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Speaker 1: I don't know if I should, says I love catechizing

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former occultists because they get it. I've had more than

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one person say to me, Yeah, I was getting way

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too deep into this. I was being haunted by these demons.

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I couldn't deal, like.

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Speaker 2: Figure it out.

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Speaker 1: I heard about orthodoxy, I didn't know what it was.

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I put icons up in my house and the demon

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stopped attacking me. So I'm all in. And Mike, right,

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I mean, so you know, it's it's we laugh and

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it's funny, but it's so real for these people, and

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and and so that I bring this up as an

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example because that's the kind of person with whom you

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don't have to have any iconoclasm discussion, right that all

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that kind of well, But the Old Testament says, blah

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blah blah. You can't make a graven image like that's

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so academic. You know, when somebody's being haunted by a

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demon and they put icons up and the demons go away,

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it works. There's exactly no And it's not academic. It's

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deeply practical.

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Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello everyone,

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I'm here with doctor Zach Porku. And so doctor Zach

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has written a wonderful book. It's called Journey to Reality.

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Many of you might recognize the book. I have been

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noticing even in my own parish that this is being

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recommended by young people, by priests as a kind of

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introduction to Orthodoxy. And I think that what's interesting about

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this book is that it's a it's a kind of

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introduction to Orthodoxy, and that for the times, you could say,

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because it tries to introduce Orthodoxy first of all, as

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a as a kind of cause make vision as a worldview,

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and doesn't go into not as much about theology, but

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really about a way of engaging with reality. And so

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it seemed to me like it's perfect part time. So

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doctor Zach, thanks for talking to me, Thanks for having

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me on. It's a pleasure. And so what motivated the

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writing of this book for students?

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Speaker 1: Actually, so when I was doing my doctoral program, I

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was a teaching fellow, and so they make all the

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teaching fellows teach the standard Introduction to Theology course that

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all incoming freshmen have to take, and they wanted me

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to teach. I said, well, what I have to teach

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in this course? They said, well, you know, just the

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Old Testament, the New Testament, Church Fathers, doctrine, and church

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history in one semester.

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Speaker 2: There you go.

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Speaker 1: And so I was completely strapped for short things to

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assign the students. And what I found was that it's

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hard to find short, concise things written at a high

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school reading level that do this. But also even when

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I could, you can't just tell nineteen year olds the

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what in this day and age? You can say the

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what God is? Three persons in one essence, crisis to

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nature is YadA, YadA, And then just they just stare

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at you and they are they so what?

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Speaker 2: You know? That was the look on all their faces

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And what does it mean? Yeah? So what?

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Speaker 1: Why do I care? Why should I care about any

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of this? And what I realized that I had to

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do in order to make this course in any way

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coherent to them was I had to totally reframe all

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of their categories for how to think about the world

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in order to get at the so what. And that's

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why I kind of spend the whole first part of

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the book taking apart basic basic definitions. What is religion?

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What do we mean by God? Where did all this start?

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Speaker 2: You know? M? And so you wrote it for like

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nineteen year olds for Yeah, well you said, are like

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really like kind of college freshmen.

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Speaker 1: Freshmen, Yeah, college freshmen, and they did not. I mean,

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so I had to be high school reading level because

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they're incoming freshmen.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I had to write basically a book about metaphysics

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and epistemology without using any of those words. And it's

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so funny because.

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Speaker 2: That it would become a kind of introduction book for

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people that are just dropping off up the street. Yeah, wild,

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that's right.

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Speaker 1: It was so funny is that I wrote it alongside

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because I was writing it for teaching while I was dissertating,

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and so I wrote it alongside my dissertation and I

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worked on both every day, And the dissertation was way

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way easier to write because if you use all these

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big words and convoluted incomprehensible sentences, they like that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to actually say the thing very simply and

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especially in a way that, like you said, I think

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most people it's okay. You know, when we go to

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church for a very long time, this happened in all

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the different you know, Christian churches. You end up having

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a kind of lingo and it's very comforting, right, The

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lingo's very comforting because it can signal inside, it can

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signal that we're on the same team. And so it does.

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It plays a function. But like you said, sometimes people

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actually don't really know what those words mean, or they

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have a very kind of fragmentary understanding of what that is.

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So if you can't explain these concepts, you know, Christ

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didn't use complicated theological terms, and so if you can't

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explain these these theological terms in ways that can reach

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a normal person that's never heard about theology, then what

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are you talking about? Like what do you say? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: And it was, you know, at seven am, a require

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course for every one of every major. So it's a

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very hard sell and really really, I mean it's it's

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a it's a tough class. And so I really had

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to I had to sell this as why is this

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relevant at all for you to think about?

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Speaker 2: And just when?

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Speaker 1: So I would do these reading summaries. That was how

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I taught, And when all the reading summaries came back incoherent,

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I rewrote the chapter. So I just rewrote this book

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over and over and over again. I response to student feedback.

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So in a lot of ways, I mean they wrote

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the book.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they told you what they could they could

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grass and when they congress. You know, the problem with

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history is that you are in it.

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Speaker 3: Plotark teaches us how to read power symbolically, asking whom

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does the person serve to predict leadership patterns before they

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play out? Join me for eight weeks studying like Cargus, Alcibiades, Alessander, Pompey, Caesar,

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and Octavian as living patterns.

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Speaker 2: Not that man. Does the world look mad to you?

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Speaker 3: This feeling of madness is something which we all share,

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especially the one who spent more time than maybe we

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should following the modern news cycle. Well, one wise Englishman

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once said, there is a system. It is madness, And

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one wise Greek two thousand years ago explained, what is

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the system behind the madness? Is of great men? Journal

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to ride clutter symbolica.

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Speaker 2: What did you or what have you noticed? Is the

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biggest obstacle to understanding why this is relevant for people.

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Speaker 1: The the whole framework of the modern world, the sort

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of secularism or humanism or whatever you want to call

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it that assumes materialism or dualism at best, means that

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people just have this almost impenetrable conceptual barrier for things

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like sacraments, because because they can't imagine a world where

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the spiritual and the physical are fundamentally interrelated, and they

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don't have the vocabulary for it. But they're you know,

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they're functionally materialists, or they're functionally dualists, or like, they

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believe in the spiritual, but it's somewhere else, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, there's a weird idea that in some ways

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spirituality is related to more like psychology something like that,

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and therefore, you know, anything spiritual has to go through

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the psychological. And so if you have a kind of

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ritual or a practice that you that you that you

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have in church, then people struggle to understand how that

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can be a vehicle for spiritual transformation and so sort

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of redeeming.

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Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's talking about re enchantment, you know, since

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and I encountered this when I was reading Charles Taylor

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and grad school. And it's now everyone's saying re enchantment

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and talking about it, and I think that's I think

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that's fine. I think that's probably the best way to

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talk about it, because you have to reframe the idea

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that matter itself has spiritual content, rather than thinking that

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matter is just neutral, it's just a tree, it's just

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a chemical reaction, and that that way of thinking is

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so deeply embedded even in people who identify it very

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piously and sincerely as Christians.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's really the thing that I've that

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I've been fighting against in some ways since I started,

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is to help people realize that there is no unpatterned reality, right,

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and there's no such thing as a material world that

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doesn't exist in patterns. And if that's true, then it

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means everything that is patterned reality, you know, has a

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claim to a form of reality, even though some people

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struggle if you can't hold it in your hands and

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you can't measure it, they struggle to understand. But the

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you know that a city or you know, a team,

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or all these things, they are patterned materiality in the

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same way that you know a car is or you

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know our rock or something like that. And that's that's

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a big struggle for modern people. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's hard too because when you start springing in

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the kind of language that some of the twentieth century

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German herminuticists used to kind of take apart the Enlightenment

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they said, well, all, like, I don't know if you're familiar.

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Michael Pollanni said, you know, all knowledge is personal knowledge

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participation through in dwelling. And when you say something like that,

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I use this participatory language in the book, people immediately

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jump to, okay, so everything's subjective. Yeah, everything's internal, and

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so you have to So I had to. I was

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faced constantly with when I said knowledge is personal. Even

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the way you see physical reality is conditioned by your

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cultural vision, which is really a lot of what's in

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Spangler actually, like uh, he says that individual cultures see

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the world a certain way. That's what our culture means.

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And when I say that that, people think like, oh,

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I can see the world however I want to. There

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is no pattern, the patterns inside me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah, that's that is the biggest obstacle, the subjective,

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objective world. And it's funny because it's so odd to

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face people that that at least espouse a kind of

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atheism or kind of materialism. If you ask them, you know,

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if they were they would say, yeah, we're scientific, you know,

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everything is, but they still believe in this arbitrary internal world.

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It seems like if you were truly a physicalist, then

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you would understand that your that your internal world is

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has to be conditioned by the same types of constraints

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and pressures that that made the external world. And so

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how can you how can it be possible to be

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both a kind of reductionist or a you know, a

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physical list and at the same time believe in this duality.

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It's weird, It's wear it because I don't. I just don't.

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Speaker 1: I think we talked about this a little bit when

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you were in Riverside. I just don't understand how you

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can even believe in minds on physicalism, in minds at all.

