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1:16

In this episode of Insights at

1:18

the Edge, my guest is David

1:21

White, an internationally

1:23

renowned poet, author and

1:25

speaker. Let me

1:27

tell you how it is for me. When

1:30

I listen to David present,

1:33

talk, teach, recite his poetry,

1:36

I feel disturbed.

1:39

That's the word. Provoked,

1:41

inspired, a type of

1:45

soul stirring. I

1:48

feel shaken up and I'm

1:50

so pleased in that

1:52

spirit to bring David White to

1:54

Insights at the Edge. David

1:57

talks to audiences of all

1:59

persuasions. From boardrooms

2:01

of Fortune 500 companies to

2:04

educational institutions to

2:06

the stages of literary

2:08

festivals and theological conferences,

2:11

he weaves poetry, story,

2:13

and commentary into

2:15

a moving, almost physical

2:18

experience of the

2:20

themes that run through all of

2:22

our lives, joy and

2:24

loss, vulnerability

2:26

and vitality, courage and

2:29

despair, beauty and

2:31

necessary heartbreak. David

2:34

White makes his home in the

2:36

Pacific Northwest where

2:39

rain and changeable skies

2:42

remind him of the other more

2:44

distant homes from which he comes.

2:47

He is

2:50

the author of 10 books

2:52

of poetry, three books

2:54

of prose on the transformative nature

2:56

of work, a widely

2:58

acclaimed book of essays, and

3:01

an extensive audio collection

3:03

which includes a gorgeous

3:06

series from Sounds True, What

3:09

to Remember When Waking.

3:11

David, welcome. Very

3:14

good to be here. Very good to see you again after

3:17

so many years of not seeing

3:19

you. Indeed.

3:23

Great to be together. I'm glad to be

3:25

here to disturb you. Yes.

3:28

You already have disturbed me. You

3:31

disturbed me in that I re-listened

3:33

to What to Remember When Waking

3:35

as part of the preparation

3:38

for recording this. One

3:42

of the things I found on your

3:44

website I think helped me understand the

3:47

disturbance, which is a way

3:49

that you describe poetry, language

3:51

against which we have

3:54

no defenses. And

3:56

I wanted to start there because in listening, what to remember

3:58

when we were recording this when waking,

4:00

it's like my normal defenses,

4:02

my rational processing, it

4:05

wasn't working. My

4:07

defenses came down. Tell

4:09

me what you mean, poetry, language

4:12

against which we have no defenses.

4:16

Yes, it's that intimate exchange that

4:18

we all know so very well

4:21

when someone is trying

4:24

to speak to us and inviting

4:27

us to understand something that we don't

4:29

quite want to understand,

4:32

but which is going to impact our lives. So we

4:34

have that particular combination

4:37

when someone is bringing us

4:40

terrible news of the loss

4:42

of a friend or a death. And

4:44

that person will

4:46

often touch you momentarily before

4:52

they start speaking. They'll touch you on the

4:54

shoulder or lean in. So

4:56

the physical contact. And then

4:58

they will often look you in the eyes and

5:04

then they will give you the news. They

5:10

will say it three different times. And

5:13

they will say it in three different ways.

5:15

And they will have silence between the way

5:17

they tell you. And

5:19

probably they will fall into

5:22

iambic pentameter, which is how human

5:26

beings speaking in English speak

5:28

in an intimate way to another person.

5:31

So there you have the natural

5:33

substrate of poetry. And

5:36

poetry is not an abstract art. It's

5:38

the way human beings speak when they're

5:40

on their intimate edge, speaking of edges,

5:43

the theme of your theories. So

5:46

it's speaking from the live edge between what you

5:48

think is you and what you think is not

5:50

you. I have a piece

5:53

directly to what you were saying. The

6:00

first line is, good poetry begins with

6:04

the lightest touch. Interesting, I

6:06

hadn't thought about that, but there

6:08

it says, yeah, so good poetry begins with

6:11

the lightest touch, a breeze arriving from nowhere,

6:13

a gifted,

6:15

easy arrival. Then,

6:18

like a hand in the dark, it

6:20

arrests the whole body, stealing

6:22

you for revelation. Then, like a hand

6:24

in the dark, it arrests

6:27

the whole body, stealing you for

6:29

revelation. In the silence that

6:31

follows a great line, you

6:34

can feel Lazarus deep

6:36

inside the laziest, most

6:38

deathly afraid part of you, lift

6:40

up his hands and walk toward

6:42

the light. Then,

6:45

like a hand in the dark, it arrests the

6:47

whole body, stealing you for

6:49

revelation. That's a very physical

6:51

line, actually. I don't know if you've ever come

6:53

across a hand in the dark that you didn't know

6:55

was there, but you can imagine what

6:58

your reaction would be if you did, yeah. If

7:00

you suddenly in the dark touched

7:03

another hand that you did not know was there, and

7:08

that's the surprise you feel in good

7:10

poetry, is that physical arresting. It arrests

7:12

the whole body, stealing you

7:15

for revelation. In

7:17

the silence that follows a great

7:19

line, you can feel Lazarus deep inside

7:22

the laziest, most deathly afraid part

7:24

of you, lift up his hands and

7:26

walk toward the light. So,

7:29

I wasn't religious as a child, but

7:32

I loved going to Sunday School, just

7:35

because the teachers there were

7:37

such great storytellers. I

7:40

loved the way they told

7:43

all the biblical stories. So, many of those

7:45

stories are stamped right through me. So, in

7:47

that poem, Lazarus came

7:50

alive, literally, risen

7:52

from the dead. So,

7:55

one of the things that occurs in that poem, for

7:57

instance, is it allows you to It

8:00

allows you to understand

8:03

that you do have an incredibly

8:05

lazy, deathly afraid part of you.

