Afterlife with Documentarian Ben Harl

When the veil between life and death seems fragile, where do we turn for answers? Join us as we discuss the afterlife with writer and musician-turned-filmmaker Ben Harl. In recent years, Ben has moved his passion for storytelling from the page to the screen, learning the craft of filmmaking through trial and error (and a huge amount of help from fellow local filmmakers!) As owner and Creative Director of Silver Compass Studios, Ben has written, directed, and produced several award-winning short films and is in post-production on his first feature film, a documentary Afterlife. 
        
In the latter half of our discussion, we cast a spotlight on the ways in which the pandemic has reshaped our spiritual landscapes and confronted the often-avoided topic of mortality with honesty and vulnerability. The episode navigates the psychological depths of grief and abandonment, touches on the intersection of science and religion, and contemplates the concept of faith, reincarnation, and our individual contributions to the collective consciousness. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:11

Hi guys, and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast, where life is story. As usual, I'd love to encourage you guys to support or follow the podcast. That really helps us grow our platform, which, of course, is the goal to spread our message, but also, you know, reach more people. We would love to get to the point of sustaining this labor of love financially and the best way to do that is to increase our reach. So by joining sorry, supporting or following you'll get notifications every time we drop a new episode and we would love for you to share those links as well. We publish to all and you can help me out here virginia all the podcasting platforms like dot dot dot, iheart radio. Okay, you go, uh amazon music obviously um apple podcast yes apple podcast.

Speaker 2 1:05

Um, and my gosh, you're making me like have to think we'll get this down.

Speaker 1 1:09

You know what I mean. We'll tag team it.

Speaker 2 1:11

I say one, you say one yeah, well, and youtube now is I mean obviously we've always been on youtube, but now it is where it's.

Speaker 1 1:19

It uploads faster than it used to because right and the hits will actually help us meet our goal. So don't shy away from youtube, folks.

Speaker 2 1:27

Yeah yep, they're connected now, and then, um, oh, spotify, we're on there as well, right? So yeah, pretty much all the biggies were there I heart radio.

Speaker 1 1:36

Did we say that? Amazon music, all of them. We always end up by going all of them, really yeah okay. So, yeah, follow us, and I I won't say like, because you can't really like individual episodes, right, but I think following us is awesome.

Speaker 2 1:51

Yeah, you can follow, you can heart them, all that kind of stuff. Oh, you can Okay.

Speaker 1 1:56

All right, and of course, this is Virginia, our producer. Extraordinaire Welcome. Thank you, producer, extraordinaire Welcome.

Speaker 2 2:04

Thank you.

Speaker 1 2:05

Okay and I will introduce with no further ado. I will introduce today's guest With an eye on creativity. Ben Harl is a storyteller at heart. He has spent his life writing music, short stories, poetry and novels. We share pretty much all of those. Ben moved his passion for storytelling from the page to the screen, learning the craft of filmmaking through trial and error. We also shared that and I would love to pick your brain and compare notes. Trial and error and a huge amount of help from fellow local filmmakers. It all sounds very familiar so far. As owner and creative director of Silver Compass Studios, ben has written, directed and produced several award-winning short films and is in post-production on his first feature film, a documentary about the afterlife. Welcome, ben Harl.

Speaker 3 2:57

Hello, thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 3:00

Well, thanks for being here. Yeah, we're intrigued. We've both watched the trailer.

Speaker 2 3:05

Well, thanks for being here yeah.

Speaker 1 3:05

We're intrigued. We've both watched the trailer.

Speaker 3 3:11

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, and we're now past post-production and we're actually in the distribution phase, so you can actually watch the film now on several, several streaming sites.

Speaker 1 3:19

Okay, Well, we'll. We'll be putting those links in the episode description, but just cause I want to get to it right away when, where's the best place to watch it?

Speaker 3 3:27

Sure, yeah. So there there are several places. Um, for anybody with a library card, you can uh watch it through hoopla, which is an app that uh allows anybody with a library card to watch films and rent audio books and such. And then there are a couple of other uh smaller streaming sites like FlixFling, zumo, watchfreeflix, but you can also watch it on Amazon Prime through IndiePix on Amazon Prime. And then we're actually poised for its release on Tubi on April 30th.

Speaker 1 3:55

Beautiful, and did you do the festival circuit with it to land all of this distribution, or is it primarily like streaming? At this point, have you taken it around to the festivals?

Speaker 3 4:06

Yeah, yes, so I did enter into the festival circuit and I actually planned on going through the festival circuit prior to distribution.

Speaker 1 4:16

Yeah, that's kind of normally how it works. I mean, in my experience that's how you land the distribution in a lot of places, Exactly.

Speaker 3 4:23

So we're only about halfway through the festival circuit right now. We've already won some awards for it, but I sent it over to some friends of mine at Bayview Entertainment to take a look at it, and they're the folks that ended up distributing it for me. It's been a wonderful endeavor with them, but they were pretty excited about it Awesome.

Speaker 1 4:43

Yeah, you're ahead of the game, yeah.

Speaker 3 4:45

Before I was even done with the film festival circuit. I ended up getting a vacation deal, so I was pretty happy about that?

Speaker 1 4:50

Absolutely, that's, you're ahead of the game. The beauty of festivals is you get to share it with people, right, and enjoy them enjoying it. Yes, I do love film festivals but you know, they're kind of I don't know, maybe phasing out and due in part to the pandemic, but anyway, we're a little ahead of the game here. I want to backpedal a little bit and just make sure the listeners know Afterlife is the title of the film, is that right?

Speaker 3 5:14

It is yes.

Speaker 1 5:15

Okay, and of course that kind of gives you a hint of what it's all about, but I would love to explore it for a variety of reasons. It's a, of course, a huge topic, but I, virginia, may have told you my mom passed in February. Oh yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's just been on my mind and then it's strangely the nature of just little things, like the nature of consciousness itself and the metaphysical realm, versus a more Newtonian understanding of the universe, like these things, come up on the podcast a lot. So I look forward to picking your brain. But if you don't mind, I want to start at the beginning a little bit and give you an opportunity to let our listeners know what you're all about. So the bio yeah, the bio gave me a sense, but if you don't mind, just walk us through, kind of what you've been up to on the planet all these years and then how that led to, yeah, your interest, the impetus for creating this documentary.

Speaker 3 6:09

Sure, yeah. So you know, as my bio stated, I've been an artistic person for pretty much my whole life. I started out writing poetry and short stories when I was still in school and then graduated into writing some novels as I got older and then I got bit by the music bug and that took precedence for many years. So I was in a few bands, nothing that really hit any kind of serious label discussions, but we did tour a little bit through the Midwest and the United States. So I enjoyed doing that for a couple of decades. And what part did you play in the band?

Speaker 3 6:45

I had two different bands that I was in that I had pretty mid-range success with, and I was the guitar player in one of them and the lead singer in the other one. Oh nice. So yeah, I had a lot of fun. It was a wonderful time, a wonderful thing to be able to go out and do. But as I got older, the the pull of the stage became less and less, so to speak. So I kind of fell back into the writing phase of my life and kind of found film.

Speaker 3 7:12

You know, we shot some music videos when I was in those bands and I really enjoyed the that portion of the creativity when it came to being a musician the music, music videos and I became really good friends with the director of photography for one of the last music videos that we shot and I started picking his brain about some stuff and just getting to know him and becoming good friends with him, I it clicked in my brain. You know all of these stories and all the things that I had written my whole life. I didn't. They worked just fine as books, but I could also portray them in a visual format and, for whatever reason, that just never clicked in my brain until that moment, and so I started writing scripts.

Speaker 3 7:51

I went out and bought an extraordinarily cheap camera to try to go out and test the waters to see if it was something that I really wanted to do. I shot a silly little short horror film with me and my friends for free, and it was a terrible little film that we shot, but it was so much fun to shoot it I just made the decision. I was like I want to do this. This is the next creative endeavor that I want to do, and I just started making films from that point and it's been probably about six or seven years. A lot of my friends thought I was really crazy because I got started in this new creative endeavor of late in life.

