Hello and welcome to the 10,000 things.
My name is Sam Ellis.
I'm Joe Loh.
And uh, today we've got a, a beautiful quote from Ard to, and we can de
uh, how do we say his damn name?
I say Eckhart to Eckhart Toll in, uh, America.
I think they say Tole.
Tole.
Yeah.
Eckhart Toll.
Sounds like if he was an Aussie, you'd call him Eckhart to Eckhart Toll Mate.
Yeah, CRO Croissant.
Yeah.
Yeah, cafe La.
Um, and look, it's a beautiful sounding quote, but as well, unfortunately we might
agree on this a little bit more than I thought, but I think it'll still be really
good that it's a beautiful sounding quote, but how much do we really agree with it?
Mm.
On a scale of one to 10, Joe.
Right now, how much can you endorse this statement?
Uh, I want to hear you read it, and I want to have a spontaneous
in the moment reaction to it.
Ooh, that's very, because I, I'm all over the shop on this one.
Yeah, me too.
I think okay.
Here's the quote behind the sometimes seemingly random or even chaotic
succession of events in our lives, as well as in the world, lies concealed the
unfolding of a higher order and purpose.
This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying, the snow falls each
flake in its appropriate place.
We can never understand this higher order through thinking about it, because
whatever we think about is content.
Whereas the higher order emanates from the formless realm of consciousness,
from universal intelligence, but we can glimpse it and more than that,
align ourselves with it, which means.
Be conscious participants in the unfolding of that higher purpose.
And that's from his book, A New Earth.
Mm.
Which was published when?
Uh, dunno exactly.
Early two thousands.
Okay.
So one to 10 or zero to 10.
Flat zero flatly rejecting at 10, completely utterly endorsing it.
Where are you?
Uh, I think I can glimpse a higher purpose at times, but it's like I
can glimpse a higher purpose when everything aligns in a way that I like.
Haha.
And this particular spiritual statement, I'm very jealous of Eckhart told,
I wish I could be this confident.
I, I, I mean, I look, I, I feel the same way.
I kept the piece of writing because I found it a beautiful piece of writing.
I really like the zen line of, uh, the snow falls, each
flake in its appropriate place.
Can't argue with that statement.
Well, you can argue.
Well, that's what we're gonna argue with is that isn't the snow falling
just completely random chaos?
And isn't it weird spiritual mumbo jumbo that would put people off a show like this
to say that it falls in its appropriate.
Place.
Yeah.
Okay.
So for starters, I hate the word appropriate.
It's used a lot in teaching.
It's a very, you know, it's a very professional context sort of word.
And it's the kind of word I would struggle to hear, struggle to say.
Struggle to define.
And that's my problem with it, that it's says everything while saying nothing.
So when we say to a, you know, to somebody in a situation, well, what you are
saying or doing there is inappropriate.
We haven't actually given them any information other than
someone, me, perhaps, possibly everybody doesn't like this.
Or in theory it's not suitable.
You know, it's not the right thing in the right place, in the right time.
But why, why not?
So appropriateness apropos means that it goes, that it applies.
I think it's clear what he's saying though.
I, you don't have to pull apart the word appropriate, like, but No, but
no, I have to because the snowflake lands in its appropriate place.
Well, why is the, why is the place that lands any more appropriate than, so
everything he is saying that everything is happening exactly how it should.
Yeah, sure.
I get that.
And we can align ourselves with the purpose.
and that means everything we see in the news mm-hmm.
Is happening exactly as it should.
And we can be completely at peace with it, for example.
And that's where I start to struggle.
Mm.
Or that everything happens for a reason.
Mm-hmm.
That, that has been something that I've kind of heard around
my addiction recovery circles.
And it's kind of the thread that's unraveling my spirituality.
Mm-hmm.
Because I can't sort of agree with it.
I think there's a lot more randomness and chaos, even if there is a higher power.
I don't see a lot of guidance towards justice or, uh, peace or, I, I
don't, I don't see the hand of a.
Of a higher power, an interventionist God making things Okay.
By the end of the Almighty.
Yeah.
Not seeing it myself at the moment, I've gotta say, and, and for the people
that are looking around and saying things in, you know, in the media about
this, something or other is happening according to God's plan, they're usually
endorsing a bad thing when they say that.
So, yeah.
So it's, it's deeply problematic.
But on the other hand, when I'm in what I would call a more spiritual state, if I've
had a good meditation session or something like that, it can seem like things
are in alignment, if that makes sense.
Sure.
And that I'm in alignment with something greater.
And there's a lot less to worry about than I thought there was.
So I have these exalted moments.
Mm-hmm.
But I'm really in a spiritual bind because I, I just can't
believe that everything happens for a reason.
No, neither can I front him flat flatly.
I'll agree with you.
Now there's layers to this thing.
Lot, a lot, a lot of layers.
And we might be able to endorse it on some layers and not on others.
Right.
That's what I'm expecting to find here.
But probably less interested in what he intends by this, but
more like what we can make of it.
But.
I will say like, so before we hit record, you mentioned that this is the kind of
statement you could have sort of got behind much more readily six months ago.
Yeah.
Like I said, it's maybe I'm unraveling and you're having a bit of a
Catholic experience of religion.
Well, I do find the Catholics are always tortured by the, does God exist?
Doesn't God exist stuff?
Right.
Well they do.
Certainly the stereotype is they do they do a lot of hand wring for
a lot of reasons, sort of, yeah.
You know, whether it's the guilt they feel themselves or, or the guilt at
what other Catholics have done or, or struggle with elements of doctrine.
Because, I mean, not all churches are like this, but the more established churches,
there is a, there is an expectation that the followers will basically update
their software whenever the learned elder or the council of elders or you know,
the Pope or like, you know, whoever's in the position to make doctrinal.
Clarifications in a particular church as an exp and I'm including
the ha Krishnas in this, there's an expectation that everyone just
goes, okay, that's the truth now.
So this new little piece of theology, or this clarification on this point,
or this rule that we, that now exists or doesn't exist, that that was
always true and we just all upgrade.
Yeah.
We all, we all just upgrade our firmware and go, yep, that's what we believe.
Now, did the, that's not actually how it works.
Did the Harry Christner, you were raised, didn't believe that
everything happens for a reason?
Yes, but I'll say, to be fair, I, I want to be what this whole quote makes me.
I, I'm starting to feel intense.
Am I summarizing it properly by saying everything happens for a reason or
have I not done Eckhart Justice?
I.
You know what?
I don't think that's quite it.
Mm.
But it's sort of good enough, I guess it's sort of like it's gonna pass the
pub test as like that's probably a reasonable, because he is saying that we
can't understand it by thinking about it.
So he's saying it's gotta come from pure consciousness.
Yes.
And so the ha Christians did say some similar things to that, so,
but this whole thing makes me.