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Why should there be a self?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean it's a kind of epiphenomenon of

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material cause it. But you know that even people that

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would say that, you just wait, wait ten seconds, and

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then you catch them falling into Dickcard dualism, they just do.

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As soon as they forget the subject they're talking about,

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as soon as they forget that they're actually discussing the

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fact that minds don't exist, You just wait ten seconds

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in and you catch them. It's watching the New Athians

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do that is the funniest. Like watching Sam Harris or

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Dawkins do that, you know, on the one hand, to

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have this kind of you know, it's just this, it's

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just that it's reductionist language. And then you wait and

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then they become pro clutching moralists like you know, five

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seconds later it's hilarious.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same. Yeah with the moralism where it's like, well,

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there's no you know, absolute moral standards don't exist, and

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then two seconds later, well Christian Church does these horrible

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moral atrocities, and you're just like, we're but you know,

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something going back to the to the seeing thing, something

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that helped me, maybe you could use this on people,

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something that helped me articulate this is do you know

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the the guy in the gorilla suit experiment. Yeah, it's

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as sounding, it's incredible. So I don't know those of

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you who we.

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Speaker 2: Can describe it, you do, just then't use that as examples.

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So many people have said you maybe you can describe

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it for people. It's quite as sounding.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so it's they have they do this test

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and they show a video to the subject and the

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subject is watching the video and it's a video of

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these basketball players passing the basketball. And it's been done

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many times in many versions, and the tester tells the subject,

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you need to count how many times the basketball has

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passed or how many times has passed to this team

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or whatever, And so the subject sits there and watches it,

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and then at the end of the video, the tester says, okay,

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how many times and the subject says, oh, seventeen. Did

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I get it right? And the tester says, yes, you did.

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But did you see the guy in the gorilla suit

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wave at you? And they're like, what do you know?

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I would have seen that, and the tester says it, yeah,

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a guy in a gorilla suit walked up, stood in

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the center of the frame, waved at the audience, and

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walked off stage. And the test goes, no, I would have,

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or the subject goes, no, I would I would have

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noticed that. Then they play it back and there it is,

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and it's This was used, I think at the time,

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to disprove the effectiveness of eyewitness testimony in courtrooms, because

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they say, well, you know, eyewitness evidence is so unreliable.

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But the takeaway was that you only see what you're

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looking for, yeah, and you don't see what you're not

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looking for. And I thought that this study I thought

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this study proved way too much because what it what

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it proves to me is that even the material world

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cannot be seen like seeing material things itself gets problematized

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by what your beliefs are. Yeah, of course if a

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spirit you know, people say, well where is where are spirits?

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Speaker 2: Well?

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Speaker 1: I thought they where a gohes? Where are spirits? All

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these other cultures believed in it in the past that

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we don't now. I guess they were stupid. And it's

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the Gorillas suit experiment shows me, at least, I'm pretty

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convinced that your your perception of physical reality itself is problematic.

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Speaker 2: It's based on your beliefs. Yeah, you can. I mean

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people experiment this. We experiment this in movies all the time,

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you know where in some ways there the movie will

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set it up so that like a good example, the

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sixth Sense was one of the best ones, right where

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you don't notice, or maybe you notice, but you kind

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of push them to the side. There are all these

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narrative incoherences in the movie and you just kind of

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you kind of toss them out, you don't really string

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them together, and then when you get to the punchline,

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all of a sudden, all the incoherences that you barely notice,

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all of a sudden gets strung together and then you

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see something from the beginning of the movie. You actually

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re see the movie in your head from the beginning,

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and then all this stuff becomes coherent, and like you said,

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you realize that there are pattern realities that it is

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possible not to notice if you're not looking for them.

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And so, like you said, let's say the signs of

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things like ghosts or things like spirits, or the effect

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of let's say, transpersonal agency. If you're not trained to

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see it, you know, you wouldn't see it. My friend

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JP Marsoi, he pushes it really hard. He talks about

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this idea of people that can see auras. He uses

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like kind of new new age kind of thing. But

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he said, you imagine when you're a child and you

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look at your mother. You know, you just see a face,

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like you see this face, and at first you don't

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even see a face, you just see a bunch of stuff,

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and then slowly this stuff, it's all discombobulated. Then it

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becomes a face, and then it becomes your mother, and

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then it becomes all these things. And then when you

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become older, you can become trained to notice emotions. Like

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you can look at someone and you can see their emotion,

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and it's like, well, what what the hell are you

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talking about, Like, how can you see an emotion? Well, exactly,

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you're you're trained to see subtle differences in material causes

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that makes you see the emotion. And people that are

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artistic or that have some impairment, you know, they're not

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capable of seeing those subtle changes. And he was saying

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something like how high does this go? How how much

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is it possible to see in in the in subtle

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by being subtly trained to look at someone's face or

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to look at someone, you know, could you see into

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their soul? Like if you imagine a monk that has

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some kind of uh you know, uh visionary capacity will

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look at you. Yeah, you'll see he sees through you

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in the same way that I can look at you

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and see if you're angry or you're mad, or you're sad.

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But he can see way more because he has that

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capacity to notice very very subtle patterning in human behavior.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it doesn't when you let when you

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kind of let the cat out of the bag with

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that idea, it's it kind of doesn't end. And so

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what I was telling Catkummens was, you know, if you

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could see reality, because that's why the book's call Journey

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to Reality. You know, it's this idea that we're not

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real yet, we don't see the world as it is.

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And I told the Catechimmens, if you could see reality,

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you would see the Holy Spirit descend on the gifts

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in the liturgy. You would see and people have seen it,

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you know, according to various reports, oftentimes little children, I heard.

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I've heard many stories about this. They see the Holy Spirit.

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Speaker 2: And so what you know is the failure.

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Speaker 1: Let me put it this way, but that idea that

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our perceptions are somehow inadequate, and that those perceptions get

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more adequate when we increase in something like virtue. It's

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just not even in the imaginative framework of a society

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like ours, which is so informed by enlightenment, thinking.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you see it. And there's also I mean,

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this is my experience, like this is not of my

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own virtue. But I you know, when I went to

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mont Athos last time and I met one of the

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abbots of the monastery that where I was staying I

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mean he was glowing. I don't know how I was

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to say it. He was like there and everybody in

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the room saw it, and everybody and then I kept

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thinking like he then he said some things if we

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had just transcribed what he had said, like you know,

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he just said what Jesus says, like he just said,

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you know, just basic Christian things. They didn't say anything

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particularly different from what you would read in the Gospel

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or what you would you know, but there was a

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kind of present that was And I don't know how

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what words used, because obviously there was no light like

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physical and it's not like there's no other way to

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describe what I was seeing besides something like he was glowing.

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But I mean, it's not like if I turned the

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light out, he would be glowing in the dark like

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it wasn't It wasn't the same kind of physical. But

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there's only the only analogy I can use is to

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say that is just to use that term. And so,

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like you said, I can imagine the same with someone

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who is so attuned that they see the Holy Spirit

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descend on the host, just like I see my wife's emotion,

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which is invisible and is an internal state. Uh, you know,

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and you say, like, what does sadness look like? And

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I can't, really, I can't tell you what sadness looks like.

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I mean, it's like I can tell when my wife

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is sad. But it's a it's a it's a particular

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experience of something that is invisible. In the same way,

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like you said that that reality holds so much. I'm

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we're you know, we're just finishing Dante right now, we're

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just finishing the last conto. Like I'm actually this morning,

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I was reading Kanto thirty two and you get these

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this exactly what you're saying. Whereas like Dantia, Dantia sends

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the heavens and he looks at Beatrice, and the higher

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he is in the heavens, the more resplendent she is, right,

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and the more she is just like this overwhelming presence

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and this overwhelming white it's always the same gesture. She

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looks at him and she smiles. She looks at him

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and she smiles. But in that same gesture, at every

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level of heaven, he sees more and more of God,

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more and more of God, until you know, in some

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ways he's trained to look directly at at God because

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he saw through her this this this reality, and so

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you know it's when you read it, If you read

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it without a certain sensitivity, it can look like kind

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of science fiction type, you know, like there's light and

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he sees light and everything. But if you've had that

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that little experience of seeing something behind you know, behind

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the mask when you look at someone, then you know that,

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like you said, there's way more behind that, like there's

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there are levels behind that that are for And this

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is this is hard, I think for modern people to

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realize because you know, it actually is a physic it

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is something that you experience. It's not like a mental thing.

398
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It's not just like when I see the sadness of

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my wife. It's not a mental thing. It's an actual experience. Uh.

400
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And so it's hard because a lot of materialists will

401
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then misinterpret that as a kind of materialist transformation, like

402
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I don't know how to say it, like a kind

403
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of kind of Marvel comics kind of you know, you

404
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don't when need Marvel comics will show like the light

405
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coming out and like electricity that's like exuding, you know, or.

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Speaker 1: It's it's attributable to forces that science simply hasn't mapped.

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Speaker 2: Out yet or something like that.

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Speaker 1: It's so weird that the accusation of the God of

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the gaps thing, when really there's the science of the gaps,

410
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you know, like we haven't mapped that out yet. Yeah,

411
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but it's like, I don't know, you get the you

412
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sort of get the opposite picture in some of C. S.

