Encountering the presence of grief and mystery with Stephen Jenkinson (Part 1 & 2)
Encountering the presence of grief and mystery in life is not something out of the ordinary. These are things that occur naturally, as well as the stories of the love of life and grief. In this new podcast episode, Stephen Jenkinson shares with us his encounter with children and delivers the news of death to them. He also shares with us knowledge and wisdom about his discipline.
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Encountering the presence of grief and mystery with Stephen Jenkinson
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Stephen Jenkinson Part 1
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[00:00:00] Hey,
[00:00:02] Host: welcome to the today dreamer podcast. I'm your host, Michael, I'm a meditation teacher, a musician, a mentor, and a conversation list. And this project is here to help you cultivate the practice of presence so that you may more wholly be able to contribute and participate in the blossoming of the emergent world story.
[00:00:28] This is a very special episode for me. Uh, my mother passed away fairly recently on November 4th, 2021 at 5:00 AM. And I'd like to dedicate this episode to you mum, with the storm in my.
[00:01:02] So this episode is with Steven Jenkinson and afterwards it left me with many questions and I felt like some things felt confirmed, but also there was quite a bit worth exploring further. And I, you know, it would be really nice if that was the case with you as well. It's an encouragement to take your time with this one and really allow yourself to absorb, um, absorb it by kind of breathing into it.
[00:01:35] Nice and gently. So I've been thinking about one of the things was this idea of the blossoming aspect of, of the in intention of the show, the contribution towards blossoming and. I kind of was looking into the life cycle of plants, you know, from seed to seedling, to the seedling with leaves followed by a young tree, a growing tree, a mature tree flowers, and then, you know, potentially fruit.
[00:02:09] And I came across this little, little piece on the internet saying that stress-induced flowering is one of the responses to stress and is the ultimate stress adaptation. Because plants can survive as a species if they flower and produce seeds, even when they cannot survive as individuals under severe stress.
[00:02:33] I'm not so sure survival is the focus here, but it was an interesting, uh, consideration. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Steven. I'm gonna go through his bio with you before we take a kind of breath of presence and then move into things. Culture activist, worker, author, Steven. Teachers internationally, uh, and is the creator and principal instructor at the orphan wisdom school.
[00:03:01] Co-founded with his wife, Natalie Roy in 2010, they convened semi-annually in deacon, Ontario, and in Northern Europe. Here's a master's degree from Harvard in theology and the university of Toronto in social work apprentice to a master storyteller. When a young man, he. He's worked extensively with dying people and their families in, and he is the former program director, uh, in a major Canadian hospital, former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school.
[00:03:38] He's also a sculpture traditional canoe builder, and his house won a governor General's award for arch. Since co-founding the Knight of grief and mystery project with singer songwriter, Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical tent show, revival, storytelling ceremony of a show across north America, UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
[00:04:04] They released their Knight of grief and mystery album in 2017. And at the end of 2020, they released two new records, dark roads and rough guards, which will be creatively fusing into this episode. And another encouragement to just kind of let go into them would be, uh, something I'd like to point towards and also to.
[00:04:32] If you are interested in the work to go for a further exploration after the episode, he's the author of a generation's worth spirit work while the crisis reigns come of age, the case for hood in a time of trouble and the award-winning die wise, a manifesto for sanity and soul. Homecoming, the haiku sessions, a live teaching from 2013, how it all could be a workbook for dying people and those who love them, angel and executioner grief and the love of life money in the soul's desires, a meditation.
[00:05:14] Okay. So let's take a moment to just pause wherever you are. And just like we start every episode on this. Feel free to gently close your eyes or focus in on an object in the distance and as slow as you may have ever done. See if you can take a gentle, inhale through a nostrils, whenever it may be that you
[00:05:47] reach the peak of this inhalation. There's an open invitation to just pause and notice the subtleties of your experience before just as gracefully releasing on the way out.
[00:06:16] You might like to repeat this process as we. And to the initial stages of the conversation, you might like to repeat it all the way through.
[00:06:28] Guest: Here we go.
[00:06:34] We leave a hole. When we come here, then we leave a hole when we go, and then it happens again and that's life
[00:06:46] now there at the beginning. It's all feminine. That's how wild it is at first. Every one of us is womankind. That's how life begins for a second before it breaks into it's one, the she of everything. A mankind's necessary, but we aren't inevitable though. Something has to happen. Something has to change, has to stop being what it was.
[00:07:18] Now, if you're born a girl, child, you've a rumor swirling that you had a home and you had belonging one and there's proof there inside. A rudiment of that old watery house there in your middle. And no matter what comes of it later still will always be a sign that you came from somewhere that you belong, that you're belonging belongs.
[00:07:53] Now you're born a boy, same rumor, but there's a feeling about a home. And there's a sense that it's not always been this way and that's all there is. And you will look for home forever thereafter. You may spend many of your days pleading for one woman, at least to agree to be home one or two may sit still long enough.
[00:08:23] That it'll seem that way to you, but it won't last. It's not supposed to last, you know, that it's there and you're sighing after love.
[00:08:41] So life goes and there's a mournful little thing that happens in the life of a young boy that motherly forever. Well, that lasts just long enough for you to miss it when it goes and it goes. And that body, the starred and storied vault of heaven, all you've ever known of the kind world, it turns from you and it won't turn back.
[00:09:12] You hardly survive and you in your ragged sorrows just then are to make out love just there in the leav. That kind of love is confusing for the STDs hearts and your boy's heart is not one of those life goes and a generation later, more or less, your mother will have the ailments of age. The family will take turns, worrying, learning, drug names, visiting.
[00:09:53] You'll grow used to that too. Endings are considered for a moment then banished you won't read the signs. Not really. You'll have to be told and you'll have to make up your mind that you're in an ending a big one.
[00:10:15] Now your mother lays dying. Freed by the war from the old decorum. She smoked in public because she could, nobody talked about emphysema then, but you're talking about it now, though, with a nurse, she takes you into a room down the hall in private. She tells you, you have to stop suctioning. You have to stop everything.
[00:10:44] She's emphatic. Tell your family. Make them understand they have to stop. So you sit vigil one endless hour at a time, and then it ends. And she goes to the ground or to the flame. And the old hurt comes on now. And you're left to decide what everything means. Thing means. It means that you're an old orphan now that's what it means that kind of love life has for you is so confusing for the clearest running of hearts and a man's heart with his mother did is not one of those.
[00:11:42] There is an electrical storm that breaks out in the mind when parents die, be they gentle or gigantic in you be they kind caribous, cantankerous, catastrophic, or full of care. Whether some part of you flirts with relief at the thought of their death, or is undone beyond surviving. It's. When it comes, it lets lose a GAE of life.
[00:12:11] So adamant, so unnerving, the storm might seize a man by his breath, by the short hairs on his neck, by his very words. And it may not move on. And for a few hours, maybe a day or two, maybe a fortnight that man. Maybe more alive than he knows how to be. And his old strategies for safeguarding, the borders of himself they're dust now and no more
[00:12:53] in the heat of all that in the storm of the heart. Well, you'll have your mother's wake. You have the heart of a boy and little else. You're a hos and you'll have her wake and there'll be the sleepwalk of stories and the I'm sorry for your loss. And she's in a better place,
[00:13:21] but there, amongst the stories and the slow gin and the guests. They'll be the nurse that helped you more than you knew. Bring your mother across the line and see her down those long few days ago. You're a particular sort of man, just now an unguarded man. And she's seen so much of you and she's a witness to that.
[00:13:51] So you'll fall to careful whispered sorrows and thanks between you and stories from the long midnight wait and the vigil. And she's the truest woman that you've known just then the only woman that you've been known by like that. And she knows that, or some of it, she can see something of you. Rise to her that you can't see.
[00:14:23] And won't see,
[00:14:28] so the guests will leave to their lives and their ones and their twos. And she doesn't leave with them, you know, next to nothing about the motherless magic of these days. But you know that she won't leave. You rise to put away the glasses, the bread, the wine, and there's the night there between you
[00:15:02] a day and a night later, she goes through the door to her life. You won't see her. For that great while though. And for a short while after, well, you know, something of how vast life really is of how true the naked man and woman can be, how the homelessness can heal you, how there's weather in love and how it can be so confusing.
