stories are you telling about your past that aren't
working? Well?
Let's go back. Why that word?
There's like a certain here now,this body in space and time, the
assumption that the universe, God source your own depths,
whatever is talking to you. Like you said, they're on the
phone. What's that look like?
(31:28):
I've never met somebody who didn't have everything they
needed to take the next step. I've never met somebody who, if
you get still and quiet enough and we just keep taking the
voices off your shoulder and listening to whatever is
happening in here, doesn't get some sort of clarity, it feels
like. For many of us in midlife,
there's a great unlearning. And would you?
(31:51):
I want you to just riff on that for a moment.
What's what has been your great unlearning in the last dozen
years that there is an. External authority that I farm
my intuition out to or farm my that hijacks my own deep
knowing. My only job is to be Rob Bell.
And so I will take all of this wisdom and I will take the voice
(32:18):
of my friends and I will take the people who inspire and
expand me. And then I'll sit with it and
there will be some sort of clarity.
It'll probably be quite simple. It'll it'll probably something I
can actually do. The number of people I've done
this work with who are like, getclarity and go, yes.
(32:38):
But Rob Bell, I could do that. I could actually take that step.
Yeah. What a bonus that you.
What a bonus that you could be you.
What a lovely feature. Of the universe that each of us
can actually be Oscar Wilde. Said be yourself, every everyone
else is taken and yeah, yeah, so.
I think that unlearning around like I used to, oh, here's a,
(32:58):
here's a massive unlearning. I used to and I came from this
intellectual tradition. My son calls it New York Times
brain, where the way you stay safe is you just know stuff.
I would read a book every coupledays because you didn't want to
be in an interview and have somebody say whoever the voice
of, you know, there's always a smart person of the moment.
(33:19):
So a decade ago, you know, Malcolm Gladwell's do book.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chapter 7, That's a banger of a
chapter. You know, that thing where like,
there's a common NPR thing whereeverybody's like, oh, yeah.
You know, the body keeps the score.
This whole sort of subtle world of smart people talk.
And I especially if you're like a spiritual teacher, if somebody
asks a question, you don't know what they're talking about or
(33:41):
something from the news and you're like what, like I came
from a tradition where God, you better be armed, like almost
like an armor of knowing here. And I lost interest in reading
and it was a literally a book every couple days.
So that unlearning about, because you're always a book
(34:02):
away from a piece and being so much more in my body.
This happened about six years ago.
It's like my mind sank into my body and and the mind's a
wonderful servant. It's not the best master, but
there was some integration that happened in which there's some
knowing. I do know what it's been like to
(34:25):
be me. So if I don't know what you're.
Talking about I have no shame insaying I don't.
Tell me more about that. I haven't heard of that.
I have no problem not knowing what's happening in the news.
I have no problem not knowing what the latest book is.
That's somebody from Stamford who tested frogs or something.
Like there's always something. And that's when, weirdly enough,
(34:48):
that's when I started to make a whole different right and create
a whole different kind of thing.That's.
Made me feel. Like I everything was a warm up
if there was a. Spiritual curriculum for
midlife. What might?
Include like what would be or what or let's even say more
(35:09):
practically for you. Do you have spiritual practices
that you do on a daily basis or weekly basis?
First off, nervous. System regulation like water, a
walk, sit still, get the body calm, whatever that looks like
in the moment. So that you can.
(35:29):
Listen, like like inbox that e-mail has the an undercurrent
of anxiety or I don't know how to answer.
I don't OK, get still what's happening in this e-mail, not
the solution to the problem. What's like what's the story
that you're telling about the e-mail?
(35:50):
What's it what's the feeling? Oh, I don't want to let this
person down. Slow down, get still.
Even just. Does this require anything in me
right now? I don't know what this is or how
to respond. OK, then that's clarity is
Spirit is. Is surfing a spiritual practice
(36:10):
for you? Absolutely.
I was in the ocean yesterday. I'll I'll go later today.
Yes Sir. The hiking, surfing, painting.
Weirdly enough, because I, I do lots of painting and I have no
expertise or skill or training, so I have no voice on my
shoulder. Like my neighbor went to Fine
Arts school, was trained in FineArts.
(36:31):
So he came over and saw a bunch of paintings.
It was like, oh, pointillism, great.
He's also all jammed up and can't, I don't have any of that.
So I just know certain things. It gets me.
I just know I like that color, not that color.
I found there's a free bin at the lumber yard of chunks of
wood and I found a bunch of themand just painted them white and
(36:55):
then put these pink dots and dida series called You should
probably get that looked at. You see, you see what I mean by
I'm laughing and I don't know why.
Good sign. Good way to start the day.
Oh, this thing behind me, this thing behind me is like a is
like a six foot aliens dancing underneath giant.
(37:20):
Radioactive. Flowers, I don't know what that
is. Or I just became like, I'm going
to make this giant thing and I worked on it and I didn't know
why or what it was for. And then a day after I finished
it, my friends were getting ready for their outdoor wedding.
And I was like, oh, take it to them.
(37:41):
And I took it to them and said, I just made this.
And the bride burst out in tearsand said, Oh my God, I wanted a
giant piece of art for when people came into the backyard,
but it fell off my To Do List 'cause I ran out of time.
Well, that was trusting. Trusting, you know, again, the
genie, it's supposed to come through you.
It feels like you have moved from knowledge to wisdom on some
(38:04):
level. And much of that wisdom is is
not self-imposed or self, you know, found.
It's really from tapping into something deeper.
What? What?
Would you recommend for someone in midlife who wants to
reconnect with spirituality? Because there's, there's lots of
social science evidence that shows that around midlife and,
(38:27):
and Richard Rohr in fact says the first half of your life,
your primary operating systems, your ego and the second-half of
your life, it's your soul. But nobody gave you operating
instructions. So how, how might you express to
someone who says, I'm 50 years old, I feel like a yearning
inside of me, but I don't know what to do with it.
And I, I, I feel lost and, and, and what I grew up with doesn't
(38:51):
feel like it's the religion I'm supposed to be pursuing.
I might say to them. Have you read Rumi's Big Red
Book? Have you read?
The Dao De. Ching Have you read John Philip
Newell as a Scottish Mystic who writes about Celtic
(39:12):
spirituality? If somebody had specific
questions, like there are lineages that might just like
get get all the energy flowing and sometimes it just takes
there's a door. Friend of mine has this Gray
line. He's like, why wouldn't you want
to hear all the greatest hits? Like if there if there were the
11 greatest songs, humans, wouldn't you want to hear them?
(39:35):
So sometimes if somebody has specific questions, I would ask
them, well, what most interests you is something about the
earth. Oh, well, that would be Celtic
spirituality. Oh, something about the mystical
nature of being a human being. Well, so if you're looking for
like actual accumulated wisdom, there's lots out there.
Also, probably for most people, there's something involving the
(39:58):
body. So even like, think of how many
people right now are discoveringbreath work.
You've been breathing for thousands of years and yet for
many of us, you go to a breath work and you're like, what just
happened in all we did was breathe.
So I'd probably just are trying.I would say the person you just
(40:19):
start trying things and generally the person's like I
did see a flyer for a whatever. Yeah, try it.
So a. Beautiful bridge there to
discussion. So Houston Smith, the famous
religious thinker. Love that guy me too.
I used to love reading his stuff.
A spiritual experience is different than a spiritual life
And and he said we Americans arealways looking for a shortcut.
(40:43):
What is your what's your point of view on psychedelics and the
the desire to connect with spirituality by means of plant
medicine and things like that UPS you know, do you have a
positive perspective, negative perspective, cautionary or
elated point of view positive. Elated, cautionary, All the
(41:08):
above. Here's how.
Here's how I would describe it. It can be like such an
unbelievable door into a whole new life.
Absolutely, I would back up and say what human beings have been
doing for thousands of years. We have been building temples.
And you build a. Temple as a way to identify this
(41:31):
space is not like your everyday normal space.
This space is sacred holy other genie level space however you
want to say that. But the problem is the moment
you name this space something else, and something else happens
in that space, then you have to name the rest of space, normal,
mundane, everyday space. So the trick for human beings
(41:55):
has been how do you build a temple so that people conceive
of that something greater, more expansive, more integrated.
But then you you got to build the temple so you can lock into
that. Then you got to tear it down
immediately, or else you end up with space divided into two
different kinds. So something like any sort of
retreat, any sort of psychedelic, it is like building
(42:19):
a temple. It shows you what's really going
on here. It shows you a connection, a
depth, a communion, a wonder andawe spirit, whatever you want to
say. But if you stay in that temple,
the leap back. What we're looking?
For is to destroy the temple, sothe whole thing becomes a
temple. And we do need these temples
(42:40):
from time to time. You have an experience in which
you go, Oh my God. The whole thing, actually.
Is love, Yeah. Now how do we integrate that
into coffee in the morning with the people we love?
