Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 15: Speaking Heaven Into Being

If Heaven is, in fact, a dimension of experience that we can access here on Earth, what does that mean? Much depends upon our speech, actions, and habits of perceptions. Rather than waiting endlessly to “arrive” at Heaven or expect it to be “delivered” to us, we must each, as individuals, participate in its creation. We start by establishing an awareness of Heaven within ourselves, at the Heart, where the material and the spiritual intersect.

Transcript

In Episode 14, We talked about heaven and the idea that heaven is not a place, But rather a state of awareness that we as individuals can experience here on earth. In this episode, We'll talk about what that means and the ways that our speech and habits of perception and behavior can either assist or hinder the establishment of heaven on earth. We hope you enjoy. What I was sort of toying with this morning was this idea that earth was always the garden and we are just so accustomed to perceiving it from our modern technological standpoint that we miss the fact that we live in this miraculous ecosystem where everything is provided for us. You don't think about this when you go to the store and you pick some fruit off the shelf to put in your basket or unless you're a person who raises your own food, We're kind of removed from the miraculousness of how those things are presented to us in this environment. Anyway, The reason I thought about this is because I had grown this watermelon in my garden after planting some seeds six months ago and it took forever for the vines to kind of wander and do what they were going to do and plus it was really hot. But finally, One morning I go out and there had been nothing there the day before and all of a sudden there was a baby watermelon about the size of a kiwi. And it just kind of struck me how it had appeared out of nowhere. It didn't rely on my surveying it and sort of checking carefully on all the blooms every day. It just was there. And then within a week it was five times the size and then it was a supermarket sized watermelon and delicious, By the way. And it just struck me that how could this not be heaven if whole watermelons just kind of appear out of thin air? And so because as a society we're so kind of removed by our technology and the fact that we have logistical systems that bring our food to us and fulfill whatever needs that we have, We kind of assume that it's all manmade and that if those systems weren't in place that we wouldn't actually be provided with everything on this planet. And yet our ancestors, You know, Millennia ago were basically just living off the land. So I think that's a very long way of circling back to the idea that we don't name this earth that we live on. We don't name it heaven. And perhaps we should. Perhaps we should start from there to say that, Hey, Everything that we need on this planet, This beautiful miraculous marble with water and air and everything that sustains us, We should name that heaven and then treat it accordingly rather than assuming that man has made all of this. Yeah. What a point, Right? What's at the center of things? You know, It's sort of like we have this remarkable arrogance to believe that humans are at the center of things or that we individually as egos are at the center of things, That our human creations are at the center of things. I mean, This is exemplified in our ideas about progress, Right? That we humans are going to make things better. Now, Of course, In some arenas that's quite sensible. It's great that we can build a house that shelters us that won't fall down for 150 years. That's great. But this arrogance of believing that we have to generate something better than what's already delivered to us. It's like. Yeah. Yeah. And that we have this arrogance right now, Like right in this common era of thinking that we are not only at the pinnacle of human evolution right now, But that we will be going ever higher, Right? And we're not really taught a lot about our history, Like our very, Very ancient history in school unless you specifically study those things. And one of the things I've learned in studying the ancient sacred texts is just how advanced in terms of philosophy and understanding that, For example, The ancient yogis were. They knew things with far more depth and I would dare say accuracy on a spiritual level. Or just on the level of truth and logos than what we do nowadays because we have such a reliance on the technologies that the brain has made, That the mind has made, That man has implemented to try to manage what we think needs managing when in fact nature just takes care of itself if we leave it to its own devices. Right. We spoke of the Tao in talking about the word and one of the things that the Tao is so exquisite in teaching is that the natural order of things is perfect. It's in balance and it only goes out of balance when we disrupt that, When we mess with it. And what you're speaking to reminds me of one of my favorite phrases for this is borrowing it from a book by Terence McKenna is the archaic revival and this remembrance of our ancient heritage of understanding that included a way of life and a relationship to nature. But it also included things like the mythologies that built cultures or that informed cultures and we look at mythologies. For example, A common view of the Bible is that it's just a bunch of superstitious nonsense that a bunch of people organized, Put together and then duped themselves into believing. It's like, Do we really think that's what has happened for 2, 000 years that people were just too stupid to realize that the Bible was – that they were just too stupid, They thought it was all literal and that they're primitives. It's like, No, No, We've forgotten that these ancient stories like the Bhagavad Gita or the Bible or any of the great things that have been passed on through millennia are informing us about our relationship to the natural world. And if we throw that away thinking that we are progressed, We are doing the very opposite. We're going backwards. We're not only going backwards, We're divergent. Yeah, I had an image of spiraling off into space somewhere, Just like totally off the path. Yeah, Out of control. And we see that. All we have to look at is how well is humanity working? How well are our societies working? Are people happy? Are people taken care of? And it's clear. Not so much. Not so much. I think it's important when we talk about the natural world that we're not just talking about nature. We're not just talking about making sure there's enough forest and growing your food organically. And those things are all very beautiful and necessary, But we're really talking about something that is consistent with the logos, The architecture of creation. One thing that sticks with me, Of course, Is the quote from the Bible that, Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be rendered unto thee. Which, From a superficial reading, I think gets interpreted as prosperity and wealth by people, Mistakenly. Whereas I'm starting to interpret that as this idea of the garden, As this idea that we were set down on this, Or that humankind was gifted with this planet that is able to sustain everything that's needed, As long as we keep ourselves in step with or in alignment with the logos and the