Light Conversations with Bhaskar

Light Conversations with Bhaskar Podcast Episode #3

Hello everybody. It's an absolute delight for me to be with my dear friend Steve Sims.

So good to be with you. Just to set the context Steve is my mentor. Many people come to me for advice, suggestions, and ideas, and I go to Steve for that. So here is the source of the, the river. Very, very grateful to have the river man with me. Steve has lived a lifeless, ordinary. I'm not one to go through people's bios enough to say that I, I think the world of Steve, he has changed my life dramatically.

A significant moment was I first started, you know, switching from engineer to being a yoga consultant and a speaker, and I was speaking at the Padua Center where Steve was a director. And I remember after about, I don't know, 15 or so speaking episodes. Steve came to me and said, Taka, you're getting good, dangerously good.

And it gave me the confidence to take the show on the road. So a lot of who I am comes from Steve. So here we are just chatting and the chilling. So how is Steve this morning? Steve's good. Steve's as I get older, I'm takes me a little longer to wake up, so That's your job? Yeah. Well, I don't know.

I'm also. Grain up the hair. So we're not that far apart. Well that is, that what it feels like also takes me a while to get, especially in the wintertime. I see lots of books behind you. I know I, I don't profess any academic brilliance. I. You can judge my background. I have no information, but I do have information in front of me.

I have Dear Steve's Noble River trilogy. This is my favorite collection of books. It has the quotes of some of the most profound thinkers and and wisdom council of our times and ancient times as well, Eastern Western. And it's been a labor of love. I know for Steve for many, many years to put this book together And Steve and I have something in common.

We are lovers of words. However, Steve is a master of words where I'm just an apprentice and I know you love breaking words down. I'm wondering if there's any word or phrase that you're playing with right now. Well, it's it's a wisdom trilogy, so we could sort of start with that word.

And it's kind of fun when you ask people. What is wisdom and you get so I'll ask you that question Vascar to start, and then we can play with that word. Sure. What is wisdom? What's spontaneously coming up for me is what is not. It's not intellectual capability. It's not cleverness, not speed, smart.

There is all these things are like swords and wisdom is the hand that holds these swords. I sense it as a kind of knowingness a more. Sort of subtle and profound access to the reality in which we find ourselves not through knowledge through direct experience. And I sense wisdom is not necessarily something gained over a lifetime.

There are some people who are just born supervised. I'm speaking to one right now perhaps. And it's kind of like physical strength. Some people are physically born strong, some people have, yeah, very born gifted at the basketball or the violin. And some people are just born wise and maybe it's car make past lives and maybe that's just a serendipitous fortuity of birth.

The wisdom I would say is a deep experiential knowingness that at the very least there's something more happening than this mind body system. There's a higher intelligence at play, so there's a sort of a big word in the conversation, and that's knowledge. And so you could say it's the type of knowledge that we're born with.

It's intrinsic. Is it, but it's only to some and not to others. Like some people have the gift of wisdom and others don't. Can we grow in wisdom? Very, very great questions. How do we grow in wisdom? Yeah. We speak of acquiring wisdom. Mm-hmm. You could speak of being street wise too. People acquire mm-hmm.

A set of skills or they have a certain, they tap into a certain resourcefulness or resilience that enables them to sort of, Survive on the street. Yeah. This question streetwise, it really throws a spanner in my, in my works of understanding what wisdom is. I would call that more street smart than streetwise.

That's just me. Okay. Wisdom to me is it feels much more like an unlearning than learning or un acknowledging than acknowledging it's maybe a strange way to put it. So going back to your point about, you know, what are the constraints of wisdom to me, I don't believe it's constraint at all in terms of gender or social status or culture or religion or tradition.

It is, it is just a serendipitous fortuity of birth. You can get the wisest people and the, the demetric opposite in all walks and spectrums of life. So it is independent of the avatar. Of how we incarnate and where we incarnate, and the beliefs and philosophies we take on. So I get the sense that we grow in wisdom from almost discarding.

At least this is my journey. I thought I knew stuff. And in life. What do something else? What do you have to discard? To me it feels like discarding ignorance. Of who you think you are, so that who you actually are reveals itself spontaneously. Hmm. Right. Or who you think, what do you think life is at a grand, non localized way of playing.