A retreat into quite a sort of, you know, dare I say, scientific sort of
way of thinking where I'm actually deeply interested in causality and
why things happen and consequence and effect and cause and, you know, trying
to get things in the right order.
And of course some causes and effects don't go in a straight order
and they're a complex interaction.
So it brings to mind physics and, you know, it brings to mind the
time I've spent with history trying to make sense of why events went
this way and not another way.
And it brings to mind my experience of personal relationships and, and
the role of random chance in life and so many complicated things.
But I'll, I'll say when I, when I get to like a difficult point, a difficult moment
in life, I often start reasoning backwards through a chain of cause and effect to try
to understand, oh, well what led to this?
And.
What I find is I can often explain how things, uh, things have become, maps less
of a mystery to me than they once were.
Mm-hmm.
So I can endorse the statement on this sort of level.
Yes, there are often reasons.
Now I'm gonna say there's always reasons and there's a level of chance,
but whether that connects to a higher purpose or not, I really couldn't say.
I can't say it doesn't, and I can't say it does.
Yeah.
You know, I'm agnostic, aren't I?
You know, I think, um, but the higher Christians certainly believed
the left wing types were like, no, our higher purpose here is to work
together to help, uh, each other and to help the rest of humanity.
That's sort of the left wing take.
And then there were some people who were perhaps unknown to
themselves, were basically fascists.
and we're, look, we're all fascists to a degree.
It's about how well we're able to deprogram and liberate ourselves
from that kind of thinking.
But there were some people in there who were very attracted to order
doctrine, hierarchy class people in their place, roles for genders.
But did both for this, both sides believe that everything
happened for a reason, sorry.
Or, uh, yeah, I would, maybe I'm misquoting.
Did both sides believe they believe that there's a higher purpose?
Yeah, I would say they both do.
Do you think it's a universal spiritual?
I, I think it might be thing to believe that there's a higher purpose.
So can, so if I am unraveling around, I can't believe there's a higher
purpose to the world and my life, then am I going back to being an atheist?
Am I now set on a path?
Because I can't come at like.
When I, when I wrote this, I can actually help you out with that one.
But when I wrote this quote down, it was because I found it really
beautiful and I was kind of vibing with it, and I'm like, yeah, man.
Yeah, it felt good.
Felt good.
Higher purpose, man.
I love that.
Sounds great.
Yeah.
And that, that line, what's the line about?
You can't think about it.
You've gotta know it from, okay.
Yeah.
So we can never understand this higher order through thinking about it because
whatever we think about is content.
Whereas the higher order emanates from the formless realm of consciousness,
from the formless realm of consciousness.
Mm.
See that's what I've been tapping into.
It's, yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting with meditation.
Mm-hmm.
So I was like, yes, I'm.
Yes, I probably can tap into a higher order, but I can never
come out of meditation and explain to you what just happened.
Yeah.
Because I'm back in the world of content and thinking.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm having these kind of trippy experiences even though I've put down
drugs and alcohol, I'm having these quite trippy experiences by meditating.
Well, and then at the end of meditating, you're back in the
mundane world of cause and effect.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Mundane cause and effect versus this other thing.
Cosmic cause and effect.
Yes.
That I'm tapping into.
Yeah.
But yeah, but see this is the thing is I read and reread Eckhart to.
Mm-hmm.
But if I can't believe this part of Eckhart told, then this is the rest
of the power of now and and new Earth.
Does it all start to unravel because.
Is it my old atheist programming kicking in after 10 years of spirituality?
because I spent a lot of that time, I stopped believing that
coincidences were just coincidences in my addiction recovery.
yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, I had the strangest experience.
Sam, do you still feel like coincidences are not just coincidences?
Like do you still anyway, before you get to the experience?
Well, there's a couple of parts to this.
Like, I was going to, uh, at about 18 months sober, I was
going to pick up a drink.
Okay.
I decided I was gonna go into a bottle shop, dangerous
moment, and buy a six pack.
Oof.
I'd been to a job interview for a job, which would've been sitting next
to a train line that was shut down.
Waiting in case a train came, but there was never gonna be a train that came
because the line was shut down for works.
And I would've had to sit next to that train line all night on the miraculous
off chance that a train came and then I could alert people further down the line.
That was the job.
Okay.
I went for this job 'cause the film industry was quiet.
Mm-hmm.
I did the interview and they said, how much of a priority would the job be?
And I said, well, after my kids, it'd been my main priority.
Didn't get the job.
Yeah.
So I had to make the trains that weren't coming my main priority.
I fucked up the interview basically.
So I knew I'd fucked up the interview.
I didn't know how I was gonna pay my rent.
I was driving home, it was like 11 in the morning.
Beautiful sunny day in Preston.
I pulled into Woolworths there.
I've been doing addiction recovery, 12 step stuff for a year and a half.
I was trying to have a, a spiritual experience with a higher power.
I sat in the car and I said, God, if you're up there.
Or wherever you are.
Uh, I'm about to go and buy a six pack and then I'm gonna drink it, and then I
don't know what I'm gonna do after that.
If you actually exist, please give me a sign Yeah.
That you exist and I shouldn't drink.
And then I walked into the supermarket.
You you surrendered control.
Yeah, I surrendered control.
I walked into the supermarket.
It was a big supermarket.
There was like 20 aisles.
And at the end was a bottle shop.
And I started walking along the aisles and I got to the fourth last aisle
and someone from AA was there and they looked up and they made eye contact with
me and I made eye contact with them.
And I turned around and I walked out.
I asked God for a sign.
A sign was given, and I haven't had a drink since.
And that's coming up on 10 years without a drink.
And that was at the 18 month mark.
So I could have been drinking for most of the last 10 years,
which I think would've safely say would've been fairly disastrous.
Oh, indeed.
So was that a coincidence?
An atheist would say that was just a coincidence.
I asked God for a sign, someone was put between me and a bottle shop.
So the higher Christians would say, in that case, they would say, uh,
of you seeing someone there that reminded you of your mission, they
would say it's Krishna's arrangement.
Right?
So that answers your question.
Yep.
God put that person there.
Mm-hmm.
Now.
They also talked a lot about, obviously Hara, Krishna, the Hindus,
they talk about karma, right?
And reincarnation.
So they, they say, you know, karma and re reincarnation go hand in hand.
They're both problematic doctrines in different ways,
but they, they are, they are.
You need to put them together for it to make sense.
So if you've got karma there, you don't even need to say, God did this.
So it's a little bit more sophisticated.
Your good karma was to have someone there remind you why, probably
'cause you reminded someone else.
So it.
The cosmic higher meaning of it can be as simple as that.
You looked out for someone, someone looked out for you, don't
you think that's good enough?
And ah, and then, and then years later I, I got the sudden urge to, so you
might have to live many lives before you become perfected and just go with it.