patterning of nature as intended. The things that the commandments are intended to guide us toward are the yamas and the niyamas. And what happens instead is that we think that we need, As I said earlier, We need to manage it somehow. And the brain wants to impose technology so that we can increase crop yields, I suppose, Or provide entertainment, Whereas in the past, Perhaps, We would have congregated together and celebrated a harvest or something. And so now, Instead, We're in our video games and our computers and devices and so forth. The more we do that, The more we're out of step with that logos, With that patterning, That if we found our way back to it, Would put us right back in heaven, Where we've always been. But we've just lost our orientation to that. It's gotten horribly distorted and misused, And we cause ourselves suffering as a result of the fact that we almost refuse to see it. I think people get addicted to their suffering. They get addicted to complaint and criticism and this idea that I'm not enough yet, I don't know enough yet, You're not enough yet. The world is still in need of fixing, As you alluded to earlier. And as we speak those things, We're not speaking heaven into being. We're speaking out of step with the logos. We're speaking in a way that's more likely to create a hellish existence or hellish experience on earth. Yeah. It brings to mind the declaration that Friedrich Nietzsche made in the mid to late 1800s when he said, God is dead. And of course, We're talking more purely about Western civilization, I think, In this particular piece. He said, God is dead, And I think his reasoning behind that was that when the Protestant view developed that all you had to do is believe in Jesus Christ, That he had died for your sins and you were saved, You were just good. It took off this burden of having to bring our divinity into being. And he said something profound. This was in the, I think, 1860s when he said that, And he predicted that what would follow is that once we had dispensed with the idea that there was a personal responsibility to live in a way that's in accordance with divinity, That we would have to make up our own rules. And I think that what we're seeing is that divergence that you're speaking of, This departure from the natural world, Is this idea that there isn't a higher ordering principle and that we are somehow in charge of making up the rules here, And human consciousness isn't developed enough to make a body of rules that are adequate to function successfully. And so we keep relying on our own intelligence, Our own intellect specifically, For creating the rules as if we could better things. Right. Yeah. And ultimately, I mean, We can fool ourselves for a while into thinking that we're making things better, But the unintended consequences inevitably come home to roost at some point. I mean, I guess that's one interpretation of karma even, Is when we get out of step, When we're not following that internal wisdom, That internal truth that's always kind of there longing to be heard but buried with our mental noise, Then stuff can go haywire. Yeah. And let's make that unbelievably practical for a moment. Let's say that you are aware that certain foods make you feel bad, And yet you don't stop eating them. You know what foods make you feel good. You know the foods that are healthy for you. You know to eat your vegetables and your fruits and what have you. You know what to eat, But you don't do it, Right? And the karma, The consequence, The effect of choosing that divergent way is that you continue to feel more and more awful. And same thing with our search for happiness. It's like we don't look for happiness where it is. We look for happiness according to the formulas that we believe in. And despite all evidence that it doesn't ever work, We continue to pursue these paths of believing this or this or this will bring happiness. It shows us that we're divergent from the pattern. It shows us that we're out of sync. I love that example of food because we have such an emphasis on physical appearance in Western culture and bodybuilding and staying in shape and so forth. And look at the incredible pantheon of protein powders and supplements and all of these manufactured foods which, You know, I'm not going to sit here and judge them. I have taken them myself and they can be helpful, But in my experience, For example, Protein powder. You know, I take a little additional protein powder sometimes to kind of keep my muscle mass up and it does not really sit well in my system. And so I have to be very careful about how much of it I'm going to choose to use. And so trace that back to the source of difficulty which is this assumption that the shape of my muscles is somehow important to anybody but me or to my ability to survive on this planet. You know, Since I don't have to chase down my own food or wrestle anyone for it, You know, I don't necessarily need to maintain that. We do that with everything appearance wise, You know, The things we put on our hair and the things that we, You know, Apply to our bodies to try and keep the body from doing what it naturally would do which is change over time. Yes, I love your point here. It's like, Okay, Protein powder, Protein is good for you, Especially this kind of protein, X, Y or Z. And it's like, Okay, So if I take protein, It makes me healthy. But here we have something that is unbelievably unnatural, A concentrated form of protein derived from a source that you would never be able to get in any other natural form at all and yet because we have this belief that the protein is good for us, We're willing to invest it with this almost, Well, The Course in Miracles refers to it as the idea of magic, That there's a certain kind of magic that we place in this kind of thinking. And then we develop a faith in this and we develop a faith in the system that designed it and we develop a faith in the results that are going to ensue. Just think of all the snake oil salesmen that the world has known because people are unable, I don't want to make a gross generalization like that, But we have sort of a resistance to surrendering to time and we want everything now, We want everything instantly, We want that thing to magically appear that's going to improve our life as though we're not already in heaven, Right? So give me the cure, Give me the pill, Give me the magic elixir that's going to change the thing that's troubling me rather than what we could do, Which is to delve into the much more organic sources of our discomfort, Be they psychological, Physical or societal. There's a point you're making here that I think is really useful for a person to inquire into, Which is maybe we're seeking the immediate solution because that's the intelligent thing to do, But maybe we're just wrong about what the immediate solution is. And this says a lot about what our aim is, Like what we're looking at. When Christ says, Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be added to you, That's an immediacy. That's like right now, Right here, Seek the kingdom of God. Right here, Right now, Put your feet in heaven. I believe that there's actually some intelligence in that immediacy, That want, That desire for the solution right now, But we look to the wrong source for it. Wow, That's a really subtle point, But I see what you're saying. It is, It is. Like for