Metamodern Spirituality | UTOK and Metamodern Alchemy (w/ Gregg Henriques)

Hello everyone today I am joined once again by Greg henriquez uh Greg apart from being a dear friend and uh incredible scholar uh uh is here to discuss the shared project that we've been involved with which is publishing his brand new book uh and so congratulations and uh I'm looking forward to talking about this with you um and getting into all the details about this but first thanks Greg for Coming back on the podcast to talk about this dude it's super exciting uh and thank you uh cuz you know it's our joint project you know

Sky Meadow uh the beautiful metamodern spirituality Haven and publisher of Sky Meadow took it on this crazy work and uh it's been a a joy and I'm super excited about it and thank you for your support and love to be here talking with you about it awesome yeah so yeah for some of that context there um you know last year 2023 I started Sky Meadow Institute and a big um kind of focus of the Institute is the Press uh which is aimed at trying to promote in advance um big picture thinkers thinkers in the complexity

space who are bridging spirituality and science etc etc um when I heard Greg was working on something I was like oh my gosh it would be incredible if uh if we could publish some work of Greg's and uh and all that was able to come together and the work is you talk the unified theory of Knowledge uh coming out well actually uh published and so again huge congratulations so this is now available for people to purchase uh and um yeah so it's been quite a wonderful ride working with you on this and um it's an

incredible work it's a wonderful beautiful AR artifact which we'll talk about in a minute some of the Aesthetics but um yeah maybe just as a first way into this uh I think might be helpful for people to know like what's different About this book like you've written two really you know impressive academic works I would say your last one um uh a new synthesis was really a Tome even a magnum opus that was really uh quite um full and Rich and uh with copious notes and everything so um to turn around and write another book

I guess why what is this one offer that those others didn't and how is uh this one yeah what's the mission for this yeah um I'll just back up to because I uh I want to honor you In the process of doing this in part because I just talked to Layman uh about GFF and a time between worlds uh and that's coming out on you talking with Greg uh and we had a great uh podcast so that will be either out or coming out very shortly and of course that was the first book uh that

was published and seeded uh at a metamodern spirituality conference I believe in relationship to that so uh I love that that's a part of that and there are seeds and roots and Trees that are growing uh in relation I actually learned quite a bit gergish was not somebody I was afraid of so anyway lovely but let's start a little tradition here uh of publishing uh fascinating work and and I'm happy to be in that uh line here so there's that um so it's a very different kind of book uh the UT talk book it is

much more sort of uh conversational declarative uh descriptive without a lot of the normal at least for me academic and probably Pro in some ways problematic academic background now I think you need that to have a lot of you know have genuine arguments in a longstanding tradition that's what I did with my other two books laid them all out uh in the particular academic fashion this one is like get to it talk about it cover the ground um so there's that piece that's that's quite different um the second thing that's different is UT Talk itself

is a is a different kind of thing I Actually mentioned this in the uh acknowledgements in the summary of this um and that is as it evolved from this unified theory of psychology into the unified theory of knowledge and then came with these sort of archetypal paradigmatic symbols uh and and symbolon and whatnot the coin and the garden and a new tree of life and all of that it's let's face it it's odd um and as you know as I was exploring the evolution of my own place in the world I found Metamodern uh to

be a particular uh remarkable synergizing home for what it was the sensibility was that I was after uh and that's another thing I really love about the book is that actually I think uh it captures uh a metamod as you as you'll folks will see it's got kind of this uh alchemical feel to it um and and I have to very quickly say uh that I'm in hugely indebted to Christian gross um the guy who did did the graphics on it uh he had a sense for What new graphics might be especially in a metamodern

field that could go into kind of a traditional alchemical sense it's got a lot of natural elements in it for an oral indigenous and of course I'm in a more modern and postmodern metamodern sensibility um so I'll pause there lots of different possible threads to pick up no that's great yeah and I want to dive in uh a little bit more to that uh into the illustrations and the Aesthetics of it and so um yeah uh Christian did an incredible job we'll talk more about that in a second um yeah I mean so for me

I think this is great because uh as you say you know this is not your kind of classic academic work that you've uh done so well in the past you know all that groundwork has been laid and I feel like this is now um a way for people to just get the UT talk download in an accessible quick um you know but still deep and really rich way um and so I've you know I've heard a Number of people mention like oh this UT talk stuff sounds super interesting but you know I don't really know

the best way in and and and there's so much going on here and to try to kind of tie it all together can be I think maybe a bit daunting for people and so I look at at this work as sort of like um intro to UT talk UT talk primer like uh just a sort of like if you if you want the whole picture you know and just to get what that's about um there's finally a Work for that this kind of how I read this lovely that's exactly what's after it's the operating system

for UT talk um it's designed so it's the design of it's got 30 short chapters in it pretty quick uh I was initially trying to five double space times new R in 12 space type that was some of them went a little over especially with the um illustrations but that was the goal and to do it in crisp clear uh fra fragments that could be really digested and then those fragments Could be put together like puzzle pieces to create a hole and then you get the whole map of Utah for an operating system for this

world viiew that's what this is after um and I think it came together reasonably well in that golf yeah definitely so yeah so on the aesthetic front and the incredible um again just sort of visual beauty of this of this work talk about that a little bit talk about what your vision um was for um this work how that came together To to be a different kind of of work uh just at that level yeah this again really is Christian gross he's a behind the scenes guy calls it sort of sort of the grounds Keeper

of the garden he's been doing he does the - talking with Greg um and and really brilliant Visionary guy but not not somebody who's out out in front but uh he's always looking for different potential angles and he had shared with me some of an early aesthetic uh Initially in sort of like a game kind of mode where we would actually imagion like you know going off on a testing Quest through the land of UT talk uh and he had shared some of these kinds of of images um and and they grew from there and

as I was working on this he then was like hey I'd like to kind of roll out a whole new uh feel for UT talk that has this more alchemical traditionalist kind of uh feel and the stuff that he produced I I was just blown away with I I love the intricacy the specificity uh there were a couple actually insights inside of UT talk that I hadn't made connections that he had made in the drawings um there's a beautiful articulation and it's on the cover it itself in a different kind of flavor of so the

