“Mysticism, Enneagram, and Christian Meditation: Rob Field” Ep#36

In this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce, Chris Jones sits down with Dr. Rob Field, the founding director of the Center for Spiritual Wisdom, to explore the intersections of mysticism, perennialism, and contemplative practice. Dr. Field shares his journey from a 23-year career in the Episcopal priesthood to establishing a regional center for seekers of all backgrounds, emphasizing that mystical experiences—defined as direct, unmediated encounters with the divine—are a core part of the Christian tradition rather than something "outside the bounds." The conversation delves into practical tools like the Enneagram and Centering Prayer, while also discussing "perennialism," the idea that common spiritual patterns and a shared desire for union with a "source" run through the world’s enduring religions. Ultimately, Field argues that exploring diverse traditions and practices like meditation doesn't distract from one's home faith but can actually deepen a commitment to the transformative power of love and kindness.

Contact for Rob Field director@centersw.org

https://centersw.org/

https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/

This episode of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:00

I had a conversation with Rob Field, who holds a doctorate in ministry, spent 23 years as a pastor, and now is the director for the Center for Spiritual Wisdom. In this conversation, we discuss mysticism, perennialism, and meditation for Christians. Rob also weighs in on the idea and answers the question: Is there one thread that runs throughout all religion? Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Rob, welcome to the sauce. Thank you, Chris. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up here.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

So, Chris, I'm a born and bred Christian in the Episcopal tradition. Some people say Anglicanism, but I use the old episcopal, which is the word we gave our church in the United States after the revolution. And I've never left that as kind of primary home base. I started out with a brief career in journalism and then Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I was at a North Carolina newspaper for four years. But something happened that had heaven kind of got my attention, and and I went and talked to my priest, and he said, Yeah, yeah, we've been c some of us have been talking, we've been waiting for you to come and talk to me. I thought, oh, would have been nice if you told me this. And and then he said we should go talk to the bishop, because in our system we have bishops. Bishops call the shots when it comes to somebody going to seminary or not. And in this case, the bishop said, Mm-hmm, yep, good. We have a committee. Anyway, so I went off to uh seminary. I was married at the time, still married to the same woman. And and that all led to it's a logical conclusion that I graduated from seminary. I started serving congregations. I did that for just about 23 years. And 23 years. Then there was this thinking, this I'm gonna call it the Holy Spirit. I'll blame her. The Holy Spirit put it in my head to say, maybe your ministry isn't always going to be in a congregational setting. And maybe it's gonna have something to do with the fact that you, speaking to myself here, you, Rob, have found contemplative prayer, a Christian meditative practice to be hugely helpful. It's helped deepen your walk of faith and your journey with God as a follower of the Christ mystery.

Chris Jones 2:42

What time are we sorry? You say this was after 23 years. What year is this?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, this was about 2014, 2015.

Chris Jones 2:50

Okay. Okay. I'm with you. All right, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Aaron Powell So I started talking to people, and I know that one of the aspects of congregational ministry I really enjoy was teaching. So I thought, oh, well, is there something along those lines? Well, for a while I thought it was, yeah, you're in the short term, you're going to help get a spirituality center open here in Western North Carolina, and we'll try to be a regional spirituality center for everyone, for all seekers, Christians, Jews, spiritual but not religious, Hindus, agnostic, doesn't matter. And it'll be about spiritual practices. So a group of us met. That sounded like a really great thing. But a funny thing happened on the way to getting the center going. We started talking about the position description for the founding director, who we would raise money for and hire. And I said, Guys, this would be my dream job. I swear this wasn't a bait and switch. I didn't plan this, but would you consider hiring me to be the founding director? There was stunned silence. And they said, Oh yeah, we think actually you might just be the guy. Maybe we don't need to do some national search. So we raised the money, and by 2016, the center was open. I was saying goodbye to the congregation I was serving here for nearly 19 years, and lo and behold, the Center for Spiritual Wisdom was born.

Chris Jones 4:16

So what was so attractive about that position?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

So I think it's the combination. I think the idea of not only being in a position to be motivated to continue my learning about various spiritual practices and spiritual teachings, but to also be able to use the gifts I think are God-given gifts of communicating, sharing, and teaching those and bringing people together. This was also a call to try to promote community, support connections among people around these teachings and practices. And that's what it's been for the last 10 years.

