IFS, Spirit & Inner Listening | Robert Falconer

0:00 Welcome to the Monday workshop of the Friendly Circle Berlin. My name is Patrick. I'll be your host. And it's great to see you all here today. We'll be exploring something many of us know from the 12-step rooms, learning to trust guidance beyond self-will and deepen our conscious contact with a power greater than ourselves. And we're honored to be joined by Bob Faulkner. Bob is a long-time IFS practitioner, trainer, and author. He's written a wonderful book called The Others Within Us. And but his latest book is what he's here to talk about today. The book is titled Spirit. And that grew out of years of daily journaling and written inner dialogue.

0:45 And with Spirit. And Bob, it's a pleasure to see you. And thank you. I think this is Bob's third third or fourth visit, I think. It's always great to have you, Bob. And thank you. I'll turn it over to you now. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes, loud and clear. I'll spotlight you too, just so that everybody can see you. Okay. Um I don't think we heal without connection to spirit. Uh psychologically or from addictions in any deep way. I thought there was a line in the big book that said something we must find a religious spiritual basis for living or

1:31 else we die. Well, there isn't. >> [laughter] >> My info went in here and my brain mushed it around and turned it into I guess what I wanted to hear. It is The best I could do is in the A A big book it says, "But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else." And then a couple lines later it says, "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." So, I mushed those things uh together and made them a little more harsh and unfriendly.

2:18 Um I think this is literally true. If we don't find a spiritual basis, we don't heal from major trauma, from addiction, from most psychological uh distress, um things that are called mental illness these days. And it's it's very interesting to me that anthropologists don't typically do not use the name mental illness cuz that's a culturally created category. And if you if you're just talking about some non-Western culture and you use that term, you've already

3:03 misunderstood their practices. So, anthropologists talk about idioms of distress. Um So, to heal from distress, I think we need to find a spiritual basis for living. Um You know, the first three steps in one of the many programs that I am grateful to have been part of for a long time is Al-Anon. We used to call the first three steps uh the Al-Anon Waltz because those are the three steps we needed every day. Um

3:48 And they're all about forming a relationship with spirit. Uh came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That's number two. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. To me, those three are the core. The the absolute foundation of recovery. And then the question quickly becomes, how do we form this relationship? Okay, so we made a decision decision to turn our lives over to a power greater than ourselves. How? How do I hear that voice and not be sure it's uh the voice of addiction or some

4:35 part of me giving me bad ideas? I also, you know, I'm just going to hammer on this a little more. Maybe I don't need to in this group. But among psychotherapists, talking about spirit, spiritual basis, that's taboo. In most of the therapy schools, you can talk about any kind of weird sexual behavior. All that stuff's welcome. But you start talking about connection to spirit and they look at you like you smell bad or something. It's it's quite astounding the level of uh exile that spiritual connection has has received in the Western academic world. Again, the 12th step, having had a

5:22 spiritual wake awakening as the result of these steps, not a result, the result. And I notice that many times when people read the steps, they slur over that the or say a result. No, it's the result of working these steps. It's absolutely central. Okay. So, I'm maybe I'm preaching to the choir here. But, um the value of spirit we we don't heal deeply without it. And most of my work as a therapist was what was with men like me who had extreme sexual physical abuse as children.

6:09 So, major trauma or big T trauma as they call it. People do not heal from that without some form of spiritual connection. And I'm saying that as though it's a given fact. It's you know, I've had 50 more than 50 years experience in this field. And it's more like a pragmatic uh pragmatic belief. And I really like the set it set aside meditation that uh Patrick uh had us start with. We need to do that all the time. I need to I need to do that all the time. I don't know what you folks need to do, but I need to do that every time.

6:55 I think when I start believing that I have a closed system with the answers, it kills everything that's most valuable in me. It kills my curiosity. It kills my longing. It kills my excitement. It's a disaster. And yet, so many people are seeking certainty and a a closed system. You know, I think the IFS world is going that in that direction now and it's immensely painful to me. And and one of the things that I think is astoundingly brilliant about the 12 steps is they provide both a container, you

7:41 know, a program, a system of steps laid out very clearly, and that does not become a closed system. It helps people open more and more to what's truly alive in them right now, to to the depths of the longing they have inside themselves to connect with spirit, and it stays fresh and new instead of killing everything around around. And certainty kills. I mean, you think you've got a final answer, you're done. You know? I I I have a big outline here cuz I so I have a bunch of things I want to say. I never stick with outlines. In IFS, curiosity is perhaps the most

8:27 important quality to have when you're working with someone. And I think there are two kinds of curiosity. One you could call Sherlock Holmes curiosity. And when you use that kind of curiosity, you focus in, you narrow your focus, you get a precise laser-like spotlight, and you work on the problem, and when that kind of curiosity is done, the issue's dead. It's It's over, you know? Everything That curiosity is pretty good for solving a math problem, that kind. It's not good in relationships. That would mean every time you satisfied your curiosity, you'd end the relationship.

