Today, my guest is Chris Bailey the author of “Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction”
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Shownotes
Doug Jackson, Returning Guest and All-Star, Explains the 3 Stages of Spiritual Development and Dispels the Biggest Myths.
Do you know St John of the Cross?
What you don’t know could hurt you…but good news, you are now in for a treat!
Listen and get a fascinating perspective of the darkest places on the spiritual journey with your guide Professor Doug Jackson. See the show notes below!
3:00
Historic context of 16th Century Catholic Revival-Era Spanish Mystic, St John of the Cross
4:30
3 stages of spiritual development
How do we know if we are making progress and what can we expect?
St John (1542-1591) provides a roadmap for night travel.
The Beginner Stage
(The beginner loves God for the self’s sake. The beginners thinks, “What’s good for me.”)
Doug explains the Dark Night of the Soul, the important next stage of spiritual development, in keen and helpful detail.
7:00
God starts at the first stage (in a place of joy and thrill in God) and allows us delight in spiritual things and feed on “mother’s milk” spiritually.
Next, God helps us get used to our baby teeth by moving us to love God for God’s sake.
John of the Cross takes the 7 deadly sins and show how they can happen to us in a spiritual sense.
8:10
God is weening us away from nursing and from spiritual milk. Like a baby, we may misunderstand and feel unloved or unnoticed, at first.
9:00
Commodified is the Dark Night of the Soul in Amercian Evangelicalism. The phrase itself is often used inexactly.
It’s not feeling sad or a string of bad things have happened for which we feel upset and confused.
BUT—It is that without cause we feel God has abandon us.
It is not a loss of faith, nor not depression, nor a felt distance because of sin.
It was also an analysis of depression 400 years before Freud!
11:00
God withdraws sensible (sensory, felt) affects. The dark night of the senses. (first phase).
12:30
Maybe it feels like prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. Maybe it feels that songs or sermons that had made an affect no longer do. This sense of loss will be different for each person.
13:30
Essentially, the delight in God disappears.
13:00
Mistakenly, we often may try to shock people back into spiritual infancy with a method, tactic, or suggestion that seems like it might cause feeling once again. (like a book, a conference, a service, etc)
14:10
The spiritual advice from John is to not abandon your spiritual practices (like prayer, fellowship, meditation, service, etc) continue to obey God and carry on until you pass through the night. They won’t be fun, but you continue for God’s sake, not your own.
Then you can come out on the other side to the stage of the Proficient. (Though the stages are actually more porous.)
15:00
The 2nd stage is where John says most of us get and hardly proceed from.
2nd dark night, is rare, and is horrible and includes a bewilderment and even a loss of faith in God and one comes out with a much richer deeper faith and far more settled and fuller understanding of God.
John Coe using 1 John 2:12-14 explains the stages as well.
18:00
John of the Cross found this understanding through terrible suffering and imprisonment and he saw the spiritual connection.
19:30
In the Dark Night of the Soul, spiritual answers are obscured and things are hidden from view.
Walking by faith and not sight.
22:00
If you can’t find the answers it doesn’t mean that something went wrong, it’s just that you can see right now. There will be a lack of certainty.
22:30
Stick with the basics in the dark night.
23:30
In the dark night we aren’t doubting our Faith, or God, but but we are doubting our understanding of God and our Faith.
The call is to obey God and persist in our ways as before. Eventually a dawn will come.
23:00
In this stage, we jettison things that are not core, central and true and come to understand God in a better way.
BE WARNED: Others may feel anxious to get you back in to where you were.
24:00
Backsliding is not the same thing as a Dark Night experience. The Dark Night is progression.
24:30
Prophets in the OT go through the dark night times.
25:00
Using a different lens to see what is already there.
26:00
Examples:
Elijah after Mt Carmel
Apostle Paul
Job
Jesus (wilderness and Gethsemane)
Jesus “learned obedience” and the the will of God was not pleasant
We all go through these types of dark nights
28:00
John of the Cross’s work was (and is) written for [spiritual] guides (leaders) so they can recognize what is happening and to know what not to do.