413
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Lewis's imagery too, like the dwarves in Narnia or the

414
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people in the Great Divorce where they literally can't see

415
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the physical thing going on because of this sort of

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moral deficiency that's happening.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's also, Oh, that's that's also so true,

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Like that's something that that you see all the time.

419
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I really do have this intuition that in some ways,

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when Christ is saying, you know, to not judge your brother,

421
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it's like it's actually a training mechanism. It's actually it's

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like it's actually training yourself to see the right patterns,

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you know, so that when you encounter someone, you're always

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encountering Christ in them, and you're actually calling that person,

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you're actually calling that person into becoming that by encountering that.

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Like if I encounter you, and I see in you

427
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the best aspect of you, and I see, you know,

428
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the highest aspect of you, and you can see that

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in my face. So that's what I'm encountering. It's like

430
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I'm actually calling you to become that. But you know,

431
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everybody has had moments like that, or everybody's met people

432
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that doesn't matter what's in front of them. They just

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see the faults.

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Speaker 1: And these ideas are in the culture. I mean, people

435
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believe in manifesting, and people believe in karma, and people

436
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believe at a sort of a pop level, and the

437
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idea that the physical and the spiritual are interpenetrated. And

438
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so I'm wondering something I've been talking a lot about

439
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on my podcast recently, is the way in which we're

440
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kind of coming back to a sort of naive paganism.

441
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It's not like the Greco Roman paganism, but we're coming

442
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back to a sort of weird re enchantment. And in

443
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there are the kind of categories that would allow somebody

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to understand the sacraments. And I was, I was, I

445
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was in class and I said, okay, who you know.

446
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I would always challenge the students and I say, you

447
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know what, you guys, you know, I give them some

448
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standard materialist thing and they would agree to it basically.

449
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And then I said, okay, but who, where's your hand

450
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if you believe in karma? And all the girls raised

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their hand and I said of course.

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Speaker 2: And I said, I.

453
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Speaker 1: Said, oh, so you're really worried about how you're going

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to get reborn in the next life. That's really what

455
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you're concerned with, right, And they're like no. And I said, well,

456
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that's what karma is about, friends, that it's about you

457
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don't want to be reborn as our cockroach. You want

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to be reborn as a princess. That's really what keeps

459
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you up at night. And they're like no, because they're Americans,

460
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they don't have a Hindu sense of karma. And so

461
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I said, well, what do you mean by that? And

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they said, well, you know, if you do good things,

463
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then good things happened to you. I said, why do.

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Speaker 2: You think that? What does that even mean?

465
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Speaker 1: I mean, good things? Explain all of that to me.

466
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And then when they realized, oh, I guess I don't

467
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believe in materialism. I guess I do believe that there's

468
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this moral thing out there. And I don't remember if

469
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it was William L. Craig or it was some one

470
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of these other one of the other kind of Protestant

471
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:18,839
philosopher types. From about ten years ago. He said, we

472
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:22,880
know that the moral law exists the same way that

473
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,200
we know the physical world exists, because when you try

474
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,440
to move around in it, you run into it. You know,

475
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:31,240
if you try to move around in the physical world,

476
00:26:31,319 --> 00:26:33,720
you run into a physical object, and the same way

477
00:26:33,759 --> 00:26:37,279
you run into the moral reality when you try to

478
00:26:37,279 --> 00:26:39,440
do things. And we all just we all just know

479
00:26:39,599 --> 00:26:42,119
that it's kind of it's the same thing that you're

480
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:46,079
talking about. You know, you run into people's emotions.

481
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 2: Even though you can't see them. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely

482
00:26:49,079 --> 00:26:52,759
I mean, I think that at this point, hopefully for

483
00:26:52,839 --> 00:26:55,559
most people, that it's kind of all the kind of undeniable,

484
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,160
you know, this idea that I do still hear people

485
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,599
say ridiculous things like you know, there's no there's no

486
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:08,400
moral order to the world, and I even sometimes I

487
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:12,519
want to just completely deracinated from moralism the way that

488
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,319
the way that you think about it. I'm like, okay,

489
00:27:16,079 --> 00:27:18,759
let's forget the moral aspect at the outset, and let's

490
00:27:18,759 --> 00:27:23,039
just say actions have consequences, Like if you do certain things,

491
00:27:23,039 --> 00:27:25,480
certain things will happen. To you, and that is you

492
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:27,640
can't avoid that, or it's like you can avoid it

493
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:29,720
for a little while sometimes, but then at some point

494
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:33,440
it just crashes back. And that's it. Like I could say, okay, well,

495
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:35,759
if you want everybody to hate you and to be

496
00:27:35,799 --> 00:27:38,480
alienated from your society, then here's how you act, Like,

497
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,359
just lie and cheat and steal, do these things. And

498
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,200
you could say, you know it's is it a moral good? Well,

499
00:27:45,279 --> 00:27:47,880
you know, do it for a while, you know, see

500
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,920
what it does for you, and you'll notice that it's

501
00:27:51,079 --> 00:27:53,559
dragging you down, like you'll notice that it's actually making

502
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:56,079
a slave, It makes a slave of others. Someone's going

503
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:57,759
to put you in prison at some point, you know,

504
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,799
someone's going to threaten you. Your going to become you're

505
00:28:00,799 --> 00:28:04,039
basically going to become imprisoned by your behavior. But there's

506
00:28:04,079 --> 00:28:07,039
these other behaviors that you can engage with and if

507
00:28:07,039 --> 00:28:10,000
you do those certain things will happen to you as well.

508
00:28:11,279 --> 00:28:12,960
You know, and you can experiment with it and you

509
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,519
can see, you can see what happens. Uh, And so yeah,

510
00:28:16,559 --> 00:28:19,359
I think that that's a that's now how when I

511
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,880
face a moral relative. That's kind of my approach now

512
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,000
is to just say, well, they're actually if you don't

513
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,359
believe in absolute moral good, there is actually there's at

514
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,799
least an applied moral good because there are things that happen,

515
00:28:31,839 --> 00:28:34,200
and there's a hierarchy of them too. You know, you

516
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:38,240
could you probably most people would probably agree that there

517
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,160
are certain societies that ran on certain patterns, but that also,

518
00:28:43,519 --> 00:28:46,200
you know, ran themselves into the ground, and you probably

519
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:50,079
don't you know, probably don't want that, right, Yeah, and

520
00:28:50,079 --> 00:28:52,279
you see it now like a good example. Now, like

521
00:28:52,319 --> 00:28:54,359
the sexual revolution is such a great example. Like you

522
00:28:54,359 --> 00:28:57,000
could say, hey, well you you want the sexual revolution.

523
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,799
Everything is relative, everything is like, well, if you do that,

524
00:29:00,359 --> 00:29:02,799
then you're not gonna have people anymore. You're gonna run

525
00:29:02,839 --> 00:29:05,960
out of people, you know, uh, And you know that's

526
00:29:06,039 --> 00:29:08,000
kind of that's a reality. So if you want to

527
00:29:08,079 --> 00:29:10,960
run out of people, then do these things and then

528
00:29:11,039 --> 00:29:13,519
you're gonna and you're gonna you're gonna stop to exist.

529
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:15,960
But if you think that it's probably good you know

530
00:29:16,039 --> 00:29:18,359
that people exist, or that you know that that people

531
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,319
should continue to exist, and you actually can't engage in

532
00:29:21,359 --> 00:29:24,799
all these behaviors because they lead to a certain result.

533
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:26,920
And we have now we have the numbers you know

534
00:29:27,519 --> 00:29:34,240
those results. Yeah, it's it's quite grim. Actually, yeah, that is.

535
00:29:34,359 --> 00:29:38,079
Speaker 1: I'm I would wonder if that would that kind of

536
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:42,720
argumentation would make people think too consequentially about morality, meaning

537
00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:45,160
like use it too much as a means to an ends.

538
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. The thing that I've been.

539
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:51,359
Speaker 1: Using a lot too is is saying because something that

540
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:57,880
where that's very indicative of the sort of Western post

541
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:03,400
Christian reform it temperament about politics and society and morality

542
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:06,640
is outrage. You know, people are so outraged because they

543
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:09,640
have and moral indignation. You know, because we're kind of

544
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:13,000
utopianists in the West. We think that with the right

545
00:30:13,039 --> 00:30:16,920
combination of laws and people that then we can make

546
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:18,920
the perfect society. And so there's a lot of outrage

547
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:20,920
because of course we're not at the perfect society. And

548
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:23,160
so what I try to poke at people's outrage, and

549
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:24,720
I say, well, why are you so upset?

550
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:27,519
Speaker 2: You know, what's the big deal? You know? Why if it?

551
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 1: And then and then you quickly uncover that they believe

552
00:30:30,319 --> 00:30:33,279
that there's such a thing as the moral law. And so,

553
00:30:33,519 --> 00:30:35,799
like you said, I think it's very hard. I think

554
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:40,200
materialism is dead. This whole that kind of naive atheism

555
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:40,880
just doesn't.

556
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:41,839
Speaker 2: It didn't.

557
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,359
Speaker 1: It wasn't able to sustain itself for that long because

558
00:30:44,359 --> 00:30:45,880
everybody has to believe.