Speaker 1 8:24

I'll be 50 next month, so and I started six or seven years ago. Well, you know, I had my midlife crisis as well. I went to New York Film Academy same exact story, just shifting my focus to a medium that, in my opinion, engages all the senses. It's a right that you show it, don't say it, all those cliches, but it just. I'm always been a film lover but I discovered this mode of storytelling really can touch people and therefore kind of change their paradigms. Uh, because it's not just an emotional medium. You show it, don't say it, but it engages all the senses, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 9:03

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and and I'm really surprised that I didn't realize that earlier. But for whatever reason, I didn't, and that's okay, because I, I, I'm, that's what I'm doing now and I'm exactly and I'll you know.

Speaker 1 9:14

They say, all roads lead you home. Yeah, so I love that, because a lot of creatives do have many modes of expression right. Different, I think. Yeah, different storytellers can use different modes of narrative modes, right, but creatives in general often have multiple their hands in multiple things, different vehicles. I call it vehicles for expression. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, there's time for all of it, especially if you feel like all your skill sets are culminating in this medium. Do you feel yourself drawing on? I mean, my favorite part as a filmmaker is working with the composer and scoring it and marrying the sound design with the foley, with the scoring, with the dialogue. It's so satisfying.

Speaker 3 9:56

Yeah, part of what I enjoy the most about filmmaking is the same thing that I enjoy the most about being a musician, unlike writing, and I can write too, but writing is a solo endeavor. Typically you have a writing partner, so there's not a lot of collaboration that takes place, except when you get into, you know, like writers, groups and things like that. You can get some collaboration, but it's mostly a solo endeavor, whereas when you're a musician and when you're a filmmaker, it's such a collaborative effort and to be able to sit down with other creative people that are equally passionate and have discussions with them about things that you're working on, I mean what a wonderful opportunity it is and there's so much less.

Speaker 1 10:39

Collaboration is a blessing, right that synergy? That synergy just feeds you. But also it sounded like you were hinting at too like part of the creative process is the reception. It doesn't just collect dust, it actually touches or moves or enlightens people. I agree writing is a solo endeavor and that you're not there with them looking over their shoulder as they're reading your book, so you don't get the payoff. Reading your book, so you don't get the payoff. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like the circuit is completed if you can kind of again enjoy the film with an audience and see how it's it's reaching them. Yes, absolutely. Anyway, I sorry to interrupt you. Um, so how specifically now? You found yourself a filmmaker about six years ago. I think you said, uh, what inspired the documentary itself? I think you said what inspired the documentary itself.

Questioning Faith and Religion

Speaker 3 11:24

Yeah, so you know that's kind of an interesting story as well. So I was raised not very religiously. Younger in life my parents would send me to Sunday school on Sundays, but I think it was more because it was free babysitting, you know. That way they could enjoy their Sunday afternoons while my sister and I were at Sunday school. But there wasn't a lot of strong religious perspective that I got from my parents until later in life. My mother found Catholicism, actually later in life, and so I became.

Speaker 3 11:59

Catholic, and she did, and my sister did, and we started going to church every Sunday. Unfortunately, the Catholic religion didn't really take with me very well. Being an artist, I'm somewhat a nonconformist by nature and there's a lot of rules to that particular religion that I just didn't agree with.

Speaker 3 12:20

There's a lot of ritual as well. Yes, oh, very much so. But I did go to Catholic school. My mother sent me to Catholic school. At the time I hated it. Looking back now, I think it was a blessing in disguise, because it was such a such an enclosed environment. It kept me out of a lot of trouble when I was younger.

Speaker 1 12:38

Exactly, yeah, that my brain operates, and so I started this journey really young in life, I'd say in my teen years I started really questioning spirituality and organized religion.

Speaker 3 13:11

More than spirituality I started questioning, and so I started down this path of atheism really, and I was what I would consider to be a pretty staunch atheist for a couple of decades actually, and just really kind of tried to forget about spirituality, even though I had to.

Speaker 1 13:29

I'm sorry to interrupt you Out of curiosity, just for the listeners and myself. Why not agnostic? Why atheism? It seems like a stand. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 13:39

Yeah, you know, that's an excellent question and I think the reason why is because I just at that point decided to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Speaker 1 13:47

That's the term right Virginia. That's the term I regularly use.

Speaker 3 13:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1 13:52

I think disillusionment. It's a little bit of disillusionment with institutionalized religion.

Speaker 3 13:57

Yeah. So you know what it did is because my brain is analytical. I thought, well, if one is wrong, if one can be proven wrong, then they all have to be wrong. My brain computed it and so and this, by the way, this was despite a lot of really interesting things happening to me in my entire life that did not fit into conventional scientific or analytical thought processes.

Speaker 1 14:20

You, know I also. Does that mean our emotional experiences determine which adopts we? I mean, does that? Does that mean our emotional experiences determine which adopts we? I mean, sorry, which beliefs we adopt? Right, in other words, it didn't stick because of your emotional imprint or your experiences in life.

Speaker 3 14:34

No, I think I think it. The things that happened to me, I just kind of sequestered into the corner of my brain. You know, the things that defied conventional or analytical explanation. I just kind of sequestered them away and chose to ignore them because I didn't want them to be true. I guess is the easiest way to explain it. You know, I had things happen to me that were paranormal in nature, things that were spiritual in nature. That happened to me. I have had it happen to me ever since I was a very, very young child and we don't have all the time to go through everything that I saw back when I was a kid. But I've had some things happen to me in my life that were pretty difficult to explain. But I sequestered them away in my brain, I denied them in favor of this atheistic perspective that I really wanted to be true.

Speaker 1 15:20

Do you think that's typical of many atheists, that they just kind of tuck it away because it's uncomfortable, or is that just unique to you?

Speaker 3 15:30

I would say I think it's unique to me. I've met a lot of atheists in my life and I think a lot of them they're built like me in the sense that they're analytical and they're science-based, but I think most of them don't have the same experiences that I've had that are more spiritually based.

Speaker 1 15:47

I think the only reason I asked is uh, I have a former roommate who's a playwright and he's an artist, and so I didn't quite understand his staunch empiricism. As you're, you said, staunch atheist. Well, he's a staunch empiricist and, um, I had the thought well then, why does a love-hate relationship with God, why is everything he writes about God if he's an atheist? And so I just came to this. You know, I don't know if I believe this anymore, but I just decided that. You know, sometimes cynics are disappointed, or, I guess you know, pessimists are disappointed, optimists they say. So you know, there's a disappointment with God in some cases.

Speaker 3 16:26

Well, I think the one thing that atheists and I hate to speak for the whole group, but from my perspective, I think one thing that atheists and people who are spiritual have in common is the desire for it to be true. I think most atheists would want nothing more, at least from my perspective. I mean, even when I was an atheist for the 20 years or so that I was I wanted nothing more than to be wrong. I wanted there to be an afterlife.

Speaker 1 16:49

I guess that's what I was hinting at with my friend Mark. Yes, he's a love-hate relationship and kind of yeah, just disappointed, but deep down hoping it was true, Interesting.

Speaker 3 17:00

But I think the thing that most atheists and this is where I think my atheism and other atheists' beliefs are similar when I said throw out the baby with the bathwater I think humans' perception or description of spiritualistic things there's fallacy in it, there's wrongness in it, because we can only describe things the way that our limited vision can do it.

Speaker 1 17:28

Language is insufficient to describe the ineffable.

Speaker 3 17:34

Exactly Sorry, Go ahead no please go ahead.

Speaker 1 17:36

Yeah Well, I, virginia, would agree this. We've talked a lot about. You know the very nature of language. It's obviously subjective, it's fallible, it's what do you call it? It's not literal but figurative by nature. It's culturally relative, it's figurative by nature. It doesn't come close to approximating the ineffable.

Speaker 3 18:01

Right.

Speaker 3 18:01

I think there's a lot of things that organized religion has gotten wrong and I will say this Like putting a beard on God things that can't be explained by humans, and so I think they've gotten some things wrong in that explanation or in how they've tried to decipher what they've seen.

Speaker 3 18:32

And because the organized religion has gotten it wrong, I think that that's where a lot of the atheists kind of I don't want to say scoff, I don't mean scoff, but I think that's where most of them have problems with it. It isn't with spirituality itself, it's with what organized religion portrays it to be, absolutely, I would say, even today, even though I wouldn't consider myself an atheist anymore, I wouldn't consider myself a Christian, I don't know if I would consider myself a spiritualist either. I would probably say I'm closer to an agnostic at this point. I do firmly believe there's something that happens to us after we die. Now, but I don't know what that is and I still I can't help but to be I don't want to say reluctant, that's not the right word I'm still suspicious of people who are convinced that they know exactly what happens to us after we die. I guess that's the best way to describe it.

