LIVE TIAMAT X Q&A with Ethan Hsieh

31:13As Nishitani recommends, you move through it. The great doubt is to look at it in the face and go, okay, how can I be in this place such that it no longer threatens me, but therefore allows me to move through and past it. This is not a place where I can promise people will find their next best friend or it's not a church. It's not a congregation of people. In that sense, it's not a community in the way that we understand it. We're not coming together for the sake of coming together. We're coming together to practice and thereby be open to receiving feedback, giving feedback, mutually oriented towards each other's growth.

32:03It's like a martial arts dojo. Yeah, it's like a dojo. And so over eight months, I think you get to know these people fairly well, especially when in tier two, you're living with them for five days at a time. Yeah. So that's a great answer, but it also sort of acts as a good segue. Let's talk a little bit about the logistics. Some of it's online, some of it's in person, it's spread out. What does the timetable look like? What do the logistics look like? Yeah. So if you go on the 5 to Midnight TMX page or the Lacton TMX page, they're pretty much the same breakdowns. You'll see a course curriculum.

32:48Link for that will be in the notes to this, by the way. Yeah, it will be in the show notes. I think the Five to Midnight site has a more detailed breakdown, but it's broken up into four modules with framing lectures in between. So the first module is Introduction to Dime, which I've explained earlier, right? The second module, we're really talking about self as process. So how do you move away from self as thing, right? Instead of looking at yourself as a substance, but instead moving more into what you would call relational ontology, right? More as a process that's continually evolving. And that's where we'll get the tier one, right?

33:28As we move through the program, it starts to become a little bit more complex. So I'll leave you all to take a look at the schedule, but I think the structure is actually quite important. So we're going to be meeting once every other week. So there is enough time in between. I hope for people to relax and integrate the session. We will have optional but recommended sessions that 5 to midnight are running. We call these crossroads and connections. If you sign up for TMX, they are free for you. You can come and you can do the practices that we've just done the previous week. It's more open to public, so you might meet folks who are not in the cohort, but that's an affordance that's available to you.

34:17Once we go through the online practices, then we have come down to that place where we're just about to run up to that in-person container. That's when we'll do a framing lecture. So I'm going to deliver a framing lecture. I think the first one is on the spiritual ego, where we talk about why the ego is what it is and how deep of a role it actually plays in transcendence and transformation, self-correction. What is the integral role? And what that does is it frames the experience of tier one ahead of time so that you're not having to grab too much of the theory one goal. There's some time to relax for it and then go into the practice.

35:01Same thing for tier two. Once we finish that, then we enter into what we call an integration and transfer process. So that's where after tier two, we'll come together and we'll do more of a longitudinal sense making process. Ground that in aspiration. How do I want to take this into the rest of my life beyond this container? Obviously, after the end of TMATX, we still have a tier three. And if you've demonstrated that, okay, there's strong capacity here, there's a sense that there isn't too much psychological risk, we will invite you onto a tier three, which will happen later in the year or at the start of next year.

35:48Once you finish tier three, then it's up to you if you would like to join the SPIRE program and become a facilitator. That's proper facilitation training. It's worth it to mention that we've recently changed the time on those online sessions. They were previously a little bit too early for folks in North America. And it was like in the morning, like a European morning, something like that. But we've gotten a lot of interest from folks in North America who want to do this. So I just had a meeting with the team and we said, hey, you know, let's shift it so that it's still early, it's still like eight, but it's at least like doable not at like four uh four to six in the morning yeah something like that so how much is going to be online and how much is going to be in person and how does that all work great um yeah so the two in-person containers tier one is a three-day uh kind of a weekend long type thing it's a three-day thing non-residential uh it's in the netherlands and will be in the universal sufi temple which is beautiful museum out in the dunes i showed john a picture of it and then for tier two it will be five days and then that's residential so we're all like living together in the same space a beautiful cottage it's got cabins as well along the edge this beautiful field out in czechia then the rest of it will be online it's important to also know that after each of the in-person containers, we actually have what we call integration calls.

37:28So those are a couple of weeks out from the end of the container or the workshop, if you want to call it. And then we'll gather together as a group and go, okay, well, how's it been going? What's been happening so far? What are you seeing has shifted? And that's really a guided process. Those are necessary, absolutely necessary to attend. And I think one special thing that I'm doing and why it's extended in this way across eight months is something a little bit more different. I'm trying to bring a lot of the practices that I would otherwise do in tier one and open them through and go a bit more nitty gritty, more nuanced in the online sessions so that we develop something almost like a shorthand.

38:11And then that way, when we meet in person, we can hit the ground running without having to necessarily explain every single exercise from bottom up. Obviously, some of the embodiment stuff will be taught in person. That's much better. But whatever I can teach online, I will do that online first. Excellent. Excellent. And so what should people do in order to, I mean, after looking at it, let's say they consider doing it. What do they have to do to sign up? What do they have to do to sign up? Sorry, you cut out a bit there for me. What was the question? Yeah, basically, sorry. I'm basically, like, if people are attracted to this, obviously they should first look at the website and read it and make sure they're thoroughly informed.

39:02But let's say they want to do it. What do they need to do? How should they properly prepare?

39:11Obviously, they need to think about setting time aside, et cetera. What are some of the more specific? that's what i meant also about their personal logistics what would they need to do and so forth yeah that's a really good question um i think the first most basic thing is uh and i said it at the lectern launch um do not impulse buy this yeah um it's not for that i think what would really really benefit you if you're interested in doing something like this is to really consider okay, who am I in service to with this? Like if I take on this program, it's a really long program, who is this ultimately going to benefit that is not me?

40:00And I often say this to say like, we've had some parents come in into workshops as well. I've always really inspired by parents who come in and go, man, this really helped me to talk to my kid because I can play with them. I'm not up there anymore. So that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing is there are a couple of lectern dialogues out now. We have a third one coming in December. We recorded the third one. Those are really good framing to kind of like have an understanding of how I'm thinking about it. You get to watch John ask me difficult questions as well. And I think it's also important to remember that like John is coming and teaching on these as well with me, same as Taylor.

40:53So you're always going to get multiple perspectives on one thing. And sometimes, actually not sometimes, I think we'll challenge each other quite a lot.

41:06For those who don't know, I brought Tiamat to both John and Taylor and we sat down about a course of like six months going through every single exercise, the entire pedagogy. Ethical rigor. What are we doing here? What are the dangers? What are the pitfalls? What is our orientation? And also to remember that we are doing a lot of the, what I think called the VF EOP, the the Vicki Foundation Ecology of Practices. So we're doing Socratic Imaginal Self-Reflection, Dialecting to Dear Logos, Socratic Search Space. And so if you have heard a lot about these, but you're not familiar with them, this is your opportunity to get to know them in a particular context.