example, We want happiness, But what we look to usually is our idea of what will bring that in the future rather than what it is to be happy right now, Right here. Thank you for making that point because I should correct myself then. It's not that we lack the patience. Well, We also lack patience. True. We do lack patience. Oh my God, It gets so complicated when you start getting into time. But that's not the main problem because we're simply over, In the context of this conversation, We're simply overlooking heaven that could be and always is available to us in the moment right here and now, As you said. There's multiple dimensions when we talk about these things and the dimension that you spoke of where we're looking for that quick fix, That's a worthwhile thing. That's an important thing for us to acknowledge because we do live in a fast food culture. When I was in India back in 2008 with an Indian yogi, He said that the American people were the most difficult people to work with because they wanted everything immediately and they wanted everything on their terms, But they didn't want to do anything that was necessary to get the results that they were looking for. That speaks to your point here, Which is this very arrogant, Very narcissistic approach to seeking meaning, To seeking happiness, To seeking fulfillment. Well let's consider heaven as a structural representation, A garden if you will, That follows a blueprint, A pattern, Which we've called the Word, The Logos. And let's consider that our human speech and action for that matter can build or design or better create inconsistency with that pattern or in harmony with that garden. And so our task in some sense is to speak and act in a way that is right. This is Buddha's notion of right action as well, In a way that represents reality as it really is, That is consistent with that underlying pattern, The Logos, And that is consistent with this creation of heaven. I mean when we talk about the generation of heaven on earth, What are we talking about but speech and action? Right, Or what we could term speaking heaven into existence, I think is how we referenced it in our last episode. And we briefly touched on the idea that the symbolism of the cross represents the fact that the human being is at the intersection between heaven and third dimensional reality. Am I saying that correctly? Well I would say it recently in group we referred to it as the crux, That we are the crux, Which is cross. And if we look at ourselves as having two dimensions, One spiritual and one, Let's say, Not quite material, Let's call it human. We have one vertical spiritual dimension to ourselves and one human dimension to ourselves. And I would say that the vertical dimension is spiritual and the horizontal is human. It's what connects us here to earth, To each other. And that there is an intersection, Right? There's an intersection between the vertical and the horizontal and at that intersection we exist, Right? Right there where X marks the spot. Yes. So then the nature of that intersection, The sort of energetic texture of it, You know, Whether it's tending toward the heavenly and the spiritual and being in alignment with the Logos or something else that's out of alignment, That's more hellish, Is going to be influenced by the way we speak about it. Yes, We will literally create the experience of heaven or the experience of hell depending on whether we speak in consistency with truth, With reality. In other words, When I speak the truth, The truth as it really is, Not just like my made-up truth but the truth as it really is, I am emboldened, I am exalted, I am made joyful and peaceful and alive and connected. I experience yoga in that way. That's the yoga of speech is that the speech itself being truthful joins with that universal pattern, Exemplifies heaven here. Yes, Yes. There are so many ways that you can visualize the thing that we're talking about. Like you could look at this also as a pattern of waveforms where, You know, Our peaks and troughs of our speech or our actions or our behavior are either in alignment with the truth, The word, The Logos, And reinforcing and amplifying those, Or they're completely out of alignment, In which case they're being canceled out. So I think we've all seen this in physics class, How that works. In physics class, Can you tell me what you mean? I don't think I ever took physics. Sure. If you throw a pebble into a pond, Then there's a pattern of ripples that emanates out from it. If you throw another pebble into the other side of the pond, It also makes ripples that then approach each other. So you can imagine these approaching each other. Now where the peaks and troughs meet at the same time, It will double in size and amplify. Where a peak from one meets the trough of another, They will cancel each other out and instead you'll have a flat surface. So in the same way, I think about this a lot when I think about how people harmonize with each other or not. It's almost as though if someone has the sort of same orientation or wavelength that I do and we come together and interact with each other, Then we can either increase each other's energy that way or we can, If someone is out of alignment, Then we'll tend to cancel each other out or come into disharmony, Conflict, Dissonance. We can also look at it from the viewpoint that what we speak, The way we interpret anything that we're experiencing or trying to convey to another person, We can view it through a variety of lenses that are represented by words. So something can be a holy war or something can be a genocide. Something can be, You know what I'm saying. So there's speech and right action will either reinforce the word, Capital W, Or negate it, Cancel it out, Come into disharmony with it. Well, I think you're speaking something, As you were speaking it reminded me of Christ saying where two or more are gathered, There I am. Because that essence of true holiness arises where those two waveforms meet in their harmony together. Right. And each one witnesses the other's validation of the same truth. And so it grows stronger. Right, Exactly. And then you can see it becomes, And then if you keep adding to that, You know, You start with two and maybe you add three and four and ten, It becomes a beacon because that resonance. . . Go forth and multiply. Exactly. That signal just can't help but be broadcast to an even wider audience, I guess, For lack of a better term. Right. Exponential. Exponential, Yes. Well, So then we have to see that just as much as it's possible to speak heaven into existence by being truthful, By acting truthfully, By perceiving truthfully, By speaking truthfully, It's also possible to do the opposite of that. I think we don't have to look far to see what happens when we do that. I think we shouldn't forget, Too, That underneath truth lies love. And so if you're speaking from a place of love, Speaking from the heart and acting from that place, You will tend to be more in alignment with the word. But you can see what happens when our darkness is activated by the speech of another, For example, In a crowd situation or a mob situation. Great harm can come about because if you have, Say, A charismatic leader who is invoking something more demonic and that tends to start resonating or activating the demonic in other people, Even if these are otherwise good people