Speaker 1 19:25

That sounds like healthy skepticism. Is that a good word, skepticism? I?

Exploring Disillusionment and Spirituality

Speaker 1 19:29

just want to agree with you real quick because I want to pursue something that you said. But just to agree with you, I use those words throwing out the baby with the bathwater for literally identical reasons. You're reading out of my book. So I just am agreeing with you in that I think the disillusionment with institutionalized religion and you have a lot of statistics I would love for you to share with our listeners but I know that more people have left the institutionalized religion of their upbringing right the past few generations than ever before. So I would add to what you said. It's not that just that they're describing it wrong, it's that the word is being usurped right by politicians to justify their wars. I mean, it's been going on for millennia. So the disillusionment is like coming out of that and realizing how power structures have abused the word right. But what about the molestations, the bloodbaths? Yeah, they got a few things wrong over the years. So I think the disillusionment is justified, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 20:31

Oh, certainly, yeah, I agree with that 100% and I think most people, most common people, have good intentions. Most common Christians and Jewish folks and people of a wide variety of religions they have good intentions. But I think that the organizations themselves, like you were saying, they've faltered a lot. Now they've succeeded a lot, but they faltered a lot, and I think the way that you explained it to me too, that I really agree with you. Know, we were talking a little bit about marketing off the air before we started and I will say I think most organized religions are masters at marketing, right.

Speaker 1 21:08

Back to story. The Christ story is awesome, it's, I mean, jung would say. Christ is the symbol of the self right. Yeah, all world leaders know the power of a story. If Kim Jong, what's his name? Kim jung il, yeah, the people. He was born on a mountaintop, in a lotus flower.

Speaker 3 21:27

He's on to something yeah yeah but they've done a great job of that, you know. And then you get back I mean, I hope I don't get too in the weeds here, but you know then you go back and, like the council and I see it, with the christian religion and how you know, a lot of the books of the new testament were removed because they didn't agree with the direction that the politicians, uh, or the, the catholics and the politicians wanted to take it. So they removed a lot of the gnostic gospels, they removed a lot of the things that were that in my opinion, you know, it should be included in that religion, and I think that's probably the. The thing that I don't want to say upsets me but saddens me the most about not to pick on the Christian religion in particular here. But it saddens me that the folks who are practicing Christians I have many friends that are Christians and I love them all.

Speaker 3 22:17

They're all wonderful human beings and I just think it's a shame that a lot of them only get to see a corner of their own religion, because a lot of those teachings have been eliminated purposefully to point them in a direction that the organized religion wants them to point, and I think that's a shame because there's so much part of that religion that's absolutely beautiful, you know, if you start reading into the Gnostic Gospels and some of the other things that were done or some of the other things that were written in relation to Jesus and Christian teachings, they're absolutely beautiful writings and they're so wholesome in nature and so many of them have been removed and it's just a shame, you know, and it really have you read out of?

Speaker 1 23:00

curiosity have you read the Gospel of Judah? Sorry, judas, I have not. That's one of them that I have. It's just one example. But I agree with you, there was an agenda in the early church. It's that's what I was getting at. The power structures have absolutely used it as propaganda and the very active canonizing certain things, but not others, had an agenda behind it. So anyway, I was just surprised because I've always heard it about the, you know the lost scrolls and but I I've decided to read the gospel of Judas at one point and it's online and you can read it. It's been pieced together. There's some missing portions, so there's a little bit of speculation. But yeah, my takeaway was, like you know, I think if you know Aramaic that helps, if you know Greek that helps right. So we never know what interpretation we're getting. But overall it seemed a little more metaphysical in its portrayals of the ineffable, if that makes sense. It seemed very contemporary.

Speaker 3 23:57

Yes, you're absolutely right, you know, and a lot of the Gnostic Gospels were a lot more spiritual in nature and a lot less physical in nature, and I think that's the reason why a lot of them were removed, because it's really hard to control a populace when they're focused on metaphysical and spiritual needs than physical needs.

Speaker 1 24:19

Yeah, they incarnated everything and I think it's beautiful. To be honest, I would say Jung has it right when he talks about the archetypes, and we've talked on this podcast a lot about how, pre-language, we dreamt in images. We didn't dream in words, right? So I do think the Greek myths beautifully encapsulate the human condition. I think religions then took that further. If that makes sense, if you study, like Joseph Campbell or any kind of comparative religion, I do think our brains are wired for these archetypes and thank God that's what makes me a writer. However, I like your acknowledgement that like, okay, they were making everything literal and figurative and incarnating it in images that speak to us, but sometimes at the expense of the true, you know, metaphysical reality that's meant to be communicated. Does that make sense? Yeah, we're very image oriented.

Speaker 3 25:13

Oh, absolutely yeah, and and I think that there's some, there's some messaging there that's been lost that I think all of us could benefit from. You know, I I think that there's a chance and again, this is my skepticism peeking in a little to time, but we are just not capable of hearing that message, or we hear it and then, throughout generations, it ends up getting twisted somehow and turned into something that it wasn't intended to be originally.

Speaker 1 25:55

Yeah, I've joked. I think this is. I think this is what you're hinting at. I've always I Catholic imagery does appear in my artwork, for whatever reason. Just what I've been exposed to and but I've joked like, well, angels and archangels, and it just, it just doesn't resonate with me. I need, I've got my own kind of type of imagery, but I do believe similarly that consciousness takes many forms and sometimes it's an entity or a bundle of consciousness, right, but I just, for whatever reason, the angels don't do it for me.

Speaker 3 26:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:29

Yeah.

Speaker 3 26:30

We know there's a lot.

Speaker 1 26:31

I'm not denying their existence, I just think it's I don't know people. Yeah, things get incarnated in sometimes silly ways that may not resonate, and it's culturally relative too. Judeo-christian imagery is going to be very different than Far Eastern imagery, but I want to steer this back to how you got to the point of doing the documentary. So we understand you. Now you're currently you currently identify as an agnostic, but at the time it sounded like you were an atheist when you were inspired to investigate this afterlife idea. Close.

Speaker 3 27:04

I was. I would say that I started kind of changing my mind probably about three to five years prior to starting this documentary or researching for this documentary. And I've actually researched this topic my entire life. Like I said, I've always been interested in spiritualism and religion, so I've studied it and I've read a lot of stuff. But I've been open-minded. So I read a lot of books by people like Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist People like Reza Aslan, who wrote a wonderful book called Zealot about the history of Jesus Christ. So I've read a lot of different stuff from a lot of different perspectives because I was always interested in it.

Beliefs on Afterlife and Higher Power

Speaker 3 27:47

But I always looked at it from a perspective of what can I find to disprove spirituality, because I was an atheist. That wasn't my mindset. But I had a couple of things that happened. My mother died it's been several years ago now but she died and it was very damaging to me emotionally to have her die and I know everybody goes through that kind of a thing with loved ones, but for me in particular it was pretty tough. And then my wife actually had a stroke and almost died shortly after that. So I went through this really dark period where I was faced with death and faced with my, my lack of belief in an afterlife, like right in my face. And so it started me down a journey of looking at it from a little bit more of an open-minded perspective.

Speaker 3 28:36

And I and again, I had had a lot of things happen to me throughout my life that defied explanation I thought, well, I need to start researching this from a from a whole different perspective. I need to research it as if I'm trying to find the truth, not trying to disprove things. So that's what I started doing, and I was kind of finding my way into film at the same time, when I was looking at the stuff for my own personal needs. And once I started doing some research and I started to talk to some people, I thought, well, you know, this is pretty interesting to me. This is a personal journey. I'm on this personal journey trying to find my truth, or a truth that I can believe in. I'm a filmmaker. I wonder if there are anybody, if there's anybody else out there who may be on a similar journey as me that could benefit from hearing about a lot of the same stuff that I'm looking into for my own personal needs. I thought, well, why not document it. I'll go on this personal journey. I'll take a cameraman with me and I'll document this and I'll just talk to people from all different walks of life about what they believe happens to us after we die and, like I said, I'll document it and I'll release it and with the hopes that maybe some other people besides myself can actually gain something from it.

