Lecture VIII Background: Abrahamic Stories, with Matthieu & Jonathan Pageau

So it's July 18 Tuesday July 18 2017 and I've been working for the last few days on the 8th lecture in my series the psychological significance of the biblical stories and I'm planning to talk about the Abrahamic stories that immediately follow the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel I'm not as familiar with Abrahamic stories as I am with the stories the earlier stories in Genesis say from the beginning of the Bible through the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel and I'm not as familiar with the Abrahamic stories as I am with

the stories of Moses that begin with Exodus and continue in the succeeding chapters so I've had to do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and and some conversing as well and as part of that process I spoke once again with Jonathan Paola a Carver of stone icons and an Orthodox Christian and student of religion and also this time who I did a Video with a while back you might remember called the metaphysics of Pepe where we discussed the psychology of the stranger and also some of the stories gaybraham ik stories involving lot

in Sodom and Gomorrah and I also had the opportunity to meet his brother Matthew pazzo who's been working on a book on the Bible for the last three and a half years and so we spent 90 minutes talking about the Abrahamic stories and the conceptual background that's necessary To understand them and that's what I wanted to show you today after this introduction so I hope it's useful so I'm going to introduce both of you so Jonathan is a carver of icons and I've spoken with Jonathan a number of times already and he now has his

own YouTube channel as well where he discusses issues that are similar to the ones that we're going to discuss today and Matthew is his brother who I haven't met before this day and Matthew has been working on A book for the last how long you're not here three and a half years and do you want to tell everyone very briefly about the book well it's a book about symbolism but it is basically I'm trying to rediscover the worldview that was present in the time of the Bible or at least actually not that long ago because

modern modern interpretations of reality materialist interpretations of reality aren't that old Right the worldview that was there when traditional societies were still there and so I'm trying to rediscover that worldview and basically there are basic patterns have an inner time and space things like things like that so it's like a cosmology that's been completely lost as far as I'm concern people have glimpses of it I think a lot of people do but it's very general patterns that we have to re re understand so we can understand the Bible for example in Other other societies so

there are did you get interested in this like what is it that's compelled you to do this oh I don't know where to start I mean my whole life has been about that so I mean you read the Bible you can take it literally you can take it figuratively or you can take it both ways and I'm trying to take it both ways I'm trying to get rid of that dichotomy the dichotomy of symbolism and factual description I think there is no such Htech otta me if you understand what the words mean if you have

the right perspective there's no more metaphors in the Bible there are none okay but it takes a while to get there because you have to adopt a completely different perspective than a materialistic one obviously it can be a materialist and and a Christian or it can't be a religious and immaterial that's what I think okay and one of the things we're hoping is that you know we've been Getting I've been getting a lot of questions and I know you've probably Jordan me getting a lot of questions about this question of metaphor and a lot of

people have been asking me how do we reconcile how do i reconcile metaphors with what's in the Bible how do i reconcile these metaphors with how I'm supposed to live in the world and I think that what Matthew has been rough with is writing and what I've been I've been reading it right I'm reading it Right now is that he he's really able to answer that question in a way that I think will be one of the most satisfying answers that we've seen in a while so we're pretty excited to see how going to get

that out to people so let me start by telling you what I've been thinking about just briefly and then you guys can comment and I'd like you to do most of the talking if we can manage that although I'm so damn talkative it's hard to imagine that will happen but so I've been reading this book called the disappearance of God and I've been using it as a - by a guy named Richard Friedman and it was published I think in 2005 I think that's right it might have been earlier than that but he makes a

couple of interesting points about the old abrading in the Old Testament and and they're parallel points and so the first is that the closer you are to the beginning of the Bible the more God is present and and as you progress towards The end of the Old Testament God sort of vanishes in stages until he only manifests himself if at all in prophetic visions and at the same time the parallel development is that the stories of individual human beings become more and more well developed so it's like as the idea of the individual personality emerges

or the fact of the individual personality emerges to the presence of God as a as a detectable entity like an external entity even seems to decline Proportionately and so I'm trying to puzzle that out in a variety of different ways partly neurologically because there's some evidence that the domain of experience that you might associate it with might associate with the divine is a consequence of suppressed lemmas left hemisphere function and augmented right hemisphere function and then I'm trying to also consider that in relationship to the effect of chemicals like psilocybin Which obviously can produce powerful

mystical experiences so experiences of consciousness that are really of a different type than normal waking ego consciousness and I've also been reading Jung's mostly commentaries about Jung's red book and his attempts to use active imagination as a as a means to explore the contents of different forms of consciousness which is something that modern people just really never do although he did it for years And and the consequence of that was the red book also the black books which haven't been published yet but the red book which was a which was I think published two or

three years ago it was a collection of visionary experiences and his his continuing discussions with figures of his imagination which he regarded as the most important work he did in his life so so what's what does that all boil down to it it's definitely possible for people to have none can Happen to have experiences outside the domain of their normal consciousness that produce the intimation of the divine that seems to be factually indisputable those we're not exactly sure how those experiences manifested themselves in the periods of time that are associated with the early biblical stories

the bit the Bible talks about those sorts of experiences very forthrightly in the earliest Abrahamic stories and also in the story of Noah And obviously in Adam and Eve and all of that God's very present and then he disappears over time and one of the things that that the guy who wrote the disappearance of God Freedman one of the things he pointed out was that the fact of the disappearance of God in the Old Testament the fact that that's an air that's a continual like it has narrative continuity that fact he really remarked on both

those things because of course the books were written by different People and then they were aggregated but out of that came two elements of narrative continuity and one was the gradual disappearance of God and the other was the gradual rise of the increasingly well-defined and powerful individual so anyways associated with that is the idea that as God withdraws he also starts to manifest himself more through the idea of a covenant and that the Covenant is something that's established with an individual It's all obviously also with the nation in the case of Israel but it's mediated

through individuals and so well that's a brief wander through the sort of cloud of associations that make up my thinking about the topic at the moment so well with what you described it sounds a lot like what would you see in the Bible I'm not so sure about the God is more distant part where in further on and goes from what I understand there are two kinds of consciousness in the Bible One of them is it's called inhabiting the land that's when reality fits the best of the theory okay so the principles and the facts

agree so there are laws and people follow the laws okay or there's an idea and reality fits with that idea so that's called inhabiting the land so it's familiar space okay so when you live in that space things make sense because your idea is match what's happened free and then you can fall away from that and that's the Covenant okay Covenant is an agreement between theory and practice that's what a covenant is in the Bible so God gives laws and the people have to agree to follow basically so the law is is is an identity