Well, yeah.
Sudden urge to, you know.
Yeah.
So years later I got the urge, sudden urge to go to a local football game.
Sure.
And I went to a local football game.
They tend to be boozy affairs.
Yeah.
And I ran into someone from my secret addiction recovery world.
Mm-hmm.
And he was like, oh, so nice to see you here, man.
What are you doing here?
And I'm like, I don't know why I'm here.
And he is like, oh, I was just having a hard time because it's such a boozy, this
is my first time I've come back to my football club since I stopped drinking.
And it's such a boozy affair and it's really nice to run into someone that I
can that is like share an experience with.
Yeah.
So I, I was that person for someone else years later.
This is the cosmic order that I think I can get with.
So this, these are concrete things that have happened Yes.
In my life.
And you can see how I started to not believe in coincidences anymore.
So that was another coincidence, right?
Oh, yes.
You're not believing, it's just pure chance that that
of no meaning intrinsically.
Oh, yes, yes.
No, I understand.
Whereas a strict atheist would say, no, no.
That was also just completely random and.
There is no meaning to that.
Yeah, but you know what?
I think of those people as one dimensional atheists and I, the, the ones I like.
It's the same with reli.
It's the same with, you know, theistic types and atheistic types.
I don't like the ones that are really super resolute and lack imagination
and get annoyed about any kind of conversation out of the lane at all.
I think it shows a lack of curiosity and I think it also in both cases
can show a bit of an insecurity.
Mm.
In their intellect.
Yeah.
It's like, it's like people that get bothered, this is something you
come across a lot less these days.
It's like that old thing about like guys that got positive, if they.
F found that they looked at another man and felt some sort of
appreciation aesthetically, it's like, holy fuck what's happening to me?
It's George Stanza.
It moved.
Yeah, it mo it moved.
It moved.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's like, it's, no, no, no.
This is just an ordinary occurrence.
Like we're complex beings with layers and layers of shit going on.
And it, if you expect everything to be simple and straightforward and just
so, and everything's definitive and in categories, well, yeah, fuck, you're
gonna be disappointed constantly.
'cause life's not like that.
Oh, I have bizarre thoughts all the time that, oh, yeah.
But now from meditation and seeing thoughts, that's just thoughts
passing by in a constant stream.
I can have the weirdest fucking thought ever and just be like,
oh, that's, that's passing by.
It's on its way.
And then it'll just be gone.
Yeah.
And I don't feel, I don't feel like I've been scathing enough of the Hara
Christians, but you've just reminded me of something that sometimes when
people said it's God's arrangement.
it, it seemed a bit simple-minded to me.
I like that.
God's arrangement.
Yeah.
Christian's arrangement.
Yeah, I, I would agree with that from those two experiences I had.
That's right.
But what I eventually realized is just like you got simple-minded atheists and
simple-minded believers that actually, just like with head sexuality, most
people are not entirely, uh, I dunno, I'm really drawn to this analogy between
sexuality and religious experience, be I, I, I feel like it's tied up somehow,
but like, not, not strictly correlated, it's a similarly difficult and indefinable
and slippery area is what I'm saying.
And that these two extremes on the spectrum of like completely hetero,
completely homosexual, that that's actually, most people aren't.
And I think the, the same thing applies to being completely
materialistic, completely theistic.
And so there's a lot of room to think about what it means.
Uh, to have these sorts of experiences and it's a good thing.
Well, and there high Christians that were a bit more subtle and would look at that
story and say, you got what you needed.
Yeah.
And isn't that enough?
Yeah.
And I guess I'm thinking about it now, which I've never
thought about this story before.
I've told it many times, uh, in the secret world.
Mm.
But what if I drank that six pack, got a hangover next day, woke up and
said, no, I don't want to drink again.
That could've, I don't have to assume I would've drank for the last 10 years.
No, but the difference is like, I can't, I I had never
bothered asking God for a sign.
And the weirdest thing is, can I Well, why not?
Because I'd never believed.
Sure.
But I was trying to believe, yeah, placebos don't work if you don't believe.
Yeah.
I was trying to believe.
So I asked God for a sign and, and you know what?
I've never asked for another one since.
Is that weird?
No.
Like you think I'd be like a next week, I'd be like, oh, gimme
another sign about, you know.
Well, it's not, no, no, no, no.
It's, it's not weird.
It's actually very sensible because like I said, some of the more subtle
thinkers you'll find on either side of the atheism, theism, divide or, uh, in just
about any debate, there's always those subtle thinkers in there somewhere that
are able to kind of go No, no, no, no.
It makes sense.
And one of the things that I came across from some of the more
reasonable thinkers in the highs was like, yeah, like Christian's
gonna sort you out and hook you up occasionally, but like, don't be greedy.
Yeah.
You know, it's felt like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't, don't be calling on it too much.
And like, yeah.
Yeah.
That experience also makes me think of another thing.
Jesus is not your delivery service.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
And that experience also makes me think of another thing, which is
friend of the show, Huma Inlay.
Yeah.
Who's also a Catholic would say about experience like that is there's two types
of people when confronted with a mystery.
Yeah.
Those who wanna solve the mystery uhhuh and those that just can be in awe of it.
Sure.
And I think that's an awestruck moment for me.
but if I want to, I keep unraveling as in I can't believe there's a higher
purpose, which is where I'm at now.
And if I keep unraveling, then I could go back and be like, oh dude,
you just had a random coincidence.
You ask God for a sign.
There happened to be someone, shopping at that exact moment.
And you, you've freaked out about it ever since.
But actually it was just complete chance.
And now you can go and get your a atheist membership card again.
Yeah.
No, no.
See, I would, I would And stop meditating and stop doing a different
diction recovery work and just Yeah.
Yeah.
Be a real concrete kind of guy again.
No, no.
I'm, I'm gonna advise against.
Going, I have to leave one camp and join another, you know, looking, maybe
it's 'cause I'm a fence sitter, but like, I actually, I don't think in my
case or that all the people I know that are like, Hmm, maybe, maybe not about
a lot of things that I don't think that this is a lack of decisiveness.
I think it's kind of where we're meant to be and the demand that we, oh,
I've just gotta bloody pick a camp.
I've gotta be somewhere, I've gotta make things definitive.
I think that's, you know, I think it's something we have to resist and overcome.
Yeah.
And like, and, and get to a place of just like letting go of That
was five years of therapy was Yeah.
I finally went in before I, I've taken a break now, but
before I went on a break mm-hmm.
I went in there and I just kept talking about the gray area.
Yeah.
Because I'm the most, Sam, you know me pretty well.
I feel like I'm the most black and white thinker of anyone I know.
I'm the most binary you can be.
Yeah.
On off.
It's true.
Like black and white about the, and you can be impatient with
subtleties and gray areas for sure.
Yeah.