Speaker 3 29:47

And so I went out and I talked to. I kept it fairly local. I talked to most people. I live in the Midwest in the United States, so most of the folks that I talked to lived within, I'd say, probably a seven or eight-hour radius to my hometown. But I live close to Chicago, so I hit Chicago, minneapolis, indianapolis and some larger cities.

Speaker 3 30:07

But I went around and I talked to people from a wide variety of professions and belief systems. I talked to people who were staunch Christians. I talked to medical doctors, paranormal investigators, atheists, people who are strictly atheist, investigators, atheists, people who are strictly atheist. I talked to some folks who I talked to a past-life regression hypnosis therapist, which was very interesting. And I talked to some young lady who was a Reiki healer, but she was also a medium so she could speak to the dead. But I went around and I just interviewed all of these people and just asked them questions about why they believe what they believe, how they got into it, and it's similar to what our conversation is today and I was able to capture that on film and it was a very transformative experience for me to go and talk to all of these different people from all these different walks of life and to be able to Different world views right.

Speaker 1 31:07

Very much so. Yes, if you don't mind, though, I want to direct the question a little bit because there's so much there, right, and of course, watching the documentary. It speaks for itself, I'm sure, but I wonder what was the biggest surprise? If I could just be a little sensational here, I want to hear the statistics that you share in the trailer as well, but just for fun. What was the biggest surprise that you didn't expect in your responses?

Speaker 3 31:34

Sure, yeah, I'd say probably the biggest surprise that I found is I was, you know, my whole life. I was kind of led to believe that all of these different people from all these different spiritual perspectives and all these different walks of life were so vastly different from one another that there was no way to find common ground. That's just the way that our society kind of designs us, that's the way our society is built, that anybody that believes different than you, maybe they may not be the enemy enemy, but they're so different that there's no common ground to be found. And and that leeches into your perspective on people. And so when I went into this and I met with these people, I was really genuinely surprised to find how many similarities there were, not just in upbringing but in background, but also so many different or so many similarities between belief systems. Right, right, that was very surprising to me, have you not?

Speaker 1 32:32

drawn comparisons in terms of the tenets of each major religion. You didn't see any common threads there.

Speaker 3 32:40

I did in the religions, of course, because I think most religions stem from all from kind of a core religion. That's my own personal perspective, but I think most religions come from a core religion from several thousand years ago. But I was really surprised that, like even the even, because I talked to some folks who dabble in I'm losing my train of thought here, sorry, but I talked to some paranormal investigators and I talked to people who, like I said, was a past life, regression, hypnosis, therapist mediums, people who were a little bit more on the fringe when it comes to spiritualism, and I really didn't expect them to have as many common, I didn't expect as many commonalities with spiritualism.

Speaker 1 33:28

I would say it was back to the language thing. You know, and that is a big thrust of my book, is we can dissolve some of this imaginary divisiveness by actually just shifting not just our perspective right, the role of flux, but shifting our vocabulary a little bit and, lo and behold, we're actually saying the same thing. And so I would say that goes for cell biology and quantum mechanics and, as you hinted at, even medicine, and we're all kind of saying the same things in more ways than we realize, if, if, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 33:58

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then you're, you nailed it. That's exactly what I was trying to get at.

Speaker 1 34:04

I'm just agreeing with you and but I can't wait to see the documentary. So the biggest surprise was that there's more commonality than we, most of us, acknowledge, right, yes, but um, I love the statistics. Do you mind sharing? I think it was nine and 10, believe in a higher power, et cetera.

Speaker 3 34:27

Yeah, um, so it it and that I guess I wasn't really too surprised about that. I was a little surprised about some of the statistics and I'm sorry I don't have them pulled up right now, so I'm going to be off the cuff here when I'm talking about them. But yeah, it's about nine and 10 people believe in a higher power and I want to say, like seven and 10, well, seven and nine and 10 believe in an afterlife. Seven and 10 believe in a higher power. I think something like that.

Speaker 1 34:46

Right, I have 6 in 10 believe in God as described in the Christian Bible. Thank you, I'm glad you're not on there.

Shifting Views on Spirituality and Death

Speaker 3 34:54

Yes, 6 in 10 believe as God is descriptive in the Christian Bible and 9 in 10 believe in some kind of a higher power. I think that that's skewed a little bit now. Just in the last few years. I think that percentage has dropped. By the way, that was all done through a Pew Research study. That was done, I want to say, in 2019, 2020. So post-COVID, I think those numbers have shifted a little bit and I think it's fewer people now. I think those numbers have shifted a little bit and I think it's fewer people now.

Speaker 1 35:26

Do you have any speculation as to why that would be? Why would it be fewer now?

Speaker 3 35:31

Well, I think we're trending away from spirituality as a group anyway, at least in the United States we are. I think we're due to the advent of social media and how readily available information is. People are more skeptical now than they ever have been in their life, and I think that that's pulling them away from spirituality to a certain extent. I don't think that that's necessarily the best move. The best move.

Speaker 1 36:02

I think I would argue a little bit, just, or I would offer, I would offer that I think you're right. People are more skeptical because they have access to information, but oftentimes it's actually conspiracy theory. So I feel like there's a skepticism that's healthy for society and that we're seeing through institutions, through social. You know the status quo through social conditioning and I like status quo through social conditioning and I like the questioning because I think that's our nature right, I think it's good for society. But I do think I mean Marianne Williamson would say the opposite and I kind of see it too that when you have some of the lack of leadership that we've been exposed to lately, you know everybody's looking for more, they're looking for a daddy. So I actually see, in the early 90s there was a you know, reemergence of not just metaphysics and mentalism and new age philosophy. There was a shift then, but I actually see the opposite. I see people wanting something more and needing something more because our sort of institutions are failing us, including our leadership. So that's my hope anyway.

Speaker 2 37:14

Go ahead, I'm sorry I was going to say so. I just want to speak to what Dalvik just mentioned. So yeah, there is. There is a shift, and now, of of course, I'm speaking more on what we see on the mental health side, but there is a shift away from the organized religion.

Speaker 1 37:31

Right, right, but that's been going on a while, hasn't it?

Speaker 2 37:36

Yeah, that's been going on for a while, because a lot of counselors and therapists are focusing with people who are in that crossroads battle of what they were raised in in organized religion and now trying to figure out where their spirituality is now. So I think that's more what's going on, but to also tie it back a little bit to the afterlife thing, I think, because death as a whole is usually veiled in silence, I mean be it organized religion be it, you know, agnostic atheism, you know whatever, especially in this country yeah, you go to mexico and it's like they celebrate day of the dead and they right, there's plenty of cultures that pray to their ancestors and embrace exactly.

Speaker 2 38:25

I'm speaking strictly to the white colonialism right. Western culture, um, it tends to be built in silence. I mean it's not I mean like, because you don't have like in love cultures where they have like whalers and a lot of those kinds of things usually. I mean I mean heck. I mean we know like, you go to a funeral here in the us, you wear black and I remember the first my kids asked me why are we wearing black to grab as well?

Speaker 2 38:47

You know, funeral like this is so depressing, um so it's not a celebration at all.

Speaker 2 38:53

No, it's not. A lot of times it's not. And so I I love the fact that you know, Ben, that you're either you did do this documentary because it does open those conversations and I, in a very artistic way, to demystify that whole universal experience. But I think where that commonality comes in, no matter where someone sits on the spiritual spectrum as you know, being either very scientific based or very you know spiritualism, you know faith bound is the fact that it's the grieving process. We all go through it, no matter who you are. Those stages of grief, everybody experienced it. You might not experience every single stage and you might experience and you won't experience them in the order in which, when you go Google it, it lists, but you will hit at least two to three of those easy and even repeat some of them throughout your life.

Speaker 1 39:48

It sounds like the big leveler right.

Speaker 2 39:51

It is.

Speaker 1 39:51

Nobody's exempt. I would also say, just to add to that, you know, the term existential terror has come up for me a lot. So maybe one of the reasons we sweep it under the carpet, right, and refuse to embrace it like other cultures is it's too threatening. Grieving is universal, but so is existential terror. So some would say every one of our creative efforts, whether it's sending a rocket into space or building a pyramid, is an attempt to create permanence. Right, because deep down we're all aware of our own mortality. And pretty scared, shitless, you know.