8:08

That's reluctant to engage

8:10

with reality. And

8:13

I always say, every human

8:16

being has the right to say, to

8:19

turn away from the courageous conversation because life

8:21

is full of so much disappearance,

8:24

death, loss, grief, ill

8:27

health. And

8:30

the loss of people

8:32

and places that are so heartbreaking.

8:35

That every human being at one time or

8:37

another in their existence says, listen God. And

8:40

even if you don't believe in God, you say,

8:42

listen God. Whatever

8:45

game, if this is the game you want me to

8:47

play, I'm not going to play it. It's

8:50

too heartbreaking, it's too painful, I'm

8:52

going to actually turn my

8:54

face elsewhere and I'm going to make a little

8:56

artificial world of my own where

8:59

I don't feel life with the keenness

9:01

that I did with my last heartbreak.

9:04

I'm going to create a little insulated video

9:06

game of my own. It's one of the

9:09

reasons video games are so addictive, especially for

9:11

the young masculine psyche.

9:14

You can restart the game if you

9:16

feel you're going to die. You can buy

9:18

the invisibility cloak that allows you not to

9:20

be seen, not to be touched. So

9:24

all of us have our versions of that

9:26

little video game at times in

9:28

life because human beings need respite. So

9:32

the ability of good poetry is not to

9:34

create some ideal world where you're going to

9:36

this perfect representation. It's

9:39

to be just yourself. This

9:42

person who at times is not

9:45

only scared of reality but terrified

9:48

when you're sitting at the bedside of a loved one

9:50

who's dying, when

9:53

you realize that

9:56

you're not just, you're not

9:58

just slightly unhelpful. you've

10:00

really got something that

10:05

is leading you down a path towards

10:07

your own disappearance. Every

10:10

human being experiences not

10:12

only those two qualities, but many other ones

10:14

all at the same time. Now,

10:18

David, as you're talking, I thought, David

10:21

White, the poet who brings you the

10:23

news you don't want to hear. So

10:26

courageous conversation. But

10:29

I've pulled several lines. That's one of the definitions

10:31

of the courageous conversation. It's the one

10:33

you don't want to have. So all

10:35

you have to do is ask yourself, what's

10:38

the conversation I don't want to

10:40

have? And that's it. That's where

10:42

you should go. Well, that's where

10:44

listening to what to remember when

10:46

waking took me. And I pulled

10:48

several quotes from, and I

10:50

want to talk about some of them with you,

10:52

a well-felt sadness in life

10:55

can be just as generative

10:58

as a well-felt joy. Because

11:01

that's actually what I found through this process

11:03

was that, you know, the difficult

11:05

thing I didn't, there was some stuff I didn't want

11:07

to feel sadness. What

11:10

makes a sadness a

11:12

well-felt sadness and talk

11:14

about its generativity? Well,

11:18

I often think that the only cure for

11:21

grief is grief itself. That

11:24

grief is its own cure. There's no

11:26

other cure for grief than grief itself.

11:30

And it asks us to feel it fully,

11:32

to feel the complete absence. And

11:36

my friend, John O'Donohue, when

11:38

he passed away at the height of his powers, that was

11:40

a great loss and grief in my life. And

11:44

because we were partners in crime, you

11:46

know, he was a philosopher, a poet

11:48

philosopher. We also had the same sense

11:50

of humor. We

11:54

loved to spend time together.

11:59

And we loved to keep it. in touch with

12:01

each other when we're on different parts of the

12:03

world. So that was an enormous absence that opened.

12:06

But John used to quote Meister Eckhart,

12:08

the great 13th century mystic, and

12:12

someone who was in deep

12:17

grief asked Meister

12:21

Eckhart, what

12:24

is God? Which is

12:26

the question we always ask, where

12:29

is God and what is God? And

12:31

Meister Eckhart said, God is pure

12:34

absence. God

12:37

is pure absence.

12:40

The fact that you can feel that something

12:42

is missing from your life is

12:45

the gravitational field and the path you

12:48

will follow to the

12:50

very quality you feel is missing. So

12:54

the path of grief is following that

12:57

incredible absence in your life.

13:00

So for John, it was the sense of

13:02

companionship and friendship. There was no one else

13:04

in the world who

13:06

did what I did, who spoke

13:08

it in the way I spoke. And there was

13:10

no one else for him that spoke in

13:12

the way he spoke and you and

13:15

worked with the same kind of dark

13:17

interior magic in a way. And

13:20

so when he left,

13:22

I felt completely bereft. But

13:24

as I followed that path of grief,

13:27

I started to have this phenomenon where

13:30

I would start a

13:32

line on stage and

13:34

John would finish it. I would

13:37

hear John's voice, and I would follow

13:39

that. Or I would

13:41

start quoting John and I would finish the

13:44

line with my own original thought

13:47

and insight. And

13:50

so in a way, grief

13:54

then turns to allergy.