[00:15:45] It's all right. Sure. Well, you know, first of all, the circumstance you described with your mom, it's, uh, it is hollowed ground. Yeah. No matter how you feel about it, uh, and you may come and go on your feelings about it, you know, from, from, uh, sort of neutrality or some sense of wa or wonder to some sense of personal liability in the.
[00:16:08] You know, and, and, and round and round, but that doesn't diminish its um, it's Teleric uh, quality. So when you're, when you're invited to, uh, attend to someone else's, uh, hollowed ground it's best not to be too casual. It's best not to assume too much. And it's best not to walk first and think later. So with that in mind, Uh, I'll start elsewhere and back towards the, the piece of ground that you've been articulated, you know, I mean, I'm as familiar as you are with the notion, uh, the fetching notion of potential, it's got a beautiful PR firm working for it potential does.
[00:16:56] It sounds good in every sense of the term, there doesn't sound to be any particular downside to the matter at all. You hold yourself to the notion of. You, you inevitably will arrive alive and so you might guess from me saying it this way, that I'm, I'm probably not persuaded. Hmm. In fact, I'm so under persuaded by that notion that I've, I think I've given up in the notion of potential more or less entirely.
[00:17:24] I don't even think potential has potential to be Frank. So, so why would I be a hard ass on the matter. Well, largely it's because, uh, two things, first of all, it participates in the same cheering section of the stadium as hope does to my mind, into my ear. And I'm on record and I don't need to replay the whole, sorry, business of hope here.
[00:17:48] Now people can look it up if they're so inclined, but needless to say that hope trades on the future that's its principle stock and trade it trades on a better future, a better day, et cetera. It's a, it's a proper thing to year an after to want and all the rest. But if you examine the function of hope, the actual kind of existential architecture of the beast, you find that it tends to diminish demean and, and, uh, dis spirit, the present for the sake of that future, it already turns away or half turns away from the present.
[00:18:30] because the present moment is clearly not good enough, not, uh, delivering enough of the upside, not, not worthy of our, you know, torment as well as our, uh, the rest of our elements. In fact, the present is all we have, Mr. The present is all we have, and it's not clear that we even have the present. Maybe that's not the best phrase you could say.
[00:18:53] The present makes a clear and distinct. And, um, and compelling claim upon us. And we either ignore that or we proceed according. Uh, but there's, there's no takers by and large in my experience for the trail. Toves in the troubles of the times in the present moment. So I think as citizens of a troubled time, we owe the present our very.
[00:19:25] We owe the future, um, a passing acknowledgement of its possibilities and no more. That's one, here's two, this notion of potential life. Um, I worked with dying people frequently in the old days. And amongst that group, I worked with a lot of dying kids and I think it's important to note that, um, working with dying kids, there's easier ways to make a living.
[00:19:54] Then being in that particular trench with those people, that degree of heartache and that degree of, of almost phosphorescent grudge against the way it is against life, against God, against the heartbeat against everything. I don't say it's not understandable, but I, I question how wise it is to call down the mighty when things are despicably, not going according to your.
[00:20:25] So I had to try to figure out what was mobilizing the parents of the dying kids. Most emphatically, that nobody seemed to be too alert to. It would admit to some kind of intervention on my part. And I think I, I found now there's more than what I found, but I certainly found this and this, you can take to the.
[00:20:51] The notion really was not that the child was dying. That was hard enough. The real grievance and grudge was, they were dying at such a point and in such a circumstance that they wouldn't get to live a full life. I E that very potential you were talking about around the fire. Hmm. I think so now know, it's, it's worthy of simply considering, rather than having an opinion about.
[00:21:18] You could think about it instead and give your opinion rest. And here's how you could do so has a seven year old leukemia patient had a full life by what measure or any measure you wanna take off the shelf? So let's pick the obvious ones. Will the seven year old ever have kids, apparently not. Would that be, uh, an indicator of a full life?
[00:21:41] Well, for some. Okay, so it's, it's hit or miss on the, on the full life spectrum, anything. Well, they won't hit puberty. Right. And everybody can't wait to hit puberty and having done so they're, it's a laugh a minute. Right. So, so there's that. Okay. What else? Um, uh, they, they look upon their parents as equals what seven year old seeks after equality with their parents.
[00:22:07] They're not missing any of these things. They simply won't live them out. But the notion that they're being. Delta poor hand or that they're being ripped off by eternity because they don't get to do everything. Whose notion is this? Where, what kind of consumer galaxy does this come from? That the only justifiable legitimate and, and, and just encounter we have with life is the one where there's very few limits in frailties and.
[00:22:43] So I submit to you that a seven year old leukemia patient is capable of living a full life in, and I I'll go on a limb here and be personal for a second in a fashion that you have outlived yourself. But just by virtue of your age, like me, you were trained out of the capacity to live a full life sometimes during your encounters with puberty and deep socialization in the schoolyard and that that sort of business.
[00:23:09] Right. You had to give up all that stuff and you, you probably did so more or less, um, gladly because participation in the greater strong was worth giving up your capacity to live a full life and signing up for the grudge match called being all you want to be or getting everything that you want. So a seven year old has no such capacity to turn on life that.
[00:23:35] Because they haven't been turned on by life by virtue of dying before the age of eight. So if this is true, when you're seven, is it less true when you're 47? It's a good thing to wonder about. I mean, you're less capable of living a full life at 47. Hmm. You need some serious reminding of the kind of nascent wisdom that was available to you.
[00:23:58] I shouldn't even call it wisdom cuz it wasn't earned. Exactly. At the age of seven, you don't, you don't really have the possibility of turning away from that kind of life was cuz there is no alternative for a while. You see. And finally, when you learn how to be normally unhappy with the rest of us older people.
[00:24:17] This is a scant and faint memory. This idea that you live fully and utterly and inhabited the moment so fiercely that you could teach any existentialist, a good lesson.
[00:24:35] Why not talk? Dear hard. Have you come see me?
[00:24:59] The darkness to us? So they
[00:25:21] will grow.
[00:25:47] Somewhere, not something, not someone to
[00:26:03] have to worry and cry them to.
[00:26:14] Stay
[00:26:25] then, then in the darkness, we are not going, boy.
[00:26:52] Oh, dream love mine. Lost. And. You.
[00:27:22] Host: Yeah. I feel like the children have a lot of lessons to teach and just kind of, um, kind of bearing weakness to how, how everything unfolded with mom around my son actually, um, was quite, it
[00:27:43] was quite difficult. Um, I guess a question comes up around whether you've ever had to. Speak to children about another one's death and how you may have approached something like that. I, I, it was, it's difficult to, to feel into whether you're doing things right or, or wrong as a parent.
[00:28:03] Guest: Um, I think, honestly, it's the wrong question to ask yourself or the wrong kind of standard to hold yourself too?
[00:28:09] Mm, not that there's not such a thing as terrible things to say. Hmm. There clearly are, but I'm not sure if there's a quote right. Thing to say, but I. You know, I could weigh in on the subject a little bit here now and suggest a couple of, of tangential things for you that in, in with the benefit of hindsight might have been useful to you once upon a time or depending on your son's age might still be.
[00:28:34] So here's one, we often mistake the err attention span of a child for aversion.
[00:28:46] That's not necessarily what it. I mean, the child has not learned that 47 minutes of uninterrupted attention span is a good thing to have. Right? They'll give you 18 seconds, depending on what the matter is at hand, they might give you, you know, 43 seconds. But after that, you're just going to the hardware store for bread.
[00:29:09] Now, if you want them to be able to stay with you, you see. So if they're not staying with you, when you're trying to talk about the death. Of another cuby a child or a grandparent, whatever it is, uh, you could easily be led down the garden path of thinking that you just haven't found the right thing to say.
[00:29:27] And when you do, they'll be all ears for the duration of your speech. Hmm. So you can tell what I'm saying here. I'm saying that, uh, child has no investment in these long term, um, elaboration, right? They have no investment in talking about their feelings. With the kind of, uh, elaboration of, of emotive field that you're looking for, that not very secretly you're depending on to persuade you that you're saying the right thing.
[00:30:02] Hmm. After all an encounter, like this is not a place for you to feel a little bitter about yourself as a father. Mm-hmm , you may, and that'd be great, but you don't hold your child to ransom in order to make you feel more adequate.