Doing. Some sort of work that actually
lights us up or and that yeah, So I'm all in favor of those
(43:04):
with absolutely if it helps. And then some way to
intentionally now integrate. It's like you went up to the
mountain and you saw how it really is, and now we go back
down in the valley and we take what we now saw and that begins
to infuse like this conversation.
I had coffee with my friends this morning.
Now I'm talking to you. This is the top of the mountain.
(43:26):
There's no thing. And then I'm going to record a
episode of my Rob cast. Yeah, top of the mountain and at
what it I even know what day of the week it is Thursday.
This is just a Thursday morning and top of the mountain.
So you're just going from. Peak to peak, yeah, but what?
Happens is the mountain in the valley begin to be all the same
place over time. Your question about psychedelics
(43:48):
is a gum because sometimes we, we need, we need like to go up
there and see so that we can begin to have them collapse into
each other. It's like you leave your life or
your present consciousness or the way your brains you, you
leave it to glimpse, but then you return or else you get stuck
(44:08):
there and now you're not here orthere.
You weren't having. Coffee with Pete Holmes this
morning, were you? No.
OK, he's out. He's.
Out there in Ohio with you, isn't he?
And we don't. Like, Oh yeah, right.
Right around the corner like. Right around the corner I.
Sometimes see him out the windowof my studio here and I will see
him and we don't even, sometimeswe say hi, but as a general
(44:32):
rule, we would hug and then justbe right into it, just right
into like, you know, the other day this thing happened.
I got really deep conversation. Yeah, no word.
Well known. Comedian and with a Christian
point of view and, and lives right in your neighborhood and
he's somebody I've hung out withhere at our ranch at the MEA
(44:54):
ranch here in Santa Fe. So with Richard Rohr.
So I wanted to, I wanted to sortof go into talking about wisdom
for a moment and then we'll get finish up with your Wisdom
bumper sticker. So wisdom.
Traditions. This is, you know, I in times
like these where it's a very complex world.
(45:14):
There's something to be said. For the idea of mystery schools,
Wisdom schools, maybe even new point, new spiritual practices
and traditions arriving at timeslike these because the times
require it and human consciousness is ready to have
an evolution. We talked about your personal
one. It feels like we're sort of in
(45:36):
that time. And I, in creating the world's
first midlife wisdom school, which is what MEA is.
One of my premises is, is that we are here to actually learn
how to move from accumulating knowledge to distilling wisdom.
And So what I would just want tohear from you about is what are
you seeing out there? What are the, the, the bamboo
(45:58):
shoots, the green shoots out there in the world at a time
where a lot of people are slightly depressed with what
they see when it comes to new new wisdom traditions, new ways
of metabolizing life experience and sharing it with others.
What, what? What has you excited from that
point of view of new wisdom? Traditions, my son?
(46:23):
One of my boys is 25 and he called the other day because he
had says like, I went down a Internet wormhole about AI and
what it's doing for jobs. And he's like my generation and
how it's obliterating whole things.
So in that moment, my son didn'tneed an expert in AI and all the
(46:46):
different kinds of AI and the iterations of AI and the coming.
He was looking. For wisdom on how human beings
handle new fire. At some level.
You could see him already. He had this great line.
He's like, well, you know, Gosling as well.
And I was like Gosling as well. He's like, yeah, that's why I
(47:08):
just keep telling myself. And I was like, what do you
mean? He's like, we'll pick the cool,
coolest guy ever. Ryan Gosling.
Whatever's coming, he'll have todeal with it as well.
So he you could. So.
You could see Preston is 25. He was already.
He now has the Internet where hecan get overwhelmed with all
this information. You know he can he can just go
(47:30):
deeper and deeper into this whole thing is going to blow up
the whole world. But you could also see him
building his own sort of wisdom around.
He wanted me to sit with him in the feeling, but I could also so
so I'm some of this is so overwhelming.
Even the nervous system what we have access to as well.
Even you think about the American, the the United States
(47:55):
government and the sort of torching of a whole number of
things and the pain this is causing, which is real pain
also. Some of these.
Systems failed to serve us well,So what would it look like in
the larger evolutionary scope tobuild something new?
Generally, the old one kind of has to go up in flames at some
(48:17):
level, and that's brutal. So there is a long time.
If I. Said to you, there is the
richest man in the world and he helped this other guy who might
or might not be a billionaire, become the president.
And then that guy said, I'm going to make up a job for you.
(48:40):
You'd be like, OK, that system deserves to go off a Cliff.
That's not working. There is being caught up in the
latest news thing and then thereis while having a heart big
enough to yes, this this is a lot of collateral.
(49:01):
This is so terrifying and also anumber of these things that are
going up in flames. Maybe that's a good thing.
Yeah, no, they. I mean, you know, in the in the
forest, they'll do, you know, controlled burns, so to speak,
because because something new can actually grow from it.
And there's a lot of people out there who's really believe that
(49:24):
we're going through what seems like a destructive time.
But on the other side of it, there is something that's going
to be even better. I think there's so much to be
said for wisdom, human wisdom being the counterbalance
artificial intelligence. That is, that is what we need.
And so I would just say to your son, the thing, the most
(49:45):
important thing he could do is to take live life as if it's one
big humaning course. To constantly be humaning
ourselves is the balance. Because, you know, artificial
intelligence, like wisdom often comes and it doesn't have to
come from this, but it often comes from suffering.
And AI does not suffer. It does not suffer.
There's no one to like if a 'cause he's a musician.
(50:07):
What if AI writes all this music?
Well, who would we interview? Like it's the interview about
where the song came from. I always just go, who do I
interview? Because that's what we love is I
even actually think, Well, here's what I think about
wisdom. There.
Is. I think we're going to.
Have technology like, I think we're going to have a little
(50:28):
black box like, and you're goingeither hold it up to somebody or
you're going to develop human beings are going to develop some
sort of radar discernment about what was made by AI and what was
made by a human. We're going to develop new like
that doesn't feel even the way ashirt feels synthetic or real.
(50:52):
I actually think with all of this, we're going to develop new
sensitivities, like little meters that we can hold up to
things or we just sense it. Who knows what expansion of
wisdom will come and it will. It won't come right now.
It'll take a minute, but we'll develop it.
And that's not a Pollyanna overly positive.
That's just human beings are incredibly adaptive creatures.
Let's just hope you. Don't live a polyester life, but
(51:14):
we're going back to what you're.Saying about wisdom, think
about, I assume for you as well,When I was in high school, at
the end of high school, you tooka test called the ACT or the
SAT, and you had a pencil and you sat in a room for three
hours and you filled in little ovals.
And if you did well, you were considered intelligent, although
there was a window in the testing room and there were
trees outside that window, and you couldn't name one of them.
(51:36):
So you could fill in these little ovals but couldn't name
one kind of tree outside the window.
And the person who did well on the ovals was considered
intelligent. So this incredibly narrow slice
of intelligence was so blown outof proportion for so and so is
very smart. They did well in school, which
means they could spit back the right answers at the right time
(51:58):
and could tune into what the teacher wanted.
Well, that's incredibly narrow. Fine.
It's just a incredibly narrow understanding of intelligence.
So if you think about the what you said in information to
wisdom, wisdom is fundamentally embodied.
Wisdom is fundamentally yes, yes, yes.
Those are all nice facts. How do you move in space and
(52:23):
time, in the world, in a body with a history, with emotions,
with desire, with a calling, andwe have a glut, unprecedented
human history of information coming at people.
But what? How you respond, what you
ignore, what you have enough spine and wisdom to know?
(52:46):
I don't even need to know about that.
What actually? Is important and vital that's
all wisdom that takes you out ofyes, I know a number of things
about this. Oh you think about right now
most you people in the United States don't know what happened
in Iran in 1953 with Mossadegh. The Iranians democratically
(53:08):
elected a president who was a byall accounts a great man and he
was like, why doesn't Iran make the money off the oil in its own
soil and the US and BP were likeno other country should make
money off of your oil. So the US organized a coup.
That's probably an important thing everybody in the United
States should know. That's wisdom is, wait, are
(53:33):
there other things in play rightnow here and histories and
reactions to those histories. And so I think you're going to
just more and more the person like especially with MEA, the
person who's lived longer and who knows this is important.
This isn't you think about the village elder.
(53:55):
Traditionally you're in a jam. You it's the last Hut at the end
of the village, the longest pathin the back.
And you sit down with that person and they're like, OK,
this thing right here that you got your shorts at a bunch about
that's keeping you sleepless at night, irrelevant.
But this thing over here that you weren't paying any attention
to actually pretty vital. And the only way you can know
(54:15):
that is because you suffered in pain and lived long enough to
know this right here, forget about it.
Just it's not even a thing. But this thing over here is
actually quite a thing. And that person is going to just
be the village elder is going tobe.
Yeah, more important than ever. They say that knowledge.
Is knowing that tomato is a fruit and wisdom is knowing not
to put it in a fruit salad, and philosophy is wondering whether
(54:41):
ketchup is a smoothie. But my last question to you.