9:14 I think there's another kind of curiosity, which I tend to call heart-centered. And as you go down that path, instead of narrowing your focus down into this laser-like uh problem-solving Sherlock Holmes kind of thing, you open. And you open all your sensory modalities. All of them, in all directions, and you notice what what your body is doing in response to this person. All these other things, there is a vast array of inner experience constantly, way more than we could track. As you open, you don't move towards a a solution, a you know, an answer that kills the

10:00 problem, you move towards wonder, and then awe, and qualities like this. This is the kind of curiosity we need. And I've I've >> [laughter] >> I'm going to do just what I'm saying don't do, and and give answers, but please don't, you know, just if they're if they're helpful, take them. So, I was, you know, I'm doing what I say don't do, give give an answer. And my answer is we need that other kind of curiosity a lot, especially when dealing with people and dealing with spirit. We need that curiosity that opens us up to what's deeply alive in us, our most profound needs, and and opens us up to having a real

10:47 profound relationship with spirit. Um you know, who was it? I think it was that the Cloud of Unknowing guy says, you can't know God, but you can love him or her. You can love your way there, you can't think your way there. I think it's very much like that. And in Western academia, unknowing is not valued. It's considered a problem, you know, and something to be gotten rid of or hidden or to be ashamed of. And I it can be very hard to sit with unknowing. It produces anxiety for a lot of people.

11:32 And um people want to get out of that at any cost. Um I think this is one reason why people are susceptible to totalitarianism. They need something that they can you know, attach to. And that that rigid right belief can provide them the illusion of that. Okay. I think what's happening to IFS now as it is being turned into this model that's considered complete and whole and final and done, you know, and you just apply these methods and you can crank out good

12:19 results. I think that's an absolute disaster. Because it tends to kill the thing we need the most, which is curiosity. Basics of IFS for those of you who don't know, and this is going to be a way too quick. We are not one unified being. We're not some milkshake or something that's been put through a blender. That is not health. Health is recognizing that we're multiple, made up of many independent parts who are sort of sparsely interlinked. And there are, you know, there's the mathematics of complex systems and uh non-linear dynamics. All of this

13:05 shows that at a certain level of complexity, we have to be made up that way. It's actually a great benefit cuz we're much more flexible, lots of reasons. So, we're made up of parts. And in IFS we also Well, I'm going to go into the parts a little bit. Two major categories, protectors and exiles. Exiles are sort of the hurt inner children that a lot of other systems mention. Protectors are parts who try and protect or distract from the pain of those those those exiled children. There are two kinds of protectors in IFS managers who try and fend off any kind of being

13:51 triggered so those exiles will never get activated. And then there's something called firefighters which come into action once the all the pain that was buried inside with those exiles comes up. The firefighters step into action and they do stuff to distract and numb and avoid and make the put those flames out. All addictions in the IFS framework are firefighters. They are actually trying to do something of great value to the system. But the methods they're using are >> [laughter] >> often very destructive. You know, um, and kill people. A lot of people die

14:37 from this. You all know that. So, but in IFS the basic way we work with firefighters is to recognize them, find their good intention, join with their good intention, say, "Oh, that you're not bad or wrong. This is you're trying to do something really really valuable." Um, and then say, "There's other ways. If we could show you another way to do this where you wouldn't have to, uh, you know, drink all that alcohol or do all those drugs, would you be willing to try it?" And they almost always say, "Yeah, we'd be willing, but you can't do that." >> [laughter] >> And then, you know, we just say, "How about as an experiment giving us a

15:23 chance to prove that we can do that?" So, that's a very different way of dealing with addiction than many, many therapists. You know, you it's it's it's finding the positive intention of the addiction. In addition to the parts, the exiles, and the protectors, IFS also has something they call self, which is the witness, who you know, who sees the whole system. And self is how Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS, sort of snuck spirit in in a way that the psychotherapeutic community could tolerate. Uh self is always the witness, and

16:10 he he's now saying, "We have a self in us." It's sort of like self is a particle. And there's also self that is like a wave or a field, and we can connect up into that. And he's even said in some of his uh more mystical moments that maybe there's only one self in in the whole universe, and that it just gets funneled down into us. So, this sounds like a scientific term, you know, to describe a uh aspect of the psyche, but actually it leads to things that are fundamentally uh spiritual or spirit-based. And even one time when I was talking with him privately, um he said, "Well, Bob, IFS is a Trojan

16:57 horse. We're we're trying to sneak spirit in, and then once it gets loose inside of academia, it'll be a really good thing." Okay. I'm I'm also a student of Emanuel Swedenborg's, who most people these days don't even know who he was. He was the foremost scientist of his day. He died in 1772, I think it was. 1770s, for sure. Um and he was a hardcore scientist. Like he was the head of copper mines and smelting for the king of Sweden. And he designed military devices. And he

17:45 also uh studied watch making and all sorts of human anatomy, you know, all sorts of hardcore science stuff. When he was around 50, he started talking to demons and angels. And he spent the rest of his long life talking to demons and angels. And as he got a little older, he said, "I can see demons and angels as clearly as I see people as I walk down on the street." So, here was a man who who would be who would have been very famous if he hadn't followed his spiritual guides. And there still are Swedenborgians. People founded a church based on his work. He kept written records of this.