559
00:30:45,599 --> 00:30:47,279
Speaker 2: In in morality.

560
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering, you know what the best way

561
00:30:50,319 --> 00:30:54,720
is to start with that belief that the moral law

562
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:57,680
is real and it's outside of us and independent of us,

563
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:58,920
and it's something that we ought.

564
00:30:58,759 --> 00:30:59,599
Speaker 2: To conform to.

565
00:31:00,559 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: And then how do we start putting that together? Because now,

566
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:05,480
when when you start with that, now you're on the

567
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:08,480
same page as every other great civilization in human history.

568
00:31:08,599 --> 00:31:10,839
And then you can have a conversation about religion.

569
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and did you see you know, because you've been

570
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,200
talking to all these nineteen year olds for how long

571
00:31:17,319 --> 00:31:19,680
did you are you still teaching? No?

572
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:22,799
Speaker 1: So I taught that course for five years at Catholic

573
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,440
University in d C. Then we moved to California and

574
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:28,559
I taught at the University of Saint Catherine until it

575
00:31:28,599 --> 00:31:29,839
closed a couple of years ago.

576
00:31:30,559 --> 00:31:33,559
Speaker 2: And so I'm just podcasting now, Okay, all right, all right,

577
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:34,640
I mean I'm.

578
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: But I'm catechising. So I teach the catechym as at church,

579
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,079
at this Church of Saint Andrew.

580
00:31:40,279 --> 00:31:45,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. My question is did you in the time

581
00:31:45,559 --> 00:31:47,680
that you were teaching that class, if you stop, if

582
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:49,200
you like a few years ago, did you see a

583
00:31:49,279 --> 00:31:53,359
change happening in the young people, either better or worse like,

584
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:57,079
in terms of their capacity to assimilate these these ideas,

585
00:31:57,359 --> 00:32:01,279
these questions en mass.

586
00:32:01,319 --> 00:32:04,839
Speaker 1: I mean, because there's mostly Generation ZE and so in general,

587
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,480
over the time that I was teaching about seven years,

588
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:13,240
I didn't see a very great change in mass in

589
00:32:13,279 --> 00:32:17,440
the generation. But at an individual level, it was so

590
00:32:17,599 --> 00:32:21,200
rewarding because so many people would individually come up to

591
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,039
me at the end of the semester, or email me,

592
00:32:23,279 --> 00:32:25,200
or take me aside privately and say, hey, I just

593
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:26,759
want to thank you for this course. I mean, no

594
00:32:26,799 --> 00:32:28,839
one has ever talked to me about religion in this

595
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:31,880
way at all ever. And these were some people who

596
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:34,480
had been in Catholic school from K through twelve. They

597
00:32:34,519 --> 00:32:36,960
had been processed their whole lives. Some of them were Orthodox.

598
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:42,359
It's just nobody had ever sat there and reframed the

599
00:32:42,559 --> 00:32:45,880
categories underneath all of these things in a way that

600
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,200
allowed them to make sense for these kids. And it

601
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:52,960
wasn't that the kids were you know, I wonder if

602
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,079
young people get too much of a bad raper. You know,

603
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:58,000
they're not interested, they don't care, they're blah blah blah.

604
00:32:58,039 --> 00:33:01,279
But no one had ever made it made them care before.

605
00:33:01,319 --> 00:33:05,279
And once I offered those that conceptual reframing, it was

606
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:09,200
just incredible. It was really breathtaking to see them go, oh, yeah,

607
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:12,440
this is what I've always believed, but no one told

608
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:15,519
me that this is what I believed. So going to God,

609
00:33:15,599 --> 00:33:19,319
I mean, it was really a deeply rewarding kind of ministry.

610
00:33:19,359 --> 00:33:21,359
Speaker 2: Really, And what are you seeing now, because now you're

611
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,119
teaching gottakisus in an actual church, what do you see

612
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:28,920
coming downstream? Because there's been a lot you know, obviously

613
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:30,680
there have been a lot of catechy and a lot

614
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:32,759
of young people coming in, And so what's your perception

615
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,839
of that, of that whole motion. It's very mixed.

616
00:33:36,839 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: And I'm in southern California, so that's a very different.

617
00:33:40,799 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 2: Kind of milieu than other milieus.

618
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,599
Speaker 1: I mean, Southern California is a lot of where the

619
00:33:45,599 --> 00:33:48,640
home of a lot of megachurches, a lot of Protestant megachurches,

620
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:50,079
a lot of I mean, there's a lot of inter

621
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:54,640
religious et cetera. And also there's a lot of occultism

622
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:59,559
in an alternative religion in southern California, and so I

623
00:33:59,599 --> 00:34:02,799
get a lot of ex Protestants in our church who

624
00:34:03,559 --> 00:34:09,280
need to be disabused of their Protestant categories, specifically in

625
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,840
the sense that those Protestant categories nine times out of

626
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,159
ten are just Enlightenment categories, which is what's so awkward

627
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:19,320
about the conversation, as you say, well, this thing that

628
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,880
you think is quote unquote biblical is actually secular humanism,

629
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:26,039
as it turns out, and so that and I think

630
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:29,599
that's kind of an all ongoing problem. But increasingly we

631
00:34:29,679 --> 00:34:34,679
get so many people who have an occult background, and

632
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,360
I actually I don't know if I should says, I

633
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:43,199
love catechising former occultists because they get it.

634
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:46,079
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't need that's what they were looking for.

635
00:34:46,159 --> 00:34:48,639
When they win a lot of people looking going towards

636
00:34:48,679 --> 00:34:53,000
the occult, they're realizing there has to be a nontological structure,

637
00:34:53,039 --> 00:34:56,960
there has to be metaphysics with undergirds these religious things.

638
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,800
And so when they read the like the nineteenth CenTra occultists,

639
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:02,719
that's what it seems to me, that's what they're at

640
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:04,719
least when I was young, that's what was that going on.

641
00:35:05,159 --> 00:35:07,440
It was like people looking to say to say, well,

642
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,679
what's the what's the meaning structure underneath? What's this? What's

643
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:14,039
the will? What's you know, what's the relationship between my

644
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,039
consciousness and you know, manifestation. And so it's like, like

645
00:35:18,079 --> 00:35:21,079
you said, it makes sense that that ocultist would discover

646
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:25,920
that that that orthodoxy actually offers a much more complete

647
00:35:26,679 --> 00:35:31,760
ontological structure than the occultis is one or or a solution.

648
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:34,280
Speaker 1: So you know, I've had more than one person say

649
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,880
to me, Yeah, I was getting way too deep into this.

650
00:35:37,039 --> 00:35:39,440
I was being haunted by these demons. I couldn't deal,

651
00:35:39,639 --> 00:35:42,800
like figure it out. I heard about orthodoxy, I didn't

652
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:44,559
know what it was. I put eye coons upon my

653
00:35:44,639 --> 00:35:46,280
house and the demons stopped attacking me.

654
00:35:47,119 --> 00:35:48,199
Speaker 2: So I'm all in.

655
00:35:48,519 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: And Mike, right, I mean, so you know it's it's

656
00:35:52,639 --> 00:35:55,719
we laugh and it's funny, but it's so real for

657
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,199
these people, and and and so that I bring this

658
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,280
up as an exam because that's the kind of person

659
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:06,480
with whom you don't have to have any iconoclasm discussion,

660
00:36:07,199 --> 00:36:10,119
right that all that kind of well, but the Old

661
00:36:10,119 --> 00:36:13,519
Testament says, blah blah blah, you can't make a graven image,

662
00:36:13,679 --> 00:36:16,360
Like that's so academic, you know, when somebody's being haunted

663
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:18,920
by a demon and they put icons up and the

664
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:22,519
demons go away.

665
00:36:23,039 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 2: It works.

666
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:29,039
Speaker 1: There's exactly no, and it's not academic. It's deeply practically

667
00:36:29,079 --> 00:36:32,159
you know. And so in a real way, those kinds

668
00:36:32,159 --> 00:36:36,400
of experiences strike me as being much more laid antique

669
00:36:36,519 --> 00:36:40,280
Christianity experience, much more like the early Church dealing with

670
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,079
these kinds of real problems.

671
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that, I mean that makes sense because when

672
00:36:44,519 --> 00:36:49,440
you hear even sometimes when you hear stories of missionaries

673
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,920
that encounter different cultures and stuff and kind of present Christianity,

674
00:36:54,519 --> 00:36:56,880
I think that's often the missing link is that people

675
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:00,360
don't realize that these weren't just theoretical questions you know

676
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,840
for people and they had like you said, they they

677
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,760
they sometimes lived with very very old things that had

678
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:11,599
a lot of power, uh, that they had to propitiate constantly,

679
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,199
and they were having to deal with all these all

680
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:15,760
these things you see it. I mean the sort of

681
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:19,400
Saint George is like is a kind of you know,

682
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,800
like a reduction of something like that, where it's like, well,

683
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,079
if you have to sacrifice human create, have human sacrifices

684
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:29,960
every year and someone comes and presents you, you know,

685
00:37:30,039 --> 00:37:32,880
something that's effective to stop that. You know, most people

686
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,559
be like, hey, all right, let's let's let's stop. Let's

687
00:37:36,559 --> 00:37:39,000
stop all these all this nonsense or all this like

688
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:41,679
destructive stuff. Yeah.