[00:30:20] So for many adults, uh, many kids do a good impersonation of a Rubik's cube, all these constituent parts. And if you just flick 'em in the right way, you just move them just so you're gonna get the face of Jesus in the cube or whatever it is you're after. So here's what I'm saying. Kid's not a Rubics cube, obviously, nor is a kid, a problem to.
[00:30:47] Yeah. So if the stance is you sit across on them, trying to figure out how to best impart this information in such a way that's not traumatizing at the same time. It grips them to their mighty core. Yeah. You might be asking the wrong thing. You might, your whole game could be wrong. Why? Because it's not predicated on, on, you know, what.
[00:31:12] The, the living life of a child requires is predicated on trying to feel that you're doing the right thing for that living life of that child. So if you, if you ceast desist in the notion that a child is a problem to solve, the first thing you change is your seating arrangement. How so? Well you don't sit across from them making them the object of your inquiry.
[00:31:37] You see, and then testing them ongoingly. With little litmus tests of, uh, of sensibility for whether or not they're getting an understanding and tracking and following and, and, and, and, uh, indulging you and the rest. So what it's did well, don't sit across them anymore to the point where you can't from where you sit, you can't actually quite see them very clearly.
[00:32:02] And where would that be? Oh, something like, uh, 45 degrees off center from them. So they're looking across. The front of you and you're looking across the front of them and wherever those two gazes intersect, that's the focus of your attention, not the child where the two gazes intersect see, and in, so doing what you'll be able to do with great practice, I should say is you'll be able to see perhaps not the child so much, but what the child sees.
[00:32:35] You mean see from their point of view? No, not exactly because it's still the world. See, it's not them. You keep trying to slip that in, but it's not them. That should be the focus of the encounter any longer. It should be the mystery. And the two of you should not be on opposite sides of the mystery. You should be gathered together in its name.
[00:32:57] You see, that's what you're there for. To, to pay more than lip service to the fact that stuff happens in this world, that nobody really understands if they're telling the truth, especially grownups. So then how do you, I mean, it's a terrible word. I hate the word, but how do you model the notion that adults have as much obligation to submit to mystery and the inscrutable as kids do, but you.
[00:33:30] You do, this is what kids need to learn more than anything else is they can trust the ambivalence and uncertainty of grownups because grownups have learned how to be properly ambivalent, but I haven't met many who know how and so kids properly. So they hold adult certainty. And at the same time in same weird high esteem, but at a, at a bit of a distance as well, because they're not inclined to imitate.
[00:34:00] Not for a while. I mean, eventually we all learn how to talk that talk, but, but outta the gate, not so much. So in a nutshell, that's how you do it. What you, what comes outta your mouth? Well, I mean, you're gonna have to live with it, right. Hopefully you've really thought about it. And you've thought about the filters it passes through to get to your lips and what you're after, what your expectations are.
[00:34:26] See, but if you get. 14 seconds on the finality of death with a seven or a 10 year old, that's pretty good for all concern. They don't need more than 10 seconds of the finality of death. They don't need to be able to be engaged in, you know, high emotive, rational conversation with you on the matter. I mean, you can't get many adults to do that with you.
[00:34:53] You certainly can't ask it of a, of a minor. Right. But what you can do. Show them that while the mystery is concerning and confounding, it's not fear inducing by nature. It's awe inspiring instead. So you, as a grown up or as a father in this case, have an obligation to practice awe with your kid looking on.
[00:35:29] Host: This idea that you you've mentioned a few times, um, throughout, you know, your books and your talks is this idea of that wisdom can't be inherited when you first mentioned that that kind of twisted my noodle a little bit. Cause I was, I was, it made a lot of sense, but I'd never thought about it like that.
[00:35:49] Right? I guess a question that came up for me is. How, how do you actually approach your, your disciplined inquiry? How do you get to something in that space? You know, where, where does, where does, what does your wondering, you know, where does that, where does that, what does that feel and look like for you and, um, and and yeah.
[00:36:17] How did you, how did you find that space? I guess were some curiosities that came up.
[00:36:24] Guest: Well, it feels like the last, um, you know, excluding the, our interruption. It feels like what I've been doing since I said hello to you, you're looking at me doing it. This is what it sounds like. This, this is what the approach is.
[00:36:39] A discipline inquiry, animates the question with something more than a demand to know what it animates it. Is that proper and high regard for the rest of the story, that's not become apparent or manifest you familiar with the piece I did in, uh, with my band called hippy radio. Did you hear that? Mm-hmm I think I heard that one.
[00:37:03] Yep. There it is. The whole thing's in there. Mm. Okay. The notion that there's, there's a sound that a song makes after it's finished. Mm-hmm and it's a strange idea. You have to listen for it. You can't go on to the next. you have to stay there. See, but if you do you'll encounter something remarkable that the song was not complete until after it ended it's completion.
[00:37:33] If you will, is the silence that follows upon it and your willingness to abide by and in that silence, that's the discipline inquiry just manifest differently in terms of listen. And not trying to move on and not trying to get more. See, how did I quote find it? Um, well, you know, the, these things you shouldn't speak with so much authority about your own little wrinkles, right?
[00:38:05] You, you haven't really known any different. I mean, there was a time when I had no notion whatsoever of what we're talking about now. And then at a certain point, I did, I'm grateful for the change. You know, without feeling an obligation to be absolutely merciless in my being able to track exactly how it took place.
[00:38:25] Okay. But I know this, I know that when I was very young, uh, perhaps even in the womb, but certainly thereafter, I was read to very frequently. And, um, I was read to, to the point where I remember whoever's reading, going unconscious, you know, with the umpteenth ver uh, rendering of the particular story that I wanted to.
[00:38:49] Again, and there's something in my, in ongoing and very young encounter with the, the lo and the cadence of, uh, of storytelling that has never left me that it, it really manifests how, I think, not what I think about, but the manner by which I think about things, and rather than. Coming to it as a lawyer might trying to find the weaknesses and, you know, the frailties in the argument or a way in which you could prevail or something like this, I'm, I'm seeking to be persuaded, not convinced persuaded by the story of something.
[00:39:34] And I guess the thing that compels me about it most is, um, you know, I went to university. I mean, I can talk the talk. I can, I can do that problem solving thing if needs be, I can be, uh, um, petant with the best of the legal minds, you know, I don't hold it in particular high esteem, but I'm, I'm, I'm grateful that the skill is there, but here's one of the things I discovered it must have been before I went to Harvard, but it certainly manifests there at Harvard university that, uh, when you.
[00:40:11] When you engage fellow human beings at the level of argument in diatribe and contentness, which does sound familiar given what's going on today. And one of the things that happens is your, your memory is deeply challenged to try to recreate the, uh, the flash points, the, uh, The what got you going the, uh, the argument at its, you know, whitest, white hottest nest, that kind of thing.
[00:40:39] Why? Well, there's something about contentness and argument that the mind was built to be able to do, but the mind is not built of argument. The thinking the thinking apparatus is not built out of contentness. Is built out of curiosity and, and pattern recognition and, uh, longing after a deeper participation in the thing.
[00:41:11] That's not quite giving itself away, otherwise known to you a story you see. So I think the way it works is this the reason you can't remember how the argument went, including the romantic circumstance arguments. You can't really remember. You remember that you were willing to live or die because of the argument, but you don't remember what the argument was about really.
[00:41:31] And you certainly couldn't replay it. Why not? Cuz you're not built that way. That's why, but try to tell a story that you can't remember almost any aspect of and you know what happens when you start telling it, it starts telling itself. Through the kind of lateral associations that you begin to make and oh yeah, there, there was this thing.
[00:41:49] I don't know how it, whether it came before or after, and then you, you tell it and in the act of telling it low and behold, doesn't the story begin to appear. And why do you suppose that is? I think the answer's pretty obvious. That's what you're built of. That's how you're made. You were made by your parents telling a story to each other that turned into.
[00:42:12] Not just their parenting style, but even before you were conceived, if you were imagined, if you were planned in some fashion, if you were, you know, worried over, if you were fretted after, if you were avoided at all costs still, there's all kind of story that's gathering around the U. That's not
[00:42:35] a pretty cool story too.
[00:42:38] Host: I don't think I can do that.
[00:42:46] so is this kind of partly why the reason when you had your school, that you would kind of, um, you know, invite students to, to take note of things that were happening in the world around them, is this kind of, are these like kind of noticing. Um, part of that kind of story forming process.