B book itself is structured around a mantra uh you'll see this on the back cover of the book it's called Merit and this is UT talks if you had to say what's you talk in a nutshell it's Marry the coin to the tree in the garden under God those are the elements and it's really the coin is your subjective experience of the world or the coin frames that the tree is the natural science objective the garden is the inter subjective cultural Collective and God is our aspirational wisdom that's what it symbolizes so so fundamentally you

talk like there is an architecture to marry the subject to the objective world in the context of an inner Subjective cultural Collective that's oriented toward wisdom that's what that is well he developed a graphic of that that I've just fallen in love with in fact we're going to print it out we're going to put it frame it we'll put it up on the wall here MSI is going to get here in a a little bit and we're going to have that a little ceremony where we're going to put that up on the wall um and

really as an Insider I look at that and I was like oh my God I don't I This got in things in it that I missed um so I look forward to really uh you know sharing that graphic have other people looking at that graphic have it come alive for them and that's just one example uh of of what he poured his heart into uh and I'm super been super happy with it yeah yeah I think of this as sort of like um well as we were uh discussing early on we were kind of brainstorming

a little bit and Christian was sharing some of his graphics and I Was seeing them for the first time it it it really clicked that this could be an opportunity to present this system that you've come up with um very much in the tradition or in the lineage or with at least a nod to kind of that classic more alchemical kind of um you know uh uh almost kind of illuminated manuscript style um approach which for me has always been really meaningful and significant there's a kind of invitation to uh I don't know get lost

in some of The uh kind of mystical uh you know diagrams and everything there's a wonderful book out by T Tashan the Tashan those art books called Alchemy and mysticism and it's a wonderful collection of these like great you know Mandela circles and cosmologies and everything and um I see this is is in that tradition sort of updating that tradition you know I I I have this phrase of metamodern alchemy which is part of this sort of mythopoetic project Of um really trying to do that big picture thinking which is what those old Alchemists were

doing in many ways but you know with the limits of their time and their worldview and so how do we how do we do new versions of that updated versions of that um I think of this as sort of the first uh example a complete example of something like that so yeah I think it's awesome that's awesome uh and in fact at the metamodern spirituality I was having a conversation with scout Leader Wy um and we were rolling out MSI and I were rolling out our theory of the week uh which starts with Monday the

void Darkness day which is included in uh the appendix uh then Energy Information day matter object living organism uh today's mind mind animal day then culture person and then God Moon day and she give it her knowledge of the background and and Magic interest in Magic and modern alchemic times he like oh my god did you take this from the Pagan tradition and I'm of course I'm clueless about pagan tradition I don't know I don't no not directly she's like this is exactly and showed me some of the connections between uh Godlike figures and old

meanings of various uh days of the week um and I was at that moment just genuinely struck yeah I think I'm really plugged in here to a particular kind of archetype a particular old Paradigm that also is bridging of course into the modern Scientific worldview and it is of course the metamodern synthesis is this capacity uh to reach into a wide variety of different sensibilities uh and recursively reflect on them and coherently integrate them uh and so that's that's what this is after and this is then speaking uh to that kind of tradition which in

the modern sense and certainly the way I grew up I can't believe I wrote a book like that right I can't believe I'm in a monastery I got a Theory of the week it's connecting to old alchemical traditions but I actually think that's unbelievably beautiful and I feel very alive uh as I make those connections yeah well and I I want to talk about that in a second too that kind of Arc uh that you've gone through which I feel like this is representative of or emblematic of but um yeah you have a chapter in

the book about sort of UT talk situated within a metamodern sensibility and um everything you're Just saying is so interesting because that move towards the mythopoetic and the symbolic and uh sort of drawing on the Mythos um to be able to illuminate these kind of cosmological ontological epistemological realities um such an important move and also I think as anyone does that work earnestly and seriously and with depth and care there are going to be these enduring threads and connections to uh previous sort of archetypal work that's been done that's Sort of like ooh that resonates

that that that has a lineage or a connection back and um you know I've often remarked too uh in other conversations how um you know we'll have we'll have similar um uh ideas that we try to capture symbolically you know we might use different symbols or icons for that but like similar ideas are showing up there in that sense but also even sometimes we have very similar symbol for things you know there's a there's an image in this Book that I really love because it's sort of showing the um onto to epistemological sort of lens

of sort of inside out to outside in and there's the coin with the layers of the of the you know the the the the kind of tree of knowledge structure but then at the center is this eye that's sort of looking out in a way at itself and for me that's a very powerful symbol that again also you know for me became very potent but that's not really my Invention either there are these deep archetypal sort of images that kind of emerge here and so again it's sort of like both really new and in some

ways very idiosyncratic but on the other hand it's also very um old and very uh archetypal very general very Universal that's I really uh I'll point you know Alexander Bard anybody knows the space knows he talks about is narratology uh and he and I synced up on this that there's basically a pathos subjective Narratology there's a Mythos inter subjective uh and a logos scientific um certainly that's the way I would frame it and I think it overlaps with him significantly um I grow up of course in the standard scientific um and uh you know the

uh but after I drew out the thing and was working my first 2003 paper by that time it had already come known to me as the tree of knowledge okay uh and and I was called to call it that in a in a weird way I was still Totally in the M Paradigm but I'll just tell you a story that when I first tried to publish that I almost didn't get my paper accepted because a guy loved the whole argument hated I mean he just with capital A I hate the word tree of knowledge this

suggest Enriquez is actually you know what is he saying about where we need to go and what does it need to happen and I had to wrestle with the editor uh Peter saloy actually president of Yale was the now or is he Still whatever historically um the the U that I had to wrestle and basically really justify why the tree of knowledge and at that time actually was hard in some ways in the sense that I felt weird about doing that I am so glad that I did um and the the way in which I

become glad shows up then in the later Parts where it becomes a garden which I and then the tree in the garden isn't originally named the tree of life it's only after I come in contact with the Cabalic Jewish cabalic tree of life and see the circles in it and I can't believe I mean I didn't have familiarity with that but there's huge amounts of archetype and then IW so I say okay and on my tree of life I've got the tree of knowledge stuck uh on the the first Branch I then learned wait the

real archetype here's two trees a vertical tree a horizontal tree the Tree of Life tree of knowledge this goes way back to human kind uh and so for me my ID Idiographic pathos that's finding these kind of narratives this is embedded in the western tradition and maybe in the human tradition archetypally and paradigmatically and then to be connecting this scientifically um is is super just so exciting to see uh these Bridges because I've always sought consilience you know that's the El Wilson's term and that's where unified comes with there's a capacity to unify our knowledge

not reduce them uh but to Connect them with coherence uh to see a jumping together of a big picture uh that's what I think you talk of fors and this book has allowed me to sort of reveal these kinds of bridges in a way that my tradition as a normal academic you know traditional as that critique suggests there's a lot of a lot of binding against this kind of bridging but the metamodern sensibility and where I think we need to go is exactly in this direction yeah so talking more about That because that Arc that

sort of you know coming from as you kind of self describe it as Dawkin s kind of you know scientific materialism atheism uh uh reductionism maybe um and then moving through that into uh well let's just say starting there in a sense and then being now where you're at in terms of you know engaging with archetyp archetypes and and mythopoeic symbols of you know this sort of a thing um there's quite there is quite an arc there and there's also Um you know that's representative too of of the kind of book that this is relative

to earlier work which is sort of this move in a in a way kind of um I would say both out of the kind of academic Ivory Tower but also carrying that with you which I think is really important it's not like a oh this is abandoning science and and naturalism or something it's quite the opposite it's sort of taking those deep insights but then moving into a different register um You know at the same time it's not um this is not the kind of work that could be published anywhere right this is not something

that Springer is going to say oh yeah great we'll pick this up right you know and so there's clearly a shift into this new register and a different kind of mode of expression and um I don't know talk more about that from whatever lens you'd like either autobiographical or conceptual or whatever um institutional even you know What's the significance of that kind of trajectory uh for you that you've taken well uh I mean so I I would I would argue that this so I've had a couple of really key break moments in my life one

was the tree of knowledge that popped out of my system in 1997 that's a key one uh the second is in two another one's in 2016 that's when I'm at this conference and I built the unified theory unified approach and I mentioned this in the acknowledgements this is Still within the modern conventional system of understanding okay so it's weird and it's a big picture view I you know can you solve the problem of psychology nobody talks that way is Big nobody does meta Theory but you're still talking Skinner and Freud and I'm doing science and

oh Psychotherapy and we're trying to put all the stuff together and it's like really interesting um but then I have this sort of I'm at this conference cultivating the globally Sustainable self and and they're trying to like well how do we do this and I'm going walk out of there very frustrated actually with the sort of final panel discussion because essentially it just devolved into abstractions and then confusion and I couldn't get a handle on it and I said to my friend I was like we should plant a two of seeds and grow a to

a trees um and and it was in that moment that all of a sudden the light bulb went was like it became this visual Archetype of seeds and trees uh and right right at that moment very quickly thereafter I came home and started drawing out an a tree on a this crazy PowerPoint cartoon thing and then a seed and then a stone and it becomes a garden um and this was this was the jump this was a creative jump where at least in my world I could see an entire educational system that starts in a

Kinder Garten right whereby actually we would we would envelop our children in a nature system In a symbol system in a stored system and have them unfold that experience then into the propositional scientific understanding and embed that stored real lived experience in a network that includes science as opposed to thinking of science as this oh this propositional methods-based notion where we're going to actually get you out of your life so that you can propositionally dictate what is really true and then be disconnected from what is actually Happening um I was like I with the archetype

of the garden I was like oh my gosh we can fuse these things together we can really Bridge our knowledge systems in a much different way we can be much more participatory and perspectival and procedural to use some of John's language with our uh I didn't have that at the time but with our propositions that's what it was after um and once I started down that path of generating a a a vision of knowledge That is embodied in lived that Bridges to the mythopoetic structures it just became very apparent to me that there's a reason

that religion's doing what it's doing you know it's just like there's an entire embedded participatory way of living in the world and we can structure our world with with symbolism uh with metaphor with myth in a way that doesn't make ontological claims that challenge science but in fact brings a lot of now my understanding of the ontology of the World to to life uh and the way we would do it through our archetypal paradigms as opposed to just trying to reduce stuff to a equation that we then say Oh that's some pristine truth so that

to me is really where the jump happened um and it's way outside the world I became increasingly alienated from people uh in some ways in the sense that what are you doing this is bizarre uh I don't talk at all the Garden or the coin uh I mentioned it even in my in the story That as this emerges it's so far away from people that actually create some distance in my own life uh with like my program uh and things along those lines so it it looks very different it is different I do believe the

21st century is going to find itself as we go through this into this digital Global where this interface capacity across all of our different informational interface systems going to get more and more integrated these Vision types of models Um that I go across all sorts of different modalities of experience and participation they're going to become the way we know so I I do believe it's a Future Vision uh that's when it happened 2016 uh and it launched me into this thing and you know it grabbed my soul spirit in a particular way that's just where

I was going to go yeah it's interesting to hear you talk about it because um there's a way of um there's a way in which you talk about this Unfolding of ideas in in in an autobi AO autobiographical sense that seems very much like personal mythology to me which is a a field or a a discipline a topic that I became very interested in uh for many reasons and there's different ways actually of of talking about the idea of personal mythology um you actually mentioned Dan McAdams in the book as the storytelling ego and that

sort of thing um but he also wrote a bit about um kind of uh in a sense personal myth as being The stories that we tell about our lives and that sort of thing and there's always been some way that people talking about personal mythology have sort of just sat in kind of the psychology space um you know I think of like the kryner and the as a Jee Houston other people like that um it was sort of like oh these are the stories that we tell but I was always interested in it from that

but also another level which is generating Mythos right not just for Ourselves but also for the world in a sense right of like coming up with myths and stories about reality but they're also deeply related and I can relate to your story a lot in this sense because as someone who is interested in kind of generating Collective Mythos there's a way in which that becomes very much a part of your own individual Mythos right and so the story uh the storytelling ego and the storytelling narrative about your own life then becomes about Storytelling and Mythos

in general um and so anyway as I was thinking about that and you were talking a minute ago it reminded me of this um of this thing in a book I'd written called building the cathedral and I don't usually do this but I want to just read this passage because we also just talking about sort of conver emergences and you know finding the metamodern sensibility and things coming together in certain ways that just seem like there is a kind Of attractor uh you know nature to this and so um there's uh there's this passage uh

and I would have written this sometime around 2015 um so I wrote clearly what is desperately needed today is an account of the universe that is both in accord with our scientific understanding of it and also psychologically fulfilling that is we need a new mythological rendering of the cosm one that is right both objectively and Subjectively as ever this is the task for poets and artists not scientists for it must speak to the heart not just the head it must be beautiful not simply correct as such it is the Endeavor of personal mythmaking one of

finding a new Mythic language for creation um and I go on here's the TA here the task is not so much the crafting of new symbols since the subject matter is physical not metaphysical um what we need rather is a new narrative a new Genesis and anyway It's just interesting because that to me became this really profound kind of endeavor this Collective Endeavor that seemed uh like we were in this moment sort of right for and so telling the story of The Universe telling a cosmic tale and and and putting that into Mythic terms uh

in a way that is also personally uh myth telling at an autobiographical level um I feel like that's what this book is doing in many Ways and uh in a shared project that we're both passionate about so yeah what a what a beautiful quote uh and I and so right the the the depth of that parallel and the shared calling is really it's touching you know because that's exactly that that's exactly what was unfolding for me as I'm I think you are more sort of conscious of it I'm was more in the scientific side the

fact that I was a clinician working with the subject and and knowing watching people made me know That you're not going to reduce everything to the third person exterior and so that was a bridge but then I back into this whole structure and then wake up you know to wait a minute that that what you describe is exactly what we need that that wasn't on my Forefront but it sort of backed in and then I'm looking out uh and then experiencing the world we end the uh the book sort of ends and like the the

the jumps that are happening at a particular level point to This you know kind of Mythic 2028 Singularity you know and there's a joint point that we can find and that's a play off me getting stoned I mean and then there this connection between again the cultural ethos the potentialities of ourselves our individual uh obviously John and I frame our Transcendent naturalism part strong Transcendence the time now is collectively binding ourselves together and waking up not just to make ourselves subjectively feel Better but to intersectionally transform our connection with reality and the potentials for future

uh and build some sort of societal Cathedral right uh that's appropriate to this time that anchors Us in science but also orients us towards wisdom um yeah totally yeah well so how would you differentiate uh between a project like you know what you're doing um and and other folks out there I would include myself engaged in the sort of shared effort um which I Think you know we have a sense of there and and what that entails uh how would you differentiate that from some of the other things uh other versions of the some of

which might be not so good it might even lead to some pathology might lead to uh any number of problems which you know we could we could get into what they could be um right I mean this has been an ongoing conversation in you know I've been having with with you with Layman with with Veri others about you Know scaling archly scaling um you know new religious structures this sort of a thing um so like you know if someone hears this Arc they might just say oh you know I guess Greg's gone off the deep

end he's abandoned s and now he's moving into creating a religion and I guess all these metamodern people just want to like you know be the new priest gods of society or something um so there's like there's that kind of critique that might show up for people There's also just uh you know a sense of oh I guess um you know Greg and these other folks are just giving up on sort of like empiricism and evidence and are just moving into speculation and sort of art or something right uh which is a little bit less

cutting of a of a critique but um and and just generally right I think we all are collectively seeing a Resurgence of interest in traditional religion and uh esotericism occultism different kinds of like people Looking for some kind of re-enchantment um and so there's a lot of ways that these kinds of projects could go arai um I guess my question would be how would you differentiate what you're doing from that and what are sort of the kind of safeguards in place or ways of thinking that you're approaching this through that um sort of mitigate against

those uh problems wonderful first and forist I'll put my scientific chops up against anybody Period okay uh and what I will say to you whoever is saying that is listen to your system of justification relative to the investment and influence dynamics that your primate person narrator is now engaged in and I will say that's about as functionally accurate of a scientific explanation of your human behavior that we will have that is coherent so if you're looking for a naturalistic account okay that's empirically grounded both that the first person I observe it And third person scientific

that is actually what UT talk is first and foremost grounded in in a way that's quite radically different so I would argue that there's no other system that's more scientific than Utah at the level especially at the level of scientific coherence that then networks empirical findings first person and third person together to give rise to a descriptive metaphysical articulation meaning just a description really deep Description of what the right terms are like energy matter life mind culture and how to interrelate them so my first point is if you're like oh this guy's not scientific nobody

more science that's that I'll I'll put that down and I'll say that's my claim uh and and anybody that then is well I'm going to go into physics well actually you're going to make a bunch of philosophical statements if you're going to say that physics says something about this Conversation show me the empirical data I haven't found a damn physicist ARG about how to explain this conversation ever I've just I've seen a lot of speculation and judgments about the way in which reductionism works but that's an argument that's not data okay these are justification systems

and I have a model scientifically for us so I don't mean to feel defensive but I just want people to know if you feel like it gets pulled into some weird Alchemy first Point I'm going to put myself out there as being more scientific than anybody else period so then once that once you do that then you're like well what does a real scientific view open and that's the beauty of it a real scientific Beauty opens up the potential to connect to the archetypal paradigmatic Mythos and pathos that's the beauty of the system so we

I'm not sacrificing science at all in fact I'm recognizing what modern science is blind to and broken Around and by opening it up it opens up a consilient bridge at least that's the UT talk experience uh so I've never lost my scci I'm a behavioral scientist a staunch empirical behavioral scientist at heart I'm also a very critical thinker and I that system's deeply Limited and blinded and it's got its own authoritarian justification systems that make it uh that way um you talk overcomes those opens up and then finds Brotherhood across a wide variety of Different

domains without ever having to become unored from its scientific ground yeah well said and that's a I mean it's a beautiful and fascinating uh not just idea because I think people in integrative spaces have kind of talked about that as an idea but I feel like your work is an application of it it's an instantiation of it of like once you move through you could say transcend and include uh the scientific modern frame then you do open up into this sort of Transpersonal uh kind of um you know symbolic and and and and uh imaginal

mythopoetic area in which um you can really integrate then the sciences and the humanities the experience and the and the data you could say in a way that um is actually the logical Next Step um and so yeah I think that I think and and so and UT Talk's point is you know the problem of psychology right and if you can't do that then you're going to be you're Going to be in trouble because your Concepts and categories aren't going to work so the argument fundamentally is that that's that's tricky you know when Abraham maslo

love him you know does okay I'm going to do trans personal and then contribute to that great the fact of the matter is Abraham Lazo doesn't have the solution to the problem psychology and in fact even will nor does Wilbur um the nice thing from our hard science view if we're going to get Defend the system cuz I don't lose that we're defend the system from a science view well the issue is people can't get from biology through psychology to social sciences no other system does that that's exactly where UT Talk's located it rotates a

set of understandings to allow a vertical and horizontal arrangement of psychology and it is through that that we can maintain grounding in the Natural Sciences and then blossom into the social sciences And Humanities um and that's what UT talk is trying to afford so what about the second part of that uh maybe bad faith critique of you know oh Greg's just trying to start his own religion or uh something like that Greg you know he thinks he's a prophet or something um what what what are sort of uh responses that you might have to that

and maybe even some kind of structural guardrails of sort of why is this different from uh other attempts people might have made in The past to present Mythos and and all that yeah so well first off I'm just at justifying ape okay so let's be what I think I am and I'm going to die and I'm fallible and you Talk's a good system for the 21st century that and and after that all bets are off okay so it's not like I'm I'm claiming anything here I'm claiming this couple a set of very clear you can

look at the data you make the arguments in relation um and there's an opportunity uh for us what I would say Is we are justifying apes and we come with a sociocultural historical justification so my dad is a great example of this of what the traditional to Modern World Views live so I grew up with the Dawkin us there is no capital M meaning why because we thought there was I thought Christ really had died for my sins this is my Dad I'm an Evangelical Christian I will when I die I'll be rited that's what

gives my life meaning this is sort of a shell game of life That will really I'll I'll get United to the real source of meaning and then he wakes up and it's like actually that doesn't really make sense uh and now as it doesn't make sense it collapses and then his life then is defined by the contrast of what it meant to be Christ's son right and then it's the justificatory contrast to that that then is like okay I now need to accept my life as not really having meaning and I'll just sort of construct

it after all We do have fun it makes a difference where having loving dinners together as opposed to suffering and dying so I'll work in that direction okay but notice the entire system then is pre-framed by an argument okay if we say actually you're you are a quazar of complexification a miracle whatever the source your quazar of complexification in the night sky that's what planet Earth is we don't know anyone else that is this kind if if what's beaming off of The the universe is complexification our system is and you and I as cultured persons

are some of the most complexified collections around and that we're self-aware means we have a miracle of antic epistemic awareness every time we open our eyes inside the universe that's generally so is this to me then it whether it's caused by anything we go to Bobby aerian what but whatever the case is this part of the universe is waking Up to its own self this part of the universe can can love and and and die and and feel the fear of that that's a miracle and that's a beautiful thing and that's meaning in life as

that expands and that is sacred that's sacred in the universe okay uh there's no I don't need to I I feel that in my body I feel that in my bones I feel that in my cells and that and that just open so meaning in life is a is felt it's everywhere it's a learning algorithm some guy laid it out I tell you it's a meaning on top of meaning it gives rise to sacredness in a particular way being in the world and that's available to us and and that's to me that both is and

ought uh that's an is and a uh quality joint point to pull off of a uh pers kind of notion there's a point of quality here there and and that if you don't have the contrast of the old story that's as apparent to me and I believe we can wake up to that I think it's crucial that we wake up to That I think we need a collective Awakening of what is sacred and what is real meaning in life um and for me the this path is Crystal Clear it's like if we get we have

to transcend some of the old narratives we have to understand where they're coming from rewrite what actually is the script uh and wake up to the sacredness of meaning upon meaning yeah well said I mean yeah uh I definitely agree with that and it's interesting too Because you know yeah as you say like uh when your own autobiographical story becomes the breakdown of a justification system and basically now one's own arc is oh I used to think that this was meaningful capital M and now I've lost that and now this then this becomes a kind

of narrative that gets told um but within within the pregiven framework I always thought this about postmodernism it was sort of like the postmodern uh emphasis Is always on superficiality the loss of meaning the the loss of uh of value the the deferral of meaning nihilism all this stuff right but it's always like in reference to what people used to think was meaningful and if you posit the default of meaning as some Supernatural or metaphysical or absolutistic or transcendental this then you lose that then you're just faced with the void and negation but that's all

privileging that metaphysical set of presuppositions in Order to even make that case so to go post postmodern means you've actually got to situate that as a reaction and then kind of uh chart a new course with better foundations and I feel like that's uh that's kind of what we're getting at uh and and what this book help map and and talk about um totally yeah uh another question on that front too though is sort of like so this is your system this is this is something you've written and at the same time You're working in

a community I mean this was also a joint effort with Christian and a whole group of of of you talk uh you know uh Circle and other people as part of all this um so there's some element of which yes it is you but also it's bigger than you but like you know in the sense of if people look at this and they're like oh do I have to to you know take this in Hook Line and Sinker you know is this a whole system that like you know you've got to you Know take it

in like some Scientology thing or whatever you know what I mean like so maybe just talk a little bit about how people should read this and what sort of um yeah yeah so right I'm not a fundamentalist I'm not a foundationalist okay I'm a scientist all right uh a lot of this and it is takes it will take a little while this has my signature on it I am a lone wolf theorist I did basically build all this at one level there's an aspect of it the Vast majority is just me building it by myself

so that's weird um and then it's got my own aesthetic to it okay so and and and crucially that's that can for this to have real value that's got to be taken out and still have a lot left um and I believe that that's the case I believe there's an enormous amount left you can take out the aesthetic one of the reasons I'm really excited about this is that this it shows a new aesthetic um uh of the of the system um I'll show you we haven't gone through it yet I built a thing called

the first law of UT talk and it's got a slightly different aesthetic a more futuristic scientific uh science fiction kind of aesthetic to it um and so we can we can go and I believe that UT talk would it's going to afford itself to have all sorts of different aesthetic sensibilities all sorts of different play the I'm super clear that these icons okay are that they're not Idols okay uh so STI to Stick the allseeing eye as as God transcending back to is is put puts it in a particular place there are aspects of architecture

here that I think cut across a wide variety of different domains I do think energy matter life mind culture as the natural wave of Behavioral complexification I stand by that scientifically um I stand by the argument that there is a subjective epistemic portal for each of us uh that we then build inter subjective systems Of justification and science is a unique one that allows us more objectivity than we've achieved in the past and we need systems that somehow coordinate between those three vectors to give us a transcave onto epistemology that's the most sophisticated knowledge systems

I think that we can build that's what I would say is pretty generalizable at least about the kind of the academic claims uh the flavor of them the sort of mythopoetic stuff I mean at one level They're totally up for you know oh Greg does that a weird flavor and at the same time I do bed embed them in things like Gardens trees of Life trees of knowledge that have a pretty rich and Broad history uh and there'll be then a lots of different ways in which you could blend into that aesthetic at least in

terms of sort of a western kind of tradition uh so it is contextualized it's contextualized in a rich cultural Tradition at the same time it's not Foundationalist or fundamentalist and it does have a signature aesthetic from me uh but it also has enormous algorithmic analytic types of things that could abstract and generalize yeah awesome what would you say what would be a uh a way that would like if you saw someone making use of this book in a a particular way it would make you very happy like what's sort of the ideal way that someone

picks this up and and something meaningful occurs from that What does that look like for that person totally so for me I think that basically the what I would love to see happen is people to sort of wake up to a new world view uh a new set of fact value intersections um and you know when people start to really internalize the days of the week I'll return to that um as a way of saying hey I now see the world as void and energy information and and and and feel the cycle of that and

feel the layers of that I see myself as Both a cultured person a m and a minded primate that's also a living organism a material object on an energy information field I would love at a fact level I'd love to have that be um you know part of the real kind of take-home message um and then there's the other part uh that's much more dear to my sort of humanistic heart uh and and watch so many people suffer as they get trapped by the frustrations of life and the injuries and we talk about bumps and

Bruises and then they form loops and they don't understand the nature of those Loops so they're transparent to them rather than opaque so opaque means I can shift from a meta perspective and see myself doing this but when there's transparent you're just in it so your Consciousness is just subjectively reacting and of course as a clinician what I see over and over or saw over is people grab the world reciprocally narrow to use John's term and see the World insist upon it on this way and then suffer and get so frustrated by that uh so

the humanistic side and the therapeutic side also comes with a whole map for how we get trapped actually we'll be introduc the book introduces uh something we haven't talked much about which is the Dragon's Lair the mythopoetic source of neurotic misery um which I say with enormous amount of respect okay I know a lot of people lived in this I I I can certainly flavor Like what does it look like when you're in that place um but how do we hold it and this gives an archetype for that it gives you an idea and of

course the comment flashlight uh provides a frame so when I'm talking about what do I hope people take away from there's these twoo broad there's a big worldview picture that gives us this justifying persons and minded primates on the one hand and then there's this other thing about hey how do we really get trapped and engage In you know painful neurotic suffering that we can reverse and afford ourselves reciprocal opening and growth even as the world bumps and bruises us yeah well and and it seems like there's a conceptual level here but also a practice

level and and and maybe that's a good setup to talk about the days of the week and The Credo and things like that you know you've been living in your own kind of UT talk Monastery as you call it right like this does again move Really uh it opens up a new way of relating to this new uh worldview and this new way of understanding reality in a manner that becomes embodied ritualized you know and there's a kind of um uh way that this now can potentially structure your life I know that that's become very

Salient and meaningful for you so so um yeah talk a little bit about that angle yeah yeah so uh I mentioned a little bit that there was some alienation and ultimately and Folks know this um so my the book is De dedicated to my life partner uh Masa uh and uh you know we uh over the last two years uh we fall in love and formed a partnership uh that emerged because she got intact with UT talk and and some for whatever reason her system was just ready to absorb it and I don't really um

it's kind of fascinating to watch somebody who just sort of intuitively speaks the of course the IAD coin and actually she helped me very early on Like you should depict it this way and everyone else like I don't know what that is and she's like depict it this way and I'm like oh my God that's right that's a better way than I've been doing it so anyway I hooked up with somebody um and formed a partnership with somebody and we talk about this in the book I de dedicated to her but um so then we

started Living Our Lives according to you talk I mean and that what did that mean uh well one of the Things was this day of the week that makes it very real every day I know when it's mind animal day are then thinking about psychology I'm thinking about toggle between self and awareness as a as a way so that's the kind of Western concern about the self Eastern concern about fundamental awareness G A Frame there and we also then built this uh our Monastery this was sort of where we lived we were going to kind

of hold this uh we had little rituals of putting Pictures up uh every week uh and then honoring them and then built this Credo uh so that has beliefs uh values and and mantras I won't go through them all but the first belief is I believe in the garden fractal okay uh that's the first belief and what does that mean well for anybody that's been in the space okay and I I went through this a little bit part of this space is oh my gosh society's not doing that great right there's a lot of high-risk

stuff there's A metac crisis however you want to name it we're certainly not maximizing our wisdom relative to our potential we'll put it that way and the potential for pandemics World War II breakdown of our digital Global Network into real catastrophe feels real to me uh use the analogy we're on a bip plane heading into a Hurricane UT Talk's part of a map that scared me okay I had to go through about a six-month period of like okay what What does that mean if I feel like how do I get in right relation well the

you the I Believe In the Garden fractal means okay I'm going to be aware of as large of expansion as possible and see patterns and and not deny and at the same time I will control it's kind of like the Serenity Prayer uh which I would often use which is basically grant me the capacity to know what I can control know what I can and do the best that I can the garden fractal is this Idea that be aware of it and be committed to wisdom within what you can control uh and that's just one

sort of example what sort of came alive uh and so every morning uh MSI and I we go through we pull up a belief we pull up a value we pull up a mantra uh that guides the day um and uh that's how some of the ways it's which we become alive uh it's got a value based system the ultimate justification be that which enhances dignity and well-being Integrity a whole Network for how how we can all kind of come together uh and maximize our valued states of being uh in a way that I think

is quite different than we're currently doing yeah the uh it occurs to me that so the T and you talk is for Theory the unified theory of knowledge but uh with this book and listening to you talk about all this and and knowing you for some time and and how much um how much uh this whole way of seeing has has really Impacted your way of being in the world and and directed your again kind of your life story in all that way it seems like it's also at least possibly so much more than a

theory like what is UT talk for you is it is it is it a theory is there some other term is it a religion is it a worldview is it a a way of being what how would you what's the category to put in sure it's religio at some it's a bind it binds my fact value system together um obviously it's Not a supernatural religion uh but it certainly has become a binding uh of what it is that I and that and it's an invitation to bind others on a what is and ought to be

in fact another way we frame it is often uh clarify what is cultivate what ought to be and bind those together okay so it's a and it is the unified theory of knowledge comes off the unified theory of psychology okay to do what for Psychotherapy for the for the embodied subject of living That I I am sitting there across from people people know the story but I'm sitting there across from people like who am I and what am I using to guide you know my engagement with this person toward wise living or away from sin

and foolishness like what justifies that and the unified theory is there's a scientific argument I do need to know what is but it's also nested then ultimately in the orientation toward wisdom that's why I often talk about Wisdom oriented men's knowledge or women's knowledge wisdom oriented modern empirical Natural Science um so fundament mentally when you start thinking about justifications this is another thing that the inside of justifications you realize justification systems fuse facts and values and they need to because they sit on Investment Systems which fuse facts and values in relationship to as say animal

systems have to decide both what is and what Ought to be if you're going to actually invest in the world uh that's a fusion of facts and values so this is definitely a theory to Foster practice it's a theory application it's a it fors research and understanding and ways of living that are be grounded in values so world view a religio that kind of binds individuals together orients towards the potential of the Sacred uh and gives us a new way of thinking about what is and ought to Be yeah what do you what would you

make of um there's a lot of people out there um right now with a kind of urgency around this issue of sort of finding religio that seems to be a huge topic on on people's minds there's a lot of conversions to traditional religions um there's a lot of kind of resurgence of um interest and engagement with uh with yeah kind of more axial age traditional religion um so it seems like there's a lot a lot of people out there and of Course you know demographically there's a lot of focus or talk about you know talking

about men it seems like uh disproportionately young men seeking um you know orientation meaning wisdom purpose um and it does seem like uh in response or in reaction to a lot of the failures of the ideologies on on you know uh at hand um people are largely it seems forced to kind of turn back to traditional religions um and and I guess just what are your thoughts on that Phenomenon in general where does you talk fit in that uh In This Moment uh around that is there um and then I guess related to that is

