The Bible: the Ultimate Parable, with Mythologist Michael McPadden

We welcome Michael McPadden, a former naval aviator turned mythologist and author of "Genesis to Revelation." Michael begins by breaking down Genesis for its symbolic meaning. Our conversation then takes you through the hero's journey, using the stories of Abraham, Job, and Jesus as powerful examples. Drawing from the works of Joseph Campbell, we uncover how these ancient tales mirror our collective quest for redemption, emphasizing the critical role of metaphor and symbolism in connecting the physical and spiritual realms. Michael highlights how modern interpretations often miss these deeper layers by taking texts too literally, depriving us of the rich, transformative wisdom they offer. Michael delves into the metaphorical interpretations of texts like Genesis and Revelation, suggesting these stories serve as guides for personal and spiritual growth. From the importance of meditation and silence to the powerful symbolism of biblical narratives, this episode offers a comprehensive look at how embracing ancient wisdom can lead to profound personal transformation and a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:55

Hi guys, and welcome to Language of the Soul, where life is story. I'm Dominic Domingo, your host, and I'd like to straight out the gate, bring in my co-host and producer extraordinaire, and I think this week we're calling her the fluorescent nail lady. No, fluorescent mushroom nail lady, what's your title?

Speaker 2 1:18

Yeah, Fluorescent mushroom nail lady works because they are well, they glow in the dark.

Speaker 1 1:23

And she has a name it's Virginia. Welcome, yes.

Speaker 2 1:25

Yes, thank you, dominic, and I'm glad to be here with you and, of course, our listeners. And then I just quickly want to go over a few things for everybody today, cause I know we have a really great interview schedule, but I just want to say thank you to our listeners and supporters. Your guys' continued support and sharing of our podcast has really been helping us spread that transformative power of storytelling. And you, you know, obviously, if you enjoy our episodes, please consider rating us and giving us reviews on your favorite platforms, sharing the podcast with friends and family.

Speaker 2 1:58

Download them, even if you can't listen to them right away, so you can go back and listen to them, because every bit of that support helps us reach more hearts and minds and then, with that, also for that more enriching conversation insights. You know, make sure you subscribe to language of the soul podcast on your favorite platforms, especially on best sprout, and you can follow us, of course, out there on the various social medias. And then, um, you know you can always find us on Apple podcast, spotify, google podcast, amazon music, I heart radio, itunes. Um, you know you can always find us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, amazon Music, iheartradio, itunes. You know you pick it. We're pretty much there and we just like to say, you know, the more you support us, the further we get to go. And you know we're working on building that Patreon community as well for exclusive content and donation options to help us continue doing what we do. So, thank you.

Speaker 1 2:49

I'm persuaded I want to be part of that club. Maybe I should follow it. No, of course I already do. Anyway, I love that. Thank you so much for fitting that in. And yeah, without further ado, because we are truly excited about this week's guest and there's so much to cover, I already can guarantee we're going to beg you to come on for a part two, but let's see what we can fit in. So I'm going to start by reading our guest's bio, as usual, and then there's a little caveat before I ask the first very general question.

Speaker 1 3:22

So Michael McPadden grew up in Virginia dreaming of one day becoming a naval aviator. That dream came true in 1981, june of 1981. That dream led to another dream that saw him become an airline pilot, retiring as an international airline captain in 2017. Retirement gave Michael time to do what he loved, only second to flying, which was reading the Bible and studying mythology, which was reading the Bible and studying mythology. This September, michael published his first book, genesis to Revelation, which combines his love of the Bible with his deep understanding of the mythological traditions found within. Welcome, I'm going to call you Mythologist, michael McPadden. Is that right?

Speaker 3 4:05

That's perfect, good title I love it.

Speaker 1 4:09

And that sounded like you. Did I get anything wrong in the bio?

Speaker 3 4:12

No, that's good. Thank you, it's an honor for me to be here.

Speaker 1 4:16

Well, truly thank you for being here. We know all of our guests have been stellar. We feel pretty lucky. But I feel like you're a good get, as they say, and I really look forward no kidding to just sitting back and listening and learning. But I think, before again asking you a distinct question, I want to read a little description of your book that I read on Amazon, because I think we're here to talk generally, but I think, right, your book seems to encapsulate what you're up to these days. So I'm just going to read a quick quote, because it's related to my first question.

Speaker 1 4:48

So, from Amazon, I have join author Michael McPadden as he takes you on a consciousness expanding ride through the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation. No stone is left unturned. This book is not your father's explanation of Genesis or Revelation. In it you will learn how God created the universe and us, our purpose here and what happens next. I love that. After reading his book sorry, after reading this book you will have a very deep understanding of the human psyche, aka the human soul, which means you will have a very deep understanding of how you work.

Speaker 1 5:22

The Bible has always been a book about us and answers any questions we could ever ask about how we work, how our world works and how God works in us and the world. We need to know where to look. Genesis to Revelation shows us where to look. So I just love that, because I just wrote a book called the Seeker. It's set in Minoan culture and I often refer to the hide and seek we play with divinity right, the grand illusion where we're blinded to divinity, and I just call it hide and seek, and I got that from a really great Howard Jones song in the eighties, anyway, so that really resonated with me. Um, but I want to start by asking you know, pointing out that, uh, the few podcasts I watched in doing my research cause of course I always stalk my guests and try to find them in deep, dark pub webby corners of the interwebs I saw a couple of interviews with, I'm guessing you know, an audience that were already Christians or already subscribed to Christ consciousness and some of the terminology you use. So we don't know our listeners that well, but I would say it's safe to say it's a rather mainstream listenership, probably secular. So I'd love to stay really general with my first question.

Speaker 1 6:43

My nephew was going to come on. He, of course. I have two family members who are ministers and of course they have a background in theology and liturgy, I guess is the term and they are biblical scholars. So I was really looking forward to having my nephew on, but he hasn't committed yet. So he would probably say that in certain fundamentalist circles there is of course a certain and you were hinting at this earlier that you may be the first one to really see it through is of course a certain and you were hinting at this earlier that you may be the first one to really see it through the lens of mythology, transcendent mythology, or symbology. My nephew is on the same path, by the way.

Speaker 1 7:20

So, in that spirit, I would like to start by asking you for our secular listenership, our mainstream listenership, if you could do what I heard you do on another podcast, which was beautifully, in a very poetic way, in a very eloquent way, you described the symbolic meaning of Genesis. So I would love for you to repeat that magic for us, basically, if you could give us a play by play or a plot synopsis of Genesis, if you don't mind, and then tell us the meaning behind it. What does it say about the human condition? Or the way I put it is literally? How does it encapsulate not just the human condition but the expression of consciousness in the physical realm? It's kind of like a handbook for this spiritual journey we all seem to be on. If that makes sense, could you just give us a quick rundown of Genesis then tell us the meaning behind it.

Speaker 3 8:16

Well, I hope I get the right answer here, because I don't know what podcast you're referring to. But what's interesting? So mythology has two stories. You have the front story and the backstory. You read the front story in Genesis 1, and it said God created the universe. If you're a Christian, if you just have any sense of the deity, you don't need to be told God created the universe. So that kind of falls flat on its face. It doesn't make a lot of sense, however, if I tell you that Genesis 1 is about how God creates reality, how he creates our reality. That's a whole different story. That's a completely different story.

Speaker 3 8:56

Genesis 2 and 3 doesn't make any sense, to me at least. It's about two people in the garden. They make a simple mistake. They're thrown out of the garden. Life's terrible for them because of the one simple mistake thrown out of the garden. Life's terrible for them because of the one simple mistake. But the underneath story, the symbolic story, is about how we work. Okay, so Genesis chapter 1 is about how our universe and our reality works, how God creates our reality, and Genesis 2 and 3 is about how we work as individuals. It's our operating manual, is what it is. Was that close? I don't know.

Speaker 1 9:33

Well, I like how you confirmed my take that it's almost like the handbook for navigating right, literally not just the human condition, but like the expression of consciousness in this physical realm. So I like all of that. I think you went into some milestones, though, like the Pentecost, like the dawning of Christ, consciousness in us. I think you talked about how the journey begins at evening, for a very good reason. And then maybe something you very much pointed out, that enlightenment, or awakening, or redemption, salvation, those aren't things that happen after you cross over. They're meant to right in the way of the hero's journey, they're meant to happen while you're still above ground. So that's what I meant by like a linear, play by play. Does that make any sense to you? You talked about how we came into this reality or life actually during the evening, when there was still some light. I love that, yeah.

Speaker 3 10:30

Okay, so that's the metaphor of the days of creation. Okay, that's what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 10:35

So, there's a lot of metaphors and symbolic stories that are in the myths, that are already symbolic. So there's symbolism on top of symbolism. It can get very complicated, very deep and convoluted. So my book makes it pretty simple. But so what you're talking about is the metaphor of the days of creation. So at the end of each, so God creates during the day, and then at the end of the day it says and he became, says and he became the evening and he became the morning. Day one, day two, day three, so all the days of creation end that way.

Speaker 3 11:17

The reason is is because the days of creation are a metaphor for our lives, our spiritual journey. So we begin the day as evening, so the daylight, god is the light, and so the sun and the light, everything's done in the light. As evening, evening is, so the daylight, god is the light, and so the sun and the light, everything's done in the light of day of the days of creation. And then it says he becomes the evening and he becomes the morning, but there's no nighttime in that description. So what's going on here is we come into this lifetime as the evening light.

Speaker 3 11:50

It's not perfect. The difference between evening light and daylight is that evening has a shred of darkness in it. So we start off perfect, as infants. But there is a shred of darkness and as our lives progress the darkness becomes darker and darker until we enter the darkness. God's not part of the darkness. The darkness is our descent into the heart of the earth.

Speaker 3 12:19

You've probably heard that before. We spend three days in the heart of the earth, in the darkness. That's our egoic life. That's our egoic life. Then, at midnight I call it the apogee of revolution, because that's as far away from the sun as we can get is at midnight we begin our hero's journey to climb out of the darkness into the light of day at dawn. So the journey of the human soul is portrayed in the metaphor of the days of creation. We come as the evening light, it gets darker and darker until full darkness. And then, as we climb out on our hero's journey to whatever you want to call it, whether it's resurrection or salvation or enlightenment we climb out while we're alive, the morning light, the dawning light of Christ consciousness, and that's the end of the journey.

Speaker 3 13:23

So that was that metaphor? That is basically an overall metaphor for the, for our lives, but then it obviously gets much more deeper when you start talking about the hero's journey and how all these bits and pieces add up.

Speaker 1 14:04

That's a quite popular comparative religion, or even Joseph Campbell, or I don't know. What is the role of the hero's journey in your understanding of this mythology and symbology?