13:57

And allergy is always the

13:59

conversation. between loss and

14:02

celebration that you were you

14:04

had the privilege of being alive on the planet

14:06

at the same time I mean how incredible is

14:08

that of all

14:10

the millions and hundreds

14:13

of millions of lives there have been since

14:15

the beginning of conscious time we

14:17

were alive together at the same time on

14:20

the same planet you know for

14:23

a brief span of years we got out to

14:25

breathe each other's have how incredible is that that's

14:27

the elegy to be able to speak and

14:30

you were able to actually be in the

14:32

presence and witness of that of

14:34

that gift so

14:36

so so that's

14:39

a well-felt sadness you

14:42

could have said you could have turned away at the beginning

14:44

and said oh he had a great innings it was good

14:47

you know and covered it over but you would have felt

14:49

that wound inside you

14:51

without ever traveling into it you would

14:53

have felt that vulnerability without ever bringing

14:55

it to its full consummation

14:58

so it can heal itself so

15:01

well-felt sadness you know interestingly enough one

15:04

of the first the

15:06

very first essay I wrote in

15:08

my book Consolations came out of

15:10

a request from the Observer magazine

15:12

and in in

15:14

Britain to write for

15:17

their philosophical column and

15:20

and but their request was very constrained they

15:22

said it has to be a single word

15:24

title and it can only be 300 words

15:26

and I

15:28

said to myself there's hardly time for an Irishman

15:30

to catch his breath you know with with

15:32

the 300 words but I I

15:35

sat down and I wrote it and and

15:37

I and I realized

15:39

regret you know has

15:42

been the deeply unfashionable quality

15:44

over the last 30 or

15:47

40 years you know lots of people

15:49

are going around saying I have no regrets and

15:51

you should have no regrets and I

15:53

always say to myself where have you

15:55

been all your life you know you should get

15:57

out more you know and actually create some because

15:59

there's no life you can live without

16:02

regret. The only

16:04

question is, will you actually feel

16:07

your regret to its

16:09

fullest? Because the proper

16:11

regret puts you into a better relationship

16:14

to the future. If

16:16

you've been a busy father who had no time

16:18

for your boy or your girl, your child, then

16:24

you could be, if you

16:27

retire and you fully get time to

16:29

regret that, you can be

16:31

a great grandfather, great grandmother to

16:34

your grandchildren. Regret

16:37

puts you into a proper

16:39

relationship with the world. So regret is one

16:41

of those great sadnesses that we often carry

16:43

but we never follow it

16:45

and allow ourselves to feel

16:48

it fully. That I was actually, I

16:51

missed a tide, you

16:54

know, a tide that will never ever

16:56

come back again, but there'll be other tides and I'm going

16:58

to be there for that one. A

17:01

couple of questions about this, David, do you

17:03

have a way of kind of busting

17:06

yourself, if you will, when you

17:08

can tell that you're not feeling

17:10

something fully, that you kind of have it

17:13

at an arm's length, that you're sort of

17:15

not quite going all the way through? How

17:17

do you sniff that

17:19

out in your own experience? Well,

17:23

it's partly through my, you

17:25

know, the identity I've shaped

17:27

through conversational identity I've shaped

17:30

through writing poetry. It's

17:32

also the identity I've probably shaped on

17:34

the black cushion facing the wall sitting

17:36

Zen. And that's the sense

17:39

when your mind is actually naming things and you

17:41

can feel it. It's almost as if it's keeping

17:44

things at a distance by naming them. So

17:48

when you feel that then it's time to bring it

17:50

back into the silence of the body. And

17:53

so you actually don't reframe it right

17:55

away, you just go back into

18:00

silence and pay attention to what you were

18:02

keeping at bay in a way. So

18:05

I always, you know, with my, um,

18:07

with my work with leadership, I

18:10

have seven elements in deepening any conversation,

18:12

but there, there are

18:14

seven elements for deepening any conversation in,

18:16

in any part of our life, actually

18:18

relationship. And the first step is

18:21

to, in deepening the conversation

18:23

is to stop having the one you're having

18:25

now. So not

18:27

to reframe it, not to

18:29

reimagine it, not to rehabilitate

18:32

it, and not to

18:34

rearticulate it just to stop having it and

18:39

go into silence. And you

18:41

don't do that from a puritanical mode or to

18:43

keep people at distance. You go there so

18:46

you can drink from a deeper well. You

18:49

can, you can have another foundation

18:51

from which to actually approach. What's

18:56

going on. And

18:59

then whether it's grief

19:01

or it's regret, I think oftentimes

19:04

for many of us, we

19:07

can find ourselves stuck

19:09

in that experience. There isn't a sense

19:11

that, Oh, now I'm going to be

19:14

a different kind of

19:16

a grandparent moving forward. I just

19:19

feel the regret of my terrible

19:21

parenting and that's that like, what

19:23

is it that enables us to

19:25

move through and beyond

19:27

into generativity with the

19:29

experience? Well, I

19:32

do think that you

19:34

can talk about conversations, but you could

19:36

just as equally talk about invitations. I

19:39

talk about conversational leadership, for instance, but

19:41

actually the essence of conversational leadership is

19:44

being an invitational leader. So

19:46

the whole, the whole of

19:48

creation seems to be made up of,

19:52

of endless invitations, things

19:55

meeting us that are inviting us to be

19:57

a certain way in their presence. And

20:02

so everything's an invitation to

20:05

the next step, to the next emancipation

20:07

of your life. So

20:09

I don't think you can fully

20:11

regret something without immediately precipitating out

20:13

the sense that

20:16

you've actually entered a new epoch

20:18

in your life. You've emancipated

20:21

yourself from that imprisonment

20:23

you were in before where

20:25

you thought you had to choose between your

20:27

work and your children. It's

20:30

just happened because you felt the regret fully.