Speaker 1 40:27

So, ben, when you were describing the two, both the death and then your wife's strokes, as making you suddenly invested in an afterlife, not to put words in your mouth, but I find that very interesting. I mean, in my 20s I wrote a little novella about how, when you don't need to believe in more right or a higher power or the fact that life goes on despite the physical vessel, right, when you don't need any of that, it's heaven. But suddenly, like a nightlight, I likened it to a nightlight. So I had a, you know, a miracle that was supposed to happen in a place like Lord's, but it was a little girl who saw Jesus in the pool, scum. I made it as mundane as possible. Right, jesus in a hotel pool in the scum. So people come from the world over wanting a miracle.

Speaker 1 41:14

Then, of course, there's a Netflix series about this right now, actually with uh, I can't think of her name Um, anyway, great Netflix series, laura Linney, about how miracles happen within. Right, you go expecting one thing and you don't realize you actually got your miracle. But it happened within and it was just a little shift. So, anyway, I just have this theory that when you don't need that nightlight, you're good, but the minute you experience loss or death, the morning might inspire you to believe in more, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 41:44

Yeah, I think it wakes you up to your own mortality. Um, that's what it did for me. You know, as soon as, as soon as I started having and I think it happens to all of us you know, once we hit a certain age, uh, people around us start to pass on. That's just. You know, it's human nature, you know nature. Everything passes on eventually. So you know, we're, we're, you're, you become more and more forced to face it. I was lucky in my youth that I didn't have a lot of people that I was really, really close to pass. You know, I think maybe I would have come to more of the epiphany moments younger in life if I would have had somebody close to me pass on when I was younger. But I have a relatively small family and I wasn't very close to a lot of my extended family, so when they passed on, there was a buffer there.

Speaker 1 42:30

I didn't see it as strongly as I did. It's almost like you don't need a policy on it, right yeah?

Speaker 3 42:35

Yeah, you can just kind of pretend. Oh yeah, they passed. I'm really sad.

Understanding Grief and Abandonment

Speaker 3 42:39

But I think I had a similar younger too, you know, in that, that, in that sense of immortality, even though when you're younger you feel people, you see people passing around you, and again I didn't have as many, but I think all of us, you know, when we're young we feel immortal, we feel we feel invincible and we feel like we can take on the world. And again we put it on the back burner, we think, you know, oh well, I'll think about death when, when, the time's right, you know I'll, I'll, uh, and, and that's it comes true, you, you.

Speaker 1 43:06

I didn't go to a single funeral as a child and I don't know if our parents were just protecting us from it, but I literally didn't go to a single funeral. I did have pets that passed and that's a little bit of a learning curve there, right. But I remember in my twenties in college is the first time I had a family member die tragically prematurely. And yeah, I bawled. My mom told me on the phone and I just viscerally I didn't even know why the tears just spilled. But then it was. You know, my grandpa died and I had all those normal rites of passage. But anyway, yeah, now I'm 56 and literally this morning a high school friend died. So yeah, they're dropping like flies. I don't know if I want to go to my 40th reunion, sure, yeah. So yeah, they're dropping like flies.

Speaker 3 43:44

I don't know if I want to go to my 40th reunion, sure, yeah Well, and you see it a lot more when you get older, so you're forced to face it a lot more when you're older. Now I will tell you an interesting thing that happened to me when I was very young. It's one of my first memories, actually, and from a psychological perspective this is probably interesting, and if I dug a little bit, it would probably explain a lot of what my belief systems have been my whole life. One of my, virginia will analyze you.

Speaker 1 44:11

Should I lie down?

Speaker 3 44:11

Virginia Great. I can't remember how old I was I was probably between two and four years old but I went to my great grandmother's funeral with my mother and I was nervous. I'm assuming it was the first funeral that I ever went to. I don't know. I don't have. I don't have the part of the memory that I have, doesn't. I don't remember all the funerals, but I remember this one very vividly.

Speaker 3 44:38

But my grandfather was there and it was his mother that had passed and, as typical Christian funerary process, you're supposed to go up to the casket say your goodbyes, you know, at the visitation and such. And my mother walked me up to the casket but I didn't want anything to do with it. I was very frightened. I remember being very frightened and my grandfather wasn't going to have any of that. He decided that, even though I barely knew my great grandmother, he decided that I really need to have a proper goodbye. So he yanked me out of my mother's arms and he walked me up to the casket while I was kicking and screaming and having an absolute fit, and he forced me down onto the casket to say goodbye to my grandmother. Um, and it was an extraordinarily traumatic experience. Through that, and if I really analyzed myself, I would say my fear of death and my denial of death, my whole life and my atheism. I could probably attribute a lot of the things I went through later in life to that one particular moment. Wow.

Speaker 1 45:37

Well, do you think we all have abandonment issues? I think loss is normal, grieving as a result of loss is just part of the human condition, right. But I know I have major abandonment issues. Andieving as a result of loss is just part of the human condition, right. But I know I have major abandonment issues, and even as a kid, without having experienced death I think I've said this on here before Virginia my prayer every day was always ended with and please don't let Blackie and Tootsie die, our two dogs, and please don't let so. Clearly, I had abandonment issues and then it played out in relationships and right up to my mom dying in February, that's been my worst. I don't even identify with fear, I don't. It doesn't mean anything to me, but if I have a worst fear, it was my mom dying. So is abandonment a natural part of the human condition? Yeah, or fear of abandonment? Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 46:25

Yeah, I mean, I think so and, to be quite honest with you, I think fear of abandonment is probably I think there will be a lot of religious people that will not like me saying this, but I think it's true. I think fear of abandonment, or the loss that you feel when people pass on, is probably one of the driving factors of belief in religion or belief.

Speaker 1 46:47

Because isolation is the extreme right. I think we fear being isolated. That's a very existential fear.

Speaker 3 46:55

Well, and it's and it's the desire to to know that you're going to see that loved one again later. I think that's a big driving factor in in religion.

Speaker 2 47:03

I'll make, I'll make you guys both feel good. So, on, um and I'm not saying that, this is just me speaking off the cuff with this I don't want anybody to like call me just and like go like Google this and like wait, let's go look this up but obviously we have oxytonin and that's our bonding hormone and that kicks in the second we're born and it kicks in with our parents when they look at us. So they, you know, bond with their child, hopefully. Obviously it doesn't always happen, as we know, because there's abuse in the world. But so, kind of speaking to all that, I mean the human condition is automatically, from the day we breathe air, is to bond and connect. And so, if you think about it, abandonment is completely exactly what you guys are saying. It's's that opposite. So we are technically in our primal brains, hardwired, you know, in the amygdala, to bond, connect, feel that sense of safety, I mean so the abandonment during a breakup is you're, you're weaning yourself off of that oxytocin addiction.

Speaker 1 48:04

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1 48:06

It's, it is universal, it's so universal.

Speaker 2 48:10

Exactly.

Speaker 3 48:11

Yeah and well, and I think I mean, if you look at it also from a sociological perspective, with organized religions as well, um, I think that the sense of belonging, the belonging to a tribe, a belonging to your people, your, your, your equals, um, from a sociological perspective, a lot of people, they cling to religion for that purpose as well. It seems like I'm beating up on religion. I don't want to.

Speaker 1 48:37

No, but that's a big thrust of this podcast too is actually tribal bonding does happen on a chemical level because it supports the propagation of the tribe and the species right? So that's why storytelling is part of it's such a strong drive, and has been from day one.

Speaker 3 48:55

Well, I think that tribalism is also the reason why I think a lot of organized religions really, or try not to encourage, discourage the search for more information. If I could direct the Don't dare go. Look for X, y and Z. A, b and C is the truth because we said it is, and X, y and Z doesn't exist. Pretend like it's not there and there's some.

Speaker 1 49:25

I do think that some religions say our way is the right way, to the exclusion of all others, more than some religions, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 49:33

Oh sure.