Speaker 3 14:16

Well, I have a whole chapter on the hero's journey of Joseph Campbell. So, yes, I do talk about it. The hero's journey is the journey of the human soul. In fact, I would say 80% of the world's mythological traditions are the hero's journey. That's how they all break down. So you take the book of Revelation out of the Bible that's a hero's journey. You take the book of Job, that's a hero's journey.

Speaker 3 14:41

Abraham, moses, Joseph, jesus every one of them is a hero's journey. So these are all like the story of Abraham. Are either of you familiar with it at all? I am Okay. So, basically you have, abraham leaves the city of Ur in Samaria and he travels to a new land that God would show him, the Promised Land.

Speaker 3 15:04

And so now I believe Abraham was a real historical character, but his story is written as a myth. So the reason it's written as a myth is because there's symbolism in it. So, if you remember, so Abraham is really old. His wife, sarah is too old to have children, she's barren, and she encourages Abraham to sleep with the slave Hagar to have a son to carry on Abraham's name. That was a big deal back then, right? So he does, and so Hagar gives birth to Abraham's first son and his name is Ishmael, but he is born as a slave to a slave woman.

Speaker 3 15:50

So this is important to understand. Then God miraculously lives something up that was dead and brings it to life, which is Sarah's womb, and Abraham sleeps with Sarah and she gives birth to Abraham's second son, the free man gives birth to Abraham's second son, the free man. So the first man, ishmael, represents Adam, the man of sin, the physical man, the egoic man, and Isaac, the second son, represents Christ. So when Paul is referencing this in his works, he says all die in Adam, but all are raised as a living spirit in the last man, christ. So the story of Abraham is the story of the human journey, in that we enter in as the first man, adam, the egoic man, but we come and we rise up as the last man, christ.

Speaker 1 16:49

Beautiful.

Speaker 3 16:51

And, on, and on and on, and every single one of them.

Speaker 1 16:55

It's like a Russian doll, because, you're right, of course the Bible is a parable, or you know of the human condition and the spiritual journey, but then it's full of parables, right, I mean, christ spoke in parables. So how wide, how far down the rabbit hole do we want to go? But I love the examples we've covered so far and I guess that's what leads to the next question, like if you're observing the template of the hero's journey as we understand it, right, in pop culture, it does inform all the myths I would say, from the dawn of time right through religions and everything that stemmed from those myths. And just for our readers, I want to, I mean our listeners, I want to say the Masks of God, of course, is a good thing to check out, and the Hero with a Thousand Faces. Do you have any other Joseph Campbell books or videos that you would recommend?

Speaker 3 17:46

That is the. The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the one that I've pretty much earmarked to death reading it and referencing it from my book.

Speaker 3 17:56

But you know, the language of symbolism is everywhere, so we talk about you said it correctly, by the way the Bible is a parable. The entire book is a parable, because a parable is a mini-myth, right? And so it dawned on me one day, as I was out walking, that we cannot teach spiritual stories without symbolism. It's impossible. Here's why. So our brain—and this goes into what we're going to talk about later with mythology but our brain works, uh, with language, in the left half of our brain, right, so that's what the language center is, it's logical, it's left brain. We only create words for the physical world. Right, we have a couple words that are exclusive to the other world God and love, for example but most of the time, what we do is we create symbolic words by taking words that mean things in our world, like fire, earth, wind and air, and we transfer it to the next world. We say there's fire and it's spiritual fire. So we go.

Speaker 3 19:12

Well, that doesn't make any sense. I know what real fire is. What is spiritual fire? Then we have a discussion about what it is. Or water, what is water in the spirit realm? There's no water in consciousness. So it means something else. It's symbolic of something else. Water is the spirit. Fire is the psychic pain we all suffer when we are pulling ourselves out of our egoic selves into our pure consciousness. That's what spiritual fire is, just since I mentioned it. So, anyway, just to finish that thought up we cannot talk about the spirit realm whether you're a Christian or a Muslim or a Buddhist, I don't care without using symbolic language. And this is where a lot of these modern Christians get tripped up, because they think everything's literal. Like really, I don't want to get salted with fire, by the way, right yeah.

Speaker 2 20:19

I was actually thinking that because, I mean, I know that's what happens a lot is, they take everything either very literally or they misinterpret a lot of texts, which has a huge impact on personal and collective beliefs in many ways. So I love that you shared that because you know, I think that's so important for us to remember that you know it's what writers do you know, be it nonfiction or fiction writing, I mean, there's always symbolism in everything, because there's symbolism in our real lives. And then, of course, when you're writing fiction, you use symbolism to have people be able to connect it to their own reality, to dive into a fictional book and suspend their disbelief on stuff.

Speaker 1 20:58

So, yeah, Well, I would add too that we do learn through metaphor. We're wired for symbolism and, I would say, pre-language, all the threats and opportunities. We're wired for symbolism and I would say pre-language. You know all the threats and opportunities we're confronted with. If you're going to have a growth response or a protection response to it, that's going to literally be wired on your DNA and passed on. That defies language. So there's a reason. Red has come right physiologically to excite us, but it also has taken on all this meaning in terms of color symbolism. So I just call them like formal properties and we have innate responses to formal properties. So it is the language of the soul because it exists pre-language, right, and so on that front, I'm going to actually read a question. So there's a reason I mean we're really talking about here, the reason we started the podcast with life is story, right. We're wired for metaphor. So it's called language of the soul for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 1 21:58

But I'm a lover of language. I love its figurative function. I also love its inability to encapsulate what I call the ineffable, right. So we have to bring the conceptual realm into the perceptual. Language is pretty insufficient to do that. So I really love this term ineffable, I love the term numinous. Language is open to interpretation. It's culturally relative and also tap into this kind of nonlinear space that transcends. So in some of the coverage for your I hope that made a little bit of sense. In some of the coverage for your book you referred to the language in which Genesis was written, which I believe was biblical or classical Hebrew, as the language of myth or mythical literature. Why, what's so great about classic Hebrew?

Speaker 3 22:49

Oh, okay, so it's not Hebrew. Remember, the Bible started off in Sumerian and Akkadian texts. Abraham came from Sumeria, so the original works were all written and this is what I propose, at least in Sumeria and by Abraham's ancestors. This is what he brought out. That was so special.

Speaker 3 23:08

Whenever you read about the Hebrew people coming out of Samaria, canaan, egypt, it's always about these little stories about God setting them aside, god protecting them from this. And you go. Why? After what? Three, four, five generations? You're not even the same people anymore. So why is he protecting these people? It wasn't because of who they were. It's because of what they had. What they had was Genesis, and that's my contention in the book.

Exploring Myth, Spirituality, and Evolution

Speaker 3 23:37

But let's go right into mythological writing, because I think the rest of the conversation can break off from that in a million ways. So what I discovered while writing the book was that, yes, in fact, genesis 1, 2, and 3, they have a front story, but they also have a symbolic backstory, and I started to see in all the myths that I was reading this dualistic form of writing. And so the way I've kind of summarized, it is to say, and everything that I have, everything that I propose, is informed by my background in the Bible, obviously. So I just want to make sure your audience is aware of that. So when I look to see the definition of a soul, I go to the Bible and Genesis 2-7 says that Yahweh Elohim formed the man. From the definition of a soul, I go to the Bible and Genesis 2-7 says that Yahweh Elohim formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Those are symbolic, obviously.

Speaker 3 24:40

The dust is symbolic for our physical bodies and also the physical environment. Our physical experience of life that's one half of us is the experience. The other half is conscious awareness to understand the experience. That's the breath of life. We have the breath of I am and we have the experience of I become. We're both of those things, not one. So we are completely a dualistic creature. We are trying to understand ourselves as one when we're actually two. We ignore any part of who we are. We're not going to get the full picture. So we are two. Do you want to talk to me? The best way to do it is to talk to both halves. The best way to do it is to talk to both halves. One half can listen in language and words and sentences. The other half listens through symbolism. That's why mythology is written literally and symbolically.

Speaker 1 25:45

There's two languages in myth. Yeah, I mean, tell me if these words mean anything to you. It's experiential, right, it's not conceptual, it's almost existential or experiential. And uh, that's what I meant by language actually has the power to transport you to that nonlinear space. I anyway, I love what you just said, but, uh, I want to ask a question along those lines Um, is there a micro and macro version of this spiritual journey? In other words, the hero's journey is largely the roadmap of this spiritual journey, as the Bible expresses it right, absolutely. But isn't there also the collective march toward human potential, or, you know, our evolution on a grander scale? How?

Speaker 3 26:30

is the.

Speaker 1 26:31

Bible set up for that.

Speaker 3 26:32

In other words Well, I would say that the greatest adventure any of us will ever have is our hero's journey, our personal act of redemption, what happens to us as we pass through this life. Okay, see, for example, one of the things I find funny in people who interpret the Bible they like to interpret the book of Revelation, for example, as the end of the world scenario. Do you really think God I mean how many planets are out there? Do you think God really cares about the end of this particular planet? I'm sorry, when, if you, if the end of the world were to come and you die? Guess what? You die, that's it. What if you live through it? Well, you're going to die anyway.

Speaker 3 27:19

In other words, the most consequential event in our lives that's going to happen to every single one of us is death and taxes, and taxes yes, but the point is is that somehow it seems silly to me that we would focus on some physical event out there, like the end of the world, when really the biggest event we will ever face in our lives is the resurrection that occurs at the end of life, our death, right. So the hero's journey is a spiritual story. It's a story of the journey of the human soul. Everything that happens in the world is really I don't want to discount it too much but the physical world is not that important in our journey. In other words, we each have a universe that we're living in.

Speaker 3 28:20

This is what the Bible says in chapter two, and what it's trying to say is that you and I could be sitting at a ball game right next to each other and watch a baseball play happen on the field and have two completely different experiences of it, even though we witnessed the same event, because you're living in your universe and I'm living in my universe and we just. These two universes aren't the same, they're different. All the experiences that I have will be different from all the experiences everyone else is having. What would be the point of redundancy if God's creating all of this right? So we're seeing it from different perspectives.

Speaker 3 29:02

So, to answer your question, anything like the evolution of the human being is a physical experience, and I don't think this is my opinion. I just don't think that's important when it comes to our spiritual journey. What happens in the physical world? It's part of the spiritual journey but not essential to it. So you and I are living in a time when humans are where they are right now and maybe in 100,000 years we'll be different as a species. But those people will have those experiences then and they will be different from ours, obviously. But we're having this experience now where we are.

Speaker 2 29:48

I like that and I want to back up a little bit because you know you're talking about revelation and the end of the world and stuff.