who would never intentionally do harm, At least they think so. I guess the inverse of what any two come together in Jesus' name and there is love and then it expands, People come together in hatred or find themselves persuaded by the beacon that hatred can become, Then great harm can be caused. Yeah. The interesting thing about demonic ideas is that they're always disguised as light. And so there are a tendency to perceive the demonic idea as something good that is happening. It's something that again and again keeps us from actually speaking the truth because we gather up together under these false banners of truth and support them and unite with them and they gain momentum and energy, But they don't represent anything truly good. For example, In different cultures or in different sects or different groups, There are different versions of what utopia is, Like what the ideal world, What the ideal society is. And those are often things that we strive for, But the very striving for those utopian ideals actually creates the opposite. So there's a way in which we're trying to achieve heaven with our utopian ideas, But we actually create the opposite. And this is what becomes so radically challenging about understanding the logos, The word, And understanding heaven is that it's in a sense it defies our limited ideas about heaven on earth. I think if you were to ask most people what utopia means to them or what would represent utopia to them, It would be some conceptualization of being in an absolutely safe environment where all needs are met. And under the guise of something like safety, You can justify all kinds of things. I want to live in a safe country, Therefore I must go to war with that country over there that feels like a threat. Or I need to protect my property. Someone from a spiritual orientation, A monk is not going to kill someone to maintain possession of his rice bowl or something. Somebody who's connected with the truth, The logos, And is speaking and acting in alignment with that understands that no harm can come to the body, Therefore safety is not something to be defended, Understands that property is not a component of happiness or security or validation and does not need to be defended. So you're not going to be easily coaxed into or resonate with any expression that seeks to harm in order to defend those things. Boy, That was long. Well, No, I mean, I think what we're starting to unfold here is that you can't speak and act the truth if you don't know what the truth is. And what we do is we create substitute truths. When we've lost touch with the truth, We create substitutes. And a good example of that is communism, Where it's this attempt at an ideal society, But it's a replacement for that truly safe haven or that place where there truly is value and richness and love and cooperation and all of those things. So that's what we're often trying to do, As you said so nicely. We're trying to create heaven on earth, But we're trying to create heaven on earth in terms of our egoic or material experience, And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You can't do it. So we have to know heaven for what heaven is rather than stumbling around in the dark trying to create what we think heaven might be. It's remarkable to me the farther we travel this path, How inverted our truth, Our apparent truth on earth actually is. When we're talking about a utopia, What we're really longing for is going back to the womb, That womb-like existence where everything is on some very deep level, The longing for heaven, The longing for God, The longing for safety and security and just to be cared for and loved. Oh, I love this. I love where this is going. I'm getting excited. And we think that's something we can build out of money and with the right kind of walls to keep certain things in and certain things out and all of our barriers. So we think it's about the things, And we think it's about the objects. And when in fact the reverse is true and that the true safety and freedom lies in attachment to none of those things and into actually being so true to what you really are that heaven is the inverse, Like heaven is having everything taken away. And it's really hard. I mean, You can see I'm stammering here because it's so hard to express this in words, But it's the emptiness we spoke of a few episodes ago. It's the silence. It's the love that is implied by those things that we're really after. But the human mind, And we still have this animal nature that we're all of us trying to evolve out of or bound to evolve out of that will try to fool us into thinking that we have to defend the den and our mates and our ideas. Yeah. There's a lot of things that you said there that I want to pick up on. I don't know that I see us evolving beyond the animal, Though I understand what you're saying. I see us more as contending with our animal nature, Which I think amounts to basically the same point in some sense. Even great saints are bound to be tempted by animal nature and therefore have to contend with it in some sense. I totally appreciate and love what you had to say about heaven and stillness. And as you mentioned, The womb, It brought to mind a whole different angle of this, Which is that—and I think this characterizes two different angles of consensus reality, And it could potentially speak here about some of the powerful solution that's needed in our world. We are looking for the womb. We are looking for heaven, That point of safety. We are looking for the place where we are cared for and fed, Like an infant at the breast or in the womb, Where there is this atmosphere of warmth and safety. You know where I think we get it wrong as human beings is we focus too much on our rights and our deservability of that, And we orient toward getting that rather than giving that. I think that part of growing up and maturing, Which means going vertical, Getting in touch with the inner truth of our being, Is becoming an adult. And when you're an adult, You're no longer looking to enter the womb again or suck at the breast again. You're looking to be the one who provides the womb and does the breastfeeding. And this is why you know that I'm constantly emphasizing personal responsibility and sovereignty, Because what a lot of people are doing in their vision of heaven is they're still acting like the hungry child or the scared child trying to find the womb or the breast again. And that's not our role if we are here as the intersection of divinity and humanity. Our role is much like the Christ, Which is to bring it into being, Not find shelter. I'm fascinated by the symbolism of the cross in general and using it in this context as the intersection between the spiritual and the human, That crux, That point at the very center where they intersect, Is so dynamic. You know, Naturally, If you line up a human, It falls at the heart, Right? The cross meets at the heart. It has to, The dynamism has to occur in the individual, Because if you're trying to create heaven as part of a group, You're dispersing that outward. That responsibility lies with you, As you keep saying, But we will hook up with others in order to kind of sort of be loosely associated with it and not take full responsibility for creating it ourselves. And admittedly, That is a great responsibility. I mean, That's kind of a really sobering and daunting concept