So if we talk about knowledge, we talk about knowing, and it's a great question. Like how do we come to know anything? And I would say, of course we ask questions, we live questions. We speak about a quest. We speak about a journey of self-discovery. And I think that, you know, I would speak myself with wisdom as knowledge, but then I ask.

Cause most people, when you ask them what is wisdom? They say, well, it's knowledge of some kind. And I say, well, what differentiates. Scientific knowledge from wisdom, or you could speak with a philosophy, of course, comes from word philia and Sophia, the love of wisdom. Hmm. So actually when you pursue like I think it's with any kind of knowing, we experience something and we wanna understand our experience.

Now to understand our experience, there's self inquiry. We have to a, just be present to ourselves, radically present to collect the data of our own experience. The hero journey. The hero goes inward war again. Joseph Campbell. So I think it, it's inner, like you've suggested that it's inner, it's inside of us.

So people talk about it and it's kind of fun and it goes all over the place when you say knowledge, but I say it's knowledge and energy is what I say. Hmm. And it's a, it's that knowledge that I would say teaches the heart to open and the energy. When I speak of energy, like it's, and as this is what you allude to, it's the very essence of ourself.

Like it's who we are. It's the intelligence of the universe right inside of us and I would say it has to be we have to actually work to discover ourselves and that deep inner essence. And with that, Comes an up of awareness or knowledge or wisdom that will guide us down the river of life and speak of.

River, there's a lot of people going down the river of life and they don't have any experience. They don't have a teaching and they don't have a community. They're not river wise. Mm-hmm. You know what happens to them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They hit their rocks and they're upside down. I've been there. Okay.

I think we all have, so I'll show you my scars. But the the way I like to say it is there's a vector like. When we want to know something, I have a pain in my knee. And I'm present to that. And then what's this pain all about? What's given rise to this pain? So there is a process of trying to understand our experience.

Mm-hmm. And in that we ask questions, we question our experience, we question, what is this? What's going on? What's happening inside me? What's going on outside me? So I think we're born with, and you talked about this, a deep desire. To know. And we're born with a deep desire to love, and the two of those go together.

And so I speak of wisdom as the knowledge of love. That's my simple definition of love. And then the question, the second question I asked you is, can we grow in wisdom? And how do we do that? Well, I think like, and this might be the second word that we can discuss is awakening. Mm-hmm. Like, I think we awaken.

That intelligence that's deep within us, that is our inner essence and it brings us, you know, into a higher dimension of consciousness. So going down the river of life, if you have a good teaching and you ha are a good guide that's with you, someone that's been down the river. Like we learn, we learn from the poets and the philosophers.

This book of the three books of wisdom, there's a thousand voices, but they're all sharing. Some of their hard one wisdom that will serve to help me navigate the unknown. Cuz all of us are like a river. We're, we're journeying into the unknown. Hmm. So the idea of knowing is we ask questions, we puzzle over things we want to understand.

It's, it's not the mind. This is the. The use of intelligence and and then when we get an insight, it's gratuitous. It comes, we don't get it. Sometimes we puzzle over things for a long time, and it's a stubborn paradox. It's a conflict that doesn't seem to have a resolution and we get frustrated. But just our effort meets grace, so to speak.

It's like two vectors and then all of a sudden we have that eureka and it comes from, as you said, deep inside of us. There's a up brush of, of knowledge or wisdom. It's a gift. In the Christian tradition, they call it a gift of the spirit. Mm-hmm. So but energy is the word. And of course, like writing the wisdom trilogy.

Yeah. Like I said, that was the best assignment anyone could get from the universe because it just gave me energy for four years. I just was. Okay. All these voices of wisdom were just activating some of that deep knowing that is inside me, but has to come into consciousness basically. Mm-hmm. So yeah, these are a few thoughts.

Okay. So there was. I'm hearing a few things. I'm hearing the word remembering, like you said, it's deep inside me and it came through a surface, so almost feels like, ah, yeah, I forgot about that. So there, this word remembering is coming up you and what I've, what I've understood you expressing is that.

It comes from questioning experience. So when we question our experience what's called an examined life, then we sort of become experientially aware or knowledgeable about some deeper truths or deeper untruths that reveal themselves. Would that be a fair way to say it? And then the energy component is the inspiration that comes from that, or I, I just wanna see how you meet energy.

Well, energy, I mean, the ego has its own agenda. And I think you used the word ignorance before. So wisdom dispels ignorance. That would be an awakening. And it dispels arrogance. Ignorance and arrogance. Now those are sort of the hallmarks of the eagle. And so wisdom will just help you to dismantle your ego, striving to unmask the ego, and then you're left with what what you mentioned before is Like it's just who are we, you know?

And it's, you basically have to peel away everything to get to the essence of who we really are. And that's sort of becoming a nobody That's a good conversation. So what I mean by that is everything in the world of form is an illusion.

It's not an illusion in the sense it's not real, but it's transitory, the sun rises on it and the sun sets mm-hmm. On all the roles that we play, who we think we are, as you mentioned earlier. And we we just keep going with this adventure. Of discovering. And then there's that quantum leap where

we get a shift, fairly dramatic shift from, you know, I once was blind, but now I see. We go from blindness to a sort of transformed vision and the wisdom helps us to transcend limitations. You know limitations. Confinements, we're confined. We have emotional confinements.

We're confined by our misperceptions. We're confined, most of all by knowledge, because we think we know. So, it is knowing, but it's not the knowing of the ego over the mind that. Thanks. I've got this all figured out. I know who I am. This is me and another whole thing just sort of disappears again and we're sort of, we have to keep going.

Sounds a loosely held sort of knowing that is more experience based than, I mean, the information can of course, inform and inspire, but fundamentally it's a knowing that arises from a direct experience of something different to what we'd imagine things to be. So this dispelling of ignorance and arrogance, wisdom can come not always as a shy question.

Sometimes it can come with a knife, you know, it could be a shocking experience. So, wondering about that as well, that Sometimes wisdom can happen like spontaneously. There have been cases of that people who are just spontaneously awakened to another reality. And sometimes it comes through gradually built effort, sometimes years of dedicated practice.

This's wisdom of no self. This wisdom of what the Buddhist would call an or impermanence that. This phenomenal world is changing. So where are you in this changing world? I was once an engineer. It's come and gone. So I'm still here, but the engineer's gone. So was I an engineer and, and I can go on like this, you know so many things have come and gone.

So then this is going back to the questioning experience and that examined life by simply just examining very deeply and sincerely. Okay, so where is this eye? And and realizing that we are in a phenomenon world, a causal universe where things are constantly changing. And this eye that what I thought was an eye, seems to be more of a verb than a noun.

It's constantly changing phenomena. I mean you and I, we both had shining black hair or whatever it was you were blonde, probably. But our hair has changed. So you know, we can do so much look after ourselves, but in, in the end, the body's changing. We're simply looking after, or at least it feels like we're looking after a changing phenomena as far as the body's concerned.

Same with my thoughts and emotions and ideas and philosophies and beliefs. Everything keeps changing. So that's, is that one form of Self-examination or, or self-questioning that can lead to wisdom or undoing of, of false knowledge. Yeah. When you speak of change, that's a great word too, to talk about.

And I always talk about a river of change every day. The river is changing. And so wisdom will help you Understand the movement of life. And I mean, we could say yes, there's archetypal developmental stages in life. You know, we have childhood and then we have adolescence and shaping a young adult identity.

We have the middle passage, then we have. Sort of elderhood and then you have knee in the evening of life. So, so there you are. So I've been through them all. But every threshold is a significant shift that's taking place and it's all programmed, as you say. Joseph Campbell called it Standard Metamorphosis.

But how we understand those changes. And of course the great thing is attachment to forum. So if you get attached to say your young adult identity, by the time you hit the middle passage, you know, a lot of people are trying to go back. And they get stuck at the threshold and there's a new season of life coming.

What you called, you know, there's the morning of life in the afternoon of life, and then the evening of life. Now the afternoon is different from the morning, but he would, he emphasized it's no lesser than the morning. But it is different. And the evening also is different from, so knowing what time it is in your life is very important.

And if you don't understand that, like I was working in an adolescent rehab center and it's people who didn't go through an adolescent process well, and that could be that the either we're resisting. You know, their own adult development. Or it could be that the parents were overprotecting over providing and they themselves were resisting.

Mm. So they get stuck there. So how you can help a person, it's like a river. We've got a set of rapids to go through. Now we've gotta get to the other side. And you can just say, oh, I wanna stay here, you know, and pitch your tent. And sometimes that's what people do in life. They just pitch their tent and watch the river.

But you gotta jump, you gotta jump into that river and, and do the journey. And if you don't, there's a certain amount of suffering in any transformative process. And there's a greater suffering when we resist the transition or the transformation that wants to happen. So when we talk for change, I think and marry that to wisdom.

Wisdom is understanding the movement of life and the timing and pacing ourselves and Different cultures, of course, have helped with rituals and the severance of the, the boy from the mother and all of these things. And in our culture now, we don't I don't think we do these threshold crossings very well.

And a fellow by the name of Toby said if you get to a threshold and you get stuck there. He said there's a whole collapse of life energy, vital energy motivation. Mm. Once you get to the other side, there's a whole amplification of energy. So, so this lack of rights and ritual that certain thresholds I'm understanding is kind of blocking or damaging the flow of energy in our lives and how we navigate through these stages.

Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. And if you have, you know, wisdom that you've received from your elders, from poets and philosophers and, you know, we have people like athletes, athletes can reveal the hidden potential of our bodies. You know, we can start to reimagine our lives when we see what our bodies are capable of.

And I Bought a house in little Burgundy. It was built in 1875. If you walked into that house, you'd probably turn on your heels and say, I'm out of here. Cause it was pretty dilapidated. But I saw myself because I'd done renovation, I saw the potential for transformation. And so I jumped on it and did the work and turned this old house into, you know, a piece of art, basically.

And so the same thing with an individual, like part of the work that I do is help a person come to see a vision of themselves, which is higher than what they see. Interior designer and carpenter for the human psyche. As you know, I have a 15 year old son and You know, typically, traditionally men go through rights of passage in India, yet the guru system that, you know, the young boys had to go through, there's natives and so on.

You know, in the Jewish tradition, they all have some sort of rights of passage and this generation does not have any rights of passage so I'm wondering how you would support someone in that transition. Yeah. And, and just seeing what the task is, the developmental task.

So I worked a lot with young adults. And just like shaping a young adult d. And just a simple teaching can help someone understand cuz wisdom in the end has to be applied. So that's another conversation. You know, a lot of people are wise, but they're not applying that wisdom.

So with shaping a young adult identity, I'd say there's four things that are the tasks of that. Developmental process, and I would say you're separating from your family of origin and becoming autonomous. So the whole movement toward autonomy becoming a self-responsible adult, that would be one.

Then there's lifestyle choices, and that's the values that are underpinning the choices that you make about your life. Then there would be mating a partner, relationships, that whole area. And then the fourth would be some kind of career track, vocation trade. So when people, just have a simple little scheme like that, they can start to say, well, where am I stuck?

And they can see these four things, or they could become, I'm gonna push back a little bit, I'm gonna put in different times. Cause that, that seems to be a very traditional model. But nowadays, we literally have like nine year olds making multimillion dollars showing toys on YouTube. We have, you know, crypto people who are like 15 years old and buying mansions, you know, or YouTubers or, so the, the whole model has completely changed.

And also this, this getting married model has completely changed. So all of that has really become so amorphous it for many people, they won't even recognize themselves in the narrative. It's, it's so transformed nowadays the way we live you know, so, I'm just wondering if there's room for a new narrative with like a rights of passage 2.0 where, the yardsticks might have changed, but there's still some kind of like you say energy flow instead of blockage.

In those transitions, the transitions remain so the context remains. Just the content has changed dramatically. Yeah, no. And you see people that are three years old that are just working a computer. Is that helpful or Well, so back to Joseph Campbell, when he says, no matter what life has its own program, you know it's a given.

Mm-hmm. So when you say you get to puberty, there's a certain physiological. A big psychic revolution. There's a lot of change that's happening. And that's built right into what life is, as we talked about before. I did a lot of midlife workshops, which were a lot of fun and sometimes in those groups, I would let a 35 year old in and they were a little ahead of schedule, but they were poised for the middle passage.

And a lot of people tell me, even at the age of 30 and 25, oh, I've already done all that, those tasks that belong, like the task of individuation. And you know, so some people say, well, I'm, I'm ahead of schedule. I don't think you can later on, of course, The middle passage comes and you know, oh, whoa, I thought I'd done all this work.

You know, I thought I was on the other side. So, yeah, obviously the changes in the outer world are impacting on how we, but I would say the river is The river is the river. And yeah, and the r you know, of course in life you, the acceptance is a big thing. Serenity comes from just accepting a river has a path and it's going to take you where it takes you. I used to be a, what I tell others, I used to be a canal guy who was like making your own river. And it was all about getting somewhere in a straight line as quickly as I could so I could arrive at my destination.

But at some point I decided canals are pretty boring, and that's when I became a river man. And yeah, the, the river is a given and the rocks are, you know, you can curse the rocks and say that stupid rock and other things, but it's just there. It's unforgiving.

Yeah. What gets you down the river is wisdom and a set of skills. So if you cultivate the ability to read the river and understand the movement, there's all kinds of vectors. Just like in the human psyche. We've got all kinds of things going on in the human psyche. And how do you turn the the noise of the psyche into song?

If you look at, if you look at kayakers, you see sometimes they get in very turbulent water and they're just playing with the water. Like they've developed a set of skills, which is remarkable. Let's peel onion a little bit because what I'm hearing you describing is more skillful living, which is I'm I see the river as a metaphor for life and the kayaking is the journey through life, and that the skillfulness of the kayaker is more skillful living.

I'm just wondering a wisdom point to understanding, Hey, it's just a ride. You're not the kayaker, you're not the river. It's just a ride. So I'm wondering if wisdom is the foundation that holds that whole story. So wisdom is not being the kayaker, it's not being the kayak not being the river.

It's literally, you know almost like a passenger in that kayaker journey. So is there another substratum of reality that wisdom points to beyond the skillful navigation of the river? I was just thinking of listening to you of becoming the river. Like one with the river and at the end of the wisdom trilogy, the epilogue of the bucket it's Kga brand.

Mm-hmm. And he talks about, you know, the river eventually meets the ocean and that's where our fears dissolve. And he says It's not about disappearing into the ocean, it's about becoming the ocean. So I think so we become the river like we're in harmony with the river and we have to be in harmony with all of creation.

We have to be in harmony with our bodies . Wisdom, I think is something that teaches us the law of harmony. Okay. And that harmony is oneness, ultimately itself. Just for fun, I'm gonna one up just for fun, just for one. I'm up our man Khali, who I love a lot. Just gonna have some fun.

Yeah. I would actually go so far as to say that in the end, the river becomes the cloud. So just using the cloud is the end point because the cloud basically rains down on the mountain to the river, to the ocean, to the sea, and you know, yes. So, I have a four year old at home and we're talking about.

True spontaneous presence. As they get older, it becomes more and more, the personality starts to come. And now she's aware, she's a girl now, she's aware of her name. Now she's aware that she's, you know, Canadian Indian. So all these labels are being put on. She's already four years old, but when she was like zero to three.

There was just pure spontaneous awareness. There's this state of nobody that you pointed to. I would call that pure innocence. So I was like that. Once you were like that once, you probably still are. So you go through this river of the illusion, man. And this crystallizing of personality and persona.

And then this is where I speak about the unlearning, at least for me, should, through the sheer heat of life experience that that persona starts to crack, you realize that this is not real. And then there's a returning to that innocence there's a, there's a band called u2, a famous band, U2 and I, I think I may be wrong.

Their, their recent tour was called Innocence Plus. Experience equals Wisdom. Innocence plus experience equals wisdom. And that to me sounds like the innocence of the cloud raining down on the mountain and then the river of experience. And then you end up in the ocean only to return back to the cloud again.

With that experience I'm wondering if that metaphor resonates. Yeah, it's the hydrological cycle they call it. So water will just, yeah. And then it will evaporate and, and then it will condense into clouds and then rain down or snow on you.

Water is going round and round. And are we going round and round? I perhaps, but I would think of it as we don't return to the innocence of a three-year-old. Because we are. Elevating our consciousness to a, a higher level. It is innocence in the end. Pure innocence is, pure consciousness is pure silence, is pure love.

Ultimately, of course, that's the noble intention, and like what's the purpose of the hydrological cycle? It all has a very sacred purpose and all this water is returning and giving us crops and forests and vegetation. So I just want to look at this notion that, Wisdom, is acquired through experience or, and I mentioned perhaps some people are born wise and it was maybe acquired at a serendipity of birth or past life experiences. Who knows? And y one could go through the, the full catastrophe of life.

Yet there is wisdom behind the catastrophe. So I'm wondering if wisdom. Is something that's acquired through one lifetime, or can you have it throughout the entire lifetime? Could you be born with more wisdom? Yeah. And so that gets us back to that question about can we grow in wisdom?

I mean, there are old people that are not wives. This doesn't happen automatically. You don't say, oh, he's a wise old man, or a wise lady. So that's why I think. A conscious life. And that's where intention and attention help us, create A condition, and again, we're speaking of awakening, of anticipation and readiness to receive wisdom.

Mm-hmm. You know, we have to be open. I think the basic attitude and the spiritual journey is receptivity. We're open to receive. So open to receive. We might say it's a gift to wisdom, but how do we cultivate that openness? And again, we have to go to the fear and ignorance and greed and say,

how do we transform these limitations? This is the human condition. And now of course, we're in a world where fear and ignorance and greed seem to be you know bounding. And so what's missing in human consciousness? Why in this age when we have all this new power, which is very beautiful and scientific knowledge, why are we still.

In the spiritual domain. Living at such a primitive level. What's missing is sort of a good question. What prevents us from being one? Yeah. It's a very good question. I genuinely find my four year old, very wise, genuinely, you know, I'm on the apex of my life, the midpoint pretty much, and I see you and I see her, in the two sides of the spectrum .

Nevertheless, the quality of wisdom, although she doesn't have the vocabulary to back it up, but just the insights and how she perceives life, it inspires me so much like, wow. We were all once like that. So I do see wisdom in both ends of the spectrum in the middle. It's sad, lacking for people like me where, where we're caught in the triples of the river yet.

So let's talk about this notion of having wise council, you know, as we go through, let's say, From preteens to mid sixties or whatever, you know, in that whole catastrophe of life when we're trying to figure ourselves out and make a living and so on. What, where is the place for Wisdom Council?

You used the word mentoring before. I was involved in drug rehabilitation, a social reentry program. And after they'd been at a farm for a year and we're going back to the world and we had an eight week called social reentry. And so when they started the journey, I said there's two things that are very important and the same.

When I was doing prison work and you see people getting outta prison, there's sort of a. Freedom that they have, and they get pretty excited. You know, it's like being sick and then you feel better afterwards. It's kind of the euphoria, but it's also very dangerous energy. It's like infatuation.

You can get swept away too. So I would always say, hurry slowly. Hurry slowly, just slowly, slowly. And at the same time the council was. Surround yourself with the right people. And the right people are the people that are gonna support your ongoing transformation.

You've done a lot of work on yourself for a year. Be sure that you don't go back to the world that you came from. You know, it's kind of that image of the seed. The seed has an assistance to grow, but it needs an environment. It needs the the soil and the rain that we talked about, the hydroelectrical cycle and the sunshine.

So you as a mentor, What you do is you surround people with your consciousness and your love, and that becomes very fertile soil in which the seed can release its power and its own unique potential. Hmm. I'm reminded of this notion that back in the days, the emperors in India, they used to walk with two people beside them.

So to the left they had their legal counsel, the lawyer, and to their right they had the wisdom council, their yogi. So it's sort of like a metaphor for our life as well. In that if you were all emperors, it's important to have the practical knowledge on how to navigate your life skillfully.

And also have some wisdom council in whatever shape or form resonates. It could be spending time in nature or being in group dialogue, or having a person that aspires inspires different shapes and forms. But just having both of these, I find are, the practicality of living in this avatar, in this manifestation, in this reality.

Yet the knowingness that there's an undercurrent that holds it all together, which is wisdom. Well, I was just thinking I have my ego over here. I have my spirit and my potential. My meaning over here, you know, Uhhuh. So now that all are the ego testicles. So no respect, you know, we love you guys.

That's gotta keep our viewers, which, which voices you're listening to, you know, cause these voices can be pretty loud and very seductive and you can get pulled into the ego over here. But then there's that calling too. And we can run away from the journey. We can refuse insight. We can refuse questions that needs to be asked.

Let's look at this notion. I wanna pick up on this because it is something, you mentioned this just because you have wisdom doesn't mean that you apply it. Is that really wisdom, or is that just knowledge? Is that knowledgeability? But unless it's living, breathing inside you, it's not wisdom. That's just knowledge.

Yeah. So it's gotta be applied. You've gotta live the truth. I would say applied wisdom, knowledge is the manifestation of wisdom. It's not just the knowledge. I could read a book on Rumi and feel very wise and go about doing nasty stuff that doesn't make me wise, you know?

So the way I say it often is you have to see the good, and then you have to choose the good. See, I can know what represents value in my life, but then I can just choose satisfactions over that value. I can say this is good for me, but then something is more satisfying. That sabotage is that good, that devalues my life.

So seeing the good and choosing the good are very important. And some people see the good and that's where we get guilt. You have a contradiction. You know what the good is, and yet you go out and do that, which contradicts the good that you know, and that sets up attention in the human psyche. That's me trying to develop a good habit.

I see the good and I want the good. Yet my habit patterns prevent me from actually manifesting it consistently. There is a. Another word that you brought up that I'd love to look at with you way, way back. So I'm circling back like the cloud, going back onto the mountain. The word grace, you said when the effort of life experience meets with grace.

What does the grace mean for you? Oh, well it's a big word. It could be gift basically. Like we have that famous song, amazing Grace. I once was blind, but now I see. So it is the idea that it's not by human effort. And in the Christian tradition, St.

Paul said at one point, I am no longer trying. For perfection by my own efforts. So if it's theistic, you might say it's the action of God in my own soul, or being, or mind or heart, whatever. And so in a sense, the grace of God meets our effort to know God. You know, somehow they come together. If it's not theistic, you could speak of the quantum universe, you know, this Movement toward higher consciousness.

And then there's that leap. Now, does the leap come from your effort? I would say maybe the leap is more a gift than our effort. We may take credit for it, but that's the ego sneaking in and say, look at me. See, I'm up here. Now I I'm reminded of the story as you speak, a story about this man who was meditating under the street.

Very sincerely. And I don't know the exact story, but the God comes, and the man says, how much longer do I have to meditate, you know, before I can be at one with V, you know, become self enlightened. And then this Godhead person said, see all the leaves on the street? You'll need that many lifetimes before you become self-realized.

And a guy got so frustrated what I got all these leaves of lifetimes to go and he got really annoyed. Okay. This got like being boxed to another man who was just dancing and, you know, goofing around, around the creek. And then, hey, do you want to know how long you got left? Guys. Yeah, sure.

Why not? Tell me how long I got left. He goes, see all the leaves and all the peace in this forest. That's how long it got left. And he goes, only this fantastic. It's nothing. And the dancing buffoon guy became instantly enlightened, goes to the story. So I think what the story points too is , our need to, to become wise might actually.

Make us run in the opposite direction. It's almost like I, my need to calm my mind is exactly that metric opposite to meditation. So the me kind of gets in the way of wisdom. How does that land says the purpose of meditation isn't to become a better meditator.

So, you know, and we can have a drivenness in our spiritual practices. They can be ego driven. Oh, I have to be perfect. You know, the real journey is your tolerance for imperfection and your ability to forgive the imperfection in yourself and in others. And, still have that intention, a noble intention.

You know, and it's, again, St. Paul, Lou said, I am no longer trying for perfection by my own effort. So you realize it's not your show, it's not your achievement. And the minute you think anything in terms of spiritual practice, Is an achievement. The purpose of any spiritual practice is just basically, I think to, to open the heart.

And I mean, again, in the Christian scriptures, they used to have this debate with Jesus of what's real religion and what's not. And he gave the simple example, he said, you can judge a tree by its fruit. And if it bears good fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, humility, self-control, then you know mm-hmm.

That you've got a holy. Spirit in you. But if it's, you know, if it breeds violence, anger, jealousy, and greed and all these other things, then he says, you know it's kind of bogus. And again, he attacked the people who said, you follow all the laws, 600 laws to a T. But it's not the letter of the law, it's the spirit of the law.

So everything has to. Be authentic. It has to be real and ultimately I think we have to dismantle the ego cause the ego's always in there. It's got a life of its own and it's very assertive and it's got its own ambitions. So there's a purification, I think that's taking place as we go along.

So it sounds to me like you can't take this eye, this insular silo of self-identity with you when it comes to wisdom. It's also a deep recognition of the sacred geometry of life that eye seems to be a part of, and the interconnectedness of it all. I think that's a very wonderful place to land, especially in these times when there is.

Such abundance of, as you mentioned, fear and all the different views of fear. That it seems like there's never been a more important time to be curious about wisdom. Oh indeed. Yeah. And I think that hunger, that thirst, I think now becomes conscious for a lot of people. Mm. And it's certainly what we need.

I mean, if you're going down the river of life without any. We're in trouble. And I think that's our culture too. It becomes more of a spectacle rather than a spiritual adventure. It's more just a spectacle of the ego. And we see that everywhere now, and we buy into the illusion of the ego. And we're trapped.

And we also don't have a relationship with death. We were talking about the seasons of a person's life, so I'm now in the evening of life and bill Moyers was interviewing Joseph Campbell and they're talking about myths or stories. You love stories that help people understand the movement of life and the challenges and the thresholds.

So he's talking about that. And then Bill Moore says, well, give me an example in your own life. And Joseph Campbell says, when I retired from teaching, he said I had to think about my life in a whole new way. I had to get outta the sphere of achievement. And get into relaxation or enjoyment, appreciation.

And this is my little mantra and relaxing into the wonder of it all. Bill Morris cuts in and says, well, what about that dark gate that we all have to go through? And Joseph Campbell says, oh, that's nothing at all. I love that one. And he says, you know, with death, he says, as long as you're not identified with the body, If you're identified with the consciousness, because the body is only the vehicle and in which the unfoldment of consciousness is taking place.

And then he says, the journey continues because you know, your real identity is, beyond form. Everything in the world of form, including the body has to go. But what's left? You know? And that you asked that earlier, what's left if you take all these identities and so in life we have different identities.

I have a certain self-image when I'm 21. I have a picture of myself. When I'm 30, I have a picture of myself. The sun rises and the sunsets, the wind blows north and then south everything comes and goes. What is it? Who are you? Or what is unchangeable? You know? And this is ultimately, is there something that is left over?

When, everything goes in the world of form, who are you? Hmm. Nobody

I love this expression. Relax into the wonder of it all. That's so beautiful. It almost feels like, don't seek an answer, just enjoy the mystery. Yeah. There's something about just hanging out with not knowing. Yeah. Wisdom just makes us available to you.

Yeah. Lacks into the mystery of it all. This is such a profound teaching. Yeah. And our deep desire is for more beauty, the eyes to see the beauty. That's all around us and that's inside of us. The goodness. We talked about mentoring. I think you're just helping people recognize the goodness that they are, that goodness is in them, but they're not manifesting that goodness because they're not conscious of it, so I think more truth, more love, more beauty. That's our deep desire and true relaxation. You know, wisdom awakens wonder. I would say there's another connection. And I think it's part of the dedication of the Noble River for all those that are interested in awakening of wonder and wisdom in their life.

Yeah, I'm absolutely not to promote anything. I don't care about promoting anything that's not my interest. I will say objectively, this book and this series of books is a life changer. Great to have it beside you. It's got a thousand voices of extremely wise people. So grateful that you put this together.

Steve. I cannot thank you enough that this is in my hands and I wish for the world to have this by their bedside. It'll change people's lives. It is that powerful. And I say that in all sincerity. Yeah. I. Thank you, brother. Yeah. And it's changed my life and I feel very lucky to be the guy that just got the job of putting it together.

It's the other simple answer. I tell people about wisdom. I just say, it's a great sport if you're interested, if you're interested in taking up a new sport, okay, why not play with wisdom? Yeah. It's, it's a one sport that makes it good in all sports. Yeah, that's right. Sport of life, brother.

Steve, thank you so much for this time together. Thank you. Maybe we can land with, Any thought or phrase that comes to you that you feel would benefit people or just what spontaneously arises where you're listening? Do people know how old you are? Ah, I think we should tell him that story cause that Alright.

Right, let's do this. Let's do that. Mark Bond. So before we get there, Steve and I have something in common. We played over a dozen games of Banana Graham and we finished every game like down to less than five seconds every single time. Most of 'em like one second, we're like that close. We are like exactly equal in nanogram.

And then I looked at the clock. And the clock at that time said 11. 11. So Hey, Steve. Look, 11, 11 was November as well, so another 11. And then, I asked a question. Steve, remind me again how old you are. Steve. 74. And what years were you born? 47 and I happen to be 47 years old. Born in 74 and seven plus four, makes 11.

Still been playing called 11, 11 thing. I just find it. Again, grace. That's just pure grace. The I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah. No, well, that's the that's connection. Lovely. It was fun. And just to see that those numbers born in forty seven seventy four. I'm born in seventy four forty seven. It's fun.

So the universe is like this. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. So enjoy the fun by by dear viewer, listener, and yes yes, rest into the mystery of it all, and I'll see you again soon. Thank you Steve g much love. Bye g. Thank you. Lovely