20:33

You've examined that you felt it in your body. You

20:35

felt the pain event. And you said, I'm

20:38

not going to do that again. And

20:43

I'm going to be aware when

20:45

I find myself in that mode.

20:48

So sometimes that happens over time. It's

20:52

a gradual awakening. And

20:54

sometimes it happens unconsciously behind the

20:57

scenes in our own mind and

20:59

then suddenly precipitates out in

21:02

what looks like a kind of Kensho,

21:05

as it's called in the Zen tradition, or

21:07

a breakthrough, or enlightenment.

21:14

And I think actually that enlightenment is

21:16

just being in a real conversation. That's

21:18

what it means. It's

21:22

not some heavenly place

21:26

with the 15,000 Buddhas. It's

21:31

the fact that you're in the conversation as far as you

21:33

can go. And there's no – you're

21:36

meeting something other than you. And

21:38

that otherness will

21:40

actually invite you into

21:43

the next stage. And there's no

21:45

other place you can actually be

21:47

except that edge of maturation,

21:49

that edge of

21:51

the emancipation, that edge of

21:54

becoming, of seeing. Yeah. I'm

21:58

not sure that everybody will track. with

22:00

you when you say enlightenment

22:04

is being in the fullness of the

22:06

conversation. The way that you use

22:08

the word conversation, I'm not sure that it's

22:11

the way most people associate with having a

22:13

conversation. So can you say more about that?

22:16

Well the lovely thing about conversation is

22:18

that it's a word that's uncoercible

22:22

because it exists along the whole spectrum.

22:25

So if you notice it's

22:27

very hard to jargonize conversation.

22:29

You can jargonize dialogue. That's

22:33

the word that's become a jargon word

22:35

actually. But conversation

22:37

means everything from a little

22:39

chat around the water cooler

22:42

to a life-changing marital

22:45

conversation at the kitchen table

22:48

at midnight. So

22:50

it's the whole spectrum from

22:54

beginning to end. So

22:56

you can be present fully

22:58

for that chat around the water

23:01

cooler. Absolutely. With the broadest background

23:03

context as well as the foreground of

23:05

the person there. So

23:08

it could become actually a moment for

23:10

the other person. Just

23:13

as much as you can be fully present

23:15

at that kitchen table for

23:17

your spouse or your partner. So

23:20

you can take a vulnerable step

23:22

together. I had this amazing

23:24

moment in now. I was

23:26

in Dublin. I'd just come out from a, this

23:29

is many years ago, but I just

23:32

come out from a

23:34

barbershop. I just had my

23:36

haircut and it was

23:38

a bright day. I had my sunglasses on. I

23:40

had a jacket and I

23:43

must have looked incredibly cool because I was

23:45

standing at this bus stop and

23:47

this young lad came up to me and

23:50

he said, are you Bono? And

23:54

my first thought to myself

23:57

was I don't think Bono would be

23:59

stood with me. waiting for the number 21

24:01

bathroom to tell me.

24:04

But there was such a longing and,

24:07

and I felt such a presence

24:09

there because I had actually been emptying my

24:11

mind while I'd been stood there, just enjoying

24:14

the day from behind my shades, you know,

24:16

and just as present as possible. And

24:19

I just absolutely felt that I

24:21

should say yes. There

24:24

was something that that boy

24:27

was needing at that moment,

24:29

you know. And I

24:31

said yes. And

24:35

he he took me by the hand and

24:37

he shook my hand and he said, I just want to thank

24:39

you for all your, your work and some

24:41

of your words have saved my life. I

24:44

said, well, you're very welcome. And

24:47

I'm glad to have such a good listener as

24:49

you and off he went. Now,

24:51

normally I wouldn't, you know, if you'd

24:53

have taken, if you'd

24:55

have gone into the strategic mind and said, well,

24:58

that's kind of disguise, you're pretending to be something

25:00

other than that. No, that was what was called

25:02

on in the moment. That was the invitation of

25:04

the moment. And I've never regretted

25:07

that moment. And I always felt

25:09

I was exactly what I

25:11

should have been for that young lad. And

25:13

he will have carried that away. And it

25:16

would have been, he actually did meet

25:18

Bono, he didn't meet me. He

25:21

met, he met

25:23

what he needed to meet. So

25:27

it's a very strange, eccentric moment. But it

25:29

was one of those moments where if you

25:31

just aware, I mean, you never know, you

25:34

think you might think your life is

25:36

all geared around and shaped around

25:39

writing a dozen books of poetry

25:41

and becoming a great philosopher poet.

25:43

And, but actually, it could

25:45

be that your whole life is shaped

25:47

about being at a bus

25:49

stop at the right time for the

25:51

right person and saying exactly

25:54

the right thing. And

25:56

that transformation might be the single best

25:59

gift. that you give from

26:01

a whole lifetime of endeavor. You

26:05

know, whatever our priorities

26:07

are during our life, they

26:11

always shift at the deathbed, looking

26:14

back. They,

26:18

the understanding of what was there all

26:20

along that

26:23

we didn't give full credence to.