So I went in and I had this therapy session where I was like a, I was
quoting chat GPTA lot 'cause it had given me a lot of good advice.
But B, I was saying everything's gotta, this relationship's
gotta be in the gray area.
This career mm-hmm.
Has gotta be in this gray area.
Sure.
This geopolitics is in a gray area.
Yeah, you're right.
Like so I'd finally taken the most important lesson from this very skilled
and wise therapist, which was stay in the gray area, stay in the ordinary place.
Yeah.
But, but see that's what I mean.
It's like now I'm in this place of doubt.
And maybe it's a natural thing.
No doubt is ordinary.
Yeah, yeah.
But at the 10 year mark of a spiritual journey, maybe you wanted more.
Well, maybe it's a natural evolution to come to a place of doubt.
and maybe I will end up more of an agnostic because I haven't, I
switched from atheist to believer.
I never spent any time as an agnostic.
Yeah, yeah.
You didn't, you didn't hang around the middle.
And that's, that's how conversions, you know, that's
what the ene conversion, the St.
Paul conversion.
It's, that's why that story is so compelling because it, it, it
looks as though it's instant and, and 180 just like in a moment.
And it is that the way the story is told, but there's a lot of layers
of subtlety to it and that he was very much struggling with himself.
Right.
So whatever biographical information I've been able to come across,
there seems to be a lot of it.
But the consensus I hear from Bible scholars is that he was very much
struggling with a lot of the things you would relate to obsessiveness.
Desire, uh, uh, is it unquenchable desire and, and, uh, and resentment and black
and white thinking and all of that stuff.
In other words, St.
Paul was sort of your average addict and neurotic.
Mm-hmm.
And back then they didn't have therapy.
but religious conversion was actually a common route out
of, uh, addiction and neurosis.
And it, it remains one today for so many people because it's not like you do your
conversion and then the work is done.
No, the work begins at last, but Oh, but no, it doesn't begin.
The work began before that, that every time he doubted what he was doing on
behalf of the Roman Empire, of, you know, oppressing these Christians
who for the most part seemed okay.
People, um, who were just sort of trying to look out for each other and then,
so to go from like they're the enemy and must be stopped seemingly overnight
to then saying, this is the way and.
all the beautiful things he says in the letters, like, neither, neither
man nor woman, neither slave nor free person, neither Jew nor Gentile.
You are all one now in, in Jesus.
Now, that's the part I struggle with, but like it's a superb formulation of human
equality and that we need to let go of these sort of illusions of, of one person
is better than another, intrinsically, and we have to love one another.
And the greatest sin is to not be there properly for each other and
not properly be there in the moment.
Did you, it's not about following the laws and doctrines.
Did you, you know, did, did there come a time in your life where you said.
Okay.
I was raised Hari Krishna, but I'm turning my back on it now.
Like a Yeah, there was no definitive moment.
It was, but you fade, you faded out from it.
It was a gradual thing and like, it doesn't mean I won't go back there.
Yeah, you could go back.
But what I'm trying to say about this story of conversion, which helps
you and me, but is that I think that these things actually happened much
more gradually than the narrative has it, and that the sort of cinematic
version of events isn't the real one.
And this cinema reveals important things to us.
But as you know, as we both know, real life simultaneously much less interesting
and much more interesting than cinema.
And that this idea that you flip from being this to that, and then
the only, the only next step is stay resolutely that forever.
And if do not permit the slightest doubt or you will flip to the other polarity.
Yes.
That's where I'm at now.
No, no, no.
What, what the Paul, what Paul's story is designed to illustrate what I'm
trying to say here with it is that.
The work was already begun.
The work continued, but with like a new consciousness of what it was.
And then in, in the process of doing the work, the mission
changes and the messy swamp of praxis changes you and it changes.
And you have to deal with that as you go through.
And that never a settled question.
And if you actually look at the, uh, if you look at all the available doctrines,
they all hint at this in various ways or say it quite bluntly here and there that
this isn't a settled question and don't expect it to be, uh, to always be obvious.
Now, this is also a theological get outta jail free card, right?
But I, but I also think it's genuine and that one of the solutions to this
particular dilemma here is to actually go, it's actually a false dilemma.
So that's one solution.
And then there's another, which I think is maybe more useful for you
is to adjust your theology a bit.
And I don't mean in like a super intellectual way, but for
example, Christian's arrangement.
Right.
Does that require the direct intervention of God?
So the direct intervention of God creates all sorts of theological and practical
and philosophical problems, right?
it, it, it brings up sort of problems like, why didn't God intervene
in this case instead of that one?
Oh yeah.
And then, and then we have to hand wave those problems away by saying, uh,
well, whoa, well we can't understand.
But that was, yeah.
I mean, that was when, when Ramdas was hanging out with his guru.
Yeah.
And there was a famine in Bangladesh.
Horrible.
And Ramdas wanted to go and take his van and use it as an ambulance.
Sure.
And his guru said, can't you see?
It's all perfect?
And that same guru would say the same about Gaza Now.
Maybe can't you see?
It's all perfect.
That's the point about each snowflake falling in its appropriate
price is you have to, yeah.
You then have to accept that everything that's happening is happening right now.
Yeah.
And this is exactly as it should be.
Totally with God's hand.
And this is why institutionally religious people, uh, especially fundamentalists,
will tend to either reject politics, not just as a way to achieve anything
useful, but reject it on its premise that it shouldn't even exist.
That God has laid out the laws.
We don't need to contest anything.
Now, obviously I can't go with that.
The idea that we've got all this agency, but, but not really.
And just let God take care of things.
It's, to me, that's unacceptable.
And, you know, oh, a person's about to tip toxic waste in a river.
No.
Go over there and slap 'em on the wrist.
Take away the toxic waste and go here.
You're gonna pay for its safe disposal.
That is the use of human agency.
But that, that could be God's will too.
Well, exactly right.
So it doesn't settle the matter either way.
And the people that want it to settle the matter either way are usually
trying to avoid something or deny something, or I mean, the existence
of suffering, the existence of suffering, which has always been with
us and will always be with us mm-hmm.
Does not prove or disprove God.
No, no, that's what I'm saying.
But, but yeah, for, for the average 18-year-old atheist, they would say
what's happening in Gaza means that if there's a God, he's a real cunt.
You know, like that's to the extent God has anything to do with what humans do.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
But, but see, I, my experience of God was someone between me and the bottle shop.
So that's an interventionist God.
Yes.
But, but, but I mean, I don't know how Christian's arrangement works,
but I took it to be, fuck there's a God and it's gonna help me in my life.
Right?
So this is where it gets more interesting.
So the higher Christians also their doctrine, you know, sort of Hindu doctrine
from the Bugger Gita and the Vaders.
It does, uh, it contains all sorts of theoretically answers
to this question, right?
But they also have to deal with the problem of evil.
