WEBVTT

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I'm Jacob Kyle, and this is
chittheads asutomus. In our culture, we

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take certain forms of objective scientific knowledge
to be the only kind of knowledge that

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is valid, and this, of
course then silences all these different other modes

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of knowledge, including somatic, contemplative, spiritual, and all the rest of

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it. You can study the peach, we can have a very beautiful discursive

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explanation of the peach, but unless
we've actually sunk our teeth into it,

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we are not going to know the
peach. And so I think analogous lead

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to that with contemplative traditions, that
we run the risk of not making use

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enough of the contempt of strategies and
technologies themselves that will give us a taste

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of the peach, and instead we
often in some spiritual circles today I think,

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get overly wrapped up in just talking
about the peach. Let's see the

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yoga traditions, as far as I
see them, are about the unique synthesis

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of paradox. Coming back to Western
culture, we have this idea of non

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contradiction. We don't think that something
should contain a contradiction in order to be

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valid, as like a proposition right, as a form of knowledge, but

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in the Indian tradition, paradox is
pervasive. But I think that there is

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a beauty in thinking of the non
object, that is consciousness, that is

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the foundation of being as something profoundly
paradoxical. Shunty shanty shanty. Hello everyone,

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and welcome back to the Chidheads podcast. I'm your host, Jacob Kyle.

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Today is a particularly special episode for
me because, by contrast to how

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this podcast usually goes, where I'm
interviewing other people, in this episode,

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I'm actually the one being interviewed.
I was very honored and delighted to be

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invited by Kelly Blazer to participate in
this year's Power of Meditation Summit. Kelly

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has been organizing and hosting this summit
for I believe it's seven years now,

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and this year she invited me to
participate and to do this interview with her.

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So I had a really wonderful time
talking with Kelly about the concept of

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the scholar practitioner, the importance of
the synergy of knowledge and experience, and

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also I spoke to her a little
bit about my own personal experience as a

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gay man and a queer person.
I spoke a lot about queer spirituality in

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an article that I wrote for Tarka
a couple of years ago now, which

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is called God is Queer, and
you can find that in the on Queer

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Dharma issue of Tarka, which is
at Tarca Journal dot com. As so

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often happens with things like this,
I listened to the interview again and I

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feel like there are certain places where
I could have said something a little bit

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differently, or I could have added
a bit to kind of deepen a sense

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of understanding of what I was talking
about. So there are just two things

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that I wanted to mention before we
segue into today's interview. Kelly spoke to

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me about the concept of zero,
and this came up because Tarka was initially

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published with issue one, which was
on boc dye, and then we did

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issue an issue on illusion and an
issue on ecology, and then we went

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back and we published an issue zero, which was on the Scholar Practitioner,

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And in the introduction to that issue, I spoke about the history of zero

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and the fact that zero wasn't a
concept that we always had. It actually

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was not a part of mathematical systems
until a particularly late date. And then

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when it was adopted into mathematical systems, when it was quote unquote discovered,

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but also in a sense created,
right, because zero is in a sense

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nothingness. It is the null point. It is the absence of something,

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and yet it made the possibility of
new forms of knowledge possible. So out

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of nothing came something. When I
spoke to her about this concept of zero,

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I was really pointing to the way
I was harnessing it as a metaphor

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to point to that which cannot be
expressed, that which cannot be designated,

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that which is silent, or that
which is beyond conceptualization. But this is

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only part of the story. She
mentioned that I called the meditation cushion a

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seat of heresy. Right. A
heretic is someone who has rejected doctrine,

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has rejected dogma. And when we
sit in meditation, even if we have

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cultivated a certain knowledge around that,
we put ourselves at the feet of that

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upsurge of creativity and aliveness, that
is our true nature, which is ultimately

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the source of all concepts, and
also beyond any conceptual articulation whatsoever. The

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tradition of Indian philosophy, and something
I wrote about in my recent m phil

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thesis is this concept of pratipa pratiba
is found throughout the Indian philosophical tradition,

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and it is pointing to this function
of radical creativity or inspiration or illuminative insight

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that is a part of the fabric
of reality itself. Reality is in some

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sense this upsurge, this arising of
creativity within us. So zero in the

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way that I'm using it here metaphorically, is simultaneously that place, that experiential

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silence within which all existing knowledge systems
dissolve. But it is also that place

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from within which new forms of affirmation, radical creativity, inspirations for new forms

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of life, new politics, new
ways of organizing ourselves socially, new ideas

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about spirituality. All of that arises
from this place of zero. Another thing

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that I wanted to mention has to
do with the topic of my article,

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God is Queer. Now. In
this article, I'm saying a number of

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things and the idea of God.
Here, I am not attaching to any

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particular religion or system, although I
do make arguments that are connected to the

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Shaivishakta Darshana. While many would say, why don't we just use the word

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divine or nature or some other you
know, synonym that can stand in as

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a substitute for the word God,
because the word God has become so rife

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with feelings of it being associated with, you know, white man in the

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clouds raining down judgment upon us.
But I say in the article that we

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would do well to reappropriate God from
the haters and the bullies who have turned

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God into something that is a judgmental
overlord, and that there is something healing

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about that process, especially for those
of us who maybe grew up in certain

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forms of organized religion and then had
a sense that we were rejected from that

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tradition, either because we were gay
or because we just didn't fit in within

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the kind of fundamentalist architecture of what
was being sold to us. But to

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say God is queer, I'm not
saying that God is a member of the

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LGBTQ community. Although God is a
member of every community right because God is

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the source of all community in my
opinion, and the source of literally everything,

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every expression of life. But I
meet it in two senses. One

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is a kind of metaphysical sense.
The term queer, before it became a

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kind of label that people identified with, it was actually a theoretical concept that,

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when found in queer theory, that
pointed to the failure of all labels

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to capture and express our full identity. Right. It pointed out the way

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in which all of these different kinds
of identities, these these dualities of man

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and woman, these gendered binaries,
how they break down in the lived experience

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of a queer person. And so
the term queer pointed to a kind of

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radical openness that was always resistant toward
the ways in which identity labels are essentially

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used to constrain and limit our capacity
for experience. God is queer in that

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sense because God is beyond all binaries. God is non binary. God is

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non dual. Right, God is
transcends all of these ways in which language

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splits things into subject and object,
into different forms of polarity, different binaries.

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In that sense, God is extremely
queer. But from a kind of

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polemical perspective. In that article,
I was also trying to argue for new

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forms of queer constructive theologies. Right, because the theologies, the organized religions,

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and even to some sense modern spiritual
communities are narrated in such a way

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that queer people are often not included, or rather the forms of queer embodiment

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that many people are experiencing don't have
a kind of theoretical or theological home or

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philosophical home within which that experience can
make sense. And I think here that

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we have work to do. We
want simultaneously honor the traditions and understand them

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at their word, but also feel
empowered to create new vocabularies, to resituate

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our understanding of different forms of iconography, to reconceptualize certain philosophical vocabularies in a

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way that empowers us to connect with
our own spiritual path as queer people.

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So, without any further ado,
I will hand things over to Kelly.

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I really hope you enjoy this interview. I would love to hear your thoughts

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about it. Please send me an
email at Chittheads at Embodied Philosophy dot com

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and I will definitely send you a
response. I love hearing people's experiences and

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insights as they pertain to the conversations
that I have on the Chitthheads podcast,

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and so I hope you'll reach out
to me if you feel called to.