41:48But you can also go and watch After Socrates episode 10A and B. If you want to get a sense of what DID is, Socratic Search Space, I think we have a demonstration video out somewhere. I think so. I think so. Yeah. So these are things to partially kind of like get excited about. But I think the big thing is going, hey, why do I really want to do this? And I have, I will say it quite explicitly. This is a training container, which means that there is a way in which going through this program, you finish tier two and move on to tier three and inspire, you might be someone who leads communities. You might be somebody who has an offering or has an ecology of practices.

42:38This is to a certain degree, almost like a train the trainer type program. It's the pre-programmed to that. It's not explicitly that. It's quite practitioner level. It takes you up to advanced practitioner level. But the orientation is that, you know, if you do this program, there is an availability there, we hope, where you might want to consider taking up a role where you are responsible for the development of other people, you can continue down that path. And if you decide that you don't want to do that, that's also okay. Excellent. So I keep moving between different dimensions of this that people might be bringing as an interest, the ones that I think are virtuous interests.

43:22A lot of people are interested in the lecture courses because they're interested in the question of what is the sacred and how can it become something as a sensed presence that's orients me and transforms me. And how can I deepen spirituality so that it has some of what religion used to have rather than just being the religion of me or my personal preferences so that it becomes deeply like Socratic in nature where it is challenging them to be better than they are. It's not making them feel good. It's making them aspire to becoming good. And those two things together, sort of a virtuous orientation towards sacredness.

44:08How will TMAT help them to realize that? Does it help them to realize that? You know, I find myself so hesitant to answer that question. Of course. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. Yeah, what I can say is that, you know, I've been doing this one for a long time. First of all, I want to speak on Ethan's behalf. And there's a sense in which my question is unfair. Because my question could be saying, well, will this manufacture the sacred for you and like a factory produce it for you? And, of course, if you followed any of the arguments I've been making for the last two years, and especially around the philosophical Silk Road, I totally reject that.

44:51So that framing behind my question should be totally challenged, and I'm withdrawing it. What I mean is, is it reasonable? Are there ways in which we can think, you could say, this is likely to make you more prone to having the sacred show up in your life? And is it something that can encourage you to cultivate virtue? How about that as a reformulation of the question? That's much better. That one I can get behind because I don't want to promise anybody visions of God. No, no, because if you could manufacture God, it's precisely not God. Yes, go ahead. Yes, exactly. I think more prone is the right orientation.

45:38What I'm interested in and have always been is the ways in which we generate shared experience, for lack of a better term. I mean, that's the official term in the performance literature, right? Like shared experience, which I've taken in a way to point at what you're trying to point at with religio. Yes, yes. Now, having said that though, there are exercises that have been developed over past 200 years, which are designed to open you up to that kind of experience, the kind of immersion that an actor experiences when they are in a scene, is not located to behind the arch in the theatre. We experience that on a daily basis.

46:31What I'm trying to do with this ecology of practices is to be able to hone that and operationalize it without instrumentalizing it. To step into the exercise to get a sense of, hey, what's happening here? Can I tune? Can I figure it out? And to be explicit, I do a lot of teaching, but I teach the exercises. I don't tell people what to think or how to make sense of their experience. my orientation i'm i'm making this request so that you can hold me accountable to it as well john sure of course is that i'm trying to invite from them the way in which they understand their experience and then invite from others the way in which that um coheres or doesn't yeah we're taking socrates stance of being midwives um yes i i think that was very well answered i i would say to people um you know having done lots of these workshops and ethan and taylor and i ran one in last toronto what did we call it an intensive uh yeah um um the logos shows up uh reliably um in these you can't if you come in thinking you manufacture then you it won't but if people come in and they're willing to make themselves available to a space such that it is affording of the kinds of attention and attitude that make people more receptive to something taking on a life of its own and flowing between, through, and with people, that does happen.

48:24um and and we we you can tell we're both hesitant about this because we it's not like it's not like turn the crank and this will happen because that's not the nature of the reality we are trying to get people to come into a more deep a deeper relationship with on the other hand it's not just flummox around and do whatever you want either it's neither one of it's neither the wanton nor the person who thinks they can craft a reflective method to manufacture it we're trying to do what we talked about earlier we're trying to find that place in between the place where life really happens and where contact with reality really happens um if you could completely control it it wouldn't be reality and if it completely overwhelmed you it wouldn't be reality would just be horror and you have to get that that place um and so what we're doing is very much like again like a martial art you you're you're trying to put these constraints in an adaptive living manner around a situation and get people to learn how to cultivate that kind of container such that they become more prone to the kind of transformation that is often life-giving in an important way.

49:39And so I want to people, we're not making a promise, as Ethan said, we can't, we're not going to promise your particular vision is going to be fulfilled. But on the other hand, I want people to have an understanding that nevertheless, this has been put through a lot of work and a lot of testing. And there's a significant degree of reliability such that we are confident in our offering of this course to you. So we're trying to get in between those two very, very carefully and very, very, very reflectively. John, can I just ask you a question? Of course. Around like, because this is, we touched on this in the third lectern dialogue a little bit, right?

50:31Which is this sense of the contact with the sacred. Yes. And I think the hesitation is well placed. right but i i also want to i want to be encouraging but i don't want to be a hype beast like i'm not a i'm not a hype beast right i'm here i'm excited about the work but i am not trying to um promise anybody anything what i can say is that when we start we're grounding it in aspiration that's from the get-go, day one, what we're doing. But I'd be curious to hear from you like a little bit more what's behind the hesitation or the, I suppose, what are you looking out for in TMX? Not from the participants, but what is motivating you to be there in person?

51:36Well, I mean, I'm motivating there. I have multiple motives. One is my love for you and for Taylor. And another is my, I think, properly in the sense of a mentor and teacher, my love for my students on the lectern and to really meet what I think is a deeply, I deeply respect the request for, yes, but what do I do next? And so to be properly responsive and responsible to that, that's another one of my motives. As a scientist and a pilgrim, as a scientist, I want to come in and look at the degree to which the cognitive scientific theory is being played out and what's happening in those situations.

52:26as a pilgrim I'm looking for and the hesitation is exactly well you know some of you may have seen the conversation I had with Bishop Maximus around faith as the sense of voluntary necessity that's at the heart of reason and beauty and love and flow and resonance and these are the things that give us our deepest sense of contact with reality are they perfect and guaranteed to provide a certainty? No, but they, we always presuppose them in that anything we use to correct them is just another version of themselves, their capacity for self-transcendence. I'm looking for how voluntary necessity faces people, places people, calls people in these practices, and I'm looking for that to happen.

53:10And I'm looking for, for me, I guess my most personal motive is I want to taste something again what i tasted when i was on the philosophical silk road

53:23and it's exactly that attitude i could not i had to make myself vulnerable and prone i had to practice the philosophical silk road i couldn't just sit around and hope and wish but i also couldn't manufacture anything and i had to rely on people beyond my control and situations beyond my control context in history beyond my control to actually call to me to challenge me, to shake me up. And so I'm looking for ways in which we can give people something that can resonate with pilgrimage, if I had to put it in a sentence.