And they also have to hand wave occasionally and go, well, we can't always
understand Krishna's purpose, right?
So they end up in that same dilemma, but their formulation's
a little bit more sophisticated.
And so it, it, I think it works a bit better.
And it's like, and you'll come across Christians that see it in
this more subtle way too, that it's not Christian acting directly.
He's acting through, I would say his expansions, but no,
their expansions 'cause it's a.
Gender non-binary situation really.
And there's like these en, there's these two energies at work in creation
and that it's not God intervening directly, but God's energy is
spread out through everything God is ever present and et cetera.
But also there's a little spark of the absolute perusia inside every one of us.
Right.
Yeah.
And Buddhists can get with that, but I think non-duality says that too.
EE, exactly.
Yeah.
And, and that there is, so whether it's like the literal Harry Krishna
painting of like a little Vishnu inside everyone's heart surrounded by
a little halo, which is, you know, sort of laughably literal or whether it's
something a bit more Buddhist and, uh, ti uh, non jewel, which is sort of like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The, your, the, there's the essence of the university in, in all of us, right?
Yes.
And we merge with the one sooner or later, right?
Yes.
That thing, well, that's where, why Ramed US says we're all
just working each other home.
Correct.
Because we'll merge with the one So Christian's arrangement again
that I'm, see, I'm struggling to come in terms with that.
I don't, I can help you here.
I I can't make my peace with death either, and I'm, so that's, I'm
falling back into being an athe.
No, there's reincarnation, so don't even worry about it.
The bad news and the good news is you have to do this again.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the other option for me, Sam, is to, for the first
time in my life, join a religion.
And the religion I would join would be Buddhism.
Sure.
And I'm seriously contemplating it.
And then I might get some reincarnation on online.
Yes.
And that could help me with what Ramdas is saying, which is we're
all just walking each other home.
Whereas I've always treated death as this thing you have to fight.
Like no matter what.
Yeah.
So where, where I was going.
Well, that's right.
So where I was, sorry, I've thrown you.
No, no.
And it's a brutal thing to have to deal with the ultimately, like the,
the problem of evil's bad enough, but the problem of my own death is the
ultimate evil that really is a great injustice and shouldn't, shouldn't exist.
Right.
So, so getting, getting past that big one I wanna live on in my
apartment, not in my work, you know?
Yeah.
And like, so I, I'll say, you know, strike one for God, he graded us to die.
That sucks.
We're gonna need a good story to deal with this.
Uh, and well, Harry Christians do.
They've got a great one ready to go.
We can maybe get back to that.
But the energy and the divine is not acting directly.
It is acting through.
The good people.
It's acting through those that believe it's acting through
those that feel compassionate.
It's, you know, so there's different qualifiers to it.
They don't have to be true believers.
They can just be people that are on the path, which is actually
how everybody's characterized.
There is no one who's gotten all the way.
Yeah, that person I saw in the supermarket, I didn't know them.
No.
I just know that I knew that I'd seen him in, in that world and
they didn't have to be a perfect being to help you in that moment.
Made eye contact with me, but they didn't say hello 'cause
we didn't know each other.
But it was all I, it was enough.
Yeah.
Like most people don't get a moment like that, Sam.
So Krishna acts through his entities, through his creations.
Well, that's in that world.
They say coincidences is how, God remains anonymous.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Can you dig that one?
Yeah.
Oh, a hundred percent sure.
I mean, that's a great formulation.
Whatever theologian came up with that.
Very clever.
Mm.
But I, but, but also as Dwight, can I get it as a, as a statement?
But see, I'm dropping that too.
I'm dropping the coincidences.
I'm just like, oh, there's another coincidence.
Fucking means nothing.
No, I'm backsliding, man.
See, see what's, you know what, one of the things that used to bother me about
the talk of coincidences, you know, again, I'm gonna have a bed each way.
Right.
I would get equally annoyed at the people that were like, no, no, no, no.
Purely random.
There's enough universe, there's enough time passing for like, enough unlikely
things to happen to impress the rubes.
Right?
And I'm like, sure.
And then I guess, but then there's the other side, like.
Which I think is a little too strong of a take either, oh my God, every
single coincidence am we gonna have, and we're gonna have a really low
threshold for what constitutes a, a coincidence, like an epic coincidence.
Uh, and that all of them are of epic significance.
Yeah.
And it's like, okay, fuck, can we just go down the middle here somewhere?
That's the second is where you're getting into a Byron Bay Yes.
Manifesting everything.
And then you are over overinterpreting everything.
Yeah.
Everything's, and then you end up down conspiracy Absolutely.
Rabbit holes, and you end up with cons, spirituality, and Absolutely.
Or no, or in some cases worse than that, you actually end up,
in some cases you start with that.
And then strangely enough, a lot of people end up with white supremacy and like,
let's get women back in the kitchen.
Yeah.
You know, that whole, um, how Byron Bay went right wing is just wild.
No, no, it is wild.
Until you start to inquire about.
For example, I asked a friend that I only see very occasionally is very
bright and is, he's always changed a lot every time and he's always
moving on and doing new things.
but like me, retains an interest in history and, uh, of course both of
us an interest in German history and we've discussed it before many times.
cause he has ancestors there and identifies as sort of a, you know,
sort of an expat German grew up in Australia sort of thing, and but
also identifies as Jewish, uh, you know, at least half or whatever.
so I put this question to him, you know, I was like, Craig, you know,
I've thought a lot about fascism.
You've thought a lot about it.
And you know, I just wanna say this, I was thinking about it a long time before it
was cool you guys, and uh, and we often debated, you know, the meaning of it.
But I think our thoughts aligned frequently, but.
He was one step ahead of me on this question of like, why the white linen
people end up fascists so often and hang on, what's a white linen person?
Oh, you know, it starts with like healthy food and wearing white linen.
Oh yeah.
Byron Bay being clean and pure.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, you know this, you remember the sound of music, you know Al Vice?
Yeah.
Pure and white, et cetera.
Yeah.
So there's a problem with some sort of dedication to purity to begin with.
That's an issue.
so that's kind of as far as I'd gotten.
Okay.
They're sort of, they wanna be pure and then so that sort of leads to false
thinking about pure people and that, and he is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because there's something more fundamental here, Sam, why are they
thinking like that in the first place?
And I'm like, Hmm, there's some sort of dissatisfaction.
Something's not right.
And, and they're not wrong.
Right Craig?
And he's like, no, they're not wrong.
But what conclusion do they come to?
And I'm like, I don't know, like everything's wrong,
I guess is the conclusion.
And he's like, yeah, basically the fundamental problem with the white linen,
new age people, the ones that go bad, that is, it's a rejection of modernity.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm like, well, they're right to critique it.
Right?
And he's like, oh yeah, modernity has many problems, right?
So do the alternatives, but their premise isn't, there's things
wrong with modernity, let's fix it.