Chris Jones 4:55

Is there some spiritual philosophies that speak to you particularly more than others that really resonate with you?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Oh, yeah. I mean, you as soon as you say mystic or contemplative, you know, my ears prick up and I go, who? What? Where? How? What did it look like? So I like to say that we are devoted to offering the mystical and contemplative dimensions, meaning teachings, practices, and wisdom from the enduring religious traditions of the world. Those that have been around, they have history, they have a lineage, and still have a lot, I think, to offer. Those of us I just call the seekers, those of us, whether we're connected to a faith community like I am, or we're not. But people know that on a soul level, we're looking for more.

Chris Jones 5:49

So the spiritual center, it's a place where people come together and share ideas and learn and how this conduct. Yeah, if you would give us some examples because I think this is alien landscape for most of us.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, yeah. So right now we have programs going, one's about to start on the Enneagram. Some people know about the Enneagram as a tool that is often taught as personality typing, but it's really more of a spiritual typology in its intention. So a co-leader and I are teaching that five-week series. We're in the midst.

Chris Jones 6:28

Tell us a little bit about that for people that don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

So the Enneagram is has roots that encompass Christian desert fathers and mothers, that period of Christianity, but also draw from Jewish Kabbalah, draw from Islam in the Sufi school of Islam, and and probably going back to what we would call sort of wisdom from Egyptian teachers, going back to maybe Jewish and pre-Jewish period. And it basically says that there are nine basic spiritual types. And the beauty of the Enneagram is it helps us uncover what our subconscious motivations are, what our deepest desires and dreams are, as well as some of our most challenging conflictual aspects of, I think your audience would understand, persona versus essence. So the Enneagram helps you identify what's more about your essence and what's more about persona. And to be able to choose, you know, when you're up against a moment that looks like it could be all about my persona or more about my essence, to choose essence, uh, to choose who I am, made in the image of the divine, made in the image of God, as our Jewish and Christian friends would say, as we say as Christians. Um so that's that's the Enneagram. And there's it it's a cottage industry now. It's everyone seems to be publishing books and doing podcasts and vlogs on the Enneagram, but but that's fine. Another example is we're partnered with public uh broadcasting to do a series called Wisdom Keepers. And this is one of the longtime public TV personalities who's interviewing leading teachers from Christianity, from Judaism, commentators like David Brooks, the author of the New York Times. And we are have been given a permission by PBS to basically broadcast those and have a discussion around it, drawing people out, what they heard, what they found challenging, what they found helpful. And we have people from all across the map who are participating in that. And something coming up is a pilgrimage to Europe so that we can walk in the footsteps of some of the mystics, namely Hildegard of Bingen, but some others who uh Can you share some of uh that mystic beliefs and ideas with us so we have an understanding of what you're you're referring to? Sure. When when I refer to mystics and mysticism, I'm referring to people who have an experience of God, an experience of the divine, which I distinguish from conceptual knowledge of God or the divine. So so think of Sunday school or Torah study or, you know, whatever tradition you're talking about, where they're teaching important ideas and concepts, and maybe even looking at some of the sacred texts of that tradition. Then there's somebody who has an encounter with what they would call a presence, or they have a close moment of communion or encounter where they sense they are in the presence of they might say God, they might say Allah, they might say Yahweh, they might say spirit. So a mystic is somebody who says, I know the divine in that way. It's personal, it's direct, and it might be rather unusual or have supernatural things or visions attached to it. It may not. It could be something very sort of subtle, like I'm out in nature, I feel like I'm in the presence of the creator who's ultimately responsible for all of this amazing beauty. Right. And there, that's a mystical experience. So we we call some saints in our Christian tradition mystics because they have these close encounters with the divine.