when you come to terms with it. We really, Truly see what that means. Yep, Because you're no longer trying to create heaven in terms of this group or movement or this ideology or this narrative or this religion. It is heaven is brought to earth right here, Right now with me, How I speak, How I act. In this moment, In this body, In this particular place, For lack of a better word. X marks the spot. Yup. X marks the spot. Yes. The cross marks the spot. Yes. The cross marks the spot. This is pretty abstract. So I was just reminded of, I think you and I were talking one time about equal pay for equal work. And I said something like, You remember this? I said something— Uh-oh, I think my connection's getting a little bit broken here. Oh, No. I'm not going to debate you on that or anything. I'm just teasing. I mean, You have a point of view about the effectiveness of movements that I didn't quite understand at first. I think we were talking about whether we needed an amendment for that or something. And I didn't get it at first until I realized that it's useless to fight these battles as kind of a class action suit in a way. Part of the reason that we, I think, Rely on movements or groups to try and get things done is because it's so daunting for an individual to stand up in the face of an quote-unquote, Impressor and say, Hey, This is not okay and I would like my rights. And be willing to take the consequences of what that means. Like to assume full responsibility for, If I demand a raise and I don't get it, Maybe to stay true to the logos of my sovereignty, I need to leave. And then enough people doing individual work like that over time creates change, Whereas when we rely on a movement, There's diffuse responsibility, There's diversified action, And it may seem effective superficially, But not quite the same thing. Well, I think there's some really good points here. I do want to clarify something though. Sure. I don't want to misrepresent. I'm not against equal pay for equal work because to me, That is justice. And I think our laws should reflect justice in that way. So to the extent that our laws are meant to actually represent true justice, I'm absolutely in support of them. What I have an argument with is the notion of equality as most people try to define it. Something I learned a few weeks back is that if you take the major characteristics of a person's life and you spread them out across six different dimensions at the point where six different dimensions that describe a person's life are articulated, There is not a single person on the planet who is exactly like you. So if you take your age, Your sex, Your work, Your education, Whether you're single or married, Whether you have children, If you factor those things out to six points, You will find that there's not a single person on the planet just like you. So here's a problem, Is that equality is something that we know as a deep part of our spiritual being that each of us has an innate value as the intersection where heaven, Where spirit and humanity meet. What we try to do is we try to achieve equality in only one or a couple arenas of our experience. But even if we were to do that, Our equality in the other areas of experience would still be not present. So the question is, Do we actually have equality at that point? Now my argument about equality is that the only equality we have is in the value and preciousness of our inner being and that all other attempts at equality are attempts in line with what we're talking about. They're attempts to bring about that sense of a utopian world where everyone is equal. But every model that we look at with that shows that even if you could create a society based on those principles, The equality would break down rapidly. For example, In – can I go on for a moment? For example, In I think it was Sweden? I can't remember. It's a Scandinavian country. They actually integrated laws that brought a greater sense of equality for men and women. I don't remember if it was pay. No, You know what it was? It was within specific job categories. What the laws produced was actually the opposite of what they were going for. It actually created more division of roles, More division of job categories. It created the imbalance even further after the laws were instigated. Why? Why do you think that was? Because when human beings try to implement their version of what heaven is, They get it wrong. And we don't – we're so far removed from the logos and the patterning which informs our natural way of living here in a heavenly way that every attempt we make to do it in our way botches it even further. It confuses it even further. Part of the problem might be – and like you said, If every human being is different, You're going to have equality in some areas and not others. And every human being is also at a different level of awareness. And so what may seem perfectly just and reasonable to one person will bring up a whole lot of resistance in someone else who – we see this in the U. S. Right now, Right? Who sees this as some kind of a betrayal of their heritage or their traditions or the way they were raised. And until they've had time to integrate whatever it is they're working with, It will feel like a demand or some kind of an unjust imposition. And so naturally you'll get a backlash. So that makes perfect sense that yeah, Things would get further. The wobbly wheel will go even farther out of balance when you try to overcorrect. And you can see all this that we're talking about simply put as an abdication of personal responsibility. In other words, It's like here's the basic messaging within most movements. I want heaven on earth. Now you do this. Right. We're going to just impose it on the system and then – Yes, We'll create a system that will give us heaven on earth. No, Can't be done. Well, Once again, What we're talking about here is looking to get something from elsewhere rather than being the thing. Seeking the tit. Yeah. Rather than demonstrating through your actions and your speech what you want to manifest. To use that word very carefully. What you want to manifest in the world. Because if you live it in your life, If you speak it in alignment with the word and then another does and then it begins to radiate outward just like with the pebbles in the pond, It will amplify. And then other people will be drawn into it by attraction rather than having to be hit over the head by it and all the resistance and resentment that that would engender. Right. So – and that's the way we would create harm in the world is by trying to impose truth in a way that's just not effective. Yep. You know, Many times in classes I've mentioned where Gandhi says, Be the change you wish to see. He doesn't say, Think about the change you'd like to see. He doesn't say change the laws so that you get the change you want. He doesn't say yell at other people to be the change. He says be it, Become it, Manifest it, Bring it into being. If there's something greater that you can foresee here that us human beings are capable of, Get busy embodying it. Yeah. And I think to a lot of people that sounds like such an ineffective way to do anything but it's so powerful. I think we've all had the experience of encountering someone who is simply not in step with everyone else and is simply quietly going about their life in a way that's true and unafraid. Yeah. And beholden to no one that's so powerful, You can't help but sort of stop and cock your head to one side and go, What is that? Yep. What is that thing I'm sensing from this person? And why do I want it? Why am I drawn to that? And in that way, You know, Someone like Gandhi, These folks don't have to go out and advertise themselves. Right. They don't have to get on social media and say, Hey, This is what I'm selling. Here's my philosophy. It's great. Come and join me. It does. That happens automatically. Yes. When we encounter someone who embodies the word, The logos, It has this in or it's like a lighthouse, Right? It's like in the dark you see a light and it's like, Oh, Let me go toward that. And every great being that has walked this planet embodies that. And they and you know, 2000 years go by, We're still talking about Christ. 