I don't also want to just paint that with a broad brush and say oh it's all just some kind of you know turn to old things right there's also I think really deeply a a desire for people to feel rooted in something old traditional with deep past deep lineage and a lot of currency in that sense that can um add an aspect of Identity right uh that that I think people are also very hungry for um and so related to this question would be how does UT talk relate to that um on the one hand

you know uh it's a very novel very new uh kind of thing so yeah situate this project this book and you talk in General within this kind of cultural moment and this sort of um fraught relationship with religion totally um well I mean I I really think we're you know we're in the time between World Su Z sign frame I I borrow from that within the book and put it there and it fits within the whole uh fifth joint point I think there's a sense in which you know we're in the modernity's done its thing

it's got a post-modern critique which is also fading and now what what is our justification system as we come across the high Horizon of the digital there's an enormous amount of flux um fear uh that's going to re root people to wait a minute there are is a Lot of wisdom in these old conservative ideas a subset of individuals um and whether that's ontological or uh eschatological or um axiological I mean there's lots of different ways you which you could find I think meaning I think you can uh look at our current society and be

like listen something's wrong or we're missing some key elements okay like we don't really know what we're doing here we're not grounded um to me what you talk of Fords uh is wonderfully Summarized in a metamodern uh kind of frame which is that it recursively steps back and then includes and transcends uh and what UT talk does is it then brings a particular set of analytics uh the problem of psychology that says well this is one of the real reasons we've had a meaning crisis is that we haven't actually been able to build a system

of understanding our natures as we grow into our civilized Technologies in relationship to Nature itself and each Other we don't we don't know we have all of this knowledge about the biological and the physical sciences but they don't really bridge and give us meaning we have knowledge sort of in the social sciences but that's a hard knowledge and so there's really this confusing network of fragmentation then in a flood of information overload that then is swamping us uh and causing all sorts of difficulties to be grounded in what is real and have a cumulative sense

of Contact with reality um UT talk fundamentally is about that it is about addressing that it says there is actually a way uh to deal with this to create a structure of understanding and architecture that cumulatively pulls the subjective objective inter subjective together in a transcave and does so in a way that makes grounding sense in common sense and deep ideas um the the challenge of it is that this is overwhelming worldview you know it's Like my parents Brothers have been watching watching me do this for a long time they love me they still don't

what the hell I'm talking about half the time you know it's like and it's like these weird archetypal symbols um and I don't know how to that's a that's a great question uh I think for you talk and for its future um it's been enormous uh just I just feel so grateful that MSI and I were able to come together and actually live it with two people that really Speak it have a small community of people that really starting to see wait a minut this's a lot of residents here somehow that's got to be metabolized

and then transitioned into the zone approximal development where a lot of people are um I hope that happens I'm anxious to see how that happens I'd like to contribute to that of course I'm so far in it that I'm not really the best person necessarily to do that well no I think that that's yeah that is a big Question for for you talk but also again other people doing similar things operating in this space where um I think we share the sense of what you just described very you know eloquently of the kind of breakdown

um that we're facing the kind of overload and then uh what do we do about that seems to be uh one clear answer is well we need to uh find uh more successful adaptive systems for understanding reality and orienting wisely to reality and we currently lack That even with regard to the traditional uh religions because of the loss of um kind of the connection between their their their cosmologies and other kinds of ways of seeing the world and now what we know to be the case so we're stuck with sort of a new understanding of

the universe and yet we don't have a sort of Mythic structure that can kind of home Us in that universe and so at the same time you've got people trying to do that work but then other people will come Around be like ah but this is all new fangled and new symbols and stuff and I want the old stuff it's like all right well you know and so there's there's an inherent tension and challenge there um but on the one hand though there's also this sort of I think very legitimate question of well if this

isn't if if this only stays in the space of symbol and uh an image and clarifying ideas about reality great but that's a very different thing from someone being like Hey the Son of God died for your sins and dot dot dot right there is a kind of emotional charge uh that a lot of the traditional religions have as part of their narratives that uh click for people and there's something there not just in the stories but in the ethos and in the archetypes that feels like a very satisfying gal for people um and so

I'm seeing that more and more uh people are finding oh this this this really speaks to me um and so I feel like if we are Going to be successful in doing that thing I was just talking about that you were just talking about um you know it's also got to work at that level and then the question is right like does um does a tree of life of complexity cones and and does an elephant Su God does that work at that level and I guess that's an open question yeah I think it is an

open question uh I will say for me the I I guess I just summarize it a sacred appreciation of the miracle of my Antic epistemic awareness that has a that that I think is aailable through a very analytic or whatever lens it's also available through a spiritual lens and of course this has been many wisdom Traditions will speak to this at various levels um but the availability for us to appreciate our place in awareness complexification and what that means uh to have to allow ourselves to feel the meaning of that across our stack to me

that's sort of the most generalizable Thing I mean my friend Rob Scott basically you know had his own Enlightenment moment talks about a fundamental shift essentially connecting with the isness of the world transcending the justificatory structures not in a way that you dis you know that you let go of them completely uh but grounding yourself in a particular kind of way of making contact with reality John will often talk about the this way in which reality discloses When the conforming grip of fors itself uh for me and the sacred liveness that the people bring religious

uh terminology to that to me that's what we got to point people to because I think the right framing of Consciousness in the natural world oriented toward uh particular K of values brings the system alive and then you point that is meaning versus the death alienation and discouragement and that's what's sacred and we're in a position to cultivate That in a radically different way um and I think that's the you know for folks that are obviously there's an enormous um you know comfort and and and and even an argument you know you can talk to

Jordan Hall or whatever you get an argument as well as comfort the idea of a loving God who died for your sins and and is resurrected and you could be resurrected and and hang with your ancestors in a particular way um I I I don't offer that I'm an agnostic in Relation you know uh I will say this you talks endon natural okay and that's like I'm I'm going to foro the supernatural questions I'll be agnostic I'll be skeptical but whatever we can do a lot better in the natural world itself we can fit conform

our human ways of being in the world to the under scientific understanding in a way that affords a connected disclosure of reality that makes us come alive and makes us Appreciate meaning in the world and sacredness in and of itself and that's really then secondary I think we need that regardless of whether God's watching us or not I think he'd be happy if that were what we were choosing to do and if this is our only life that's a good idea to do it that way anyway so I think that's one way to frame it

well and it's interesting too because it might also be a bit of a category error or a kind of misplaced question or Critique because you know it's the same sort of thing with the Alchemist if you go back right like you know some folks were doing some very significant meaningful things for them uh at the mythopoetic level making sense of reality um and it probably would have been pretty difficult to just in a quick elevator pitch describe the significance of you know the of of the work of the Opus and the and the negredo phase

and the you know of this into the Putrification it's like what you know and so if we can value that and and look at that and be like wow people were doing some really deep archetypal stuff here that had some profound significance to it that we're still finding ways of you know connecting and integrating with other aspects of reality in in various ways which isn't to say you know oh they had all the answers EI I'm not saying that but but there was a system there that was not immediately transparent or Clear to your average

man on the street and that's not a knock against it right there's always going to be some of that esoteric uh exoteric kinds of distinctions and similarly even within the great Traditions you know an aquinus is going to have different things on his mind and talking about different things than you know uh just your standard person in the Pew on Sunday or something right so um it is a demographic audience kind of question as well and and so I'll Just yeah what to me what you're doing there and this is what I was missing is