Exploring Spiritual Growth and Transformation

Speaker 2 29:53

So this is always something that's kind of gone through my mind when you know, because I've grown up with a religious background Enough said so, like one thing I always thought about, like you know, when I would hear my parents talk about stuff, or when I went to church with my parents and stuff would be said, and then I'd sit down and talk, like with my grandparents who lived through World War Two, and I'm thinking, well, if you think about it, like stuff, that is, you know, supposed to be like this prediction to the end of the world. I mean, wouldn't people during World War One, world War Two, even wars before those ones have gone, oh, my gosh, this is it. You know, because there were markers that you could literally say, well, yep, that's a revelation, yep, that's a revelation. And so I love what you're saying, because to me that was a huge historical event. It was the close of a chapter in time and a new beginning.

Speaker 2 30:51

And I think sometimes people, at least how I've always looked at it in my mind is you know, it's kind of that. How do you align those historical teachings and contemporary, you know religious beliefs with you know those kinds of events and realize, and that's how I've always kind of looked at it, as you know it's. You know those kinds of events and realize, and that's how I've always kind of looked at it as you know. It's, you know, a new dawn, a new beginning.

Speaker 1 31:14

You know you went right, but I mean. What I'm hearing is that it could apply to any moment, right?

Speaker 2 31:19

Yeah, exactly. It can play to any moment is what I'm trying to say. And that's where I think that's where we get that spiritual growth, because now we have to turn inwardly and work on ourselves.

Speaker 1 31:29

So is that true that the symbolic meaning of revelations is kind of a portrait of every moment, both on the macro and the micro right? It's not that, it's I don't know. Sometimes I think Nostradamus actually was onto something, because time is a construct of man. It's not linear. All these we do have access right. But is that kind of, michael, what you're saying, that it's a metaphor and it's not that it's literal, it's not going to go down this way, but it is the mechanics of how every moment operates. Like you were hinting too that we do reify information and your reality is different than mine, based on perspective and semantics and these lenses we all wear. But it seems to me the Bible and a lot of sacred texts and even philosophic traditions, and you know, thought leaders will promote this idea that we're actually tapping into the universal. We all have our own subjective experience, but there is something universal and here's what it is.

Speaker 1 32:28

Sorry if I confused you, but Virginia seemed to be hinting that it's kind of how to navigate any rebirth. It's not, and I happen to think the end of my world is the end of the world I've always seen and it's called solipsism. I don't want to get too down, far down this rabbit hole, but I just see a correlation between all world events and what I'm going through spiritually and emotionally. So I do feel like, if Revelations is right around the corner and the doom speakers are right, yeah, that makes sense. It kind of mirrors what's going on in my life. So is the end of the world, you know, the end of your world, the end of the universe? And anyway, is it true that Revelations is sort of symbolic of our ability to transform and be reborn in every moment? Or did I project that?

Speaker 3 33:15

You ask really hard questions.

Speaker 1 33:19

Did it make sense though.

Speaker 3 33:20

It did make sense. I didn't say it was not, I didn't understand it. First of all, revelation is a roadmap, and it's quite literal, into what you and I will see in our lives. It's a hero's journey. We start off. Let me just give you some snippets so you can kind of ground it to something.

Speaker 3 33:38

So the very first part is where we start the adventure. Right, it's not the first part, but when the adventure starts for our hero, it's the rider on the white horse and he's followed by three other horses. So the three horses are basically the three sins—lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, pride of life and those are the three states that each of us will exist in, or four states each of us will exist in. At some point in our lives we will be consumed by lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, pride of life. Or the white rider, overcomer of the world. Four riders set out, but only one returns. Okay, that's you on your hero's journey. When you walk into the great city, that will be your resurrection moment Solipsism I don't know much about the big words, but I will. I can guarantee.

Speaker 1 34:37

It's a new one for me. I just learned it a year ago and I love it because it's made a lot of people.

Speaker 3 34:43

I've heard the word, but I don't want to try and define it. But I will say this when you die, the world ends.

Speaker 1 34:50

I guarantee so the observer effect right. If there's no one there to observe it, it doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 34:58

So time isn't a construct of man, it's a construct of our physical nature, our physical universe. But when our physical universe comes to an end, so does time. We re-enter the one moment, the one consciousness of God. That's the resurrection that the Christians used to teach in the first century. They don't teach that anymore, but you enter a resurrection. And when you enter the resurrection, if you think about it logically, with a scientific mind, time has come to an end. Who are you looking at? You're looking at all the people that came before you and you're looking at all the people who come after you your grandchildren, your grandparents and you will walk over the line together. That's what resurrection is. We're all doing it at the exact same time. You will know them and they will know you, and that's what the resurrection really is. Now, the way Revelation speaks of the resurrection is it will last a thousand years. Paul says that we will be with the Lord for all time. But remember, time only exists while we are alive in this physical body. So in that millisecond as you're dying, in the last millisecond of your life, you will be entering a thousand years of resurrection, which I'm guessing is going to be a good deal. Sign me up. Sign me up is right.

Speaker 3 36:20

So you know, when I go back to the mythical writing style and it being the language of the soul, it's funny that when I remember seeing the podcast the name of the podcast I go oh wait, oh, this is right up my alley. I think we have something here, but that's why these myths are so old. I'm convinced that Genesis, chapters 1, 2, and 3 came before the flood or pre-flood, which makes them older than 12,000 years. I have no evidence, but these things. Here's the thing that kind of tells me that these myths are old and tell me what you think.

Speaker 3 37:02

So we read Adam and Eve and we go this is ridiculous. Who wrote this? This is so embarrassing. Why would they put this in a great book like the Bible? And you go okay, fine, that's what you think, don't you think there have been thousands and thousands of people who had the power to edit that out and they never did. And you go. You know there's something profound, but I don't know why. But there's something profound about Adam and Eve. Well, because it describes the human psyche and how we work and what happened to us and how to fix ourselves. Of course it's profound, but that story would have never made it this far if people didn't read it and their left brain went that's a silly story. But the right brain perhaps, I don't know. But maybe the right brain said you better keep it. I think it's okay. I think there's something more profound in this story than you might know.

Speaker 1 37:59

It's perfection. It's perfection in terms of encapsulating the human condition. So I would agree with I mean, I think you were hinting at oral tradition. You know, some of these stories probably do date back. You know farther back than we're willing to acknowledge through oral tradition, but it does lead me. So, if you don't mind, could you, for our viewers and even for me, tell us the significance of Adam Eve, the snake, the Garden of Eden being cast out. Could you break it down for us?

Speaker 3 38:30

I could try. You're the guy. I know but it's a long story, okay, so what?

Speaker 1 38:35

does it mean about the human condition or the spiritual journey?

Speaker 3 38:39

Okay, so we start. We start the narrative in in in Genesis chapter two. Let's stick with that. So, so you have Yahweh. Elohim is the expression of God, as I am and I become in the name you got. Yahweh is a singular name, Elohim is plural for God, so it's the concept of I am and I become within the name. That's part of the symbolism, within the symbolism that I was talking about earlier. So he creates the man, okay, about earlier. So he creates the man, okay. And then about halfway down, you read that and God determined that it wasn't good for man to be alone. That's your first clue that something else is going on here, because God called everything good. So this Yahweh Elohim, that is, the creator of the universe, has suddenly morphed into a physical creature with an ego. All right, that's Genesis, chapter 2. So what we're being told is the physical creature created man, not the creator God of the universe. He did it. The creator God of the universe created man through the physical creature, but not directly.

Speaker 1 39:47

But that almost correlates with sentience right. Creature, but not directly. So that almost correlates with sentience right, like our really developed frontal lobe made us self-aware right.

Symbolism of Genesis and Job

Speaker 3 39:56

That's where I'm going, so here's what we got. So we're told a story about where God puts the man to sleep, he takes something from him and he goes, and this is important in the myth, because he doesn't go to create or make, do or fashion. He builds, like you would find in other ancient texts where they built a city or they built an altar. God builds, or Yahweh Elohim builds the woman. The woman is an engineering project, the woman. And then the first thing the man says in the myth, when Yahweh Elohim brings the woman back, he says, at last, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. The man says this. What that means is she is a biological part of the man. She's not his wife, she's a part of his biology.

Speaker 3 40:52

Okay, what she represents is human self-awareness, because what he brought the man was a large brain, the ability to speak, and when we speak, we have to have some form of a self-identification, which is our human self-awareness. So we enter human self-awareness, we become Dominic and then we talk to Virginia hey, virginia, how are you Right? But the problem is, children can do this and they go back and forth. Spiritual masters can do this and go back and forth. We, as people, cannot do this. We enter human self-awareness and we become trapped. Okay, so what we have at the end of Genesis, chapter 2, is the perfected man with his new blueprint. We have Yahweh Elohim representing the consciousness of the man, then we have the physical man, who represents the physical experience of life, and then we have the woman. She's silent and she's virginal, which means the man has not entered her, come to know her, and she has not given him children yet. Okay, you see where the metaphor is going.

Speaker 1 42:05

I'm hanging in there because, I got the self-awareness part. Thank you, virginia, for the self-awareness Continue. I Virginia, for the self-awareness Continue. I'm waiting for the snake. I want to hear it all. And I don't want to go off in the weeds. You know I'm with you so far.

Speaker 3 42:18

Okay. So now the next scene is the beginning of chapter three, and the woman is alone, talking with the serpent. Okay, just to jump to the quick. Here, the serpent represents the unconscious brain, all right, and the woman, as self-awareness, represents the man's captured spirit in human self-awareness. So when you sit down and talk to yourself, you know hey, Dominic, what do you want to do today? I don't know. You have this conversation at the internal spaces of your mind. You're talking to the serpent.

Speaker 1 42:57

Right, all right.

Speaker 3 42:58

That's who you talk to. And if you don't believe me, just like I say in my book, just talk to yourself and see who answers. If it sounds a lot like Siri, that's your clue. So anyway. So the serpent represents the unconscious brain. The woman is self-awareness. She is program code separated in the brain. All right, so so far, so good. Just human self-awareness by itself isn't bad. What happens is, every time the man comes into the woman to become the woman, she births a child, and those childs becomes our personality, our mental illnesses, our physical debilitations. All the things that ego brings is what the children of the woman represent. So the woman is always going to be with us. She's human self-awareness. That will always be. But the children of the woman are the things that we will battle with our whole lives until we conquer all of them. And that is basically the myth. The man leaves the garden because the garden represents the perfection of his soul, as he lives in the tree of life. The tree of life is the compassionate heart that we understood as children.

Speaker 1 44:13

Sorry, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Is that the same thing?

Speaker 3 44:17

Okay, so the yeah. So it's the tree of knowledge. You're right, it's the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but it's the tree of knowledge because it's in our head.