18:32 The first the old English translation was 30 volumes. So, he wrote a lot. I consider it a geography of the other world. It He's very difficult to read. But he saw a lot of stuff. He saw really deeply. And he had ways of developing his own connection to the inner world. Some of the things he says are so parallel with IFS, it's stunning. He didn't talk about an internal family. He talked about an internal household. And he even used the word well, the Latin equivalent to the word managers, which is which is one of the IFS terms.

19:21 Um what Swedenborg talks about instead of self and and one of the things Dick says that's really valuable and wonderful, especially for people like me with big trauma. He said, "Self can never be damaged, no matter what happened to you or what you did. It's like the sun on a stormy day. No matter how bad the storm is, when the clouds part, the sun is there undamaged, not even dirtied." That was such a liberating message for me cuz before that, I'd always been told, "You know, you're damaged goods, you're broken, you know, expect a miserable little life. Yeah, you might be able to help a few others like you,

20:07 but you know, you're really a you know, garbage." Basically, was the message. But Dick saying, "No, no matter what, that can't be damaged." And I I I that's I believe that's true. What Swedenborg talked about, he talked about a place of inflow. In the older translations, it was a place of influx, but the idea is the same. There is a place in each one of us where the divine, and he used very Christian terminology, can flow into us. And he said, "That place can never be damaged." We can do all sorts of stuff to refuse to receive what's coming in, twist it and turn it into poisonous garbage. There's lots of ways we can

20:53 mess this up, but that place of inflow is always there and it's always undamaged. >> Now, in talking about self, you know, we're we're made up of parts. We got all these different parts. Each part has a self that it experiences as their own. So, it's sort of fractal, you know, at each level you go down in and in. Um And one thing I've noticed very often the parts with the most profound connection to the other world

21:39 are the youngest ones. That was not where I expected profound wisdom to come from. I had this prejudice that it would come from old, gray-haired people. >> [laughter] >> But very, very often, uh it's the very youngest parts of people. I think they in some way they're still connected to that realm. They haven't lost that from when they were born. Um I love it. I was working So, what I've done is when you work with an exile, you know, one of these very wounded inner child parts, you can help them unburden, which means get all the extreme feelings and beliefs off of them so that they can they can start to live in the present and they're not stuck back in that place

22:26 in time anymore. So, when when we do when when I do an unburdening with a young part like that now, I almost always just say something I hope it's non-directive, something like, "You know, a lot of people find an an opening to really deep realms of the inner world when they do this kind of unburdening." So, I just, you know, and then I pause for a minute or two. I did this once with an Orthodox Jewish man who was very rough, tough, stern, sort of angry guy, and um um he he did that. He was willing to, you know, open for a minute, and he smacks himself in the forehead, and he said,

23:11 "Oh, it's Jesus." >> [laughter] >> And that that cracked me up, and somehow I >> [snorts] >> I think spirit told me, "Just remind him Jesus wasn't Jesus wasn't a Christian." >> [laughter] >> And and he was he was able to talk to spirit in in that in in the form it came to him that day. Okay. So, this entire inner world, which to me

23:57 has contact with spirit and guides and allies, whatever you want to call it, and demons, at very near its core, has been devalued by the modern Western world. I There are a lot of historians who have talked about this. And some Owen Barfield at Oxford said this really started in ancient Greece. This other guy, um well, I can't remember his name. He said it started with with the beginning of agriculture. >> [laughter] >> But I think it really got bad around the Reformation Counter-Reformation time. This feeling that we're totally isolated, that our inner worlds don't

24:42 matter, and it's just gotten worse and worse and worse. And I think this false belief that we are independent, separate beings, and that our inner worlds don't matter, is actually the root cause of the modern epidemic of mental illness and addiction. And it it's so sad because we're also our minds are porous. William James, and I'm going to misquote him cuz I've smooshed his words around to make them, I think, more comprehensible in the 21st century. He said something like we look If you look at first, people look like islands in an ocean, totally

25:29 separate. But we're not separate, we're all bumps on the same seafloor. I think that's pretty literally true. And when we forget that and forget that our inner world has immense value and and determines who we are and how we can live. When we forget those two things, we are set up for mental illness, dependency on all these psychiatric meds, and also, I believe, I think this is the root cause of why people are susceptible to totalitarianism. Cuz they want they want something, anything, so they're not left with this lonely anxiety they were in.