2500 years go by, We're still talking about Buddha because these people walked with that. They walked that. They were the logos in action. They were this embodiment of truth. And it's what our destiny is too. It's what we're here for. That's why each of us feels that we have a great purpose, But we can't put our finger on what it is. Yeah. This is maybe a little off on a tangent so we can follow it or not, But since we started talking about speech specifically. So there's like a vibrational force towards delivered either in love or in something that's not love that creates on its own. We're attracted to strong vibration and we can be attracted to a strong loving vibration and want to follow that. But we're also fascinated by the dark side. So when angry and if you watch any Hollywood movies with the explosions and the noise and the characters yelling at each other in conflict cells, In sex cells. So all of those things that our darker impulses tend to notice. Yeah, It brings to mind like I've had conversations with people that go something like this. Well, If I was in Nazi Germany, I would have never let that happen. And here's the thing is that when, As you mentioned earlier, As a charismatic leader steps forward with a certain kind of energy and power behind what they have to say, The darkness in other people is going to resonate with that. The people who did terrible things in Nazi Germany were not just like evil people sitting around waiting to do terrible things. They were people who bought into a patterning. If we don't guard our mind against such patterning by keeping it true to the word, If we do not know how to follow the dictation of our inner being and follow it in such a way that we can speak it and embody it and act it out, We're going to become susceptible to all sorts of – I mean, Carl Jung said it really well. He said that people don't have ideas. Ideas have people. And if you consider what that means, What it means is that mass ideas take power. They take energy and that energy is human consciousness. And so if we're not careful about what ideas possess our mind, In the name of heaven, We're going to create a lot of hell. Right, Right. And we all have different susceptibilities just based on our makeup. I think people have these – well, We have our shadow sides, The places in us where our needs have gone unmet or we haven't been willing to look at them so they're sort of lying in wait to be invoked and seen and heard. And as you said, A charismatic leader can say something that to your darkness sounds perfectly reasonable. Like this is the answer to the thing that's been troubling me that I wasn't quite aware of. And so it resonates on some level and you respond to that. And there's like some kind of endorphin rush or some kind of feeling in the body that rises up and feels good and it makes it feel right, Even though some part of maybe our rational mind can even recognize that it is not right. And I think that's one way that things like the Ten Commandments or the Yamas and Niyamas come in handy because no matter how advanced you are, You may come into a situation where there's a conflict, Right? And it's like, Well, What's right and what's wrong here? I can tell that there's a conflict between my ego and the truth and I can't quite say sort this out on my own. My mind is not capable of that. And you can maybe look to these guides to say, No, You're not allowed to go kill this person just because you don't like what they said or whatever. You just spoke an important part of the logos, Which is the part where we need something bigger than ourselves. This is why I think it's worthwhile to talk about atheism from time to time because within the atheist mindset, There's this notion that you don't need a higher ordering principle in order to live here, But you do. Because if you think that you're in charge of creating reality and that you can create things any way you want, There's absolutely no difference between heaven and hell in your mind. You're not able to make a distinction between what is heavenish and what is heaven and what is hellish, Right? So we need the logos. We need that higher ordering principle to inform. Otherwise, Not only are we the place of intersection where heaven and earth meet, Where heaven and humanity meet, But we are then that with an absolutely misguided principle about what it means to create an ideal world here. And we're wrong. We're wrong. Just like this movement of technology to make everything technological in our world. We think we're doing something progressive. We think we're doing something that is evolutionary. But what is the cost it's having on our collective being? That's why there's such a profound atheistic ethos within the technological sphere of life because it's this notion that we can dispense with all higher order and create our own. I think also, Just speaking of atheism, Because I had an atheistic phase of my life as well, And at that time I was under the impression that all I have to do is not hurt people and I'm good. Except you don't know when you're hurting people. I mean, Some things are obvious like hitting them or killing them or stealing from them. Those are all harmful, Lying to them. But you come to see in spiritual work that there's the reverse conflict that comes up as well. There are times when you may, Maybe in order to act and speak in alignment with truth and with the logos, You are saying or doing things that may appear harmful. I'm not talking about killing people, Obviously, But you may hurt someone out of love. And how do we know the difference in either case? You've got a conflict in atheism, You've got a conflict in a spiritual person, And without that higher ordering principle that you're discussing, There might not be a good way to tell the difference. Exactly. Right? And in line with what you said, It's like, If we are truly atheists, If I was a true atheist, Why is murder even bad? There's no reason to think it's bad if you're atheist. I mean, There's no cause to actually believe that anything is negative or positive at all. I mean, We get a whole reference for what is negative and what is positive from the logos, And we all know it intrinsically. That's why an atheist says, I don't believe in God. It's like, Okay, Fine, Then why don't you kill somebody if there's no such thing as God? But there's a natural feeling within even an atheist that that is not the right thing to do. That's the logos. That's part of the patterning. Something in us knows that. And so we can make