30:00
Some mystical-style theologians have been hijacked and grafted into a different (sometimes New Age) model of how the reality is ( i.e. “divided self”.)
30:30
The Devil – So what about the Devil which is a prominent feature in the writings?
A CAUTION:
John takes the readers’ Christian theology for already granted. The basic Christian theology was assumed because that was the background and beliefs of his audience.
32:00
Doug answers…Devil with a Big “D” questions. How do we come to understand John and what he is saying, if it is different than our understanding of The Devil and the spiritual world?
Don’t rehabilitate [John], or superimpose our ideas on his work.
Don’t judge or put parts on trial for the embarrassing and difficult sections of St John of the Cross.
34:30
Approach the text thus: “Eat the meat of the fish not the bones”
35:00
If the language bothers you, then let it lie fallow and see what is going on in your own heart as you read.
The promise is (found in Scripture and from those who’ve gone ahead of us in the Faith) that we come out (into dawn) and see the value of what we went through.
God says to Job: I’m God and you are not.
Job says, “Now I have seen you. I spoke out of turn.”
42:00
A word of hope for those in the dark night.
1. Those in the dark night bless those around them and their pride does not effect this because of the Night itself. We are spiritual protected.
43:00
In the Dark Night we don’t get to be proud of our humility.
Be faithful know that God is using you and wait it out.
43:30
Modern example Mother Teresa. She lived most of her life with a sense of abandonment by God.
“If I ever become a Saint I will be a Saint of Darkness, facing the dark to guide souls to the light.”
44:00
People were drawn to her service and work for God even though she felt God’s silence.
45:00
On her critics who say she stopped believing in God.
Christopher Hitchens wrote slanderously about her and others in his book “The Missionary Position”. He said she did have the courage to admit publicly that she didn’t believe in God and never had.
46:00
Mother Teresa–her fruit shows otherwise (it’s sow belief and faithfulness).
Apostasy is a deliberate walking away from God which is a danger of misunderstanding the Dark Night. This is why trained and wise spiritual guides are essential.
47:00
C.S. Lewis character Screwtape urges: “Use the word “phase” to tell him he had it all wrong”
In a genuine Dark Night, we may think we have abandon God or want to and then find ourselves incapable of it.
48:00
Doubt in God is like holding a volleyball underwater with just one hand and senses all the force and then thinking there is no volleyball because it cannot be seen.
“We aren’t working without a net and we won’t fall out of the arms of God.”
49:00
If you are in the Dark Night…(it helps) remembering “it’s a thing, a documented thing”.
49:30
Walking in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before.
51:00
What to do if you are in the throes of it all. best advice.
Richard Foster’s advice in the Celebration of Discipline. The chapter on solitude.
Don’t try to explain this to people when you are in it.
(It’s like Fight Club) “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about fight club”
Most people will not get it. It can hurt our spiritual reputation. God is drawing us into obedience and faith in the absence of feeling. We carry on
“The Spiritual Journey: Crucial Thinking and Stages of Adult Spiritual Genesis”
Henri Nouwen “The Way of the Heart”
55:00
Protestantism running thin in certain areas.
Psychology tainted some spiritual experience as pathology and than co-opted with modern Christianity.
57:00
Baptists were not systematic theologians early on because of the persecution from the Mother Church (in Rome).
58:00
Puritan writers like Jonathan Edwards take God as Physician of the Soul very seriously.
59:00
The one sermon that did in Jonathan Edwards in our time.
“The Religious Affections” To teach that the Great Awakening was just an emotional experience or demonic experience. He writes on how to understand what is of God.
60:02
On taking your time understanding the Dark Night. God is trying to bring us into greater maturity and Christ likeness.
Have you ever gone through a Dark Night of the Soul?
If you’ve reached the dawn, what was strengthen or changed in you?
Blessings in your night travels. If you aren’t in a Dark Night, it’s coming. Stay Calm and Carry on.