689
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 1: And something on that note, something that a lot of

690
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,480
people don't know is that the Romans had exorcisms too.

691
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:50,480
I mean, all these old cultures who knew and dealt

692
00:37:50,519 --> 00:37:53,039
with the reality of spirits had exorcisms, and a lot

693
00:37:53,039 --> 00:37:56,360
of Romans were won over on the basis of how

694
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,000
much more effective the Christian exorcism was.

695
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:03,039
Speaker 2: It was just practical. There are crazy stories I was

696
00:38:03,159 --> 00:38:06,760
being interviewed by h a Coptic priest, and you know,

697
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:09,119
and then off the off camera he started telling me

698
00:38:09,159 --> 00:38:12,599
these crazy stories about I mean, this is wild, like

699
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,360
that they're the monastery with Saint Moses, the Ethiopian is right,

700
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:19,840
Saint Modes the Blackest and his sarcophagus is there and

701
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:23,159
it's like seven feet you know, it's like a huge sarcophagus,

702
00:38:23,159 --> 00:38:26,199
you know, and it's closed. And at least when he

703
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,239
told me the story, he said that there's a monk

704
00:38:28,679 --> 00:38:31,440
who has a very deep a grey close relationship to

705
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:34,400
Saint Moses. And so he sits next to the sarcophagus

706
00:38:35,199 --> 00:38:37,960
and they talk to each other, and he like whispers

707
00:38:38,039 --> 00:38:41,320
to Saint Moses. Uh. And then there's a long line

708
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:45,440
of people that come to get to receive healing from

709
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:49,199
Saint Moses. And it's like, it's like me, it's it's Muslims,

710
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:52,760
is Christians, it's like whatever, just any kind of person.

711
00:38:53,159 --> 00:38:56,400
People just come, you know. And then and then supposedly

712
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:58,480
the monk he like whispers to Saint Moses, and then

713
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:01,679
like it starts, the room starts to shake and people

714
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:04,639
get healed. This is the story I heard, Folks like,

715
00:39:04,679 --> 00:39:07,960
I didn't witness it myself, but this is the story

716
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:09,719
I heard of a man who saw it himself.

717
00:39:10,599 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 1: But I mean, there are so many stories like this everywhere,

718
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:18,440
and you can just say, well, I mean back to

719
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:21,400
the kind of original point. It's like, I think those

720
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,519
sorts of stories are hard for us as Westerners, whereas

721
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,079
an ancient person would have just been like, yeah, sure,

722
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:28,079
why not.

723
00:39:28,199 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm cynical, Like you saw how I told the story.

724
00:39:31,039 --> 00:39:34,159
The whole time, I'm like making excuses, you know, I

725
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:36,599
you know, I have to say I'm such a modern person.

726
00:39:36,599 --> 00:39:39,119
People tell me about the mare streaming icons and I'm like, yeah,

727
00:39:39,159 --> 00:39:41,320
you know, I'll see it when I believe it. I'll

728
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:43,440
believe it when I see it, you know. And and

729
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:47,360
you know you will see it when you believe it too. Yeah, exactly. Well,

730
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,840
I like I saw I did see the mirror streaming

731
00:39:51,119 --> 00:39:54,840
icon from of Hawaii when I was in a church

732
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,519
in Louisville. I think it would just showed up and uh,

733
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:01,960
and you know, it's like I'm still such a modern person.

734
00:40:02,079 --> 00:40:04,400
I was looking at it and I'm thinking, you know,

735
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:08,719
it's a pretty big box. It was like being so cynical.

736
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:11,159
But I talked to a nun once who saw the

737
00:40:11,199 --> 00:40:15,360
mur screaming icon of Montreal, and you know, and I

738
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:17,599
trusted her. She said she said she spent the night

739
00:40:17,639 --> 00:40:20,079
with the icon because she was she was helping the

740
00:40:20,079 --> 00:40:22,519
guardian because obviously the guardian can't be with the icon

741
00:40:22,519 --> 00:40:25,400
all the time. And she said, you know, she said,

742
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,079
it's just a piece of paper and she like put

743
00:40:28,119 --> 00:40:30,079
her face like right up to it and she was

744
00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:32,559
just waiting and she could just see like the beads

745
00:40:32,679 --> 00:40:35,800
pop out and she said, there's no like it was

746
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:40,360
just it's just a photocopy, you know, and anyway, so

747
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:42,800
but yeah, so you can see that I'm such a

748
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,599
modern person because I'm very cynical about all that stuff.

749
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:48,199
I believe in it, like theoretically, but as soon as

750
00:40:48,199 --> 00:40:51,599
someone gives me a story, I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know, maybe.

751
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:55,639
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe yeah, no, it's it's in the water, you know.

752
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,800
Speaker 2: So actually, this is a question I wanted to ask you.

753
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:02,840
Speaker 1: So people people really like the Journey to Reality Glory

754
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,599
to God, and they've been appreciating kind of me getting

755
00:41:05,639 --> 00:41:07,840
more into these sorts of topics in my podcast. But

756
00:41:08,639 --> 00:41:11,159
something that people keep asking me over and over again.

757
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:13,159
And the students started with the students, they say, we

758
00:41:13,199 --> 00:41:14,599
love the book, it's great, we get it.

759
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:15,519
Speaker 2: What do we.

760
00:41:15,679 --> 00:41:19,280
Speaker 1: Do how do we actually put this into practice? And

761
00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:24,199
the answer is not just go to liturgy and be

762
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:28,920
a Christian because I get all these neophytes in our church.

763
00:41:29,639 --> 00:41:31,840
We've actually just turned into a neophight church because we

764
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,760
have so many catechumens and the ratio of neophytes is

765
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,199
very high and they're going to church and doing it.

766
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:41,960
But same kind of thing you're talking about. The categories

767
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:45,159
are all still Protestant, secular, modern, whatever, and you know

768
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:49,119
me too, everybody, everybody in this culture. So what people

769
00:41:49,159 --> 00:41:51,840
I've been asking me for is we need some kind

770
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:55,480
of set of practical things to do. So what I'm

771
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:58,719
working on right now is basically a masterclass that I'm

772
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:04,719
calling d secular rightation, and it's it's it's it's like

773
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,320
a masterclass style. So there's you know, short lectures that

774
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,960
go along with each lesson and whatever. But then I'm

775
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:15,079
giving all of these exercises and challenges. Do this journal

776
00:42:15,119 --> 00:42:18,159
about this? Ask yourself this question. A lot of it's

777
00:42:18,199 --> 00:42:20,559
related to putting your phone away, you know, all this.

778
00:42:20,599 --> 00:42:21,559
Speaker 2: Kind of practical stuff.

779
00:42:21,639 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: But so my question that I'm asking everybody because people

780
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:26,400
keep asking me for this course and it's going to

781
00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:30,039
it's coming out soon. But what do you think, because

782
00:42:30,079 --> 00:42:32,119
obviously you could go all over the place with a

783
00:42:32,159 --> 00:42:37,119
course like that, what do you see that's something that

784
00:42:37,199 --> 00:42:42,800
would be very helpful and healing for people? Like a topic?

785
00:42:43,679 --> 00:42:46,719
You know, what sorts of things do you think should

786
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,320
be focused on in an introductory course like that? Given

787
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:53,199
the kinds of things that you see people struggling with

788
00:42:53,599 --> 00:42:56,719
in your perish and when you're going around giving talks

789
00:42:56,719 --> 00:42:58,840
and the kinds of questions people ask you, you know,

790
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,119
what sort of thing would be valuable to people? And

791
00:43:02,199 --> 00:43:03,239
of course like that do you.

792
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:08,320
Speaker 2: Think I mean, I would say, I mean, my my

793
00:43:09,599 --> 00:43:13,239
advice on that front is always to stay close to

794
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:17,639
what is accessible to you, because I mean, it's hard,

795
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,800
especially for like people who become Orthodox. It's it's like

796
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,679
you're also moving into like a foreign world. You're you're

797
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:27,880
learning a new language. Everything about it is is new.

798
00:43:28,039 --> 00:43:32,119
But you know, the the kind of enlightened experiences are

799
00:43:32,159 --> 00:43:35,159
they're closer to us than we than we think they're

800
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:40,920
They're in our own celebrations, like the birthday celebrations or

801
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:47,920
name day celebrations, in holidays and meals. And so I

802
00:43:48,559 --> 00:43:53,599
tend to to tell to encourage people to stay close

803
00:43:53,639 --> 00:43:55,639
and to say, okay, well, can you make the most

804
00:43:55,679 --> 00:43:58,920
of your dining room, like when you're with your wife

805
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:03,280
and your kids, Like can you create dedicated experiences that

806
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,400
that that will that will shine. And if you start

807
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:10,199
when you're when the kids are young, that's definitely something

808
00:44:10,199 --> 00:44:11,960
you can do. Like what are these what are these

809
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:14,639
moments that we can have and end the everyday life.

