The Silence that Called Me

I was around eight years old when a question arrived that no one could answer. How did I get in this body? There was a "me," and there was this body, and the two were not the same. This first episode returns to that question, and begins a journey to search for answers.

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So when I was around eight years old, I had this profound experience, all because of a question. I don't remember exactly what I was doing, but I do remember that question. How did I get in this body? Not how I was born, not where do babies come from, but how did I get in this body? You see, for me in that moment, in my small eight-year-old frame, I was aware of my body, but I was also suddenly aware of myself. And I know that's typically called your first moment of awareness, but there was a separation. There was me, there was this I, and there was this body. Not only how did I get in this body, but if I'm not this body, who am I? So I did what most kids do. I went to the people that I trusted the most, my parents. And they they giggled. For them, this was a conversation about the birds and the bees. They told me that they came together with love. They told me that God sent me to them. Uh my mother carried me in her belly for nine months and gave birth to me. And ta-da, I'm here. And while I understood what they were saying, their answers didn't fully reach the heart of the question that I was asking. Because they were telling me how the body was born, and I wanted to know how I got in this body. And I would ask that question to anybody that I trusted, friends, family, brothers, sisters, and nothing could quite satisfy what it was that I was looking for. So I kept living. And I have lived a normal life, friends, relationships, school, graduation, jobs, marriage, children, the whole nine yards. I'm a normal, everyday person. But that question, and what that question sparked never left me. You see, that question sparked in me a hunger, a need, a restlessness, really. A restlessness that said you've got to find truth, inner truth, the truth that you can't really read about, a truth that you really can't find in a lecture. We go to the mystics, we go to the sages, we go to saints, we look for their guidance. And there's wisdom in that. We go to scripture, there's definitely wisdom in that. But it never quite reaches the deepest questions we have. It never quite goes to the places where we're even afraid to go. And that's why this podcast is here. Welcome to Talks with the Soul. I'm rich. And first and foremost, before I say anything else, I want to say that this is a sacred space, not a safe space. And I mean that genuinely, because this is a place where we're not going to find all the answers, but we will find what's honest. And we're going to ask those questions that we're afraid to ask, even ourselves. The questions that we tend to push to the back of our minds, the questions that let us know that there's more than what we've been taught. See, I grew up in a Christian tradition with a father who believed in God but didn't adhere to any one religion. I've got an older brother that's a Muslim, and another brother that's a Christian, and all those different beliefs made for very interesting conversations, a very interesting upbringing and attitude when it came to religious and spiritual traditions. For me personally, it produced a desire in me to know the truth because everybody may seemingly believe different ways, but everybody also has all the answers. And anybody that doesn't believe like them is automatically shunned. They're automatically wronged, they're automatically damned. And for me, that doesn't quite cut it. And it never reaches the place from where that question came back when I was eight years old. And it's not just how did I get in this body, it's who am I? That's what the question evolved into. Who am I? And ultimately, that's the one question that we're gonna explore the most here at Talks with the Soul. We're gonna have episodes about life, death, faith, fear, hope, smiling more, joy, playing, breathing, existing. But all of that comes back down to who am I? How did I get in this body? Where did I come from? Why am I here? The questions that are closest to the human heart. And I do not have all the answers. I am not a pastor, I'm not a guru, I'm not a scholar, I'm not a saint, I'm not a mystic, a sage. Any title that we give to the greatest spiritual teachers is not me. What I am, though, is human. And I want to have very real human conversations with other humans that are not afraid to have those conversations. Ultimately, I'm searching for inner truth just like you. That's one of the main reasons that I created this space and this podcast. Because something in me has been restless. Something in me that just no matter how much I resonated with the teaching, no matter how much something I read in a book opened something up in me and gave me a different perspective. It still didn't satisfy this hunger. It still didn't settle within me that I had made it home. I had made it back to the truth that I was looking for. I hadn't found the answers that I was looking for. And what I found is the thing that I've been looking for hasn't been something that I could read about. It hasn't been something that I could hear in a lecture. It's something that had to be experienced. It's inside. And when I finally experienced it, even if it was just for a glimpse, for small seconds, a fraction of a second, the scriptures began to open differently. The words on the page somehow had a different meaning for me than they did before. In all the books I read, the words stopped being just words on a page, and they started to illuminate the experience that I had even more. Seeing that moment, to me, it felt like a light came on. Like I had been standing in a dark room, and somebody comes in, turns on the light, and now you can see clearly. So, how did I get to that experience? Or how can I best describe this brief encounter, small as it was, fraction of a second. But there's a quote by St. John of the Cross. In Dark Knight of the Soul, he wrote, in order to come to union with the wisdom of God, the soul must go by unknowing rather than knowing. And he's not talking about ignorance here. It's my belief that he's talking about the moment that we stop trying to think our way to God, the moment that we stop trying to study our way to God, and we decide to just be and allow ourselves to be met. Allow ourselves to experience, to be still and know. That's another way to put it. Kind of think of it like a fire. It's the kind of fire that burns deeply. It burns away everything that's not real. It burns away everything that's not true. It's not there to destroy, it's there to reveal. It's there to reveal the answers to those questions. Who am I? How did I get in this body? So every week I'll be right here. And hopefully you'll meet me here. We'll have readings from different traditions, from different religions, different quotes from the saints and the sages throughout history. Because for me, truth isn't confined to one tradition. If you have eyes to see, it's written everywhere, and it's all pointing back to the same place. To quote Saint John of the Cross again, the soul that is attached to anything, however good it may be, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. Again, I want to say this podcast is not a sermon, and it's definitely not a lecture. I like to call it a return, a return to the beginning, a return to the question that started it all, and a return to the child that asked the question before he even had the understanding to fully grasp what he was asking. How did I get in this body? We're still finding out together. In closing, I want to say I pray that this space allows you to be still for a moment. I pray that it allows you to be silent for a moment, not to escape, but to listen, to hear. I pray that you stop ignoring those questions that you're even afraid to ask yourself. And I pray that if you feel like there's more than what you've ever been taught, more than what you believe, that you don't look at that as a flaw, but as a compass. And I pray that you never stop asking the questions that the child and you already knew how to ask. Because you're a soul, and a soul always remembers its way home. Until next time.