it's not just you do this you do that this it expresses God's identity in practice so when the facts match that identity that's like a soul and a body that are [Music] not agree okay so when you fall away from that you fall into exile that's the Other mode yeah and it looks like and that's what you were talking about before I'm not so sure until you talk about a covenant but that's when the meaning ends the facts do not match okay so let me ask you a couple of questions about that yeah so you

know I've been describing the cosmology in the Bible as mapable onto the domains of order and chaos and I actually think the best way to define order is order is the place you are when What you're doing matches what's happening yes very very very similar to the idea that you just expressed and then that's exactly it okay okay and yeah that's a state there's a state of harmony between preconception and actuality and that's also I think this the circumstances under which people's emotions remain regulated and I thought about that neurologically too I think that what

happens is that under those conditions You're left hemisphere stays in charge and there's some evidence for that kind of thing too especially from the writings of this neurologist I think he's a neurologist his name is Rama Chandra he's quite a famous brain scientist and he's oh and another another neuropsychologist named Belconnen Goldberg who's also talked about hemispheric function in the same way and so when things are going according to plan Let's say yes you're in red and then the individual ego consciousness that's that's focused and specific stays in charge but that also keeps negative emotions

regulated because there's no need for them because everything is working properly and so then you can fall out of that and you called that you call that exile not when you follow it for me yeah yeah when you follow it by the XS so that would be a quest all so the flood it's also the slide yeah fine Okay so the exile is like the wandering in the desert yeah oh it's the idea of exile is it's exactly just what we said it's about serving strange things so you're not in charge anymore of relax something

else is but you're in you're in that you live in in a world where you're not in charge or your identity is not in charge of the facts and they're not they don't fit with reality so that means something else is in charge and so you're serving that so the idea of Serving strangers in exile it simply means absolutely your identity that match reality oh that's really buddy I never thought about that that idea of serving strangers in exile so so okay so I'm going to branch off that a couple of different ways so one

idea there is that there's an idea from you which is paraphrased something like if you don't if you don't act out your own myth and you serve a bit part in the myths of Others okay so that will be in keeping with that idea of serving the stranger in exile and then the next part would be when you're in a chaotic state and your emotions are dysregulated your personality fraction aids and the fractionated personality personality sub personalities fight for control over over over behavioral output so you dissolve from a unity maite think about it as

a pyramid a pyramid with with a unifying conception at the top that Disintegrates that would be like the Tower of Babel to some degree that disintegrates and then sub entities you can think about them as spirits or think about them as psychological entities regulate your behavior and that would be equivalent I think to a movement from the left hemisphere to the right because I think the right is dominated by subcortical structures rather I think that's how the animals exist is it's sequential domination by subcortical Structures rather than some overarching conceptualization from the top-down I think

that what you call the less than the right is exactly the opposite of the traditional left and right I'm not so sure yet but when you say left hemisphere what do you mean well like what the left hemisphere governs the right hand okay so the left hemisphere is the one that went when it's in charge and when everything works yes okay it's the right oh it's exactly the opposite Of the traditional imagery usually it's the right that's well yeah because they're using the hands and I talked yeah the brain Rock exactly so the right that

it's the right would be mapped onto the left hemisphere okay so that's fine that's fine and the traditional imagery I think is associated with the hemispheric specialization as well because the idea of right you know well I want to ask you a question about that you said that they The the living what was it you contracted exile with what was the other conceptualization and having the homely inhabit inhabiting the homeland sure absolutely working on the home working on the homeland is another way say okay now tell me again how you conceptualize the relationship between God

and and his people let's say in the homeland so that well God like I said at the beginning there's the idea of heaven in earth is Is at the basis of everything in the Bible so heaven is meaning and earth is fact so in that relationship there's God it's always the name of God by the way if you look if you look in the way it's described in the Bible it's it's they're talking about the name of God so that means the meaning of God so God is not just meaning but when they talked about

in the Bible it's always about the name of God so the name of God is an identity it's like a principal an axiom or Something like that and it has to embody itself in physical reality flash or in a matter so the the role of the nation of Israel is to embody that identity and it's also to embody it in reality not just in themselves so basically they're a mediator between heaven and earth right they're trying to make God's identity practical or concrete or that's why it's all about laws because you take and that's like

mathematics you've taken at an abstract principle that's really Extremely simple it doesn't seem like it it contains much information right if you take an axiom in mathematics but then you have to derive all the implications here so that's making it practical that's making concrete that's bringing heaven into the earth so that's their job yeah it's like a cosmic mediator okay Dean okay follow you so far so all right so the the it looks like there's two ways maybe in the biblical narrative that that will is Instantiated in in reality and one would be as a

consequence of individuals aligning themselves with the Word of God and the other is the instantiation of the Word of God into the State of Israel okay seem seem reasonable okay and that seems to begin that that has its origin in the in the first Abrahamic story so Abraham talks to God and or God talks to Abraham and tells him that he's going to be the father of a nation essentially And then it was to inherit the land to do that important it's the same thing those two things are the same he's going to inherit the

land and he's going to become the principal of great many people so that's like he's fleshing out an identity right it gives a nation instead of just an individual right and he's going to be going to be identity of a nation okay and so how do you understand the description of that in the in the biblical narrative because One of the very one of the things I find very strange about the Abrahamic stories is that immediate presence of God and God shows up to Abraham and tells him this and then Abraham makes an altar if

I remember correctly once he gets to the land where he's supposed to be he makes an altar and then and then God appears to him again yeah not again not again he appears to him the first time he doesn't appear I think I'm pretty sure The first time God speaks to him okay he's active that's important okay let's check inside not distinction important well because he's just work he's just yeah he's not physical he's not a into practical reality yet it's invisible so God speaks he's not manifest it's just an idea of principle a word

okay and unmanifest word or it's like the minimum of manifestation is like just language this word and then so what he says is go to this place go to this land And you'll inherit the land and then he goes there and then he says God appears in our city so okay so there's a there's a progression progressive in there's a progressive appearance of God and it's partly a consequence of Abraham's original obedience to the initial idea yeah which was very abstract means go here you can't be more simple than that go there so it's it's

like it doesn't mean anything but it means everything it's a very everything we do is let's go There go there and do something right it's like principle of all things appear to Abraham saying just go there and you'll inherit that doesn't really mean anything here but it contains everything humans do yeah okay that that's an interesting observation because you know I think of human beings as well they're very directional they're always going from point A to point B they're always aiming there like archers right and it's definitely the case like I had someone Write to