810
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:17,039
You know, That's why we wrote the Fairy Tales was

811
00:44:17,079 --> 00:44:20,199
because that's something that's immediate, right, sitting with a child

812
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,400
in a book. Reading a book to a child is

813
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:26,719
like an immediate entering into a world of uh that's

814
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,880
almost liturgical, you know. And so that's the that's really

815
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,519
the the the advice that I give is that a

816
00:44:32,519 --> 00:44:35,039
lot of people, you know, they go straight to Oh,

817
00:44:35,079 --> 00:44:37,280
you know, I could say that Jesus pay a thousand

818
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:40,039
times a day, and you know, I can do these

819
00:44:40,119 --> 00:44:43,800
these like massive spiritual practices. I'm not against those obviously,

820
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,719
but I think there's something to say about saying kind

821
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:50,800
of close to close to the things that are that

822
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,400
are already around you and that you can make more bright,

823
00:44:54,679 --> 00:44:58,239
you know, like our our daily lived reality. Yeah exactly,

824
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:00,679
you know, and just like a kind of day discipline.

825
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:04,079
And also, like I said, I think that I focus

826
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:06,280
on meals a lot, especially if you have kids. There

827
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:09,320
are a lot of things that you can do to

828
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:13,320
to to feel connected and to kind of leave the

829
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:19,320
mind in a box world that we tend to live in. Yeah,

830
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:23,239
thank you, I'm writing I'm writing this down. Does that well?

831
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,159
Speaker 1: I'm asking everybody, I mean everyone, I talk to, every priest,

832
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:29,639
every catechist, everyone, because you know, there's this there's this

833
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:34,679
real need I think that for practical things, because there's

834
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,599
lots of good books and good podcasts and good content

835
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:39,000
coming out all of the time.

836
00:45:39,039 --> 00:45:39,199
Speaker 3: Now.

837
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this huge explosion of good Internet orthodoxy,

838
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:47,119
let's say, and re enchantment is on everybody's minds and

839
00:45:47,159 --> 00:45:51,639
all this stuff. But you know, my concern always, well

840
00:45:51,679 --> 00:45:54,760
a lot of the time is that they become too intellectualized,

841
00:45:55,079 --> 00:45:57,599
because if you just turn it into studying more and

842
00:45:57,599 --> 00:46:00,800
more and more, a that preclude it's a certain type

843
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:03,599
of person who's not that interested in doing that, and

844
00:46:03,679 --> 00:46:05,880
then b it kind of puts you back into your

845
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:09,800
inside this internal headspace where you're just thinking through problems.

846
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:13,400
Very scholastic. Maybe you could say, yeah, yeah, but our

847
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:14,920
life is lived that.

848
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 2: There's also a simple one, which is obviously the one

849
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:20,480
that the Fathers often say. It's like remember, you know,

850
00:46:20,679 --> 00:46:25,480
just remember remember God, remember your sins. You know, just attention,

851
00:46:26,079 --> 00:46:29,000
practicing attention is pretty you know, I think it's it's

852
00:46:29,079 --> 00:46:31,639
it's also like a universal thing. It's not a particularly

853
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:33,960
Christian thing. It's something you see in the Fathers that

854
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,280
you see some Buddhist monk tailure or whatever. But I

855
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,840
think it's because it's so real that if you that

856
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,639
were so distracted and we're so swirling in our thoughts,

857
00:46:41,639 --> 00:46:46,039
that if you're able to practice just basic attention and

858
00:46:46,519 --> 00:46:51,239
basic memory, like like remembering yourself and remembering God, that

859
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:52,360
does a lot. I think too.

860
00:46:54,079 --> 00:46:58,079
Speaker 1: And actually I've often quoted your definition for worship, but

861
00:46:58,159 --> 00:47:00,960
let me make sure I'm doing it justice, which was

862
00:47:05,079 --> 00:47:08,440
imitative attention is yeah, how you talk about it?

863
00:47:09,079 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so.

864
00:47:12,679 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: Do you find because I often want to recommend people,

865
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,199
I'm sort of on the cusp of including something that

866
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,719
looks like meditation in this course, just in the sense

867
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,559
of there's a lot of meanings to that word, obviously,

868
00:47:24,599 --> 00:47:27,199
but just in the sense of being totally present and

869
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:31,000
having no thoughts. Yeah, in a state of giving total

870
00:47:31,039 --> 00:47:35,800
attention to something, just to existing. But I wonder how

871
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,320
much that kind of word is a turn off for

872
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:41,239
people who are worried about the influence of New Age

873
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:44,599
thought on Christianity, which is real, that's a that's a

874
00:47:44,639 --> 00:47:48,559
real kind of syncretism problem that you see in the

875
00:47:48,639 --> 00:47:49,440
twentieth century.

876
00:47:50,039 --> 00:47:53,039
Speaker 2: But I think that if you use the term practicing attention,

877
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:57,639
I don't think that that's that that's particularly a problem,

878
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:01,760
you know, you know, the idea of the idea of

879
00:48:02,039 --> 00:48:10,239
of focusing attention and then also avoiding distraction and having

880
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:13,679
that attention be a physical attention too, right, to just

881
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:19,239
be still and to attend, and to also you know

882
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:24,920
the practice of being aware of the the logismoi, you know,

883
00:48:25,039 --> 00:48:26,960
like of the of the thoughts and to kind of

884
00:48:27,039 --> 00:48:29,679
let them go. Like all of those things are totally fine.

885
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:33,440
Just because some Buddhist meditation does the same thing doesn't

886
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:35,639
mean that it's wrong. You see it in the Philocalia

887
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:39,079
and in the in the Hesiochastic Fathers all the time.

888
00:48:39,159 --> 00:48:43,079
So I think that it's completely fine, you know. And

889
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:46,800
I know there's been you know, in the early twentieth

890
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:48,800
century and part of the parts of the twentieth century,

891
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:53,960
there's been a lot of going against the breathing aspect

892
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:59,400
of the Jesus prayer. But I think that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

893
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:02,519
but I think that there's that there's been a I

894
00:49:02,559 --> 00:49:05,320
think that now we're in a better position to help

895
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:09,559
people kind of understand that aspect and how in fact,

896
00:49:09,639 --> 00:49:12,800
if we do believe in a fully sacramental reality, you know,

897
00:49:13,599 --> 00:49:15,880
if you don't object to the fact that the that

898
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,920
the you know that the cup that the hold the

899
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:20,960
host has to be made of a precious metal. Like

900
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:24,360
if if you believe that, then why would it bother

901
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:26,800
you that in prayer there would also be a kind

902
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,880
of breathing and a type of attention to the body

903
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,960
that would that would help to avoid distraction, you know.

904
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:35,920
And so I think that I think that it's possible

905
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:37,960
to recover those aspects of the Jesus prayer in a

906
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,239
way that isn't new age or whatever, but it is

907
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:46,280
actually a more more sacramental and kind of incarnational practice

908
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:47,280
of the of the prayer.

909
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:51,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I understand why people have that reaction where

910
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,679
we just started the next series on my podcast on

911
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,199
American religion, and in reading up on this, I was

912
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:03,719
just kind of validated and also still surprised at how

913
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:05,960
much a cult and esoteric influence.

914
00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:08,559
Speaker 2: Was weird. You're doing that. We're doing that right now too.

915
00:50:08,599 --> 00:50:11,000
We just brow Yeah. Yeah, we just put out as

916
00:50:11,119 --> 00:50:15,480
episode uh called I think it's called Universal History of

917
00:50:15,519 --> 00:50:18,840
American I forget American Religion. We talk about the bird,

918
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:22,519
the birdover district. Yes, that's next week. Oh, that's wild

919
00:50:22,519 --> 00:50:24,079
that you're doing at the same you're doing it Oh

920
00:50:24,119 --> 00:50:26,039
my goodness. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so there you go.

921
00:50:26,119 --> 00:50:29,079
It's it's in the air to help understand the relationship

922
00:50:29,079 --> 00:50:33,559
between Kabbalah and and the you know, and the Puritans,

923
00:50:33,599 --> 00:50:36,679
Like they're these weird connections that people like, you know,

924
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:40,280
the idea that that the Salem witch trials, like we're

925
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:44,119
just completely in a vacuum that nobody was practicing these

926
00:50:44,239 --> 00:50:49,039
kinds of magical practices, you know, Okay, whatever they were.

927
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:51,679
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's breath taking. Well, you know, I mean,

928
00:50:51,679 --> 00:50:53,400
you guys are in the middle of it right now too.

929
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:55,719
I was just breath taking to me. The extent to

930
00:50:55,760 --> 00:51:01,159
which occultism and spirit mediums and says, I mean Lincoln

931
00:51:01,159 --> 00:51:03,880
held a seance in the White House. I mean, it's

932
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:04,880
it's just wild.

933
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it was, so I understand, yeah it was

934
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:11,599
those times. But but yeah, but I think, yeah, go

935
00:51:11,599 --> 00:51:12,880
ahead and say what you were going to say about

936
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,199
the well, the connection is, like, so I understand. Why.