If you have any questions or you would like to drop me a line about what you are going through, please use the contact page. A helpful (worldwide) listing to find qualified guides is here.
Shane is a Soul Friend (Spiritual Director) with a focus on artists and creatives, be they “yuccies”, “slashies”, painters, musicians, or any one in need of deeper and more sustaining, soul-level communing.
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• A trained Anam Cara (soul friend in the Irish Tradition).
• He lived with his wife and family in Ireland for 11 years!
Conversation (podcast) notes:
MINUTE 3:00
How Shane and his wife and family happened to live in Ireland for 11 years.
4:15
How God begins to grow dreams in us
Working at the Willow Creek Church
People have long said that still seems true. When foreigners come that end up being more Irish than the Irish themselves.
7:20
One of the most potent lessons learned from the Irish was the necessity to put people first. They take time to connect with each other and share life.
9:00 A sense of call to minister to artist and creatives.
9:40 On why he feels a passion to serve the creative community: “I believe the creative of today is the prophet of old”. It is a prophetic call.
10:10
“Creatives are called to paint a picture of the future that God is calling us all into. His Kingdom coming.”
10:50
“When a creative (person) using their gift…it taps into something deep inside of us and reverberates…and it feels like echoes of home.”
12:00
Jesus invites us to “walk with me and work with me.”
12:20
answering: What is Spiritual Direction (or soul friendship) actually?
13:00
A soul friend is “the best friend you’ve always wanted.”
and the Saint Bridgette quote…
13:50
A good picture is in the New Testament of the friends walking to Emmaus and then Jesus come in their midst. Unpacking life.
14:00
“The Soul Friend is someone who helps us see how God has been at work in our lives…so we can (as St. Ignatius says) “to recklessly abandon ourselves to his loving care.”
15:20
The problem with the phrase “Spiritual Director” on two counts so I use “soul friend”.
18:00
How he was trained in soul care and soul friendship
21:00
On becoming an Anglican Priest…
25:00
What he find to be the deepest needs of the creative community he works with?
Affirmation and Presence
30:00
Living in a Creative Age (moving from head to heart)
31:30
There’s an affective moving in society leading with Beauty first and then Truth that leads to freedom.
32:00
Alan Crieder
Behave Belong Believe (in which order should be in what era)
33:20
“What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”
35:00
The error of focusing too much on trying to convince people just intellectually.
36:00
Ignatian Spirituality
Celtic Spirituality
Soul Friendship
by Rev Ray Simpson (Church of England)
The Celtic Way of Prayer
by Ester De Waal
Holy Companions
42:30
on the hospitality and generosity of Irish spirituality.
The story of an Inn with 7 doors for the 7 roads.
Thank you so much for listening to the show!
To get alerts of the topics and the new and interesting folks coming to the podcast in future episode click HERE.
Here’s a tasting of who’s coming in the next few months:
Three Humor Science researchers walk into a bar. ….um. Wait. That won’t work. Let me start over.
Get a scientist to talk about humor studies and you get a quick reminder of how science can squeeze the life out of anything.
Dissection is destructive. But no more!
It’s time to find out in a better way:
1. What do people find funny and why?
2. How can YOU become more humorously winsome?
3. How can science and an understanding of human nature and spirituality help us find out?
That’s what this series will be about, and I promise that it won’t be as dull as it’s been when scientists have the mic.
If it’s successful, a long form project will go a lot further and get a lot funnier. That’s up to you.
Here’s the story of how it all started:
A friend of mine asked me to speak at a senior residential home on the topic of community. No problem. I speak at plenty of places on plenty of topics. I wrote my bullet points and picked out an outfit…and then things went bad.
The problem?
I didn’t know she was billing me as “hilarious”.
I found that part out only a few days beforehand. I went into a quiet panic. The kind where your hands get clammy and your sweat smells like bad coffee. You run out of TUMS at times like this.
I’d planned on being friendly and informative, not uproarious. I was going to present material and involve them in cute bonding activities, not split their sides in gales of laughter. My friend had been walking around assuring residents that I was the funniest thing going.