That's amea banger is that you don't even you could just say
MEA and then have that little thing below it and we'd be like,
yeah, I'm going to their thing. Last question.
Rob, so you talked about the origin story.
You know you have an origin story if you're a human, if AI,
(55:02):
you don't have an origin story. So if you were to take one piece
of your wisdom and let's assume you have a lot of them.
And put it onto a. Bumper sticker.
What would be that Wisdom bumpersticker and what would be the
origin story that helped you arrive at that Wisdom My bumper?
Sticker would say. My.
(55:25):
Favorite word is unpigeonholablethat describes you.
If. Each of us unpigeonholable.
What we're each doing is we're duct taping together all these
bits and pieces that we've picked up along the way.
(55:48):
And it's a little wobbly going down the road, but that's the
job for you to learn how to be chip and me to learn how to be
robbed. And so I met this person and I
had this experience and I'm integrating all of the best of
this. I'm leaving behind what I want
to leave behind. I'm bringing this with me and it
(56:09):
will only ever allow make you more and more you, which just
won't look like everything around you.
It will be unhit, pigeonhole, able, and that a dominant
percentage of our human energiesare spent looking around, going.
I haven't seen someone do it like this.
And it doesn't mean that you won't take the best of their
(56:29):
wisdom. It doesn't mean they can't hold
a mirror up and help you. I mean, a good friend holds a
mirror up and helps you discern who you are.
But it won't. It will be how you do it.
And the most powerful question in some ways you can ask a
friend is, well, how how do you get the word out about your
business? How do you live in what kind of
(56:53):
home? What kind of car?
Like all the details? How?
Well, how do you do it? It's actually a yeah,
unpigeonhole ball. I don't know.
Does that fit on a bumper sticker?
My favorite word is unpigeonholeball that fits on a bumper
sticker. As long as it's one of those big
Tesla, you know, big trucks or something like that, I don't
know. So Rob, thank you.
Thank you for joining us. You're going to be at Mea Baja
(57:16):
January 19th through the 24th. The workshop is not called
Pigeon Holdable, but you can tell that it's going to be a
wide-ranging workshop and you can go surfing because we have a
surf. We have a surf break just five
to seven units away from the campus.
We're on the beach. Oh my God, you're going to love
it this. I am so excited about this.
(57:38):
Thank you, Rob. Loved it, love.
Talking to you and someday we'llmeet in person.
Well. Rob Bell is.
A. Crazy Angel.
I mean, he has such fascinating energy.
He's the kind of person who you would have said as a kid that he
was sort of bouncing off the walls, maybe had ADHD or
(57:59):
something like that. He's going through, you know, he
shared with me before, before werecorded the episode, that he's
going through a lot of transition right now and it's
challenging time. But one of the things I, I take
from him is this sense that to live a life less ordinary, to
be, as he called it, unpigeonholeable.
What a great phrase is what we all aspire to.
(58:22):
I, I don't think anybody on their deathbed wants to feel
like they were pigeon holed or that they actually went on the
path that everybody expected them to go on.
So I really appreciated that about Rob.
Secondly, I literally just got out of leading a faith leaders
retreat here at MEA. And a lot of those people know
Rob Bell because his books have been big time bestsellers in the
(58:45):
faith and religion category. But what was interesting to hear
Rob say and then also to hear itfrom some of the this these
folks in the this private retreat was how being a faith
leader is an enormous responsibility.
And what comes with it is often the straitjacket of having to
live up to doctrine and dogma that you are that the
(59:08):
denomination requires. And to hear him basically think
of being a faith leader as beingan art form.
It's like performance art. And he as long as it was
creative and he had a lot of freedom, he felt like he could
do it all. And, and people would come by
the droves on Sundays, 10,000 people coming to his, you know,
(59:30):
his sermons at a mall at a second rate mall in the Midwest.
And it was when he started to feel like he was being
handcuffed in terms of the message he could deliver, that
he actually lost his interest inbeing a pastor.
And so I think there's somethingto that, the idea that focus on
(59:53):
the creativity, focus on the freedom, focus on the ingenuity
of what you're doing, especiallyif you're a creative sort of
person, and then guard that. And unfortunately for him, he
ended up moving on. And he moved on at a beautiful
time because, you know, to be on.
Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the
United States. It's not a bad time to move on.
(01:00:15):
At the same time, you know, there was an element for him
that I think he still regrets and misses having his flock
every Sunday. And then finally, the the last
thing I got from him is the The Bible is a subversive document
written by a minority group who are oppressed by one global
military superpower after another.
Wow. The Bible as a subversive
(01:00:38):
document. I think there's a lot of people
I know. There's recently a guy named
Amakai. Amakai was in this private faith
leaders retreat. There's a film coming that's
come out about him called Sabbath Queen.
And he's basically an Orthodox rabbi who happens to be gay,
which is that that alone is enough.
Is is unusual. And he has built a following,
(01:01:04):
what he calls labshul, of peoplewho would like to see the Bible
as a subversive document. Rob Bell is someone who has
planted those seeds for people like Amakai and others to come
along and say, what if this document is supposed to actually
rock us out of our stupor of modern life such that we can see
(01:01:25):
that, you know, being a good Christian or or a good Jewish
someone of the Jewish faith is all about believing in some of
the basic principles that were in the Bible.
So hope you enjoyed it. We will occasionally have faith
leaders on on the show here. And Rob is actually leading a
(01:01:47):
workshop in January in Baja. He's a he loves.
Surfing so. Highly recommend that one.
I know it's going to fill up. Thanks.
We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.
To the midlife chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
My only job is to be Rob Bell, and I will take the voice of my
friends and I will take the people who inspire and expand
me. And then I'll sit with it and
there will be some sort of clarity and it will only ever
make you more and more you, which just won't look like
everything around you. Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
(00:21):
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, this episode's sort of a different one.
It's a bit abstract. It goes all over because Rob
(00:41):
Bell is unpigeonholable, a word I'd never heard before.
He is somebody who was started achurch what turned into a mega
church, 10,000 people a day going to his celebrations and
his services. And then he went on and did this
in clubs. And he's the punk rock pastor
(01:03):
who toured with Oprah, was one of Time magazine's 100 most
influential people in the world in that issue in 2011.
And he is teaching at the MEA campus in Baja in January.
I think you're going to enjoy this one.
Rob's mind is like going througha labyrinth, but it's a
(01:24):
beautiful labyrinth, so you're not going to get lost.
It only lasts an hour. On the other side of it, you'll
be wiser. Well, Rob Bell, welcome to the
midlife chrysalis. It's great to be with you.
Yeah, I mean, I you're, you're afascinating cat.
Cat. Yeah, no, you know, our our
(01:44):
mutual friend Rich Roll calls you the punk rock pastor and he
said, oh, Chip, you've got to talk to to Robin and Liz
Gilbert, another mutual friend of ours said, oh gosh, you got
to get Rob to come to a workshopand teach at a workshop.
And you'll be doing that at our Baja campus in January, January
19th through the 24th. But I just want to like, say I
(02:08):
am honored to have you here because you are a beautiful
example of someone who is constantly evolving.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, that's one of the words
for it. Yeah.
I never, I someone asked someonethe other day was talking about
having a career and I was like, oh, what an interesting.
Like I never had a sense that I had a career.
(02:31):
I've had a sense that I was following something and I would
move across the country and livein less square footage and drive
an older car and spend whatever money I had to follow it.
Evolution is a good word and it didn't feel like, what's the
business word? I find business terminology be
hilarious. Pivots, which always feel like
(02:51):
feels like a little metal thing in a drawer in the kitchen that
you'd have never felt like pivots or swerves.
That felt like following something and it was just a
depart. It was just an evolution.
It's just a continued following something.
Would you call it a calling? If nothing else, we, we each at
some level have some invitation to be us.
(03:12):
That's goes real deep to the core of like your chipness, some
sense that there's and, and whenI think of such chipness, what's
also so fascinating to me is when you ask people questions
about where they are right now, the decisions they made to get
here, why this matters to them, why they love that, how often
(03:35):
it's this fascinating cocktail of the known and the unknown.
Well, like you with Mea, you canboth clearly articulate why you
do what you do and also, I don'tknow, I just love it.
The way I describe calling is, you know, for those of you who
are watching it, it's like the phone does not stop ringing.
(03:55):
There's no do not disturb. There's no airplane mode it like
in the middle of the night. It's coming through.
In fact, I had one of those nights last night.
I didn't sleep a lot because stuff was coming through me.
We're we're meant to be that receptacle.
Liz Gilbert talks about the the genie, not the genius that
what's supposed to come through us and we're we're supposed to
be a conduit, not the can do it hero, but the conduit and and
(04:20):
you have been a conduit. And I first of all, for those
who don't know Rob very well, Rob was actually listen to this.