[00:43:12] Guest: Yes. Although I would put it a little more strongly than you did.
[00:43:17] I didn't advocate that they take note of the world around them. I would assume given the fact that they're coming to a school that I'm doing that they're probably already in that business. Mm-hmm OK. Because they couldn't really justify being in my school for and do anything less than that. But what I did in particular was ask them to.
[00:43:36] Take note and keep track of what I call signs of the end times. And this is before the COVID thing. Sometimes you look really smart in hindsight, right? So that's what I did. And I, I wasn't, I, in, in using the term, I wasn't using it like a 50 Adventist to Pentecostal or a born again, anything in particular.
[00:44:00] I was using it with an understanding that there are certain indicators of where you are in the likelihoods that surround you. You are, you have no business being overly truant on the matter of where in the arc of your particular civilization, you might be. It's important that you be alerted to the likelihood.
[00:44:25] The fact that they don't come from central command, that it's not nailed to the sky for everybody to see, doesn't let you, or me off the meet hook of being an ordinary civilian in a troubled time and assuming that obligation. And so one of the practices you can begin to cultivate is rather than having feelings about this notion of end times, which I didn't invent the term by the way.
[00:44:52] Right. I'm just borrowing. Rather than having feelings about it, dread or relief or , whatever it might be. I'm not talking, I didn't say track your feelings about the end times. I said, track the signs. The notion is that there's a world out there beyond the frontier of your feelings. Go there.
[00:45:20] Host: can you talk to me a little bit more about why.
[00:45:25] Guest: I go there. Yes.
[00:45:29] Well, I mean, your whole life has been lived in the presence of a, of a civilization that has failed to do so in any kind of consistent way. So I, you know, my question is right back to you, how do you think it's working so far to work on the level of potential and be a better you and, uh, personal growth and development and yeah, how's it working.
[00:45:52] Yeah, I don't need to make the case that it's not working. I don't have that obligation or responsibility, you know, I'll put, I'll put it to you. Another way. When I worked in the death trade, let's say at any given day 500 people were diagnosed with Dustin. So in the greater Mo metropolitan zone where I was working, and let's say of those people, 499 of them died on schedule.
[00:46:20] Like within the reasonable expectation that they were provided at when they were told the prognosis. Let me tell you what story gets told over and over and over again in the name of being helpful and supportive and positive. You know what I'm gonna tell you the story of that one person who didn't die on schedule.
[00:46:41] Now, I'm not saying there's no such thing as that one person. Of course there is. There's probably more than one, but you take the point I'm making here. So I, I reasoned it this way. I think my responsibility is to see to it that the stories of the 499, who died on schedule are told, and everybody else can hold tight to their Boso.
[00:47:00] The story of the one who defied all the odds and is still alive.
[00:47:07] Host: So along with this kind of, um, suggestion or recommendation or, or kind of invitation to the students, were there other ways in which you kind of, um, opened the door or the window, however you wanna put it to the ideas of, um, you know, coming closer to the harsh realities that we are kind. Embedded in and, and, and bringing them closer and feeling more deeply into them.
[00:47:37] Um, or recognizing them with more kind of clear eyes, I guess. Mm-hmm, ,
[00:47:43] Guest: that's a good question. Um, I don't think my principal, uh, obligation in the 10 years that I did the school or when I do the school and a again, after three years interruption starting, I think it's tonight, it's today, Wednesday or Tuesday.
[00:47:58] Today's Tuesday. a week tomorrow. The school starts again for the first time in several years and I'm, I'm outta practice, but I'm not outta tune. So I'm, I'm very keen and, and, and, and ready, able will see, but certainly ready for it. So I didn't advocate, um, getting close to the troubles of the times as a point of dogma, you know, it's not an idea.
[00:48:27] What I did was I practiced doing so in front of them, with them and to a certain degree to them at them, upon them. And then ultimately, you know, no, I mean, arguments are futile in that matter. Recommendations are futile, but practice may not be. And then ultimately you have to leave the consequences of the practice that you demonstrate.
[00:48:57] To the, the, uh, constituent neurological parts of the people you're dealing with, you're talking to you, are you feel an obligation to, as a result of them coming to your school? I never thought I had an obligation to reassure people that things are gonna be okay if we just fill in the blank. I don't consider that to be adult behavior, to be honest.
[00:49:22] Mm-hmm, , it's a, it's a kind. Citizenship malpractice. I think, you know, we are, we are truly in the shit, man, if you don't start there, you haven't started. If you're running down the world road to solutions, you know, tech abiding solutions for tech driven problems, just to take the obvious, um, you know, you can, you can claim you're working on behalf of a better day, but I don't know how, I don't know how you're you're you're a solution junk.
[00:49:54] When your real, your real Jones should be trouble. Not beam me up. Scotty, not, uh, you know, here's a little song I wrote. You might like to play it. Note for note, don't worry. Be happy,
[00:50:13] but honestly it takes a, a certain kind of grown up stamina. Doesn't it. To do what we're talking about. Because, uh, isn't that true? Hasn't it been your experience that an awful lot of people want to be rewarded for taking, taking it in the teeth in terms of how we're doing in the Western world, that people wanna reassurance that there's an upside to doing so, and they want that reassurance to be there before they really submit themselves to the, to the hard ass, you know, sort of, uh, corroded steel edge of.
[00:50:52] What we've done with the numerous possibilities that have been entrusted to us. I think the answer is yes.
[00:51:00] Host: Thank you for your participation in this episode of theri podcast. I'll leave links on our beautiful guest in the show notes section on the website, where you can check out all their wonderful work and offerings.
[00:51:13] And if you're interested in working one on one with me, feel free to head over to today. dreamer.com and get in touch. Also, if you are a part of the today dreamer family, which. Really only means that you've listened to one full episode and you'd like to go deeper to at least one full episode then, um, and you'd like to participate in some group meditation sessions online that I'm offering for free only to listeners of the show.
[00:51:42] Then please send me an email through the contact form on the website. I'll add you to. List and, um, I'll give you all the details to that. And any other upcoming kind of offerings around helping your development in this space. Thank you so much again. And until next time, uh, be present, feel alive and yeah.
[00:52:10] and yeah.
[00:52:11] Guest: Be well.
===
Stephen Jenkinson Part 2
===
[00:00:00] Host: Welcome to the today dreamer podcast, a project that's dedicated to helping you cultivate your own practice of presence. My name's Michael, and I'm your host. I'm a meditation teacher, a musician, a mentor, and a conversationalist that's currently based in Melbourne Australia. And it's my hope that through listening to these conversations and through these kind of shared spaces, that you'll be able to feel more empowered and more enabled in participating and contributing to the blossoming of the emergent world story.
[00:00:40] So hopefully you find some clarity through these chats, some inspiration and motivation. This is a. Two of a two part series. So if you haven't yet, I would like to kind of point you to part one, to have a listen. And if you have then, you know, sit back, relax and enjoy this episode before we do get into it.
[00:01:02] I would like to invite you to pause with me for a moment as we have the space to just be through the practice of an inhalation and exhalation, feel free to focus in on one object in the distance, in your field of vision, or you may even like to close your eyes for a moment and as slow it slowly and gracefully as you possibly can.
[00:01:34] There's a nice, gentle, open invitation to begin to inhale through the nostrils.
[00:01:49] Noticing any subtleties of your experience, you might like to just pause for a moment at the peak of your inhalation
[00:02:05] before gently releasing, just seeing just as slowly and gracefully
[00:02:12] Audio: on the way out.
[00:02:24] And there's
[00:02:24] Host: an open invitation to continue this process. As we lead into part two of this conversation, you might like to continue all the way through .
[00:02:35] Audio: Yeah. Let's get into it.
[00:02:41] Guest: I'm not qualified blaming anybody in particular for it. I'm I have no interest in blaming anybody.
[00:02:46] Host: Right. Well, I could even see that within myself.
[00:02:49] And if I look deeply into my own, you know, the phases or the different lives, I've lived within my own life. And I think it's only up until recently to be honest, that this has kind of started to shift for me. Yeah. And it's just started, you know? Yeah. Um, so I can definitely feel into what you're saying.
[00:03:08] There's a real truth to that. Yeah. And there's a sense of like, wanting to kind of, um, almost like create this cycle of holding, but being held at the same time.