arguments all day long about whether there's God or not God, But the natural existence of an ethic. And Dostoevsky writes of that so elegantly in Crime and Punishment, Where there's this character who thinks he's beyond these principles of right and wrong, So he kills somebody. And the rest of the story is his self-torture because he couldn't escape that law. Sorry, We're on a whole different tangent now than we were intending to talk about. But you know, Anyway. That happens. I have a good example, Though, Of something kind of a different angle on this, Though, Because we were talking about how responsibility has to, It's located at the crux in the individual. And a really good representation of this in cinema. Maybe a character is being persecuted or is at risk for some kind of punishment and there's a crowd, Some torment is being visited on someone, And then one person in the crowd finds their conscience and stands up and says, I am with him or her. And silence descends over the crowd and everybody focuses on this one person who dares to stand in truth against what the audience knows is an obviously bad thing happening to a favorable character. But then that's powerful. That one person standing in truth all of a sudden changes the mood, Changes what's happening in the room, Because that's resonating with the truth in the other people, The other characters in the crowd. And suddenly they're ashamed, Perhaps, Of what they were about to do. Right. Because that demonstration of speech and action is that embodiment of heaven and we're all waiting for it. We're all waiting for someone else to do it. Someone else step forward and save us here. Someone come forward and do the right thing here. Someone come forward and make this place better. Well, It's you. It's me. It's you. Absolutely. And that's the thing. That's what's so disturbing about this atmosphere of rights and privileges where it's like there's this waiting for the system to change so that we can be what we're looking for. It's like, No, We need to stop waiting. Oh, Somebody wrote a song on that. Do you know that song, Waiting on the World to Change? Oh, Yeah. Who is that? Is that Ben Harper? I can't remember. No, It was older than that. Ben Harper redid it, I think. But oh, That song always bugged me. Why? Why are you waiting? Yes, Right. Why are you waiting for the change? What a passive and hands off and kind of like don't bother me and my… Well, It's like the ultimate form of laziness. It's like we're waiting for environmental change. We're waiting for political change. We're waiting for social change. We're waiting for our neighbor to change. We're waiting for the churches to change. We're waiting for schools to change. I mean, It's like we're waiting for everything to change. But if we really put our heart to the task of understanding what is it I really want to bring into being here? What are the core things that I am waiting for? And once they're identified and recognized, Which will put us in touch with the logos, Then we figure out how to speak and act those things. And there's great power in simply behaving as if. Because as long as you're waiting on something else to change or someone else or some system, You're locating the crux of the cross outside, Over there in those people, That government, That group. And by creating the change in yourself, You're bringing it back to where it belongs, Which is in the heart, The crux of the human being. And that's the only place that this real change can take place. That's how we give our way our power all the time. It's like, You're the cross over there, You need to make things better. Right? Yeah, And you're right. So bringing it back home to where it actually is. And I truly believe, This is sort of loosely related, But I truly believe that speaking as if and behaving as if is part of the way we manifest heaven on earth. When you behave in a way, Again, It's like the monk who simply floats through the crowd untouched because he's sovereign and can't be defiled. No matter what anyone does to his physical body, That creates an awareness, It creates a ripple of change, It creates an attraction. And enough people gather in his name in that way, Then the world does change. Yep. We've gotten away from speech a little bit, And I think that a little bit at times you've gotten away from speech and I think that. . . I wouldn't mind going back to speech, Because the way we speak, The words we choose, The tone we create, All of those vibrational aspects of speech, Those words have a power and a resonance and, I don't know, This is just an off-the-cuff example, But I used to work, Right out of college I worked at a TV studio on a morning show, Morning news show, And so we all had headphones and our director, Who was like this 26-year-old guy also just out of college, Set the tone for the show. And so for a half an hour we would all be communicating behind the scenes while the newscasters were doing their things, But we would be talking about what was happening and directing each other and he used the F word like every other word and just had the most foul mouth and if something went wrong he would call it an abortion and it created this. . . It was funny at the time, I was, Like I said, Just out of college, I thought this was hilarious, And it was fun, But it was also so toxic and so it created this atmosphere of nastiness and contempt and there wasn't a lot of love or truth coming through in what was being done in that studio and it took me, After I quit that job a year later, It took me a long time to get that voice out of my head, To stop swearing myself and dropping F bombs every 10 seconds because it had kind of woven itself into my thought patterns. And so we talk sometimes about the way that we think in language and the way that frames our world. That's a really good example of how my view of humanity and work and people in television and everything kind of got really distorted by that atmosphere that was created simply by the words that were being spoken into a microphone by one person. Right. By one person and let alone all the online experience we have or the commercials we watch or the radio we listen to or whatever, Right? Because the language that we think is original to our own mind is implanted. I mean we get it from outside and that's part of this imperative toward truthful speech or this yoga of speeches is that when we begin to speak the truth, We are empowered by it, We are elevated, We are opened and it creates this whole other kind of atmosphere around us. And if we simply repeat and parrot the language that's being given to us all the time, Then we're just a product of the machine. I mean we literally are artificial intelligence embodied in physical form at that point, Right? Because we're just taking what has been given from this machine-like culture and we're repeating it and so to be the logos, This goes back to one of the points you made, To embody truthful speech and the logos is in some sense to articulate what is unpopular, To articulate what is not housed within consensus reality and its language. Let's think of that for a moment as speaking with inspiration in spirit, Right? The way that we can be inspired. Inspiration is the very essence of the logos when it comes into speech and action. Oh, That segues perfectly into something I was about to say which is that the nature