It's No, no, no.
We reject modernity, wholesale, and we're gonna throw the
car into reverse and go back.
And it's like, and that's when I started to pick up the thread of the conversation.
I'm like, okay.
Okay.
So anyone who's looked at history now can tell you there is no reverse gear.
Never ever was.
You're in the now.
The future's not determined yet either, but there's no going back.
Yeah.
And you might be in a dead end, you might be about to drive off a cliff.
There might be more than one forward direction.
Some might be better than others, but it's forward.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nonetheless.
Yeah.
And there's no going back.
And so for us moderns, we have this afflicted consciousness that wants to
settle this matter one way or the other.
And I'm like, no, don't try and settle it.
Don't dismiss signs.
Don't be like, it's everything either.
Like, can is that okay?
You know, it's, it's, it's like almost like, don't dismiss signs.
Don't dismiss science.
Exactly.
And what, you know, the, the, how does the subconscious, even if we just explain
it purely as subconscious, like let's go, let's go with a science explanation
for why people find that there are signs, but also they've helped people before.
Maybe we can scientifically explain that, but I think it's a moot point.
I, I, they help people in that, in that, in that moment, call it my moment of
spiritual conversion in that moment, what I was overwhelmed with was a sense of awe.
And a sense of humility.
Yeah.
That it, it would, it would take the most arrogant of atheists to ask God
to put someone between them and the bottle shop when they're an alcoholic.
Mm-hmm.
And someone is put there and then you say, oh, that doesn't mean anything.
Yeah.
You would have to be so arrogant to just Yes.
Like, you'd have to be really up your own ass, like more, more than you look,
if you ask God for something every day and then on the hundredth day God showed
you something, you'd be questioning it.
But when you've only ever asked once Yeah.
And it happened, well there are, well also there are those that have, There are those
that ask for the sign and the intervention and then fail to make use of it.
The doctrine is full of those stories.
And then there are those that never ask.
But I'm reminded of some verse about those with ears to hear.
Right.
And I, I think what it's telling us, and I don't wanna be totally
relativistic and explain it all the way, but I think what it's telling us is.
The signs may not be obvious.
You might have to be subtle.
You might have to be alert and attentive, and it's calling you
into the moment and it's like.
It's not gonna be a goddamn billboard with 10 foot letters telling you what's what.
Yeah.
It's like you have to do some of the work here yourself, motherfucker.
That's what it's saying.
Yeah.
Right.
And isn't that in accord with everything you've discovered
about spirituality so far?
Yeah.
All right.
Well look in conclusion.
In conclusion, yeah.
What we're both saying is, so Eckhart Toll is a spiritual teacher.
Sure.
He, he claims to have had a spiritual awakening one night in a bed in London,
and he never was the same again.
He, he never came back to not having spiritual, he was able to escape a
feeling of utter despair and emptiness.
Yes.
So he claims to be speaking to us from a place of awakenness.
Yeah.
And he's saying very confidently that there is a higher purpose.
Mm-hmm.
Every snowflake falls in its appropriate place.
Yeah.
We can't think about it, but we can subtly align ourselves
with us, what we're saying.
Sitting here in Melbourne is, we don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
You don't know.
Maybe there is, if there is a higher purpose than something like Gaza
is just like, mind bogglingly.
Impossible to, to, I, I don't, I have no words, but like, well, I mean, I've got
some thoughts about the causality of that.
There's causality.
Sure.
But what, where it's ended up like the horror now.
Well, it was entirely predictable according to a lot of people.
Yeah.
Or I don't want to get into political, I'm just saying spiritually.
No, no.
I mean, just social scientists.
The suffering, the level of suffering.
Yeah.
Which maybe we'd hoped maybe was in the past, which is happening
again, is so hard to reconcile with any kind of interventionist God.
Yeah.
That it, it almost breaks.
That's what I mean.
It almost breaks that link between me and a higher power, if that higher power.
Oh no, I understand.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you're actually saying Yohi are very.
Grappling seriously with the problem of evil.
Like yes, in an existential way.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay, sure.
And do you know what?
That's very fair.
I'm reminded, I thought about this and I, but I decided not to bring
it up, but I've changed my mind.
Do you know that little, that little zen story about, so it's, it is a strange one.
I thought about it many times that, and they're all strange,
all the good ones, anyway.
But like, you know, one night at the monastery, for some reason, the learned
master is murdered in his sleep, right?
Well, rather, he awakens from sleep just as he's about to be murdered.
And he screams in fear and pain.
And the next day some of the novices are very unsettled.
They're like obviously this horrible event.
But the thing that's bothering them the most, the nagging question,
the grief, that's understandable.
But the nagging question they can't deal with is, but he was
the most enlightened among us.
And he couldn't accept death.
So what hope is there for me?
Yeah.
Well, sure.
Not a bad question, I guess, but what's the rejoinder from the second most learned
person in the place, or the second most wise or realized person in the place?
Hey, who are you to judge that?
A perfectly human reaction.
Oh, I'm paraphrasing, but to me, this is how the story goes.
That is a very human reaction.
None of us, however, self realized would react differently.
And it would, it would be, we would lack compassion for another to
expect them to react differently just so that we might feel better.
In other words, even after enlightenment, the horror doesn't go away.
But in theory, yeah, in theory, you are better equipped to deal with everyday
sort of horror and stay in the place of compassion instead of, 'cause,
you know, hurt people, hurt people.
Right.
Oh yeah.
And if you, getting outta that is difficult.
Yeah.
And when you read The Power of Now by Eckhart Toll in 1997, he's
predicting the complete breakdown of society because of egoic Sure.
Egoic identification.
And he's saying, unless everyone awakens to the Eckhart Toll style of awake Yeah.
Only I can save the world.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's, he, so he predicts, he does apocalyptic predictions
back in 1997, which as bad as the world seems have not come true.
No.
so yeah, like many spiritual teachers, he will predict like the end of the
world unless you agree with Yeah.
There's a massive overreach and Yeah.
And, and, and whether it's a market.
Yeah.
And I love that book.
I reread it because it's, I gave it, you know, it's the one book
I've given to my oldest daughter.
I love it.
But that stuff, ah, I don't know.
I just wish I, it doesn't need to be in there.
It doesn't really add to his message.
I, you know, also, maybe we can write this off as.
Excesses of a, of a young man.
Right.
And maybe he'd be much more considered now, who can say, but certainly
this is a tactic you see with Alex Jones and you see with every cult.
Oh, I remember during COVID he put out a video, which was just like
at the height of the chaos and just looking into the camera going,
this is your chance to wake up.
Sure, sure.
Like, sure.
Wake up to what Exactly.
He wasn't like, oh, it's gonna be okay.
He's like, this is your, this.
Everything that's happening is your chance to wake up.