Speaker 1 44:28

The emphasis is usually put on the tree, the apple, the snake coercing her to eat the apple, then the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. I was kind of waiting for the meaning behind all of that. I'm going to have to listen to this again. It's really dense. But you may have addressed that but that seems to be the sexier thing that people like to talk about is the temptation, the apple, what it means to be expelled once you have carnal knowledge, all of that.

Speaker 3 44:52

So, yeah, so, so the man. It's pretty interesting. So at the end of Genesis, chapter two, you have the virginal woman and the man, and they were naked and they were not ashamed. But then, as soon as the woman eats the fruit of the tree, they realize they're naked and they become ashamed. So that's what Paul would have called the law, coming in and understanding what sin was. And so that is the condition that all egoic people are in. This condition of sin, it doesn't matter how bad you think you are, everybody gets guilty about stuff that they do right, because that's the nature of human beings. So it's this the woman displays three sins at the tree of Knowledge, and those three sins are, yes, lust of the eye, lust of the flesh and pride of life. Those are the three sins.

Speaker 1 45:55

And those correlate with the horsemen in Revelations.

Speaker 3 45:59

Yes, it's always three sins. Every time a hero sets out a hero's journey, he usually has to overcome three obstacles. The book of Ruth in the Bible is a hero's journey, and the three obstacles are represented by Naomi the hero losing her husband and then her two sons die. What about Job?

Speaker 1 46:20

Is it a triad in Job as well? Die. What about Job? Is it a triad in Job as well?

Speaker 3 46:23

So Job is what I call the original myth. So we all. So the hero's journey. Myths only talk about the adventure. Remember I told you the adventure doesn't start until midnight, right, because there's all of this time. Why does the hero have to adventure? And so the original myth tells us.

Speaker 3 46:42

So Job starts off in this perfected life that's childhood, then all these, and then the evil one comes and takes all these things away and plagues the man throughout his life, right? And then, at the end of all of these plagues and these terrible things that have happened to Job, he's complaining. And then God shows Job his majesty. In other words, apotheosis has come upon Job. Job sees God in his flesh, as we all will. And so when he sees God in his flesh, he repents. He realizes I don't know anything, I was a complete fool to question any of this stuff, and then he goes back to his former state of being perfected, like he was as a child. That's all of our journeys Before you die. I promise you you will become a perfected master, maybe in death, but it's going to happen. It happens to all of us.

Speaker 1 47:40

Is there like a degree, or did we get a certificate of some kind or a crown?

Speaker 3 47:46

You know it's funny because I still complain about stuff that goes on in my life. You'd think I would know better, but I don't. And usually if I'm complaining on a Monday, by Wednesday I have a reason as to why I should have been complaining on Monday. It's like could I get this reversed? Like not complain to begin with. Is that a thing?

Speaker 1 48:05

Is that like hindsight yeah?

Speaker 3 48:09

So the symbolism of the trees. There's only one tree and it's representative of a state of mind. So one of the things we learn in the New Testament is that children are already where we want to be. Children are already in the kingdom of the heavens. So there's a scene where Jesus is sitting down minding his own business, and these women come and bring their children to be blessed by Jesus which is a good move, I would think and his disciples are blocking the way, right, they're not letting the kids get to.

Speaker 1 48:47

Jesus, why am I picturing seeing Santa Claus in a shopping mall? Right Like trying to-.

Speaker 3 48:52

I know.

Speaker 1 48:52

Go ahead.

Understanding Genesis Through Psychological Framework

Speaker 3 48:54

I'm trying not to see that either, but anyway. So Jesus, and he gets indignant, which means he got pissed, and he says he turns to the disciples and says do not hinder the little children to come unto me, because truly theirs is. And so it's important that I say these things. The word is is what we call in the Greek the present indicative active. That means right now, as we're speaking, these children are existing within the kingdom of the heavens. That's the best you can do, man. That is the best you can do in life is to be in the kingdom of the heavens. And so Jesus is just telling us, without any question, that the children are already in the kingdom of the heavens. This is where we want to go. So, yeah, so Job is the original myth. Halfway through, Job starts the hero's journey, his climb back to glory. That happens at the end.

Speaker 1 49:51

Beautiful. I love it. Yeah, job is I think we all relate to that to a degree right when we're um enduring challenges or um loss of any kind. Uh, I love what've said and I am absolutely going to have to listen to this later and let it sink in Virginia. Well, but I guess I'll ask you, virginia, did that resonate as far as your understanding of Genesis or the Garden of Eden?

Speaker 2 50:16

It did. And I'm going to throw a spin on here because, as you were talking, michael on here, because, as you were talking, michael, it really made me go back to my foundational beginning in psychology and my studies on the different theories and stuff. You know, the earlier philosophical can't even talk now sociology and then of course psychology aspects of theory in the field and when you're talking and kind of going through, like the symbolism, representation, something I never even thought, even when I was doing my studies didn't even think about. But I started thinking about freud, um, sigmund freud and his id ego and super ego and so to kind of and this might help maybe you, dominic, a little bit. So I was like, as you're kind of talking about, like Adam and Eve and their initial state there in the Eden, I was thinking like, well, it's kind of like you know our instinctual desires, like as the id.

Speaker 1 51:13

Like base drives the id.

Speaker 2 51:15

Yeah, exactly, and how it's like a representation of acting on that pure instinct and desire without even know thinking about social norms.

Speaker 1 51:23

morality, because you're not tempering it with the super right and exactly and it's because they're innocent.

Speaker 2 51:29

Obviously it's the whole concept. But then when you got, when we started going into kind of like the tree and and the forbidden fruit and stuff, I'll think of that being basically the ego word. That's the reality principle and how. That's where we develop our knowledge, self-awareness, representing us attempting to understand new situations and the consequences of our actions.

Speaker 1 51:50

Right.

Speaker 2 51:51

And then under the superego, that's basically where is our moral consciousness. So basically that's symbolizing our understanding of right and wrong.

Speaker 1 51:59

Codes yeah.

Speaker 2 52:01

Exactly the internalized moral standards of awareness of sin and stuff.

Speaker 1 52:06

And so when I was I was like, wow, you know, I never thought about psychology in these terms, but I'm like, well, that's you know, that's the spirit of my book and therefore this podcast is actually reconciling different teleological views of the world right, or different systems of belief, and saying actually they kind of are not mutually exclusive and they're actually saying the same thing. So, michael, does that fit in? Does that sound about right in terms of a Freudian view of all of this?

Speaker 3 52:33

Yeah, well, I mean, they just use different terms.

Speaker 1 52:37

But there's a triad. Notice that it eco superego.

Speaker 3 52:41

That's true. We like the triads, don't we? The way I look at it is, I took it obviously from a biblical point of view and it's simpler to understand. So you have human self-awareness. Like I said earlier, you're fine.

Speaker 3 52:55

What happens is we start to build a belief system. This is huge. So we build this belief system. The belief system, all the little beliefs that we have in our life are the children of the woman. It's the children of the woman that actually fight with the serpent. They're the ones that make our, in other words, the serpent, our unconscious brain that's going through life on its belly, because that's what it does, and then us fighting with the way that the world is being presented to us. That's the struggle.

Speaker 3 53:28

So we build these belief systems and I kind of make a little bit of fun of the human condition, the sense that we build up these beliefs. But we also carry with us the things that we are required to believe that we do not believe. Okay. So let's say you joined a group, okay, we'll just say some group, a fan club, and they say here's 10 beliefs you got to believe. And you go if you went to a meeting and said you know, I'm good with one through eight, but nine and 10, I'm a little sketch on, they would throw you out.

Speaker 1 54:05

Right, especially if it was yeah, even if they didn't believe.

Speaker 3 54:10

Yeah, Even if they didn't believe, because we all believe everything in the document, basically. So we all belong to groups and we pretend to believe things we don't believe, and that causes cognitive dissonance. That's a form of cognitive dissonance that follows us throughout our life. Cognitive dissonance is the same thing that Jesus and Paul described as spiritual fire. Okay, there's also cognitive dissonance. That happens to us because every day we change, Every time you change the belief system.

Speaker 3 54:46

The only way it can go from point A to point B is more cognitive dissonance. So imagine the belief system as a blob that you're trying to destroy. You're trying to get rid of, because the belief system is what keeps you locked into the tree of knowledge your ego. Trying to get rid of, because the belief system is what keeps you locked into the tree of knowledge your ego. So you're trying to get rid of this blob. It doesn't matter whether you move it from point A to point B, in the sense of I've become a different person. That causes pain. If you're trying to shrink it out of existence, that causes a lot of pain.

Speaker 3 55:20

So the Bible has terms. Let me see, if I remember it. In Revelation it is drinking the wine of her passionate prostitution. That is the daily cognitive dissonance that we suffer as we change the people we are or as life changes around us. But then the type of fire that you will feel when you're trying to actually destroy the ego, get rid of that blob, is what they call drinking God's anger, undiluted from the cup of his wrath. Doesn't that sound like?

Speaker 1 56:08

just beautiful. It's very poetic. Those are all very strong words.

Speaker 3 56:15

So the point is is what they're trying to describe? That describes the pain of destroying ego, Right and on this podcast.

Speaker 1 56:24

I mean, every week we talk about crucibles, right, and how all growth and transformation is the product of uh, adversity, Right and uh. But on a grander scale, there's something called the dark night of the soul. Is what you're describing also the dark night of the soul, or is that a bigger milestone?

Speaker 3 56:42

That's bigger milestone, so the best way I would describe that. So in Paul's letter to the Ephesians we're really getting to the Bible stuff, but I'm trying to keep it as secular as I can. But this is about how nothing is going to happen until what he calls the apostasia. The apostasia is when you finally separate internally from your ego and yourself. And you see that separation, you see that that is program code running in your head and that's not who you are. That's a huge—and then he says only when that happens can the day of the Lord come.

Speaker 1 57:25

The day of the Lord is enlightenment, and so first you have to— so that's the big rebirth, that's the big right. Chrysalis and rebirth is the time of the soul.

Speaker 3 57:36

So what they call that in Revelation which is interesting is actually the second death. So the first death is when you're a child, and the death of Christ the death of your spiritual perfection as you enter egoic, your egoic nature. So they call that the first death. The second death is the death of ego and that's why in Revelation it says that those who go through this process before death will not suffer the second death. That's what that means.

Exploring Mythology and Spiritual Traditions

Speaker 2 58:07

To me that ties you know and I know, dominic, you and I have mentioned this before the Carl Young concept of the shadow and how it symbolizes the hidden and often darker aspects of our personality. And then of course, we have to confront that and integrate it for our own personal growth.

Speaker 1 58:26

Yep, yeah, I guess one. Sorry, go ahead, I have some questions. I mean, we're hinting at some of the pre the questions I formulated in advance and I always want to take the opportunity to get to them. Go ahead, and Michael, and then I'll jump to my rote question that I have written down.