54:12Yeah, I'm taking a moment to also sense into, like I was really nervous at the start of this call. Now something seems to have settled and shifted for me. Part of it is because I was rushing from another call. The other part of it is also that what we're offering here is unprecedented, at least for me. I've had the privilege of meeting small groups of people all the time. And some of them have become really, really good friends. And part of my motivation is, well, what if we really stayed? What if we really stayed in fellowship for an extended period of time? What would that look like? I was talking to Guy Sengstock the other day and he asked me about beauty and I said that nothing is actually more beautiful than watching somebody develop in front of your eyes.

55:19And I've seen that with people that were in my containers two years ago. Sure. Yeah, with my students too, yes. yeah yeah yeah and that's to me like profoundly beautiful um and i think by the way by the way just as because ethan and i are always looking for the criteria that and we're trying to like apply it to ourselves of course we're not perfect but that distinguish the teacher from the guru and i think that's another one i think the teacher falls in love with the beauty of the development of the students and the guru does not and i think that's a very different a very different A defining difference, yes.

56:03And I think part of the, one of the big sort of flowers in that, right, is how much I've actually learned from all of the people that have come to my containers before that. You always learn when you're teaching deeply. And the best way to teach is to learn. This is the abiding lesson that my, what, three and a half decades as a teacher has made clear to me. yeah and to see the work change as a result of that i've seen you make like we talked about this the other day right make corrections to your own work like i am very sure that after this program the next iteration of tmx will have changes done to it there'll be iterations of exercises and improvements well i wanted to bring that up as one more thing to mention to people One of the things that is important for meaning in life is to be a sense of being connected to something larger than yourself.

57:03And that means connected to a enlightenment or awakening to a process by which a wider, deeper reality is realized. Those of you who are involved in this will be participating in making that better and more available to other people. and that is a significant thing to participate in as Ethan said this isn't perfect and we don't have there is no perfect practice there is no panacea practice we will learn from this we will learn from you we will learn with you we will learn through you and then that will help other people in the future you will be contributing in a in an ongoing way to something that is larger than yourself to help other people wake up or whatever to become right to open the world i once heard a hero described as somebody who widens the field of human experience that's what a hero is right this is and so it's heroic in that sense you're what so socrates is so after socrates there's ways we could all be that we couldn't be before after jesus does there was ways we could be that we could all be that we couldn't be before.

58:20And of course, we're not claiming to be Socrates or Jesus, but we're claiming to at least give you a way of touching and tasting what it's like to be that kind of heroic person and make that available for other people. Through play. Yes. Through play. Shall we take some questions, John? I think it's now time to take questions. Let's take some questions, please. And so my understanding is that Ellie's going to manage this. Is that correct? Yeah. Ellie's nodding and looking at the chat. She's raised a finger. She's scrolling.

58:59And then she's, yes. Can you right click on it and click highlight? I can see it. Well, and now it's gone. I need it to come back yet. Okay. I'd love to hear you talk about bringing imaginal practice into Dialogos. So Ethan, do you want to? Very good. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Imaginal practice into Dialogos. There's a way in which we kind of do it already. If you've been into some of the DID practice sessions, some of them we do like a bit of like a sit beforehand. The way in which I bring imaginal into dialecting to Dialogos is actually also very embodied. So one of the things that we do in Tiamat, we do DID slightly differently, is we do it on our feet.

59:48Yeah. And so you can imagine you have like two people on the outside, they're scribing and vibing, if you're familiar with the roles. And then you have the midwife and the proposer who are in it, right? And they're talking through something, but they're also kind of wrestling, like as a joust, I suppose. and part of the pedagogy which part of me hopes that Taylor ain't listening to this now I do so one of the ways in which I scaffold in the imaginal into DID is the presence of images that eventually you get to that point in a DID where the words that you read in the book don't work anymore. And one has to describe it in an image.

1:00:36And when the description of the image doesn't work anymore, you have to enact the image in the form of a gesture. And while I scaffold people up to do this, it's not an actual step in the DID. No one says like, hey, do this now. We try and set up the condition such that your body is available to you, right? The poetry is available to you, we play exercises that tune you into an imagistic or poetic sense of the world so that you can fold that into the DID. In that sense, it's like it's got a little sprinkle, it's got a flavor on it. Yeah, I mean, and in that way, we're inducing, we're drawing out and exacting, repurposing, redesigning the way we always pay attention to gesture and metaphor within DID.

1:01:29And we're just now enhancing that and making it more imaginally present for people. Great question. Really wonderful question. Is there one more? Nice. Let's go. With the container, how important is the visual aesthetic of it? For example, does being outside as opposed to inside allow for more openness? I mean, I want to speak to this right away. First of all, two aspects of that. One from, I did a retreat with Kyle Cock and Guy Senstock, and being able to go outside makes a huge difference. A huge, huge difference. Very huge difference. And Kyle actually did some nature connectedness. We might think about, you know, maybe extemporaneously bringing that into some when we're, especially in Chechnya.

1:02:20So that makes a big difference. The second thing is being in person. There's ways in which a lot of vitality happens online, but there's a magic to being in person. So I'm thinking about last year in Toronto or earlier this year. Was it earlier this year? It was earlier this year, May.

1:02:40Yeah, being in person and then also dwelling with people, which is, of course, culminating in this. So those three things make a huge dimension. And it's not just the visual aesthetics, because what you're doing is you're exacting all of this from those of you who do the courses. You're exacting all of the everyday sensory motor senses into your spiritual senses. You're developing noetic vision. You're developing a deeper sense of contact with reality. The sense of being called is your spiritual hearing. that and so you're developing not only a visual aesthetic but a tactile and an auditory and even a proprioceptive aesthetic uh is enhanced uh by by this very good question that would be my answer i would know what would you add i would add to that that um it's the the visual aesthetic is an interesting piece because i actually for an artist don't focus on that at all in this course there is no such thing as this thing is in the wrong place.

1:03:43No, no, no. The places that we pick happen to be beautiful. They happen to be. But what I mean by that is in the process of this course, you will learn to look through aesthetics into beauty as opposed to judge aesthetics as beautiful, bracket or not. Yeah, that's well said. That's well said. Excellent. Great question. These are excellent questions. These are really good. Okay, here's another one. So gesture is image, language is image. Are you traveling to presence as image? Hi, Ethan, it's Bradley. Are you traveling to presence as image? Yes, yes. I need to try and figure out what Bradley is going for.