26:25

Yeah. I

26:27

think it might help me, David, if you're willing,

26:30

you mentioned that there are these seven

26:32

steps of conversational or invitational leadership. And

26:34

the first one is not to

26:37

keep telling the same story, to

26:40

open up to some silence. I think it

26:42

would help me if I could just hear

26:44

the other steps articulated,

26:46

because I think when I think of

26:48

conversation, I think, I'm gonna go into my mind

26:50

and I'm gonna talk to myself and we're, no,

26:53

that's the conversation I've been having that

26:55

I don't need to keep having. So I

26:57

wonder if you could just help me see

26:59

the progression. Oh my God, the seven elements,

27:01

this is a year long program. So, but

27:03

just very quickly, more

27:06

or less, and I may not even, The

27:08

gist of it. The gist of it. But

27:10

yeah, so it's, stop the

27:13

conversation you're having now so you can drink

27:15

from a deeper well. That's

27:18

immediately, by definition,

27:20

puts you into a relationship with

27:22

the unknown. So

27:24

the second element, the second step,

27:27

the second phenomenology is

27:31

cultivating a friendship with

27:35

what you do not know. Being,

27:38

getting used to not having easy answers.

27:41

Your strategic peripheral mind is

27:43

constantly trying to name things,

27:46

constantly trying to have answers to

27:49

everything. You've been rewarded

27:51

in your educational system all your life

27:53

for having easy answers. Many

27:56

of the answers I gave during my

27:58

zoology classes, you know, at university. are

28:00

seen to be completely untrue now, you

28:02

know, but you were rewarded at that

28:05

time for having those

28:07

names and that understanding. So

28:11

stopping the conversation you're having now, drinking

28:13

from a deeper well, making

28:15

a friend of the unknown. And

28:18

then that brings you to ground in

28:21

the unknown. You hit

28:23

something new. It's surprising you're

28:26

not even fully aware of what

28:29

you've made contact with

28:31

in that unknown. But

28:34

this is the Danti in place at the

28:36

beginning of the Kamediya, where

28:38

Danti says, nel mezod al kameen

28:40

den Ostrovita me retrovai. Nel

28:46

mezod al kameen den Ostrovita

28:48

me retrovai per una selva

28:50

oskura ke la divita via

28:52

adas medita. In the middle

28:55

of the road of my life, of our lives, I

28:57

awoke in a dark wood where

29:00

the true way was wholly lost.

29:03

So this is a coming to ground. Danti

29:06

in his outer life has

29:08

been expelled from his

29:10

home city of Florence. He and his family

29:12

have been thrown out of power. And

29:15

he's told that he can't go home. And if

29:17

he does go home, he'll be put on trial

29:19

and probably executed. So

29:21

for an Italian who's even to

29:24

this day whose

29:26

identity comes from their city that they belong

29:28

to in the area around the city, this

29:30

is like a living death. So

29:33

you can go off and live in exile

29:36

or you can come home in your grief.

29:39

And that's what Danti did at the beginning of the

29:42

Kamediya. He

29:44

wrote those lines, which every

29:46

Italian child now has to

29:48

recite. Nel

29:51

mezzo del Camindo in the middle of the

29:53

road of our lives. You don't know where

29:56

it began. You don't know who's to blame.

29:58

You're just here in this dark. wood.

30:01

But in that dark wood there's

30:03

a narrow place onto which you

30:05

can step and from

30:07

which you can step into your new life.

30:12

And then the next element is following the

30:14

path of vulnerability. And in

30:16

the Dantian story that follows this phenomenon,

30:21

he meets the lion, the leopard and

30:23

the wolf, which

30:25

are representations of his

30:28

own inner

30:30

flaws and difficulties. The

30:33

things you carry with you that sabotage you

30:35

and sabotage other people all the time. And

30:40

so he encounters those in

30:42

that dark place. But

30:44

then following this path

30:46

of vulnerability, and that's what it is,

30:50

he meets the ancient essence

30:53

and representation of Portrait which is

30:55

Virgil. I mean we

30:57

think nothing of Virgil today but in

30:59

Dentist time Virgil was the cat's whiskers.

31:02

He was the foundation of

31:04

all Portrait. And so

31:07

he met the essence of Portrait

31:09

and that's where Virgil invites

31:11

him through that famous doorway which

31:13

says, give up all hope ye

31:15

who enter here. He

31:18

said, will you follow me? And Denti says, yes. So

31:20

this is following the path

31:22

of vulnerability. So

31:26

we tend to think of vulnerability as a weakness

31:29

but it's really interesting to think of

31:31

it as the place where you're open

31:33

to the world where you want to be or not.

31:37

You're just made that way. You

31:39

were made to create sounds true and

31:42

to get the word

31:44

out to people. That's just the way you're made. That's

31:49

your vulnerability. You're vulnerable because you care

31:51

about it. Your

31:54

work makes you vulnerable because

31:56

you care about it. And the only way you can

31:58

stop being vulnerable is to stop caring. And

32:01

many people do that, of course, it's one of our great

32:04

defenses. I'm

32:06

going to stop my dream because

32:08

it's breaking my heart. So

32:11

I'm not, I'm going to stop caring. Yeah. And

32:14

then you create the, you

32:16

create the identity of the cynic, which

32:20

has all the other cynic always has all

32:22

the answers and all the evidence behind them.

32:24

They're very powerful that way. Yes. And

32:27

they've got all the evidence as to why

32:30

you're just going to get your heart broken,

32:32

whatever you do. Yeah. In many ways, it's true.