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Please also note that we have recently
become a YouTube channel. Chittheads now has

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its own YouTube channel, So please
do subscribe to the Chittheads podcast on YouTube

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so that we can begin to grow
that. I'm going to be putting more

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episodes up there. I'm doing a
little bit more work trying to record these

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episodes in a more highly produced way, using different camera angles, using better

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audio equipment. So I'm using YouTube
as a place to place all these and

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also to share some other inspiration and
educational resources. So please do follow us

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on YouTube if you haven't already.
I will hand things over to Kelly and

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thanks so much for being a Chitheads
listener. I hope you enjoy the episode.

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Hello, and welcome back to the
Power of Meditation Summit and I'm here

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with Jacob Kyle, founder of Embody
Philosophy. Such a treat to get to

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be with you. Thanks for coming, Jacob, Thank you so much for

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having me Kelly, It's a pleasure. Yeah. So, Embody Philosophy is

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a platform that's just full of magic, and so I hope people will go

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to embodyphilosophy dot com and just check
it out. And we do have a

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pretty amazing gift which I'll talk about
a little bit later, but a really

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nice discount for folks that want to
play inside your platform. But let me

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tell them a little bit about you. So, Jacob Kyle's meditation teacher,

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writer, philosophy, educator, and
the founding director of Embody Philosophy. He

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holds a master's in philosophy and Classical
Indian Religions from Oxford, a master's in

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philosophy from the New School for Social
Research, and a master's in science in

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political theory from the London School of
Economics and Political Science. Jacob is a

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student of Kashmir Shaivism, scholar practitioner
Paul Muller Ortega, and is a devoted

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practitioner of the Shaivashakta Darshana. So
we can talk, we can kind of

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contextualize that for folks that don't really
know what that means, and we have

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a lot to kind of dive into
here today. I spent a lot of

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time with the Tarka issues from the
Tarka Journal, and so I would really

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want to encourage people to pay attention
to that as well. But maybe you

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can give us kind of a little
bit of an like, just well,

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let me see if I can frame
this properly. So you talk about the

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fact that after you had already published
a few issues of the Tarka Journal,

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you kind of like rewound and published
another one and you called it zero,

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And there's something pretty profound about that, and maybe you could use that as

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kind of a jumping off place to
what happens inside the Shaiva Shakka tradition that's

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distinct maybe from other traditions that people
are used to. Well, the zero

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issue, as you said, was
it was a retro actively a retrospectively however

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you want to look at it.
A published issue of the Tarka Journal.

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We had published I believe three issues
by that point, and when we were

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developing that issue, what I wanted
to do was to really kind of make

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essentially set the foundation for what we
were doing with the entire Tarka project.

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And I I don't think it's exclusively
what we're doing in the Embodied Philosophy project,

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but it's certainly a key part of
it, which is developing and creating

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space for this notion and this perspective
of the scholar practitioner. And by that

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I mean quite simply in the article, in one of the articles that I

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had sent to you, it's essentially
a scholar who practices and when we think

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about scholarship today, there is a
pretense toward objectivity, right, and we

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have this value of objectivity that's very
dominant in Western culture and generally speaking in

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academic circles at least if we think
about them quote unquote traditionally meaning you know,

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over the last couple of centuries that
has tended to denigrate subjective experience.

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Well, given the fact that contemplative
traditions like Shaivishakta tantra are you know,

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built around sequences of sodena and meditative
practice and various practices of ritual if we

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bracket out subjectivity as a valid means
of knowledge, subjective knowledge as a valid

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means of knowledge, then we essentially
have missed the point of these contemplative traditions.

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And so I you know, when
I started embodied philosophy, I think

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the scholar practitioner impulse was there in
the sense that I created it because I

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wanted to have a place where people
could study more deeply yoga philosophy, and

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that it was important to study it
deeply and understand the textual traditions, understand

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the philosophical concepts because what I was
seeing at that time, which is now

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back in twenty fifteen, what I
observed, just at least in my own

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circles, was a really kind of
fluffy distillation of yoga philosophy. You know,

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there was sort of a fluffy idea
around the Yoga Sutras, and in

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fact, the Yoga Sutras was I
mean very kind of I would say,

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narrowly understood, and certain parts of
the book were just completely left out of

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consideration because we didn't really have a
context to understand it. And so I

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think if more practitioners were where I
thought at the time, if more practitioners

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were exposed to a deeper study of
the text, a deeper study of the

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tradition, not in a purely scholarly
way, but in a deep and in

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a way with integrity and depth and
vigor or rigor, that they would that

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their practice would become would feel more
supported and more inspired and more empowered.

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So on the one hand, I
was kind of responding to this sort of

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fluffy yoga philosophy I experienced in the
yoga in yoga schools and yoga studios.

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And then on the other hand,
I felt like scholarship was completely inaccessible to

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most yoga practitioners. So the platform
really was a way of bridging the two.

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It also reflected my own kind of
experience in being a yoga practitioner but

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also being kind of studying philosophy and
being passionate about philosophy, and so that

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combination and exploring the tension between them
and also the possibility of them complementing and

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supporting one another is something that I
just feel is a really important mode of

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investigation. And I think lots of
different people have ideas of what the scholar

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practitioner means, and that's fine,
everybody can have. I mean, even

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in the scholar practitioner issue itself,
the issue zero, I feel like there

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was a lot of different kind of
angles to unpacking this idea of the scholar

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practitioner. But to me, you
know, it really means employing the what

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I call embodied epistemaies. Essentially,
embodied methods in epistemology is just this fancy

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philosophy word for the science of knowledge
and what we take to be knowledge.

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And to go back to the point
about objectivity. In our culture, we

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take certain forms of objective scientific knowledge
to be the only kind of knowledge that

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is valid, and this, of
course then silences all these different other modes

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of knowledge, including somatic, contemplative, spiritual, and all the rest of

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it. And I don't think that
these two are mutually exclusive. I think

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we just have to as a culture, you know, especially in the scholarly

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community, we have to see the
limits of our own cultural epistemology so that

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we can begin to engage these contemplative
traditions in the spirit of openness, almost

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like a scientist, like we are. We are open to the experiments of

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contemplative sodena and see what happens,
See how it transforms our body mind,

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see how it transmutes our nervous system. And then on the yoga side,

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we also have to get past this
what I think is a kind of anti

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intellectual obstacle that is at least pervasive
in the United States and my experience that

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all we need to do is practice. And I don't think that that is

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at all true both experientially, that
all we need is that, because right,

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if we don't have a context of
knowledge to situate and make sense of

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our experience, then oftentimes we explain
our experience in terms of the cultural conditioning

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that we've had, right, And
that's just a form of limitation, and

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so and so you know, in
the yoga community you hear a lot about

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you know, I think it's one
percent theory in ninety nine percent practice.