Chris Jones 10:40

What's the distinction about getting a revelation or an epiphany or something that changes our path from God versus just having an experience that seems to have no purpose? Or does all of this actually have purpose?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Well, that's a great question. I can think of two responses that make sense. One is that whenever someone has a, I will call an unmediated direct experience of the divine, the holy, the numinous, it's gonna rearrange your molecules in some way. And I I trust for the better because of all the beliefs that are attached to my own uh Christian thinking. But the other is there could be, along with the mystical experience, incredible visions. St. Hildegard of Bingen, if you don't know her, she was back in the 1300s, and she believes, and there's good reason to think, she had these visions that were visionary kind of visions, and she was awake when they happened. They gave her the ability to understand the mysteries of holy scripture, they gave her insights into creation, and she wrote a lot of stuff down before she died. But there has to be something here because one of the most conservative Catholic popes of recent memory, Benedict XVI, named her a doctor of the church. She's now only one of four women who received the accolade of doctor of the church, meaning somebody who speaks authoritatively and knows what she's talking about when it comes to the Christian mysteries.

Chris Jones 12:56

So maybe we can deep dive her in a future episode.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Oh, oh, she's she's she's worth it. I mean, this this woman was a Renaissance woman before the Renaissance.

Chris Jones 13:07

That sounds good. All right. So mysticism. And I think when people hear mysticism, they've got some ideas of people experimenting in these weird ideas of spiritual religions with weird symbolism outside of traditional dogmatic faith. But it sounds like anybody that has a personal encounter with the divine, of whatever that may be, that could be considered mysticism.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Well, it might help Christians to remember Jesus was a mystic. I mean, here's somebody who communed with his heavenly father who understood that he he has a voice from heaven saying, This is my son, the beloved, listen to him. Yeah and something like a bird, a dove, descends, anointing him. If that's not weird, kind of out there mystical stuff, I don't know what is. And that's not the only one. We could talk about the Mount of Transfiguration, we could talk about a lot of people.

Chris Jones 14:06

I think we've redefined that word and we've recast it for a different purpose. So now it gets us into these weird conversations that is in the darker parts of podcasting. You know?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's good for podcasters because it gives you guys something to talk about. Yeah. But it's it it can be an epithet, it can be some a term of derision if people think of it as something negative. And oh, mystical means misty, means not comprehensible, means irrational, means not logical, means outside the bounds of what's acceptable for Christian. And if you don't uh understand mysticism in the way I've received it, then that that's understandable. It's like anything that we're not comfortable with or familiar with.

Chris Jones 14:55

Okay. All right. So some a lot of people, I guess, would say they have experiences just hanging out in the woods, out in nature, and they feel that connection. Where's the line of just us kind of experiencing what we're a part of versus experiencing the divine, or is there a difference?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Oh, I love the line. You know, by their fruits you will know them. I mean, I think you can test the validity of some kind of spiritual or mystical experience by saying, does this make me more in conformity to the mind of Christ as I understand it, or or less? And I think we we know the fruits and gifts of the Spirit when when we see it. When we see some of those things that Paul describes in his letters, that somebody is more peaceful, that they are giving and generous, that there is kindness, that they don't think about themselves all the time, that they're have a capacity for compassion for for those in need. Those are the simple tests.

Chris Jones 15:59

What other things do you guys teach and help other people understand?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Well, so there's a whole wonderful list of practices. I just call them spiritual practices for short, and by that we mean things like contemplation, meditation, lexio divina, which some people may have heard of, pilgrimage is a spiritual practice, uh, walking a labyrinth is a spiritual practice, learning, giving you some of the Christian-based ones, but there are others from other traditions as well. Share some of the other traditions with us. Yes, so I don't understand Buddhism as much as I'd like to, but we've had a Tibetan Buddhist master. We've this has been a co-partnership with a group of people who are trying to start a Buddhist community here in our community, who have brought in this master from elsewhere. He's he's originally from Tibet, but now he has a community in Arkansas, I think. Okay. He came to our community, and that led to a book study about mindfulness practices based on Buddhist teachings. So there's a group now, I'm not part of it, but we're glad to see that happening, that are gathering and reading this Tibetan Buddhist teacher's practices and practicing the mindfulness practice that he teaches. So that's that'd be a for instance.

Chris Jones 17:25

You said pilgrimages. Yes. Tell us how pilgrimages kind of help this. What how does that help spiritually?