Speaker 3 58:41

I was going to say, ask me that rote question.

Speaker 1 58:48

Oh well, I mean it's all interrelated, but what I'm noticing is we're talking about Freudian terms, Jungian terms, popularized terms like archetype, and I guess I just I've already got my answer. It seems like you're with me that maybe even you know oral tradition around the campfire, maybe even pre-language. A lot of our stories have followed us right as a race in our dialectic and they became the myths and legends that became the religions. It's all like interconnected in my world.

Speaker 1 59:16

So one of my questions was you know, I find the Greek myths to be pretty impeccable, right, I find the Greek myths to be pretty impeccable, right, not in isolation, but when you look at the canon of Greek myths you know, as a whole they seem to be perfectly right, a perfect encapsulation of the human condition. So one of the questions I had was do you see I mean you were hinting that oral tradition, like about Abraham, actually survived for many centuries and became right, finally found its way into scripture. But is there anything from sort of the classical Greek canon that made its way into the Judeo-Christian tradition? Does that make sense? Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 59:58

I really don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 3 1:00:02

Wow, we should do it on the another show Greek myths predate the anything Judeo-Christian.

Speaker 1 1:00:09

So what made its way into?

Speaker 3 1:00:10

you know what I mean the Western European Judeo-Christian tradition so all the myths have the same origin story they all came from Sumer. So actually the oldest creation story in the world is Genesis, because it predates the oldest one we have from Sumeria, the Babylonian time, by 400 years. That's my contention.

Speaker 1 1:00:30

That's not what— and were those passed on orally for the most part?

Speaker 3 1:00:34

No, I think Abraham had a written tradition. I think—because what we have in the Old Testament we have many Sumerian and Akkadian words that have been transferred. That sounds like something that would have been done in the written form as opposed to the oral form. I'm sure some of the stories were carried through the oral tradition, but I think a lot of what Abraham had was written. So the myths that you find in Greece came from Samaria.

Speaker 1 1:01:03

They were just changed, you know. I mean, they're just variations on a theme. Right, that's what I love. I thrive on finding the common ground between a lot of these again, philosophic traditions or spiritual traditions. So that's on. You know, that's distasteful to some, but I love finding the common ground and therefore the universal. So in that spirit, I do have a two-parter for you, can I?

Speaker 3 1:01:29

say something about the Greek myths before we go, please. Yeah, I mean, what I wanted to point out was what's different, I think, in the Genesis myths is they're literally intact. I found some mistakes and some additions that they had done over time in the Genesis myth, but you could see the original writing, what was originally there. This is interesting. So the story of one of the Greek myths I like is the story of Demeter and Persephone, and so Persephone is a child. It's important to understand that she's an innocent child and she was out one day picking flowers in a field and the god, hades, comes down, swoops down, swoops her up into his chariot and takes her down to Hades, and so this is the death of Christ in childhood. That's what this originally meant, but the Greeks had it for so long they lost the understanding of what it was supposed to be, and so they ended up changing it. It became a story about the seasons, and now winter and summer and whatnot. But really this is the exact same story that you find in Genesis, chapter 3.

Speaker 3 1:02:43

In Genesis, chapter 3, the woman is referred to by the narrator and God as a feminine entity, but she refers to herself and the serpent refers to her as a masculine entity. The reason is is the serpent and the woman are physical creations. The woman is physical human self-awareness is the serpent and the woman are physical creations. The woman is physical human self-awareness and the serpent is the unconscious brain. So since they're both physical creations, in Hebrew physical things of man's physical aspect is masculine and man's spiritual aspect and his soul are feminine. So when God refers to the woman, or the narrator refers to the woman, she's referred to as feminine because it's the consciousness of the man that they're speaking to. And so you have this female child, persephone, which represents the Christ spirit and innocence, taken away in childhood and returned in adulthood. Okay, what was your question?

Speaker 1 1:03:46

I like that because you're tracing them all back to Sumerian right tradition and how they just became two different animals. But you also said in there somewhere you know it became about the seasons when initially it wasn't. I've noticed too that it depends on the cultural, the culture looking at it and the time period. Right, with the myth of Icarus. So that applies to Persephone as well, right, if, if we're in the middle ages and we're all about squelching our humanity right and beating, flogging ourselves, you're going to interpret, I use I just wrote an Icarus right, a variation on Icarus, and I did my research. But I think you know, if you look again during the dark ages, when it was all about fire and brimstone and it wasn't about our humanism, it was about being faulted creatures, oh, it's about flying the middle path between heaven and earth. Don't, don't get any ideas. Don't fly too high, Don't fly too low. Right, but in another time period it meant something very different.

Speaker 1 1:04:42

So, yeah, but I see the common thread between Persephone, was it? Yeah, and actually the Garden of Eden a little bit too, maybe I'm projecting on that, but anyway, this is all related to, yes, the two-parter that I've got for you, which you hinted a little bit earlier. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but kind of a left, right brain, take on. People want to dismiss. Did Jonah really sit in the stomach of a whale? That's ridiculous. Instead of embracing the metaphorical value which would be, I guess, more right brain right. Do you remember hinting at that, that people kind of reject or dismiss things because it's not linear and logical?

Speaker 3 1:05:21

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:05:22

Okay, I promise you you said it. But so that, to me, ties in a little bit to one of my questions. I do have some people in my life that are really invested, for whatever reason, really invested in reconciling history with scripture. You know, I lived in Jerusalem for a while. I was fascinated with do you know what I mean? Like wow, when Constantine and Helena commemorated these spaces, did they really just fudge it and make it kind of sexier, or is this actually where it all went down? I came to the conclusion oral history doesn't really distort. As we were saying a while ago, in 300 years, we don't question where the Alamo took place. So I feel like you know I I did get sucked into that uh, vicious cycle of trying to reconcile history with scripture. Is there any value to that, or do you know what I mean? Should we just take it as parable and myth and stop trying to reconcile it with history? That's the first part of the question.

Speaker 3 1:06:21

It's. It's the only history I really deal with was did Abraham bring Genesis with him out of Samaria? I really, because so that leads to understanding what the name of God is and what God told Moses his name was, and how that relates to the very first stories in Genesis I already talked about. I Am and I Become, and that's the name that God gave to Moses and it connects Moses to Genesis. In other words, the name that God's giving Moses in 1200 BC is the name that we find in Genesis from 2000 BC from Abraham. Other than that, I mean, you know, did Paul shipwreck on? I don't know, I think it was Malta, the island of Malta, and it doesn't change anything for me whether he did or didn't.

Speaker 1 1:07:19

Well, even the Greek myth it's tempting to with, you know, the Trojan Wars, or like the Mycenaean invasion, or even the I forget the volcano that kind of did in the no, there was another one that was a major, it just changed everything in the Aegean, you know. But you wonder what? You know what is strict mythology, you know? Did she really launch a thousand ships? But it's, it's, I don't know. It's tempting to go down that road. I don't really.

Speaker 1 1:07:50

I look at the metaphorical and, as we were saying, symbolic value of it and I'm not that invested in reconciling it. But the part two is kind of related and maybe it is again ego wanting to resolve this cognitive dissonance. But some are pretty invested too, and our podcast is kind of meant to do this in a good way, reconciling scripture with things like quantum mechanics. Not scripture but spiritual tenets with quantum mechanics, cell biology, epigenetics, scientific thought forms. So in other words, you know, I do believe a lot of the divisiveness that we can't shut up about in this moment is imaginary, right? There's these binaries we create that actually aren't mutually exclusive on further examination. So that is, if we have an agenda, it's kind of that like actually we might be saying the same thing using different semantics, right, different perspective. So on that front, are you invested at all or do you see any value in reconciling scripture with science? In my world is an imaginary divide. I call it the grand illusion.

Speaker 3 1:08:56

So I just started a YouTube channel and a Rumble channel putting little videos out based on my book, and I think the first one I put out was Religion and Science. Finally, agree, it's a three minute video. You should definitely look it up, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3 1:09:11

Basically, what I do is I show how the first description of quantum physics is in Genesis, chapter one. It literally so. So quantum physics is interesting. They talk about the wave, and the wave is what they call a wave-particle duality. And so it's neither it's not a wave, it's not a particle until an observer observes the end part where it breaks down into a particle. So in Genesis, God said I am light and he became light. And then God separates the darkness from the light. Remember I told you the darkness.

Speaker 3 1:09:54

The darkness is the physical reality. God is not part of the physical reality. Once it breaks down into a particle, it's something else. So God is, I am, which is the light, and I become, which is the particle that becomes. Wow, that's great, all right. So basically, yeah. So quantum physics was described in two verses in Genesis, chapter one. Then I put in the video. I say that's what real genius looks like.

Speaker 1 1:10:20

I love it. Wow Well, or just a direct line. We're wired for the truth, right, but it just takes different forms and sometimes it comes out figuratively, which is the like that's kind of what I was hinting at earlier like we can address the ineffable through poetry, but maybe not with empirical means. So I think we're on the same page. That's really beautiful. I will check out that video and can you put that.

Speaker 3 1:10:48

Can we put that link in our episode description? Yes, I will. I'll send you an email as soon as we hang up here.

Speaker 1 1:10:52

Okay and on, before I forget, on a related note, I'm sure you've read the gospel of Judah. Judas, sorry Judas.

Speaker 3 1:11:06

You know, I don't, I haven't read much of the extracurricular gosp and I don't know.

Speaker 1 1:11:24

I finally found it online and I thought, oh, thank God for the interwebs, because I can actually read the gospel of Judas. And it wasn't what I thought. Now, granted, there are missing chunks and they kind of fill in the gaps, but if you believe it and language is not an exact science, right, there's a lot of room for cultural relativity. But I found it very compared to at least certain versions of the Bible that I've read, just a kind of almost contemporary language and very metaphysical I'll leave it at that Similar to your take on Genesis.

Speaker 3 1:12:01

Well, you know, with the extracurricular gospels, you can't say they're wrong or you can't say they're right. We just don't know about these things. They, you know, a bunch of people, got together. They voted on the ones that they put in. You know the Matthew, mark, luke and John. They're fine. I mean, they're fine. There's a lot of mistakes in all four of them.

Speaker 1 1:12:23

Well, I've heard tell me, if this is true, like, of course, each one of them wrote it for a given readership, either a pagan readership or a Jewish one, and so I give them credit for actually allowing for those discrepancies, you know.

Speaker 3 1:12:36

Oh yeah, I mean yeah. So with Matthew you have the long the lineage, jesus's lineage, going all the way back, you know, and whatnot. And that was obviously for a Jewish audience, you know where. The Gospel of Mark. I like the Gospel of Mark because it's just, it's short and to the point. All right, here's what happened.