Now what?
Maybe, I could stick a joke in there somewhere:
“Have you ever peed your pants laughing? What a silly question–you’re old people. You peed your pants getting out of bed today. Is bladder incontinence a laughing matter? …Depends.”
Depends is right. This wasn’t going to work.
What if they hated me? Some of them are in chronic pain. Some are grouchy. Some have little patience for sassy youngsters. These people carry canes and some smell like pee.
I could get the beating of my life! And I would deserve it.
The terror of bombing at the place drove me to research the topic of humor scientifically.
My purpose was to help these folks have a good time, not offend them.
What resulted was a quest and many discoveries. I had to find out if funniness can be learned, if public speaking can be improved with a formula, if laughter can be predicted, and if old people laugh at jokes about physical deterioration and, if so, under what conditions.
Well, it turns out the last bit is sort of tricky. More on that in future material.
On getting funnier
My research dug up a very good find and it might help you too:
One of the ways almost anyone can get funnier to more people is to appear harmless more broadly.
Does that seem counter-intuitive?
Yes, there are foul-mouthed, raunchy comics aplenty and seem to get lots of laughs, but they are not typically funny to the greatest numbers of people compared to plenty of other things (pies in the face, mistaken identity antics, prat falls, kittens jumping in surprise), and there is a scientific reason why.
What more people (on average) actually find funny hinges on giving them something that is funny at a further comedic distance. This explains why Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, and Bill Cosby (before all that drugging women stuff was found out) have huge followings and continued success, and Roseanne Barr gets more annoying as time goes by.
What is Comedic Distance?
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
-Mel Brooks
In this quote, Mel Brooks underscores what humor researchers are finding empirically true. Distance matters a lot.
If your child falls off the playground slide and bangs himself up, it’s scary. If some man in a cowboy hat suddenly gets kicked in the crotch by an aggressive llama, it’s laughable.
The Kitten vs. Stern Proof
This is why videos of kittens doing silly things trump in spades the popularity of Howard Stern and his radio show antics. The hoards of memes, shares, and overall fans of funny kitten videos means that invariably, kittens kick Howard’s butt. Big time. Kittens won’t squash your dearly held values. Kittens won’t say something gross about bodily fluids. (Kittens are not funny to everyone, but they are funnier on the whole than a raunchy DJ or vulgar comedian. No contest.)
The difference between kittens and Howard Stern is this: Something “dangerous” isn’t personally threatening when kittens are involved.
Comedic distance (whether physical, chronological, or emotional) creates an amusing incident. The surprise pays off and people are thusly amused. If not, that you can get booed.
For me, I played off that my normal Thursday afternoons are spend with prison inmates and that I was REALLY happy for the upgrade.
I was then heckled by a woman who said,
“Don’t be so sure.” (She has it in for a few of her neighbors. It’s been ugly.)
To which I replied, “Well, you are all much better dressed.”
Resounding laughter. A win!
So, see if you can figure out why the photo above is funny (to most people)?
Answer:
The woman has made it to 100 years old and she’s done it her way.
Sure, smoking is dangerous, but apparently not much, in her case.
Having fun?
I hope you are enjoying this series.
Do you have questions about humor theory or getting funnier?
Let me know.
For the last 10 years in a row, we’ve gone toCamp Swatara to…almost rough it as a family.
We just got back yesterday afternoon and began the de-camping process. 6 loads of laundry and putting things away for 3 hours. It’s more tiring than camping, and camping includes foraging for firewood to sustain your life.
For the first time, I didn’t take a single picture of our time away. (The photo above is from the camp website. It’s nondescript enough to resemble us.) It seems strange that I didn’t take any now that it’s done.
It’s an interruption to take photos sometimes, so honestly, I didn’t even think about it. My mind was chattering and I was more “in the moment”.
Later, off course, the photos come in handy to help you remember what happened. Right now, I think I remember something about killing 30 flies with the swatter and the surge of gratification that gave me–and something about S’mores.