1:04:29Are you traveling to presence as image? Oh, presence not as a verb, presence as an adjective. There are a couple of ways to think about this. It depends on what you would consider an image. So if you are thinking about how present am I looking at myself from the outside, then no. but if you are thinking about it in the sense of what is animating, like an animating presence that you are engaged deeply in the world and you're like very aware, like situationally aware, you're participating deeply, right? You can call upon other images to change how you're being, things like that, then I would say yes.

1:05:31And this is almost like leveraging off the last question, which is such a beautiful distinction between the difference between aesthetics and beauty. Like no one here is going to move you to pursue a particular aesthetic or a particular image of yourself. But what we're trying to do is to call upon the symbolic. How do I...

1:06:07Am I still live? Ben? Yeah, so everyone, for those of you who are live, Ethan is frozen right now. I'll just pick up on what he says there. Yeah, the distinction Ethan is making between we're not giving you an aesthetic, we're not giving you images. It is much more adverbial. We're giving you a way to enact beauty. We're giving you ways to imagine. There we go. Sorry, I was filling in the gap, but I was talking about how I was picking up on your point. We're not giving you people aesthetics or an image. This is adverbial. We're telling them how to enact beauty. We're telling them how to actually properly imagine into a situation, things like that.

1:06:56I think Ethan's gone again. So technology is the God that limps. We're going to keep going. I don't know if we can still take questions. Ben, is Ellie still available? Are the questions still available?

1:07:21um oh i'm back i'm back did i am i lagging you're you're you're freezing actually so what i said was i picked up on what you said we're not giving people an aesthetic we're not giving them an image this is adverbial we're teaching them how to enact beauty we're teaching them how to imagine themselves into situations. And then I was just going to say, why don't we move on now to another question? Perfect. Yes. Bradley, I think your question broke the internet, bro. I love Bradley. Here's another question. Can you go into more detail about the differences to therapeutic methods as they did not become very clear after the last talk?

1:08:07so it's I mean there's there's different domains in which we can talk about the differences there's different in intent there's different in the nature of the practice so the difference in the intent is we we are not set up nor are we endeavoring to help people to deal with trauma or to deal with specific kinds of issues that have left them sort of, I don't want to use any technical terms here. Let's just say we're not dealing with trauma and we're not dealing with issues that require people to investigate personal aspects of their life that require their personal autobiography coming out in an in-depth manner or something like that that is often crucial.

1:09:03Now, people will talk about their autobiography, but our intent is not to probe that because we're not trying to deal with that. So we're trying to cultivate virtue. We're trying to cultivate skills. So beliefs, skills, states of mind, traits of character. The problem with answering how it doesn't overlap with therapies, therapists are, first of all, by and large, eclectic. They draw from many traditions. So I can't answer that in some homogeneous fashion. I mean, we're trying to say some of we're not trying to deal with trauma, but you may say, well, I'm helping my clients or my patients cultivate virtue.

1:09:44Maybe you are. Maybe you aren't. You're, of course, well aware of the fact that, you know, the thing that is most predictive of success in therapy is rapport as opposed to specific techniques. So this is not oriented towards dealing with trauma. It's so to use, this is a bit of a hackneyed distinction. Therapy generally addresses pathology. We are addressing aspiration. We're on the positive psychology end of things, not dealing with the pathological. in a pronounced way. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I think you've named most of the bulk of that. The orientation is not to heal, right? So there is the difference between orientation to heal and orientation to adapt.

1:10:33Yes. So therapy is orientation to heal. We're doing orientation to adapt. Now, I want to be clear about this, and I'm trying to look at the camera as I say this, right which is we are not disparaging people going to therapy what we are doing is not ever for therapy yes it's not a please don't take us to be saying that that is not our orientation but on the other hand i would resist any therapist who claims that what socrates doing in the dialogues is therapy that is to stretch therapy beyond its proper purview i mean so let us let us let's be fair both ways we're not trying to take away from therapy but we're also saying therapy is not what's happening in the platonic dialogues it's not happening when people are doing tai chi chuan i mean if so and if you broaden therapy to mean any and all of that then sure we're doing therapy but then i don't know what isn't therapy anymore is education therapy so if we're going to be fair both ways.

1:11:36Sorry, Ethan, I feel strongly about this. We're going to be fair both ways. We're not disparaging therapy. And by the way, we recommend people into therapy who come into these practices and we say, no, this is not right for you. You should go into therapy. We do do that. We also make a distinction between therapy and Socratic counseling. And we sometimes say, no, you don't really need therapy. You need something other than this practice. You need to go into Socratic counseling. And then sometimes you tell people, no, what you need is what you're doing right here because you're aspiring to be more socratic you're aspiring to perhaps be more buddha-like you're aspiring to be more christ-like that is what we're trying to do that's what we're trying to address yes yes we are not we are so yes all of that and also we're not doing uh self-help in person uh so it's not a which is also not a disparaging of self-help a lot of people come through these containers having done a lot of self-help and then realizing hey you know like I kind of hit an edge here or like I'm kind of not quite sure what else to do because I collected all of this stuff look at all my books right um and so we're saying good but we're trying to draw a distinction between these two in order to make clear what it is that we are offering and I think John you encapsulated that very well what I can say is that if you are already in therapy, right?

1:13:00Or you're going to be in therapy. Tell your therapist you'll be doing this. Yes, for sure. Please tell your therapist that you're doing this. It's the most honest and accountable thing to do because it also allows you to have somebody who is a medical professional to actually check your experience up against, right? So that it's not just, oh, what Ethan and John say is correct. No, no, no. You need someone on that end, right? To be able to give you another perspective. And I think it's also fair to say that over the course of this program, like you said, we will make recommendations if we feel like, huh, okay, you seem to be struggling.

1:13:42Let's have a conversation. What's happening for you, right? We'll do check-ins like that in the interest of maintaining psychological safety. So that we have folks on the back end within our network who can help support that. We will help where we can, but we are also, and I dare say this for you and for myself, I know Taylor as well, there are some things which are not ours to handle, and we'll be in conversation with you to decide, hey, what's best? Please stay open to having a conversation with us around like, oh, what your experience is and how you might want to bring it forward. If you want to like slow it, like slow roll it a bit more, we're more than happy.

1:14:24I've been doing this way before I even knew Ethan. For years I taught meditation and I would always make this clear to people. I would give them a checklist of things that would indicate that the course was not what something was coming up, issues of trauma or other things that were coming up that for which they needed therapy and to stop the practice and seek therapy or if they were in therapy they i i made it necessary i mandated that they have they had to tell their therapist they were in a mindfulness meditation class um so there's a proper respect for therapy um and there i i believe that is what what is properly due to the therapeutic world yeah okay i think i hope i hope i hope i came off not as uh i hope i didn't come too aggressive uh as this um um uh i uh it's important that we get we're trying to do something that's very tricky which is can we get the educational the pedagogical the aspirational and the therapeutic to properly talk to each other without each one ignoring the other two or trying to superimpose onto the other two.