me know I was doing a patreon interview with one of the people who've been supporting me a young guy and we were talking about the idea of Christ as Redeemer and judge and he was this young man was unredeemed let's say for period of time because he didn't have any direction and have direction you have to know what's good and what isn't because to have direction you have to go to words what's good and so the judge is what helps you figure out what's good And if you don't know what's good then you can't be

redeemed because to be redeemed is to be is to be moving towards the good and away from let's say evil so the judge and the Redeemer have to be the same thing and that fits in with what you're saying because the judge is the thing that makes qualitative distinctions let's say and you need to make a qualitative distinction before you can move ahead okay and so your point is that the the Principle that Abraham encounters to begin with is the principle of directionality itself qualitative directionality it's something like that so that's right yeah it's well

it's it's the positive identity of anything like it's it's like a seed it's like the seed of a tree that's that's the traditional way to understand it it's just a seed yeah it contains everything in it but in itself it's just something like go there something go there okay so that's it Okay so one of the things that's been interesting I think for me to learn personally as I moved through my life was that if I ever actually did anything it was worthwhile yes you know what I mean is that something would come of it

it wouldn't necessarily be what I expected to come of it but yet act of going and doing did bear fruit yeah and that's pretty much the story of Abraham in a nutshell actually what he just said because God Says go here the only hair is the land Abraham doesn't inherit the land I mean he could have been right away you could have gone there and it's yours right no sir that's what it says as soon as you gets there it says there's already people there that the land is already owned by other people Grady's always

a famine yeah exactly and that means it means like what I was saying before the facts supports the theory Okay and here is going to the land that's the theory you'll inherit that's the theory and the facts don't support it that's a--fun okay the earth doesn't supply the earth doesn't give you sustenance to make it reality it doesn't give you matter yeah give him a disease of in Egypt and I mean his wife is separated on a limb essentially a because he lies about her but then it's so strange because so he tells the Pharaoh

and the Pharaohs men that his wife is actually a sister that's Soraya's Sarai that how you say that yeah sir or she changes the name yet yes it is actually his sister and that's to protect them and so the Pharaoh takes Sarai and then okay going up they can I say something you bet there's a meaning to all those things as a meaning to it okay so the idea is that when fact that fact support the theory okay when when the flesh supports the identity or the matters Haven't earth support seven things are square okay

that's just a traditional way of understanding it that basically means that what you see is what you get okay it's it's true things are true that's the definition of meaning matches fact yes true okay fine when pragmatic definition yeah when when the other side happens then things are round there they're cyclical okay and it essentially it's time its space in time that's what it is Okay one of them you're falling into time things are not square that means things do not the meaning doesn't match the facts that's why it's all out lives okay when they

go into exile it's all about lives it's all about screaming okay because they're in that domain they're in a domain where meaning in fact doesn't match so everything happens through lies interception and even the whole idea of saying my wife is my sister less that represents a cyclical Paradox okay it was supposed to happen well why cyclical your parent has a son and a daughter and they get married it's like a regression okay it's like you're producing different things and then you're joining them back together and I'm supposed to join them back together because when

you join them back together it's like you're going you're regressing when you rebuild something you start on Principle and you develop it take you make specializations of that principle when you start to mix them up again it's like a regression you're going back to something more primitive than before okay now essentially that how do you see that in relationship to Abraham's insistence that Sarai is his is his distant sister yeah because you're not supposed to marry your sister and I'm not saying that as a moralistic thing even though it becomes one but the Reason you

shouldn't marry your sister is because you're undoing the work the specializations that your your your father or your mother have created it's like going back it's like regressing so like if you marry your your father or your mother or depending at your going back it's a cycle you're not smoking that because it's like you're annihilating something that was specified okay look I'll give you an example like it's imagery of that That's pretty important in the sort of the flood there are traditions that the Giants created hybrids okay yeah one of the things that Giants like

to do is create hybrids that they are either themselves but they created hybrids they took the species and they confuse them back into who knows what okay and that's very significant because it actually means that you are regressing in a confused manner okay that there is a connection between the flood and what I Just said making hybrids and causing the flood it's actually considered one of the same thing because I mean that makes some sense yeah it's about returning to confusion yep look look I'll say it this way either names the animals Adam Adam name

gentleman's gating forgot asked Adams and in Genesis first job in the universe so he's asking is just specify different things okay that are all I'll have the same source right the same attitude yep Differentiate that the idea of incarnated a principle into practice damn please get differentiated okay now if you reverse that process you're going back to a more primitive level you're going back to the flood because the flood is the most primitive thing in in that cosmology right it starts with a flooded world that means everything's in confusion so what you have to do

is specify things out but if you go back there says okay so let me let me Reformulate that and tell you what popped into mind alright so God gives Abraham the word and then Abraham follows it and God manifests himself more completely to Abraham and then what happens to Abraham is twofold he ends up in a barren land so nature rebels and he also ends up in a tyranny right because he it's not only not only does the land not produce so it's in a famine but Egypt eventually Egypt is generally speaking a symbol for

For tyranny throughout the initial parts of the Old Testament I mean you see that with the Pharaoh for example and and the symbolism in in the mosaic story of the of Egypt always being associated with stone instead of water and so you could say that God gives Abraham the command to move forward but he has to contend with the intransigence II of nature which rejects him because there was a famine and then he becomes subjugate some become subject to both tyranny and To deceit and so okay they see him oh well this is there any

are look okay I'll say it this way it's it's more about deceits and tearing okay but the thing is when you're not in charge I mean desert here nice that's it when you're you or whoever you identify with is not in charge you're a slave to some other principle right you're embodying some other will that's not you I mean that's theorem you're Right I mean so right and that said it's really directly related to the idea of hearing you're serving strangers break it says it all well that also motivates that also motivates Abraham's deception right

because he's terrified that the strangers that he's serving will kill him yet for his wife for his wife and that's why he lied and he's afraid that he's going to be treated very badly yes because he doesn't want strangers to have his wife okay his wife is like the Earth his wife is how he will incarnate himself or express himself yeah in the world he's like the seed and the wife is like feet above the earth something like that so she some she is like his earth it's like a miniature version of hadn't an earth

the male is heaven and the female is the earth in that case that's the whole idea he's not in charge of fact anymore that includes his wife batting dreams so he doesn't want other men Other principles to control his wife right does that make sense yes well it also it also seems to me that because he's the land isn't fruitful for him and because he's serving strangers in a strange land he's also correct to be afraid for the loss of his wife yes and how does he get out of it by being deceitful because yes