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I don't know who said this,
maybe Petabi Joyce, but I think that

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that is really a kind of myth
and it's a little bit problematic, and

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it's certainly not representative of the traditions
themselves, especially the Shaivishoktra tradition, as

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you wanted me to talk about,
because the Shaivishoktra tradition is you know,

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through and through permeated by very deep
philosophical inquiry as well as these really sophisticated

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modes of contemplative sodona that are meant
to give one an experience of that knowledge

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that is otherwise being studied. Yeah, brilliant. I mean, I don't

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know that much about the Tantrasara,
but I was reading it a little bit

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recently, and there's a big emphasis
in Avagupta's writings on like the importance of

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studying, studying scripture, studying the
philosophy itself. I just want to read

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a little bit of what you wrote
in that audition in zero, So you

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wrote zero is synonymous with void nothingness
and entails infinity. The emergence of zero

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led to philosophical and mathematical implications that
not all cultures were ready or willing to

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accept. When it was accepted,
it overturned a restitilian philosophy, subverted the

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existing mathematical logic, and provoked a
dismantling of the geocentric worldview. So you

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know, you go on to really
like talk about what that meant and what

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it means to what it meant at
that time to for something first of all,

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like just so kind of blank at
a blanket level, heretical. I

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think at one point you say,
like the seat of the meditator or the

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meditation cushion is a place of heresy. So that willingness to dismantle what is

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is clearly like a part of the
scholar practitioner's role. And also I see

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in this kind of this movement from
geocentric to heliocentric worldview is in a sense

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is like this metaphor from an orientation
to the world that's really kind of self

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centric, like egocentric, to more
centered in the In the wholeness and my

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understanding of the Shaiva Shakta philosophy in
general, there's a huge, huge amount

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of this, like, you know, there's no real dividing line between Kelly

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and Jacob. Like the dividing line
is more like between what is real and

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what is unreal, like what is
true? What is consciousness and then what

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is the the veil that is sometimes
within consciousness. Anyway, before I go

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on and on on that, didn't
he just any thoughts on that? Yeah,

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you know, it's interesting the concept
of zero and the reason I was

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sort of bringing it up playfully and
kind of metaphorically in a way to to

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really express essentially what cannot be designated. Right, So the zero is,

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you know, we have any at
any point we enumerate, we are counting

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things that are existing in the world, and the zero points to the null

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place, the place of emptiness,
which could also be seen as fullness depending

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on right emptiness in the Buddhist tradition, fullness in the Vedante or the Shaivashakta

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tradition. But they're both getting at
the same thing, which is this experiential

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place beyond concepts that in my view, contemplative traditions and really all spiritual traditions

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are in some sense building their architectures
around. So as soon as we start

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to enumerate anything, is the zero
is always implied. And yet we forget

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about the zero, right, We
become obsessed with certain forms of identification,

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right, and so we number ourselves
in various ways. And yet the zero

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is the silence within that is giving
rise to the inspiration of all esoteric and

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spiritual modalities. And so I think
my kind of metaphorical point in bringing zero

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into that conversation with just saying,
let's attend to that as a worthy field

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of our practitioners study. Let's not
forget that we can't actually touch zero with

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our intellectual discursive methods, right,
we can't. Even we can talk about

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it as we're doing. We can
poetically transcribe it in a way, but

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ultimately we need to touch that place
experience experientially within ourselves. And contemplative traditions

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are giving us the tools to actually
experience zero. Right. And so I

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think that there's you know, I
brought it up in the in the the

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Scholar Practitioner article about the of studying
of a peach. Right, you can

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study the peach, you can know
the scientific I'm not a scientist, so

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I'll have trouble articulating this in scientific
terms. But we can have a very

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beautiful discursive explanation of the peach,
but unless we've actually sunk our teeth into

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it, we are not going to
know the peach. And so I think

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analogously to that in with contemplative traditions, that we run the risk of not

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constructing and making use enough of the
contemplative you know, the contemplative strategies and

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technologies themselves that will give us a
taste of the peach, and instead we

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often in some spiritual circles today I
think, get overly wrapped up in just

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talking about the peach. Right,
So that's I think that's kind of that's

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I don't know if I answered your
question, but that's sort of how I

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would try to get you know,
what the point of the zero was.

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That it's a it's a metaphor for
the experience of contemplative fulfillment that then gets

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enumerated in many different types of ways
by different traditions. Beautiful. Yeah,

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there's incredible depth actually just in this
conversation about what like, what is what

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is it to be a scholar practitioner? What is it to let your own

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subjective experience be the deepest ground,
like the most important laboratory. But how

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do we do that without rejecting what's
core in the tradition? Another interesting quote

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here, Hold on a second,
let me see if I can find it.

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Well, let me just read this. This is actually a lot about

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what you just said. But to
be a scholar practitioner then is precisely to

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straddle domains of the object and the
non object. Surely it must not neglect

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that which has been revealed the knowledge
and history of yoga, but it must

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simultaneously seek the revealing power that is
encountered as a priori throughout the yogic process.

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So talk to us a little bit
about the revealing power and maybe how

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that gets positioned inside the teachings of
the naturage. Perhaps if you like,

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yeah, sure, well you're reading
from the article Yoga Apologia, which I

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really in that. When I had
read, I was reading a lot of

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phenomenologists at the time, and I
was being extremely playful with my style,

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and I felt like I was really
experimenting. But I was really trying to

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and I'm sure it seemed a little
obtuse to some folks who are reading it,

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but I was really trying to capture
in that, you know, in

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that passage that you mentioned, this
idea that you know, the the object,

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of course is is any object,
and it can be a conceptual object,

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it can be an object in the
world. And when we're talking about

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I think in that passage, I
was just very recently talking about maybe kaivoly

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Ya Samadi, these sorts of concepts, and without the concepts, right,

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we don't actually perceive them as a
possibility. But without actually having the concept

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initially, we don't really have a
sort of horizon through which, you know,

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between ourselves and the end of that
horizon within which something can be revealed,

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like of you know, an experience
of some sort of form of awakening

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or contemplative fulfillment. I won't put
too you know, definitive a point on

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it, but there's many, of
course ways of thinking about that sort of

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subtle opening, subtle revealing that happens
through the process of meditation or a contemplative

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sodden and more generally. But we
need But at the end of the day,

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kaivala is not an objective state.
It is not an object, right.

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It is actually the condition of having
no objects within consciousness. So that's

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why it's often translated as a loneness
or isolation, which is a little bit

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of a clunky term because when we
think of alone, being alone or being

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you know, in isolation, the
very way in which we perceive that or

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think about that concept is that we
are alone, but everything else is happening

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around us. But that and of
itself is already a picture that is permeated

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with objective perception, right, objects, you know, isolated in space apart

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from each other. But a Kivolya
is actually saying that there's an experience of

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consciousness that is prior to any objectivation
at all. So even so Kivolya is

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not like when I am sitting in
meditation, I'm like Kivolya, it's here,

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there, it is, But rather
we only know it occurred, right,

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We only know somebody happened, well, some forms of somebody, because

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they're smoty with objects and without objects
of thought. But these states are often

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only known almost either because of the
cumulative effects that they incur upon our life.

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Or we realized we were there because
you know, we sat down and

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then the alarm, the meditation alarm
went off, and it was like no

335
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time had passed, right, because
you were in a state without any objects,

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and so there was no thinking as
well. And so the the the

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if we don't have the the words
for these experiences, we don't know that

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they're possible. And and so I
think words like Kivolya and Samadi, amongst

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many many others are essentially pointing to
with the object of a concept, they're

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pointing to an experience, but ultimately
the experience isn't in that concept itself,

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right, we actually have to then
sit down and do the sod and a

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follow the you know, the the
practice technology, whatever it is we're doing.