26:22 Okay. The the the value of the inner world. I think in in some of the Sufi traditions, they they talk about the inner world as the unseen and the outer world as the seen. And I've forget which person said the unseen is much more important. Because things in the unseen world are eternal. And anything you can see with your physical eyes is transitory.

27:10 It does not last. So, focus on the unseen world. Um Henry Corbin, who was a great scholar, I believe, and undervalued. He talked about the imaginal realm. Which is it's not like imagination. This is how we create the world we live in. You know, our perceptual systems basically create the world we live in. Um Just a little bit more of this academic stuff. Predictive coding or predictive processing is this idea of perception

27:57 that basically says there's raw data down here. There's way too much of that. If you let that all in your head, it would be like the peak of an acid trip or a psilocybin experience. Everything would be wah, which might be nice, but you're not going to be able to drive a car or earn a living. So our As the raw data comes up from up here at the top, all these filters come down. And some systems have six, some have 12, you know, there's all kinds of different way. But each filter determines what's of value. It's based on the values of our of our

28:42 our highest level of thinking. And if if they decide this stuff's not value, you just don't ever perceive it. This whole cascade of filters is unconscious. You're not aware of it. You can't just go in there and say, "Oh, I want I'm No, I don't want that anymore. Put this in there." Um it's like an operating system in a computer. So, what finally gets through to consciousness and the world we perceive is determined by our value system. We don't see what's out there. >> [laughter] >> We we see who we are. So, and this is incredibly important. You know, I'm just going over this stuff to try and

29:28 underline how important this imaginal realm, this inner world is. That we I was indoctrinated to think that was absolutely worthless. You know, a waste of time. And when I was being raised, uh well, this this standard belief was that kids with imaginary friends had a problem. And we need to get those kids to stop interacting with their imaginal friend you know, imaginary friends and you know, come out here and you know, that's that's bad. Well, actually now they've done some studies. Kids with imaginary friends mature more quickly. And typically in precisely the area

30:15 where all these people were saying, "Oh, it's going to destroy them social relations." They learn how to relate by relating in the inner world. So, we have had this so backwards. >> [laughter] >> Can you get any more wrong? I don't know. I don't really want to find out either but um I think this is very scary to people to realize the importance of all of this stuff. You know, that there's a a quote I love from a Cherokee woman shaman who said, "Our foundations are ripped out from under us over and over and over

31:02 again until the abyss itself becomes our foundation." And when you start turning to the inner world, that's what it's like. Um so, understandably, it scares a lot of people. And I want to say I think one reason why I love talking with this group is because most of you, coming out of a 12-step background, know the value of the inner world. Um Okay, so how do we go back How do we go about reconnecting to spirit? That's that's the

31:50 you know, once once you're convinced that this is something that's super important to do, how do you do it? I think I want this brilliant brilliant thing about the 12 steps, they give you a map, you know, a program, but it it doesn't close you off, it opens you up. You know, and it keeps that curiosity and life force strong and the sense of connection to your own needs. I I wish IFS could achieve this. I think the phrase higher power was a stroke of genius because it it made it vague and wide

32:36 enough that people didn't feel all hemmed in and controlled and told what the answer is. I also think God as we understood him. It's clear enough to make turning our will and our lives over to him meaningful and yet it's free of dogmatism, predetermined answers, and this feeling of jail I often get when people are presenting these closed philosophical or therapeutic systems. Okay, how do we do this? This This is

33:22 what I'm really here to talk about. Um I'm going to make a few points. The first is the idea of inner sense cultivation. Now, that's a term from anthropology, especially Tanya Luhrmann. Uh I think she's one of the great minds on our planet today. One of her books that might be most interesting to you all is how God becomes real. She studies in many cultures how the experience of God becomes real, something that people can use as a basis for their living. And a real key to this is this idea of inner sense cultivation.

34:09 Um learning how to be aware of our inner world, the unseen, learning how to be aware of that. Now, I think some of us, like in athletics or music, some of us are way more talented and some of us are kind of slow, but this is a trainable skill. There's no doubt about that whatsoever. This is a trainable skill, and there's lots of things you can do to increase your inner sense culti- cultivation. Now, I want to say there's a whole there's a spectrum here. In psychology, now this idea of interoception has become quite popular, which means it's much more sci- scientific.

34:54 >> [laughter] >> It's much more pompous, let's have I'm sorry, I should be nicer, but I'm old. After a certain age, you don't have to be that nice anymore. Um interoception, they've narrowed it down to sensing the state of our body from the inside. And proprioception, knowing where our bodies are is a part of this. Now, many people on the autism spectrum will flap their hands. And one suggestion for this is their interoception, their proprioception, is so poor that they flap their hands in order to know where their hands are. So, this is a very uh basic level of knowing the inner

35:40 world. From starting here, you can there's a whole middle realm, and then Tanya Luhrmann, and I think she's right. I think she's brilliant on this. She says prayer is actually a very sophisticated way of inner sense cultivation. So, you can go all the way from flapping your hands to try and know where your body is in space to the highest levels of prayer, I think you're dealing with the same same thing, trainings in how to know our insides. Uh there's a wonderful Balinese psychiatrist Suryani who talks about this. She was talking about the trainings of the Balinese shamans.