1:15:43And that is very much what I am committed to deeply philosophically. And I've had training in all three domains. I have had psychotherapeutic training, by the way. So anyways, let's take the next question, please. Thank you for that question, Barry. Very necessary. I think that question was pertinent. And I hope my response came off as taking it very seriously, not as in any way angry or upset. If you'll permit me another, virtuosity into virtue. How are we defining virtuosity? Are we pointing to flow states? No, I don't think flow states particularly. For me, virtuosity, so we're on the cusp of myself and Hussein and Daniel, on the cusp of getting a paper published on the cognitive continuum.

1:16:30Many of you know about this because you've taken Seeing God Again for the first time or the cognitive science of ritual. There's a continuum from what's called fluency. Fluency is just your local ability to take what could be what's objectively, notice what I'm doing, an ill-defined situation. And you're very readily getting an optimal grip on it, right? And then when you get a spike of fluency and you suddenly get a rapid improvement of your optimal grip, that's insight. When you get cascades of insight, that's flow. When you're starting to flow at the level of your orientation, you get mystical experiences.

1:17:10When that broadens out to more resonant experiences through your life and then a resonant way of life, I won't go into any more detail. I'm just giving you a quick gist. Virtuosity is to be on the cognitive continuum and moving along it. So if you're in fluency and I get you into insight, you've trained some virtuosity. If you're having some insights and you start to get into flow, or if flow starts to get you into more broad-based resonant experiences, or you start to get flow more comprehensively into something like a mystical experience or a spiritual experience, It's the sense presence of a deeper contact with reality, for example.

1:17:55And for those of you who don't know those distinctions, sorry, those are from the course. People have taken the courses. Virtuosity is that. But I also use the term virtuosity because it's all of that oriented towards virtue, right? That is why that term is particularly used. So it's to move you along the cognitive continuum because you are aspiring to be more virtuous. That is how I'm understanding the use of virtuosity. So if, like, I could be moving you from insight to flow to make you a better, you know, terrorist sniper or something. Believe me, like, the military has approached me for that kind of crap, right?

1:18:40So moving you along the continuum is the functional phenomenological aspect. The normative aspect is you're moving along the continuum because you are aspiring to being a more virtuous person. That's what is meant. That's why we often pair it together as virtuosity to virtue. I'm going to try and explain that more poetically, which is virtue is the north star that you know you will never touch. Virtuosity is learning how to steer your ship. What we're trying to do is to teach you to look up. That's it. That's a good combination. Both the scientific explanation, the philosophical explanation, and the poetic.

1:19:25That went very well together. Let's take another question. Let's go. Could you elaborate on how the program aspires to cultivate the metacognitive skills among its participants? Ethan, you want to start that? yes i can i will say that most of this is in the uh lectern dialogue one uh conversation i've just done but i can i can go into a little bit more detail if it doesn't make sense please look at lecture dialogue one which is already up it's already available go ahead um so particularly in tier one we'll already start doing this is that we um put yourself put i'm trying not to spoil it. It's like we have various domains of practice.

1:20:12The first is what we call the playground. The playground will be the beginning of everything that we do. And in a lot of ways, you can think of it as an improvisational moving meditation. Now, I can already hear alarm bells going off when I say that. I'm going to try and draw a distinction. This is not like, it's not aesthetic dance. there's no music for at least a good long while until we introduce it. There is always an emphasis and a guidance. Like myself as well as facilitators will be out guiding, sometimes we'll step in, right? Step in, guide something and step out so that we can walk that line between being metacognitively aware and falling into one of these two extremes.

1:21:03So what I'm trying to say is in an exercise like this, we're going to be helping to shepherd the optimal grip between the two. And this will run as a continual theme throughout the entire program, all the way up to tier two, all the way up to the transfer process, so that it becomes something that you're used to, you normalize it, you're habituating it. I'll give you an example of how this tends to go quote-unquote wrong. If you have a particularly violent inner critic that berates every single thing you do all of the time and then you find yourself in paralysis or collapse, then processes like what you're going to be engaging in when we're in TMX will help to smooth that relationship out and go, hey, what's actually happening here?

1:21:58What is the part of me that wants something? What am I trying to protect or what am I trying to, how do I say this, defend against, right? Where do I feel threatened? How am I seeing the world from both of these places? That is a profound kind of self-knowledge, which John and I have been talking a lot recently about the dialogical self. So I'm urging you to think about the metacognitive cognitive piece as less about being able to see yourself better, but more in the traditional sense, befriending yourself well. So we're going to use exercises to help us get to that orientation of befriending oneself.

1:22:44Yeah. So part of what's happening here is to make sure that you understand that the metacognitive has like sort of two axes to it, which has also shown up in a lot of the of course, is there's a vertical axis in which you can be looking sort of from different levels or from different levels. And then there's the relationship between your current self and your future self. That's also a metacognitive. And becoming a reasonable person, I don't use the word rational anymore because people just refuse to accept that. I don't equate that with logical. So being a reasonable person is to get exactly that kind of fluency and hopefully insight and eventually flow vertically, horizontally, and then diagonally, if you want to use the metaphor, so that you become in that way, a much more comprehensively reasonable person.

1:23:30And in that sense, your metacognition is being made, given more virtuosity to virtue.

1:23:40Let's take another question. Yep. is there a way to get uh for example collectivize the tm at endeavor to make this more financially accessible i'm not quite sure i think he means is there a way in which people can pool financial resources to be able to afford it i'll read it again ethan is that could you could it come up again please is there a way to get for example collectivize the tm at endeavor to make this more financially accessible?

1:24:17For this particular program, I don't think we have that option at the moment. Five to Midnight does have different ways in which we do this. So, for example, I was just having a call earlier. By the way, we will be completely transparent. As we said on the Q &A, we're completely transparent about where your money's going for this, right? Okay, so go ahead, Ethan. Yeah. So we sometimes take, I like to say, they're kind of like contracts, but they're more like projects of say an organization who wants to bring TMA into their workplace. Or I've also done things with say like theater companies that want to do a series of workshops at that point.

1:25:03So if you would like to have something like that, say you have an organization that you run as like a nonprofit or something like that, and it's too expensive for each individual person to afford TMX for eight months in that kind of scenario, like reach out to me. You can send me an email. You can actually send an email to frontdoor at 5tomidnight.org, right? And then we can have a conversation where, okay, let's figure out like what would be the optimum price, what you all need, what would be the timeframe, what would be the manpower required, that kind of stuff. And I think if you're working in a more collective setting, that's an affordable option.