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And then and then later retroactively we
might think, ah, I feel

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that that might have constituted a Samadi
state or that would have been an experience

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of kai volume because I was nowhere
where was I right? So again,

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I'm not sure if I answered your
question, but it took me. It's

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very paradoxical, I find because there's
this there's this sense. Christopher Wallison I

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talked about this as well, and
this is part of what's in his most

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recent book, you know, like
having a path to awakening or understanding of

350
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what awakening is, what kaivalia is, which I've always heard kind of translated

351
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by as liberation. But with this
kind of a loneeness, kind of isolation

352
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from the dross of the material world, sort of components, so very classical

353
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yoga kind of lens. But so
this idea that there is a possible,

354
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the possibility of liberation. Without that, without being exposed to that idea,

355
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we would never maybe know to seek
it. And yet we the mind gets

356
00:31:52.519 --> 00:31:56.759
so hooked on an idea of a
thing, like a concept of a thing,

357
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that then it becomes impossible to that
away in order to experience what we're

358
00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:07.160
actually experiencing. So it feels like
there's a paradox there. Oh, absolutely,

359
00:32:07.279 --> 00:32:14.880
I think. I think probably those
of us who have done adventures of

360
00:32:14.920 --> 00:32:20.039
Sodona for some sustain period of time
have probably experienced these states. And yet

361
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because we have maybe made them so
mystical or so esoteric that we actually don't

362
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even realize, right, we don't
recognize protibution now, we don't recognize the

363
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state for what it is because we're
so attached to some idea we have about

364
00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:40.680
it. And usually I think that
idea is associated with a really transcendent notion

365
00:32:40.839 --> 00:32:46.000
of what spiritual experience is supposed to
be like. And you're right, You're

366
00:32:46.039 --> 00:32:52.960
absolutely right. I think it's it
is paradoxical. And and but the you

367
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know, the the yoga traditions,
as far as I see them, are

368
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about the unique synthesis paradox that actually, you know, we again, like

369
00:33:02.920 --> 00:33:08.079
coming back to Western culture, we
have this idea of non contradiction. We

370
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don't think that something should contain a
contradiction in order to be valid as like

371
00:33:15.240 --> 00:33:19.680
a proposition, right, as a
form of knowledge. But in the Indian

372
00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:23.839
tradition, paradox is pervasive, right, And so in a certain way,

373
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the experience of paradox is sort of
getting at the truth of it. So,

374
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so acknowledging it as a paradox might
it could either send us running in

375
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the other direction or think that it's
wrong. And I think that's where our

376
00:33:38.079 --> 00:33:44.759
conditioned way of thinking about these things
affects our relationship with it, because we

377
00:33:44.799 --> 00:33:47.960
think it's supposed to completely cohere.
Now that's not to say that there are

378
00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:53.039
certain contradictions that we shouldn't work out
philosophically for ourselves. But I think that

379
00:33:53.119 --> 00:34:00.640
there is a beauty in thinking of
the non object that is consciousness, that

380
00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:07.119
is the foundation of being as something
profoundly paradoxical. M Yeah, I mean,

381
00:34:07.159 --> 00:34:13.840
and certainly if all arising is from
this kind of floor, you can't

382
00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:17.519
really call it a floor because it
doesn't have any substance but consciousness itself,

383
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and there infinite low side of consciousness. If we have any kind of a

384
00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:30.039
glimpse into what consciousness is, we
invariably are going to perceive the infinitude of

385
00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:35.079
those different perspectives on consciousness. So
it's going to feel a little bit like

386
00:34:35.320 --> 00:34:37.400
we're going crazy, perhaps, even
though that might be an insight into what

387
00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:44.800
really is. So yeah, there's
a lot there. I want to take

388
00:34:44.840 --> 00:34:49.440
us back to the idea of the
revealing power because I feel like just this

389
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.239
the kind of the the phase of
revelation, even inside this the teachings on

390
00:34:54.280 --> 00:35:00.119
the five acts kind of you know, elucid, it's what the other acts

391
00:35:00.159 --> 00:35:02.800
are in a sense. And I
wonder if you might just be yes,

392
00:35:04.840 --> 00:35:07.800
sure, So I feel like you
want me to talk a little bit about

393
00:35:07.840 --> 00:35:14.239
the the symbolic symbolic depiction of Naraja, right so Notaj, as we know,

394
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:22.119
is the dancing form of Shiva,
and he beautifully reflects the non duality

395
00:35:22.159 --> 00:35:27.360
of consciousness in in this morti right
in this, in this statue, in

396
00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:32.480
this image and so you have a
statue of Nataraja behind you, and there

397
00:35:32.519 --> 00:35:38.079
are, yes, there are four
arms right and and two feet and in

398
00:35:39.559 --> 00:35:44.039
let's see if I can remember where
they're situated. But in one hand he

399
00:35:44.199 --> 00:35:50.280
has the damaru drum right, which
is the essentially the the drum of creation.

400
00:35:51.320 --> 00:35:54.000
And then he has a hand that
is in a biomudra, which means

401
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:59.599
fear not. And then he has
this another hand that's holding a flame.

402
00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:07.280
And uh, those three those three
hands, the elements that he's holding are

403
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:12.559
representative of the creation, the sustainment, and the dissolution, which is this

404
00:36:12.639 --> 00:36:17.239
kind of arc of reality that is
happening all the time. Right at every

405
00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:22.519
given moment, something is coming into
being, something is being sustained for some

406
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:27.800
time, and then something is is
passing away and then and you know,

407
00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:30.719
we can think about this just in
the arc of life, but it happens,

408
00:36:30.039 --> 00:36:32.440
you know, at a daily level, it happens at a second level,

409
00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:37.960
that happens at a minute level.
And then there are two other kind

410
00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:43.119
of symbolic depictions, and one is
well, they're actually well, depending on

411
00:36:43.159 --> 00:36:45.079
how you look at it, other
three or four more. But there is

412
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:52.079
the foot that is the hand.
Excuse me the hand that is turned down

413
00:36:52.119 --> 00:36:59.480
with the palm facing away, and
this is representative of the concealing of reality,

414
00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:04.519
right, the act that we are
hiding from ourselves act you know,

415
00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:08.360
in a in a way that we
at the absolute level have actually chosen to

416
00:37:08.440 --> 00:37:12.880
do. Right, we've made the
decision or rather, you know, not

417
00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:16.119
our individual egoic self has made that
decision, but the great cosmic consciousness has

418
00:37:16.119 --> 00:37:23.400
made the decision to conceal itself as
our individuated identity. And then there and

419
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:29.159
then that hand very beautifully is pointing
to an upraised foot, right, the

420
00:37:29.239 --> 00:37:31.039
upraised foot that is, you know, the foot that's well, they're both

421
00:37:31.119 --> 00:37:36.880
dancing, I suppose, but the
upraised foot is the is. You know,

422
00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:40.639
feed are very sacred in in the
Indian tradition, and one is often

423
00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:45.719
you know, prostrates when selves at
the guru's feet. And also sometimes you'll

424
00:37:45.719 --> 00:37:51.440
see on people's alters the sandals,
right, because the sandals represent grace,