36:25 And she said, "Well, it's not really their healing their initiatory disease. They're learning how to be aware of the realm of the she called it autonomous imagination, the autonomous psyche, and they're they're learning how to see and interact with this realm. Same idea. And she does Suryani does not refer to Lerman or any you know, there's no footnotes going back and forth. These people discovered this same idea from um you know, independently. And this is I Despite my badmouthing them, I have a very academic part. This is called consilience. When the same conclusion is reached from

37:12 different databases, and it's considered very strong evidence that something is of value. So, there's a lot of consilience around this idea of inner sense cultivation. This is trainable. I want to give you a really simple-minded uh kind of way to way to start a pro- It's not so simple-minded, but it's it's it's basically kind of easy. I'm going to back up just a little bit. I don't think there are any blank walls in the psyche. Uh there's no dead ends. There's nothing that's boring or empty. What happens is our curiosity fails. So,

37:58 when I'm working with a client and they say, oh, there's just a wall there. There's nothing. It's just nothing nothing. We can't you know, nothing's going to happen here. And I say, oh, let's get curious about nothing. As you focus on nothing, do you hear any sounds? And I'll even sort of suggest stuff like maybe the whistering whispering of the wind or maybe something really quiet at first. Just listen and see. And then, oh, as you move closer toward this nothing, this black realm inside you, uh does the temperature change? Does it get colder or warmer? As as you look at this nothing and start to perceive it, does it go all the way up and all the way down and all the way

38:45 to the right and all the way to the left? Or if it stops somewhere, what what what's what's it standing on? And as you as you focus on this nothing, do you notice any smells? What's the texture of the nothing inside of you? Is it like a uh cloud, a fog that you can sort of go in and out of, or is it like steel? Oh, it's like steel. Oh, if it's like steel, is it smooth and shiny or is it rough and jagged? And is the black uniform everywhere or are there variations? This is going to help the person get curious about what this is in them, but also it's an exercise in inner sense

39:33 cultivation. They are learning how to be more and more sensitive in their inner world. So, you know, some people go, "Why are you wasting my time with this crap, Bob?" >> [laughter] >> But I actually think it does a lot of important things. And that's that's one that's a basic type of exercise for inner sense cultivation. And you know, as Tanya Luhrmann says, it goes all the way up into the most refined uh high levels of prayer. You know, and that uh So, there's that inner sense cultivation interoception and just recognizing the value of the

40:18 unseen world. That is a really important part about how do we connect with spirit? Cuz you know, if we're to Oh, can you connect with spirit inside? No, nothing there. >> [laughter] >> That's just a beginning. That's not an end. That's just a beginning. Get curious. Oh, the nothing there. Tell me about the nothing, you know, and get curious about the nothing and And you can you can start one of the other things I will bring up. Well, I guess I'm going to bring it up now. Personalism. In the inner world, in the unseen realms, it works better if we treat everything we meet as a person. Not as a process, not as an energy, not

41:06 as an it, but as a thou in Martin Buber's terms. So, we start helping the person interact with this Oh, there's nothing there. Starting to interact with nothing as a person as a person. And then you can have Oh, well, how's your relationship with nothing today? >> [laughter] >> And So, inner sense cultivation, the spectrum of that and personalism, it's relational. Now, this idea of personalism really upsets the materialists. This If you want to be rejected by a by an academic community, start bringing this up.

41:51 Or if you're writing a thesis and you make this a big part of a thesis, expect a hard time with your thesis review committee. And I you know, that that when I first started taking this on as a reality, it was threatening to me, too. You mean there are other people living in my head? Who are actually running my boat in here, driving my bus? But, you know, that can be quite unsettling. But it has some it has some good things, too. It's all All this stuff is relational. It's relationships, forming relationships, cultivating relationships

42:38 with persons who are part of the unseen world and treat having that helping that relationship grow, just like you'd nurture or tend any relationship. Now, Iain McGilchrist, another one in my mind of the great intellects on our planet today, he said relationships are prior to the relata. Relationships are prior to the things or persons who are relating to each other. I'm not so sure that's true. I think maybe they co-evolve. But the relationships create who we are.