he's in the cycle he's in that I mean are you supposed to be truthful with your Adversary usually no especially when you're adversaries hostile and if you're an enemy territory your morality changes because all of a sudden it's not about being truthful it's about surviving it's about it's like the most primitive existence there is right the more primitive state of existence are more about species than about truth yeah it's an advance it's an advanced state to talk about truth it's when we all agree you know we all agree on at least Something but before that

is every man or woman for him or herself it's all about the seat it's almost survival okay okay so now now the next thing that happens essentially is that the Pharaoh gets plagued and he's wondering why so because so the story indicates that the Pharaoh has broken some natural law let's say or some divine law and things go very badly for him and then he discovers I don't remember how he Discovers that he's taken suraíh sir I think it doesn't say how yeah I think that's right and and he discovers that he's taken Sarah but

that Sarah is Abraham's wife and so then the Pharaoh gives Abraham all sorts of goods and yeah enzym on his way okay so that's also quite confusing so abraham is rewarded for is to see a sense ill-gotten good yeah right ile des good yeah Barto story sorry that it's raining because you also see I Think did not account some of the complexity that's embedded in the in the Old Testament accounts is that it's not a simple morality tale it - stretch of the imagination especially see that in the Abrahamic accounts because it's Jacob who who's

so deceitful with Esau I mean he thought comes off I mean he has kind of he's kind of unconscious he saw yeah he gives things up too easily he's too easily deceived and he's a bit primitive it too primitive in a bit too Naive something like that but Jacob places and Rachel plays some really nasty tricks on him and yet they come out ahead yeah and so that's also a very difficult thing to contend with well there's there's this idea at least in traditional interpretation there's this idea that in Esau is actually supposed to be

that the king he should be the only reason he isn't is because there's something wrong that pretty much Described the whole Bible in its entirety that there's there's the theory in the fact the fact is supposed to be king okay do you know what I mean by that like I matter is king that's what it's supposed to be but it's not and the whole all the stories are about redeeming redeeming that problem taking care of that problem like the fact don't match the theory we have to redeem the facts that's that pretty much all the

stories in the Bible are about that and That pretty much what's lost represents in the story of Abraham as well okay he represents the material reality he represents facts but there's something wrong with it let's go into the large story now so okay so Abraham leaves and I believe he leaves with lot and and law it also becomes quite wealthy and they go back to where Abraham had built the altar initially but lot Lots men and Abraham's men started to fight yeah so they decide they're going to separate And they basically do that somewhat arbitrarily

it could have gone either way but lot ends up going to sort them well actually there's something you should be aware of well that's that's the thing a lot of the stories in the Bible are based on a really ancient way of thinking that we don't really follow anymore but I mean in the Bible there is a reason why the directions of the travels that they're not just random like Egypt represents the earth and What's the name of the city what's the name of the place above her amethy the place where he goes to meet

Laban eyes in the north okay I'm not sure I remember the name of this see I think it's Iran that represents heaven okay and there's a reason it's not just arbitrary it's because Egypt is south and South is going down right we still say that when you say that someone's gone south we say that means that they've gone to cedar they've gone down Yes so so in the Bible and especially in Genesis especially in Genesis the South represents the earth and the North represents the heavens okay and like I said it's not arbitrary it corresponds

to the geography of the region one of them goes up hills the other one goes downhill and the north is mountains like snowy mountains and in the south there's a Egypt which is like the low a low place and summary to North literally is up yeah it's not a metaphor yeah It literally is close going getting closer to heaven and the other ones going into the earth so when they go in exile into Egypt there it's actually me they're going into the earth it's like a defense in two years so it's like a death its

death right and they say it a few times in the book of Genesis they talk about your it's like dying going it going to Egypt is like a death okay so then now so then we moved to the story of the strangers right wait nothing You're going to say why the separation of the land with lot and an Abraham oh yes right the idea is that lot takes the the south right and then a ramp oh yeah that was the whole point of that yes a lot there's a reason why he takes the south it's

the lowest place on earth Sodom and Gomorrah that that place it's the lowest place okay so literally the lowest place on earth right I'm not sure I don't know I don't know I think that region actually is the Lowest place on earth but in the story that that's how that's what it means it means it's the lowest place you can go so it's a place that's farthest away from heaven yeah it's all in order you're like the idea that milton develops with regards to satan when he's thrown from heaven because the hell that satan inhabits

is the furthest possible away from heaven that's got to find essentially okay that's like a journey into fear yes it's The same as it means the same thing as falling asleep exile and sleep are the same in the Bible sleep it'll kick this form of Exile okay so it is so so the next thing that happens is that we get the first warning about Sodom and Gomorrah yes that's just a very brief sentence it's like a foreshadowing and then the next thing that happens is that there's an episode where there is a war among kings

and the kings if I remember correctly it's the king of Sodom takes Lot and Abraham has to go rescue him and he'd actually actually I think it's the other way around I think it's Kings from the north that come down and take Sodom and Gomorrah and a lot as part of that and so is the king the king of Sodom and Gomorrah they have to flee that's what I remember okay do they flee with do they flee with what no law is taken by these chains from the north and the king of Sodom yeah I

think hives or something like that please And then Abraham the King the king of Sodom at the end give gifts to Abraham to thank him that he today rescued him yes that's right so what happens is that yeah it says it came to pass in the days of amraphel king of shinar etc that these made war with bera king of sodom and with persia king of gomorrah etc and these were all joined together in the Vale of Siddim which is in the Salton Sea which is the salt sea so I presume that would be the