425
00:37:51.519 --> 00:38:00.480
they represent essentially the anugraja shakti,
right, which is the revealing function of

426
00:38:00.559 --> 00:38:07.639
reality itself. So on one level, everything is in this kind of cosmic

427
00:38:07.880 --> 00:38:13.960
dance of coming into being sustaining for
a while and dissolving, and that's sort

428
00:38:13.960 --> 00:38:17.800
of like this cyclical, recycled process. And then there is this other,

429
00:38:19.519 --> 00:38:25.039
this dimension happening simultaneously, this dialectic
of awakening and concealing, and you can

430
00:38:25.039 --> 00:38:28.559
think about it as a game of
heide and seek. In fact, that's

431
00:38:28.599 --> 00:38:31.360
not an original idea that comes from
Alan Watts. I believe was the first

432
00:38:31.400 --> 00:38:40.280
place I heard that. And in
this concealing and revealing dialectic of our lives

433
00:38:40.440 --> 00:38:46.800
and of really cosmic reality itself.
According to the Shaibashakta tradition, is the

434
00:38:46.920 --> 00:38:52.519
dance of life, and it happens
infinitely, I mean depends on who you

435
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:55.360
ask. Different teachers will say,
well, you are ultimately looking to liberate

436
00:38:55.400 --> 00:39:00.880
yourself from the cycles of smsara,
and at some point you'll be in in

437
00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:05.840
you know, you'll you'll be beyond
that cycle. But from the nondual shaivashock

438
00:39:05.880 --> 00:39:08.960
to perspective, it's a nondual tradition, there's nowhere else to go but here.

439
00:39:09.880 --> 00:39:15.199
Everything is already here, because nothing
is separate or different from what is

440
00:39:15.239 --> 00:39:20.119
already here. And so in some
sense, the awakening is to you know,

441
00:39:20.159 --> 00:39:23.719
the awakening happens, the revealing happens, potentially in this very lifetime.

442
00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:29.800
But I think it's also interesting to
think about the fate, the sort of

443
00:39:30.039 --> 00:39:32.960
subtle variations of this, and that
it's not like you were suggesting before.

444
00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:37.360
Actually I think it isn't. You
know. Sometimes we get stuck on this

445
00:39:37.559 --> 00:39:43.559
idea and it happens in you know, popular spirituality a lot that like there

446
00:39:43.599 --> 00:39:45.840
is this state of enlightenment, like
you know, I've interviewed a lot of

447
00:39:45.840 --> 00:39:50.079
people for Chittheads, as you've interviewed
a lot of people, and it shifted

448
00:39:50.079 --> 00:39:52.719
a little bit. But I remember
at the beginning, it seemed like every

449
00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:58.800
spiritual teacher had this story of like
their awakening, as if like it was

450
00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:01.559
just one moment and then they were
on that higher level and everybody else was

451
00:40:01.599 --> 00:40:06.480
down here hoping that their you know, peak spiritual experience would happen. And

452
00:40:06.559 --> 00:40:09.519
I think that's a really it's a
really sort of it's not a non dual

453
00:40:09.559 --> 00:40:14.400
perspective in my opinion, and it's
a bit of a problematic view because it

454
00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:22.400
suggests that again there's this hierarchy,
and I think that that concealing revealing dance

455
00:40:22.760 --> 00:40:27.760
happens in subtle ways throughout our lives, and actually we can become quite revealed,

456
00:40:27.800 --> 00:40:30.679
like we can, like I can
remember, you know, being in

457
00:40:30.760 --> 00:40:35.360
states just sort of like in that
interstitial space between waking and dreaming, right,

458
00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:39.199
which is a is itself a kind
of auspicious space in yoga traditions,

459
00:40:39.719 --> 00:40:44.400
and sometimes you're there. I feel
like it's a common experience. Sometimes you're

460
00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:47.480
in that space and you just know, right, you're just in this feeling

461
00:40:47.519 --> 00:40:53.239
of knowing or you understand something,
and you as you're waking up, you

462
00:40:53.320 --> 00:40:55.639
want to write it down because like, ah, I got it, I

463
00:40:55.679 --> 00:40:58.480
got it, I got it.
I don't know what I got, but

464
00:40:58.599 --> 00:41:00.480
it's there and it's profound, and
if I can just write it down.

465
00:41:00.719 --> 00:41:07.880
And then as you become concealed into
your own linguistic you know, identified position,

466
00:41:08.599 --> 00:41:14.360
you lose it, right, It
disappears, it falls back into the

467
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:19.920
ocean of consciousness. And so I
feel like we do ourselves maybe a disservice

468
00:41:19.960 --> 00:41:23.960
of thinking that they're revealing as a
sort of linear trajectory upward, and that

469
00:41:24.039 --> 00:41:31.400
actually these moments of realization and revelation
are happening in subtle ways throughout our lives.

470
00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:37.320
And that's another thing I think we
could do, you know, we

471
00:41:37.400 --> 00:41:42.159
could develop more of a language around
talking about that and acknowledging that and affirming

472
00:41:42.239 --> 00:41:50.280
those moments as really unique and special
and auspicious. Yeah, I mean,

473
00:41:50.440 --> 00:41:55.800
just that kind of rubbing together of
concealment and revelation is incredible. I mean,

474
00:41:57.400 --> 00:42:00.039
I've read something recently about how,
like, you know, dream states

475
00:42:00.079 --> 00:42:07.000
have been studied and like the process
of what the mind is doing in the

476
00:42:07.039 --> 00:42:09.239
dream state is exactly what is happening
during the waking state, except in the

477
00:42:09.239 --> 00:42:15.480
waking state we're constantly checking against what
we can perceive in so called outer reality,

478
00:42:15.559 --> 00:42:20.400
Like the doors of perception are in
contact with the things of this world,

479
00:42:20.840 --> 00:42:24.480
and that's providing a constant restraint on
what the mind would otherwise be able

480
00:42:24.519 --> 00:42:28.800
to do. And so, in
a sense, like our waking life is

481
00:42:28.840 --> 00:42:34.880
the concealment because we're you know,
our consciousness is colored by contact with the

482
00:42:34.920 --> 00:42:38.000
outer world, and therefore we you
know, to quote Chameraja, I think

483
00:42:38.440 --> 00:42:45.400
seventh Sutra of the Sutras on recognition
something like we therefore, maybe it's not

484
00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:51.000
the seventh ninth we wander diluted like
as some Saudines, because we're in that

485
00:42:51.760 --> 00:42:55.760
contact and it's an inevitable byproduct of
consciousness. Coming into the world of form,

486
00:42:57.199 --> 00:43:00.360
that there's constraint that occurs. But
we think of the day as you

487
00:43:00.360 --> 00:43:04.440
know, we think of the day
as light and the night as concealment,

488
00:43:04.519 --> 00:43:08.559
and in fact it's maybe the opposite. But nonetheless it feels like that I

489
00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:13.840
totally hear what you're saying that it's
you know, it's really a flawed paradigm

490
00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:17.719
to think that there's some enlightenment experience
and that we have somewhere to get.

491
00:43:17.800 --> 00:43:21.760
I mean that the image of like
the night sky is coming to mind,

492
00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:25.159
like maybe it's just like having this
sense of the profundity of the darkness that

493
00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:30.679
is being the world and then it's
kind of pierced through by moments of light.