Speaker 1 1:12:54

He did this, this and this Just the facts, man Just the facts, you know.

Speaker 3 1:12:58

The interesting thing about the Gospel of Mark, though, is that all that stuff about the resurrection, that wasn't in the original. The original ended when the two women went to the tomb and found it empty, and they left telling no one. So they just walked away and didn't tell anybody. That was the end of the original Gospel of Mark.

Speaker 1 1:13:17

When was the rest added? Out of curiosity.

Speaker 3 1:13:20

Okay. So the New Testament's interesting If you wanted to see it in 3D. If you take the four Gospels and lay them out next to each other, you'd have part of Mark and then you'd have Matthew. But then, as time goes on, you have additions being inserted into these gospels, into these narratives. That's kind of what I saw in the Old Testament too. For example, in Genesis, chapter 1, day 5 was a complete. They added it later. Does not fit with anything else in the narrative, day 5.

Symbolism in Biblical Stories

Speaker 1 1:14:02

But what does that say to you? I mean, that's what I was hinting at earlier. There's a lot of speculation about the agenda, the early church, the power structures. What does that say to you?

Speaker 3 1:14:12

Oh well, basically these people, I suspect that day five was added shortly after it was either added with Moses or shortly afterwards, because day five is when they create the birds and fishes. But so they must have thought, based on the textual narrative, that there were no birds and fishes created and they said well, we got to have birds and fishes, Oops, but in day six they had an editor. Oh yeah, well, this goes on all the time. Is this correct?

Speaker 1 1:14:44

Whatever, so I think I think people started to examine, like we're saying, the actual function of storytelling and what makes something resonate with the human condition and what doesn't. Let's perfect this thing, let's make it sexy, you know.

Speaker 3 1:14:59

Well, that's why the hero's journey is is so attractive to us as a story outline because it is our story. It's our very, very human story. It's the story of the human soul.

Speaker 1 1:15:11

We recognize— it's not just relatable, it's the truth. I mean, that's my opinion, you know. There's no denying it.

Speaker 3 1:15:17

It's like it's written on our DNA. Somehow we know, like I remember watching Star Wars it was a Star, a star wars the first time and you know, just somehow knowing that that this was our journey, somehow knowing that these are the steps that were, that that we all must pass through to be successful, or whatever.

Speaker 1 1:15:36

But yeah, it resonates because we're wired for it. We, that's our line to the truth. Um, anyway, I of course we're gonna have you on for part two because we're going down some alleys here, but there's our line to the truth. Anyway, of course we're going to have you on for part two because we're going down some alleys here. But there's so much to cover and thank you for everything you've said. I'm going to listen to this later, maybe to slowly bring it to a close, if I could be selfish, because, again, there's so many parables we can analyze and you've given us some really distinct examples. Job is pretty, you know what I mean. It's most people know the story of Job, so I think that was awesome. Genesis in general, the garden of Eden Thank you for indulging me on those.

Speaker 1 1:16:11

I have a personal one that I want to know about, because I haven't taken the time to investigate much, and I'll start by telling a quick story. When I was living in Jerusalem, uh, my Italian grandmother would have murdered me and she's still alive, by the way at a hundred and something. But I was like oh, my God, I got to, got to do the Vio Dolorosa or she's going to kill me. So I did the walk of Christ and like, oh, and here's where, you know, veronica washed his feet, here's where he stumbled with the cross. And I was like, oh my God, my grandmother would love this. But you know, I was seeing a very objectively equal opportunity tradition basher, you know.

Speaker 1 1:16:48

But at one point I got to the prison cell where Christ and Barabbas were supposedly held together. Right, if you believe Constantine and Helena and I'm not that invested, I don't really care but I did go down there. The streets were just flooded with right missionaries and truth seekers and but nobody, and I thought it was very symbolic, nobody would go the depths. I was alone in that prison chamber. I meditated, yes, nobody went down there. Isn't that weird? Sounds like a gift from God.

Speaker 1 1:17:20

It was amazing. I did meditate and I tried to get in touch and it was, I won't say I came out transformed. It wasn't huge, but I did, and what I walked away with is like God. That means something that nobody would go the depths. And you know that's me as a writer, just reading into it. But all I know is, uh, I felt like Lazarus and I and that myth really resonates with me. And that myth really resonates with me, I think. I then saw a mural of the Lazarus story on a chapel wall a little later in the day, so I thought of him in that chamber. Then I see this right fresco, or whatever you call it in Jerusalem and I know there's a couple Lazarai right Is that a word Lazarai, in the Bible there's a couple.

Speaker 1 1:18:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know the one I'm talking about right, where christ shows up a little too late and he's, he's died yes, that's the gospel of john okay. Is there a symbolic meaning to lazarus? I'm just because I've never investigated, but I know I resonate with it well, okay, so the problem with that?

Speaker 3 1:18:21

that's a story that's relayed in the Gospel of John. That's one of the ones I don't like, but so it's not a parable. Now, if it was a parable that Jesus had, then I could tell you what the symbolism is, because he deliberately told many myths with symbolism.

Speaker 1 1:18:39

So, since Lazarus is just a story and it, it could have happened I'm not saying it didn't, but the symbolism is whatever you want it to be, at that point, right, it seems like it's there to just illustrate that part portion of his life where he was being called upon right and kind of pulled right and left to uh, I don't know right Like break bread and perform miracles and heal people, right? Is it just there to bolster kind of that part of his ministry, Christ?

Speaker 3 1:19:11

The story of Lazarus. Yeah, why is it there, you know? So you were talking about the Greeks having an influence on the New Testament. If the greatest influence of Hellenistic culture on the New Testament was probably the Gospel of John, it's a very formulaic gospel. So it has seven miracles, just seven, and one of them is Lazarus being raised from the dead. So it does—it probably— I bet you, if we broke down the Gospel of John, we'd find out that the seven miracles relate somehow to the seven chakras and to the seven. What are they called? The sacraments of the Catholic?

Speaker 1 1:19:56

Church Seven is almost as popular as three, isn't it?

Speaker 3 1:20:02

It's the second most popular number in the Bible.

Speaker 2 1:20:05

Wow, can I throw another thought out too about Lazarus, because you know, obviously everybody knows about, you know him being, you know, resurrected by Christ.

Speaker 1 1:20:14

you know the way the story goes, so beautiful.

Speaker 2 1:20:17

Could it be, maybe, like it's demonstrating the power of faith and be a metaphor for, like, maybe, spiritual awakening and transformation? Like I said, it can be anything you want, really Okay.

Speaker 1 1:20:31

And then I won't share mine, but it's, I just find it really beautiful and poetic. But maybe is anyone interested in Noah. Can we go down that road, virginia?

Speaker 3 1:20:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:20:41

Well, I know it's, it's in Genesis, right, but you know that movie came out with Russell Crowe and I just was. It rocked my world and I didn't know about the Watchers or any of that. So I know we covered Genesis, but is there more to talk about with the symbolism of the flood and the whole Noah story? Could you break that one down for us, or is that too much?

Speaker 3 1:21:02

That is beyond my expertise. I, I, I, you know what. I'll tell you a funny story. So I, I, when I read these stories, I obviously have a gift to, to, to uh understand the symbolic language. It's been 4 000 years and no one has, no one's, been able to interpret these myths.

Speaker 1 1:21:21

So I guess I have a gift but anyway, and it resonates, everything you've said absolutely resonates. I don't think you're alone. You need to meet my nephew. I think you're on the same path. Anyway, go on.

Speaker 3 1:21:30

Yeah, well, how about have on the next show with me? We'll just, we'll just go at it.

Speaker 3 1:21:34

But anyway, the, the, the. The point is is, so I did these three and it's really, uh, you know, Dominic, you're a writer, you understand, when you get into that writing mode, the last thing you want is to have someone interrupt you. You know, you're kind of in a Zen, You're somewhere else. When I read these myths, that's kind of what happens. I go off someplace. And so, and I really enjoyed doing it and I thought, well, is the whole Bible like that? And I started reading Genesis chapter four with Cain and Abel. And I started reading Genesis chapter 4 with Cain and Abel Immediately closed and shut and I went it's all like this.

Speaker 3 1:22:12

I'll go crazy if I read the whole Old Testament.

Speaker 3 1:22:15

So, I didn't go any further than Genesis 1, 2, and 3. But just to give you an idea, cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, abel represents the Christ, cain represents the ego and of course the ego dominates the Christ in life. So that's where that metaphor goes right. So I don't. The story of Noah. The only part I took out from the story of Noah was at the end of my book. I trying to explain what happened, why God needed to destroy the world. And so in the story of Noah I don't know this, you may hang up on me if I get halfway through this, but we'll see what happens In the story of Noah it says that the people have become all evil all the time and their thoughts were all evil.

Speaker 1 1:23:06

And some versions say the word wicked right Wicked.

Speaker 3 1:23:09

It's the same word. It's the same.

Speaker 1 1:23:11

But I don't. None of them, neither of those, resonate with me. What is evil exactly? So, anyway, go on.

Speaker 3 1:23:17

Well, it's egoic. What they're describing is egoic behavior, but Noah.

Speaker 1 1:23:22

Disconnection, disconnection from source, from God.

The Power of Meditation and Silence

Speaker 3 1:23:30

Yes, yes, and becoming just like we are, but anyway so. And Noah was righteous before God, which made him worth saving. So that's the lesson from there. When you go to the myth of the Atrahasis, from the Akkadians I think it was Akkadian it turns out that the gods wanted to do away with mankind because they had become too noisy, noisy. Okay, so we connect those two myths Righteousness is the opposite of egoic and it's also the opposite of noisy, in other words. So the noisiness was coming from what I call unstable program code running in the heads of men.

Speaker 3 1:24:13

So, when we live our lives. And I'm sitting here and I'm worried about something in my life, but I'm supposed to be talking to you, but I'm thinking about something else. I'm putting all this discordant energy into the atmosphere. Right, you can feel it, even though I pretend you can't. You know darn well you can when you're sitting with someone who's troubled. Right, that's what the noise is. It's psychic noise and the gods can hear it and that's why they wanted to do away with mankind in the myth. But the point is, is they're trying to do away with man's egoic nature?

Speaker 1 1:24:47

Right. Do you know Eckhart Tolle? Are you a fan of Eckhart Tolle?

Speaker 3 1:24:50

Yeah, I like Eckhart.

Speaker 1 1:24:51

Tolle, he's good. Well, that's largely what he talks about. I mean, meditation is there to quiet the mental chatter right, which automatically aligns you with your source. So I agree with that a hundred percent. But it takes so many forms. You know, we all, or some of us, meditate regularly to quiet that mental chatter and keep a cleaner mind right. But you can't quiet a leaf blower. So if you live in my neighbor, I mean I've been saying jokingly lately, like the minute I'm president, I'm doing away with above ground power lines.