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Aaron Powell So a pilgrimage is some kind of journey with a spiritual intention. And for most of us, the spiritual intention sounds something like I would like to grow closer to God, learn more about God, or learn more about some of God's people. And give you a, for instance, I recently took a group to Italy because we were wanting to do a deep dive into St. Francis and St. Clair, those well-known, well-beloved Christian saints. And we thought going to the place where they lived, Assisi, Italy, Rome, where some of the story took place, and some towns in the surrounding area around Assisi would help because we'd be visiting some of the very places where we know they worshipped, did ministry. We don't know where Francis embraced the leper, but it had to be somewhere near Assisi. So getting close uh felt like would would help. And I know that I felt I more deeply understood the life and teachings of Francis and Claire after going where they did ministry, where they built monasteries, where they built communities, the hermitages where Francis and his followers would spend part of the Christian year. And usually a pilgrim will go with some life question, something that they're wrestling with. I'm hoping that God andor one of God's people, like St. Francis or St. Claire, will help shed light on this decision. It could be, what do I do in retirement? It could be, should I forgive that person who betrayed me? It could be any number of things. Should I stay in my marriage, et cetera? And so getting out of your normal everyday existence, your work routine, your personal life, leaving home has been something that actually all the religions, the great religions of the world, have this sort of hardwired into their teachings and their traditions. Go to a holy place, go to a sacred site, bring a practice like prayer or meditation, and you will have your spiritual DNA rearranged as a result of that.

Chris Jones 19:54

Now, when you're talking about interspirituality and you're talking about all these different ideas of faith in God, do you see that they all have a single thread that kind of unifies them?

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I don't know about unifies them. I refer to similarities of patterns. That there are patterns if you're looking for common patterns in religions. And there is the founding philosophy that we have adopted at Center for Spiritual Wisdom, which is called perennialism or the perennial tradition. And that is a, I'd say has been esoteric, but becoming more mainstream idea that there are these common patterns. For example, that the universe and the created order didn't just come out of nowhere, that there is a something that brought it into being. And that this source is something that we as individuals seem to have an affinity for, and part of us wants to be connected to. And so there are ways we try to connect, get more connected to the source of all that is. We had various ways of naming that, of course. And furthermore, if you look at the world religious traditions from a contemplative or mystical standpoint, there's this idea that we want to become more like the source, and that there are ways in which we can become more like the source, which is where practices of prayer or meditation, for example, come in. And finally, many of the traditions, at least some schools, will say that the ultimate goal of the spiritual life is to become one with or to become in union with the source. You and I would use the language of God, might say spirit, holy spirit. Other traditions might use different language. So the point is if you're looking for differences in the world religions, you're going to find a ton of them. Sure. If you're interested and curious, are there some commonalities? I would say there are common patterns. Not so sure, I would say a common thread, because I don't believe that there is one religion that sort of would tie them all together. And that's been attempted in various ways through the years. And I think God seems to like diversity in lots of things, including religion. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had thousands of years of various traditions.

Chris Jones 22:24

Yeah. Yeah. I uh when I had Brian Muldoon on, he had spent five days with the Dalai Lama. And I did some deep diving. Into some of the stuff that happened in those dialogue synthesis. And I noticed he had said in there, there cannot be one religion because we all have a different experience. So therefore, it it takes a different religion.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yeah. Well, the Dalai Lama is quite a fan of Jesus. That's the most important thing to say. He's uh somebody who uh has great affinity for the teachings of Jesus. And so even if he is not somebody who adopts Christian-centered language like Lord, Savior, Messiah, the Christ, at the very least, I think we can find a commonality with him because he thinks a lot of what Jesus taught and the what he was trying to point to was good and that he himself can affirm. So I'm not trying to call the Dalai Lama a Christian or a closet Christian. I'm just simply saying the fruits and gifts of the spirit, the spirit is funny, and I'm now referring to the Holy Spirit. It blows where it will, right? We know that. And if it blows in the direction of somebody from a different religion, the Dalai Lama, thinking that peacefulness and cultivating a peaceful nature is one of the most important things you can do in your life. I I would argue that Jesus wouldn't have a problem with that if he were here and met the Dalai Lama and said, Oh, we we agree on this and this and that.