43:25 As much as they change the other, they change us. You know, and we grow through these relationships. I can't resist. Martin Buber is the great master to in my mind of personalism. He said we can relate to anything in the world as an it or a thou. And he said there are two basic words in the whole human universe. One is They're word pairs, actually. I-it, the other is I-thou. And he was very specific. You can relate to a rock as a thou. You know, which would be animism, which would be, you know, the Native Americans talking about all my relations when they

44:11 mean mean the the natural world around them. And that is so much that could be said about Buber. His book, I and Thou, is is is a very short, but I mean, you could spend many many years >> [laughter] >> trying to plumb the depths of what that man was saying. The point he made that's really important here, the I when you're in an I it relationship is different than the I when you're in an I Thou relationship. The form of relationship you take changes you in very fundamental ways. He also said at one point, I don't think

44:57 he maintained this his whole life, but I'm I'm researching that. Now, all evil comes out of I it relationships. I don't know if he stuck with that, but I think that's largely true. Okay, so we've got personalism, and then we've got this inner sense cultivation, or at least being aware of how our inner sensory interoceptive systems are. There is great evidence now that we are not limited to our five senses. Even a lot of the materialist physicalist scientists are suggesting we

45:44 have 33 senses. Or, you know, it I don't know how many, um, but five doesn't cover it doesn't cut the mustard at all. >> [laughter] >> So, the idea of being open to the input of all these other sensory systems. And perhaps applying them inside as well as out. It's very liberating, but it also can be scary. You know, it's like, "Whoa, I thought I had, you know, some mastery here. I knew what I was doing." And "Oh my gosh, there's this whole ocean out here I didn't understand at all." Um I'll just give you one example. It's almost It's It is It's certain we

46:32 directly sense magnetic fields. There's this transcranial magnetic stimulation that changes people's moods and how they think. Uh birds some birds migrate based on uh the Earth's magnetic field. >> [snorts] >> They did these studies from satellites of cow herds. And cow herds, when they lay down, tend to have certain orientations to Earth's magnetic field. So, if cows can do it and birds can do it and there's some evidence at very high levels we can do it, it's probably around all the time and we've just blinded ourselves to it. There's many, many, many more. So, starting to open this vast array

47:21 of inner sense cultivation can really, really help us. And I think it helps us feel reconnected to the world. So, we don't feel isolated and alone anymore. And we we know where we belong. Which And the this feeling of not belonging is so pervasive and so poisonous uh to us. Okay, so we got inner sense cultivation and personal personalism. And I want to dis- discuss another one which is maybe the most important of these. Who knows? >> [laughter] >> Right now, today, I'm sort of thinking it's the most important. I believe that we can

48:06 we can set up a spectrum and place all spiritual practices somewhere along this spectrum. And at one end of this spectrum, I want to suggest we put total surrender. And just opening ourselves completely. In the Western Christian spiritual tradition, this was often referred to as quietism. Madam Guyon in France was a very prominent quietist, and she was jailed by the Inquisition for I think 10 years of her life and then effectively silenced. Father Molinos in Italy was another uh quietist, and he was killed, executed

48:51 by the Inquisition. Cuz if you really go down this quietist path, Father Molinos was saying stuff like, "When we have this inner receptive connection, we no longer need priests. We no longer need a liturgy. We are directly connected ourselves." And this is >> [laughter] >> this is absolutely unacceptable to domination structures. Both churches and governments, they don't like this. Cuz when people are connected that way inside, they can't be manipulated and moved around and sold a lot of garbage they don't need, you know? Uh they become truly independent at a

49:37 profound level. So, Okay. So, we got quietism at this end, over here. Uh surrender. This would be the spirituality of surrender. I want to say I think every every point along the spectrum is important and valuable and I think we probably ought to become you know conversant or realize we might at different times of our life need many different points along the spectrum. I'm not trying to set up a value system. That's one reason why it's a horizontal spectrum. >> [laughter] >> It's not this vertical thing of you're ascending up here. Let's put at the other end of this spectrum extremely structured spiritual practice.

50:25 Now, an example saying previously written prayers is one example of this. You're just reciting something that people have been reciting for thousands of years and you know, very structured. I think the the example that to me really captures the nature of this end of the spectrum is usually called deity yoga. And the Tibetans or some of them are really strong with this. I worked with a Tibetan llama for a while and he he I was needing some help as usual >> [laughter] >> and he and his sangha did this blue

51:11 medicine Buddha meditation for me. Where they all visualize this blue medicine Buddha in incredible detail. Just his description of all I couldn't keep it all in my mind, but you know, they went through it and they were prayers and there was this over here and these objects all around him. They would visualize that with incredible vivid detail. Then they would bring or invite the blue medicine Buddha down into them and then they as a group offered me some healing from the blue medicine Buddha and then they sent the Blue Medicine Buddha back. That's an incredibly structured and difficult

51:56 psychological process. I think that's of incredible value sometimes too. What And and there's, you know, like um a little bit down the a little bit toward the center from from this extreme edge of the continuum, I think you could put Saint Ignatius's spiritual exercises. Cuz they're quite scripted, you know, there's certain things you're supposed to visualize and you read a passage of scripture and then you you go back in there and you smell the smells and feel the heat of the sun and the dust, you know, and so so you're back there living in that. It is somewhat structured, but you're also invited to participate in it in your own

52:43 individual way. And I think, you know, if if you're the organized type, you could start putting pretty much any spiritual discipline somewhere on this path. I want to talk about the sort of the middle of this path now because I think it's undervalued. Um Huh. One way I like to think of the middle of this path, it's about developing personal relationships with spirit.