494
00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:34.679
Yeah, and also I think,
you know, it feels like you're

495
00:43:34.719 --> 00:43:39.119
touching on a beautiful point, which
is that you know, when we the

496
00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:45.800
morete is symbolic of the divine reality, which also you know includes a pasmata,

497
00:43:45.880 --> 00:43:49.960
right, which is the demon of
forgetting or the demon of ignorance,

498
00:43:50.400 --> 00:43:52.800
who is underneath not toa daja's foot, and we think, well, you

499
00:43:52.840 --> 00:43:57.880
know, he's trying to repress that, but really it's all part of the

500
00:43:57.920 --> 00:44:01.719
mortis right. The ignorance is part
of the morti. The the concealing and

501
00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:05.960
the revealing, it's part of the
morti. So when we think about the

502
00:44:06.159 --> 00:44:10.800
entire morti as being a symbolic depiction
of divine reality, then like you're saying,

503
00:44:12.039 --> 00:44:16.000
the darkness, the concealing is also
divine and so it's not that we're

504
00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:20.679
looking to get. I mean,
this is where the nondual traditions are extremely

505
00:44:20.760 --> 00:44:27.719
different from the those dualistic traditions that
think and I'm not and I don't think

506
00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:30.320
I think Sometimes we say, oh, the Vedanta's I mean, there's lots

507
00:44:30.360 --> 00:44:35.920
of misunderstandings. There's non duality is
pervasive throughout a lot of different traditions,

508
00:44:35.960 --> 00:44:39.800
and there's ways of reading you know, Vidonta in a way that's very aligned

509
00:44:39.800 --> 00:44:45.840
with Shaivashakta Tantra and even classical yoga. But when we when nondualists want to

510
00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:52.280
distinguish themselves from dualistic systems, they
often point to some traditions of thought that

511
00:44:52.679 --> 00:44:58.360
denigrate the body right and say that
the body is essentially a you know,

512
00:44:58.559 --> 00:45:01.000
meat tube of piss and shit,
and we're just looking to get out of

513
00:45:01.039 --> 00:45:06.559
it and beyond it and to purify
ourselves into you know, live in some

514
00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:12.440
alternate plane in our pure, you
know, soul like state. And of

515
00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:15.400
course the Shivish extradition isn't saying that, it's saying that, you know,

516
00:45:15.639 --> 00:45:25.920
every individuated experience is itself at some
level is a completely like equal expression of

517
00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:35.000
the divine consciousness. And so it's
our own ignorance that then projects onto our

518
00:45:35.039 --> 00:45:39.039
experiences and our relationships with other people
these ideas of hierarchy of well, I'm

519
00:45:39.039 --> 00:45:43.800
more illuminated than you, and this
person is so sad because there's living in

520
00:45:43.840 --> 00:45:46.159
this hell rom and all that sort
of thing that we that our egos tend

521
00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:50.679
to project onto it. Mm hmm, yeah, I mean, just the

522
00:45:51.400 --> 00:45:57.280
it is a very ambiguous place for
a lot of people, and and you

523
00:45:57.320 --> 00:46:01.920
know requires this kind of combination between
some sort of surrender and then ongoing inquiry,

524
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:08.760
I think, because it's not to
become like completely sort of morally vacuous

525
00:46:09.039 --> 00:46:15.000
or you know, relativistic. And
yet it's a it is a very different

526
00:46:15.039 --> 00:46:20.039
tradition in that, you know,
to speak to something we were talking about

527
00:46:20.039 --> 00:46:22.880
before we hit record, you know, there's not a whole lot of like

528
00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:31.039
moral like very identified moral code except
for to recognize everything as self, which

529
00:46:31.119 --> 00:46:37.119
is a pretty big moral code as
it turns out. Yeah, Now,

530
00:46:37.159 --> 00:46:40.159
I think it's a really important point
you're raising, because I think that when

531
00:46:40.199 --> 00:46:46.079
people hear that right, that everything
is equally divine, then they they're looking

532
00:46:46.199 --> 00:46:51.519
for a moral allege within which they
can, you know, say that this

533
00:46:51.679 --> 00:46:55.559
is wrong and that is wrong.
And I think it's really my teacher Paul

534
00:46:55.719 --> 00:47:01.960
often speaks about this, that we
can't on some level. Yes, that

535
00:47:02.159 --> 00:47:08.719
is true from an absolute perspective,
but we are not perceiving the world from

536
00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:13.920
the absolute perspective, right, We
are not in a state of non dual

537
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:19.199
consciousness where we are experiencing ourselves simultaneously
with everything that is in such a way

538
00:47:19.480 --> 00:47:22.320
that we can really make sense of
that. So we fall into contradiction and

539
00:47:22.360 --> 00:47:32.679
we fall into misunderstanding and spiritual bypassing
quite frankly, when we take that explanation

540
00:47:32.800 --> 00:47:39.480
of reality as a moral justification,
right, we actually because again it goes

541
00:47:39.519 --> 00:47:45.920
back to this idea of just talking
about these traditions and not actually engaging with

542
00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:51.559
the spiritual technologies of which they are
a part. And as we were saying,

543
00:47:51.800 --> 00:47:53.960
you know, in that portion of
our conversation, before we started the

544
00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:59.400
interview, at least according to Abaavagupta, you know, who's one of the

545
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:05.000
thinkers that I study very closely,
that ethical formation process happens as a result

546
00:48:05.039 --> 00:48:09.840
of your sodena, and and so
you become essentially or you have more insight

547
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:17.000
into the nature of morality, you
have more of a you have more skillfulness

548
00:48:17.199 --> 00:48:24.800
around moral decision making and ethical perspectives
when you are engaged in that sequence of

549
00:48:25.239 --> 00:48:30.000
sodena, and when you are actually
you know, doing the work of cultivating

550
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:35.639
the nervous system such that you can
understand things at a sort of more subtle

551
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:38.599
level, I guess, yeah,
yeah, And and the you know,

552
00:48:38.639 --> 00:48:43.960
the practice, the practices show us
so much about like the mind's tendency to

553
00:48:44.039 --> 00:48:49.320
defend and to kind of bolster the
separate self and become something that we're not,

554
00:48:49.480 --> 00:48:53.800
or protect our reputation or all of
the like slippery things that that conditioned

555
00:48:53.840 --> 00:49:00.320
mind does. And without sudden that
it's very hard to you know, see

556
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:04.920
that stuff much less kind of cop
to it the impact that it has on

557
00:49:04.960 --> 00:49:08.280
your life, or recognize how a
lot of what you would consider amoral activity

558
00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:15.280
and others probably has similar roots to
what you've experienced inside. Well, yeah,

559
00:49:15.440 --> 00:49:17.719
now this takes us kind of toward
a direction I wanted to go.