Chris Jones 24:02

Yeah, I did a deep dive on uh Mahatma Gandhi. It was episode 26, and it was called Beyond Believing: The Journey of a Disciple. And I had studied him. And man, I've never seen so much misinformation online about someone. So I just went and got his autobiography and just started reading it to figure out what he really believed. And what I found out was although he was a Hindu, when he went to college, he challenged himself with all kinds of different religions and faiths and philosophies, even atheism. And he was brilliant in how he did it. He would go read your book or your scriptures from front cover to back cover, and then he would go sit down with you and allow you to try to convert him. And he found it fruitful. He learned a lot as he read the Bible from front cover to back cover. And he said the Old Testament was painfully boring. But when he got to the New Testament, it was life. And when he started reading the teachings of Jesus, he said he was one of the greatest teachers of all humanity. And it spoke to him. And the more he read it, the more it spoke to his heart. And it was this idea of love. And so for the first time, he knew that when he went back to these church leaders that he was going to convert and he was going to become a Christian. However, once he got there and he started talking to these Christians and they started talking to him about their theology, then he that's where the disagreement was. I mean, he was able to read the scriptures without any interference from religion or culture. He just cold stopped read it. And how he read it was his in love. And I think you've listened to becoming the antidote to the poison on my own podcast here. And a lot of that was influenced by his teaching, but or how he understood it. So they were saying that Jesus died for our sins. And so therefore, real transformation isn't necessary. And that's how he was hearing it from them because Jesus is doing all the work for you. And he said, No, I don't want that. I don't want an excuse to not have to transform. I want to transform and I want to do better and I want to be better. And so he walked away and left Christianity where it was, but he took the Bible and Christ with him. I mean, he was often, he would teach Sermon on the Mount as some of his favorite passages. But it absolutely transformed him. And how he saw this commandment of Christ as in love, as the antidote to the poison that's in humanity, that we, through becoming like Christ in just his love, then we change the world. We we help everybody. And that was the basis of his beliefs. He said that the Bhagavad Gita was in one lung and the teachings of Christ was in the other lung. That's from his own book. And he would go on to change the world with that thinking and that ideology, all because one person, you know, seen Christ as what we should be discipled about, that there's a difference in becoming a believer and a worshiper in the deity of Christ versus becoming a disciple of Christ. You know, they're two different things.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Right. I once heard the distinction. Jesus never said worship me, but he did say follow me. Yeah. And that's always got my attention because I thought, okay, is the church that at least the version the branch of the church I'm leading mostly about worshiping Christ, or is it more about following him? And I was usually pushing for the what is it going to take to follow him, to pattern our lives after the way he did in our own time. He did it the way he did it in his time. He set an example for the rest of us. How are we going to do it in our time? And so I so I love that story. It also reminds me of we were mentioning the Dalai Lama earlier. The Dalai Lama is known to say, My religion is kindness. And kindness is on one of Paul's lists of fruits and gifts of the spirit. So here is somebody who is saying, you want to boil down my understanding of religion to its essence, it's this fruit of the spirit, kindness. And I want to say to my fellow Christians, can you really argue with that? Because the guy's obviously being quite sincere. Right.

Chris Jones 28:36

Oh, so you you brought up meditation. Let's let's talk about meditation, because for a lot of people from the Christian tradition, that is a real big taboo. And they're they're very afraid of it, but yet neuroscience tells us how amazingly healthy it is for us. So would you open this up and kind of explain to us what is meditation? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