Dead Sea and that Would be that identity the low point that you're describing those actual earth is the Dead Sea yes pretty interesting yeah and the Vale of Siddim was full of slime pits and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and fell there and they took away all the goods of sodom and gomorrah and all their victuals and they took lot Abrams brothers son who deltas who dwelt in Sodom and his Goods and departed so you can really see this whole geography did Matthew talking about when they say that Sodom and Gomorrah they had to

flee and fall into slime pits it's almost like they're laying it out for us that they had to almost kind of go even further down into the earth to hide from these these these invaders of the north that are coming to take their their land so ok so Abram goes in rescues lot and he does that successfully and the and also there's Kings that he that he frees as far as I can tell yeah and probably then The Kings want to reward him and Abraham says to the king of Sodom that he doesn't want any

reward and the reason he doesn't want any reward except for what his men have eaten he doesn't want any reward because I will not take anything that is thine lest thou should say I have made abram rich save only that which the young men have eaten and the portion of the men which went with me and it looks see God has already promised Abraham everything in some Sense and it looks like he doesn't want to take anything and Abraham doesn't want to take anything from anyone else because what would it want to do would it

interfere with the purity of his accomplishments something like that yeah well III don't know for certain because that's just a line I guess but in the in the story in it it's not that much of a big part of the story but the way I see it is I think he says I don't want to take even a shoe lash if you latch from You ok so the reason why he said that because the shoe is the lowest part is the lowest clothing right it is not on the feet so it's all related to the

idea that the earth needs to be redeemed needs needs to be rectified and it's in that situation it's not like he's not allowed to accept a certain thing is not eating the forbidden fruit there are things in the world that are poisonous to humans we can't eat them because they don't agree With our our patterns our mind so if you eat poison you go into that place where things don't agree your mind and your body don't agree and if you if you if you take if you drink alcohol that takes you into the realm where

your mind and your body don't agree the theory doesn't match the fact and then you go into that whole confusion and so it could it be that when when you don't have he doesn't want to take from Sodom because Sodom is already what we know Sodom to be I mean It already represents kind of the land it can't hold and will be burned off yes it's something he can't he can't integrate right something it's like leather I said the forbidden fruit it you don't want to eat you don't want to accept matter that you can't

handle that you can't integrate so there's something in that place that he doesn't know how to deal with what to do with it and he doesn't want his riches to come from that place you didn't write these Doesn't want his riches to come from that place yeah that would compromise him because he doesn't know how to deal with it yeah maybe someday you will that's correct that's the whole idea and actually here's an interpretation lot represents that place that will one day be redeemed okay the reason why they talk about lot so much in the

story of Abraham is because he represents King David but he is the ancestor of the nation that will give rise to King David Okay it's like a secondary story within the story but it's like a it's meant to be interpreted in terms of a future redemption of that place that he can't handle that Abraham could not handle at that time and that place will be redeemed I'm giving you a lot of tradition here I happen this is what I quit I what I've learned it's King David okay it's the future King okay so the whole

one area vlog is about King David one and of Course Lauda is Abraham's descendants as well because he's his nephew yes and so Ibrahim is nephew descends into the lowest place essentially yeah well look it the story just starts out pretty clear it starts out there's three sons to Tara one of them is her on the other ones Nahor and the other ones Abraham okay Aaron dies that's how the story starts okay that's like the beginning of this story is Aaron dies and he has a son called a lot see that's what I was The

idea is it's the same idea the son of this Herrin he represents death he represents the thing we can't handle he represents the material facts that we can explain with with our theories or with our identity is the thing which is the matter we can't handle okay and that's why in story starts with he dies the father of lots tax it means lot represents some fact that we cannot correctly integrate into our universe this could be interpreted in so many Different levels but that's basically what this I don't know if that makes sense but the

idea yeah I mean the idea is that is the I think we need to see it the idea that an orphan or a widow that's what they always represent the DA represents something that have lost their their principle that unifies them they're they're they're kind of various connected from the hierarchy of the family so so so lot losing is the fact that Losing us father died means that he loses the thing that gives him identity and so he's like this he's like a piece of Earth that his lost attachment or lost meaning or well that

that reminds me of what happens to Noah's son who sees him naked yeah right yeah and and why they just because because to see it seems to me I'm going to talk about this a little bit tonight that to see no one gets drunk and then which which Sun is it Ham ham yeah really first sees him but doesn't respond properly the other sons when they see Noah naked they cover him up and they don't look and so it's like they're not exposing their father's weakness his mortality his is his insufficiency right they had attained

respect but but ham doesn't do that but there's also more what Matthew was talking about before the in that story there's two things that are implied of what Matthew was Talking about before this idea of wine that brings you into this cycle where causality ceases to be direct and then what Pam told the fashion yeah and the fact that hem sees his father naked he discovers his nakedness is also a kind of suggestion of incest as well the same type the same type of inappropriate causality that you be in the story of the two of

a Abraham's sister marrying this writer right yeah and a lot with his two daughters Yeah lot lot to daughter right so it's transgression to give some fun transgression against some fundamental boundary yeah I guess the the hierarchical relationship and of a family right yes they're not supposed to make loops focus it's a tree you're not supposed to make loops in a tree so you can say like that it's really simple and that's supposed to regress and I supposed to you produce things you're not supposed to turn back on yourself Okay you're not supposed to go

back contradict ourselves okay so so maybe that's why Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt to she lay back right yeah exactly yeah you have to do is listen experimental and and and and pines for something that that was terrible they shouldn't be and so and she's come out not to look back once she once you escape from that catastrophe you don't get to be nostalgic for it the same Thing happens in the story of Moses because what happens to the Israelites when they're out in the desert is they start to become nostalgic

for Egypt for the tyranny yet right and that's also I think when God starts to send poisonous snakes among them because right though don't they they start to pine for Egypt and complain about Moses and then they start to worship other idols so that's part of that confusion that you were talking about and then God gets Irritated and throws a bunch of poisonous snakes in there to give them a good chomping yeah so I call that the snakes come as a result of them wanting to go back yeah yeah well right that makes perfect sense

so and you see that nostalgia for tyranny you know you see that the Soviet nor in Russia right now in regards to Stalin and so the question the question is I think this is one of the things that the guy who wrote the disappearance of God mentioned is do you Want to be well fed as a slave or hungry and freedom something like that and the choice well fed as a slave is not a good choice yeah so okay now so in Jonathan you and I had talked to fair bit about the story of Abraham

and the strangers and before so so God decides to reward Abraham and he tells him that just like he told him before but he repeats it that he's going to be the the founder of the nation and he and he tells them that Sarah is going to bear a child and Sarah Of course is not doesn't believe that let's see let me let me just find this here yeah yes okay so that's what happens is the is that God's God God's word comes in to Abraham in a vision so it's the word again saying that

his reward will be great and that he's going to be the father of Nations but he doesn't have any children and so isn't that when he takes you take Farrah's servant Hagar yeah and and that gives rise to Ishmael And it isn't until later that Sarah is informed that she's going sorry sir your hopes up man turning the key one fancy request this you want fancier quietly I'd be curious to know what she has found yeah you should look guys close her down yeah I know it's very strange intermission there so okay so so abraham