1:25:46Excellent. Very practical question, but very pertinent question. Let's take another question. What do you think of Chesterton's that Christianity is the one religion that sees outward instead of inwards? Good practices such as integrating fairy tales, Christian narratives, beast solutions. I'm not that familiar with Chesterton. I bought his book orthodoxy it's sitting on my shelf but I have about 25 000 books sitting on my shelf um um and I don't know about that uh that that overall idea about looking outward and versus looking inward um I I prima facie at first facing I'm kind of critical of it because I see all uh all the religions having inward and outward facing aspects but I don't know what he means in detail because i'm just ignorant as i just said so i have to read more of that i'm intending to um so i'm sorry that i can um um the idea of bringing in narrative and thing uh fairy tales um uh i mean there's a way in which the imaginal is coming in um uh to this the the thing we have to remember is, I mean, we are, like, we have an orientation towards, and I'll let Ethan answer this question, but we have an orientation towards, like, a porous pluralism, right?

1:27:10We're not requiring people to be Christian, we're not requiring people to be Buddhist, we're not requiring... We are hoping that whatever home people dwell in, that they will find... And this has reliably happened. People will say, this renewed and deepened my Christianity or my Buddhism or my practice of Judaism. That is what we're after. And so we're trying to be in a situation in which people can bring things in like that, but we're not going to mandate anything. But this goes along again with like, we're not recommending particular images other than ones that are adverbially presented for people?

1:27:56Ethan, what would you say? I will build on that. And I would say, I mean, I will just leave the Chesterton Christianity question aside because I'm just as ignorant, if not more so. I didn't buy the book. So, but regards to narrative, what I can say is that, you know, this is in our module Dynamics of Being, right? So this is where we do tier two. What we're trying to get used to is an understanding of narrativization. Yes. Well said. Sorry, that was just wonderful. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Excellent. One of the modules, one of the days in tier two is literally about stories we make bracket of ourselves.

1:28:42Right. So you can read it two ways. Stories we make ourselves. Stories we make of ourselves. and it's in one of the exercises. I think we talked about it very long. First conversation that we had, we talked about snake form, right? Snake form is the exercise by which we understand how we thread things together into a narrative. So in that sense, I will double down on what John said, what I said earlier. We are not giving you an image or a story that you have to fit. That's not happening here. There's no, there isn't a myth of tier map There isn't a myth of the integrative approach and methodology of active transformation.

1:29:22There is a mesopotamian myth. But there isn't a myth of this ecology of practices that presides over our entire time together. It will not be that. There will be no such thing. You might feel associations to stories that you know. And you'd be welcome to share them, by the way. 100%. Those will come up bottom up. 100 % guaranteed. this will occur, right? But there will be no scenario where me or John or Taylor or any of the other facilitators go, yeah, but we're working with the hero myth or whatever. We're trying to be this, right? Look at the arc of it. No, no. We're only going to touch on, hey, this seems to be what's happening.

1:30:08How is that making sense for everybody? Yeah. So that's the distinction that I wanted to draw. Process, not product. Yes, process, not product. So you'll be involved in the mythilization, the narrativization process, but we're not specifying a specific product. But I think we've answered that as honestly as we can. Let's take another question. Yeah. I know TMA has Jungian influences. Can you speak to how you're integrating this work? uh no i'm just kidding um well actually that's not that's that's that's half that's uh half true um john you know this like i'm i'm a deep lover of yong um very at some point ethan's going to do a course for the lectern on the cognitive science of yong okay yes okay if i catch out the back catch out the back um in fact a lot of my phd work integrates yong what i can say about it So in the lectures, in the framing lectures, I'll make use of Yang, for sure, but I'll also put him in dialogue with very important figures that John has introduced in your lecture series, right?

1:31:21We put Jung into a conversation with Alicia Yararo for dynamic systems theory. We put Jung in conversation with Putnam.

1:31:31And Spinoza as well. Spinoza and Jung are my two. Desmond, William Desmond. Jung and Spinoza are my two big sages. So this is a personal project of mine, but what I'm trying to do is to hone Jung within 4E called science, within a relational ontology, solely because I have an academic intuition that I think he has a place here. And Jung is coming back into fashion in a big way that helps us maybe re-understand, reframe things that we might have thought we understood, like shadow. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the way in which we understand shadow is somewhat misguided, and I'll explain that in some of the framing lectures, but that there is a way to understand Jung's notion of what the shadow is archetypally within the 4E cognitive science framework, within the predictive processing framework that is deeply practicable.

1:32:40And because we'll do the exercises, I've made exercises based off of this reformation. I've WhatsApp John at two o 'clock in the morning, you know, hey, does this sound right to you? I've talked to Mark Miller about it. I've talked to Kevin Liu, who you'll meet at some point. He was my proposed supervisor for a while, a powerful, powerful scholar in Jung. And I think there is something happening in the resurgence of interest around Jung. And I think, to my mind, what Jung provided us with is a really powerful language for understanding how we know anything. And he's a good teacher, a really, really good teacher, if we know how to learn from him instead of taking Jung's ideas as gospel truth.

1:33:29In a way, we have to put him in dialogue with the best of our science and the best of our theology, the best of our philosophy in order for him to really shine. That would be my stance. Excellent answer. Excellent answer. Okay, John got nothing to add. I mean, I have a deep respect for Jung. I actually went through Jungian therapy, did Jungian training. And I have two finger puppets in my library. One is Plato, the other is Jung. And so Jung helps me reach towards the primordial aspects. Plato helps me reach towards the ultimate aspects of reality. um but you know but like ethan i think jung needs to be put into a dialogue with the best cognitive science we have the the best addictive processing relevance realization biology um all of that um the best philosophy the best theology uh and i i strongly believe that Jung would want that.

1:34:33And like Ethan, I have become a little bit distraught at a kind of ossification around Jung, to use a somewhat harsh term. But if a theory isn't correcting itself, it is starting to disconnect itself from the world in an important way. Jung definitely saw himself as being on the cutting edge of the best science of his time. And he was deeply responsive to the philosophy and theology of his time. We should pick up his spirit and continue that. And to put it in a way that might embarrass him because he's modest, but I think Ethan is carrying that torch very well. And I respect the work he's doing.

1:35:26Another question.

1:35:30this journey has a sense of uniqueness because it operates at such a high level of human intelligence. How would one bring themselves back with the remaining public or with what's already there?

1:35:44So did you hear the question, Ethan? Yeah, I was wowed by it. I was wowed by this question. I think it's beautiful. Do you want to take a first stab at it? Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, this is a constant, yeah, this is the right word. This is a constant concern of mine. So a teacher has to bring people into their own proximal development, which means you don't just make them comfortable and reinforce what they know. But, again, you don't present it in a way that's inaccessible to them. The zone of proximal development is with the teacher's help, it becomes accessible. Now, that means constant correction on my part because I tend to drift too high.