So meditation, as I understand it, a Christian, and as I mentioned, Christianity is my home base and Christ is my primary teacher. It's about putting myself in a position where I am more open and receptive to the presence of God through the Holy Spirit, beyond words, beyond concepts. And there are methods, techniques, that's not a word I use, but you could use it if you wanted to, guidelines that help you enter into what is a different state of mind, all in the service of putting on the mind of Christ, as Paul encourages us to. So Christian meditation, just to use that as an example, was taught by a man named John Main, again, a Catholic priest. And he said, if we take a phrase, something that's been hallowed by tradition, he really liked the phrase Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, is what that means. And if we start at the beginning of a 20-minute period and simply repeat it internally with a prayerful intention while trying to open ourselves as best we can from the center, from the heart center, to the love and presence of God, then we make that a practice, we make that one of our discipleship practices. We will grow closer to God in Christ by so doing. And many people have practiced it. It's called Christian meditation. You can look it up online. Uh John Maine has an organization that can carries on his teachings. I'm afraid uh it's gone out of my head at this moment. But that's a version of meditative prayer that I tried. It so happens it didn't take with me, but I was at a point in life and ministry where I felt like I really needed something to help me go deeper. In fact, I feel like the Holy Spirit said, find a way to go deeper in your faith. So after I tried Christian meditation, said, I'm not sure this is a good fit for me. Then I heard about centering prayer, which is a form of Christian contemplation. Contemplation meaning what? Meaning I want to adore with my inner being God in love. I want to simply come into the presence of God as best I can and to be present to that divine presence. That's what Christian contemplation is in a nutshell. Centering prayer is a way to make myself more receptive to this gift, which we believe, we who teach centering prayer, believe God wants to give to everybody. And so centering prayer is simply four steps to help you become more receptive to this gift, which is God's own presence, God's own loving presence. Well, if you would take us through those four steps. Sure. So my word is mercy. Why? Because I think of what are the attributes of God that I can know unfailingly must be something of God or a very godly person, it's mercy. So this is something that I invoke at the beginning of the 20 minutes of centering prayer silently and inwardly while trying to maintain a disposition of openness to the presence of God. And so that's guideline number one. Guideline number two is silently introduce the sacred word as a symbol of your intention to open yourself to the presence of God. It's repeating that important phrase because this is a prayer of intention. Mindfulness and meditation is often about attention and how you can either control your thinking or manipulate your thinking. This is almost 180 degrees the opposite. It's about intention, it's about receptivity, it's not about trying to control how God wants to be present to you. It's simply to say, Lord, here I am, and I want to spend this 20 minutes with you. And however you show up, whether it's a feeling of peacefulness, whether it's a lot of thoughts going through my head, this I've set aside this time for you. The great teacher and founder of Centering Prayer, Thomas Keating, said it's your heavy date with God. So we've gotten to step two. There you are, you're in your prayer chair, you've silently inwardly invoked your sacred word for me. It's mercy.

Chris Jones 34:09

Now, is there a posture to this? You said your sacred prayer chair. I know in like mutation, there's positions. Nothing special in this case, sitting.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Okay. Sitting is recommended, but some people with mobility issues or ailments might prefer to lie down. It's fine. So there's nothing particular about the posture with this with this teaching. The heart of centering prayer, which differentiates it from other spiritual practices, is what you do with thoughts. Because thoughts invariably are going to arise. And with centering prayer, you allow the thoughts to enter the stream of consciousness and you allow them to drift on through. Imagine them going in one ear, bouncing around a little bit inside your head, and then going out the other ear. But when you begin thinking about the thoughts, this is a subtlety, when you begin engaging the thoughts mentally, then you reinvoke your sacred word, in my case, mercy, which reestablishes my original intention, which is to open myself to the presence, loving presence of God. And it has a way of helping, it doesn't make the stop thoughts stop necessarily, but it helps redirect my myself to, oh, that's right, I'm here for God, not these thoughts that may actually be masquerading, trying to masquerade themselves as being from God, but that's almost invariably not the case. It's usually my imagination and my false self conspiring to try to get me distracted in the middle of my contemplative prayer period. The physical man getting bored. Sorry.

Chris Jones 35:50

Yeah, I said that's just the physical man getting bored. Yeah.

unknown 35:53

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah, that's it. That's that's the imagination and my ego getting jealous that I haven't been paying them much attention for the 20 minutes. And and returning ever so gently to my original sacred word is a way of saying, oh, well, that's right. That's what I'm here for. Finally, at the end of 20 minutes, you remain quiet with your eyes closed, maybe for two or three minutes, if you wish, before you get up and go on your way. And that's simply a way to try to build a little bridge between what you're about to go do and what hopefully you've experienced, which is at least a little more internal, quiet, at least a little higher degree of calm. And if not calm, then at least I have not been stuck on my little screen, internet connected device and spinning the hamster wheel, you know, that most of us do a lot of the time. So that's it in a nutshell. And there are millions of people throughout the world, it's an international movement, who practice this. You can do a keyword search on centering prayer, contemplative prayer, Father Thomas Keating. But the organization is at Contemplative Outreach or Contemplative Outreach.org. And they hit they're not trying to make money off of you. You can go and learn everything you need to learn about it for free.