53:28 It's not uh giving, you know, just it's not like channeling or some spirit voice comes in, takes you over, and says all this brilliant stuff. >> [laughter] >> It But it's like asking questions, receiving answers, back and forth, dialog, dialogical. That's That's the word that the academics like these days. This is a dialogical experience. Um Carl Jung talked about this in what I think is a enlightening way. He said there are three kinds of imagination, and he was referring to the

54:16 imagination in the sense of Henri Corbin and the imaginal realm. He said there's fantasy, passive imagination, and active imagination. And fantasy's useless. That's like wish fulfillment stuff. You know, it He just dismissed that. And he said, "Well, we all experience passive imagination. And the number one way it shows up for most people is dreams. You know, you're not creating that. You're receiving that. It's very, very obvious. And And you can learn how to have relationships with the the beings who come to you in the dream." He says, "The other major example of

55:01 passive imagination in our world is psychosis." Those are people who are receiving beings or messages or powers from the imaginal realm in a totally passive way, and it takes them over and sometimes destroys them. I think one reason why people who are having visionary experiences in our culture are so often destroyed by it, we provide the worst container, perhaps in the history of humanity, for receiving visionary experiences. Most other cultures have a way of receiving and supporting people who are having these incredibly

55:47 powerful visionary emotional experiences. We don't. We tell them, "Your mind's broken. This experience you just had, which is the most intense emotional and visionary experience you ever had in your whole life, that's meaningless, meaningless. Pay no attention. Do not interact with those parts. You could You could lose your job. You still can in many places if you encourage psychotic people to start dialoguing with the voices they hear." That is That is insane, and it's still the standard of care the the predominant standard of care in Western psychotherapy. Okay. So, passive imagination, dreams, and

56:35 psychosis. Another reason why this is so important, this imaginal realm is not trivial. Not trivial at all. If you have a lousy relationship to it, it, you know, it can get you locked up for the rest of your life. It can get you put on meds, which will turn your brain into a jellyfish in about a decade. It can destroy you. It can also bring you incredible meaning and light, but one thing it's not It's not trivial. It's important how we focus on this. So, Jung's third form of imagination he called active imagination. And this is what he did in the Red Book. And he said,

57:21 when he was going into these experience, he feared he was losing his mind. He feared psychosis, and that he'd lose his ability to relate to other people in the external world. So, it was a very unsettling experience for him, and he met several beings in there. He met Elijah, Salome, [snorts] um Philemon. Philemon was a big one. Philemon had the head of a bird and wings, but the body of a human. And all of these beings he met in there knew more than he did, which was kind of humbling >> [laughter] >> for Dr. Jung. And then, he would actively interact with them. Somebody recently said, and I can't remember who, I wish I could credit them, a better name for Jung's active

58:08 imagination would be interactive imagination. Because it is about interacting with the beings from the unseen world. You know, and I start talking about beings from the unseen world, and you should see the looks I get >> [laughter] >> from the distinguished psychotherapists. It's It's getting a little better. I I I'm experiencing less ridicule when I talk about these things. But, I think it's super important. I think without this, we are going to be lost in this epidemic of mental illness and mental distress. And, you know,

58:55 I'm going to go off on a uh No, I won't, cuz I want to leave time for some questions, and there's a lot more I want to say. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, so we want to have a personal and relational way of being with these ones we we meet. Uh active imagination in Jung's terms. Now, the I have There's a teacher, I think she's presented here, I'm not sure. Kay Gardner, a very senior IFS lead trainer, wonderful woman. I love and respect Kay a lot. And she suggested this practice, which I

59:40 thought was brain dead and stupid. >> [laughter] >> And if it didn't come from anybody else, I would have I'm not going to try that garbage. But the practice is really really simple. You know, she said, "Well, I know many of you want contact with spirits. So, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to write a dialogue." You go down and you just write your you know, write something like your initial or something. Write a question. Write if you have a name for the the form of spirit you meet, write that or just write spirit. Write an answer. Then keep going. Question, answer, question, answer question answer. And don't stop. Don't get hung up in

1:00:26 criticizing anything that comes through. Just keep writing for 10 minutes. And I thought, "Kay, that sounds really dumb, but I'll try it." And I did. And the very first time I did it, I realized that there was a voice in my head that is distinctly wiser than I am. And that was that was a little humbling. It was actually quite humbling. Um but it also sparked an interest. So, I do that kind of dialogue every day and I have for over a decade. And it it it actually it's doesn't feel like a chore like to me at all. It's a