560
00:49:20.199 --> 00:49:23.119
You know, one of the other
articles that you sent me is called God

561
00:49:23.199 --> 00:49:30.119
is Queer and yeah, and it's
it's amazing. I'm going to read from

562
00:49:30.159 --> 00:49:32.440
it again and then maybe I'll be
able to explain why I feel like you

563
00:49:32.519 --> 00:49:36.440
just linked me into it. Maybe
I won't. We'll see. So you

564
00:49:36.480 --> 00:49:40.320
said, let us now take steps
to reappropriate the word God, which has

565
00:49:40.559 --> 00:49:45.559
for too long haunted many queer people
in the Judaeo Christian world as a dogmatic

566
00:49:45.760 --> 00:49:50.199
overlord who looks down upon the promiscuous
citizens of Sodom with rage and spite,

567
00:49:50.360 --> 00:49:53.159
who at best hates the sin,
not the sinner, when nearly every homo

568
00:49:53.239 --> 00:49:57.760
alive knows that the two cannot be
separated. Yes, God, for many

569
00:49:57.840 --> 00:50:00.039
of us has been a hater and
a bully, or at least an inspiration

570
00:50:00.119 --> 00:50:04.119
for the many bullies and haters who
have sculpted in the dark corners in hallways

571
00:50:04.119 --> 00:50:06.760
of our lives. And you know, you go on, your writing is

572
00:50:06.800 --> 00:50:09.440
so beautiful. I just I loved
getting to kind of basket it for a

573
00:50:09.480 --> 00:50:13.800
little while. But you talk about
this in the way I've talked about how

574
00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:19.639
a lot of people who've been harmed
by you know, moralistic twist with twisted

575
00:50:19.800 --> 00:50:23.320
moral codes, kind of moralistic traditions
have been you know, particularly folks with

576
00:50:23.320 --> 00:50:29.480
marginalized identities, but like almost anyone
has been harmed in some way by the

577
00:50:29.519 --> 00:50:32.760
way that these moralistic traditions are then
foisted by the powers that be, YadA,

578
00:50:32.840 --> 00:50:37.480
YadA. And you talk about the
fact that sometimes a way to heal

579
00:50:37.519 --> 00:50:44.360
that for folks is to move more
toward atheism or you know, yeah,

580
00:50:44.440 --> 00:50:46.599
just some sort of a rejection of
the of the concept of God. And

581
00:50:46.719 --> 00:50:52.960
you're you're suggesting that a reappropriation of
God and a kind of understanding of the

582
00:50:53.039 --> 00:50:58.000
queerness of God is maybe the more
healing path. So if you could just

583
00:50:58.039 --> 00:51:00.960
talk about that a little bit,
it would be delighted. Yeah, not

584
00:51:00.039 --> 00:51:06.840
a small topic for sure. Yeah. I loved the I felt I loved

585
00:51:06.840 --> 00:51:10.119
the opportunity to write that article,
and that issue was obviously very important to

586
00:51:10.159 --> 00:51:16.039
me as someone who identifies as a
gay man and a queer person. And

587
00:51:16.719 --> 00:51:20.199
you know, I'll just speak a
little bit to my personal experience. I

588
00:51:20.800 --> 00:51:25.480
lost my faith in God at a
certain age, and I can remember it

589
00:51:25.639 --> 00:51:30.639
very viscerally. I used to have
this image in my room. It was

590
00:51:30.679 --> 00:51:35.199
like a picture of Jesus at the
garden of Guestsemine on like the cross section

591
00:51:35.239 --> 00:51:37.199
of a tree trunk. It was
very specific. I think it was actually

592
00:51:37.239 --> 00:51:40.239
a very popular image. I think
I remember seeing it some other homes.

593
00:51:40.280 --> 00:51:47.400
And I have no idea how this
conversation I had with this mentor woman who

594
00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:51.519
is like ten years older than me, who I did theater with, but

595
00:51:51.599 --> 00:51:54.599
she told me something about ancient Greece, and I have no idea what it

596
00:51:54.639 --> 00:52:00.079
was. I can't remember exactly,
but it within the course of that conversation

597
00:52:00.320 --> 00:52:04.719
I went from believing in God to
not believing in God. And it was

598
00:52:04.920 --> 00:52:07.000
I you know, I when I
speak about it, which isn't actually very

599
00:52:07.199 --> 00:52:12.679
often, it's it was like a
dark night of the soul for me because

600
00:52:12.719 --> 00:52:19.960
I felt completely unmoored from my from
the ground of what I knew to be

601
00:52:20.079 --> 00:52:22.199
real. And I remember sitting and
looking at the Jesus in the garden of

602
00:52:22.239 --> 00:52:30.960
the Gustemone and and just crying hysterically, you know, about like not having

603
00:52:30.320 --> 00:52:37.880
any source of meaning ultimately, And
you know, I've I think a lot

604
00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:42.480
of what I've done with my life, and and and the Embody Flashy Project

605
00:52:42.480 --> 00:52:45.960
really all and and my expirations of
philosophy. It took me many years to

606
00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:51.480
realize that. I think it's I've
always been seeking God in in in the

607
00:52:51.480 --> 00:52:58.440
way. I've always been looking for
that substitute of meaningfulness that I lost at

608
00:52:58.440 --> 00:53:05.239
that early age. Now, the
reason I lost my faith in God was

609
00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:08.159
because God was so narrowly defined.
I say this in the article, like,

610
00:53:08.760 --> 00:53:15.639
when God is so narrowly defined that
it's possible to say one either believes

611
00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:22.159
or not believes in God, then
you are you've narrowly You've narrowly defined God

612
00:53:22.280 --> 00:53:28.039
so much that that kind of dichotomy
makes sense. But if, as the

613
00:53:28.039 --> 00:53:34.840
Shaiva Shoktra traditions teach, God is
everything, nothing and anything in between,

614
00:53:35.760 --> 00:53:42.280
then it's a little bit more difficult
to say one doesn't or does believe in

615
00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:47.559
God, because both declarations are themselves
already, according to the shaivashacta perspective,

616
00:53:47.840 --> 00:53:55.079
already implying God in their very articulation, because to articulate anything is an expression

617
00:53:55.119 --> 00:54:01.320
of God. So so if you
know, we had a larger container to

618
00:54:01.760 --> 00:54:07.239
under and even I mean even in
the obviously it was a Christian experience that

619
00:54:07.280 --> 00:54:09.519
I was having in that moment.
But even in the Christian tradition, there

620
00:54:09.599 --> 00:54:15.320
is a long theological debate about the
nature of God. And even had I

621
00:54:15.360 --> 00:54:20.199
been exposed to that, which maybe
if I had gone to the pastor and

622
00:54:20.480 --> 00:54:22.360
told him, you know, maybe
he would have given me some of these

623
00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:29.000
thinkers to explore. But really it
came, I think on it came at

624
00:54:29.039 --> 00:54:31.559
the time that I was also coming
to grips with my own sexuality. And

625
00:54:31.599 --> 00:54:35.679
I think implicitly, even though at
the time I don't think I would have

626
00:54:36.079 --> 00:54:38.840
put it this way, I was
implicitly recognizing that I did not belong in

627
00:54:38.880 --> 00:54:45.480
this church, right, I did
not belong in that my experience and my

628
00:54:45.559 --> 00:54:50.400
identity, as I was coming to
know it, no longer had a home.