of truth and God and love is creative and it is suppressed by those some scholars that are installed in our minds by the society around us. So if you're glued to your devices 24-7 and engaging in online arguments, How are you going to write a poem? How are you going to choreograph a dance, Paint a painting, Any of those things? As a writer, I didn't really even realize when I was younger and tried to write why I couldn't be as creative as I liked and it was because I kept trying to work within the confines of the words that had already been installed. I was a latchkey kid growing up so I'd watch all kinds of television after school and so I had all these concepts of what reality was that were just not true and they were saccharine and packaged and overly dramatized and there was no room amid that or there was no inherent poetry to it that made any kind of sense if I tried to work through it to get something on paper. Writers talk about writer's block a lot of the time and I think that's part of what it is, Is those words, You're trying to come up with something fresh and original and let the divine speak through you, Let the logos come through and it's just that there's a barrier, There's a fence, There's a force field of all these words you've consumed your entire life and some of my most inspired writing has come at like 4 in the morning or when I woke up and was half asleep and then all of a sudden the logos was there and suddenly I understood and had not just the truth but the words to express it in and there is such a difference between that kind of creativity and one that's just a hack job. Yes, Right. Maybe that's what we could say here most about the yoga of speech and articulating the logos is that it makes us an artist, It makes us a vessel just like the painter or the poet or the musician who opens themselves so completely and so fully to let that informative creative impulse flood their mind and come out as their skill, Whether it's poetry or music or gosh, Public speaking or movie making or cooking a meal or whatever it may be. It's like that's the creative impulse that we're all looking for. We're all waiting for that. Yeah. You know it when you see it or hear it. You know there's a difference when someone is giving a speech say since you mentioned public speaking and speaking from logos and speaking from love and truth, You feel it. It resonates. When someone is lying or trying to color reality in a way that's false and manipulative, You feel that something's off. You know even if you don't know like the facts to dispute whatever's being said, You can feel that now there's an agenda here, There's something that's not right and if we can tune into those things, It gets us closer I think to knowing what the truth is, How to recognize it both in ourselves at the crux that we keep discussing and also in those who are not maybe in alignment. That's right. Yeah. I love the way you just put that because it brings it back to that point we made earlier which is that if you're going to speak and embody and enact the truth, You have to know what the truth is. Yes. And that comes through a very discerning awareness of what the truth is. In order to understand that, We have to understand that. We have to come underneath the influence of that logos and that patterning to be taught. Yeah. The difference. Yeah. I love the way you said that. Which brings me to how we recognize when we're dealing with truth and when we're not because that's a skill that needs to be developed if you're going to grow up, If we're going to embody the truth and work and speak and behave only from there. You can have the experience of someone who's telling you exactly what you want to hear, Maybe someone you're in a romantic situation with and they're speaking all the pretty words and yet something doesn't feel right. And I've heard you say before that the logos feels good. It feels true and right. It is good. Yeah. And God saw that it was good. It is good. It is the very essence of good. That's it. That's how we identify it. And if you want to know the difference between the good and what, You know, See this gets difficult because we tend to think that our interpretation of good makes something good and that's not true. Yeah. Right? And so a truly discerning mind will be able to discern the difference between truly good and a manufactured good. A parent good. Right. A parent good. Right. And I mean I think there's no better way to truly begin to discern truth than to study the words of those who are truthful. If you study the masters because they were the ones who spoke the truth or you study the artist or the painter or the pianist and you really understand what's being articulated there, That quality of discerning awareness develops quite potently. Yeah, There's beauty to it. That's why an inspired piece of music feels so powerful in the body. You know, You listen to the Messiah and it resonates and maybe you don't know why. Beauty is another good indication that truth is present. But even there, Like a true discernment about what real beauty is. Because real beauty will bring you into an elevated state versus a false beauty which may be intriguing or fascinating or tantalizing but it doesn't take you beyond yourself. Yeah, Yeah. There's that kind of packaged beauty that looks familiar and so maybe it feels okay from that standpoint but it doesn't have a power to it. And this reminds me of, I think I've told you this story before, But I went to the San Francisco Museum of Art, SFMOMA, And they had a Jackson Pollock exhibition. Now you wouldn't look at some of his paintings and think, Oh that's conventionally beautiful, You know, It's all flowers and rainbows because they're not. They're chaotic, They're messy, They're just deeply weird sometimes. But I stood in front of this canvas that was about, Gosh it was huge. It must have been 16 or 18 feet wide and maybe 10 feet tall. I may be overestimating but it was a big canvas and I stood in front of it and it was very dark and just all scribbles, Mostly black. And I don't know what it was but I burst into tears. There was such passion and love and anguish in it. It was crazy. And so here I go again, Just thinking about it. And this is like 20 years later and it still resonates. I don't even know the name of the piece. I know nothing about its history. All I know is that it just vibrated with something that just struck me. So it was true. It had to be true. I have a good poem to accompany this. Can I read it? Please. Okay. It's Rumi, One of those who's maybe most talented at doing just what we're talking about. What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest. What was told to the cypress that made it strong and straight? What was whispered the jasmine so it is what it is. Whatever made sugar cane sweet. Whatever was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chagil in Turkestan that makes them so handsome. Whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a human face. That is what is being said to me now. I blush. Ever put eloquence and language, That's happening here. The great warehouse doors open. I fill with gratitude chewing a piece of sugar cane in love with the one to whom every that belongs. Oh my God. I'll be destroyed for the rest of the day. What a beautiful distraction. Yes, Yes, Definitely. Very true. Thank you for that. Thank you.