Speaker 1 49:33

Christianity is, it's all or nothing, and you need to be a missionary and proselytize to those who don't think the same way. Other religions actually say there are many Messiahs. Pick, pick your Messiah, right, right. But anyway, I want to. I want to steer this back a little bit. I love everything we're talking about. This is awesome, but I do wonder if I could ask you in your research and again, I'm guessing if our listeners check out the documentary they'll get their answers, but I'm personally intrigued to find out now I know, kind of like, what the biggest surprise was. It was the commonality. But I wonder did you encounter a big disparity between people that have a sort of metaphysical understanding of consciousness and the afterlife versus those who had a more empirical these are my words a more Newtonian, empirical understanding of consciousness? That might jive again with quantum mechanics or even medicine, if that makes sense. Did you find a big difference? Did people lean toward empirical versus rational, if that makes sense?

Speaker 3 50:34

I think the and this was kind of a surprise as well after doing the research, but I think the biggest difference that I found between those two different types of people were the similarities. And I know that sounds weird to say the differences were the similarities, but what I mean by that is the differences were the language with which they explained what they saw. The messaging was the same. It was a lot more the same than I expected it to be, but they used different language and terminology to explain the same things.

Speaker 1 51:10

Beautiful. Yeah, that is the exact agenda of my book.

Speaker 2 51:12

You know that version. Yeah Well, and I'm thinking this goes right back to that whole duality thing that you can't have one without the other.

Speaker 1 51:17

You know in some capacity, Meaning mind, body, duality or um you can't have one without the other, you can't have Like.

Speaker 2 51:27

you have your use of language, of how you need to describe what you're experiencing, be it if it's going to be more on the metaphysical realm or more on the empirical realm, but the reality is, you know, the flip side is the experience is the experience.

Speaker 1 51:41

Right, Well, and some things again. The ineffable, by definition, defies, quantify, is quantification a word through language? So again, if I have an agenda with my book, it's like let's just get a little bit smarter about Lux, perspective, semantics, the figurative nature of language that is causing a lot of these imaginary divides. I call it the Grand Canyon between faith and empiricism. One of the things I've said again partially in this book is like what is this big standoff between science and faith? It's imaginary.

Speaker 3 52:17

Yeah, right, and one of the ladies that I interviewed for this very, very intelligent young lady. It was a wonderful interview. The way that she explained it and I'm paraphrasing here, but the way that she explained it was. She said you know, hundreds of years ago, science and religion, or science and spirituality, went hand in hand, Didn't?

Speaker 1 52:38

happen Because they seek to explain our world, and they were intertwined.

Speaker 3 52:42

They were intertwined Over the last couple of hundred years.

Speaker 1 52:45

They've separated and there's been and then we kill people like Copernicus because it's too threatening to the controlling the populace, yeah, but.

Speaker 3 52:54

But the nice thing is is we're starting to see and again I'm paraphrasing her words here, but I do agree with her we're starting to see science and spirituality start coming together again. We've started to see that over the last decade or so, where we're starting to see the gap and the divide narrow again, because there are a lot of people who do have science-based backgrounds, whether they're medical doctors, psychiatrists, people who work in energy, quantum mechanics, whatever the case is. You know, you're starting to see a lot of these people that, as we're discovering more, we're starting to see that there were a lot of things that were that spirituality had already I don't want to say figured out, but it already were answering spiritual questions discovery, and that's kind of why I pushed back a little, kind of why I pushed back a little bit earlier and said I actually don't see people leaving spirituality in the dust.

Speaker 1 53:52

I think the information we have access to on the internet and a few of our guests have said the same thing that it actually validates people's instinctual understanding of the mechanics of the universe in some ways and it gives them permission to believe in what we were calling fringe things earlier.

Speaker 2 54:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1 54:09

Well.

Speaker 3 54:10

I guess I think we're at.

Speaker 1 54:11

thank God, you're at the forefront of this, and this came up today too. Like all, binary things are being integrated and synthesized right now. That is the path we're on, and even if that's science and faith or what I'm calling, you know, empiricism versus rationalism, I think there's a lot of that going on, a lot of healing of these divides.

Speaker 3 54:31

Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to say, you know earlier, I don't think people are leaving spirituality. I think they're leaving organized spirituality, I think because of social media. You know, I mean 20 years ago, before social media existed, if you were Christian-based, the only information that you could really get at your fingertips you'd have to go to the library, you had to dig, you had to really research to find differing viewpoints from where you were raised from. And now it's literally at your fingertips. You can Google something, get on social media, you can be exposed to all these different forms of spirituality and all these different forms of religion. And so I don't think people are leaving spirituality. I think they're leaving organized religion because they're being exposed.

Speaker 1 55:14

That is exactly the distinction I parse between institutionalized religion and a personal spirituality.

Speaker 3 55:21

Yes, that excites me because I think that there is truth in all of it, and but I don't think any of them have the whole truth.

Speaker 1 55:33

So I think well, one of our guests said what if? And we've talked a lot about how interconnectivity is the name of the game and we're all just one big tapestry and it takes a village. These things come up a lot. But who was the guest, virginia that said what if all religions spoke the truth collectively? What if, you know, one little nugget here and another nugget there completed the portrait I want to say I think it was was on a.

Speaker 1 56:02

It might have been, yeah, but I like that idea that collectively they speak the truth, not just about the human condition, but what about consciousness? Right expression of consciousness might have been, yeah, but I like that idea that collectively they speak the truth, not just about the human condition, but what about consciousness?

Speaker 2 56:10

right expression of consciousness in the physical realm, if you want to get real wacky about it well, and I want to go back to what ben was just saying too, when, um, when he was talking about, you know, spirituality and science, the other thing that I think that we're seeing why those two are starting to come together. You know, going back off of you know, I know you weren't direct quoting, but I know for me, and we actually, just in a previous episode, brought up the fact that, like I read a lot about hermeticism and I am on the metaphysical, spiritual realm of when it comes to spirituality and my and what I believe and what my values are, and, um, I know, like back a long time ago, because things couldn't be explained, it was always like, oh, it's magic, you know it's metaphysical, and then, of course, as we progressed in the scientific field, with being able

Speaker 2 57:04

to do empirical research and stuff, you're able to go like, oh okay, that's how this happens, and I think that's kind of where we sit with a lot of things too is the fact that if we can't explain it, it's like this you know, omnipresent thing that is, you know. Just, you just have and we know it's there. We just can't explain why it's there. And so that's where I think faith, belief, spirituality comes from, until we can one day reach that point where we can scientifically go.

Speaker 1 57:33

this is why Well, have you ever heard this statistic that most scientists, the more they learn about these miracles, right, that are all around us all day, every day, the more their faith actually increases in, again, a higher power or consciousness? So I think, yeah, quantum mechanics, the more we learn, the more it opens the door that the invisibles are actually the iceberg, when what we're seeing is the tip of an iceberg. Right, if we can only see a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum or experience it with our apparatus, you know that says a lot, so, don't you? I think science is supporting the idea that, wow, there's way more going on here than we acknowledge. We need to build bridges, right. We need to function, so we embrace this limited reality, which is the product of a very narrow chemical balance, to the exclusion of all else. Right, just so we can function.

Exploring Science, Religion, and Consciousness

Speaker 3 58:30

I agree with all that. I think one of the biggest travesties that I see with the division between science and religion is, I think, science, and the thing that makes me encouraged these days is that you know science and religion. Uh, I, I think that religious you know organized religious folks think that if science can explain something that it's no longer miraculous, and I don't think that's the case. It does not make it Monday.

Speaker 1 58:59

If you can explain it. Well, that's what I meant by. Miracles are around us all day, every day, if you, if you, I think life should retain some mystery. We're never going to find out all the secrets of the universe. That's the beautiful part. But what if we just decided every effing embryo that becomes a baby is a miracle? Let's start recognizing the miracles around us.

Speaker 3 59:19

Right, and it makes it no less of a miracle just because we understand how it transpires as a matter of fact. If anything, I think it makes it more miraculous that we can understand it.

Speaker 1 59:30

Well, that was the statistic I was hinting at and I don't remember the wording, but it was something like most quote-unquote empirical scientists or Newtonian scientists. Actually, their faith increases the more they learn.

Speaker 3 59:43

Well, I think that's because they they begin to see the scaffolding that the universe is built on.

Speaker 1 59:48

They've seen behind the curtain right.

Speaker 3 59:51

And it's really hard to explain how a lot of that can happen, naturally, and so the more that, the more that you see that scaffolding, the more it uh, the more, the more miraculous it feels.