He was on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential
people in the world in 2011, partly because his book is best
selling book Love Wins came out there.
It was slightly controversial. The book people loved it or
didn't love it. And within with yeah, there was
(04:43):
nothing in between. And within the clerical and the
religious community, it was verymixed.
I mean, my, my good friend Richard Rohr, who is an MEA
faculty member. And you know, you, you may know
Robbie may know Richard pretty well, but I, I see you as like
the next, the next generation ofRichard Rohr.
(05:05):
He was a huge fan and loved the fact that there was a sense that
someone was stirring things up. So let's go back to your let
that's a little background. We'll come back to that.
But you grew up with a federal judge, Dad, is that correct?
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And then you just had to go off to college and and and
theological seminary where is. So maybe the calling started at
(05:29):
a very young age. But tell us about your
upbringing and what led you to knowing that you wanted to study
and focus on religion. Yeah, I came from a from the
Midwest. My actually one of my dad's
specialties as a federal judge was cartel trials.
Oh well, that could be dangerous, that.
There would be specific times when there would be like an
(05:50):
extra level of death threats andthere would be, I remember him
coming over to the house for Father's Day and there were like
bodyguards in the driveway. So like, he was an absolutely
fascinating man. My mom as well.
Then when I was in college, I was in a band, like like almost
early Talking Heads, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Violet Femmes,
(06:12):
Midnight Oil, sort of back when alternative meant not not Bon
Jovi essentially. And I was the leads singer, but
I didn't really sing. So it was more of a scattered
shot, talky, singy thing. But what happened in I was 19.
I would write these lyrics and then I would we would have a
(06:34):
show and we would do our songs and then we made cassette tapes.
And then over time we would do our shows and people would sing
the songs back. But there was this experience of
giving language to what it was like to be me and then sharing
it with people that shaped me forever.
I talk about creation bias, likemaking something and then
(06:59):
sharing it with people. Shit, it became for the first
time I felt like, oh, maybe there might be something for me
to do here on this planet. Everything else felt like like I
was never the best student, never the best athlete, never
the most cool kid. So everything felt like trying
on sweaters that didn't fit. But the moment I could give
(07:19):
language to experiences and thenshare it with people was like,
oh, yeah. And then the band broke up, as
bands do, because everybody had to get jobs.
But I was always interested in the big questions.
What are we doing here? What is this experience?
And I came, my parents took us to church.
(07:41):
I came from this Christian tradition.
So in that tradition, if you have questions about the big
things, you go to seminary and get a master of divinity, which
no one ever laughed about. Like that is the weirdest.
A master of the infinite. Nobody ever went that.
This is what you all realize is ridiculous, right?
Yeah. So then I went because in the
(08:02):
tradition I came from, if you were interested in the sort of
thing. And then I stumbled into the
sermon. I volunteered to give a sermon,
and I was like, Oh my God, this is an art form.
It's kind of like being the leadsinger, but I don't have to
organize practice with these knuckleheads, you know what I
mean? It was like, oh, this is an art
form. Like like.
Martin, tell us more tell us more about so we so who the
(08:24):
reason I'm asking I want to knowabout this story because there's
a guy named Cecil Williams, famous pastor for Glide Memorial
Church in San Francisco. I was on the board for 10 years
and loved it. And, you know, you do the lift,
lift the offering. So I was in the congregation
every Sunday. And, you know, occasionally, you
know, they have someone from thecongregation come up and talk
(08:44):
about why they should lift the offering.
I heard from his people at the team like, oh, Cecil wants you
on stage again this week. And but they didn't tell me.
He wanted me to give a sermon. True story.
And so my it was 2012. My book Emotional Equations have
come out. And he just thought, like, I
really like the book. And so I got there 5 minutes
before 9:00. This.
(09:05):
Yeah. We call it not the service, but
the celebration in front of 800 people.
And he says, you know, are you excited to give the sermon?
And so truly, I was giving a sermon.
The only time I've ever given a sermon, I at the 9 and the 11, I
gave a sermon quite spontaneously.
How did you give your first sermon?
I was running a water ski show in northern Wisconsin at a
(09:26):
summer camp, and they were like,hey, there's a Sunday morning.
Well, like a celebration in thisChapel that was in among these
trees and this, all the people who worked at the camp got
together on Sunday mornings and someone said some stuff.
And I remember there was like, it was the water people, the
waterfront. It was our turn to organize the
thing. And I was like, I'll give the
sermon. And I remember getting up to
(09:48):
give it and thinking, oh, yeah, I loved it.
But I also had like, oh, I couldgive myself to this.
And I saw it as an art form as opposed to like propaganda or
like the transmission of information, which which nothing
against information, but it was something deeper.
It was some can't. It almost felt like an extension
(10:10):
of cause the job in the band wasto get everybody to the back of
the room dancing. So it was an energetic, almost
harmonic sort of let's get the thing spinning here.
Let's get the whirling dervishesdoing their thing like the like
to the back of the room. We're all in this together.
So this was like 00. And I hadn't ever seen anybody
do that. I just intuitively was like, I
(10:33):
want to see how far I can take this.
I was, I took off my sandals, myBirkenstocks, as soon as I stood
up to talk because I was like, oh, you're on, oh, this ground
is different. This is like, there's something
sacred about this. There's just something holy
about this. So yeah.
And when you're younger, those sorts of experiences, they, they
do something to the psyche. Like they imprint very clearly,
(10:54):
like, oh, I'm going to give myself to this.
So when I went to seminary afterthat, all I, I was just like,
just this is an art form and I'm, I, I, I want to give myself
to this. By the end of your 20s, you had
started the Mars Hill Bible Church or you started.
You started or you take it over.Did you start it I.
Started it in the living room with like 1010 like probably 10
(11:15):
or 1215 people and then somebodyI convinced this guy to let us
use this building he just built for a dollar a year that had
like it's like a warehouse home school.
It was like a multi use building.
And then someone gave us a mall.Then we outgrew that and someone
gave us a mall. I remember that.
(11:35):
Yeah. There was like a loser mall.
You know, the mall where more people go to the baseball card
show and the RV show, then actually buy things.
And whoever owned whoever owned it was like, I'll give you can
buy the land and I'll give you the mall.
And I remember they said that they went through the building
and the the, you know, there's like an anchor store.
And I remember a guy named Bill said, who's in construction,
(11:57):
said you could take all the walls out of the anchor store
and you can make a big room. So it was in the round, it was 3
1/2 thousand seats, but in the round with the stage because I
wanted it to feel like the biggest living room ever.
Wait, wait, wait. You went.
You went from your living room with 10 to 15 people to a space
with 3500 people that you could fit in there.
(12:19):
I had to do the sermon 3 times on Sundays.
You had 10,000 people per day, but that didn't happen
overnight. I mean, it took, it took a
little while, no? Two years.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I lived through I Even
now, at the time, you're aware you're living through something
(12:40):
rare. You, you, you're in your late
20s. You know this doesn't It was
such a phenomenon. There was so much energy.
There was. And right away, when there were
so many crowds, I was like, how could I thin this out?
So I decided to go through the book of Leviticus verse by
verse. So I did the Book of Leviticus.
The Bible the Bible church so. Yeah.
(13:02):
And So what was interesting to me, because my take, my
understanding, the Bible's a subversive document written by a
minority group of people who have been oppressed by one
global military superpower afteranother.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Seleucid, the poemies, the
great like. So I just saw it as this ancient
collection of poems and stories that came from real people in
(13:23):
real places. So, so there's lots of history.
There was lots of philosophy. It was almost like all these
cliches people had heard in thisparticular tradition.
Well, where'd that come from? Turning the other cheek.
Well, turning the other cheek was actually a very powerful
political stance based on how you either punch or slap a
person, which is requires a leftor right cheek.
So I would take apart all of that and show people the history
(13:45):
of it and the context. And suddenly these stories were
not about some future day when you die.
They're loaded political, economic stories about how to
have a spine, how to find hope, how to forgive your oppressor.
I was covering the stage with dirt and setting things on fire,
and I would have people planted in the audience.
(14:07):
It was like it. Was like, it sounds like
performance art. Exactly.
People would come and be like, huh, Because that was history.
That was geography, that was soul meditation.
There was therapeutic elements of it.
There was, it was funny. People would try to they'd be
like, I don't know what that was, but it was quite it was
(14:31):
something that I always felt to me, it did not feel like
building an institution. It felt like a giant art
experiment, felt like a giant experiment in community, in
humanity, in what does it mean to commune with other human
beings and the earth. I remember doing a sermon called
God is green. Any basic to any spiritual
(14:54):
vision of life starts with the earth and proper relationship
with the soil. And then there.
Yeah. So it was all stuff, yeah.
In your 30s, you were you. Were you perceived as a heretic
heretic in the OR were you? There were people early on, I
remember a couple years into it,doing a whole series on women's
(15:16):
equality and a group of people in the church that I had started
organized to have me remove as the pastor.