629
00:54:50.920 --> 00:54:53.920
And then and and I think that
that was very much wrapped up in

630
00:54:54.079 --> 00:55:00.519
my own loss of faith in God. And so now I think of faith

631
00:55:00.719 --> 00:55:06.360
very differently, and I think that
God is obvious. I think that it's

632
00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:08.559
you know, it's only when we
are stuck in these really narrow ideas of

633
00:55:08.599 --> 00:55:15.840
God that we that we that we
lose the what is if we just pause

634
00:55:16.679 --> 00:55:22.599
or engage in contemplative of soden long
enough to feel it. You know,

635
00:55:22.840 --> 00:55:29.039
we can experience God everywhere, but
it isn't the white man living in the

636
00:55:29.039 --> 00:55:34.519
clouds throwing thunderbolts of judgment down on
all of us. Obviously. Now,

637
00:55:35.039 --> 00:55:38.400
I think my larger purpose in that
article, I mean, that's sort of

638
00:55:38.400 --> 00:55:44.400
my own just speaking to my own
experience. But you know, I often

639
00:55:44.480 --> 00:55:49.199
feel like I'm in the minority.
I mean, there's lots of gay people

640
00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:55.800
practicing yoga, but in sort of
the esoteric communities that study different esoteric wisdom

641
00:55:55.840 --> 00:56:00.159
traditions, there are not a lot
of queer people. They're not a lot

642
00:56:00.199 --> 00:56:04.599
of gay people. And I think
that's partly because, as I said in

643
00:56:04.639 --> 00:56:07.639
the article, we have been I
say that at the end, in a

644
00:56:07.719 --> 00:56:12.000
very polemical way, that God was
taken from us in the sense that,

645
00:56:12.519 --> 00:56:19.760
you know, God was always used
as a narrative force to judge and condemned

646
00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:25.360
to hell gay people, LGBTQ people, queer people, and that this has

647
00:56:25.519 --> 00:56:35.840
led to an understandable reaction in LGBTQ
people to reject God and to essentially attach

648
00:56:36.360 --> 00:56:38.920
to another God, or the God
of science, one could say, or

649
00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:45.320
at least, you know, different
modes of understanding secular understanding that they think

650
00:56:45.480 --> 00:56:51.280
are safe from the dogmatic perspectives that
are you know, present in kind of

651
00:56:51.320 --> 00:56:55.199
fundamentalist religions. But I think that
there are all sorts of reasons that I

652
00:56:55.199 --> 00:57:01.079
won't get into about why. I
think the spiritual voice aid that is left

653
00:57:01.159 --> 00:57:08.719
without the freedom and inspiration to explore
God and what God means for us in

654
00:57:08.760 --> 00:57:15.079
our lives outside of those dogmas is
causing us a lot of suffering. And

655
00:57:15.440 --> 00:57:20.800
I think, I think, and
I think that this isn't just regarding LGBTQ

656
00:57:20.920 --> 00:57:25.000
people. I think it's all secular
people who, you know, we we

657
00:57:25.199 --> 00:57:31.039
have this idea of what reality is
that is that is framing and limiting our

658
00:57:31.159 --> 00:57:37.440
sense of wonder and our sense of
aliveness and our sense of amazement, you

659
00:57:37.480 --> 00:57:39.840
know. I mean, we don't
even have to have a God concept to

660
00:57:39.880 --> 00:57:46.440
be amazed by the cosmos, right, and the magnitude and and the the

661
00:57:46.559 --> 00:57:51.760
magnitude of it, and how just
thinking wow, we don't actually know.

662
00:57:52.079 --> 00:57:54.119
We don't have to actually have a
limit concept for the universe. It could

663
00:57:54.199 --> 00:57:58.519
it's for you know, from some
perspectives, it's contracting. From some perspectives,

664
00:57:58.519 --> 00:58:01.599
it's continuing to expand infinite. It
may go on infinitely, and that

665
00:58:01.679 --> 00:58:08.960
even of itself is a is just
one tool that as secular thinkers we can

666
00:58:09.039 --> 00:58:15.119
take and go to that place of
wonder because it naturally invokes wonder. And

667
00:58:15.599 --> 00:58:20.440
you know, at least the ancient
Greeks thought that wonder was the source of

668
00:58:20.440 --> 00:58:24.199
philosophy, right, and then the
Indian tradition, you know, often suffering

669
00:58:24.280 --> 00:58:29.039
is the source of philosophy. It's
interesting to think about the dynamic of those

670
00:58:29.079 --> 00:58:35.119
two, but yeah, it's I
think we are all living in a time

671
00:58:35.519 --> 00:58:43.039
when we need new spiritual solutions,
and we're seeing the symptoms of not having

672
00:58:43.880 --> 00:58:50.000
spiritual solutions that speak to our time
outside of the dogmas of fundamentalist religions everywhere,

673
00:58:50.280 --> 00:58:57.159
right, and the failure of particular
ideologies to substitute that. You know,

674
00:58:57.400 --> 00:59:01.000
that that that place that is reserved
for the adventure of meaning and the

675
00:59:01.039 --> 00:59:08.079
adventure of fulfillment. That is spirituality
so beautiful. I feel like I could

676
00:59:08.119 --> 00:59:15.559
go on and on, just I
want to extract more of this beautiful wisdom

677
00:59:15.639 --> 00:59:20.039
and curiosity, but we should probably
let our guests go and have their lives.

678
00:59:20.880 --> 00:59:24.559
But thank you so much for the
immensity of your curiosity and your capacity

679
00:59:24.559 --> 00:59:29.840
to hold paradox, and you kind
of brought us back full circle in a

680
00:59:29.920 --> 00:59:36.280
sense to this querying of what the
infinite is, and we began with the

681
00:59:36.320 --> 00:59:42.159
infinite and the nothingness and can come
back to this place of like maybe you

682
00:59:42.199 --> 00:59:45.800
know, for those that have felt
like cut off in any way from traditions

683
00:59:45.800 --> 00:59:51.519
that they can understand maybe this querying
into the Shaivashakta tantra and give folks back

684
00:59:51.559 --> 00:59:55.920
to that place of infinitude. So
I want to let people know a little

685
00:59:55.920 --> 01:00:00.440
bit about the free gift that you're
offering. It's good stuff. So Embody

686
01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:07.320
Philosophy, as I said, is
an extraordinarily extensive platform basically a library of

687
01:00:07.400 --> 01:00:14.280
continuing education. And you know,
Jacob and I went pretty deep here and

688
01:00:14.639 --> 01:00:19.480
esoteric, and I'm sure there's a
lot of that, but also there's a

689
01:00:19.480 --> 01:00:24.280
lot of content that's also just very
grounded in the things that one wants to

690
01:00:24.360 --> 01:00:30.360
know in a sense, like anyone
who's a meditator, a yoga teacher who

691
01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:35.079
just kind of wants the fundamentals.
There's there are so many courses that you

692
01:00:35.119 --> 01:00:38.079
can explore there. And the coupon
code that we'll send to you all in

693
01:00:38.119 --> 01:00:43.559
your email will give folks twenty five
percent off of the monthly subscription to The

694
01:00:43.559 --> 01:00:49.920
Wisdom School, So check it out
and thank you Jacob, thank you so

695
01:00:50.039 --> 01:00:54.880
much. You've just you've you've lifted
up so many voices and just disseminated so

696
01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:59.840
much goodness through that, through that
platform and through your work so deep.

697
01:01:00.280 --> 01:01:01.800
Thank you so much. Kelly,
it's been such an honor to chat with

698
01:01:01.840 --> 01:01:05.159
you today. Thank you all right, be well,