Well, certainly the guy I mentioned before, Craig, we had a discussion
earlier in the Pando, which was like, maybe a year in or so.
yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
This is a chance for people to wake up, but it's like.
My pitch was, oh, people were waking up to the existence of a
thing called the state, and it has powers, it has repressive powers.
It has a monopoly on legitimate violence.
If it doesn't want to allow you to protest, it won't allow it.
If it needs you to do a certain thing for good or bad reasons, it's gonna
try and get you to do that thing.
It's gonna call on you for cooperation, and it's gonna hit you.
If it can't get the cooperation, it's gonna sanction you in some way.
This thing exists, and some people, it seems adults.
Who managed to get through life.
Yeah.
At 35 or 40 or 50, discover that there's a thing called government Yeah.
And are fucking astonished by it.
That Yeah.
Yeah.
That can't be mandatory.
Yeah.
It's like, yes, it can.
Yeah.
Government exists, bro.
And, and, and so I, so I said, you know, in a rather smarmy moment where
I was feeling a bit high on my own supply, 'cause there was a brief pause
in pandemic and we were in restaurants and stuff, and there's a cool friend
from overseas visiting, and I felt quite satisfied with myself, as I said.
yes, Craig, uh, the, there are many who've suddenly discovered the
theories of Max Weber, you know, the, the, the, the monopoly on legitimate
violence, et cetera, et cetera.
And, and then as the conversation went on, well they discovered that modernity
where, where, uh oh, where we're in it.
Uh oh.
Everything was cool when the treat supply was steady and everything was
cool when I thought I had freedom.
But really I just adjusted to a certain set of limitations and
that in my mind was freedom.
And then now the limitations have changed in some way.
And now I'm not free, but like in that same kind of simple minded
way of like, I was totally free before and now I'm 0% free now.
It's this kind of black and white thinking, which gets people into trouble.
Yeah.
You know, I look, I didn't mind Eckhart to look him in the eye, tell me to
wait, have a spiritual awakening.
It was about as useful as anything else I could do in during lockdown.
I think it's a good invitation.
Yeah.
It's just, it's what you do with it, you know?
Yeah.
It's like, you gonna but, but, but Eckhart to wouldn't say that.
You know, it escaped randomly from a lab, or it was randomly, someone eating a bat
would say He didn't, he didn't say that.
No, he didn't have an opinion either way.
But from what he's written there, he would say, this is God's higher
purpose, the whole COVID thing.
And everyone that died from it was, well, God created viruses.
I guess so.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess, yeah, but the way it even unfolded in the world, Sam
has to be part of a higher purpose.
Uh, yeah.
And maybe that higher purpose is, see, I would say it was fucking random,
whatever it started from, from same.
It was a crazy, random series of crazy events that, but,
but here's the thing, right?
Even a, even a sort of committed fence sit like me, can see some bigger patterns,
some slightly larger, more epic things.
Yeah.
The environmentalist like to say, oh, well this is in humans
encroaching on the natural world.
It's like, yeah, except, unless it got out of a lab, which no one
knows, I, I'm actually going with the Pangolin, it's much more likely the
wet markets have been a vector before.
Sure.
Sam.
Yeah.
I'm saying people will take an event and, and overlay whatever
their preexisting ideology was.
Well, look, I, I, I'm a, look, I'm, I'm interested in history.
I think that the, the higher meanings are to be found in sort of two places.
The combination of chaos and causality, that history is the synthesis of what
it is and what we'd like it to be.
Instead, things, we oppose things, we try to support the, the, the
crab walk up the beach, you know, side to side to side to side.
But it's, maybe it's going in some direction, maybe it's not,
you know, dialectics, right?
But.
There's also another source of higher meaning and higher purpose in history,
which is what the fuck we make of it.
And that is a thing that is hugely contested.
Like what is the meaning of history?
What's the meaning of the present?
What should the future be?
Well, unfortunately I've got bad news for people.
If you are hoping to escape controversy or having to think
for yourselves, it can't be done.
And if you think you can escape the influence of others and the requests of
others and the pressure from other, no, you're not gonna escape that either.
So you're not entirely free, but also you're not entirely unfree and you
have, you've got some agency, you've gotta join with the rest of humans.
But what about rather than to try and make it a better place?
What about rather than trying to do my will, I try and do god's will?
Is that good advice?
Absolutely.
But now we just have to figure out what God's will is.
Yeah.
I've been wrestling with that one for a long time, and I have,
I think absolutely no idea.
I think the scriptural source.
So it's up to, as far as I can tell, it's up to me still as
much as I, and I've tried to hand it over Sam to a higher power.
Mm-hmm.
And in the end, when, when something goes wrong in my life, it's usually
something I've done well and a dec decision I've made that I got wrong.
Mm, yes, yes, yes.
But the, the bug in the Protestant code, Martin Luther had legitimate criticisms of
Catholic church, which needed to be made.
Uh, he was also an anti-Semite, but he did unleash a hell of a train of consequences,
which even he didn't quite want.
Uh, not all of them anyway, just like Margaret Thatcher.
I don't think she tended to unravel British society.
She did it, but it wasn't quite her plan.
and so it was Martin Luther and he's like the primacy of conscience
and like, no, no, we're not getting the doctrine from the priests.
We have to discover it ourselves in the book.
Fast forward a few hundred years.
Oh, oh, it's whatever I think it is.
I'm a church of one.
Whatever.
I, I'm gonna manifest that.
That's, that's where most, that's where so many Christians are at
now, and other religious types.
They've actually gotten quite new age, a lot of them.
And they've really renounced sort of an engagement with reality.
and you've also got materialists and atheists that just wanna retreat
into blaming religion for everything.
And I find all of this quite childish and that it's actually, we're all just a bunch
of humans in a massive fucking dilemma.
And that's the meaning of life.
Yeah.
It's like we're in this difficult, difficult dilemma.
Don't, together, don't think whether you call it god's will or a higher purpose.
I think I could do a lot worse sometimes and close my eyes for five
minutes and just try and think what the higher purpose would want me to do.
Uh, yeah.
And what That's a, that's totally, that's a, that's a.
Tall in my toolkit I didn't have as an atheist.
Yes.
You know, I just acted in the world and Yeah.
Dealt with the reaction.
Well, I, I go Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Deal with the consequences.
Yeah.
Pausing.
Yeah.
Reflecting, yeah.
Meditating.
Yeah.
well, I, I go with, yes, I go with Geck on this though.
He says I'm an atheist Paul line.
That basically what Paul asks us to do in the letters, that's my platform.
But I reject the idea that I have to believe in Jesus in order to do that.
And that, what Paul was actually saying was, at the moment we need
this idea of Jesus and salvation and the body of the church in
order to become our better selves.
But it di it didn't necessarily mean this was the only way
it could ever be achieved.