And I remember being like, but wait, that's I started it.
I can you just the weirdest. There was always I remember
there was a Christmas series I did against the war in Iraq,
which isn't apparently what people want to hear about at
(15:38):
Christmas time. But if you're going to talk
about peace on earth, there werealways a group of people who,
how do you say it, were agitated.
And there was always a group going, Oh, my God, this, this
make like lit up. Oh, yeah, yeah.
A friend of mine said there's always 1000 people coming and
1000 people going. So that of my early 30s, that
(16:01):
just became you. I would not go anywhere.
This was in West Michigan. I would not go anywhere in
public. And there wasn't somebody who
was like, oh, my God, that thingthat you're doing.
I was there two weeks ago. And then there was somebody who
I knew was very not in favor of what I was doing.
That was just a normal part of life.
(16:23):
So. Feels like I'm feel like I'm
talking about 17 robs ago. That's it's.
I know. Well, this is the evolution.
This is the fact that this is your 30s.
You're 54 now, by the way. You are the average age of the
of the normal MEA goer. I waited to get to know you till
this date so that I'd be the themiddle of a demographic.
(16:43):
The timing is. Exactly.
Exactly so by by 2011, you know,you certainly you'd create a
congregation that was enormous. Time magazine was going to do
make you one of the most influential people in the world.
Oprah was going to take you on tour.
But a lot of that also has to dowith the fact that you had a
book, a best selling book that came out called Love wins.
(17:06):
And if I'm getting my my numberscorrect in terms of the
chronology, maybe give us give us just a snippet on what that
book was about. Because quite frankly, that's
where you rocketed to even, you know, beyond West Michigan.
Like the world got to know you because of that book.
I had had this idea for a one man show like a 2 hour one man
(17:27):
show about quantum physics and spirituality called Everything
is Spiritual and a friend of mine is in a band and he I
convinced him to introduce me tohis booking agent.
So I had started touring like clubs and theaters, like punk
rock clubs doing this one man show.
I had a whiteboard that was 24 feet long I brought with me and
(17:49):
I would fill it in with all these drawings.
So I had started removing takingthe sermon talk one man show
thing out of like the church andjust doing it where I So I
remember the first tour was 25 American cities in 28 days where
you live on a tour bus and like a Ticketmaster, like a band
(18:09):
would tour. Just I was so I had been explore
because what had happened is it got itchy for me doing what I
did in a church because my goal wasn't to build a church or to
build a religion. I was interested in what does it
mean to be human? And this tradition I came from
had fascinating, helpful, very grounding, beautiful things to
(18:33):
say about it. But it was about something
larger than a religion. There had been a number of
books, I think the Love Wins wasthe 5th book and that seemed to
and that book was about heaven and hell and how for many people
heaven and hell is where you go when you die, but that heaven
(18:54):
and hell are present states of consciousness right now.
Like why would you talk about where you go when you die when
we have enough Hells on earth right now?
Whether it's an internal misery,resentment, anger that is hasn't
been given its proper expression, or that that's how
you create a world that's in trouble.
I was already chafing against the container might be the best
(19:16):
way to say it. And then that book came out,
Love Wins, which I and it had been normal that I would be on
tour and there would be people out front with bull horns like
announcing that I'm the spawn ofthe devil or something.
And by the way, they don't appreciate it if you order them
pizza. That book seemed to take at that
(19:39):
point, probably a decade of doing what I was doing.
It seemed to bring it to a head in some ways.
And, and the answer to your question, there was a sense of
like, I'm not trying to be like a particular checklist.
Like even the word Christian wasn't interesting to me.
(20:03):
Jesus is fascinating. The Jesus teachings are
articulating a way of being in the world.
So what is that way of being in the world?
That's interesting. And other traditions have a lot
to say about that as well. So I think it was already
integrating. Yeah.
So that was quite that experience was like, oh, I have
to keep going. It was like I have to keep
(20:24):
following this and. Even the people who led the
church, who are beloved friends of mine were like, you realize
when you do stuff then we spend tons of like, our phone rings
like crazy here. And they had said after that
book, So are you going to keep going?
Because we're going to have to make this institution way more
(20:47):
nimble because otherwise, whatever you're going to do
next, can you tell us? No, that that would take all the
fun out of it, but we end up what you're doing.
We end up spending a bunch of energy reacting to.
And so they were asking these really interesting questions
that had me for the first time, like what it, what is next?
(21:08):
And it was like, oh, we'll keep following it.
Well, so you and then you left in 2012.
You. I think you left the church.
2011, yeah. Yeah, left the church soon
around this time, the church youcreate this mega church that was
extremely successful. I, I just want to ask you one of
the things that we talked about at MEA and, and in in this
podcast, the midlife chrysalis is the idea of the ending.
(21:31):
The three stages of any a transition includes the ending
of something, the messy middle and the beginning of something.
And we have transitions happening in our life.
You know, we, you and I talked about one just a few minutes ago
before we got on the air and these transitions happen.
So you often the transition alsois disrobing of an identity.
(21:51):
So what was that like to have to?
You didn't really have a career until you became the punk rock
pastor and then you became famous.
And then you had like, you know,you're on Time Magazine's 100
most influentialist and then youleave your church and your role
and you did. Where was the identity?
Well, who were you then? And this, and this is just so
everybody knows this is your early 40s.
(22:13):
Yes, right, 41 and you're totally, totally correct.
The end one of the ways, you know, the you're ending
something. And in our culture, which is so
disconnected from the earth for a lot of people without an
outward failure or scandal, it alot of people don't have the
(22:34):
muscular to spot and ending something can end because it's
good. So if we say, Oh yeah, yeah,
Wayne just just left that organization, we're like, well,
who do you sleep with or where do you put the money?
Where's the offshore account? Do you know what I mean?
For many people, so and so leaves because something went
wonky as opposed to no, he's leaving because it's good.
(22:55):
She's the CEO and she stepped down because she did what she
came there to do. So for a lot of people, they
only know divorces and not graduations.
And I would argue that's a directly relationship when you
get cut off from the soil cause spring doesn't feel like winter
failed like the seasons just, you know, none of the seasons
(23:18):
have issues with each other. They're like they did their
thing and now it ends. So one of the things is as in
the modern world, for so many people with so much concrete and
separate even the fact that you can get tomatoes in Minnesota at
2:00 AM at an all night grocery store in February.
Well, where were they grown? Like what's in season, what's
out of season even is blurred even terms of food.
So that's one of the things I'venoticed again and again is how
(23:41):
many people who come to Ojai andsit with me.
Something has over. But the external circumstances,
it's, it's actually doing betterthan ever.
And yet something within them islike, sometimes they're just
bored, but they feel like, yeah,I can't say that because people
would kill for this job, to which I always respond,
excellent. And no one has to die.
You know what I mean? So that's part of it.
(24:03):
Well, back to you, But. Where were you?
I mean, you were in this liminalstage and around that time and
how did you find your footing about through this messy middle
and and what was the new identity?
Because what I. Noticed what I've seen with lots
of people. To your question about the.
Identity is somebody had said, well, if you leave this, you
know, you wouldn't be a pastor. I could not have cared less what
(24:27):
I was called and and that isn't a universal experience.
I have now come to see you don'tcare like, well, what would I
say? What just do dinner party at a
dinner party, What do you do? For many people, I wouldn't know
what to say, but what happens issomething is happening within
(24:48):
you where you don't hair anymorebecause The thing is so clear.
Your life is talking to you. The phone is ringing and I do
distinctly remember and someone told me you will always if you
leave this, you'll be a has beenyou'll be the guy who people
like whatever happened to that? Remember when that guy like was
(25:08):
a thing and now he kind of like jumped the shark.
You could go from has. Been to will be well said.
I just didn't. That's when you know, I don't
care how it appears. I wasn't playing that game in
the 1st place. And and I did when I in that in
between, like when I we first left Michigan, moved to
(25:32):
California, I would be out somewhere and someone say, what
would you do? And I would just like I remember
saying to somebody, I have some ideas.
I would just make crap up. I'm working on some things.
I would literally just. Yeah, I didn't.
Know I didn't have a clear I waswriting a book, I was doing some
(25:54):
events, but I didn't it just wasn't that interesting.
That's and that's a huge sign isyou're just like, how would I
present your identity? Something died, and with it the
grasping to that particular title, Prestige, job, office
structure, hierarchy, power, organization, you just don't
(26:15):
care anymore because you're following something that's just
way, way, way more compelling. And it is.
It is. There is like a wobbly.
What am I? Yeah.
Well, this is. So now with the hindsight, you
know, the, the connecting the dots of 13 years later, what was
that you were following? What was it?
What, what if you define the decade of your 40s?
(26:38):
You're 54 now. What would you define that?
What was the theme of that decade?
Because 40s can be a really rocky period.
It's the low point on EU curve of happiness.