My least favorite things about camping:
1. Too much humidity (Towels dry outside on the clothesline….never.)
2. Feeling covered in dirt and sweat 95% of the time
3. Feeling covered in sunscreen and bug spray over the layers of dirt and sweat
4. Bugs and all sort of biting and buzzing insects
5. Walking outdoors to use the indoor bathroom facilities
6. Thin mattresses that cause aches and pains
7. The hyper-vilgilengce about poison ivy and occasionally getting it.
(It all sounds like a dream-come-true, right?)
(some of) My most favorite things about camp
1. Having friends visit
2. The hospitality inherent in the camping community (sharing, chatting by the fire, friendly greetings as you walk around)
3. Family togetherness. Yes, it’s forced on you, but you can really start to enjoy it, usually.
4. The way things smell when the dew evaporates off the leaves in the morning.
5. How the day eases into the night and the darkness that comes to ease you into sleeping
6. Overcoming crisis together. Yes, it’s pretty awful at the time, but great memories and bonding come later.
7. Making fire and cooking with it, or using the firepit as a homing device. It’s hypnotic and primal and warm.
8. The refinement that happens when you realize what you truly need, compare to what you think you need. It turns out that you want things you don’t need.
What you really need: water, food, dry shelter and clothing, each other. What you think you need: a faster laptop.
In the end, you have kids that look forward very happily to the time away, and two parents (me and Tim, obviously) who are happy it’s part of our summertime, even though the whole process is challenging.
It’s actually the challenge that creates the satisfaction later, but you don’t know that unless you try it the whole way through.
If you aren’t psychologically ready to endure, you can get bitter or regretful (…um…so I’ve heard). Plus, it’s a dry camp, so there’s no wine to easy you into it.
The other thing is that intact families tend to camp together. I didn’t have this growing up and it’s a gift I give my children and myself now.
Yes, sometimes “split-up” families camp, too. But, mine didn’t.
Usually broken up families have a lot more scheduling issues and conflicts. Camping as an activity gets pushed to the side, unless you are very dedicated about it and keep it up.
And then there’s the Chatter of the Mind
And sometimes, though not this time, I get to hear less from the planning and inner monologue part of my “chattering mind”.
In general, this chatter may be telling you that you forgot ziplock bags at home or that, or that despite your efforts, you really aren’t worth much in the world, or that you should have cleaned out the vacuum filter more thoroughly, or that you made a mistake in explaining something, or that the people you were just talking to think poorly of you, or that you have to cook something that requires 14 steps… and how will be working out anyway, or the plans for the afternoon and where and how to apply sunscreen properly for it, or any number of things.
There isn’t much quiet in and about our minds, and not for very long.
It’s called thinking. It can be incessant. It’s not just me, right?
If you finally reach that place in time and space where the chatter dies down, it’s almost deafening, actually. At first.
It tends to happen, not on family camping trips, but when I retreat away from home and I go alone. After 2-3 hours of intensional quietness–dialing down everything things improve. But that’s only when I’m being disciplined about getting away and pushing every nuisance thought back, or submitting it to paper, each time one surfaces. If not, it can take days, and too often never happens at all.
And after you tamp down or divert each thought pelting your brain you realize you’ve been breathing all wrong for much too long. You haven’t been able to separate the planning from the enjoying and looking around. You’ve forgotten the things you love or you have not noticed the things you should.
It doesn’t happen all at once that the chatter starts bullying you, but it happens.
The chatter is an adversary that comes in pretending to be helpful and careful, as if it has your best interests in mind. But really, it’s just making you weary by using up too much valuable “mental RAM”, like (foolishly) running windows on top of a Mac Operating System.
How’s your mental RAM these days, anyway? Up to snuff?
Can you remember the last time you didn’t experience “the chatter of your mind” for some length of time?
(If you’re thinking about that now, or much of anything, then now is not one of those times.)
And if settling it all down sounds too close to death, then it’s been too long.
A conversation with Shane Tucker:
