1 00:00:00,591 --> 00:00:02,092 Welcome to Wonder Cabinet. 2 00:00:04,234 --> 00:00:05,255 I'm Anne Strainchamps. 3 00:00:05,695 --> 00:00:06,636 And I'm Steve Paulson. 4 00:00:07,696 --> 00:00:10,759 Some people say the modern world is disenchanted. 5 00:00:11,119 --> 00:00:15,102 Stripped of a kind of magic and mystery that used to be part of life. 6 00:00:15,582 --> 00:00:17,804 But it's all still pretty miraculous. 7 00:00:18,525 --> 00:00:22,347 The hummingbird at my feeder can fly faster than the space shuttle. 8 00:00:23,008 --> 00:00:26,711 The flower it's sipping from can turn sunlight into food. 9 00:00:27,195 --> 00:00:33,520 The rays of sunlight hitting that flower carry light particles that began their journey during the last ice age. 10 00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:36,142 So there's still plenty to be enchanted about. 11 00:00:36,802 --> 00:00:39,785 And yet, we often have a hard time feeling it. 12 00:00:40,551 --> 00:00:45,195 One of the things that makes me so sad is this world we live in that we say is life now. 13 00:00:45,795 --> 00:00:47,136 We've said it doesn't have magic. 14 00:00:47,597 --> 00:00:48,697 It's devoid of magic. 15 00:00:49,318 --> 00:00:50,659 And there is so much magic. 16 00:00:51,119 --> 00:00:52,500 There is magic in the birdsong. 17 00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:53,661 There is magic in our dreams. 18 00:00:53,681 --> 00:00:54,962 There is magic in our breath. 19 00:00:55,603 --> 00:00:56,884 There is so much magic. 20 00:00:57,644 --> 00:01:00,387 And we want to say, no, we are the magicians. 21 00:01:01,550 --> 00:01:03,071 This is Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. 22 00:01:03,451 --> 00:01:13,219 He's the founder of Emergence Magazine and somebody I've admired for a long time for the way he has nurtured and given a voice to the spiritual ecology movement. 23 00:01:13,439 --> 00:01:21,565 Now, if you're not familiar with Emergence, it's a publication, a film production studio, and also a podcast, which Emmanuel hosts. 24 00:01:22,045 --> 00:01:29,531 And for nearly a decade, it has been the hub for the same kind of environmentally-based, spiritually-infused writing that Anne and I have been bringing to Wonder Cabinet. 25 00:01:29,771 --> 00:01:33,094 There's some differences, but there is definitely a lot of synergy. 26 00:01:33,614 --> 00:01:37,217 Deep time, animism, the mythic imagination. 27 00:01:37,537 --> 00:01:41,159 Indigenous wisdom, Buddhist philosophy, and mysticism. 28 00:01:41,540 --> 00:01:45,463 And Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee grew up in a mystical family. 29 00:01:46,043 --> 00:01:52,448 He's the son of the Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, the lineage successor in the Naqshbandiya Sufi order. 30 00:01:53,008 --> 00:01:57,671 And Emmanuel is a Sufi teacher himself and the authorized successor to his father. 31 00:01:58,612 --> 00:02:07,177 You wouldn't necessarily know any of this just from listening to Emergence, but I wanted to know how that Sufi practice informs Emmanuel's life and work. 32 00:02:07,938 --> 00:02:12,881 And since he has a brand new book out called Remembering Earth, it seemed like a good time to talk. 33 00:02:13,501 --> 00:02:14,482 Okay, let's listen. 34 00:02:15,883 --> 00:02:23,127 Emmanuel, I wanted to start by talking a bit about how you grew up, because that was a pretty remarkable spiritual atmosphere. 35 00:02:24,458 --> 00:02:27,921 Oh, it was definitely a unique way to grow up. 36 00:02:28,441 --> 00:02:46,595 I mean, the story really begins with my parents, who were disciples of a Sufi teacher, a Russian Sufi mystic named Irina Tweedie, who went to India in the late 50s, met a Sufi master and spent several years with him. 37 00:02:46,635 --> 00:02:47,756 And upon his death, he 38 00:02:48,556 --> 00:02:55,078 She was made his successor, and she took this particular lineage of Naqshbandiya Sufism to England. 39 00:02:55,539 --> 00:03:11,564 She had given up everything through the course of her training, given all her money away, and was surviving on a war widow's pension and living in a tiny little flat by a train track, meeting with a few disciples, my parents being one of the early ones. 40 00:03:11,584 --> 00:03:12,345 This is the early 70s. 41 00:03:13,745 --> 00:03:24,659 And a few years later, my father bought a house in a residential area of North London and invited Irina Tweedie to live in the ground floor flat. 42 00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:29,385 And so I grew up with a guru living downstairs. 43 00:03:31,558 --> 00:03:35,420 She was an extraordinary person too. 44 00:03:35,460 --> 00:03:37,642 When you think she was born, I think I looked her up. 45 00:03:37,662 --> 00:03:40,243 She was born in like 1907 or something like that. 46 00:03:40,263 --> 00:03:45,147 So she's one of that generation who lived through both World War I and World War II. 47 00:03:45,527 --> 00:03:49,029 And then she goes off to India and she has this spiritual quest. 48 00:03:49,470 --> 00:03:53,472 And this is before the flower children discover the Eastern religions. 49 00:03:53,573 --> 00:03:53,993 And she's 50 00:03:54,673 --> 00:04:00,215 The first Western woman trained in this particular Sufi lineage. 51 00:04:00,235 --> 00:04:03,036 And then she writes a spiritual memoir. 52 00:04:03,416 --> 00:04:04,897 And that becomes huge. 53 00:04:05,197 --> 00:04:07,478 And all these people begin trekking to your house. 54 00:04:07,498 --> 00:04:18,322 But it's really a remarkable story of a woman with a, I don't know, kind of spiritual passion that was incredibly rare then, still rare today. 55 00:04:19,337 --> 00:04:23,279 She was a formidable character in every sense. 56 00:04:23,859 --> 00:04:30,403 She loved fiercely, like really fiercely, and she would do anything for the sake of the truth. 57 00:04:30,863 --> 00:04:43,950 She also was somebody who would, remember when we were young, you know, you'd wake up one morning and there'd be a note on the table downstairs that would be like, gone, if I'm not back in three months, consider me dead. 58 00:04:44,750 --> 00:04:45,130 You know? 59 00:04:46,151 --> 00:04:57,556 And she would have gone off to somewhere because she had had a dream the night before that said she had to seek out a teacher in, you know, it's a true story, in Morocco who had to do something to her heart. 60 00:04:58,697 --> 00:04:59,417 She lived... 61 00:04:59,777 --> 00:05:03,398 you know, on the razor's edge, if you will, you know, they speak of in mysticism. 62 00:05:04,118 --> 00:05:06,639 And, you know, she permeated the house. 63 00:05:07,259 --> 00:05:19,241 As you said, she wrote this spiritual memoir, which was so unique because it was a diary of the personal journey into her own darkness that this mystical path took her on. 64 00:05:19,762 --> 00:05:22,822 And so it was very intimate, very personal, and nothing held back. 65 00:05:23,182 --> 00:05:25,723 There really hadn't been anything like that published in the West. 66 00:05:26,523 --> 00:05:30,425 And it drew seekers from all over the world to our door. 67 00:05:30,906 --> 00:05:32,847 Word got out that she was just open. 68 00:05:32,887 --> 00:05:33,908 And this was the address. 69 00:05:34,188 --> 00:05:37,610 And people would ring up and say, you know, I've just read the book. 70 00:05:37,790 --> 00:05:39,111 I must come see Tweedie. 71 00:05:39,691 --> 00:05:45,895 Or they would just show up on the door at all hours in states of often distress. 72 00:05:47,247 --> 00:05:48,929 So, you know, it was not dull. 73 00:05:50,491 --> 00:05:51,412 I'll just say that. 74 00:05:51,773 --> 00:06:00,964 Growing up with a guru downstairs, you know, and also my father, you know, was, you know, I would say I lived with two masters, a master downstairs and then a master upstairs. 75 00:06:02,045 --> 00:06:05,470 It was a potent energetic pot. 76 00:06:06,070 --> 00:06:17,483 Well, the one thing I wonder about also, though, is it is such an extraordinary and rare experience to have grown up with a spiritual leader, a guru, in a sense, who is a woman. 77 00:06:18,544 --> 00:06:18,684 Yeah. 78 00:06:18,704 --> 00:06:25,232 I mean, we are not used to seeing in any way, shape, or form the face of the divine through the face of a woman. 79 00:06:26,265 --> 00:06:27,526 No, you're absolutely right. 80 00:06:27,786 --> 00:06:30,547 You know, and I don't think I even thought about it growing up. 81 00:06:30,607 --> 00:06:31,548 It was just Tweedie. 82 00:06:32,028 --> 00:06:43,333 I don't think I ever even thought that other people didn't meditate and pray for hours every day until I, you know, went to other kids' house after school when I was, you know, seven or eight years old. 83 00:06:43,353 --> 00:06:44,494 You know how it is. 84 00:06:44,514 --> 00:06:46,935 You just take it all for face value. 85 00:06:46,995 --> 00:06:47,996 This is what life is. 86 00:06:49,436 --> 00:06:50,277 It's kind of beautiful. 87 00:06:50,832 --> 00:06:54,834 So, Sufism, that's the mystical side of Islam. 88 00:06:55,054 --> 00:07:09,902 In the U.S., I am guessing that most people associate it with Rumi, the 13th century mystic and poet, still best-selling poet in the U.S. How similar or dissimilar is Sufi mysticism to the other mystical traditions, Christian, Jewish, Hindu? 89 00:07:10,103 --> 00:07:12,084 What sets Sufi mysticism apart? 90 00:07:12,964 --> 00:07:15,004 Well, in some ways, nothing. 91 00:07:15,064 --> 00:07:23,146 In some ways, they're all the same perennial stream of divine love manifesting in the world through different prophets and experiences in different times and places. 92 00:07:23,206 --> 00:07:35,509 And yes, Sufism is considered the mystical heart of Islam, but there is also a tradition among Sufis who say Sufism is much older and just had different names in the past. 93 00:07:36,629 --> 00:07:42,552 And within Sufism, there are so many different forms as well, just like within Buddhism and Christianity. 94 00:07:42,852 --> 00:07:44,753 It's like Baskin and Robbins. 95 00:07:45,034 --> 00:07:50,637 There's 31 flavors for whether you like music or dance or silence or chanting. 96 00:07:51,257 --> 00:07:56,100 But in the end, it's that famous story that it really is one river. 97 00:07:57,221 --> 00:08:04,910 And yet, as it flows from the source to the sea, all the countries that are on the banks of the river try to claim it as theirs. 98 00:08:06,111 --> 00:08:07,432 And you can't. 99 00:08:07,452 --> 00:08:09,174 It really is an essence. 100 00:08:09,895 --> 00:08:14,040 And Sufism is about taking you into that essence through love. 101 00:08:14,562 --> 00:08:18,545 And what about the concept of God, the divine, the beloved? 102 00:08:19,045 --> 00:08:25,150 I have friends and family members who are kind of allergic to those words. 103 00:08:25,210 --> 00:08:28,332 They bring a lot of baggage with them. 104 00:08:29,052 --> 00:08:32,315 Who or what are you talking about when you talk about God? 105 00:08:33,035 --> 00:08:35,797 You know, it's a very good question. 106 00:08:36,017 --> 00:08:37,859 It's also a deeply personal one. 107 00:08:39,443 --> 00:08:49,618 There are many names, and the names, you know, Sufism we say beloved because there is this desire to come to experience this personal side of God. 108 00:08:50,259 --> 00:08:53,724 They say in Sufism, the beloved is closer to you than your jugular vein. 109 00:08:54,024 --> 00:08:54,345 Hallelujah. 110 00:08:54,925 --> 00:08:57,345 You want to come to know that side of God. 111 00:08:57,365 --> 00:09:00,886 And of course, there is the other side, the unknowable side of God. 112 00:09:01,166 --> 00:09:10,168 And there is also this knowing beyond the form of, in quote, God, there is what they refer to as absolute truth, which is this undifferentiated essence. 113 00:09:10,568 --> 00:09:18,009 You know, traditionally in Sufism, they say the first form that emerged from that undifferentiated essence, that was the beginning of God. 114 00:09:18,209 --> 00:09:23,450 But I do have the sense that for you, this is not and has never been... 115 00:09:24,370 --> 00:09:26,512 an anthropomorphic vision. 116 00:09:26,952 --> 00:09:27,212 No. 117 00:09:27,892 --> 00:09:28,113 No. 118 00:09:28,293 --> 00:09:34,077 You know, Dhu'l-Nun, who's a very famous early Sufi, said, whatever you think God is, it is the opposite of that. 119 00:09:34,937 --> 00:09:53,370 And this idea that God is this and not that is, to me, one of the saddest stories that has emerged through religious and spiritual forms and has led to tremendous, you know, horrific, not just in our past, but very much as part of our present story of separation. 120 00:09:53,990 --> 00:10:07,312 When we say the divine exists in heaven and what lies beneath our feet is not that, to me that lies at the root in many ways of whether you want to call it the Garden of Eden, I think it's the opposite. 121 00:10:07,413 --> 00:10:10,813 We have not been exiled, we exiled the divine. 122 00:10:10,833 --> 00:10:11,713 Yeah, we left. 123 00:10:12,093 --> 00:10:20,255 We exiled the divine and said it is this and it is only for people who have access to this particular religion in this form and if you do this and that and the other and 124 00:10:21,037 --> 00:10:30,188 Which I think is part of the story of how, you know, in mainstream culture we don't talk about the divine. 125 00:10:30,208 --> 00:10:37,196 I remember people saying to me, I would be more comfortable asking my best friends how much money they make than whether they believe in God or not. 126 00:10:37,216 --> 00:10:39,499 I said, it should be the opposite. 127 00:10:40,230 --> 00:10:40,570 I know. 128 00:10:40,590 --> 00:10:42,092 It's become taboo. 129 00:10:42,732 --> 00:10:51,641 And I think that is also deeply sad that nowadays if you believe in God in America, then you're a certain political affiliation of this or that or the other. 130 00:10:52,522 --> 00:11:00,509 So we have to rediscover what it means to be in relationship to the divine, not through this place of dualism and conflict and owning. 131 00:11:01,350 --> 00:11:03,411 an image of what we think God is. 132 00:11:03,431 --> 00:11:14,057 So I was trying to imagine what it must have been like to imbibe some of these really beautiful Sufi concepts, you know, like the oneness of being from young childhood. 133 00:11:14,077 --> 00:11:21,201 And I was thinking, oh, in some ways it's maybe not that different from the way children perceive the world anyway. 134 00:11:22,002 --> 00:11:29,466 You know, it sounds like it's a vision of imminence, all the world alive. 135 00:11:29,486 --> 00:11:29,586 Yeah. 136 00:11:29,886 --> 00:11:34,189 Well, you know, we say in Sufism there are really three main parts of the journey. 137 00:11:34,209 --> 00:11:37,971 The journey from God, the journey to God, and the journey in God. 138 00:11:38,571 --> 00:11:45,396 And the journey from God begins when we are actually born, and we are actually much more in tune with our divine nature. 139 00:11:45,436 --> 00:11:57,283 We have yet to be formed around an ego consciousness, and we represent this kind of boundless experience, and that is encapsulated through the ways that children naturally talk to God. 140 00:11:57,663 --> 00:12:01,106 whether it's fairies or trees or spirits. 141 00:12:01,126 --> 00:12:08,512 I mean, watching my children grow up, you know, seeing other children grow up, naturally they are just in this state of wonder and connection. 142 00:12:09,213 --> 00:12:12,816 And it is as we grow up that falls away. 143 00:12:13,777 --> 00:12:25,387 But, you know, what was interesting growing up with Irina Tweedie and my father is my father never once put a book in my hand and said, read this, learn this about Sufism. 144 00:12:26,327 --> 00:12:28,988 My whole experience growing up there was through osmosis. 145 00:12:29,548 --> 00:12:36,691 You know, later I actually came to know that this particular Naqshbandi path that I'm a part of, it's got parallels to Zen, you could say. 146 00:12:36,711 --> 00:12:38,511 It's about practice. 147 00:12:38,591 --> 00:12:40,452 It's about silence. 148 00:12:40,652 --> 00:12:42,653 But it isn't about words on a page. 149 00:12:43,933 --> 00:12:47,915 So you said it's about practice. 150 00:12:48,475 --> 00:12:53,096 From the little bit I've read, I have the feeling that meditation practices are incredibly simple. 151 00:12:53,497 --> 00:12:54,017 Is that right? 152 00:12:55,038 --> 00:13:00,008 Well, I started meditating properly when I was about six years old. 153 00:13:00,429 --> 00:13:04,276 And one day I wanted to go downstairs because my father never – 154 00:13:06,061 --> 00:13:08,863 I saw him meditating and I saw lots of people meditating. 155 00:13:09,324 --> 00:13:16,650 And it was actually a thing, you know, growing up it was, you know, I often say to myself one of the first words I remember hearing was, shh, they're meditating. 156 00:13:17,030 --> 00:13:20,674 It was because, you know, we lived upstairs and every afternoon we had to be quiet. 157 00:13:20,794 --> 00:13:24,097 It was a lot of actually be quiet because people are meditating. 158 00:13:25,077 --> 00:13:29,481 And it wasn't until I was six that one day I even vividly remember it. 159 00:13:29,681 --> 00:13:30,902 I came home from school and 160 00:13:31,863 --> 00:13:35,165 And I wanted to go downstairs, and I wanted to meditate. 161 00:13:35,185 --> 00:13:38,207 There was just this desire that took over. 162 00:13:38,707 --> 00:13:41,749 And I went downstairs, and I stepped over the sea of shoes. 163 00:13:41,929 --> 00:13:45,491 Imagine 100 pairs of shoes outside this front door. 164 00:13:45,511 --> 00:13:47,172 I even remember the smell. 165 00:13:47,493 --> 00:13:52,015 I remember the smell of going into the room, 100 people in a small room. 166 00:13:52,876 --> 00:13:55,478 And my father was there, and they cleared a space for me to sit. 167 00:13:56,518 --> 00:13:57,840 And I closed my eyes. 168 00:13:58,841 --> 00:14:03,787 And then two hours later, my father said they had to wake me up. 169 00:14:04,688 --> 00:14:05,649 Two hours wait. 170 00:14:05,689 --> 00:14:09,133 So did you fall asleep or were you actually in meditation? 171 00:14:09,173 --> 00:14:10,695 So what was that experience like? 172 00:14:10,735 --> 00:14:14,799 I was sitting in lotus position, which kids can comfortably do. 173 00:14:15,260 --> 00:14:16,561 I sadly can't do it anymore. 174 00:14:17,744 --> 00:14:21,771 And I have no memory of what I experienced in meditation. 175 00:14:22,393 --> 00:14:29,266 All I remember is that I just stepped into a space that was bigger than myself, and then I stepped out of it. 176 00:14:31,141 --> 00:14:35,043 And then after that day, I came downstairs every afternoon and meditated. 177 00:14:35,703 --> 00:14:37,384 And my father was very nonchalant about it. 178 00:14:37,424 --> 00:14:39,385 He said, oh, no, you've done this before. 179 00:14:39,705 --> 00:14:42,046 And he was referring to in previous lives. 180 00:14:42,787 --> 00:14:45,168 And you're just, you know, you're doing what you know. 181 00:14:45,829 --> 00:14:47,630 Did not make a big deal about it at all. 182 00:14:48,190 --> 00:14:50,451 And, you know, I did this for a while, I think a year or two. 183 00:14:50,491 --> 00:14:54,473 And then eventually I think kids on my street would be riding bikes or skateboarding or whatever. 184 00:14:54,493 --> 00:14:56,094 And I wanted to go and do that after school. 185 00:14:56,154 --> 00:14:56,714 And I stopped. 186 00:14:57,515 --> 00:14:59,336 At its most profound... 187 00:15:00,503 --> 00:15:06,987 Are there mystical experiences that you have had that have been utterly transformative? 188 00:15:08,088 --> 00:15:09,269 Yes, many. 189 00:15:09,289 --> 00:15:13,952 And some of them have been deep in meditation and deep in prayer. 190 00:15:14,873 --> 00:15:16,914 Many have been in my dreams, actually. 191 00:15:16,934 --> 00:15:20,557 I've had very powerful experiences in my dreams. 192 00:15:21,457 --> 00:15:23,098 And many in waking consciousness. 193 00:15:24,319 --> 00:15:41,668 And as the years go by, the delineations between what is meditation, what is prayer, what is breath, what is getting up and going about my day have shifted and become more porous and connected and less determined. 194 00:15:42,689 --> 00:15:47,371 I used to have experiences in meditation where you would see things, whether it be certain patterns. 195 00:15:48,812 --> 00:15:52,554 It's a remarkable world, this inner world that we've denied. 196 00:15:53,619 --> 00:15:59,723 So, we should switch to talking about emergence and spiritual ecology. 197 00:16:00,083 --> 00:16:09,489 So, your family moved to Northern California, where you live now, and work now, when you were, I think, 11, 12, something like that? 198 00:16:09,589 --> 00:16:10,330 Yeah, 11 years old. 199 00:16:10,790 --> 00:16:17,394 Huge change to go from urban London to the coastal Northern California. 200 00:16:17,474 --> 00:16:24,998 And I know you kind of had one of those classic experiences of falling in love with the landscape. 201 00:16:25,318 --> 00:16:26,259 Can you tell me about that? 202 00:16:27,788 --> 00:16:33,293 Yeah, I mean, as I said, I grew up in a very nondescript residential part of North London, you know. 203 00:16:34,434 --> 00:16:38,098 I loved nature as a child and went to parks, you know. 204 00:16:38,599 --> 00:16:44,104 Occasionally we'd go to the countryside or, you know, once a year maybe a camping trip to the Swiss Alps. 205 00:16:45,465 --> 00:16:49,409 But we moved to this very small town right on the Pacific Ocean. 206 00:16:49,669 --> 00:16:51,171 We had no direct neighbors. 207 00:16:51,211 --> 00:16:54,494 We were in the middle of a forest overlooking the wetlands and the bay. 208 00:16:55,234 --> 00:16:57,016 And there weren't enough bedrooms in the house. 209 00:16:57,256 --> 00:17:03,362 So they put me in this little cabin on the property that had been built in the 60s in the shape of a ship. 210 00:17:03,482 --> 00:17:06,425 And it had a ladder that went up to the little sleeping loft. 211 00:17:06,485 --> 00:17:11,810 And they had even, you know, it was made of redwood planks and all the knots had pictures of stars. 212 00:17:12,150 --> 00:17:15,833 Rock stars, Dylan, the Stones, the Beatles, Janis Joplin. 213 00:17:16,214 --> 00:17:19,276 You know, it was like a creation out of the 60s. 214 00:17:19,356 --> 00:17:23,120 It had a little wood stove, lots of mice, bats. 215 00:17:23,140 --> 00:17:23,840 It was cold and dead. 216 00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:25,482 But you're out there by yourself at age 11? 217 00:17:26,490 --> 00:17:26,690 Yeah. 218 00:17:26,710 --> 00:17:28,652 I mean, it was across the courtyard from the house. 219 00:17:28,672 --> 00:17:29,673 It wasn't so far. 220 00:17:29,753 --> 00:17:41,426 So, you know, I could, it was a little intercom, dinner's ready, you know, but, but it was, you know, it was in the midst of this forest and transitioning from life in London to Northern California was really rough. 221 00:17:41,506 --> 00:17:45,830 I went to this little school where everybody had been together since kindergarten, pretty much. 222 00:17:45,870 --> 00:17:46,911 There weren't a lot of new kids. 223 00:17:48,068 --> 00:17:49,790 I was brutally bullied. 224 00:17:50,770 --> 00:17:53,092 Sixth and seventh grade were very, very hard. 225 00:17:54,774 --> 00:17:57,576 And I think I found solace in nature. 226 00:17:58,116 --> 00:18:01,139 And I spent a lot of time on the trails near our home. 227 00:18:01,199 --> 00:18:06,724 And I discovered things that I had never experienced before, like that mushrooms grew in the fall that you could eat. 228 00:18:07,584 --> 00:18:12,366 And I learned all about mushrooms and I would spend a lot of time hunting mushrooms and foraging. 229 00:18:13,026 --> 00:18:17,127 And the ocean was nearby and spent a lot of time there and eventually started surfing. 230 00:18:17,187 --> 00:18:22,449 And it was just being in a space that was so expansive, nurtured something in me. 231 00:18:23,069 --> 00:18:25,910 Being in the ocean, I always remember it reminded me of meditation. 232 00:18:26,050 --> 00:18:27,171 Every wave was different. 233 00:18:27,451 --> 00:18:30,832 You were immersed in something that was so great, you could feel that it was... 234 00:18:32,313 --> 00:18:40,822 Beyond what you can see to the horizon, there is this energy there, and it is kind and unkind at the same time. 235 00:18:40,922 --> 00:18:43,685 It is welcoming, and it is saying, I'm in control. 236 00:18:44,166 --> 00:18:46,909 It is so many things, and I love that. 237 00:18:47,149 --> 00:18:48,150 Were you ever afraid? 238 00:18:48,170 --> 00:18:48,231 No. 239 00:18:49,650 --> 00:18:52,372 When the waves got big enough, yeah, sure. 240 00:18:52,832 --> 00:18:53,573 But I loved it. 241 00:18:53,753 --> 00:18:55,154 I loved the aliveness of it. 242 00:18:55,674 --> 00:19:03,380 You know, I remember when I was 14, we had a very, very destructive fire that tore through the region. 243 00:19:04,101 --> 00:19:05,142 Almost came to our house. 244 00:19:05,282 --> 00:19:11,026 We had that note on the door when you come back from being evacuated that says, we were able to save your home. 245 00:19:11,607 --> 00:19:13,268 And just up the road, it had burned. 246 00:19:14,509 --> 00:19:15,390 And I remember... 247 00:19:16,392 --> 00:19:23,834 sneaking past the firefighters to go and see what had burned and walking the trail towards where the fire had started. 248 00:19:23,854 --> 00:19:25,695 And it burned all the way to the ocean by then. 249 00:19:25,715 --> 00:19:27,195 It was still smoldering in a few places. 250 00:19:27,215 --> 00:19:28,156 And I shouldn't have been there. 251 00:19:29,816 --> 00:19:37,839 But the ground was littered with pinecone seeds from the Bishop Pines on this charred landscape. 252 00:19:38,899 --> 00:19:39,699 I remember the image. 253 00:19:39,799 --> 00:19:41,460 It's clear as day to me now. 254 00:19:42,730 --> 00:19:49,432 And I've then watched that forest regrow over the last 30 years. 255 00:19:49,492 --> 00:20:01,136 And I was been reflecting on this recently that it's like I was part of that regrowth that was birthed by the serotiny of those pine cones seeding themselves in that fire. 256 00:20:01,736 --> 00:20:07,918 And so my relationship to this place, this home where I've lived my whole life other than going back east for college for a few years, 257 00:20:08,718 --> 00:20:16,441 You know, it has shaped me in so many ways, and it helped bring to the surface what had been primarily an interior experience. 258 00:20:17,041 --> 00:20:22,282 And even though growing up, you know, it was always understood, wherever you turn, there is the face of God. 259 00:20:22,543 --> 00:20:31,425 But to feel it in the body and to experience it in relationship to a place that nurtured me was a whole other journey. 260 00:20:31,646 --> 00:20:32,386 Very different. 261 00:20:32,426 --> 00:20:32,586 Yeah. 262 00:20:33,666 --> 00:20:35,968 I mean, there's a line in your book. 263 00:20:36,949 --> 00:20:47,537 I had to stop and think about it for a minute because it did strike me as a very different way of thinking about the divine than the Judeo-Christian tradition. 264 00:20:47,577 --> 00:20:52,381 You said the creator wasn't better than the creation. 265 00:20:52,701 --> 00:20:59,987 Rather, creation was a form of the creator, which opens the door to having... 266 00:21:00,747 --> 00:21:03,309 a spiritual relationship with earth. 267 00:21:03,389 --> 00:21:06,251 If earth is a face of the divine, it's not. 268 00:21:06,431 --> 00:21:13,637 That's a very different vision of what the earth is than I grew up with. 269 00:21:16,245 --> 00:21:27,513 You know, you mentioned the oneness of being earlier, which is this philosophy that is connected to this great, great early Sufi, Ibn Arabi. 270 00:21:29,754 --> 00:21:38,861 And he developed this metaphysical system, this ontology, to understand how the beloved reveals themselves. 271 00:21:39,641 --> 00:21:42,423 You know, and there's this wonderful Hadith Qudsi, which is... 272 00:21:44,024 --> 00:21:52,169 A saying of the Prophet attributed to God that, I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known so I created the world so that I could be known. 273 00:21:53,150 --> 00:21:56,712 And of course the Sufis, they changed it slightly to say, I longed to be loved. 274 00:21:57,952 --> 00:22:01,555 I long to be loved, because it is through love that we really come to know something. 275 00:22:02,235 --> 00:22:11,502 And so, for me, one of the sad things about the emphasis on transcendent forms of the divine is the disclusion of the imminent. 276 00:22:11,922 --> 00:22:17,126 The desacralization, you know, we were speaking earlier about exile, the desacralization of earth. 277 00:22:18,267 --> 00:22:36,044 And here we find ourselves at a time where that story of separation, that story of desacralization, has led us to treat the earth as a resource for us to exist in a human-centric reality that denies the holy ground we walk upon. 278 00:22:37,408 --> 00:22:40,729 Well, I'm not sure where this is going to go. 279 00:22:40,749 --> 00:22:42,030 This is sort of unformed. 280 00:22:42,110 --> 00:22:49,492 But I'm thinking that many of us have wanted to fall back in love with the world. 281 00:22:49,632 --> 00:22:52,553 And to a certain extent, it now feels like a moral agenda, too. 282 00:22:52,573 --> 00:22:53,914 Like, that's what we should be doing. 283 00:22:54,454 --> 00:22:57,555 I definitely should be walking in the woods rather than making a target run. 284 00:22:58,636 --> 00:23:02,197 But I think often our first default... 285 00:23:02,757 --> 00:23:05,638 you know, position is to try to learn. 286 00:23:06,038 --> 00:23:11,019 So we're like, we're going to memorize the names of the trees and we're going to learn how to identify insects and plants. 287 00:23:11,039 --> 00:23:13,459 And we're just going to try to learn a whole lot. 288 00:23:13,499 --> 00:23:18,840 And so we have seen this like incredible explosion in the life sciences. 289 00:23:18,940 --> 00:23:20,160 It's, it's amazing. 290 00:23:20,340 --> 00:23:29,362 It's one of the most kind of wonder filled things that's happened in, in my lifetime, how much we know about the natural world now. 291 00:23:29,382 --> 00:23:30,342 Yeah. 292 00:23:30,462 --> 00:23:37,143 But I'm guessing that you would say that knowing is not the same as loving. 293 00:23:37,163 --> 00:23:38,023 I don't know. 294 00:23:38,043 --> 00:23:39,584 Do you have any comment there? 295 00:23:40,524 --> 00:23:50,606 You know, I think that it's wonderful that there has been this resurgence of wanting to come to know the names of trees and come to know birdsong. 296 00:23:51,006 --> 00:23:53,486 And I think it is in response to a deep hunger. 297 00:23:53,506 --> 00:23:55,386 I don't think it's just the environmental movement. 298 00:23:55,406 --> 00:23:58,307 There are a lot of birders out there who might not associate themselves as 299 00:23:58,707 --> 00:24:00,228 environmentalist necessarily. 300 00:24:00,648 --> 00:24:10,013 So I think going out, whether it's on a long walk or to know the names of trees and watch birds, is a beginning. 301 00:24:10,983 --> 00:24:13,044 And if we follow that, it will change us. 302 00:24:13,425 --> 00:24:19,049 But I'm also very interested in what happens if we intentionally try to engage with the living earth. 303 00:24:19,269 --> 00:24:22,031 Because, you know, what is spiritual practice? 304 00:24:22,151 --> 00:24:29,596 It's an intentional engagement with whether it's the divine or whether it's consciousness or whether it's love or whether it's emptiness. 305 00:24:30,016 --> 00:24:36,301 There are these tremendous, I call them spiritual technologies, developed from many traditions, Sufism just being one. 306 00:24:36,681 --> 00:24:38,763 Yeah, I mean, describe them. 307 00:24:38,783 --> 00:24:44,006 We're jumping ahead a little bit, but the practice section is probably my favorite section in the book. 308 00:24:44,026 --> 00:24:45,948 So talk a little bit more about those. 309 00:24:46,068 --> 00:25:00,459 Well, my own experience over the years was that my own spiritual practice in meditation and zikr, which means recollection, and in my tradition, the primary practice is to be in constant remembrance of God. 310 00:25:00,479 --> 00:25:05,683 So every breath you take breathes like a mantra, the name of God. 311 00:25:06,543 --> 00:25:14,715 And what I discovered is that these practices naturally made me more porous to experience 312 00:25:17,014 --> 00:25:18,715 the divine and the earth. 313 00:25:19,255 --> 00:25:23,597 Again, I think a lot of people have experiences of God in nature more than anything else these days. 314 00:25:24,457 --> 00:25:29,959 I always think that often when we walk through a forest or we walk through a landscape, we're not actually walking in the landscape. 315 00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:33,340 We are walking in a forest, thinking about walking in a forest. 316 00:25:33,661 --> 00:25:36,882 We may even be thinking about how wonderful it makes me feel that I'm walking in a forest. 317 00:25:37,322 --> 00:25:38,642 But are we actually walking in a forest? 318 00:25:38,662 --> 00:25:39,483 Oh, I feel so busted. 319 00:25:40,724 --> 00:25:40,944 Right. 320 00:25:42,165 --> 00:25:47,129 And part of me feels that that's extractive, to be perfectly honest, because it's taking and not giving. 321 00:25:47,729 --> 00:25:54,014 But if we are focused on our breath, we can actually go beyond that space rather easily. 322 00:25:54,735 --> 00:25:57,537 And we're not in this projected self-image of our own self. 323 00:25:57,557 --> 00:25:59,999 We actually have an experience of that landscape. 324 00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:02,081 Let's give folks a taste. 325 00:26:02,341 --> 00:26:05,544 I mean, just take me on a virtual walk. 326 00:26:06,983 --> 00:26:09,085 Like a guided practice, if you will. 327 00:26:09,165 --> 00:26:09,345 Yeah. 328 00:26:09,826 --> 00:26:10,706 A shortened version. 329 00:26:10,726 --> 00:26:10,847 Short. 330 00:26:11,907 --> 00:26:20,755 Well, the first thing I would do is before I would leave, I would actually try to put myself in the space of where I am going and why. 331 00:26:21,635 --> 00:26:27,460 Often we begin something without putting ourselves in the space to begin. 332 00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:35,867 And I would say it very simply, just close your eyes. 333 00:26:38,741 --> 00:27:02,523 And bring your attention to your breath, following your out-breath as it leaves your body, enters the sphere and space around you, and then returns back to your body, making you both more aware of where you are and who you are. 334 00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:14,403 As I walk and leave my door, I think also of the relationship between my step and my breath. 335 00:27:17,204 --> 00:27:25,468 And I want to align my breath with my step at a pace that is comfortable to walk 336 00:27:27,085 --> 00:27:39,537 Perhaps it is three steps per out-breath, one, two, three, and three steps per in-breath, one, two, three. 337 00:27:41,498 --> 00:27:46,964 And the rhythm of my breath becomes aligned with the rhythm of my step. 338 00:27:48,825 --> 00:27:50,527 And each time that my mind 339 00:27:52,525 --> 00:27:57,408 is taken over by thoughts, I return to my breath and my step. 340 00:27:59,169 --> 00:28:08,035 And the more we walk and the quieter the mind becomes, the more we perceive, the more we feel, the more we hear, 341 00:28:12,535 --> 00:28:14,496 Let's pause there for just a second. 342 00:28:15,377 --> 00:28:20,081 My guest is Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, founder of Emergence Magazine. 343 00:28:20,781 --> 00:28:23,003 His new book is called Remembering Earth. 344 00:28:23,503 --> 00:28:29,187 He's also a filmmaker and a former jazz musician and a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandi tradition. 345 00:28:29,928 --> 00:28:35,712 And we'll talk about music, birdsong, and listening into silence after this. 346 00:28:35,863 --> 00:28:36,765 Hey, it's Steve. 347 00:28:37,206 --> 00:28:38,648 I am so glad you're with us. 348 00:28:38,949 --> 00:28:40,051 And I have a favor to ask. 349 00:28:40,612 --> 00:28:44,078 This is a new podcast and we're really hoping to reach more listeners. 350 00:28:44,559 --> 00:28:47,524 So we'd love for you to tell your friends about Wonder Cabinet. 351 00:28:47,925 --> 00:28:52,734 And it will really help when you give us a good rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. 352 00:28:53,355 --> 00:28:59,085 And if you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, you can sign up at wondercabinetproductions.com. 353 00:29:03,944 --> 00:29:12,847 One of the connections Emmanuel and I discovered is that we are both huge fans of the British folk singer Sam Lee and his Singing with Nightingales project. 354 00:29:13,668 --> 00:29:28,113 Nightingales have a famously beautiful song, and every spring Sam takes small groups of people into the woods at night to listen to them and to hear Sam and some of his musician friends improvise duets with the birds. 355 00:29:28,993 --> 00:29:34,955 Emmanuel was so enchanted by this, he wound up making a short film about it called The Nightingale's Song. 356 00:29:36,176 --> 00:29:38,717 What was that like, being there in the woods with Sam? 357 00:29:39,397 --> 00:29:40,918 Well, thank you for asking about that. 358 00:29:41,258 --> 00:29:43,539 Sam's a remarkable fellow. 359 00:29:43,759 --> 00:29:54,063 We met on a panel for Cambridge University, and he was talking about his relationship with the nightingale, which, you know, in Sufism has tremendous symbolism. 360 00:29:54,623 --> 00:29:55,484 Oh, no, really? 361 00:29:55,544 --> 00:29:57,245 The nightingale is big in Sufism, too? 362 00:29:57,265 --> 00:29:58,527 Oh, it's huge. 363 00:29:58,607 --> 00:30:04,932 I mean, God, this is a bird that makes their home throughout Middle East. 364 00:30:05,473 --> 00:30:05,853 Oh, yes. 365 00:30:05,913 --> 00:30:10,937 I mean, that sings all night to its lover, to its beloved. 366 00:30:11,478 --> 00:30:13,960 I mean, that gives itself, you know. 367 00:30:15,201 --> 00:30:15,601 Oh, yes. 368 00:30:15,721 --> 00:30:17,483 Could there be a more spiritual bird? 369 00:30:18,083 --> 00:30:23,046 Oh, and you listen to this bird, and then you have a spiritual experience there with Sam. 370 00:30:23,507 --> 00:30:37,235 And he does this thing, you know, he leads people from the campfire at midnight into the woods, and in silence, you know, 30, 40 people at a time, half an hour to find the tree that the nightingale is singing, and it's a different tree, different night. 371 00:30:37,735 --> 00:30:44,299 You know, so he creates this space where people leave behind the busyness of their lives and step into the wonder of the night. 372 00:30:45,099 --> 00:30:50,744 And then they step into this space where they hear not just a nightingale, which is this very loud bird. 373 00:30:51,285 --> 00:30:52,887 I mean, it is not subtle. 374 00:30:53,067 --> 00:30:54,528 I've never heard it. 375 00:30:54,548 --> 00:30:56,030 We don't have them in North America. 376 00:30:56,370 --> 00:30:57,251 Oh, they're very loud. 377 00:30:57,291 --> 00:30:59,893 They sing very loudly, beautifully but loudly. 378 00:30:59,973 --> 00:31:02,476 And so you hear them as you step deeper into the woods. 379 00:31:03,016 --> 00:31:08,661 And so you're first overtaken by their song and then his song in response. 380 00:31:09,342 --> 00:31:22,448 And so, you know, the film is also a profile of Sam and it's about the relationship between Song and Birdsong and, you know, the epigenetic imprint that we all carry within us as human beings from the thousand years of actually being the recipient of Birdsong. 381 00:31:23,088 --> 00:31:27,450 Because I do feel like this kind of ancestral memory is like an epigenetic imprint. 382 00:31:27,750 --> 00:31:34,573 And also in the context of the reality of the times we're in, which is that in southern England, the nightingale, 383 00:31:35,333 --> 00:31:36,094 is disappearing. 384 00:31:36,595 --> 00:31:39,137 There are 5,000 pairs left. 385 00:31:39,638 --> 00:31:42,782 And in our lifetime, most likely, they will not nest in England again. 386 00:31:42,822 --> 00:31:52,873 What happens to a place when the birdsong that enveloped it for millennia, or much longer than millennia, really, maybe a million years, is silent? 387 00:31:54,291 --> 00:31:59,353 We were talking about that longing to be in a deeper relationship with the earth. 388 00:31:59,653 --> 00:32:05,455 Figuring out how to reconnect and not be gutted by the anguish. 389 00:32:06,175 --> 00:32:07,095 That's the challenge. 390 00:32:07,755 --> 00:32:10,396 Well, human beings are paradoxical creatures, you know. 391 00:32:10,936 --> 00:32:12,837 We live in a constant state of contradiction. 392 00:32:13,297 --> 00:32:15,398 We hold many realities at once, you know. 393 00:32:15,938 --> 00:32:21,760 We can experience love and joy and pain and longing and heartbreak all at once. 394 00:32:22,932 --> 00:32:30,898 What I have found in my own self, Anne, is that the earth is this incredible outpouring of abundance and compassion. 395 00:32:32,019 --> 00:32:35,922 You know, she gives and she gives and she gives regardless of how we treat her. 396 00:32:36,583 --> 00:32:46,351 In the midst of how we are destroying this incredible gift, she gives, she holds, she invites us. 397 00:32:47,927 --> 00:33:01,816 And the more I've stepped into that, the more I am able to feel contained as I hold these paradoxical realities of feeling this grief and then wanting to step more and more into the love. 398 00:33:01,916 --> 00:33:05,798 And the more I step into the love, the more I can actually feel grief sometimes. 399 00:33:07,079 --> 00:33:10,141 And the love also helps me hold the grief, but it doesn't deny it. 400 00:33:12,342 --> 00:33:12,962 It's messy. 401 00:33:14,383 --> 00:33:15,304 But we're not alone. 402 00:33:16,847 --> 00:33:20,508 I'm curious, why is Earth her to you? 403 00:33:21,828 --> 00:33:23,689 Because that's how I've experienced her. 404 00:33:24,509 --> 00:33:25,789 Of course, I'm not alone here. 405 00:33:25,889 --> 00:33:32,511 She's been referred to as Mother Earth since the beginning, this great outpouring of creation, of birth. 406 00:33:33,131 --> 00:33:39,413 And for me, actually, the divine has not been gendered, not been a he or a she. 407 00:33:39,433 --> 00:33:40,553 No, that's why I was curious. 408 00:33:41,033 --> 00:33:43,894 But my experience in this reality is different with her. 409 00:33:44,903 --> 00:33:51,531 And I also feel it's important to acknowledge the feminine nature of Earth because we have denied that. 410 00:33:51,811 --> 00:34:02,804 There is a very patriarchal component to the transcendent experience of religion and spiritual life that is very much central to the problems that we're experiencing now and the roots of the crisis. 411 00:34:03,144 --> 00:34:05,547 And I think there needs to be a reclaiming of that, you know. 412 00:34:06,922 --> 00:34:15,915 You mentioned earlier that you started out as a teenager to become a jazz musician, riffing still a little bit more on listening. 413 00:34:15,935 --> 00:34:21,904 And I'm thinking about, I'm curious about what you might have learned as a jazz musician 414 00:34:22,965 --> 00:34:25,587 about listening, about sound. 415 00:34:25,607 --> 00:34:28,709 A little backdrop, my dad was a jazz musician. 416 00:34:28,729 --> 00:34:36,914 He played in the late 50s and early 60s in New York City clubs, and he quit when I was very little, so I don't remember hearing him play. 417 00:34:37,715 --> 00:34:45,720 But from what he's described, it's always sounded like an ecstatic experience, certainly an altered state. 418 00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:50,783 What was your experience like, and what do you feel like you learned from those years of playing jazz? 419 00:34:51,678 --> 00:34:55,619 I think it was hugely influential, actually. 420 00:34:56,479 --> 00:34:58,900 You know, I fell in love with jazz when I was 14. 421 00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:02,540 Like many people, I was given a record by Miles Davis. 422 00:35:02,720 --> 00:35:03,120 Which one? 423 00:35:03,180 --> 00:35:03,641 Kind of blue. 424 00:35:03,661 --> 00:35:05,121 You know, it's the cliche beginning. 425 00:35:05,621 --> 00:35:07,841 But that record is a masterpiece. 426 00:35:07,861 --> 00:35:10,462 And something just came alive in me. 427 00:35:10,982 --> 00:35:13,683 I had played bass before that, electric bass and cello. 428 00:35:13,763 --> 00:35:14,623 I was a musician. 429 00:35:15,323 --> 00:35:18,365 And I immediately traded my electric bass for an acoustic bass. 430 00:35:18,685 --> 00:35:24,829 And overnight, I had been bitten by the jazz bug, as they say, and just immersed myself in that world. 431 00:35:25,429 --> 00:35:28,151 I eventually dropped out of high school when I was 16 so I could play. 432 00:35:28,331 --> 00:35:29,272 Oh, wow. 433 00:35:29,432 --> 00:35:38,097 As a bass player, you were often the youngest and least accomplished musician on the bandstand because everyone needed a bass player so you could start working before you even knew how to play. 434 00:35:38,698 --> 00:35:43,681 And that was my experience in many ways, was actually learning jazz on the bandstand 435 00:35:44,102 --> 00:35:45,899 And they'd be like, no kid play it like this. 436 00:35:46,707 --> 00:35:48,768 If they were nice, they would say that. 437 00:35:48,908 --> 00:35:52,670 And if the piano player was nice, he'd play the roots in his left hand with his pinky. 438 00:35:52,970 --> 00:35:57,813 But often they wouldn't do that, because they wanted you to learn the hard way, which is by opening your ears. 439 00:35:57,833 --> 00:36:00,734 They would always say, oh, you know this tune? 440 00:36:00,854 --> 00:36:02,295 OK, well, let's play it in D flat then. 441 00:36:02,535 --> 00:36:03,215 Do you know it then? 442 00:36:03,756 --> 00:36:04,836 So it was a great training. 443 00:36:05,237 --> 00:36:08,818 And I was lucky enough to play with really good jazz musicians from when I was really young. 444 00:36:09,018 --> 00:36:12,180 And they would often be like, listen to the space between the notes. 445 00:36:12,660 --> 00:36:15,162 They have more power than the notes themselves. 446 00:36:16,306 --> 00:36:24,452 The shaping of a melody, the shaping of a phrase, it is the space around the notes that gives that phrase its potency and its meaning. 447 00:36:24,492 --> 00:36:25,533 It's not just the notes. 448 00:36:26,543 --> 00:36:27,924 They're long traditions. 449 00:36:28,504 --> 00:36:40,149 I don't know enough about them, but I'm thinking of music as a foundational, almost divine element of the world, the universe, the music of the spheres. 450 00:36:40,809 --> 00:36:49,013 Did you feel connections between playing jazz and your spiritual path? 451 00:36:49,877 --> 00:36:52,238 I did have transcendent experiences playing music. 452 00:36:52,799 --> 00:36:53,399 Did you? 453 00:36:53,539 --> 00:36:54,200 Yeah, many. 454 00:36:54,520 --> 00:37:12,270 Not as many as I would have liked, honestly, because I found that jazz is an improvisational art form, but it is also a highly technical one in which you have this mastery of your instrument and music theory and the last canon of the great American songbook and all the standards that emerged from greats like Miles and Coltrane. 455 00:37:12,310 --> 00:37:18,414 All of a sudden, you know a thousand songs, and you've got this great kind of meeting ground that you can play with other players. 456 00:37:19,354 --> 00:37:24,417 But the real improvisation happened when the egos had to be left behind on the bandstand. 457 00:37:24,437 --> 00:37:28,520 The technical mastery and your attachment to it had to be left behind on the bandstand. 458 00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:40,227 And then something else would happen where you would step into the space of access to the imaginal, you know, the mundus imaginalis, you know, where the real creative force would actually reveal itself. 459 00:37:40,307 --> 00:37:45,591 And, you know, the great ones, whether that be Coltrane, you know, or Miles or... 460 00:37:46,491 --> 00:37:50,492 In more modern times, you know, players like Keith Jarrett, they knew how to do that. 461 00:37:50,532 --> 00:37:53,873 They would put themselves in that space of openness and vulnerability. 462 00:37:54,553 --> 00:37:57,213 Actually, there was a singer I played with who taught me this. 463 00:37:57,473 --> 00:37:58,394 Her name was Rhiannon. 464 00:37:58,974 --> 00:37:59,554 Wonderful singer. 465 00:37:59,574 --> 00:38:00,654 Used to play Bobby McFerrin. 466 00:38:01,214 --> 00:38:04,495 And for a while, I played just with her, like she had a... 467 00:38:04,615 --> 00:38:06,475 It was just duets of bass and voice. 468 00:38:06,495 --> 00:38:07,976 And she would never tell me what we were gonna play. 469 00:38:08,976 --> 00:38:14,120 And you'd go out and you'd be on a stage with a thousand people, whatever it was, and you wouldn't know what you were going to play. 470 00:38:14,500 --> 00:38:16,802 And bass and voice is very naked. 471 00:38:17,102 --> 00:38:19,724 There's no harmony except the ones we create. 472 00:38:20,384 --> 00:38:25,628 I learned a lot through that, through this nakedness of listening to the voice and responding to it. 473 00:38:26,008 --> 00:38:29,451 But I didn't grow up with a lot of music in my house. 474 00:38:30,272 --> 00:38:37,777 And my particular Sufi path actually emphasizes silence, not song or music, because I wasn't exposed to... 475 00:38:38,222 --> 00:38:44,569 When I was young, two forms of praise and worship and trance-like experiences that come through music. 476 00:38:44,910 --> 00:38:52,899 Later, as a teenager, when I was 14 to 16, I lived two years at an ashram my father sent me to for high school. 477 00:38:53,579 --> 00:38:54,681 And there they chanted. 478 00:38:55,321 --> 00:38:57,424 And there they sang devotional songs. 479 00:38:57,664 --> 00:38:58,345 Did you like it? 480 00:38:58,930 --> 00:38:59,871 The music? 481 00:39:00,231 --> 00:39:03,233 The chanting, that practice? 482 00:39:04,014 --> 00:39:08,277 I appreciated it, but it didn't feel authentic to my nature. 483 00:39:08,357 --> 00:39:12,580 It was a place where people would stay up all night and fast and sing. 484 00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:21,207 I did things like I swallowed 20 yards of cloth down into my system to pull it out to clean out your inside because it was a yogic practice that they would do. 485 00:39:21,547 --> 00:39:28,272 They had pranayams where they would bend rebar around their arms and you would lie on beds of nails with boulders on your chest and they would break them open with... 486 00:39:28,672 --> 00:39:30,653 With hammers, using the power of the breath. 487 00:39:30,954 --> 00:39:36,617 It was like an exposure to a very different physical, spiritual reality kind of all in one. 488 00:39:37,558 --> 00:39:39,459 And I tried all this stuff. 489 00:39:39,579 --> 00:39:40,420 I was really intrigued. 490 00:39:41,961 --> 00:39:42,802 It sounds amazing. 491 00:39:42,822 --> 00:39:43,282 Yeah. 492 00:39:44,835 --> 00:39:45,535 It was great. 493 00:39:45,696 --> 00:39:50,098 Anyone could go and stay there as long as you did 35 hours of karma yoga. 494 00:39:50,458 --> 00:39:51,739 So you had all sorts of people. 495 00:39:51,759 --> 00:39:57,822 You had recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who had gotten clean and wanted to find a place to find meaning. 496 00:39:58,382 --> 00:40:05,186 And they would be washing dishes next to you, next to the person who'd been there for 35 years, who was one of the founding members of the community. 497 00:40:05,366 --> 00:40:11,329 And behind it all was this kind, silent yogi who wrote on a chalkboard and whistled. 498 00:40:13,088 --> 00:40:13,749 He would whistle. 499 00:40:13,929 --> 00:40:15,429 He would whistle to get your attention. 500 00:40:15,469 --> 00:40:17,230 And you would ask him a question. 501 00:40:17,250 --> 00:40:18,531 He'd write on a chalkboard. 502 00:40:19,331 --> 00:40:20,352 And I loved it. 503 00:40:20,992 --> 00:40:22,813 It brought many worlds together for me. 504 00:40:24,133 --> 00:40:28,055 Well, so I was curious about, you mentioned dream work earlier. 505 00:40:28,275 --> 00:40:31,216 And I know that's another part of your practice. 506 00:40:31,396 --> 00:40:37,519 I mean, you mentioned the imaginal world, that there is this other reality. 507 00:40:37,939 --> 00:40:39,780 Do you have a theory of dreams? 508 00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:41,801 I mean, what do you believe dreams are? 509 00:40:42,546 --> 00:40:45,869 Dreams are a very traditional part of the Sufi path. 510 00:40:46,649 --> 00:40:51,213 And in our tradition, dream work has always played a central role. 511 00:40:52,234 --> 00:40:57,278 You know, my father used to say, when we dream, the king is not in his castle, the prisoner is not in his cell. 512 00:40:58,259 --> 00:41:05,245 You know, it's like, it's the closest place we often have where ego consciousness falls away and we step into this most vast reality. 513 00:41:06,165 --> 00:41:10,289 And also in Sufism, it was part of the tradition of learning to catch the divine hint. 514 00:41:10,818 --> 00:41:13,121 Oh, I love that line, the divine hint. 515 00:41:13,562 --> 00:41:24,276 Yeah, that there are these hints that are given to us and that learning to listen to our dreams is a training so that when it happens, then we catch the moment. 516 00:41:25,372 --> 00:41:29,557 And so to me, dreams were, I mean, they were such a central part of my childhood. 517 00:41:29,878 --> 00:41:38,168 I remember as a child, I actually used to get quite upset because every breakfast, my father and mother would be talking about the dreams that they had or the dreams that other people had. 518 00:41:38,528 --> 00:41:40,150 And it was like, oh, can we just have a break? 519 00:41:40,671 --> 00:41:42,353 You know, people's dreams, you know? 520 00:41:42,373 --> 00:41:42,994 Yeah. 521 00:41:43,634 --> 00:41:51,479 I mean, when I asked you about theory, there's a whole school of thought that the dream is your psyche. 522 00:41:51,659 --> 00:41:53,440 It's all from inside you. 523 00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:58,443 And then there's another way of thinking that, no, it's not just interior. 524 00:41:58,543 --> 00:42:01,485 The dream is coming from out there. 525 00:42:02,566 --> 00:42:03,386 Yes, completely. 526 00:42:03,466 --> 00:42:07,149 I mean, the world of our psyche is like, let's say that's the first room. 527 00:42:07,893 --> 00:42:10,915 that we enter when we enter the dream world, but there are many other rooms. 528 00:42:11,856 --> 00:42:15,960 I mean, I've experienced many teachings coming through dreams. 529 00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:20,183 I've been from people, people I know who are alive, people who are dead. 530 00:42:20,924 --> 00:42:27,729 I've experienced the divine speaking to me in my dreams, and so have you, and so have so many other people. 531 00:42:28,490 --> 00:42:30,111 We just don't listen to it enough. 532 00:42:30,972 --> 00:42:32,493 Can I ask you about a dream, then? 533 00:42:33,763 --> 00:42:34,204 Sure. 534 00:42:34,824 --> 00:42:35,544 No, I'm going to ask. 535 00:42:35,725 --> 00:42:38,126 First, can I ask you about one of mine? 536 00:42:38,367 --> 00:42:39,748 Oh, gosh, sure. 537 00:42:39,788 --> 00:42:40,328 Well, let's see. 538 00:42:40,968 --> 00:42:42,189 And then I'll ask you about one of yours. 539 00:42:43,530 --> 00:42:43,790 Okay. 540 00:42:43,830 --> 00:42:49,995 Okay, there's a recurrent dream, and it's always along a body of water. 541 00:42:50,015 --> 00:42:51,296 It could be the ocean. 542 00:42:51,316 --> 00:42:53,377 It could be a very clear river. 543 00:42:54,538 --> 00:42:56,219 And I'm wading in it. 544 00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:01,824 And there are these incredible shells, seashells like I've never seen before. 545 00:43:01,984 --> 00:43:04,046 Just the most beautiful. 546 00:43:04,406 --> 00:43:12,193 And once it was little golden statues, figurines in the water. 547 00:43:12,913 --> 00:43:13,414 It's treasure. 548 00:43:14,752 --> 00:43:17,893 But I can never have it, get it. 549 00:43:18,053 --> 00:43:19,974 Sometimes I'll try to pick things up. 550 00:43:20,074 --> 00:43:21,554 Always something happens. 551 00:43:21,574 --> 00:43:25,355 And then the dream takes a turn and I have to leave. 552 00:43:26,356 --> 00:43:30,717 But it's the most magical place I've ever been. 553 00:43:30,737 --> 00:43:32,518 What do I do with that? 554 00:43:33,958 --> 00:43:37,059 You know, what's interesting to me is that it plays out along the shoreline. 555 00:43:38,420 --> 00:43:41,681 And I always think like a shoreline or a riverbank is a meeting of worlds. 556 00:43:42,576 --> 00:43:53,308 You know, this vast unknown space, the sea, which is often a symbol of the divine in Sufism, or the river, you know, this river of the divine that flows. 557 00:43:53,328 --> 00:43:54,910 The source. 558 00:43:55,271 --> 00:44:02,579 The source, and at the shore is often where we interface with it, and there are many treasures that exist there. 559 00:44:03,521 --> 00:44:17,608 The question I have is, is that a bad thing that you can't take them with you, or is it just that you experience something in that space, in that dream, where these worlds come together along the shore, and that you have access to something there? 560 00:44:19,489 --> 00:44:20,430 And what about for you? 561 00:44:22,491 --> 00:44:26,113 Well, since I just shared before my time in this ashram, 562 00:44:27,533 --> 00:44:31,317 The backdrop is, you know, like most teenagers, I was rebelling. 563 00:44:32,258 --> 00:44:42,631 There was tremendous resentment about my life and my family and this and that and being in this small town and not being understood, you know, all the things that come to the surface, right? 564 00:44:42,651 --> 00:44:43,272 Yeah. 565 00:44:43,432 --> 00:44:52,040 And I rebelled, and that was my, you know, I've only done drugs a few times in my life, and it was when I was, you know, 12, 13 that I did. 566 00:44:52,460 --> 00:44:55,903 And I lived in a small hippie town where the kids, you get high with your parents. 567 00:44:55,983 --> 00:44:57,484 They'd be like, here's a joint, go play. 568 00:44:58,225 --> 00:45:01,908 You know, I had my first experience of mushrooms at a birthday party when I was 13. 569 00:45:03,229 --> 00:45:09,535 And in the midst of that, of course, my father was insisting that I meditate with him twice a day at 6 a.m. and at 5 p.m., 570 00:45:10,967 --> 00:45:15,528 But when I went to Mount Madonna, all that fell away, which is the name of the school, this ashram. 571 00:45:16,228 --> 00:45:22,390 And I started to have very, very powerful mystical experiences, different than the ones I had before, very different dreams. 572 00:45:23,170 --> 00:45:30,432 And I had this dream that there was this field below the—sorry, I'm getting emotional sharing it with you— 573 00:45:32,388 --> 00:45:40,892 below the main gathering hall on the property, and it was foggy, and I was walking towards these figures on the other side of the field. 574 00:45:42,173 --> 00:45:47,976 And on the left side, I saw my father, and I saw Irina Tweedie standing next to him. 575 00:45:48,856 --> 00:45:56,760 And on the right side, I saw Baba Hari Dass, which was this yogi who was there, and to his right, an older Indian teacher. 576 00:45:57,841 --> 00:46:01,923 And they all said together in one voice, come, join us. 577 00:46:03,541 --> 00:46:06,825 And it unleashed something in me. 578 00:46:06,845 --> 00:46:12,691 It was like something in me felt validated and something in me changed in that moment. 579 00:46:13,733 --> 00:46:15,214 My life really changed after that. 580 00:46:15,795 --> 00:46:19,159 My spiritual life, my everything really. 581 00:46:20,540 --> 00:46:21,842 And it came in a dream. 582 00:46:23,688 --> 00:46:27,551 Getting ready to talk with you, I was curious about what your father's been writing lately. 583 00:46:28,051 --> 00:46:32,755 There's an essay, Preparing for the Dark and Holding the Light. 584 00:46:34,296 --> 00:46:36,318 This was a hard essay for me to read. 585 00:46:36,898 --> 00:46:42,383 He talked about, you know, we're in an era where the light of the sacred is receding. 586 00:46:42,983 --> 00:46:44,825 And he goes on to talk about how... 587 00:46:45,725 --> 00:46:56,613 As the future unfolds, there will be small little outposts of light that will remain, little hidden enclaves where the seeds of the future can be planted. 588 00:46:56,633 --> 00:46:59,194 That's kind of terrifying. 589 00:46:59,554 --> 00:47:01,936 It's like a vision of entering a new dark ages. 590 00:47:01,956 --> 00:47:03,077 I don't know. 591 00:47:03,337 --> 00:47:04,418 What's your reading of that? 592 00:47:05,214 --> 00:47:14,425 Yes, my father's teachings, especially the last few years, he wrote a whole book about that called The Darkening of the Light a while ago. 593 00:47:14,445 --> 00:47:15,426 It's not a new, yes. 594 00:47:15,747 --> 00:47:23,456 No, and this was after he wrote many, many books about human consciousness evolving, you know, and he felt there was a missed opportunity. 595 00:47:24,257 --> 00:47:26,238 and a window that was closed. 596 00:47:27,358 --> 00:47:31,020 And so I think that there is a darkness about what we have done. 597 00:47:31,720 --> 00:47:40,424 You can call the climate catastrophe, you can call the ecocide, you can call the reality of our modern capitalistic system completely run rampant. 598 00:47:40,524 --> 00:47:42,304 It has set certain things in motion. 599 00:47:42,664 --> 00:47:43,645 And our response is, 600 00:47:45,033 --> 00:47:49,578 are completely going the other direction away from what we could have been doing. 601 00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:55,744 You know, if we think even just now about how much money is being invested in AI and data centers, what could be done with that? 602 00:47:56,385 --> 00:47:57,867 You know, you can pick things apart. 603 00:47:57,967 --> 00:48:04,814 I mean, and that is maybe we want to take this conversation, but there is a darkness that is present and a darkness that will only grow 604 00:48:05,935 --> 00:48:09,477 And yet, in the midst of that, there is, of course, light. 605 00:48:10,137 --> 00:48:14,780 And there is our own engagement with what is unfolding. 606 00:48:15,420 --> 00:48:18,922 It would be nice if we knew in advance what was coming. 607 00:48:18,982 --> 00:48:24,105 It's funny that what I'm thinking about is my experience of being pregnant. 608 00:48:24,425 --> 00:48:27,987 I have two children, and they're grown now. 609 00:48:28,767 --> 00:48:29,088 But... 610 00:48:29,868 --> 00:48:33,650 You know, the experience of pregnancy, it is a kind of death. 611 00:48:34,010 --> 00:48:36,031 You're no longer ever the person that you were. 612 00:48:36,491 --> 00:48:40,434 And for the period that you're pregnant, you are two bodies in one. 613 00:48:40,454 --> 00:48:45,416 You have to die to a certain extent to who you've been and what you've been before. 614 00:48:45,476 --> 00:48:50,939 An old period of life ends, but something amazing comes out of it. 615 00:48:51,559 --> 00:48:56,462 So I kind of like to think, well, maybe we're all pregnant with the next world. 616 00:48:56,982 --> 00:48:57,862 Oh, I think we are. 617 00:48:59,503 --> 00:49:07,926 Taking it back to Sufism, one of the most fundamental sayings is to die before you die. 618 00:49:07,946 --> 00:49:11,287 The death of the ego, the death of the self. 619 00:49:12,559 --> 00:49:18,809 And here I think we see also the death of a culture that denied the divine and the birth of something new. 620 00:49:18,869 --> 00:49:27,942 And I am trying to put all of my attention, all of my focus, all of my gaze, the full capacity of my heart and my ears on what is being born. 621 00:49:29,073 --> 00:49:30,254 That's the work now. 622 00:49:30,274 --> 00:49:31,315 That's the midwifery. 623 00:49:31,615 --> 00:49:33,096 But it is indeed a birthing. 624 00:49:33,116 --> 00:49:34,818 That's how I think of it. 625 00:49:35,158 --> 00:49:35,398 It is. 626 00:49:35,798 --> 00:49:38,781 And it has been a privilege to be part of it. 627 00:49:39,221 --> 00:49:40,602 Privileged to talk with you, too. 628 00:49:40,803 --> 00:49:49,710 And thank you so much on behalf of all your other readers and listeners for the gift and the jewel that Emergence has been for all these years. 629 00:49:49,790 --> 00:49:55,294 You have really opened a space in our culture for the next thing to come through. 630 00:49:55,655 --> 00:49:55,975 Thank you. 631 00:49:56,956 --> 00:50:00,518 And it's been really such a pleasure to speak with you. 632 00:50:00,538 --> 00:50:01,839 Thank you for the invitation. 633 00:50:03,340 --> 00:50:09,664 Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is the founder, executive editor, and podcast host of Emergence Magazine. 634 00:50:10,324 --> 00:50:16,007 He's a documentary filmmaker and former jazz musician and a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandi tradition. 635 00:50:16,748 --> 00:50:21,311 His new book of essays and spiritual ecology practices is called Remembering Earth. 636 00:50:21,931 --> 00:50:25,113 And if you want to explore any more, you'll find links on our website. 637 00:50:25,653 --> 00:50:28,013 at wondercabinetproductions.com. 638 00:50:28,714 --> 00:50:29,714 I'm Anne Strainchamps. 639 00:50:30,014 --> 00:50:30,974 And I'm Steve Paulson. 640 00:50:31,274 --> 00:50:37,175 And this would be a good time to catch up on any episodes you missed because Wonder Cabinet is going on vacation. 641 00:50:37,775 --> 00:50:41,996 Our audio engineer, Steve Gotcher, is heading out on a month-long bike trip. 642 00:50:42,416 --> 00:50:45,777 Our digital producer, Mark Riechers, has some Midwest travel plans. 643 00:50:46,377 --> 00:50:49,397 And Anne and I are making our annual summer migration to Vermont. 644 00:50:49,918 --> 00:50:52,358 We will be back with new episodes in August. 645 00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:59,863 Whether you are staying home or traveling this summer, I hope you have a chance to spend a lot of blissful time outdoors. 646 00:51:00,564 --> 00:51:01,384 We'll be thinking of you.