Speaker 1 1:25:21

That's visual pollution, I'm going to do away. You heard me say that the other day, right With Greg Spelenka, virginia. I was saying I'm not kidding. Actually, noise pollution creates chronic anxiety, it creates PTSD. And then I jokingly said you know, when I'm president and I try to enforce that, I'm just predicting. People say, oh, but we have bigger problems, we've got wars. And I said in all seriousness I would actually make the case that we might have fewer wars if there was less aggression and less addiction to adrenaline and cortisol. And I'm going to start with the noise pollution.

Speaker 3 1:25:56

Why not? Why not? I mean noise pollution, emf pollution, you name it, you know.

Speaker 1 1:26:02

But it's just funny. You chose. I did not know that, in addition to wicked and evil, that it was the noise, but it makes perfect sense. It's the mental chatter, right, which is a distortion of ego. It's ego run amok is what I would say. But it's just funny, the word noise because every day I complain about leaf blowers I'm like can they just pick a day? Please like, limit the days. There's leaf blowers everywhere around my apartment. I'm ready to move out to the sticks and I'm only 56. I'm ready to retire and move out, yeah.

Speaker 3 1:26:34

That's what I did. We moved out to the sticks, and so it's a little better out here, you know. But it's interesting because, if you think about it, if you think of the gods, they weren't the celestial gods, they were physical gods, they were creatures like us, only more advanced. They would probably have a greater capacity to hear that mental chatter in other people or other beings, right? Right it would make sense, they're not habituated to it right.

Speaker 2 1:27:02

Yeah, and I was just saying to piggyback off something that you said earlier, michael, when you were talking about, um, you know how we've got the duality in ourself between the physical and the spiritual aspect of of being two people. Um, that noise that you're speaking about, dominic, I mean, if you think about it, that helps us basically become disconnected, where you can't hear that inner voice because you've got all the chatter around from everywhere else, you can't tune out the noise, literally.

Speaker 2 1:27:29

Yeah, which is why, you know, I know you and I both love to meditate and like the silence because it allows us to go deeper in and, to you know, really hear beyond just what is next to us.

Speaker 1 1:27:45

Well, that's what Eckhart Tolle is saying. It's the power of now, the power of silence. But I mean artists, creatives, I mean it's a kind of a romantic notion, but letters to a young poet very much says all true inspiration comes from solitude. But you could replace solitude with stillness, silence right.

Speaker 3 1:28:06

Oh yeah, you know what? It's funny late in life I've been meditating. I took a. Believe it or not, I took a meditation course when I was 18. That was a long time ago, but I paid money, yeah. But anyway, it took me a long time to realize that I get up in the morning and I do my meditation, and it's a struggle. By the end of 20, 30 minutes I'm done and I mean it's just hard for me to maintain that focus.

Speaker 1 1:28:34

No, we all. You hear that all the time. I can't get there, I can't get there and and I'm just repeating what I've heard, which is there, if you have, it's about being fixed on outcome right, which is ego. We all think something mystical and magical is going to happen. It's actually the act of just doing it, whether you get there or not. You know.

Speaker 2 1:28:54

Well, that ties, I would say that ties right into symbolism, when you, you know with the Bible, where they always talk about, you know, prayer in the Bible. I mean, isn't that what basically meditation is?

Speaker 1 1:29:06

I love this definition. Have you ever heard this one, that most people, when they pray, they're asking for something? When you meditate, you're listening?

Speaker 2 1:29:15

Right. But if you do it the way that it actually says there, you know it's never about asking for something.

Speaker 1 1:29:21

If you actually look at how it's said in the bible, it's oh yeah, exactly yeah, it's become that it's a wish list, like god is not santa claus are you sure? That came up earlier too in the mall remember that's why I said that well well, you know, it's interesting when you read the actual words.

Speaker 3 1:29:41

What, what jesus and paul are both telling us to do when it comes to prayer, is that? No, you don't just ask, you become. You become that which you're asking for. And it's not a mystery. This is what Jesus said. If you believe he kept saying you must believe. You cannot have doubt. Doubt comes from the ego and the brain, and belief is the active process of a conscious mind, and so it's this believing that the early Christians were doing. This is a whole other topic. This will be our third podcast.

Speaker 1 1:30:14

But that's what we're here to do, is kind of connect dots. I would say the genie archetype is exactly that too Ask and you shall receive. It's the mechanics of manifestation, right? You ask and you have faith. The's the mechanics of manifestation, right? You ask and you have faith. The universe is abundant, there is no scarcity. Yeah, I love the genie archetype.

Speaker 2 1:30:33

Exactly, and it's like affirmations to you know, people who wake up every morning and have that saying you know whatever if they change it, you know every day or whatever. But having that affirmation because I know when I meditate, that's what I do I usually have something in front of me that I want to concentrate on as something I want to put out into the world which is becoming, which is, you know, transforming into something more than what I was the day before myself.

Speaker 3 1:30:56

Exactly, and that's the essence of prayer is to believe yourself into the new man, to become something that you were not yesterday, that you will be tomorrow and, if you believe it, it's a process that develops over time. But it's funny, because after a while, believing isn't that hard to do, when in the beginning it seemed like it was real difficult. But it's just a matter of focusing your mind and, like you said, virginia, it's something you do every day.

Speaker 1 1:31:27

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was saying about meditation. The real value is in just doing it, whether you feel you've arrived at that mystical place or not. But I think they do. And you know we will be burned at the stake by certain fundamentalists. Right for saying this, but I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 1:31:42

In my world artists have a little leg up, because when you're in the creative process and you have quieted that mental chatter and there's nothing but I think they're called beta waves flowing you're in the zone, you're aligned right and so we have that gift. We may not need to chant if we're a singer right, I'm not kidding, and I'm a plain air painter If I lose myself in the creative process. That is my church, that is my meditation, but I think for people that don't have a craft like that, that's a gift. You carve out those opportunities, right. So I would say I'm agreeing with you, virginia, that affirmations and um, what's the other one, like mantras, are one thing, but I think that chanting, just by saying Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, or whatever it is, you're still in the mind because you can't hold linear chatter right at the same moment. So anyway, I just think they all serve the same purpose, but people do not like hearing that.

Speaker 3 1:32:45

Fundamentalists don't want to hear that because we are definitely going to hell in a handbasket. You know, there's so many different viewpoints out there. I had to get over that really quick because I was on a podcast one time talking to a super nice fellow. He was a Lutheran pastor and I was telling him about the symbolism of the Bible and of course he's very nice. He interjects and goes. Well, of course you know the Lutherans had a major split back in 1970 over whether there is symbolism in the Bible or not and I looked at him. I said let me guess you're with the ones that left right. He goes yeah, I says we won't talk about too much on symbolism today.

Speaker 1 1:33:20

Then I remember the first time I heard that it could be taken as a parable, you know, and Jonah in the whales was the prime example. But I learned early on, because I have a Cuban brother-in-law that's obviously Catholic, and he said, oh, our church 100% taught us that way. And I wow, I had no idea because I had gone to pretty much every denomination of Protestantism, even though my dad's 100% Italian. I don't know how that happened. I did it socially, with friends, you know, right, and yeah, it was meant to be taken literally and I found that really beautiful and redeeming that many Catholic traditions and I'm not an expert in any of this, but right, actually teach it that way from day one.

Speaker 3 1:34:03

Yeah, and it's funny because the Bible completely contradicts that viewpoint. I mean, in the Psalms it says that when the Messiah comes, he will only teach in parables and he will not teach otherwise. And he will teach great lessons that were unknown before time began, right, but the people will not understand it because it's in parables. Just like he said, it's not for them to know the kingdom of the heavens, but it is for you. And he was talking to them. This is his disciples. They were all knuckleheads, they didn't know anything. He says, but it's for you to know the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens. I'm thinking, well, they don't know it now, and then later on you find out that they all have this Passover event and then they did know the secrets. So he was talking to them in a timeframe before they had the secrets, as if they already had them.

Connecting With God in the Moment

Speaker 1 1:34:55

Well, I guess and again we are steering toward a close, but it kind of, again, I'm going to be crucified but I do think our artists and our creatives can be, if not visionaries, actual prophets, because they are disseminating, they're taking concepts and bringing them into the perceptual realm for others. Do you believe that certain and again Time Magazine would say oh, our prophets have a very distinct brain chemistry that connects, dots, sees, interconnectivity, experiences, numinous experiences. They've got it all figured out in terms of an empirical worldview. What makes a prophet, what makes a Messiah? Is it a, you know, a unique mindset or brain chemistry? Or is it just Christ? Was he the only one? What about Buddha? What about Muhammad?

Speaker 3 1:35:42

You know, no, there's plenty of them. Messiah just means anointed and Christos means anointed.

Speaker 1 1:35:50

But what about conduits Like when do we know a snake oil salesman from somebody? That's actually a conduit for wisdom.

Speaker 3 1:35:57

Someone trying to sell you a different version of the hero's journey when you already know what it is. It just doesn't resonate in other words yeah, I mean you, just you, you totally understand something. And then something comes across as I mean when I, when I hear stories from people who are in cults, I mean I go, when did you start to think things were going off the rails? I mean here's my.

Speaker 1 1:36:21

I've read the the. The distinction that makes a cult is of course, they encourage you to cut ties with friends and family, but the line I draw is like when they're fucking everyone, everyone in the cult, the women, the children, the men. Isn't that a good indicator?

Speaker 3 1:36:40

Yeah, shouldn't you know? I heard a testimony from some girl and she was in a cult and her mother was like one of the wives and uh and uh and like something happened to the number one wife and her mother had been like number four or five she got a promotion.

Speaker 3 1:37:00

She was expecting one and she didn't. And she didn't get it. And another lady got the promotion to number one wife and the prophet he was a head dude told the mom that she just she wasn't made of the right stuff. And then the little girl goes, and that night we were walking 40 miles.

Speaker 1 1:37:21

We were out. That's awesome. Whatever it takes, right. I love that. That was the motivation.

Speaker 3 1:37:27

Finally wake up to figure what your situation is. But yeah, you were talking about something earlier. I wanted to finish up. We were talking about meditation. What I wanted to say about it was it was interesting is that it dawned on me in the past couple of years that the greatest value of meditation for me is when I go out on my afternoon walks with my dogs. I realize that I don't think.

Speaker 3 1:37:55

I just I just walk and I observe, I walk through the woods in the field and I go, I'm doing a walking meditation and I didn't even realize it.