A lot of people get confused by it, but you in some ways, you
had your major crazy life quake at the start of the 40s as
opposed to later in your 40s. How you characterize your your
(27:01):
early mid life, your 40s, I do remember.
Thinking, oh, I've heard people talk about this.
I think I'm coming into this earlier.
I I do remember thinking, I think I'm a number of these
feelings. I.
Started doing to me, what was interesting was taking, what
would you call it, spiritual teacher?
(27:23):
How what other spaces can this? Can I take this?
I started doing a residency at Largo, which is a comedy music
club in Los Angeles. It's almost like can we talk
about soul spirit? Creating your.
Life. Ancient spiritual traditions.
What places could I do that? What I do in that aren't
(27:47):
traditionally places where thesesorts of things get explored.
I think that was. Probably out of the container of
Sure. I was already in church world
touring and seeing where it could go.
And this was like Los Angeles, could we go here?
Could we? I remember talking to like a
group of CEOs. I get the weirdest invites and
(28:08):
part of the IT was like startingover with, Oh yeah, I'll just go
anywhere. I'll I remember talking to a
group of CEOs and they had to make 10 million a year to be
around some table. Just some ridiculous blah, blah,
blah. They brought me in to say some
things and like the 1st 25 minutes I'm bombing hard.
I have a bad case of pounds lower back sweat, which is when
you're bombing and you start that like that unique like this
(28:31):
isn't working. And then I remember one of them
said something about he had justhad his first, his wife had just
had his first baby, and suddenlyhe didn't want to be at the
office all the time. And I was like, well, he'd like
to be home with his kid. And I was like, well, you know,
you have a soul. I remember all these CEOs just
all of a sudden, wait, what? No, wait.
(28:54):
It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, you have a soul.
You have an interior life that you can't access with a
spreadsheet. What?
And just having these experiences of going into places
where people didn't talk about interior lives, didn't talk
about all of this accumulated wisdom around knowing who you
are. And.
(29:15):
So that became like, where else could we take it?
Yeah. Like I would rent a club
somewhere and instead of being on the stage, I'd arrange the
chairs and circles on the dance floor and then do a whole day.
Remember the How to Be Here tourwas about being present to your
life and learning to listen to your life.
(29:36):
And it was an 8 hour interactive.
I realize now it was like an interactive sermon.
And I would rent dance halls andart galleries around, like
around the world actually. So I would just keep cooking up.
What kind of experience could wedo that would and then we figure
out how to do it? Yeah.
(29:57):
How has your sense of meaning, and maybe your relationship with
religion evolved since the time you left?
Your the church. Is it the Mars Hill Bible
Church? A lot.
A lot. You know, I, I, I'm curious
about that. Just because you don't have the
structure, you don't have that, you don't have to deal with the
(30:17):
dogma as much. I don't care.
Honestly, straight up, I don't care.
So anybody wants to talk about that?
Great, great. I will just keep asking
questions to get. What's interesting is Yeah,
yeah. OK.
There's that doctrine, there's that thing.
You're part of that group. Fine, fine, fine.
Who are you? What's it like to be you?
Sometimes they. Ask people what they.
Have for breakfast because the week like let's get almost like
(30:41):
the most grounded. Let's start there.
So all that is lovely. Also, who are you?
What are you? You're listening to your life.
What's it telling you? What's next?
So that can be wonderful and andcan be grounding and can have
all sorts of insight and yet. Who are you?
(31:04):
What stories are you telling about your past that aren't
working? Well?
Let's go back. Why that word?
There's like a certain here now,this body in space and time, the
assumption that the universe, God source your own depths,
whatever is talking to you. Like you said, they're on the
phone. What's that look like?
(31:28):
I've never met somebody who didn't have everything they
needed to take the next step. I've never met somebody who, if
you get still and quiet enough and we just keep taking the
voices off your shoulder and listening to whatever is
happening in here, doesn't get some sort of clarity, it feels
like. For many of us in midlife,
there's a great unlearning. And would you?
(31:51):
I want you to just riff on that for a moment.
What's what has been your great unlearning in the last dozen
years that there is an. External authority that I farm
my intuition out to or farm my that hijacks my own deep
knowing. My only job is to be Rob Bell.
And so I will take all of this wisdom and I will take the voice
(32:18):
of my friends and I will take the people who inspire and
expand me. And then I'll sit with it and
there will be some sort of clarity.
It'll probably be quite simple. It'll it'll probably something I
can actually do. The number of people I've done
this work with who are like, getclarity and go, yes.
(32:38):
But Rob Bell, I could do that. I could actually take that step.
Yeah. What a bonus that you.
What a bonus that you could be you.
What a lovely feature. Of the universe that each of us
can actually be Oscar Wilde. Said be yourself, every everyone
else is taken and yeah, yeah, so.
I think that unlearning around like I used to, oh, here's a,
(32:58):
here's a massive unlearning. I used to and I came from this
intellectual tradition. My son calls it New York Times
brain, where the way you stay safe is you just know stuff.
I would read a book every coupledays because you didn't want to
be in an interview and have somebody say whoever the voice
of, you know, there's always a smart person of the moment.
(33:19):
So a decade ago, you know, Malcolm Gladwell's do book.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chapter 7, That's a banger of a
chapter. You know, that thing where like,
there's a common NPR thing whereeverybody's like, oh, yeah.
You know, the body keeps the score.
This whole sort of subtle world of smart people talk.
And I especially if you're like a spiritual teacher, if somebody
asks a question, you don't know what they're talking about or
(33:41):
something from the news and you're like what, like I came
from a tradition where God, you better be armed, like almost
like an armor of knowing here. And I lost interest in reading
and it was a literally a book every couple days.
So that unlearning about, because you're always a book
(34:02):
away from a piece and being so much more in my body.
This happened about six years ago.
It's like my mind sank into my body and and the mind's a
wonderful servant. It's not the best master, but
there was some integration that happened in which there's some
knowing. I do know what it's been like to
(34:25):
be me. So if I don't know what you're.
Talking about I have no shame insaying I don't.
Tell me more about that. I haven't heard of that.
I have no problem not knowing what's happening in the news.
I have no problem not knowing what the latest book is.
That's somebody from Stamford who tested frogs or something.
Like there's always something. And that's when, weirdly enough,
(34:48):
that's when I started to make a whole different right and create
a whole different kind of thing.That's.
Made me feel. Like I everything was a warm up
if there was a. Spiritual curriculum for
midlife. What might?
Include like what would be or what or let's even say more
(35:09):
practically for you. Do you have spiritual practices
that you do on a daily basis or weekly basis?
First off, nervous. System regulation like water, a
walk, sit still, get the body calm, whatever that looks like
in the moment. So that you can.
(35:29):
Listen, like like inbox that e-mail has the an undercurrent
of anxiety or I don't know how to answer.
I don't OK, get still what's happening in this e-mail, not
the solution to the problem. What's like what's the story
that you're telling about the e-mail?
(35:50):
What's it what's the feeling? Oh, I don't want to let this
person down. Slow down, get still.
Even just. Does this require anything in me
right now? I don't know what this is or how
to respond. OK, then that's clarity is
Spirit is. Is surfing a spiritual practice
(36:10):
for you? Absolutely.
I was in the ocean yesterday. I'll I'll go later today.
Yes Sir. The hiking, surfing, painting.
Weirdly enough, because I, I do lots of painting and I have no
expertise or skill or training, so I have no voice on my
shoulder. Like my neighbor went to Fine
Arts school, was trained in FineArts.
(36:31):
So he came over and saw a bunch of paintings.
It was like, oh, pointillism, great.
He's also all jammed up and can't, I don't have any of that.
So I just know certain things. It gets me.
I just know I like that color, not that color.
I found there's a free bin at the lumber yard of chunks of
wood and I found a bunch of themand just painted them white and
(36:55):
then put these pink dots and dida series called You should
probably get that looked at. You see, you see what I mean by
I'm laughing and I don't know why.
Good sign. Good way to start the day.
Oh, this thing behind me, this thing behind me is like a is
like a six foot aliens dancing underneath giant.
(37:20):
Radioactive. Flowers, I don't know what that
is. Or I just became like, I'm going
to make this giant thing and I worked on it and I didn't know
why or what it was for. And then a day after I finished
it, my friends were getting ready for their outdoor wedding.
And I was like, oh, take it to them.
(37:41):
And I took it to them and said, I just made this.
And the bride burst out in tearsand said, Oh my God, I wanted a
giant piece of art for when people came into the backyard,
but it fell off my To Do List 'cause I ran out of time.
Well, that was trusting. Trusting, you know, again, the
genie, it's supposed to come through you.
It feels like you have moved from knowledge to wisdom on some
(38:04):
level. And much of that wisdom is is
not self-imposed or self, you know, found.
It's really from tapping into something deeper.
What? What?