1:36:32I tend to drift too high because I'm a philosopher. I'm a scientist. And so I have people like Ethan. I have people like Taylor. I have people like Chris. I have my beautiful beloved Sarah who are constantly, yes, but John, make it like if it's. And so one of the things I aspire to, and I've been getting some feedback that I'm getting better at it, which is encouraging. What I see in people like Socrates and Jesus and the Buddha is their ability to calibrate themselves to their interlocutor, into the person they're interacting with, so that they get that balance of accessibility and challenge.

1:37:19And, of course, that's why they're sages. I think that's a mark of a sage. I am not a sage. I'm not claiming to be a sage. I'm claiming to be a lover of that and to aspire to it. And I'm trying more and more. And so we're constantly working on, you know, how do we, part of the project of the lectern is how can we make this material? And if you watch the Q &A from last Saturday when Mark was there and Charles, we're trying to do how can we get it so that this material is both philosophically rich and accessible at the same time? Because we also we have to we have to we have to stand against the current of our culture, which wants to trivialize everything so that it is quickly and smoothly commodified.

1:38:10And so we have to resist that, too. And we're all of us, myself included, we're all being insidiously shifted to like trivializing things so that we can be more readily, right, co-opted into whatever project, political or economic, financial, commercial that people want to co-opt us into. So we're trying very hard to do this. And we're constantly talking to people. And so we, I mean, part of what Ethan's bringing to the lectern is he's constantly working on refining the pedagogy to get that balance between, right, philosophical, richness and public accessibility. And we're constantly working on it.

1:39:12We are open to hearing, and we do, we listen to people who give recommendations about, well, you could do this or do that. It's a very complex and dynamic problem to try and address because the problem is as you think you're getting it, the culture is also shifting because the culture is constantly shifting around this because of social media and political polarization that constantly shift the Overton window for people. And you all are aware of this. I mean, people are constantly talking about it. So it's a challenging problem. It's a central problem. And I'm personally aspiring to get better at it.

1:40:00We are working as a group to get better at it. We are taking feedback on how to get better at it. And we have done specific things. Take a look at some of my more recent talks, people have said, compared to some of my earlier talk, and you'll see that there is, I believe there's been a shift and I'm trying to make it like that. And then the whole project of the lectern was, okay, let's give people extended time and courses so we can build them up and scaffold them into the richness so they do not ever feel like the material is becoming inaccessible to them. So I'm going to let Ethan, I could go on and on about this because as you can tell, this is a deep concern of mine, but I'll let Ethan speak.

1:40:49Babe, can you put the question up again? Is that available to you? Because I heard the question somewhat differently. Yeah. Yeah. This journey has a sense of uniqueness because it operates at such a high level of human intelligence. How would one bring themselves back with the remaining public or what's already there? Yeah, the way I heard this was more as a integration question. Right. And I suppose, John, you gave an amazing answer. I don't know if we lost. Okay, no, you're just very still. yeah no no no uh yeah oh sorry i just wanted to acknowledge i yeah i could have and if if that was the intent of the question i apologize i do think it i it can be read as an accessibility question i think both questions should be addressed yeah exactly like you like you give one so i'll give the other one and then um maybe pick whichever one is more suited to the question um but the way i understand it is like if i can paraphrase it hey there is such a there is such a in a unique intensity in a way to this program, right?

1:41:55How does it, how, and it's at such a high level where there's so much conceptual scaffolding around it, but there's also a lot of practices. There's also a lot of relational dynamics, new things we have to learn. And there's a way in which that forms kind of almost like a new pair of lenses or a new pair of glasses. You ever tried this where you like get a new pair of glasses and they don't quite fit on your face, right? Or you you look at yourself in the mirror and like, who is this? And the way that I hear that question in an example is like, hey, I go through this thing for eight months. What if I don't know how to be with my partner, right?

1:42:34Or how do I interact with my year-long friends? Are they going to, is my vocabulary suddenly going to change that they can't understand anything I say anymore and I have to send them to John Verbecki? So there's a way in which I'm hearing that question that way. Now, what I can say is that there is by design that much time between sessions, even online, including integration calls. So think about this. So the tier ones are divided into two groups. There's a group one, there's a group two. So we divide the cohort into two so that one, the facilitators are not overladen. We can give adequate attention to everybody.

1:43:16but also if you are say in group one okay you do the container you have two about two weeks of time right where you are out back in the world that's not oh chill time it's not oh what an intense experience now i'm back to life no there is a process there of go through it see what sticks and i keep emphasizing this to people like see what sticks from the practice because what really lens for you is probably what matters the most, right? And so then we do an integration call two weeks after that, and then we do more practices. So you have a month of time to come down from the intensity of an experience.

1:44:02Something that has made me feel particularly distraught is in our culture, the way that we confuse intensity with authenticity. You've named this before, right? If I have a very intense experience, it must be the most real. Again, I said Jung and Spinoza are my two sages. And so I stand more on that pole where it's like, no, I think the subtler experiences are the ones that can be most profound. I'm more of a proponent of like divinity in the profane kind of thing, right? Can you see the beauty in the everyday? More that kind of thing, more trying not to try. So what I would suggest and what I keep saying at the start of this conversation, is there anything to prepare?

1:44:49Yes. Like really dial down and go, hey, who's going to benefit from this? That's not me, right? Because what that does is it gives you an orientation to go, how is the practice? How is the experience showing up in the world that you don't get too attached to? Wow, that experience was so cool. I need to have that again, right? I want to chase that again. No, trust that it does its work, right? For eight months. And then that will offer you something here. The other piece is just a little, a short one in reply to John. If you go and watch the early conversations I did with John, like three years ago, right?

1:45:32For whatever implicit dynamic there was of like, wanting to be like seeking approval or seeking attention, I got taken up in that train of complexity. And I heard from a lot of people that like, wow, I didn't know you were such a complex thinker. Great. What do you think about it? I don't know. I don't understand. Right. And I felt like I was losing contact with people that I cared about. I did. You know, I did lose contact with people that I cared about. And that mattered a lot to me because of this. And so something I do consciously and sometimes i do this with john um if you see that uh if you watch the lectern q and a's you'll sometimes hear me say this thing of like yeah can you say that in english or like let me say that again in english yeah i'm trying to do that move to bring it more into the poetic the example the everyday the lived in the practical um because i don't want i don't want to get caught up in this i'm still like halfway up there like i'm like i'm like washing my hair in the clouds with the abstraction, but I'm trying to create that tension so that John and I can complement each other rather than just, I don't know, cooperate all the way.

1:46:43We do that when we're talking. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I mean, I've been really, really pleased by the way that when we move to, you look at some of the old Q &A, it's just me taking the questions and then we did one where Ethan was threading some of the questions and I immediately said to Ethan, No, no. That thing you're doing where you're threading and weaving like he was just thriving, that's how we're going to do it from now on. Precisely because the dynamic between us is much better than me on my own. And that's how we now we do it. And it won't just be he and I, it'll be Taylor, right?