32:35

You know, there is no, there

32:37

is no sincere path that human being can

32:39

take where you, where we won't have our

32:42

hearts broken. So

32:45

we can only choose to take the path

32:47

that we really care about. So

32:50

that's the path of vulnerability. It's also the path

32:53

of artistry. And

32:56

out of that, we start making

32:58

incredible invitations. So the next element

33:01

is, is making the invitation.

33:05

And you can see how your work,

33:07

for instance, has made invitations to millions

33:10

of people around the planet. And

33:13

you, and I know intimately

33:15

the way writing and lines

33:17

and essays, you know, have gone into

33:19

people's lives. The invitation and

33:21

then that makes an invitation to us in return

33:24

to be,

33:26

to go deeper with what we're doing. You

33:28

know, it's a mutual invitation in a

33:30

way that just deepens in a

33:32

virtuous circle. And then

33:35

the last element is, is

33:37

bringing in the harvest of your life harvest,

33:40

because we can be involved with

33:42

all of these endeavors, you know,

33:44

in such an incredible, incredibly intense

33:47

way that life passes

33:49

us by as we're doing it. You

33:52

somehow are not enjoying

33:54

the full context of what, you're

33:57

not allowing yourself to enjoy what you're doing. So

34:01

the greatest harvest, I think, is

34:03

being happy as

34:06

you go along the way, right from the

34:08

beginning. Yeah. It's a certain

34:10

kind of happiness even in knowing

34:14

you're in the... I mean, if you do know... I

34:17

mean, what's wonderful about knowing this phenomenology

34:19

of how conversation deepens is

34:21

you can recognize where you are. You

34:24

go, oh my God, you know, first of all, and

34:26

then you say, ah, the dark

34:28

wood. I'm

34:31

not supposed to know what's going on

34:33

actually. You know,

34:35

in the dark wood, you're just not meant to know.

34:38

And if you did know something, it would be the wrong thing.

34:41

And if you did find a direction to go, it'd

34:44

be the wrong direction. You're

34:48

just meant to clear the decks. You're

34:50

meant to come to

34:52

ground. And if

34:54

you did know where you're going to go, you'd turn around

34:56

100 miles in the opposite direction

34:59

because you're not psychologically

35:01

ready for it. We

35:04

always hide our future from ourselves

35:07

because that future is always slightly

35:09

terrifying to the person we are

35:11

now. We never think we're big

35:13

enough for it. We

35:15

never think we're equal to it. So

35:19

we have to go to the part of us, the

35:21

deep part of us that actually is already

35:23

equal to it and has been right from the

35:25

moment we were born. You've

35:39

been listening to Insights at the Edge. Empathy

35:42

is not just for highly

35:44

sensitive people or deep healers.

35:47

It's a healing, empowering

35:49

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35:52

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35:54

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35:56

trauma, and to offer love

35:58

and kindness to others. you only

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need. Now available

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36:07

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36:09

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heal your sensitive self, your

36:17

relationship, and the world. You

36:19

can learn more about the genius

36:22

of empathy and order your copy

36:24

at soundstrue.com. And now back

36:26

to Insights at the Edge. One

36:43

question I have, David, is when you talk about giving

36:46

up all hope in order to

36:49

go through that doorway. Why

36:51

do I have to give up all hope? I

36:53

have a piece of me that is hopeful. David

36:57

Yeah, this is a different kind of hope, actually.

37:00

This is really notions, I would

37:02

say. Give up all notions. Yes.

37:05

Of all your ideas

37:07

of what

37:09

it would mean to be, in dentists,

37:12

in dentists, in a case, a good

37:14

poet. So

37:17

give up those fancy ideas. And

37:21

you know, well, the

37:23

incredible thing about the Commedia

37:26

that Dante wrote coming out of

37:28

this exile, was

37:30

that he at a

37:33

time when you in Europe, when

37:35

you only wrote in Latin, so

37:38

that so that every other educated person

37:40

in Europe could read what you'd written,

37:44

he chose his

37:46

local dialect, which

37:48

was Tuscan, Florentine

37:50

Tuscan, which was

37:53

really a very eccentric,

37:57

but also powerfully courageous step

37:59

to take into account. It

38:01

was literally the tongue of

38:03

his mother. It was his mother tongue. It

38:06

was what he heard from his mother and

38:08

from his father and from the landscape.

38:10

Yeah. But he

38:13

wrote so stunningly in

38:15

Tuscan that every

38:17

other inhabitant of the Italian peninsula

38:20

who spoke other dialects started

38:23

to learn Tuscan so that they could

38:25

read Dante. And

38:27

that was how the Italian language came about.

38:36

So that was just an

38:39

incredible invitation to

38:42

the birth of a future nationality

38:46

in a way, an understanding of

38:48

identity. OK,

38:50

so let me ask you this other question

38:52

when you talk about grounding in the unknown.

38:55

And, you know, during this

38:57

time, I think pandemic, post

38:59

pandemic now, there's been

39:02

such a rise. The number

39:04

one key word we find

39:06

that people search often, it

39:08

sounds true, is anxiety and

39:10

anxiety relief. There's such a

39:13

rise in this free

39:15

floating sense of being

39:17

out of control, not knowing what's

39:20

happening on so many different stages

39:22

in the world and being OK, grounded

39:25

at home, rooted

39:28

in the unknown. It seems

39:30

it's harder than ever for

39:32

people. And I wonder if you

39:35

can talk about that, the time we're in and

39:37

that need. Yes. Yeah. And in

39:39

fact, I'm just I'm just

39:41

writing. I've

39:44

written one essay for the new book

39:46

of Consolations on anguish and

39:48

the other one which I just

39:51

in the middle of is anxiety. And

39:55

it has to do with. With.

40:00

is something to

40:02

do with not being fully in

40:06

your body or the real body of the world.

40:10

And part of it is

40:12

the magnification of the peripheral

40:14

mind through our iPhones and

40:16

our gadgets and

40:19

Zoom. You don't get

40:21

the physical proximity, which

40:24

literally grounds you. And

40:27

I've just written an essay on background, the

40:29

way background, you know, one of the phenomena

40:31

that happens in the deepening of attention in

40:33

Zen. And I

40:36

actually should just forget about the word Zen,

40:38

but just the deepening of any form of

40:40

attention is that the background

40:43

starts to become just as important as

40:45

the foreground. And

40:47

background is the is,

40:49

you know, the physical

40:51

background of the world

40:53

is half of the

40:56

necessity of our experience. And

40:59

it's half of the substrate of our belonging.

41:02

So we've co evolved with the color

41:04

blue, for instance, for millions of years,

41:06

so that the color blue in the

41:09

sky is incredibly nourishing

41:11

to us. And

41:13

my grandma used to say there was enough, I'd

41:15

say, how's the sky outside? I'd say,

41:18

there's enough blue to make a

41:20

sailor's bonnet, she'd say, or

41:22

a sailor's shirt. But that

41:24

that was the reference. It was the blue that was

41:26

coming through. We've grown in

41:29

companionship with all the different greens in

41:32

the world, you know, so we've

41:34

grown with the sound of the

41:36

wind. Yeah. So those

41:39

kind of communal canopies beneath

41:41

which we share and experience

41:44

are incredibly powerful. So often we're

41:46

lonely, not only because we're

41:48

physically distant from other people, but we're

41:50

also physically

41:53

distant from

41:56

a real immersion in the

41:58

sky and the rain. know, in the

42:00

moon, the stars, you know,

42:03

the wind, yeah,

42:06

and the actual ground beneath our

42:08

feet. So there's

42:11

a lovely communal experience,

42:15

for instance, you know, in living in a

42:17

village where you say hello

42:19

to 20 people in the

42:21

day, who you only half know, really. You

42:25

get to know a little bit more and

42:27

more as you live longer and longer. But

42:29

those things, research shows that those half acquaintances

42:32

are incredibly important in your

42:34

everyday happiness. If you're in

42:36

a pub in the west of Ireland, and you're,

42:38

you're foot tapping away to a great music session

42:40

with a, with a, with

42:42

a pub full of fellow strangers

42:44

who are fellow listeners, there's a

42:47

community there, which is

42:49

incredibly nourishing. So

42:52

part of it, I think, and it was

42:54

certainly exacerbated, as we know, by, by

42:57

the lockdown, the worldwide lockdown,

42:59

this distancing,

43:02

literal distancing that occurred, which

43:04

magnified everything on top of

43:07

everything else. So

43:09

we didn't quite realize

43:12

how much, how wonderful

43:14

it was just to hang around other people,

43:16

you know, and how

43:18

much we're actually breathing other people's air,

43:22

which for those years was a

43:24

fearful thing, but it's actually a necessary

43:27

thing in the long evolution of human

43:29

beings to be snagged together,

43:31

breathing each other's air that's part of it.

43:34

So I do think it's this abstraction

43:36

from, from

43:38

physicality, and therefore the care

43:41

of physicality. We all know

43:43

the way we are when we're in a car,

43:45

you know, and someone cuts us off slightly. You,

43:49

you, you, you say things you would never

43:51

say if you were just walking down the

43:53

street with that person, because you have this,

43:56

this barrier between your him. So

43:59

that dynamic, dynamic is certainly magnified

44:01

by the internet where people are their

44:03

worst selves quite often when they're anonymous

44:06

and they're distant and they can get away with it. So

44:11

I think all of those things

44:13

together make us very anxious. So

44:16

that's a very powerful

44:18

representation of stopping the conversation

44:20

just to go for a

44:26

walk without your phone. For

44:29

a minute it's radical for some people and for many

44:31

people they feel as if a

44:33

limb is actually missing from them. I

44:36

felt it at times. I have

44:38

my phone with me because I write in it

44:40

too but there are always messages and things. But

44:43

you sometimes feel as if a limb is actually

44:46

missing when you go without your phone. But

44:50

actually once you get through

44:52

that you find you've got

44:55

another conversation

44:57

knocking on your door. It's

45:00

not the messages in your

45:02

Gmail or your iMessage.

45:06

It's another message from deeper inside you

45:08

and from out over the horizon in the

45:11

world. So David I'm going

45:13

to get slightly confessional.

45:16

I think this is a form

45:18

of inhabiting robust vulnerability. I hope

45:20

so. You use that term robust

45:23

vulnerability. You can explain what you

45:25

mean by it before I go on. Well

45:29

there's a way of, I mean one

45:31

form of robust vulnerability is having a sense of

45:33

humor about yourself. So

45:36

you have a flaw you're working with and you're

45:38

so proud of yourself about the way you are

45:41

with that and then suddenly you find yourself in

45:44

the limelight demonstrating

45:47

that flaw to a large room. If

45:49

you're present enough you can laugh with

45:51

everyone else and you say oh my

45:53

god there I go again. And

45:58

it's both an acknowledgement. but

46:01

also it's part of your practice. You

46:04

won't do it as easily the next time. So

46:07

that's one form of robust vulnerability.