Would you recommend for someone in midlife who wants to
reconnect with spirituality? Because there's, there's lots of
social science evidence that shows that around midlife and,
(38:27):
and Richard Rohr in fact says the first half of your life,
your primary operating systems, your ego and the second-half of
your life, it's your soul. But nobody gave you operating
instructions. So how, how might you express to
someone who says, I'm 50 years old, I feel like a yearning
inside of me, but I don't know what to do with it.
And I, I, I feel lost and, and, and what I grew up with doesn't
(38:51):
feel like it's the religion I'm supposed to be pursuing.
I might say to them. Have you read Rumi's Big Red
Book? Have you read?
The Dao De. Ching Have you read John Philip
Newell as a Scottish Mystic who writes about Celtic
(39:12):
spirituality? If somebody had specific
questions, like there are lineages that might just like
get get all the energy flowing and sometimes it just takes
there's a door. Friend of mine has this Gray
line. He's like, why wouldn't you want
to hear all the greatest hits? Like if there if there were the
11 greatest songs, humans, wouldn't you want to hear them?
(39:35):
So sometimes if somebody has specific questions, I would ask
them, well, what most interests you is something about the
earth. Oh, well, that would be Celtic
spirituality. Oh, something about the mystical
nature of being a human being. Well, so if you're looking for
like actual accumulated wisdom, there's lots out there.
Also, probably for most people, there's something involving the
(39:58):
body. So even like, think of how many
people right now are discoveringbreath work.
You've been breathing for thousands of years and yet for
many of us, you go to a breath work and you're like, what just
happened in all we did was breathe.
So I'd probably just are trying.I would say the person you just
(40:19):
start trying things and generally the person's like I
did see a flyer for a whatever. Yeah, try it.
So a. Beautiful bridge there to
discussion. So Houston Smith, the famous
religious thinker. Love that guy me too.
I used to love reading his stuff.
A spiritual experience is different than a spiritual life
And and he said we Americans arealways looking for a shortcut.
(40:43):
What is your what's your point of view on psychedelics and the
the desire to connect with spirituality by means of plant
medicine and things like that UPS you know, do you have a
positive perspective, negative perspective, cautionary or
elated point of view positive. Elated, cautionary, All the
(41:08):
above. Here's how.
Here's how I would describe it. It can be like such an
unbelievable door into a whole new life.
Absolutely, I would back up and say what human beings have been
doing for thousands of years. We have been building temples.
And you build a. Temple as a way to identify this
(41:31):
space is not like your everyday normal space.
This space is sacred holy other genie level space however you
want to say that. But the problem is the moment
you name this space something else, and something else happens
in that space, then you have to name the rest of space, normal,
mundane, everyday space. So the trick for human beings
(41:55):
has been how do you build a temple so that people conceive
of that something greater, more expansive, more integrated.
But then you you got to build the temple so you can lock into
that. Then you got to tear it down
immediately, or else you end up with space divided into two
different kinds. So something like any sort of
retreat, any sort of psychedelic, it is like building
(42:19):
a temple. It shows you what's really going
on here. It shows you a connection, a
depth, a communion, a wonder andawe spirit, whatever you want to
say. But if you stay in that temple,
the leap back. What we're looking?
For is to destroy the temple, sothe whole thing becomes a
temple. And we do need these temples
(42:40):
from time to time. You have an experience in which
you go, Oh my God. The whole thing, actually.
Is love, Yeah. Now how do we integrate that
into coffee in the morning with the people we love?
Doing. Some sort of work that actually
lights us up or and that yeah, So I'm all in favor of those
(43:04):
with absolutely if it helps. And then some way to
intentionally now integrate. It's like you went up to the
mountain and you saw how it really is, and now we go back
down in the valley and we take what we now saw and that begins
to infuse like this conversation.
I had coffee with my friends this morning.
Now I'm talking to you. This is the top of the mountain.
(43:26):
There's no thing. And then I'm going to record a
episode of my Rob cast. Yeah, top of the mountain and at
what it I even know what day of the week it is Thursday.
This is just a Thursday morning and top of the mountain.
So you're just going from. Peak to peak, yeah, but what?
Happens is the mountain in the valley begin to be all the same
place over time. Your question about psychedelics
(43:48):
is a gum because sometimes we, we need, we need like to go up
there and see so that we can begin to have them collapse into
each other. It's like you leave your life or
your present consciousness or the way your brains you, you
leave it to glimpse, but then you return or else you get stuck
(44:08):
there and now you're not here orthere.
You weren't having. Coffee with Pete Holmes this
morning, were you? No.
OK, he's out. He's.
Out there in Ohio with you, isn't he?
And we don't. Like, Oh yeah, right.
Right around the corner like. Right around the corner I.
Sometimes see him out the windowof my studio here and I will see
him and we don't even, sometimeswe say hi, but as a general
(44:32):
rule, we would hug and then justbe right into it, just right
into like, you know, the other day this thing happened.
I got really deep conversation. Yeah, no word.
Well known. Comedian and with a Christian
point of view and, and lives right in your neighborhood and
he's somebody I've hung out withhere at our ranch at the MEA
(44:54):
ranch here in Santa Fe. So with Richard Rohr.
So I wanted to, I wanted to sortof go into talking about wisdom
for a moment and then we'll get finish up with your Wisdom
bumper sticker. So wisdom.
Traditions. This is, you know, I in times
like these where it's a very complex world.
(45:14):
There's something to be said. For the idea of mystery schools,
Wisdom schools, maybe even new point, new spiritual practices
and traditions arriving at timeslike these because the times
require it and human consciousness is ready to have
an evolution. We talked about your personal
one. It feels like we're sort of in
(45:36):
that time. And I, in creating the world's
first midlife wisdom school, which is what MEA is.
One of my premises is, is that we are here to actually learn
how to move from accumulating knowledge to distilling wisdom.
And So what I would just want tohear from you about is what are
you seeing out there? What are the, the, the bamboo
(45:58):
shoots, the green shoots out there in the world at a time
where a lot of people are slightly depressed with what
they see when it comes to new new wisdom traditions, new ways
of metabolizing life experience and sharing it with others.
What, what? What has you excited from that
point of view of new wisdom? Traditions, my son?
(46:23):
One of my boys is 25 and he called the other day because he
had says like, I went down a Internet wormhole about AI and
what it's doing for jobs. And he's like my generation and
how it's obliterating whole things.
So in that moment, my son didn'tneed an expert in AI and all the
(46:46):
different kinds of AI and the iterations of AI and the coming.
He was looking. For wisdom on how human beings
handle new fire. At some level.
You could see him already. He had this great line.
He's like, well, you know, Gosling as well.
And I was like Gosling as well. He's like, yeah, that's why I
(47:08):
just keep telling myself. And I was like, what do you
mean? He's like, we'll pick the cool,
coolest guy ever. Ryan Gosling.
Whatever's coming, he'll have todeal with it as well.
So he you could. So.
You could see Preston is 25. He was already.
He now has the Internet where hecan get overwhelmed with all
this information. You know he can he can just go
(47:30):
deeper and deeper into this whole thing is going to blow up
the whole world. But you could also see him
building his own sort of wisdom around.
He wanted me to sit with him in the feeling, but I could also so
so I'm some of this is so overwhelming.
Even the nervous system what we have access to as well.
Even you think about the American, the the United States
(47:55):
government and the sort of torching of a whole number of
things and the pain this is causing, which is real pain
also. Some of these.
Systems failed to serve us well,So what would it look like in
the larger evolutionary scope tobuild something new?
Generally, the old one kind of has to go up in flames at some
(48:17):
level, and that's brutal. So there is a long time.
If I. Said to you, there is the
richest man in the world and he helped this other guy who might
or might not be a billionaire, become the president.
And then that guy said, I'm going to make up a job for you.
(48:40):
You'd be like, OK, that system deserves to go off a Cliff.
That's not working. There is being caught up in the
latest news thing and then thereis while having a heart big
enough to yes, this this is a lot of collateral.
(49:01):
This is so terrifying and also anumber of these things that are
going up in flames. Maybe that's a good thing.
Yeah, no, they. I mean, you know, in the in the
forest, they'll do, you know, controlled burns, so to speak,
because because something new can actually grow from it.
And there's a lot of people out there who's really believe that
(49:24):
we're going through what seems like a destructive time.
But on the other side of it, there is something that's going
to be even better. I think there's so much to be
said for wisdom, human wisdom being the counterbalance
artificial intelligence. That is, that is what we need.
And so I would just say to your son, the thing, the most
(49:45):
important thing he could do is to take live life as if it's one
big humaning course. To constantly be humaning
ourselves is the balance. Because, you know, artificial
intelligence, like wisdom often comes and it doesn't have to
come from this, but it often comes from suffering.
And AI does not suffer. It does not suffer.
There's no one to like if a 'cause he's a musician.
(50:07):
What if AI writes all this music?
Well, who would we interview? Like it's the interview about
where the song came from. I always just go, who do I
interview? Because that's what we love is I
even actually think, Well, here's what I think about
wisdom. There.