Speaker 1 1:38:05

Exactly, yeah, but that's what I'm saying. It takes many forms and actually I don't want to say too much, but the family member I mentioned that I hope is going to come on has really had a learning curve. He's more than ever open to like we're seeing the parabolic meaning of scripture. But you know, in his youth he wrote a whole paper about how everything that doesn't glorify God is folly and I thought well, who gets to decide what glorifies God?

Speaker 1 1:38:30

I've devoted my life to artistry and storytelling because to me that is my connection to divinity and it's what I'm here for. You're going to discount my entire existence, really. So I've spent my entire adult life saying you know what, just while doing the dishes, if you stare at the window and see the play of light on the trunk of a tree and that dapple of light is dancing around and you're transported and, like you're saying, there's no linear thought, there's no chatter, that's divine. So I am a bit like you're saying. I'm a big fan of just being in the moment, experiencing the beauty all around me, and that is divinity on earth, and that is, and that is what we would call glorifying God too, I agree.

Speaker 1 1:39:11

That's what I'm saying. Like who gets to decide how insulting that you're going to tell me? What I've devoted my life to is less divine than sitting in a church and smelling some woman's hairspray, you know?

Speaker 3 1:39:21

sitting in a pew.

Speaker 1 1:39:22

So all I'm going to say is, like I, actually, when I'm president again, the first holiday I'm going to create is leave your phone at home day.

Speaker 3 1:39:33

And it's going to be twice a month. Hey, if you don't mind, I want to interject something. You've mentioned it three times. I think about what you do and, and, and, glorifying God and whatnot, and, and I know you're familiar with the topic called flow yeah, the zone the zone and the flow.

Speaker 3 1:39:48

They both mean the same thing. Flow was something that was I I can't pronounce the guy's name is professor up in, I think, washington state, but the point is is what flow is? Is the lack of egoic processing. Do you do either of you? Play sports?

Speaker 3 1:40:04

I was a track runner and I used to get into what was called the runner's high absolutely okay so so, uh, I'm I'm not a professional athlete, but I mean in the in the times when I was, would play tennis and I would hit that ball and I knew exactly where it was going to go before I ever hit it and and there was no thought of I'm going to flub it, I can't do it, I have doubts. There was no, it was just totally being in the moment.

Speaker 1 1:40:31

Your subconscious knows how to get it in the basket. Do you know what I mean? It knows the mechanics of how to do it. You just got to get mind and ego out of the way.

Speaker 3 1:40:39

You got to get your ego out of the way, and so the point I'm trying to make is that that is what flow is, and when you're in flow whether you're an athlete or a musician or an artist or a writer you are direct connection, contact with God. That's where God is, is in the moment, in the flow, and so if you're experiencing this flow moment, the zone moment, what Eckhart Tolle calls the now moment, that's the only way you can connect with God. You got two minutes.

Speaker 1 1:41:13

Yes, I want to say thank you for saying that that was really beautiful and I probably should have said you know, it takes many forms. That was kind of my whole point. Like athletes, they're doing it. We're all doing it in our own way. Let's not limit, you know, the form that the flow state takes, or the alignment takes. It can. It looks different on different people. And yes, you have one more. I was going to close by saying what else would you love to impart to our listeners and maybe do a plug of the book what? What is it you'd like to talk about?

Speaker 3 1:41:41

Um, let me just try. Let me just try and explain something here, all right, so every moment you live is think of it as a stepping stone in your life. So you step on the stone and it lights up. That's the moment you're living in, the moment from the past is that path? It's a memory. It's not lit up. You can't experience a past moment again in reality, but you're experiencing this moment, the stepping stone you're stepping on and it's lit up. And then you go to the next stone and it's lit up as you pass through these moments in our lives.

Speaker 3 1:42:20

Okay, when a person dies one of the most often things when people have near-death experience they come back they say, oh, I saw my life flash before my eyes. That's not something the human brain is capable of. That's a spiritual experience you're having where you see your whole life. What you're actually seeing is all those stepping stones light up at one time. When you die and you enter the resurrection, you're going to a place where you understand one stepping stone of your life at a time, to all the stepping stones of your life, to everyone's stepping stones. Okay, so that's where you have to go.

Speaker 1 1:43:01

That's great. That's where you have to go.

Speaker 3 1:43:02

yeah, that's great that's where you have to go. So here's the thing when you're stepping on these stones and you're thinking about so, you've gone somewhere else in your head because the tree of knowledge. What's happening is that the only entity in the universe that cannot experience these moments in our lives is god, because God is who is lighting up every stepping stone out there. All right, Every stepping stone is lit up all the time by God. This is the light and the particle, all right. And so when you connect into the moment, when you connect into that one stepping stone deeply, the moment you're existing in, you're connecting with God and you're literally asking God to join you in the experience of life. That's the only time it can happen is when you call God into the moment. You have to be present for that to happen. That's your gift back to God, for giving you the entire experience of life is to bring Him into the individual moments of that life. That's all I have to say.

Speaker 1 1:44:09

You are preaching to the choir. I love it, yeah, no, in my writing that is kind of the image I use is you're bringing divinity into the moment. You know that's the goal. Yeah, but I love you know. They say that memories don't really live anywhere geographically in the brain. If they do, we can't find them. So the past is largely an illusion and the future is just speculation. So the present is really all that's real.

Speaker 3 1:44:37

Correct.

Speaker 1 1:44:39

Anyway, but I also like that, maybe the mind of God, it's almost like big mind and small mind too. Right, God can only see the big picture and we can only see our finite right.

Speaker 3 1:44:49

Well, see, that's the gift. That's what the gift is. You see, if we were opened up and we knew everything, we couldn't have experience. Experience is having a moment that we didn't anticipate, something that's novel to our experience of existence. And so what God has done is he shut down all the other lights, so all we can see is one at a time. That's what gives us time, because it's an illusion. That's what gives us the illusion of this physical reality, but it's also what gives us the experience of life. We're not here to have a good life, we're here to have the experience of life.

Speaker 1 1:45:23

That's the difference beautiful, beautiful virginia, are you still with us? Oh, yeah, I absolutely remember uh piaget's come up a lot on here, but what about maslow as well?

Speaker 2 1:45:32

remember peak experiences um, I'm not gonna get into maslow but that's the idea.

Speaker 1 1:45:39

They're called peak experiences, or, and some people call them in new age culture bleed throughs and I just call it glimpses, right. And in my writings I say we're not like you hinted at earlier, we're not meant to know the full truth. We probably burn up like Icarus, right. So I think sometimes we get glimpses just to sustain us Right and bring us to the next numinous moment.

Speaker 3 1:46:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:46:03

Is he controversial?

Speaker 2 1:46:10

What Maslow? Yeah, um. So there's been studies done and none of them um can basically empirically support Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's why I didn't want to get into it, because, yeah, there's there's there's some controversy right now going on around that, and it's it's relatively over the last few decades.

Speaker 1 1:46:25

Well, I think psychology and psych. Well, psychology. I'm not going to speak to psychiatry, but I think it is a pseudoscience who's looking to empirically prove anything, isn't it?

Speaker 2 1:46:37

There are not to get into the weeds on this, but yes, there are definitely pseudosciences in the psychology realm. However, in actual clinical key term, clinical mental health, they are. There are empirical studies to, but it's it's data and then consensus.

Speaker 1 1:46:56

It's getting the approval of your peers. I'm sorry, I'm at 56 years old and I'm using the word pseudoscience loosely. I'm not trying to insult you. I'm a big fan of psychology but you know whether it's Maslow's hierarchy or Piaget's developmental stages. Right, they're as wacky as Freud's. You know defense mechanisms. They're just teleological systems for understanding the world.

Speaker 2 1:47:20

So, as I say, when you get into the sociology aspects and behavioralism aspects, it's hard to have empirical, actual ethical case studies to completely support it. So, yes, there are pseudoscience branches.

Speaker 1 1:47:36

Within it.

Speaker 2 1:47:37

Within it.

Speaker 1 1:47:37

Yes, Right I think we're on the same page. Yes, absolutely. But, thank God for psychology. We'd have a lot more wackos if it didn't exist. Anyway, michael, thank you so much. You ended on a beautiful poetic note and we botched it, so thank you for your final words. Is there anything about the book you'd like to share with our listeners? We're going to put the link in the episode description, of course, but any closing words about the book?

Speaker 3 1:48:01

I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you have fun reading it. It's uh, it's very dense, so you're not going to read it. It's not a, it's not a quick read.

Speaker 1 1:48:10

It's not toilet reading.

Speaker 3 1:48:16

No, it's a. It's pretty deep, but it's. What I'm doing is. Uh, I've decided that I've been making these videos on my video chair just little blurbs from the book and it's. It's absolutely been a blast. I didn't think I'd have as much fun as I have.

Speaker 1 1:48:25

Well, we do live in an right ADD culture, so you got to grab them. Maybe have some dancers on too when you do those video snippets, just saying I'm keeping the dances to a minimum. I actually support you in that. We're overstimulated as a culture. How many pages is your book? You, you say it's dense. We're overstimulated as a culture. How many pages is your book?

Speaker 3 1:48:45

You say it's dense. It's about 420 pages and then it's got a bunch of pages of footnotes. You know essentially it covers Genesis, chapters 1, 2, and 3. That tells us what happened. And then you know how God creates reality, how we operate and so why things are messed up because of the way the machine has been built. We were flawed, we weren't built correctly. Someone has some explaining to do on that one. And then we jump to the New Testament, because what you learn is that you're run by the program code in your head.

Speaker 3 1:49:21

But in chapter 9, I go over how Jesus teaches us to deprogram ourselves from our ego, and that's through prayer and believing meditation, like we talked about. And then Paul talks about the steps of the awakening, like we are going to have a day of the Lord and that's going to be an incredible event in every man's life. I wish the Christian church would teach that, but they don't. Then there's Revelation be an incredible event in every man's life. I wish the Christian church would teach that, but they don't. Then there's Revelation. I just tell you what Revelation is. It's a hero's journey. And then the last chapter is about what happens when we die the resurrection. How awesome it's going to be, can't wait. I say that, but my wife does not like it when I say that.

Speaker 1 1:50:05

Well, it's better than having you know the doomsday view of it. I think it is the goal, you know, whether it's symbolic right Awakening or yeah, I look forward to it too, and I will see you there. How about that?

Speaker 3 1:50:18

Perfect. See you in the resurrection.

Speaker 1 1:50:21

Thank you so much, and Virginia, any final words.

Speaker 2 1:50:25

No, I don't have any, except it was a pleasure to have you on, michael, and definitely I see a part too.

Speaker 3 1:50:31

Thank you so much, guys. You guys have been great. You asked fantastic questions, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 1:50:35

Thanks, man, thanks for being with us 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.