has to take a kind of a detour in order to have a child and he lays with Hagar and Hagar we don't know much about her but she gets haughty right away and Starts to despise Sarai and Sarai actually beats her as far as I can tell it says Sarah dealt hardly with her and then Hagar flees and she ends up by a well where an angel appears to her and the angel tells her that her son her child is going to be the father of the nation as well so so the first question might

be why is it that Abraham at this point in the story why is it necessary for the story that Abraham takes a detour and has a child with Hagar what Do you think is a signifier it it's always the same problem in the Bible it's always it starts with confusion and it has to develop towards something that is clear so you're saying it yourself when you say detour yeah it's a detour exactly that's exactly what it is it's a detour okay that's not necessary but it happens then they say well isn't there such as these

detours or if the others are things that are not necessary but happen There's something also in that detour the fact that that he gives birth to Ishmael which has to do with this this turning because God kind of promises that Ishmael is going to come back and is going to be a big problem for you he's going to be a father of a great nation but it's going to be a big problem for you later like this going to be there's going to be fighting between between your sons basically yeah there's that idea yeah of

course here you know I Don't know if it's in that story but yeah well ASO seems to be associated with an idea that you might think about as successive approximation to an ideal you know so one of the things that that I conceptualize sort of visually is this is associated with the idea of Geppetto wishing on a star you know so what Geppetto does when he wants to facilitate the transformation of Pinocchio is lift his eyes up to the highest thing that he can conceive up And Orient's himself with that but the thing is is

that as you move through life let's say you're oriented by the highest thing you can conceive of but as you move towards it you transform and then and your conceptualization of what's the highest shifts as you transform so you're aiming at the highest thing but but your perhaps your ability to conceptualize what's the highest thing develops as you move towards it and so but what that means in Practice is that you do take detours because you aim at something but your aim is off and you move towards it and then you get to a point

where you can correct your aim and so it's not like you've made a mistake exactly it's you're farther ahead than you were and you've corrected your aim but your aim wasn't you weren't aiming at exactly the right thing to begin with and so now go ahead well maybe that's what's happening to Abraham is that you know you could Almost say I don't know that Ishmael is a practice run something like that well so all right so then you were going to Matthew you were going to say something about that oh yeah I was going to

say that exile in the Bible there's always a reason for it but it's not necessarily a logical reason it's it's just like what you described you think you know something you think you'd know what you're aiming at you think you know what You want you think you know what you're doing something happens that you didn't plan and that doesn't look like it's part of what you were aiming it makes you take a detour well this this side is all about detours it's all about turning around you don't know where you're going you're lost so but

in the end if it brings about something that maybe you weren't even aiming at in the first place yeah but might be better than what you were in in the first place so it's Not all bad so I think that's the idea the idea of the whole idea of exile is that there it renews your plans right if you don't die yeah if you don't that ha ha ha ha yeah even if you do die for New York life well yeah ok ok so now ok so now the next thing that happens is that the

strangers come to visit Abraham and he treats them hospitably and so now we might say that that's an indication of his increasing alignment with the good maybe that's one way of thinking About it because he does right by the stranger and one of the consequences of that is that the angels I guess we find out that they're angels tell him that Sarah is going to give birth to someone and Abraham finds that very difficult to believe it Sarah finds it so difficult to believe that she actually laughs about it she overhears it she laughs about

it but but he he has the strangers he feeds them and he has them wash their feet if I remember Correctly and anyways he treats them hospitably it well and there's a blessing as a consequence of that and that's something we talked about a fair bit Jonathan when we were talking about Tom the thing doesn't fit in categories yeah the stranger yeah which is that invitation to chaos as well that you were talking about Matthew because the stranger is well the thing that you can be subjugated to but also something that Will bring something new

and potentially disruptive but also potentially beneficial and so then the idea there is whether or not the stranger is disruptive or beneficial depends to a large degree on how you treat the stranger and that's that strikes me as very very possible I mean that's the one thing that that's one of the things that has really entered my imagination as a clinician know if you're approached by someone who's very in chaos the Consequence of that is very dependent on how you interact with them because it can go any way and they're not really in control because

there's so chaotic and so if you're careful and awake you can keep things moving in the proper direction and maybe even benefit from it and that's kind of like the idea of Noah walking with God because one of the reasons that Noah gets through the flood is because he's oriented properly he's walking with God and so you could say That exile can it's something like exile can expand you if you stay properly oriented while you're in exile it can fix it can fix your mistakes that's part of it it cleans you it renews you because

you make mistakes yeah and they become part of you and if you're just stuck with your mistakes you're rigid about your own mistakes you need something outer to something that you don't know something that you don't Understand the clean you're like takes away yeah well that's like the gold the dragon hordes with a virgin that the dragon hordes right it's it's if the dragon represents that chaotic would say exile state the drag or the gold and the and the virgin both represent that which can be assimilated as a consequence of being in that situation the

funny thing is is in the hero myths going into exile on Purpose works way better than going into exile accidentally yeah so that's an interesting thing so okay okay so now well can I say something about the part you were describing the whole story of Abraham if you look at the big picture it's really about progressive progressively knowing something so it starts with just the voice okay oh god go here doesn't mean much goes there then it becomes a little more precise I will give you this land but is more Specific and then as the

further he goes the more it becomes explicit what's going to happen so I'll give you a son when I don't know someday it doesn't say later on it becomes more and more explicit okay and he says like in the party were talking about he says three men come these are angels as it becomes clear later so this is God right pod sending his message in a clear manner and it's more right specific than before he says this time next year you Will have it's okay so okay so a couple of things about that so yes

one of the things that see one of the ways that I've conceptualized the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament and I this is kind of a classic Christian conceptualization I think and it's also it's also analogous to what happens to Moses because Moses doesn't get to the promised land so there's this idea Christian idea that the reason that Moses can't get to the promised land is because he only represents the law now but then I thought about that I thought well one of the I've got to say about four stories at the

same time here to man to get the bill as I'm right so the first is it's not so easy to speak the truth but it's fairly easy to stop lying and so as you stop lying you get better you get to approximate speaking the truth but the way you start isn't by speaking the truth the way you start is By stopping line and then a lot of the rules in the Old Testament are prohibitions here's a bunch of things you shouldn't do that you might be inclined to do and so the idea there would be

if you stop doing all the things you know you shouldn't do then you can your head clears up enough so you can start to see the things that you should do and so then in the Abrahamic story maybe it's something like this You said you implied Matthew that Abraham had originally follows something like a vague and he'll defined whim but he has enough faith to move forward despite the fact that it's vague and ill-defined and then as a consequence of moving forward it becomes more and more concretize dand and differentiated and clear okay that's right