Is. I think we're going to.
Have technology like, I think we're going to have a little
(50:28):
black box like, and you're goingeither hold it up to somebody or
you're going to develop human beings are going to develop some
sort of radar discernment about what was made by AI and what was
made by a human. We're going to develop new like
that doesn't feel even the way ashirt feels synthetic or real.
(50:52):
I actually think with all of this, we're going to develop new
sensitivities, like little meters that we can hold up to
things or we just sense it. Who knows what expansion of
wisdom will come and it will. It won't come right now.
It'll take a minute, but we'll develop it.
And that's not a Pollyanna overly positive.
That's just human beings are incredibly adaptive creatures.
Let's just hope you. Don't live a polyester life, but
(51:14):
we're going back to what you're.Saying about wisdom, think
about, I assume for you as well,When I was in high school, at
the end of high school, you tooka test called the ACT or the
SAT, and you had a pencil and you sat in a room for three
hours and you filled in little ovals.
And if you did well, you were considered intelligent, although
there was a window in the testing room and there were
trees outside that window, and you couldn't name one of them.
(51:36):
So you could fill in these little ovals but couldn't name
one kind of tree outside the window.
And the person who did well on the ovals was considered
intelligent. So this incredibly narrow slice
of intelligence was so blown outof proportion for so and so is
very smart. They did well in school, which
means they could spit back the right answers at the right time
(51:58):
and could tune into what the teacher wanted.
Well, that's incredibly narrow. Fine.
It's just a incredibly narrow understanding of intelligence.
So if you think about the what you said in information to
wisdom, wisdom is fundamentally embodied.
Wisdom is fundamentally yes, yes, yes.
Those are all nice facts. How do you move in space and
(52:23):
time, in the world, in a body with a history, with emotions,
with desire, with a calling, andwe have a glut, unprecedented
human history of information coming at people.
But what? How you respond, what you
ignore, what you have enough spine and wisdom to know?
(52:46):
I don't even need to know about that.
What actually? Is important and vital that's
all wisdom that takes you out ofyes, I know a number of things
about this. Oh you think about right now
most you people in the United States don't know what happened
in Iran in 1953 with Mossadegh. The Iranians democratically
(53:08):
elected a president who was a byall accounts a great man and he
was like, why doesn't Iran make the money off the oil in its own
soil and the US and BP were likeno other country should make
money off of your oil. So the US organized a coup.
That's probably an important thing everybody in the United
States should know. That's wisdom is, wait, are
(53:33):
there other things in play rightnow here and histories and
reactions to those histories. And so I think you're going to
just more and more the person like especially with MEA, the
person who's lived longer and who knows this is important.
This isn't you think about the village elder.
(53:55):
Traditionally you're in a jam. You it's the last Hut at the end
of the village, the longest pathin the back.
And you sit down with that person and they're like, OK,
this thing right here that you got your shorts at a bunch about
that's keeping you sleepless at night, irrelevant.
But this thing over here that you weren't paying any attention
to actually pretty vital. And the only way you can know
(54:15):
that is because you suffered in pain and lived long enough to
know this right here, forget about it.
Just it's not even a thing. But this thing over here is
actually quite a thing. And that person is going to just
be the village elder is going tobe.
Yeah, more important than ever. They say that knowledge.
Is knowing that tomato is a fruit and wisdom is knowing not
to put it in a fruit salad, and philosophy is wondering whether
(54:41):
ketchup is a smoothie. But my last question to you.
That's amea banger is that you don't even you could just say
MEA and then have that little thing below it and we'd be like,
yeah, I'm going to their thing. Last question.
Rob, so you talked about the origin story.
You know you have an origin story if you're a human, if AI,
(55:02):
you don't have an origin story. So if you were to take one piece
of your wisdom and let's assume you have a lot of them.
And put it onto a. Bumper sticker.
What would be that Wisdom bumpersticker and what would be the
origin story that helped you arrive at that Wisdom My bumper?
Sticker would say. My.
(55:25):
Favorite word is unpigeonholablethat describes you.
If. Each of us unpigeonholable.
What we're each doing is we're duct taping together all these
bits and pieces that we've picked up along the way.
(55:48):
And it's a little wobbly going down the road, but that's the
job for you to learn how to be chip and me to learn how to be
robbed. And so I met this person and I
had this experience and I'm integrating all of the best of
this. I'm leaving behind what I want
to leave behind. I'm bringing this with me and it
(56:09):
will only ever allow make you more and more you, which just
won't look like everything around you.
It will be unhit, pigeonhole, able, and that a dominant
percentage of our human energiesare spent looking around, going.
I haven't seen someone do it like this.
And it doesn't mean that you won't take the best of their
(56:29):
wisdom. It doesn't mean they can't hold
a mirror up and help you. I mean, a good friend holds a
mirror up and helps you discern who you are.
But it won't. It will be how you do it.
And the most powerful question in some ways you can ask a
friend is, well, how how do you get the word out about your
business? How do you live in what kind of
(56:53):
home? What kind of car?
Like all the details? How?
Well, how do you do it? It's actually a yeah,
unpigeonhole ball. I don't know.
Does that fit on a bumper sticker?
My favorite word is unpigeonholeball that fits on a bumper
sticker. As long as it's one of those big
Tesla, you know, big trucks or something like that, I don't
know. So Rob, thank you.
Thank you for joining us. You're going to be at Mea Baja
(57:16):
January 19th through the 24th. The workshop is not called
Pigeon Holdable, but you can tell that it's going to be a
wide-ranging workshop and you can go surfing because we have a
surf. We have a surf break just five
to seven units away from the campus.
We're on the beach. Oh my God, you're going to love
it this. I am so excited about this.
(57:38):
Thank you, Rob. Loved it, love.
Talking to you and someday we'llmeet in person.
Well. Rob Bell is.
A. Crazy Angel.
I mean, he has such fascinating energy.
He's the kind of person who you would have said as a kid that he
was sort of bouncing off the walls, maybe had ADHD or
(57:59):
something like that. He's going through, you know, he
shared with me before, before werecorded the episode, that he's
going through a lot of transition right now and it's
challenging time. But one of the things I, I take
from him is this sense that to live a life less ordinary, to
be, as he called it, unpigeonholeable.
What a great phrase is what we all aspire to.
(58:22):
I, I don't think anybody on their deathbed wants to feel
like they were pigeon holed or that they actually went on the
path that everybody expected them to go on.
So I really appreciated that about Rob.
Secondly, I literally just got out of leading a faith leaders
retreat here at MEA. And a lot of those people know
Rob Bell because his books have been big time bestsellers in the
(58:45):
faith and religion category. But what was interesting to hear
Rob say and then also to hear itfrom some of the this these
folks in the this private retreat was how being a faith
leader is an enormous responsibility.
And what comes with it is often the straitjacket of having to
live up to doctrine and dogma that you are that the
(59:08):
denomination requires. And to hear him basically think
of being a faith leader as beingan art form.
It's like performance art. And he as long as it was
creative and he had a lot of freedom, he felt like he could
do it all. And, and people would come by
the droves on Sundays, 10,000 people coming to his, you know,
(59:30):
his sermons at a mall at a second rate mall in the Midwest.
And it was when he started to feel like he was being
handcuffed in terms of the message he could deliver, that
he actually lost his interest inbeing a pastor.
And so I think there's somethingto that, the idea that focus on
(59:53):
the creativity, focus on the freedom, focus on the ingenuity
of what you're doing, especiallyif you're a creative sort of
person, and then guard that. And unfortunately for him, he
ended up moving on. And he moved on at a beautiful
time because, you know, to be on.
Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the
United States. It's not a bad time to move on.
(01:00:15):
At the same time, you know, there was an element for him
that I think he still regrets and misses having his flock
every Sunday. And then finally, the the last
thing I got from him is the The Bible is a subversive document
written by a minority group who are oppressed by one global
military superpower after another.
Wow. The Bible as a subversive
(01:00:38):
document. I think there's a lot of people
I know. There's recently a guy named
Amakai. Amakai was in this private faith
leaders retreat. There's a film coming that's
come out about him called Sabbath Queen.
And he's basically an Orthodox rabbi who happens to be gay,
which is that that alone is enough.
Is is unusual. And he has built a following,
(01:01:04):
what he calls labshul, of peoplewho would like to see the Bible
as a subversive document. Rob Bell is someone who has
planted those seeds for people like Amakai and others to come
along and say, what if this document is supposed to actually
rock us out of our stupor of modern life such that we can see
(01:01:25):
that, you know, being a good Christian or or a good Jewish
someone of the Jewish faith is all about believing in some of
the basic principles that were in the Bible.
So hope you enjoyed it. We will occasionally have faith
leaders on on the show here. And Rob is actually leading a
(01:01:47):
workshop in January in Baja. He's a he loves.
Surfing so. Highly recommend that one.
I know it's going to fill up. Thanks.
We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.
To the midlife chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com