1:01:11 part of my day I really look forward to. And I do it early in the morning when I do most of my uh prayer and checking in with parts and inner work. Cuz I want the denizens of my inner world to know that they come first. They come first every day. I don't turn on the internet or check emails or phone messages. No, I do this other stuff first. And uh that very important for me, but it might be absolutely wrong for some of you others. So, I've kept doing these dialogues. And it continued There's something in there a lot smarter than me. >> [laughter]

1:01:57 >> A lot. And this this book I recently wrote that I titled Spirit is there there over 3,000 pages of these dialogues now. So, I tried to summarize summarize them in a book, which was sort of an arrogant task, you know, to think I could do that. But um I did. And I think I think there's stuff in here that's of value to other people. But the the most important thing would not be that I got any answers that are going to save the world, nothing like that. But hopefully, I found a way to do

1:02:43 a practice which everybody can do on their own. It doesn't cost money. You don't have to go get a certification. You don't need a license. >> [laughter] >> Nothing like that. And I just sort of yesterday I sort of randomly chose a few short pieces from this. Um And I'm just going to read a few short ones and talk about them a little bit. And this is my summary of what Spirit said to me. Humor can save you from pride. Pride is a sense of specialness wrapped up in the flag of self-righteousness. It is toxic. It is a turd with whipped cream on it.

1:03:29 Poison inside a gourmet chocolate. Even if your next book is not valuable, the effect of writing it will be good for your spirit. It will focus you and that's this book. He was talking about. Beware of pride. Staying free of pride is the fundamental sine qua non of a spiritual path. It is the besetting sin. Well, it's an error really of your civilization. It is false gold and so alluring. If pride gets you, it strangles all the rest cutting you off at the roots.

1:04:15 And >> [laughter] >> my the spirit who talks to me has quite a the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy, which might say something about my emotional maturity. But, some days I'm you know, I get up before dawn. I do this spiritual practice. I go out in the woods where I live and pray and some days when I'm feeling you know, like, well, I'm a holy man. And I'm really praying intensely, what spirit does is he makes me fart. >> [laughter] >> And that sort of puts a that sort of pokes the balloon of pride. And at first, I did not like this.

1:05:01 Um but and now I really enjoy it. I mean So, I'll I'll just try another another little bit here. It is true that most of the popular and successful teachers are full of and lies. But, there are sparks of truth in all of them. Just as there are sparks of of relief in addictions. Do not bother yourself about them. Resist the urge to debunk or fight. Offer what we're giving you without attachment to how it is received. You need the trust of a blind man or of a sailor in a heavy fog.

1:05:49 You are too immature and foolish to be given much real power. You are deeply loved. Trust this. Work on your direction-finding systems. We will keep giving you more perception and more power as fast as you can receive them. Self-righteousness is your biggest addiction now, surpassing your addiction to control. Being right and getting others to see it. Self-righteousness is a closed system. It prevents new learning, and learning is always new. Learning is always new, surprise, and different. It's not about being right at

1:06:35 all. Our relationship is a living relationship with love and warmth and tears and joy. It is that way, or it's nothing. Without that, it's echoes, memories, and lostness. There are no absolute truths in your world, only the appearance of truth. So, doubt is appropriate. Let your doubt lead to curiosity. Learn. The learning that really matters is closer to how you learn to ride a bicycle than academic learning. The things of this world do not matter much, even though they convincingly

1:07:23 appear so important. And that sort of goes with the, you know that um Sufi thing about the unseen world is more important. Because the things of the unseen world are eternal. Words can evolve into song, which can evolve into images, which can evolve into pure intuition. Imagination is a perceptual system through which you can sense the divine. That's become an incredibly important idea to me. Imagination is like sight or

1:08:10 hearing. It's how we see the denizens of the inner world. It's how we can perceive and interact with the divine. It's It's not some trivial thing at all. It's as important as being able to see. Imagination is a perceptual system through which you can sense the divine. There are many real allies all around you, and there always have been. Mostly, you do not see them. The dark ones hate the divine feminine because she doesn't use words. So, they cannot argue. They're at a loss when faced with love alone. And when I experience the

1:08:57 I feminine aspects of the divine, she never uses words. Or she has maybe twice. And she finds words so crude, they're they're very unpleasant and it's painful for her to force her being down into words. So I experience her often as a gentle breeze or as a fog bank. But a really welcoming, soft, wonderful fog bank. The dark ones hate the divine feminine because she does not use words. They cannot argue. They're at a loss when faced with love alone. It is your internal civil wars that exhaust you more than any external

1:09:44 factors. They exhaust your spirit, life force, chi prana. They burn it up uselessly. The dark ones use this as a campfire to cook their food. For you, it is purely waste. It is being revealed to you how little of your mind is yours. This can either be scary or liberating. I think I'll stop with that for now. Wow, thank you so much, Bob. Could listen to this you talk on this subject all day. Thank you.