937
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:18,360
Speaker 1: So by the time we get to the twentieth century

938
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:25,239
and there's there are overtly explicit movements called Satanism and

939
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:30,519
Luciferianism and Hindu syncretism and the Bahai religion it's like

940
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:34,440
I understand why there's a pushback from the evangelicals, even

941
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,519
if they are not on solid enough ground to make

942
00:51:37,559 --> 00:51:42,039
an adequate pushback, and why that might come into, you know,

943
00:51:42,039 --> 00:51:43,920
a suspicion of Buddhism or whatever.

944
00:51:45,119 --> 00:51:48,519
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually in the in the Orthodox, in some

945
00:51:48,559 --> 00:51:53,039
of the twentieth century aesthetics, they really went after the

946
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:57,599
breathing part and especially like the heartbeat part of the

947
00:51:57,719 --> 00:51:59,679
and said it was dangerous, it was danger for help

948
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,000
and all this stuff. And I think they're also afraid

949
00:52:02,039 --> 00:52:04,480
that it was turning the Jesus prayer into a kind

950
00:52:04,519 --> 00:52:08,440
of an automatic thing, you know, like it it wasn't

951
00:52:08,639 --> 00:52:11,880
it wasn't related to contrition and to I see, and

952
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:13,760
it was just like it was more like a Montreal

953
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,840
like this automatic thing that you do. But I think

954
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:21,360
that we can recover the more that's say embodied aspect

955
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,199
of the prayer without falling into that mistake. It's especially

956
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,360
now with like so much so much of Cogshai and

957
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:30,199
so much of like the recent psycho you know, psychological

958
00:52:30,199 --> 00:52:34,599
development show us that the body is completely related. You

959
00:52:34,679 --> 00:52:39,079
can't separate the body from from from spiritual practices, you know.

960
00:52:40,119 --> 00:52:42,639
Speaker 1: And I even knew a woman on the East Coast

961
00:52:42,639 --> 00:52:44,960
who went to her priest and said, I want to

962
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:48,639
do the Jesus prayer, and he sent her, He literally

963
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:54,679
sent her to a nearby Buddhist center to take a

964
00:52:54,719 --> 00:52:59,079
class in breathing meditation. You should go there, learn to breathe,

965
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:01,519
and then come back and I'll teach you that Jesus prayer.

966
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:03,960
And she said, you know, why are you sending me

967
00:53:04,039 --> 00:53:06,199
to this Buddhist center? He said, because the human body

968
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:09,000
is the same everywhere, and this is a good resource

969
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,519
to learn how to breathe. So you need to breathe

970
00:53:11,559 --> 00:53:14,119
to pray. Go do that, you come back.

971
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:18,400
Speaker 2: So that's why I've never heard anything like that. That's

972
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:21,199
where that's it. That's that's interesting, very interesting.

973
00:53:22,519 --> 00:53:28,920
Speaker 1: And I wonder too, how much of because obviously ecommenced syncretism,

974
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:31,280
where we kind of say all religions are the same

975
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,719
or whatever. Obviously that's you know, we can't have that.

976
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,559
But I guess I would want a different word for

977
00:53:38,639 --> 00:53:43,559
the kind of cus lewisy and syncretism that produces books

978
00:53:43,599 --> 00:53:45,800
like Christ the Eternal Doo, for example.

979
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:47,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean where.

980
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,559
Speaker 1: We say, well, all of this belongs to the faith,

981
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:53,719
no matter where where it is all all truth is Christ.

982
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:56,519
So when you encounter truth, you're encountering some part of

983
00:53:57,159 --> 00:53:58,119
some part of Christ.

984
00:53:59,119 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think that this is It's been there

985
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:04,800
from the beginning. You know. It's like you have Tertillian

986
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:08,079
versus Justin Martyr, Like right at the outset, you kind

987
00:54:08,119 --> 00:54:11,199
of have these two almost necessary aspects of the tradition,

988
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:14,719
one which is trying to protect the inside and to

989
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:19,119
prevent corruption and kind of infection, and the other which

990
00:54:19,159 --> 00:54:20,800
is saying, well, if you know, if the world is

991
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,719
creative by God, then it means that God must be present.

992
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:27,280
And therefore all those that you know, all truth is

993
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:30,719
our truth. You know, the ancient philosophers, all the things

994
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,239
they said were true, is Christ's truth, you know, saying,

995
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:35,960
I mean Justin Martyr even said they were Christians before Christ.

996
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:39,480
And so I think that, you know, and it's and

997
00:54:39,519 --> 00:54:41,639
it's funny because both of those are kind of captured

998
00:54:41,639 --> 00:54:44,840
in monasticism, and you know, you go to mon Athos,

999
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:47,880
you see the Greek the philosophers and the Greek thinkers

1000
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:51,519
in the nartheks of the churches with their like prophecies.

1001
00:54:51,559 --> 00:54:54,079
But at the same time, you know, often the monastics

1002
00:54:54,079 --> 00:54:56,039
are the ones that are the most radical in terms

1003
00:54:56,039 --> 00:55:00,559
of purity and like protecting the inside and everything. So

1004
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:03,199
I think that there'll always be at tension between those two.

1005
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,199
And if we're sensitive, we can realize that the people

1006
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:08,599
that play the like, if we have a certain tendency,

1007
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:11,800
that the people that have the opposite tendency, they they

1008
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:14,800
are also necessary. They're probably good check on you, no

1009
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:17,280
matter what you which side you're on, They're probably a

1010
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:20,599
good check on you to prevent prevent accesses in believing

1011
00:55:20,639 --> 00:55:22,960
that the world is arbitrary and that you know, the

1012
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:25,280
world isn't actually created by God, and God's grace isn't

1013
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:28,719
present in the world, and where everything is falling and

1014
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:32,079
corrupted in a kind of Calvinist way, you know that's

1015
00:55:32,119 --> 00:55:34,719
not the Orthodox way. Then at the same time, like

1016
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:38,679
you said, we can't have this kind of just like

1017
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:42,159
whatever syncretism that doesn't work either.

1018
00:55:43,039 --> 00:55:46,920
Speaker 1: Which, weirdly, going back to the American religion things, that's

1019
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:49,360
a weird theme I'm noticing in American religion. You know,

1020
00:55:49,519 --> 00:55:53,039
it starts with Freemasonry and then it leads into Theioseelphism.

1021
00:55:53,159 --> 00:55:56,000
There's all of these movements to sort of make this

1022
00:55:56,079 --> 00:55:59,800
kind of meta religious movement that tries to include all

1023
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:05,320
these other things. And so that's I don't know, that's

1024
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,039
probably a result of the trying to solve the chaos

1025
00:56:08,039 --> 00:56:10,039
of the Reformation, now that I think about it.

1026
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:12,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one of the things that I've been my

1027
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:16,639
insight too about this has been that there seems to

1028
00:56:16,679 --> 00:56:20,440
be that because the tendency of the Reformation, not right away,

1029
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:22,480
but the tendency of the Reformation is to move towards

1030
00:56:22,519 --> 00:56:26,480
the kind of flattening. Obviously, like you know, Anabaptists are

1031
00:56:26,519 --> 00:56:30,280
the radicals, but even if you don't just take directly Anabaptists,

1032
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:32,800
there's a movement towards the kind of flattening. But because

1033
00:56:33,199 --> 00:56:36,440
reality is actually not flat, it's just it is, isn't

1034
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:40,800
it actually doesn't work that way. What happens is secret societies,

1035
00:56:41,199 --> 00:56:44,440
you know, because there's a kind of secret about the

1036
00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:47,880
higher cure of the world that has to re formulate itself,

1037
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:51,360
and so you have these people that that so you

1038
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:54,760
can see like the secret societies and even freemasony, like

1039
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:58,880
if it really existed before the like seventeenth century, I mean,

1040
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:01,679
who knows, I mean maybe did, but it's appealas it

1041
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:04,320
appears around the around that time, it starts to it

1042
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,719
starts to bubble up. And so there's a connection between

1043
00:57:07,079 --> 00:57:10,480
the Enlightenment and the secret societies, right uh. The wrote

1044
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:13,039
these letters to the to the Rosicrucians trying to like

1045
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,039
get into their secret, secret thing, and so, you know,

1046
00:57:17,679 --> 00:57:19,679
so it's interesting because in North and so in some

1047
00:57:19,719 --> 00:57:22,960
ways you have, like I heard traces. This is a

1048
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:25,960
little difficult to talk about, but you know, I've heard

1049
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:30,280
traces of of of hermetic organizations inside the Catholic Church,

1050
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:35,639
like actually Catholic priests that are kind of secretly hermeticists

1051
00:57:35,679 --> 00:57:38,679
and practice these kind of mixed mystical practice, but it's

1052
00:57:38,679 --> 00:57:42,599
not officially part of their practice. It's like something apart

1053
00:57:42,760 --> 00:57:46,599
or on top or whatever. But as in Orthodoxy, we

1054
00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:49,519
don't we don't have that, we don't need that because

1055
00:57:49,719 --> 00:57:54,239
because the Jesus Prayer, which leads to theosis, is just

1056
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:56,440
part of our it's just part of our tradition, and

1057
00:57:56,480 --> 00:57:59,519
you access it to whatever level you can access it.