And obviously Socialists and Mar revolutionary Marxists believed that
they could do this in a secular way.
They could create utopia and heaven on earth in a secular way.
Right.
Now the world today, obviously a, a mess that might become a bigger mess.
It's hard to say exactly, but it's not all what we say it is.
And it's not all set out either.
So that's, so what does God ask us to do?
What is God's will?
Well, I'm gonna tell you actually, I think there's loads of scriptural
evidence from across all the religions and none of it is particularly
convenient for powerful people.
That's where you know it's real.
So if it says, if it says act with charity and compassion, if it says
care for the sick and clothe the naked and go to those in prison as
though you yourself were a prisoner.
And if it, and if it tells you to sympathize with a band of oppressed
people being crushed by an empire, well that's what that book says to do.
So I think it's.
Pretty clear who's who currently, in terms of that narrative.
it asks us to regard other humans as no more or less than ourselves and as
companions in this difficult journey.
Like that's all it is.
Like, isn't that big enough?
Isn't that hard enough and cosmic enough?
Yeah.
I've never had a god from a, from a book.
Well, what I'm saying is I've be one those people trying to work it out on my own.
No, well, that's fine, right?
I don't care about the scr.
Any scriptures.
No, but the, well, the scripture people will say, the, the, the
honest ones will say these documents aren't perfect, but they are
useful and make reference to them.
And then there's the people that are like, no, no, religion,
spirituality, it's a difficult.
Path that everyone has to walk alone to some degree, and every experience
is gonna be a little bit different.
Well, I think both of those people are right, but I do think it's
interesting to reflect on what humans have written down at different points.
Yeah.
As the word of God.
So refer.
And so when I refer people to scriptures, what I'm actually referring them to is
statements from previous humans thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago.
and they say a lot of the same things.
Now, there's also stuff in there about having a hierarchy and a
cosmic sort of hierarchy and, uh, casts and stinky stuff like that.
But I can refer you to another scriptural authority that says, no, no, no, no.
Hinduism has no future if it stays with caste as Hanya 500 years ago says,
we have to abolish caste ethnicity.
in fact, we have to abolish kind of this idea that we're all in different religions
all together and we have to abolish basically gender-based hierarchy as well.
So like, this was a radical throwdown 500 years ago, and people keep making those
throwdowns and like, I don't know what sort of higher purpose Toley has in mind.
Well, he's gonna tell you we can't say what it is.
We just have to try and feel it and follow it.
Yeah.
Can we go with that?
Can we try and feel it and follow it?
I think that that could be a good place to leave it, Sam, but, um, yeah, I, it's been
good to thrash out my spiritual crisis.
Do you still feel like you're in the same degree of crisis?
I think that in conclusion.
Maybe we could all take some time to align ourselves with a higher
purpose we can't quite understand.
Mm-hmm.
So maybe I've come back around to thinking it's a beautiful quote
and I'm kind of okay with it.
Mm-hmm.
And it's, it's a quite a beautiful quote that leaves you with a lot of work to
do, and any person on a spiritual path who isn't concerned with a problem of
human suffering at some point and how that relates to a higher power mm-hmm.
Has maybe missed something, you know, oh, they've absolutely missed that.
And maybe I've become a Buddhist and renounce ever having high,
not ever having, having one, but renounce having a higher power
and renounce a higher purpose.
Maybe then maybe I get more and more into Buddhism, which I find
to be quite concrete actually.
Yeah.
There are some aspects of it that are quite weird and mysterious and there's
other parts that are very concrete.
Indeed.
It's interesting like that.
Yeah.
Uh, that's what I'm feeling a strong pull towards.
I don't know.
So you see, you see Buddhism though as non monotheistic kind of thing.
It's sort of not even theistic.
Well, there's no higher power.
Yeah.
I dunno.
But Buddha in a religious in, if you go to a religiously Buddhist country Yeah.
Buddha is venerated as he's worshiped as a sort of God Yes, a hundred percent.
In a similar way that Jesus is, but Western, yeah, like Buddhism
that I could sign on for would be none of that, if that makes sense.
Well, yeah.
Unless I wanted to have some of that.
Well it's interesting though, 'cause Tibetan Buddhism meanwhile, so
you're right, some of that Southeast Asian Buddhism, it's sort of quite.
Recognizably, they're worshiping this God.
Yeah.
That's clear enough.
Yeah.
And, and they, and when you hang out with 'em, they don't take it that seriously.
That's right.
And like religion here.
Yeah.
Like Christians here.
Yeah.
They sort of hold it lightly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which I, I kind of dig on some level.
Yeah.
And then, but then you've got like Tibetan Buddhism, which is like
much more weird and interesting.
It's got all these budha and ghosts and like Yeah.
Tupa and it's quite far out.
And there's actually some kind of, there's kind of some creepy
characters in like the law.
Like it's, I do, I mean, I do sometimes think Sam, as a bipolar person, I've
done well to never join a religion and maybe I should not join a religion.
Well, like, because I am prone to being a zealot.
I think some would suit you better than others.
I'm prone to zealotry.
Yes.
And there are Buddhist zealots too.
Uh, yeah.
So I've never signed on for a religion and I'm 45.
I'm only drawn to one religion and that's Buddhism.
Well, if you're gonna be a zeal, but I'm in a spiritual dilemma, which is a good
time to join a religion, I guess probably.
Yeah.
Uh, I think, well if you're gonna be a zealot, maybe Western Buddhism
is, could be worse of a thing to be a zealot about, I guess.
And also like I was just thinking before about Yeah.
'cause there were har Christians who in their zealotry did a lot of good
and there were others who didn't.
Uh, or it was a mixed bag.
Right.
so I'm not necessarily afraid of you becoming mega committed
to that, but That's right.
I was remembered.
I was reminded of a John Lennon quote.
In like there's a particular edition of the Bug Gita or whatever, where
there's like an introduction from John Lennon that, you know, that Harry's
asked him to write and he says, uh, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
You know, you can't like look at it and go, that's a good pud, that's my pud, I'm
on that PUD train for the rest of my life.
It's like, no, no.
Eat the pod mates.
See what happens.
Yeah.
Or drop some acid and decide you're a Hindu.
Well, it is kind of what those guys did.
Yeah.
I get, you're right, you're right.
That was sort of like, I saw things with multiple arms and heads.
Yeah.
I guess we're going with this now.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Alright, I'm gonna go, Sam.
Yeah, you can stay if you want, but you're in my house, so I'll have to kick you out.
No, no.
You can make me a coffee then kick me out.
All right.
Well it's been fun and um, thanks for helping with my spiritual dilemma.
Oh, well, I, I hope it gets better and stays the same and.
Well, yeah, I mean, I can come and join you in the agnostic with the
splinters in my ass a hundred percent.
It's uncomfortable, but someone's gotta do it.
All right, see you mate.
See ya.