1:47:20Yeah. So I think whichever intent the question had, I think we've addressed both sides of it very, very well. one small one one small thing to know actually might be a little bit more revealing um the relationship that you and i have had has changed over many years oh yes in the process of that like you know i started to get to know that part of me yeah that part of me really wants john to say like i'm good you know like oh i want him to say that i'm smart i want you to write my phd recommendation letter i want you know there was a lot of that which i had to work with you um to to release and to come to understanding actually what do i need um that's my tier two right it happened for like very very long uh very drawn out very long container but i think if if there's a part of you that resonates with that tool and you know there's a kind of honesty there of like yeah actually i think i have something to work through in my relationship with john or in my relationship to um people that i see as smarter than me or more complex maybe can pay attention to that also and say, okay, maybe this can afford you a different way of proportioning that relationship.

1:48:31Because doing this job gets lonely, frankly. And I want to meet you in person. And we can sort out the projections of whatever you might think I am so that we can meet each other. But that would be what I have to say to that. Thank you, Ethan. That was excellent. Let's take one more Yeah, one more question Let's do it

1:49:03Honest question What does this framework provide that you cannot get from a traditional Buddhist practice to, I'm hesitant to adopt things that could turn into a thicket of views, thank you I'll answer that first First of all, you know, the primary inspiration for the idea of an ecology of practices was the eightfold path and its representation as a wheel.

1:49:36Now, and in that sense, there's a deep resonance with Buddhism. I do think that it's not about a thicket of views. I mean, that's, in fact, the whole point about this. We're not trying to push propositions on you. We're trying to get you to on the path of virtuosity to virtue. And I think that's very much aligned with what the Buddha was oriented to with people. I do think that what this brings in is it brings in things derived from, you know, sort of cutting edge cognitive science, other philosophical frameworks. I do not think there's any panacea practice or any panacea framework, Buddhism included, Christianity included, Neoplatonism included.

1:50:26That's why I'm a Zen Neoplatonist. You need at least two to correct each other the way Ethan and I correct each other. And so you'll get an emphasis on things that are typically not as well emphasized in a traditional Buddhist practice. But do not undermine it either. We've been very careful to cultivate something that will give you what you're not necessarily getting in any traditional home without undermining any particular traditional home. If you would, I think you'd be willing to admit that there's probably things that a platonic or a Taoist framework have in it that a Buddhist framework don't and that are of value to human flourishing, then that is exactly what we're trying to give you.

1:51:15But we're not trying to give you a thicket of views. This is not about you becoming a Taoist or a Platonist. That's what Ethan has been emphasizing from the beginning. This is what can we learn from their practices and what can we learn from practices drawn from cutting edge cognitive science that can best afford us getting all of these traditions to talk to each other in a way that is mutually transformative and enriching. And so I'm trying to, I appreciate the honesty of your question. And I would say to you that, and I know this is only anecdotal evidence and there's an aspect of trust, but I've been, you know, not only this, but in other ways.

1:52:06One of my constant experiences is people find that they are renewed and deepened in their home practices, not that they have been alienated from it or undermined from it. As I said before, Christians will say, you've really helped. I get so much more out of church. And Buddhists will say, I'm getting so much more now out of my practices. is. And so now can we promise that will absolutely be the case for you? No, I don't know you personally. But what I can say is that that's what has typically been the prototype of how people experience this. And that is how it's designed to operate.

1:52:52I want to be somewhat playful with the question. I think if what's implied is that there isn't a difference. I take that as a compliment, frankly. To be compared to the traditional Buddhist practices is a high bar. Now, having said that though, I want to recommend this quite explicitly. If you feel that you look at Tiamat, or you have a conversation with me, or you go through our conversation and you go, actually, I could get this going to my Buddhist community practice center. Great. Go do that. Go do that. That's totally okay. But I'm more interested in people taking up practices and coming into relationship with themselves in whatever way sees fit.

1:53:49I'm not here to promote like, oh, this is a unique selling point. I'm making a scientific argument for what I think is necessary in our particular culture. And I can draw that with this metaphor.

1:54:04If you're pointing at different ecologies or practices that already exist, whether they are secular or they are religious, it's like saying, that's a really good car. That's a really good car. That's a really good car. What we're trying to do with TMX is teach you how to drive. That's the point. so you can get in any car. And in that is to experience the difference. You know how people get in cars and they're like, wow, this feels like it's really quiet or she's really smooth. Man, some people can't feel the tension in their breath. That's the equivalent of saying like, yeah, it's all right. Sound system's good.

1:54:46I'm not trying to disparage any religion, which is why that in this particular container, all my containers, I talk about religious frameworks, I talk about I bring in theological arguments in conversation with the science, with the philosophy, it's all together. I'm not trying to push a particular region on anybody. What I would love to see, and I have been privileged to see this quite a lot, is people come in with long histories of being in a religious setting. They get a lot out of it. I have people come in, they're Christians, a couple of Buddhists come in. I worked in Japan for a long time as well.

1:55:29I worked in Indonesia, it was a highly Muslim country, the biggest Muslim country in the world. And what I've seen is that this work transfers and nobody abandoned their religion and started praying to me. Thank God. I'm interested in facilitating conversation between faiths, between worldviews. And if that's not what you need, that's okay.

1:55:56All right. Ethan, we're coming to the end of our time. It's almost 12, my time. And so, as always, I want to give my interlocutor the last word, the last thing. Before I do, I want to give thanks. We've mentioned him multiple times. Of course, we owe an ongoing debt of gratitude to Taylor Barrett. And of course, we always owe thanks to Christopher Master Pietro. Benjamin Baker is behind the scenes making sure that the imp of the perverse is in no way thwarting us here. Ellie is there making sure that all the questions are. And so thanks to all the people that are making, have made this happen or making this happen.

1:56:42and of course my thanks in advance to all the facilitators are going to be helping us so Ethan anything final before I close this up oh one final thanks thanks for all of you who have spent time with us and especially the ones that have given such an excellent set of questions yeah that was the first thing I was going to start with thank you all for your excellent excellent questions it felt really good and really relieving to also like address questions that were coming up and so to that end, I just have so much gratitude for you, for Taylor Barrett, same thing for Ellie, for Ben. I can't wait for all of us to actually spend time together.

1:57:22And I can think of no better gift than the company of good people. So I hope that you'll want to come and be a part of that as well. Well, and also given our last question, maybe this is appropriate. I'll end with one of my favorite stories from the Buddhist tradition, Ananda, who's always getting things slightly wrong, comes to the Buddha and says, you know, I think that half of the way is, you know, the friends we keep or the company we keep, there's different translations. And the Buddha turned to Ananda and said, no, Ananda, that is all of the way. That is all of the way. All right. Thank you, everyone.

1:57:57And look forward to meeting many of you and practicing and growing with many of you in person. Take good care, everyone. Take good care. Bye-bye. Thank you.