[00:03:23] Audio: And sure.
[00:03:26] Host: There's also this idea of, I just come back to my son and I see him, you know, Possibly even as an analogy in a way, but just the idea of, um, coming into a kind of way of being with him, where he is the ultimate priority, in a sense, sending that seed into the future, rather than focusing in on, you know, what, what, like myself and my own, my own kind of sense of selfishness has come up.
[00:04:02] Yeah. In that reflection. Yeah. Um, so there is something, um, uh, very kind of, uh, there's a big opening there when we're talking about, um, putting in effort and, um, doing what we feel in, in our heart is, you know, worthy of love and that effort, um, and sending that kind of eye picture as sending it forward.
[00:04:30] But I mean, it's really a sense of presence. Um,
[00:04:36] Audio: yeah,
[00:04:38] Guest: a, a caveat that I would attach to what you've just said in the last couple of minutes. Yes. It would be this, um, I, I noticed the coincidence of what I just talked about and your response in terms of go, going back to your son. Yes. And I would point out to you that this is probably the single, I mean, it's noble, of course, but it's the single easiest response you could have to what I said.
[00:05:04] Hmm. How, sorry you go right back to making him a priority. Okay. Mm-hmm okay. Because it's, it's in the matrix, isn't it? Or the, I suppose it would be better word here since you're the father, it it's, it's, it's in the circuitry to do so. Right. But there's a big reward system for doing so, too, to set yourself aside, you know, for the sake of his, him and the future and so on like this.
[00:05:29] So here's my caveat. when things come that easy to you. Mm-hmm , it's not that you should suspect them, but you should wonder about their, their ease, the kind of petroleum jelly that's on the idea. Okay. That may, that, that produces no friction whatsoever. So let me introduce some friction, some, uh, some granular element to the idea.
[00:05:52] It suggest, yes, it goes like this. You as, as do I, I mean, my kids are my thirties, but still, still to this day, do I not have all kind of senses that I would like to run interference for them and in some fashion, um, baptized them against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune globally and ecologically and all the rest.
[00:06:17] Don't I, of course I do. It's there. What do I do with that? Well, I don't obey it. I do this instead. It I've come to realize for what it's worth. That me being AB able to act directly on behalf of my children in real time, so that they recognize the efficacy of what I've done on their behalf in real time.
[00:06:42] And that that recognition comes back to me in a positive feedback loop in real time is extremely unlikely and not the best use of the limited time I have on this planet. So I'm gonna suggest to you, it should work like this. Instead, you want your kids to be in a better world perhaps than you were born into.
[00:07:06] I should hope so. Good. How do you get there? You work for the better world, Mr. You don't work for the kids. Okay. And what you hope is that indirect, um, focus. They see you. Operating, not with them at the center of the enterprise. Amen. But with the better day at the center of the enterprise with this sorry, broken world or what we've done to it at the center of the enterprise that you lead with your heart brokenness on the matter, not what your sense of fierce, you know, uh, protectiveness on their behalf, that you, you open that you, you break a hole in that big enough to acknowledge that you can't save them directly from the world that you yourself inherited.
[00:07:58] So what you're gonna have to do instead is try to, and your little corner of the world and me and mine have to make something that's better than it was when we found it. And we hope they're watching and we hope they take inspiration from that example and are able to translate that into paternal love.
[00:08:25] Host: I feel like I was with you before you begun Steven. Because I, I, I, even though I said he was a priority, I still kind of saw him as fused together with, with the world. Like they, they seem to be, um, one in a sense. Yeah. Because like exactly what you're saying, there's this kind of the betterment of all in a sense from my corner with, you know, whatever I can do to contribute and participate and, and be of some use.
[00:08:58] And then there's this sense of him indirectly. Um, there's an example. That's, that's brought out rather than that sole focus beyond him. Right. And then, but he is actually the seed into the future. I mean, no one can say when anyone will live or die, but there is a sense of sending something forward in. And one of those things could possibly be his life through that example.
[00:09:26] Yeah. Um, so I think we may be on the same page, but I'm not quite sure. I might still be a little bit off.
[00:09:32] Guest: I don't think so. I think, I think there's a general amen. In the mixture here somehow between the two of us. Yeah. Yeah. I would just recommend to you that you not employ your son as a standin for the world that you can't get get at.
[00:09:48] Mm-hmm see what I'm saying. Mm-hmm yes, I get what you're saying. Kids. Kids can tell when they're stand ins for some symbol mm-hmm they can tell when they've become a project for you. Yes. Right. And, and they have no obligation to be in this world in order to give you something to work on.
[00:10:06] Audio: Mm-hmm yeah.
[00:10:09] Guest: Otherwise you and I are perfect accord.
[00:10:12] Host: This whole thing around there was one of your songs and it was around being useful in a war. Yes. I was wondering around that. Is there anything that comes up that you may be able to share in the context of what we're talking about? Um,
[00:10:28] Guest: yeah, that's a scary song now I should say, I should say it's not my song.
[00:10:33] It's uh, my partner in that project, he wrote that song. Yes. That's his music and his lyrics as, as well. I have
[00:10:40] Host: noticed you talking around usefulness though, and you've mentioned the word a few times. Yeah,
[00:10:44] Guest: certainly. But I think he wrote that song before he met me to, you know, to give him his full, do he
[00:10:50] Audio: didn't it's
[00:10:50] Host: beautiful coming together.
[00:10:52] Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I think in, in, it's not a tongue in cheek thing, he's saying, um, he's saying something like this, I'm not a child and ALA, um, let me see if I can remember some lyrics. Um, my, my hair is gray and thinning. Um, oh my God. See, I don't have to sing it every night, so it's not, it's not on me to have the lyrics burned in my mind, but I, I know in principle, the thrust of the song is to say, um, you know, I've glimpsed my willingness to be complicit.
[00:11:34] And, uh, even though this, it sounds like a prayer to be pressed into like an active draft to go fight in a war. It's not clear that he's talking about a war of, uh, the likes that's going on in Ukraine at the moment. I think the, the warfare he's talking about might be closer to a lot of guys referring to themselves or each other in terms of warriors and spiritual warriors and things of this kind.
[00:12:01] I think that's in there as well, but he's, he's obviously, uh, I mean, I would recommend the song to anybody who's listening and say, you will find in there, it's not irony. It's not sarcasm. He's saying when he's saying, make me useful in the war, make me deaf to my own voice. I, I won't, uh, something, any choice, um, coming down from the co Commodor make me useful in the war.
[00:12:28] Uh that's all I can remember right now. He's saying something in the order of, um, you might wanna pay attention to what you obey, but in this case, in he's he situated himself inside the compromise, rather than talking about it from the. And in that sense, it's a braver revelation, I think,
[00:13:06] Audio: have yours to do bidding. It's been its way since the beginning. Now my hair is gray and thinning. You need me anymore. I
[00:13:25] have watched
[00:13:35] the burning skies through coward's eyes. I've ignored the battle, cries that a red house. My door stumbled drunk through love and joy far too long. Boy. Ready to, you have
[00:14:02] to tell me what side I'm fighting for my green.
[00:14:24] My ambition,
[00:14:26] Guest: sanctify my secret
[00:14:28] Audio: mission. Make me block up, cut the cord,
[00:14:32] Guest: deny that I was ever in your war.
[00:14:39] Audio: Take my head out of the heaven, take my hands and make them weapons. Hold me to the oaths. I swore make me useful in a war. Make me deaf to
[00:14:59] my own voice. I won't question any choice coming down from the, and just make in. In the line of fire, make me climb, raise a wire until my flesh is torn. Make me useful in a take my its make out on thes. Make me humble. Make me, make me tell what.
[00:15:53] Me
[00:16:21] make me
[00:16:26] you don't gotta tell me side. I'm fighting for, just make me please make me
[00:16:40] what side.
[00:16:51] Something's coming
[00:16:58] up for me around something that
[00:17:26] Host: you mentioned as well. I'm gonna jump around a little bit here. Um, but it was this idea of, uh, in a way it's the finality to death. And I'm just thinking about almost like the storm you, you, I think it was in mother's canoe, this kind of sharing that you, that you gave and, um, There was this, there was this kind of, quite a, um,
[00:17:58] never experience before a storm in my heart. And the feeling of that. It was almost as if I, I kind of, I pictured like this, some reason it brought this kind of magical thing to it, but it was kind of like, um, like a white witch had passed away and then I'd inherited some of those powers or something.