1058
00:57:59,559 --> 00:58:01,920
There's no need for a secret doctrine. There's no need

1059
00:58:01,960 --> 00:58:06,320
for like a secret hierarchy. It's like it's right there.

1060
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:09,920
Speaker 1: I wonder if that starts to emerge by the time

1061
00:58:10,039 --> 00:58:14,840
Scholasticism is hitting its full kind of rationalist force, and

1062
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:19,239
that kind of causes a esoteric reaction the way the

1063
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,239
Enlightenment leans very non rationalism, and then you get the

1064
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:25,800
romantic kind of pushback against it. I feel like you

1065
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:28,400
see those two tendencies and in the West since the

1066
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:31,280
Middle Ages, you know, the hyperrational and then the move

1067
00:58:31,320 --> 00:58:35,639
away to the sort of secret, emotional, occult, esoteric thing

1068
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:37,760
kind of a as a reaction.

1069
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:42,360
Speaker 2: I mean, it's possible. For sure, there's a there's a

1070
00:58:42,599 --> 00:58:46,840
there's an influx from Spain, you know, that came from

1071
00:58:47,119 --> 00:58:50,320
from the kind of capitalist movement. And then there's already

1072
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:53,000
a kind of Christian Cobbola during the Renaissance that starts

1073
00:58:53,039 --> 00:58:55,639
to develop itself. And so it is it is like

1074
00:58:55,679 --> 00:59:00,400
you said, before the Reformation, before the Enlightenment, but it's

1075
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:04,079
already in those movements that are leading, that are leading

1076
00:59:04,119 --> 00:59:06,639
to it. And so you know, in the in kind

1077
00:59:06,639 --> 00:59:09,559
of Renaissance magic, you have these types of influences.

1078
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean maybe that that starts earlier in

1079
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:19,280
like the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, where you know at

1080
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:24,320
and the divide between the rational and the sort of esoteric.

1081
00:59:24,159 --> 00:59:27,679
Speaker 2: It possibly, Yeah, I mean that's where the that's where

1082
00:59:27,719 --> 00:59:29,880
the templars, like, so that's where the legends of the

1083
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:34,559
templars are are are probably at least the legends around

1084
00:59:34,599 --> 00:59:37,440
them are probably relevant in the sense that it's the

1085
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:40,880
templars that are the source of all the the esotericism

1086
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:43,360
in the West, Like they all no matter which one

1087
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,719
you look at, whether it's the Freemasons or the Resecutions

1088
00:59:46,800 --> 00:59:49,480
or whatever, if you look at their mythology, it goes

1089
00:59:49,519 --> 00:59:53,360
back to the to the templars into this to the

1090
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:56,800
suppression of the templars. So yeah, you probably onto something

1091
00:59:58,519 --> 01:00:03,639
we studied U before I was in Patristics in my

1092
01:00:03,719 --> 01:00:05,639
PhD program. They I was.

1093
01:00:05,719 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 1: I just sort of woke up one day in the

1094
01:00:07,400 --> 01:00:09,760
medieval department and we were doing all this translation of

1095
01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:13,280
medieval manuscripts, and it was really just eye opening the

1096
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:17,039
way that we know very little about the medieval world.

1097
01:00:17,159 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 2: It certain says, I don't know if you know this.

1098
01:00:18,639 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: There was a ton of text produced in the in

1099
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,480
the Middle Ages, and ninety percent of it has never

1100
01:00:24,559 --> 01:00:26,320
been translated by ament.

1101
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 2: I totally believe it. I completely believe it, and because

1102
01:00:31,079 --> 01:00:33,960
I mean, but in some ways it is. I think

1103
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:36,360
it's it has to be with the Enlightenment and the

1104
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:38,760
Dark Ages and all this stuff. There's a desire for

1105
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:42,840
the same reason the Enlightenment people said, said the Byzantine Empire,

1106
01:00:43,159 --> 01:00:46,679
you know, quote for that same reason it was also

1107
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:49,320
didn't want you to see anything of the medieval actual

1108
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:54,239
medieval text. Yeah. Yeah, anyways, we're kind of way off

1109
01:00:54,320 --> 01:00:58,480
our original subject, but it is definitely very interesting. And

1110
01:00:58,519 --> 01:01:01,960
so doctor zach Talus, where people you said, you're podcasting,

1111
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:04,320
that's so tell us where people can find you. Yeah.

1112
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:07,599
Speaker 1: So the podcast is on ANCI it's an ancient faith

1113
01:01:07,639 --> 01:01:10,159
hosted podcast, so it's on Ancient Faith Radio. There's a

1114
01:01:10,199 --> 01:01:13,239
YouTube channel for it called the Roots of Everything. It's

1115
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:16,639
also on the regular kind of ancient faith channels. But

1116
01:01:17,599 --> 01:01:20,880
all of that content, with all these bonus episodes are

1117
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:25,400
on substack. So it's just just zach Ricporku dot substack

1118
01:01:25,480 --> 01:01:28,400
dot com. And that's kind of where I'm putting everything

1119
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:33,400
right now and putting notes actually for the upcoming course

1120
01:01:33,719 --> 01:01:37,519
and for I'm trying to do a sequel to this book. Actually,

1121
01:01:37,559 --> 01:01:39,960
there's a because the thing my students asked me a

1122
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:41,960
lot about was I said, well, what do you want next?

1123
01:01:42,639 --> 01:01:48,480
And they said sexuality, sexual ethics, because a huge defeat

1124
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:53,320
for Generation Z and a lot of other generations is

1125
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:55,519
as soon as they hear that your church might be

1126
01:01:55,679 --> 01:01:58,079
somehow phobic, it's a non.

1127
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:00,880
Speaker 2: Starter for them. You know, it's just lay off the table.

1128
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,920
Speaker 1: And so I realized that we needed a whole sequel

1129
01:02:03,920 --> 01:02:06,920
book about morality and to address sexual ethics.

1130
01:02:06,920 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 2: So so putting some notes out step on that landmine

1131
01:02:10,480 --> 01:02:11,599
for us, Doctor Zach.

1132
01:02:12,360 --> 01:02:16,599
Speaker 1: That's what everybody said. Everybody said, you go to that,

1133
01:02:17,559 --> 01:02:21,159
but but no. I asked Father Josiah, trying for a

1134
01:02:21,239 --> 01:02:24,599
blessing to write this book, and he said, I'm not

1135
01:02:24,719 --> 01:02:27,639
giving you a blessing to write this book. And then

1136
01:02:27,679 --> 01:02:29,800
he paused, and I stared at him, and he goes,

1137
01:02:30,119 --> 01:02:33,840
I'm demanding it. Did you write this book that's hilarious?

1138
01:02:34,559 --> 01:02:37,280
So you know, well we'll see how that goes.

1139
01:02:37,519 --> 01:02:40,639
Speaker 2: All right, And everybody, don't forget to jick out journey

1140
01:02:40,679 --> 01:02:41,239
to reality.

1141
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:43,599
Speaker 1: It's good to talk to you, doctor Zach. Yeah, it

1142
01:02:43,639 --> 01:02:45,199
was great to talk to you. Thanks for having me on.

1143
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:47,679
Speaker 2: I said I would never do it again. But here

1144
01:02:47,719 --> 01:02:50,719
we are. We are announcing the Symbolic Girl Summit in

1145
01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:53,639
May twenty twenty six. I have so many great people

1146
01:02:53,639 --> 01:02:55,840
around me that I'm just excited to do it, even

1147
01:02:55,880 --> 01:02:58,199
though I thought it would be crazy to do it again.

1148
01:02:58,599 --> 01:03:01,840
Speaker 4: Our summit's going to be from May fourteenth through sixteenth

1149
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:05,679
in Broadview Heights, Ohio. You can buy tickets at Symbolic

1150
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:08,960
World Summit dot com. We have early bird pricing going

1151
01:03:09,039 --> 01:03:12,760
right now, fifty dollars off of general admission and VIP tickets.

1152
01:03:13,079 --> 01:03:15,920
Keynote speakers this year our father Josiah Trenham and doctor

1153
01:03:15,960 --> 01:03:19,320
Mary Harrington, which is a combination nobody knew that they wanted,

1154
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:21,800
but I think it's going to be absolutely incredible. And

1155
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:23,840
of course Jonathan and I will be speaking, as well

1156
01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:27,320
as several people from around the Symbolic World community.

1157
01:03:27,519 --> 01:03:29,719
Speaker 2: A lot of people that you like that you've seen

1158
01:03:30,039 --> 01:03:31,679
are going to be there, are going to come, We're

1159
01:03:31,679 --> 01:03:33,760
gonna have book signings. It'll be a lot of time

1160
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:36,360
for people to meet and to greet. We're also doing

1161
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:39,480
Supra as well, and so come and join us. We

1162
01:03:39,519 --> 01:03:41,639
can't wait for this and we're excited to meet you

1163
01:03:41,679 --> 01:03:51,320
in person. If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please

1164
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:54,000
go to the Symbolic World dot com website and see

1165
01:03:54,039 --> 01:03:56,519
how you can support what we're doing. There are multiple

1166
01:03:56,559 --> 01:03:59,960
subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase,

1167
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:02,480
So go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank

1168
01:04:02,519 --> 01:04:03,719
you for your support.