man because that's you know it's funny because the future authoring program we've developed is sort of predicated on that idea the First thing you do is wander around in a kind of confused days trying to find a direction of orientation and then you clarify that and partly you do that by continuing to think about it but you also clarify it by acting on it okay yeah and that's the idea these three men that come visit him there's a reason whether it's three okay it's because it's it's trying to express the idea that it's more expressed

it's more explicit it's not just the seed Anymore it's like it's like a branch okay you've got up here you've got something that looks like a branch it's branching out into a more concrete thing and at first it's just a voice then its division then it's actual people okay Shay okay okay so here's another idea so let's say if you're beginning to develop morality you you behave so that the people who share your morality can get along with you That means you follow the rules but if you're dealing with strangers it's a different issue because

they aren't part of your morality and so the question then is how do you act properly when you're not in the domain of your morality and I always thought about that as a meta moral domain and it seems to me that it's the domain that Christ occupies because he's he's like the mediator between morality he's in no man's land and is a mediator Between morality Xand and if you're if you're if you've oriented yourself properly then you even know how to act with there aren't any rules and that's why Abraham can act properly in relationship

to the strangers he's awake enough so that when the strangers show up shows up he can pay attention to the way they're acting and can act spontaneously as a consequence of paying attention and things go well and so the strangers aren't hostile they don't kill Him they don't take his wife they don't do any of the terrible things that strangers could do and he gets a blessing as a consequence of it that seemed reasonable it is but we have to understand that these strangers are come from heaven in the sense that they've bringing a message

they're not just random strangers very they're sent well maybe he would have acted the same way with strangers that wasn't sent and that's The whole point he doesn't know that's right we act in a way that allows for that yeah yeah for the one that accent okay here is Eve okay so that's very interesting too because one of the things that I think you see happening as a consequence of the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament is that part of Christ's message is to act in exactly that way is to act in

a manner that allows for the possibility of the emergence of the good that's Something like that's something like what would you describe as a description of the necessity of faith and you know like let's say you stretch out your hand to someone in trust should be naive but it's a precondition for good things happening AG if you're distrustful and you have every reason to be because people are full of snakes if you're distrustful you foreclose the opportunity for cooperative progress instantly you might protect yourself Against being bitten now net so so there is a dramatic

relationship between the manner in which you open yourself up to the world and the way the world treats you and one of the things that seems to be really emphasized it's more implicit in the Old Testament more explicit the New Testament is that the more you open yourself up to the possibility that good things will happen and that's partly by accepting your vulnerability as far as I can tell the higher the probability is That good things will in fact happen yeah I mean I would definitely say that in the story of Abraham the like we

were kind of flirting around that idea before is that the reason why he was able to to receive them as these angels that they were able to manifest themselves as these angels was because he was willing to host them properly eat he like it's as if his family just like Sarah like Sarah is is he was the right ground for that manifestation at that time right Well yeah I would say that they wouldn't have been angels if he wouldn't have treated them properly well he might have been here but they might have done they might

have done what they did in Sodom and Gomorrah like that's the whole thing okay so now I want to switch I want to flip the head a little bit this is really what I this is I think of all the things I wanted to discuss with you guys I think this is the one that's most crucial because okay so now we're in Let's say we're in Sodom with the with the angels and we're in the part of the story where the townspeople have Sodom gather around the house and they tell law and unless he throws

out the strangers so that they can be raped well the townspeople demand that and then law it offers them his daughters which seems like a hell of a thing to do it's like the sacrifice of Isaac to some degree what it looks like to me because he's Willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the strangers now okay so that's a morally let's call that a morally ambiguous element of the story but then the townspeople reject out and they tell they basically tell him that he has no right or power to bargain and that not only

are they going to take his daughters but they're also going to take the stranger's so it doesn't work but you know to modern sensibility the offering of his daughters is a Reprehensible thing but it seems to be that in the context of the story it's an indication of how hard Lotte is trying to treat the strangers properly in a place where that's essentially impossible yes that's the whole point of that story that place is impossible that's the whole point I think what he just said okay there's no way out of it right Leonard Cohen said

something about that he said there's he had a line that I remember quite well he said there's no Decent place to stand in the massacre and what that seems to mean is that something it's something like you can get into a place where that's made of such a compound of errors and deceit and catastrophe that no matter which way you turn there is no good yeah I've seen people like that my clinical practice there's there's no good there's no good alternative everything is sin that's that's a good way of no matter which way you shake

your you're not Going to hit the mark because you're not somewhere where the mark can be hit okay now I've been trying to think about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in relationship to modern sexual confusion so this is what I see happening on the social justice front let's say on the one hand since the 1960's and probably has a consequence of the birth control pill but other factors as well there's been tremendous stress placed on sexual liberation and so there's this idea that I think is associated in large part right now with the radical

left of total sexual freedom but at the same time there's increasing emphasis from exactly the same sources on restricting sexual interaction so you see this in the campuses for example where increasingly particularly heterosexual contact is regulated by a doctrine that says you have to get spoken permission for every move in the mating process and so you see and I know I'm not expressing myself Very well but there seems to be in our current culture there seems to be massive sexual confusion it's it's some weird combination of extreme libertinism and extreme authoritarianism part of what's happening

happening and is that sex impulse of sexual gratification trumps everything it's something like that I mean I know there's more to what's going on inside of the knob but there's certainly that and so well I'm trying to figure out what to say about That tonight because well there's there's a lesson in there the lesson is something like don't let sexuality don't let impulse and sexuality get the upper hand it's something like that or all hell will break loose which I actually happen to agree with so one of the things that we haven't been able to

talk about in our culture I think is let's take the idea the phenomenon of AIDS like AIDS mutated to take advantage of promiscuous sexuality and that's just Nothing you never hear that publicized you know people had associated AIDS with homosexuality and there was a reason for that because it's much more easily transmitted as a consequence of homosexual sex than heterosexual sex because the anus is a much more delicate physiological structure it's not as robust and it can be eat much more easily damaged and and and with with disease resulting as a consequence but it isn't

only the matter of sexual Action that's the issue it's also the fact that promiscuity provided the evolutionary platform for the AIDS virus to mutate into a very into the form that it finally took and it was only through the skin by the skin of our teeth that we escaped a total izing plague you know had that emerged 100 years ago god only knows how many people would have died AIDS was unbelievably fatal so I know that's a mishmash of ideas and I'm not exactly sure how to see my way Clear through it but there is