[00:18:24] Some, some kind of something became alive or online in me that was never in that way there before. And, but there was also the finality of what had taken place. There was a full stop.
[00:18:39] Audio: Um,
[00:18:41] Host: yeah. And it was just this idea of, I guess, almost as if some sort of potency had been deepened or something had, um, you know, it was like, she was almost more alive with death in some ways, um, that I'd ever than I'd ever experienced.
[00:19:00] And not only for me, I could see that for people around us. Um, mm-hmm in the way that they had kind of come to terms with the fact that they would never grow old with her, or, you know, all these kind of imaginings that they may have had, um, or even spent time with her in the same way ever again. So I guess there's this idea of,
[00:19:26] Audio: yeah, just,
[00:19:30] Host: I guess there's this idea of having her with me, but then also at the same time, knowing that she's gone, I'm curious to know. I guess, I don't know if this is a question or a sharing or what it is or wondering. Um, but I've, yeah, I've heard you kind of, uh, maybe mention a distaste around this idea of, um, and maybe, I don't know how I've taken this.
[00:19:56] It's just a real neutral kind of, uh, curiosity around, um, you know, and I can see the shadow side of people feeling like there's, um, you know, like you live forever or something like that, but there seems to be some life in her death, although there was definitely a lot of death in her death as well. Yeah.
[00:20:17] So I kind of wanted to kind of just put that out and see what came up for you.
[00:20:22] Audio: Well,
[00:20:24] Guest: um, you know, how did that happen? It didn't happen cuz she was alive. Mm the release or the, or the, uh, exposure that you endured as a consequence. Was a result of her dying and had she not died the likelihood of any kind of spontaneous transmission of the kind that you've described here as bordering on the N I would say, because it's not a, it's not a commission, right?
[00:20:55] It's not a, uh, it's not a, a status report, what you're describing and you, and you described it quite well. I should say the idea that, that, that whatever this was, that constituted her, let's call it spiritual ity, whatever that was, it obeyed the bind, the bonds of her body only so long and something like the nanosecond, the body was no longer there to contain it temporarily.
[00:21:26] It, uh, immediately recast itself with no particular attachment to her chassis. Yes. Okay. This astounding. No. This is a very old, old understanding of how these things move from one person to another. They're not rewards, they're not acknowledgements. They're not, um, depositions, they're summonses. Yes. And, and re, and the fact remains that no matter how clear that might be to you, the work before you is the work of translating what it means that it's come to you because that's not a given how you're going to do that.
[00:22:11] And then you realize my God, you know, to the extent that these things are in the world at all in human form, it's such a, it's such a frigging tight roll act that it could, it could give good in all the places. It appears as it kind of slides from one human form to another and, and, and in different circumstance without, without a.
[00:22:36] And operators guide, you know, to, uh, to make the whole thing clear and legible. And this is why, you know, in more traditional times, people would tell stories where such a thing took place. They wouldn't say, are you listening as your mother's about to die, but they would see to it that you were told this on the off chance that this might leap across the chasm and come to you.
[00:23:03] Why to, to make sure that you're gonna be okay, secondarily maybe, but the principle reason is the culture needs that stuff in its midst. And if you're the latest incarnation of it, there's nothing special about you for that. But there is something mandatory about you for that. And so they'll tell those stories and in hopes that you're paying attention in hopes that they'll be useful and, and some kind of, some kind of, uh, gravitational pull or some kind of.
[00:23:35] Downward incline makes the molten aspect of what she's bequeathed to you move.
[00:23:47] Audio: What do you do
[00:23:47] Host: with that? You know, like it's, it's like that, that, that comes through. And, and I think that, that's the first thing that comes up for me. It, in that moment is like, and I think what you, the way you pointed to it was quite beautiful. It's like, now you gotta figure that that's the work, the translation.
[00:24:05] Correct. And also there seems to be something around like a breathing into the fact that that's the work like just to kind of, it is true. It's true. Slow
[00:24:16] Guest: down a little bit. This is, uh, a good moment for a bit of Jewish humor. Cuz Jewish humor is very valuable in moments like this, where okay. The possibilities of inflation are there.
[00:24:27] Okay. So I be, you know, as best I can re recollect the story, it goes like this. So there's a, there's the broom pusher in the synagogue, right? He's the custodian he's taking care of the joint and, and he happens to be there when one of the August members of the congregation comes into the temple, looking for the rabbi and the rabbi comes to meet him and they go through the thing because they're acknowledging each other's high status in the community and so on.
[00:24:54] And, uh, and as they're telling stories about the people who've died and, and, uh, what they've seen in their lives. And so on one will often at the end of his exclamation say, but me, I'm nobody. I'm nothing he will say. And then, you know, not to be one uped by being nothing. Then the other August member will say in response to something that they've said at the end of the conclusion, I'm also nothing I'm less than nothing.
[00:25:26] And so it goes like this, and here's the , here's the, the custodian listening to this. And he's completely overwhelmed by the magic of these two old and August members of the community declaring that they're nobody and they're nothing. And the magic of the moment overwhelms him completely. And he says, my myself also, I'm also nothing.
[00:25:48] I'm no one. And, and the, apparently the rabbi looks at the, the other rich fellow and they look back at each other and say, point to him and say, look who thinks he's nothing. , it's just, it's one of the great stories. And it just, it helps in every way. So, so there's that element too, you know, you're, you're just another guy, man, but another guy whose mother died and may have slipped you the goods.
[00:26:15] Yeah, it's still work. It's mostly work. It's not an identity. Yeah. You know, it's not a passport, it's not a special status. It's, it's work. It's in the world for a reason. You gotta find out what that is. By active pursuit.
[00:26:31] Audio: I went to
[00:26:32] Guest: Harvard divinity school in the late 1970s. I thought I'd get into the clergy business,
[00:26:40] Audio: the clergy,
[00:26:41] Guest: they thought otherwise they were
[00:26:44] Audio: right.
[00:26:47] Guest: Things have worked out on all sides of that hill conceive
[00:26:50] Audio: notion though. Still
[00:26:54] Guest: God's mysteries are as mysterious when they work out as when they don't.
[00:27:01] Audio: So I was
[00:27:01] Guest: counseled out of the divinity part of things. I had no plan B at all. I was eight weeks into
[00:27:07] Audio: my career
[00:27:09] Guest: and I was missing the
[00:27:10] Audio: soul of it all.
[00:27:12] With
[00:27:22] my divinity plans in
[00:27:23] Guest: charms, I was walking across Harvard yard in a skiff of December snow.
[00:27:30] Audio: It was dusk
[00:27:32] Guest: and everything was
[00:27:33] Audio: violet shadow and murmuring. Now
[00:27:38] Guest: pigeons are a fact of life there. They'll let you get pretty close.
[00:27:43] Audio: And then they'll explode in feathers and bawling
[00:27:46] Guest: to land 10 feet away to start the whole thing again.
[00:27:51] Audio: And that happened with every bird, but one, a loft that one remained in the snow.
[00:28:02] Guest: The bird tried again to rise and didn't
[00:28:05] Audio: nothing but flapping. Bird adrenaline, the bird, let
[00:28:11] Guest: me get
[00:28:11] too
[00:28:12] Audio: close. I thought so I knelt beside and I reached over it
[00:28:18] Guest: and I folded the wings to the
[00:28:19] Audio: body. So I was not to hurt
[00:28:23] Guest: and I made to turn the bird over, to look for
[00:28:27] Audio: something wrong
[00:28:48] Guest: in that rotating motion. The
[00:28:52] Audio: bird died,
[00:28:57] a thumb,
[00:28:58] Guest: moved through my palms and then up both of my arms and across the shoulders. And to my chest and quivered there
[00:29:08] Audio: and stayed there. And my breathing was burdened
[00:29:15] Guest: for some other life had taken its place there alongside
[00:29:20] Audio: mine, and it
[00:29:22] Guest: lasted
[00:29:22] Audio: for maybe an hour or until now.
[00:30:28] Yeah.