you're pointing to the power of the process meaning and whatever the content is but the power of process so um what what this what you talk led us to do is like oh our home became a sanctuary it became a monastery it became there were places and rituals we engaged in that were sort of sacred and then we built a belief value Mantra statement that we sort of hold ourselves to that's what Emerged and I look back and I had a great family and I was very appreciative of what I got uh you know in

a standard but sacredness you know not it was just embedded in the love and that we would shared but there wasn't a holding of what it is that really mattered in the world and and what do you really believe and why do you commit to that particular thing we we certainly valued Integrity my dad was very honest and instilled in that I deeply appreci but why you know Why I would argue that actually for me at least the UT talk structure embeds integrity and dignity and well-being it embeds what it the entire sort of spectrum

of value in a way that's ontologically real and and has meaning rather than just some sort of construction that's good for us because we'd rather be happy than not even though it's meaningless that's a very different opinion uh or or frame and I think that UT talk can give That kind of frame I think a lot of the things that were you know kind of groping toward here in the metamodern space are about that well let's maybe uh move to a close on that topic because it was that's sort of a version of of of

my last question which is something like um you know again oh I was talking to Rafe Kelly not long ago and he was saying that someone had said to him you know John 3:16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever Believes in him shall but have eternal life and he was like that just it just became like an earworm it just stuck with him it just meaningful he had to like unpack that he had to live into that Etc there's a kind of uh story there that people can

connect with almost intuitively and then live into and I guess the question for for you would be like what is that story or maybe it doesn't have to be a story but what is that for for you talk Specifically around this issue of the Sacred like how would you kind of summarize not necessarily using the terms or the symbols or images or even the mantras that you've come up with but just like in layman's terms like what what is this orienting us to what what is when someone wakes up and they say you know does

my life have meaning what am I doing why am I here how does UT talk answer that question in a way that you could uh succinctly uh describe Totally um yeah so I think that it's an appreciation and this is hard because you're surrounded by people and every day first off it's appreciation of of the miracle of your complexification is one of the things okay uh and then it's the contact that that that that complexified integration affords so when I talk about Mary the coin to the tree that is me seeing myself as a cultured

person minded animal living organism material object In an energy information field okay what that affords me is this a deep sense of Oneness with everything in the universe it's all an unfolding Energy Information and yet it's still also affords me a tremendous sense of unique individual differentiation and a deep Love of My Own perspective in this world and then a deep connection to other so it's a one many in fact the design of the coin is a one many dialectic at least in part and to connect to that thread connect to a Coherent integrated thread

that both appreciates my uniqueness and then links me up to this whole field in a particular way that is the miracle of existence I I believe that that's really available to us I believe that kids can celebrate in that if we were raised in a particular way I I wasn't not to knock on my parents but I wasn't as I got in tou with I tell a story sometimes one time I was overwhelmed just walking into food line I'm I just started crying Basically cuz I was like I can't believe I'm alive I can't believe

that I my system can do this um I think that there is a real opportunity for us to reclaim the sacred of of existence the sacredness of consciousness of awareness um that what UT talk tries to do with this entire architecture is like we can connect our subjectivity to science and to culture and to value that's Mary the coin to the tree and the garden and if you Do the difference in meaning is is enormous uh relative to well what's available I mean you know we've going through maybe it's tapering but our United States just

went through the OPA crisis where we had you know almost 100,000 people dead uh a year because they're shooting themselves up of drugs getting alienated from the world in particular way um there there is an opportunity for us to connect and I think our systems once we know how to Calibrate them are are eager to fill the metabolizing capacity of that connection uh so UT talk tries to point to that and if that happens man the difference between that and the malnourishment and the dis uh disconfigured alienation um is just tremendous uh so that's what

you talk points to so that's marry the coin to the tree and the garden uh under god well said well speaking of which what is that you've got jangling there I've been hearing is that a is that a These are my coins yeah these are coins so there it is yep there's the I quad coin with the Tree of Life on the back so I have two of them and been banging them together so sometimes I try to do that awesome I will just say on that final note um it's interesting to me because I

resonate very much with that and as I've been exploring your work in this General domain of ideas around meaning and and value and actually putting that back into the world as Being something real um that has utterly changed the way that I live and feel about uh about my existence and about being alive and uh relating to other people and um and but what occurs to me as well though is that something like a religio or religion um might also fulfill different functions for some people for me it's always been deeply about meaning and so

when I feel fulfilled at the meaning level I feel like well there it is I this this this Does it and other people might be like well but for me a big part of it is like my connection to my ancestors or you know um feeling that that I don't know certain kinds of peak experiences if I do a certain kind of ritual or something and so uh these are broad categories that um you know maybe it just occurs to me that you know that for people um seeking different aspects of the religious life um

getting the meaning thing met might not be as Salient as Aspects and so maybe these different kinds of approaches won't won't speak to them as much but I will say for my part um you know the kinds of things that you're describing and the way that you're doing it uh is very uh core to that kind of reinfusion of meaning and significance and the re-enchantment of Life uh not by turning to some other Supernatural um two world's mythology as the bestow of meaning but rather to see the meaning as A inherent imminent um emergent aspect

of reality itself at every kind of layer down the stack and uh that to me is um is is very profound and when I think about religio um that I feel like you know fits the bill so um anyway very proud and honored and humbled to um have had a chance for The Institute and this press to publish this book any other final thoughts you'd want to throw out there about this just a no a deep sense of gratitude uh to you in particular in Terms of bringing this book around but do you to framing

uh the metamodern Deep sense of gratitude m graa Christian gross the people that in this corner of the internet John BVI uh Rob Scott I mean that I've been able to connect with individuals and I uh so that that brings you alive that interconnection um and to to feel a part of something that I didn't even know existed uh to have my sort of Soul Spirit be pulled into it that's really the metamodern kind of Thing was really striking to me um so it's beautiful and uh and I I you know I'm just not sure

where else I would have put this uh and so it's just a perfect home for it uh so I'm really happy that it that it worked out that way and your dear friend and uh I'm glad we're able to put this up together thanks man yes it will be literally at home here on the on the increasing uh bookshelf of Sky Meadow um uh press works including Layman including one That I put out now this and then we've got uh at least one more being published this year and we've already got some lined up for

next year and so um it's an expanding kind of wisdom library and I think um it's beautiful to have this uh as sort of integral to that set um so thank you Greg uh for writing this book for this conversation and for all the work that you're doing great greatly appreciated and um uh there will obviously be a link uh for people who Want to explore this and and check this book out um but for now and unlike these It's 1999 this is instead of 150 bucks right yeah that's right this is full color full

color folks for 1999 or whatever it is so yeah it's uh yeah so check it out it's an incredible work and uh much appreciated Greg till till next time thank you friend deeply appreciate