a clear warning in that story about about something about to do with with with sexual iniquity in in the Bible that sexuality has two two poles that define it and it's pretty clear one one side is reproduction and the other side is we could let's say recreation okay so so those are the two folds of sexuality in a normal world so it's not just for reproduction and it's not just for recreation it's both like that was the Idea I mean I mean actual idea now if you if there's a balance there and you know that

should be have if you lose this balance and it becomes just about reproduction that's a problem if it becomes just about recreation that's another problem you know okay it's not that complicated really but it's so politically incorrect to talk about these things a little bit obvious well that nobody cares you talk about it the thing is is that the most difficult Things to talk about are the things that are obvious because when they're obvious you don't have to talk about them and so then when people start to question the obvious you don't know what to

say yes I guess so for example we would I I'm thinking about the [ __ ] walks you know and so women go out and they dress very provocatively and and they go out and manifest their right to be as provocative as they possibly can be without being interfered with and I have Some sympathy for that perspective because it seems to me appropriate for women to be the final arbiters in sexual contact but on the other hand it also it's that whole exercise is blind to the fact that clothing for example has communicative intent and

that people broadcast their invitation to sexual congress in a million ways subtle and not-so-subtle and you can't just say I have the right to broadcast myself in any manner Possible and be completely beat what completely immune from the consequences there's something wrong with that and with regards to basic sexual morality you know I've read things about like slut-shaming is that the more radical feminist types for example claim that women shouldn't be held responsible for their sexual behavior in some sense shouldn't be held against them how many men they've slept with etc but then I think

well you never recommend to Someone that they lay down naked on the on the side of the street with their legs spread and invite anybody who walks by to partake of the opportunity everyone would regard that as inappropriate I think without question and so what that indicates is that some degree of sexual propriety is both normative and ethical and then of course you can start asking yourself about what that degree of social sexual propriety should be and it does have something to Do with getting the balance between reproduction and recreation right okay but the thing

even in the Bible there's there's the two aspects some stories are about just this aspect and there are the most strange stories in the Bible for example the story of Tamar is one of those so I don't know if you're familiar with that story but stuff it's in that it's intercut with the story of Joseph okay in Egypt and it's essentially it says that Judah has children with some Woman and I think it's a stranger it doesn't necessarily say so but it seems like that's what it is and then the sons die off and then

there's this woman called Tamar and she disguises herself as a prostitute great and she has a kid with Judah himself so all the simple jurors heard that shorty elements of his clothing yes demonstrate as a as a bribe yes essentially she wants to indicate later that he's the one who slept with her yeah yeah yeah so That story is about then is that the need for the recreated part of sexuality it's all about that symbolism it's all about the seat it's all about incest it's all about that and the idea is it's to raise the

dead okay it's not clear in the story but if you understand the imagery that's what it's about it's about regressing back to an error that was made okay and raising the dead so I want to get into it but just the idea that in the Bible there's folks - there's reproduction and there's recreation and the recreation is renewal there's the original sexuality is about renewal - but that aspect of the symbolism is is pretty I don't want to say obscure because it's actually right there if you can see it but it's it's strange I'll say

it like that it's a strange okay okay so now another element of this might be the fact that in modern identity politics sexual choice is a canonical identifier and That also seems to me to be something wrong about that like one of the things I've seen happening in Toronto I'm sure it's the same in Montreal is that and I'm going to do this awkwardly I'm going to put this awkwardly because I haven't been able to sort through it properly Pride Week Pride Day has turned into Pride Week and that's turned into Pride Month and I

think that seems to me to be pushing against some kind of limit because the first question that I have Is like I was reading this book the other day by a friend of mine from Ottawa who's a gay conservative and he said he had a lot harder time coming out as a conservative than he had as coming out as gay and he talked about the degree to which homosexuals were persecuted in Canada before say the 1980s and it's quite it makes quite parce reading let's say and so-and-so fair enough to the to the civil rights

movement let's say it that has brought Homosexuality into the norm or that into the mainstream maybe that's one way of thinking about it but that conversation still has a tremendous amount of development that's necessary because I don't understand exactly it isn't obvious to me what integration into the mainstream precisely means because a lot there's been a lot of talk so far about respecting the rights of gay people but very little talk about what the accompanying responsibilities might be That actually seems to me to be a problem and I mean I just had a letter from

from gay guy who is being wrestling with this because he's not sure how to be gay and to be ethical at the same time you know because he sees part of normative behavior as taking wife and having children and not and can see the value in that but that's certainly not the direction of his proclivity and so we wrote wrote to me asking me what he should do and you know I don't have an Answer for that I don't know what the answer to that is but I know that it might be something that would

be worth talking about and then it's part of this current confusion about sexual identity and sexual pleasure and and well even gender identity for that matter so all right so your idea was well the balance between recreation and reproduction had gone was completely absent in Sodom it was all recreation it was all instant gratification and impulse yeah and That's why it's put in contests with the Abraham bit because it's the same Angels know in that case he says you'll have a son this time next year so it's the reproduction part is there but when he

gets to the bottom it's not there anymore it's only the recreation part okay yeah so there goes they're meant to be contested those two swords actually in the story of Abraham it's pretty Clear he goes um I don't know if this will make sense because it when the angels come it says um he washes their feet and then he feasts them okay that's actually the recreation and reproduction part that's not a sense of sexuality but it's in terms of meaning the renewal the washing of the feet is the recreation part the renewals or restarting and

the feeding is the reproduction part that's not the sexual way but when you feed something food and it eats it and Integrate it integrates it correctly that's like a reproduction of your identity or you're staying yourself you're reproducing yourself so when you eat food that's what you're doing not like I said not in a sexual way but it has exactly the same meaning if you eat something that you can integrate correctly you're like reproducing your pattern it's like the correct version of yourself and then the other side the washing is That like is that mental

flood yeah look it's a mini flood right it also isn't accessible right it's a controlled one you're washing the dust off your the roads dust off your feet it means that you're you're passing from one mode of being into another because you're you're cleaning off the debris of the past it's something like that and then it's about renewal next yeah okay so you have to see that when when when Matthew is talking about the idea of recreation you Have to understand that recreation and rest are basically the same thing right let's basically have the same

meaning it's sleeping resting recreation are all guides that bring you into renewal okay all right dying even dying that's what dying is it's this passing into another state letting something else have a chance that's what time is it I mean