[00:30:28] Host: And, and I think there's this sense of like, in everyone's life, everyone having inherited that that's kind of alive today in their own way, you know? I don't think so. That's a, I don't. So, so I don't mean with the mother. I mean, everyone's got a sense of ancestry about them, right? Everyone's had ancestry, sorry.
[00:30:51] Would be a better way of putting it.
[00:30:53] Guest: Not even here's why. Okay. Mm-hmm. What are ancestors, dead people, lots of dead people. Mm-hmm like rings and rings and rings like around Saturn of dead people. I'm gonna suggest to you an ancestor is a very particular consequence of things happening, and this is what it is.
[00:31:10] Mm-hmm in order to be an ancestor dying won't necessarily get you there. You have to be claimed by the living. You leave behind to be an ancestor. Otherwise you could just as readily be a ghost. Okay? So it's not a given in a culture that that leaves its dead behind that, that culture's gonna have ancestors galore, never mind have the kind of what we call it.
[00:31:39] A kind of spiritual democracy that sees to it, that all the spiritual gifts are equally distributed across the population. That's certainly not true either in the most devote and Aboriginal communities. That's not true. So it's certainly not true in a demolished yet to be a culture like the one I'm from, or perhaps you're you're from.
[00:32:01] Audio: So
[00:32:01] Host: what I'm hearing and, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong. That is that, that there's a sense of the ancestors are only alive once. They're kind of, I don't know if claims the right word, but kind of opened into in some way. And before that takes place, then, then in, in a sense there's an act as if they don't exist.
[00:32:20] So how could, how could we then, you know, become the proper sense of an ancestor to the, to the next
[00:32:29] Guest: generation, right? When it's your turn, right? Yes. Um, I mean, one of the things you do is pay attention to the language and use the term a couple of times the ancestors, and that's a clear indicator of the dilemma I've described.
[00:32:42] Okay. There's no such thing as the ancestors, there's only your ancestors. Or mine or hers or theirs. In other words, there has to be, the claim has to be in the title. And the answers is some kind of free floating lending library of spiritual funkiness, you know? And, uh, it doesn't, there's no such thing in my humble estimation as the ancestors for this reason.
[00:33:12] Yes. So that when they're employed,
[00:33:16] Audio: they work,
[00:33:18] Guest: maybe that's the simplest way to say it when they're employed, when they're called upon, they something like a tuning fork, they ring perhaps, but fail to failure to call upon them, certainly visits upon them. A degree of mildew, corrosion, rust mold, and the rest.
[00:33:40] Don't you think.
[00:33:47] Host: Yeah, definitely. And there's, there's this kind of touches a point that I've been kind of wondering and exploring into recently around, I think this kind of yeah. Leads onto this quite well. This idea of,
[00:33:59] Audio: um,
[00:34:03] I guess, uh,
[00:34:08] Host: it's the idea of like, invoking, I'm gonna say spirits of beings that are either still alive or that have passed in certain moments to help us along this path of usefulness with whatever at the right time with the right attunement. So calling in, you know, um, the invoking this idea of, um, you know, a wise Sage or something that may have passed, or even, you know, at a certain moment of confusion, With my words, I might invoke the spirit of, of Steven Jenkinson in and see how that kind of sits with me.
[00:34:52] Mm-hmm , you know, so this, this idea of having a vast array of these, I don't, I don't want to misuse the word ancestors, but you know, spirits or, or, or beings that we can call in. Yeah. At the time where we may not be, um, as strong or, or seemingly not, and when, when they may be needed.
[00:35:15] Guest: So the question there is, what if there is one,
[00:35:22] Host: I guess it seems to be, I guess we're talking about this sense of, um, well, from what I'm hearing is, is like a, there's an individual sense of the ancestor. And then there's this almost like. Universal opportunity. In some sense, if, if, if the window's cleaned enough to be able to connect with something that can help us along on this journey, I just was wondering what you thought about that.
[00:35:50] And if you kind, yeah. If, if you agree and, um, how you, if you ever do anything like that kind of comes up now as well.
[00:35:59] Guest: You know, first of all, what do I know? This is the, an important thing to begin this answer with. Um, you know, I'm, I can wonder with, with the champs, I can wonder, but I don't. I have to pretend to be absolutely certain on the matter mm-hmm okay.
[00:36:15] So there's, that's an important caveat with that in mind, uh, to follow along somewhat with what I was saying earlier, not individual ancestors, so much as particular ones. What's the difference? I think if you focus too much on an individual ancestry, you're likely to attach yourself to their. Personality quirks and their, you know, what sets them apart and, and above, maybe that's in somehow implied in there as well.
[00:36:48] And then you have this under the other understanding that goes along with that, it's Corolla, the mass, you know, the undifferentiated mass of kinda ancestral Glu that you derive from. So what I'm suggested as an alternative to that kind of unnecessary hierarchy of preference is that you think of all ancestors as particular, not unique, simply as once upon a time they stood and put one leg through their pants and then the other.
[00:37:22] Right. And, and you're lucky that they did and that they're with you no longer as part of their particularness. Right. And, and you learn something of their particularness without clinging to it without fetishizing it, see, and you're, you're led by an understanding that all redemptive work is particular work.
[00:37:46] It's not mass, anything it's it's um, it comes down to you are accorded a certain number of move. During the course of your lifetime, each one of them is separate. It's not a mass thing. It's not a wave. You know, you get a chance to do this. Then you catch your breath and then maybe you do that and you should be able to articulate the specifics of what you tried to do.
[00:38:11] These things are all particular, not talk about your feelings, know what you did, what you did, not, why you
[00:38:18] Audio: did it
[00:38:31] well with all of this. Of course, there are regrets. Of course, there are regrets down along the
[00:38:46] Guest: fence line in the back 40 of your
[00:38:49] Audio: life. There's a pile of stones there.
[00:38:53] Guest: And you know what they are, those are your regrets.
[00:38:57] Audio: And if you don't go down there and if you don't visit them often,
[00:39:01] Guest: you're gonna end up thinking that there's no pile LOL
[00:39:05] Audio: and that's never true.
[00:39:09] Or you gonna
[00:39:10] Guest: end up deciding that it makes a pile, a mile
[00:39:12] Audio: high, which is almost never true. So here it is, they're always there. And
[00:39:24] Guest: the pile is rarely as high as you think it is. So how about this?
[00:39:31] Audio: When the ending of days comes into view? Maybe that's a good
[00:39:36] Guest: time to go down there
[00:39:39] Audio: and visit that little altar because that's what it becomes now, an altar where you can pray.
[00:39:49] Here's an idea. Don't add another stone to the pile by how you are with the ending of days. Just remember, and then climb that little hill, picking up one stone at a time and then putting it down, remembering it's not all bad. And when you get to the top. Look around now because that that's the vast
[00:40:27] Guest: field and pasture of your life
[00:40:31] Audio: and everything in it is now visible and lucid and clear.
[00:40:39] And you can only really see it from up there. And
[00:40:46] that's the big story.
[00:41:48] Yeah.
[00:42:06] Guest: Um, but this brings me to, uh, an etymology that's very useful. I think at this moment, you know, the word awake is used with, um, not much caution and I don't think much tuition is involved in it either. So it's, you often use as a, as a self descriptor for people who think they've, they've finally rose on the right side of the bed and of life and of God and whatever it is, uh, or their, or their life partner at all these things awake means nothing.
[00:42:35] It's not the opposite of anything. It's not the opposite of asleep, spiritual. Otherwise the word is built of very specific meanings. And because it's an old Anglo-Saxon word. I don't have to be a Latin scholar for this one. Okay. So the prefix, the a in old English is a preposition function. It answers the question where basically where, or maybe secondarily kind of in what fashion, what form a little bit, how that's the general thing.
[00:43:11] And then the root word is wake, which of course we use, and you may have had one for your mother. So there's that meaning of it? And there's the secondary meaning. I'm not sure which is primary, but there's the other meaning, which is when you're making your way through water or air, if you'd be able to see it.
[00:43:31] And of course through life, you will break the waves. If you will here in front of you, just at your chest bone, but fanning up behind you. There's a whole, any sequence isn't there and you can see it in the water very clearly. That's called awake too. So what does it mean then to put the word back together and to call yourself?
[00:43:56] I'm not sure you should ever do so, but certainly you could admire someone as, as striking you as being, you know, specifically and particularly awake. The con the description that you're making of them is comes to this while that person is inhabited by and claimed by a certain alertness, to the realm of consequence that it insinuated out from everything they did and everything they didn't do and everything they said and everything they failed to say.