Speaker 1 1:00:03

Well, yeah, and I think it speaks well that intelligent design in some states. They'd like to do away with it right In certain states, but I think intelligent design is taught in schools for a reason, and I think that's progress. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:00:15

I would agree, and I wanted to take ask you to define a couple terms if you don't mind. So I think again not to put words in your mouth, but it sounded like you did the documentary for a variety of reasons and that you actually had some surprises. But did it help you cope with death or loss and what did you emerge with? Did it shift your worldview, your paradigms, your ideas?

Speaker 3 1:00:40

It did so, um, I think that the I mean completing the journey was very therapeutic for me. It helped me understand death from a perspective that I hadn't really entertained before. Talking to all these folks really validated, Um, they were able to show me validation and why they believed what they believed, and it made me feel closer to all of these different walks of life.

Speaker 1 1:01:05

So now I respect them more. Is that a good?

Speaker 3 1:01:08

word Certainly and not the individual. Of course I started out respecting the individuals that I interviewed. Of course they're all wonderful people, but their, their perspectives. I was able to respect their perspectives a lot more as I went through this process. I think it made me feel more reassured to begin with as I was going through it, Cause I started to see all these things, I started to see these similarities, and it and I did get this was completely positive, wonderful, positive experience for me to go through.

Speaker 3 1:01:37

I will say, though, upon reflection and I don't want to give too much of the film away here, but upon reflection I did find that some of the anxiety that I had with my own mortality started creeping back in, and the reason why it started creeping back in is because I started to see I mean, I know that of going down the belief system of reincarnation, because I actually did go through a past life regression, hypnosis session with Adam Dentz, who's one of the gentlemen that I interviewed for the film. Wonderful, wonderful experience. Cannot suggest it enough for anybody. Who's Is that in the documentary?

Speaker 1 1:02:23

your own past life regression.

Speaker 3 1:02:24

Well, there's a little bit of it. That's in the documentary. I do speak about it quite a bit in the documentary. Your own past life regression Well, there's a little bit of it. That's in the documentary. I do speak about it quite a bit in the documentary. I didn't speak a lot about the details in the documentary because some of them were pretty personal, but I did see some things during that hypnosis session that really really threw me for a huge curveball that I just could not explain through conventional analytical thought processes you said, some of the anxiety crept back in.

Speaker 1 1:02:53

Is it just the vastness of it? Like we were saying, seeing the scaffolding, or what about past life regression daunted you.

Speaker 3 1:03:00

So I really do believe that when we the belief system that I came away from, believe that when we the belief system that I came away from with this, through this journey, was that we do, when we die, we do go back into some vast creative consciousness, that Is it collective or do we retain our individual souls?

Speaker 3 1:03:21

Yes and no Kind of a both. And that's where the anxiety kind of came from was because I was an atheist. For so long, 20-plus years, I was an atheist and my biggest fear when I was an atheist was when I die, I will cease to exist, I will not exist anymore, and there was a lot of fear with that, that my consciousness will no longer exist, will no longer exist. Through my journey I kind of came to the same conclusion that if I die, I become part of this general consciousness again and now my own personality will get developed into that general consciousness and I will no longer cease to exist or I will no longer exist.

Speaker 1 1:04:00

Past that, yeah, I gotcha, I gotcha, but how about this? I mean, I think a lot of people understand the subjective versus the universal right. So if a lot of, I guess, belief systems acknowledge that we're an extension of collective consciousness, but maybe it's just when we're in these bodies, with this apparatus, we have a subjective experience. You think that dissolves completely my little nightlight, if I'm going to see my mom again, is like hmm, maybe there are clusters of consciousness that they don't have the personality traits or the self-identifiers or all the stuff that the default mode network enforces during this life. Right, but some kind of bundle of consciousness? Is something like that possible?

Speaker 3 1:04:53

Yeah, so I yes, and I think so, and so I'd say I go back and forth between being still a little anxious and apprehensive about death and then being reassured just because of simply what you just stated. So for a long time when I was a Catholic, when I was really young and I was baptized and I was a Catholic, I had a lot of trouble understanding the Trinity the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all being separate but the same all at once. My young mind did not understand that, and so going into a general consciousness and maintaining your own kernel of personality is kind of like that of personality is kind of like that. It's really hard to understand that you can be both at the same time, just much like you know God can be the three at the same time.

Speaker 1 1:05:34

So that's really difficult. That's where people get hung up too, like Christians don't love the idea that we have God in us or we have divinity in us right, we have to depend on it out there. So maybe that's where we're headed is reconciling those two concepts, because they are just concepts.

Speaker 3 1:05:51

And I think so, and so I think that you can be both at the same time, and I do find some reassurance in that.

Speaker 1 1:05:59

Go back to the Kabbalian Virginia. As above, so below there's a micro and a macro to everything.

Speaker 3 1:06:05

Yeah Well, and I'd say my biggest hurdle that I'm still struggling with right now is ego, and we're all ego driven. We're ego based for good or ill, we're all based. And so I think most of my apprehension comes from that, and there are people I met on this journey that I would say have found a way to do away with their ego, at least as much as a human being can get rid of their ego, and so they are very at peace with the idea that when they die they become part of the general consciousness and they blend into that. But I haven't been able to rid myself of my ego yet.

Speaker 2 1:06:42

So that I'm still on.

Speaker 1 1:06:44

That's why I was parsing between this idea that our subjective, quote, unquote personality is exactly what is going to abandon us when we get Alzheimer's or dementia or when, certainly when we pass all those self identifiers. But I still yeah, I guess it's ego I still want to cling to the idea that there is a subjective consciousness that is an extension of collective consciousness. That's as far as I can go for now.

Speaker 3 1:07:11

Yeah Well, and the and the. The other thing that gives me a little bit, a little bit of reassurance too is, you know, going back to part of our earlier conversation about, um, spiritual people doing the best to explain things from a human perspective that we just can't understand. And I that re that thought. Even though it probably should give me a little bit of anxiety, it does reassure me, because just because I can't understand how I can be part of a collective and I can be an individual at the same time doesn't mean that it can't exist. It just means that I can't understand it. You can't conceive it. Yeah, I can't conceive it, but that doesn't get there. We'll get there.

The Concept of Faith and Reincarnation

Speaker 1 1:07:52

Right, so I can't conceive it, but that doesn't get there, We'll get there, Right, so. So that does give me a little bit of reassurance. Well, if I could ask you because I think we need to steer toward a close here pretty soon but I wondered if you would define your current understanding Again, it sounds like you know you've transformed a little bit through this experience and this might be obnoxious, but do you have a current understanding of faith? What is faith exactly?

Speaker 3 1:08:10

So faith, specifically faith. I don't necessarily know if I believe in some kind of a creator that desires or needs worship. I think that whatever has created our universe, that's a human construct, that's a human emotion. That desire to be praised and idolated is a human construct. I think that's our poor understanding of what a creator would expect. From my perspective, I think a creator-.

Speaker 1 1:08:44

We shouldn't be sacrificing animals, exactly. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 1:08:48

Yes, so that's, that's idolatry. Is all is all a human construct, in my opinion. I think a creator, um, if there is one, has created its universe with the, with the desire to experience it, and has chosen to experience it through the living things that it creates. And it sends us out into the physical world to collect up all of these memories and these emotions and all of these things that happen to us through our lives, and then, when we die, we go back into that general consciousness so it can collect up all of these experiences that we've had and it can learn and grow from them, and it can continue to learn and grow from them, and it can and it can continue to learn and grow from them. And then we have the option, whether we want to or not, to go back and be reincarnated into these lives again and again.

Speaker 1 1:09:39

Um, so that is a conscious like choice, so we must have subjective intelligence, right, if we can choose to come back and reincarnate.

Speaker 3 1:09:50

Yes, I, and I think that I do believe that, and it varies. If you ask me, tomorrow I may not believe this because I'm still. I'm still on the journey, so to speak, but right now I think that we can choose you know who we can choose who we're born to, we can choose what parents, we can choose what life that we want to have. And I think a lot of people have trouble understanding because they think, well, if you can choose it, why would you ever want to choose it? A horrible life where you go through some some terrible traumatic experience.