Chris Jones 37:17

We can provide a link in the episode so people can go look at it. Yeah. Okay. So since you've been involved with this, the spirituality from different faiths and beliefs and traditions, what's some of the most important things you've taken away from that that you've learned from it?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

That's a great question. You like these challenging ones basically.

Chris Jones 37:46

I like the insightful ones.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

I I think so so I know a lot of people who who begin with a particular religious tradition, they're faithful to it, and they love it. That the fearfulness about looking into other traditions is I'm gonna betray or be led astray. And I've actually had the opposite experience on here to report, that I am more in love with Jesus and his teachings and the tradition I was raised in, Christianity, by learning more about other religions, in part because so much of what I learn about other religions reinforces what I think is at the core of my spiritual journey with the Christ mystery. Namely, that love is the bottom line, that love is the glue that holds the universe together. And when I begin to get off track, stumble, and get off course, it's probably because somewhere along the way I've forgotten that. That the most important thing, not just love of self, not just love of God, but love in the broader sense of love of the universe, creation, and my fellow human being, particularly those that are hurting, if I've messed up somewhere along the way, it's that I've forgotten about that. And most of the great enduring religious traditions, you can find this. It may not be emphasized in some of the traditions, but it is also there in those traditions. So that's one thing. Another thing is that the more I study other religions, the more I'm reminded that Jesus did not come to establish a new religion. If he was trying to do anything in regard to religion, he was probably trying to reform his own home-based religion, which was Judaism.

Chris Jones 39:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

And that he is a helpful reminder that sometimes religion needs to be reformed because it's gotten off base. And the institution of religion can lose sight of the spiritual core, the the good stuff that was the origin of that religion, and that we need to be mindful, aware of how easily we humans can derail the good stuff from religion, and that we need to get back to it. Because all of the great enduring religions that have been around have had reform movements to do the very same thing, to try to get them back on track to the original vision, if you will. And then I think people like the Dalai Lama teaching about compassion, and and I seem to see that more frequently in other religions. It'll take different forms. You talked about Hinduism, it's this teaching of non-harm, ahimsa, which can is that the same as compassion? Not quite, but it's hard to be compassionate if you have a tendency to wish harm or actually perpetuate harm upon another person, right? Yeah. So these compatible teachings that in many ways reinforce or bring a different flavor to something that my Jesus was on to or was was talking about 2,000 years ago.

Chris Jones 41:19

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's really nice. I like that. So if somebody wants to connect with the Center of Spiritual Wisdom and is in Bradford, North Carolina, correct? Yes, Brevard, North Carolina. Brevard, North Carolina. How do they connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 41:37

So we're online at centersw.org, and it's an easy way to sign up for our once-a-month mail out, email, digital newsletter. You can connect with me directly at our phone number, 828-577-8168. And I just encourage people to try us out. We have programs that are freebies. We have programs that are with a suggested donation if people are able to do that. And we have programs that there's a set fee because we have some costs invested in the program that we have to recover. Good example, the one PBS Wisdom Keepers that we're doing in partnership with PBS. That's a freebie by their insistence, because they want all the material that they disseminate to not be a source of revenue. I guess for anyone but them. You know, they do sell their BBBs.

Chris Jones 42:33

They want to own it.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Exactly. But I also am a spiritual director, a soul friend, and I do one-on-one sessions with people. So I would love to connect with people if they feel so moved.

Chris Jones 42:46

Well, Rob, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. This is this has been great.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Yeah, Chris, I enjoyed the conversation and thanks for what you're doing. You're giving people a lot of good food for thought, and um uh I think some probably the best kind of intellectual and spiritual challenges, which is to think outside the box. So thanks for what you're doing.

Chris Jones 43:08

Thank you. I appreciate it. We'll see you again soon, Rob. All right, take care. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, and or concerns. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.