[00:44:29] And every thought they thought, and everyone that escaped them and so forth and so on. And so on in each one of those things, They have some allegiance to obligatory allegiance, to not to live in it as if it were a prison or the final word on anything. But the condition of being awake means being alert to the consequences that you set into motion mostly by default or inattention or in elegance to detail things of that kind.
[00:45:02] We could practice more of that and we would be better off for it. And the world around us would as well. The condition of being awake is the condition partly of wishing you had proceeded otherwise, but having lived long enough to have those regrets, you can mobilize yourself subsequently as if those regrets count for something, they can inform you as to how you proceed now, so that you're free to make other mistakes you see, and not the same ones.
[00:45:36] Again. And again, and again,
[00:45:42] Host: thank you so much for your time, Steven and for sharing. Um, yeah, I'm not sure if it's if it's needed or if it's welcome, but I'm, I'm gonna reach over and give you a big energetic hug. Um, and hopefully, maybe it is . Um, yeah. And yeah, thank you to Natalie as well for setting this up and, and, and helping kind of save the day a little earlier.
[00:46:08] Thanks. Sweet. And I'm going to, um, I'm gonna throw some music in and, and make it all kind of creative and fun and do that kind of thing and, and share some more details around your offerings and, and your, your own wake. Um, so thank you. Thank you so much, Steven. It's it's been a pleasure and I'm gonna let you go and, and get on with your day.
[00:46:26] You're
[00:46:27] Guest: welcome. Thank you. And I just say. You know if, uh, if the gods are on our side, who, whoever knows mm-hmm, , uh, we're trying to put a, a real, proper grief and mystery tour together. Mm-hmm for this fall mm-hmm . And, uh, and I'm hoping that it brings us to your part of the world. If we can put enough gigs together and the money makes sense and the, the COVID protocols or wherever they need to be to make it possible and so forth.
[00:46:52] Uh, but I'd love to get there again, we've been there three or four times on different tours and something about Oz. That's always seems to have understood in a general way, what I'm up to. And I didn't have to translate everything the way I tend to have to do here, where I live. And it's a, it's a relief that I'd very much look forward to.
[00:47:11] So, so, uh, from my mouth to God's ear, let's see if it happens.
[00:47:17] Host: let's see. Let's see. Okay, man. Thank you. Thank you for your participation in this episode of Thema podcast. I'll leave links on our beautiful guest in the show notes section on the website, where you can check out all their wonderful work and offerings.
[00:47:33] And if you're interested in working one on one with me, feel free to head over to today.com and get in touch. Thank you so much again.
[00:47:43] Audio: And until next time
[00:47:48] feel
[00:47:48] Host: alive.
[00:47:51] Audio: Yeah. Be what?
[00:48:02] Moist morning bath door to the car.
[00:48:12] It takes me away back.
[00:48:22] The
[00:48:36] truth intact.
[00:48:44] I
[00:49:10] grateful for it
[00:49:14] all
[00:49:25] fall. Cause I.
[00:51:04] I
[00:51:22] am.
[00:51:28] A shadow. I
[00:52:04] love.
[00:52:44] You
[00:53:02] start
[00:53:39] off in the light. That's right. And you end, uh, you end in wisdom if the gods are prevailing, but otherwise light.
[00:54:04] So legions
[00:54:07] Guest: of kids coming downtown from the north American suburbs,
[00:54:12] Audio: and they're looking for a, a good time. Some of 'em find it. That's good.
[00:54:20] Guest: Some of 'em find things they're pretty sure is a good time and well, that changes
[00:54:25] Audio: that's okay. But some of them more than some where they find Oxycontin and more of them that, that find
[00:54:38] Guest: fentanyl.
[00:54:39] Audio: And these, these are not mood altars per se, down there on the corner. These are not halluc in gins of any kind.
[00:54:50] Guest: These are prescription drugs, friends, and they're right down there in
[00:54:55] Audio: easy reach. These are pain relievers. You see either analgesics and they are
[00:55:03] Guest: amongst the most pernicious prompters of addiction
[00:55:07] Audio: that this world has ever seen or ever been obliged to bear.
[00:55:11] And here's the thing.
[00:55:13] Guest: Their manufacturers
[00:55:14] Audio: know that. And
[00:55:20] every day and every night,
[00:55:23] Guest: kids from the most materially prosperous culture that this world has ever produced or been obliged to bear
[00:55:31] Audio: are
[00:55:33] Guest: a considerable. Risk to themselves, demonstrable risk this very
[00:55:39] Audio: evening in this very place, treating themselves for pain, not UN we, not depression, not despair, not purposelessness pain, a kind of
[00:55:58] Guest: pain that it seems no anesthesiologist would treat
[00:56:04] Audio: or countenance or even recognize.
[00:56:09] And the manufacturers they know that too. And then if you
[00:56:16] Guest: would consider this word
[00:56:18] Audio: anesthetic who knew
[00:56:22] Guest: that, the word that we use to describe numbing ourselves for the sake of getting by.
[00:56:29] Audio: Has our word for beauty buried there in its midst
[00:56:37] aesthetic
[00:56:38] Guest: pertaining to beauty, the ability to make beauty or to, to know beauty or to have it in your life, which is in ability, or to be that in someone else's life, also an ability and you reassemble the word. And what does it mean to be anesthetized? The word is telling you plainly
[00:57:00] Audio: it means to be disabled where beauty is concerned
[00:57:05] Guest: to be unable, to make beauty and to no beauty and to have
[00:57:08] Audio: it in your life or
[00:57:10] Guest: to be it.
[00:57:11] Audio: And someone else's grief or mystery. Let's see, I ask you this who
[00:57:21] Guest: treats themselves
[00:57:23] Audio: for beauty? Uh, that's too easy. It's the beauty bereft. That's who these kids are not down on the corner, looking for beauty in their lives. I dare say
[00:57:40] Guest: they've given up on beauty more or less entirely by the time they're
[00:57:43] Audio: down there, scooping up that fentanyl.
[00:57:47] Guest: They've given up on beauty by then. And they've lived its absence long enough.
[00:57:53] Audio: They are a wash. Are
[00:57:54] Guest: they not the new and the improved and the version 12.6 of every godless, trinket,
[00:58:01] Audio: and device. And many of them, maybe more than many. They can't bear it anymore.
[00:58:13] They've been
[00:58:13] Guest: obliged to proceed in their young lives, minus the presence of ratifying
[00:58:18] Audio: humanness,
[00:58:22] Guest: which is the beauty they're treating themselves for ratifying
[00:58:28] Audio: humanness elders. In other words, and what's become of them.
[00:58:36] Guest: Um, they're 25 year olds now competition with 55 year olds for the same music, the same clothes and the same boyfriend, the same
[00:58:48] Audio: girlfriend at the
[00:58:49] Guest: same
[00:58:51] Audio: time, same payday,
[00:58:55] Guest: the same spiritual charge at the same
[00:58:57] Audio: retreat center.
[00:58:59] Guest: And many of them
[00:59:00] Audio: can't take the competition anymore.
[00:59:07] They're bereft of elders. And you know, now what their
[00:59:10] Guest: solution is
[00:59:12] Audio: disabled, that part of them that longs after that ratifying human ness beauty in a human form,
[00:59:25] Guest: oh, they've tried swearing off the stuff. The time sanctioned
[00:59:29] Audio: the time honored kind, but the longing after real human beauty is too strong and it's involuntary too.
[00:59:38] And it does not answer to our
[00:59:39] Guest: sorrow or our command
[00:59:42] Audio: to have it. Otherwise, the longing for ancient beauty is a powerful thing and it's not going away. So, and meet the task. Instead
[00:59:56] Guest: it takes powerful medicine indeed to get by without
[00:59:59] Audio: it, and to make as if it doesn't matter. So here's the thing, legions of kids down on the corner, a wash and a drift in what's gone and what's missing in their lives and they are spiritually
[01:00:17] Guest: and psychically free for the taken down there.
[01:00:21] Audio: And hasn't it come to pass
[01:00:22] Guest: in our own lifetime
[01:00:24] Audio: that the young among us can't tell the difference between being useful in a troubled time and being used by the troubles of the time.