Speaker 1 1:10:23

But I think that's when you get into problematic territory, and it is the ego that always wants a nice, clean right. Every belief system people believe is supposed to be impeccable. Well, actually, a lot, a lot of laws coexist with one another, disprove the law of attraction.

Speaker 3 1:10:49

It's just the, you know, being incapable of realizing all these laws can coexist and we can hold all of these thoughts, you know Well and also, I mean, if you do have the ability to be reincarnated and you have the ability to maintain your own individualism but be part of that collective consciousness at the same time, the vastness of eternity, you know, in the vastness of eternity, to, in order to gather that experience of that traumatic life that you may choose to be born into, that's a blip, you know.

Speaker 3 1:11:15

I mean you, if you knew, if you know during that transitional period, that even if you choose the most horrible life imaginable, that it's temporary, it's short, and that when you die you're going to go back into the collective consciousness and have the option to maybe have a good life after that, um, it's not going to seem quite as bad. I don't think so. That's that's kind of. That's where that's the belief that I'm leaning toward is reincarnation and a general consciousness type of type of afterlife. Um, but yeah, I, I firmly believe that if there is a creator, that the, the way that we idolize and treat that creator is certainly not what they would expect from us or desire from us. That's a human construct love it, virginia.

Speaker 1 1:11:59

I, I thought I heard you wanting to chime in no, but I was the whole time.

Speaker 2 1:12:03

I was just going oh my gosh, this is like totally listen. Well, as I seem to been going, it's. Oh my gosh, this is like totally what I was listening to Ben going, it's not exactly so. Again, this is just me off the cuff, just relating, but it was reminding me of systems theory, which is what a lot of family marriage therapists use and licensed clinical social workers. That's usually the theory Most of them adapt and it's the concept that you so just bring it into like a clinical setting to understand.

Speaker 2 1:12:28

So like people go in for like couples counseling, right, and most people go in thinking that they are individually each the client, but really the client is the couple and then, and then secondary, are the two individuals. And so how I always explain it to people is it takes you you have to first, you have to treat the individual to, to fix the, the relationship, because relationship is the client. And so it's kind of a when I was listening to Ben, that's what I was thinking of was like that relation of the individual versus the collective. It's the same thing Like individually we have to go on these journeys to understand things, so collectively we can bring that our individual experiences.

Speaker 1 1:13:07

So the relationship is the collective part and then the right correct but everybody wants. They think they're not the guilty party. Right, we're really here to talk about my spouse because she's the problem right, yeah, but and that's not what it is.

Speaker 2 1:13:19

It's like we each, we each have a journey that we're on and then, collectively, we come together and that's how we fix that the, the collective, the, the couple, the family, you know, the society, whatever, whatever, whatever you want to put into the whole, you know, but it takes each one of us to to go on these journeys, to learn, and that's. And it goes back to like you know what you're saying been about, you know we get, I totally, I. I come from that same mindset where we get to choose the. You know when, before we come here, you know we get to choose like who our parents are, the, the, the experience we're going to have now.

Speaker 2 1:13:56

Obviously each individual can affect another individual's that ripple effect. So that's where some bad things can happen. Somebody else's journey, you know, came on to yours. The best way I, I guess, to think of it like an analogy is like we're all on the freeway and we all can get off on the off ramp. So we can all get on the on ramps and we don't know where we're going to meet each other and how those meetings and separations will affect as we're on that pathway, on the freeway.

Speaker 1 1:14:24

That's a wonderful analogy.

Speaker 2 1:14:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:14:26

Hopefully it's not a fender bender.

Speaker 2 1:14:29

Yes, and the fender benders are the really traumatic experiences that we all have, and sometimes it is someone's fault, sometimes it's a few people's fault, sometimes it just happened because we were all just being oblivious and we learned a lot from it.

Speaker 1 1:14:43

Well, exactly, and I think we've said a million times, language is insufficient to approximate the ineffable. So this is feeling a little sophomoric and silly right at times. But I do notice like for me, I, I get a little uncomfortable when we personify and oh, I looked down at this little spinning marble and I chose that family to be a part of because there were lessons to be learned. I, I don't. I think that's a personification, but I do agree with all those platitudes Like actually, in retrospect, everything happens for a reason. It came up this morning, right, oh, you ended up back under your parents' roof because clearly there was a bigger picture and there was unresolved stuff that needed to be healed. And I always, always see do you know what I mean? The meaning behind things we're often invisible to. But I don't know. I just kind of resist the idea that you choose which family, and there are many schools of thought out there. So I think these conversations are good because you can reconcile these schools of thought, right, but I hit a little wall when I imagine looking down at that spinning globe and choosing the family, with all of its trauma, because there's something to be learned.

Speaker 1 1:15:53

I do think collective consciousness is just trying to propagate. It might not be trying to learn, grow and evolve, but, right, you evolve or die. And that includes all of us individuals and, yeah, maybe collective intelligence. So I can go so far as to say you know, all day, every day, our cells are self-creating. Little enzymes and particles and proteins are being shuttled around non-locally. What's shuttling them around? Non-local energy? What's another word for that? Intelligence? Right, and with entanglement, all the particles are entangled.

Speaker 3 1:16:41

So clearly this energetic force, whether you put a beard on it or not, is driving everything. But do you know what I mean? I find it a little tough to swallow this idea that you chose your family as some kind of person sitting on a cloud. You bring up some really good points about the evolution of the creator, I mean because if their goal is to evolve as well, then that needs to come into play with all of that. And to be honest with you, I mean and that's why I said you asked me, tomorrow it may be different, right, talking to you, it makes me think, makes me wonder if me wanting the option, or believing in the option, to choose my own adventure, so to speak, or my own human ego again, which is something that you're supposed to be able to get rid of when you get into the spiritual, true spiritual aspect. A lot of people call it enlightenment, but it's the loss of ego. It's the same thing, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 1:17:24

Yeah, and that's why I'm just acknowledging that, by kind of personifying and attaching imagery to some of these phenomena, it's it, that is human nature, that is our ego, and it's all good, it's all good, but I think that the thing that I really one of the biggest takeaways was I'm really starting to believe that the journey is the goal.

Speaker 3 1:17:48

You know, open-minded searching and searching for the truth has become the goal for me, rather than finding the truth.

Speaker 1 1:17:58

And how about just contributing to the conversation? Yes, right, and having these dialogues we we've said often. You know we may never arrive at any answers, but there's a lot of value in just contributing to the conversation.

Speaker 3 1:18:09

Yeah it's all about learning and growing.

Speaker 1 1:18:12

So, on that note, is there any last thing you would want to share with our listeners, or impart?

Speaker 3 1:18:20

I mean we covered a lot of stuff today. I'd say the thing that I would probably want to give them the most would be just to remain open-minded. Just because you're born into a certain belief system doesn't mean that you have to maintain that belief system. I think human nature is to grow and explore and search out for things, and don't let where you came from stifle that desire to search out and grow and learn.

Speaker 1 1:18:49

Do you think some personality types let's call it dispositions or temperaments are more apt to be seekers and others are more apt to just conform to the status quo or their upbringing? Or does a life experience eventually catch up with you and force you right or speak louder and louder to get your attention, if that makes sense?

Speaker 3 1:19:10

I think our desire to seek is a primal human nature. I think that that's something that you're born with, but I think that your surroundings and how you're raised can stifle that and sometimes stifle to the point where you never search for your whole life, and I think that that's unfortunate. I think that we are seekers by nature and I think that one of our primary purposes on this earth is to seek, and one of the easiest and best things to seek is knowledge.

Speaker 1 1:19:38

Beautiful. I don't think there's a better note to end it on. What do you think, Virginia? I 100% agree with that I love how you said that it's true, and maybe I would just add, through the seeking, whatever conclusions you come to, you are wired to share that with the collective yes, right Toward our evolution, our march toward human potential. Okay, thank you so much, ben. I can't wait to see the film. Thank, you.

Speaker 3 1:20:02

Thank you very much for having me on. I had a wonderful time having a conversation with both of you.

Speaker 1 1:20:06

Thank, you so much for having me on. I had a wonderful time of having a conversation with both of you. Thank you so much. And again, the links. I think let them know if you don't have all the links so that people can access the film. That would be great. Okay, thank you. And to our listeners, remember life is story and we can get our hands in the clay individually and collectively. We can write our own story. See you next time.