46:10

And what's robust

46:12

about a sense of humor is that

46:15

a sense of humor is

46:17

a kind of spiritual practice in a way

46:19

because a sense of humor

46:21

always tells you that whatever context

46:24

you have arranged for yourself,

46:27

there is always another context

46:29

that makes your context absurd.

46:33

And in Ireland, this dynamic is the

46:35

basis of all conversation in a way.

46:39

You try to bring that absurdity, the

46:42

absurdity of what you've just said, or everyone

46:44

around you will try to bring it to

46:47

its full consummation, you know, within a few

46:49

minutes, then it will move on to the

46:51

next subject.

46:55

So yes, robust vulnerability takes a

46:57

lot of... And

46:59

then, you know, in the

47:05

deeper vulnerabilities of writing, quite

47:09

often in

47:11

the early stages, you break into tears as

47:13

you're writing. And

47:18

actually that's a really good sign because

47:21

it's the sign that you've

47:23

broken through an edge. Whatever

47:26

emotional container you had, it could only

47:28

contain so much and you've just overflowed,

47:31

over flown it.

47:33

Yeah. You're

47:35

now pouring into the next, the

47:39

next territory of your life. The

47:41

river is running on. So

47:43

that's another lovely... And

47:45

we've had that breakdown, you know, when

47:47

you have a marital argument or a

47:49

relationship and you end up in tears

47:51

in it, it's usually it's a good

47:53

sign. If you can stay in that and not

47:55

see it as a weakness, you know, feel

47:59

it more fully in your body. body, you

48:01

can practice robust vulnerability, so you stop

48:03

seeing it as a weakness. And

48:06

then it becomes a kind of alertness. So

48:09

you're in a meeting room, someone attacks you. Previously

48:12

a few years ago, you would have curled up

48:14

into a ball, you felt vulnerable, yeah.

48:18

But you got used to, oh right,

48:20

he's going for that part of me. I

48:23

used to go for that part of me myself

48:25

too, so I know

48:27

how to deal with that. So you

48:30

have a, the vulnerability is still there,

48:32

but you have a much larger identity

48:35

around it. We're trying

48:37

to make ourselves

48:39

bigger than the actual

48:42

impact itself. Well,

48:44

I do think that what I wanted to

48:46

share did have this quality of tears and

48:48

the river banks

48:51

breaking. And just briefly, it

48:53

has to do with the impact of your work,

48:55

which is about 25 years ago, I

48:58

was recording you, maybe 30 years ago, David,

49:00

it was so long. I mean, here

49:02

you are approaching 70 now, I'm

49:05

over 60, we're going way back

49:07

here. And here I

49:10

am at some event someplace with my

49:12

headphones on sitting in the corner, crying,

49:14

crying, crying over the course of two

49:16

days, because in listening to you, I

49:19

realized I had to let something

49:21

very important in my life go

49:24

that related to the way I had

49:26

built sounds true to that point in

49:28

time. And I made the decision right

49:30

there during the recording. And

49:32

that's the way I felt listening now to

49:35

what to remember when waking to that there's

49:37

this something I need to let go of

49:39

that I and it was, it was there,

49:41

I could see it, but

49:43

I didn't really want to admit it.

49:45

And so I wonder if you could

49:48

speak to that directly. And maybe you

49:50

even have a poem, I bet about

49:52

this phenomenon of knowing that it's time

49:55

to let something go so that

49:57

the new can come. Yeah.

50:00

I mean, isn't that life itself? I

50:04

do think life is this

50:07

constant invitation to a radical form

50:09

of simplification of

50:11

giving away peripheral complications to get down

50:13

to the essence of it, and carry

50:16

that essence into the world and to

50:18

other people. So

50:23

there's always something to be given away. We're

50:31

seasonal creatures, so we take on the

50:33

mantle of a certain season. I

50:35

mean, spring is occurring now in the

50:37

West and the Pacific Northwest, as you

50:39

know, where you are in Vancouver. And

50:43

so we're all excited, you know, and we're

50:45

spring people suddenly, you know. But

50:48

the season moves on, and

50:50

suddenly it's high summer, you know.

50:53

And then you move into that, and the

50:55

most difficult ones are actually moving out of

50:57

summer into fall. Fall is actually quite attractive,

50:59

but the winter, you know, letting

51:03

go of your previous joyous

51:07

summer identity when

51:09

you're actually being invited into a

51:11

winter. Because of

51:13

circumstances, because of difficulties, because of

51:15

losing people, because of

51:17

worlds circumstances, because of political circumstances,

51:19

you know, whatever it is. You

51:23

suddenly find that you've

51:27

refused to move on, and you've refused

51:29

to move with the season, and

51:32

so there's that giving away. This

51:35

is a piece I wrote, actually, a springtime

51:37

poem. I was written in this

51:40

very desk where I'm sitting right in front of

51:42

me are two French doors, actually, and it was

51:44

Easter. And I had the

51:46

French door open, and

51:50

I heard the red-winged blackbird singing. And

51:52

in this part of the world, the

51:54

red-winged blackbird is a migratory bird. It

51:57

comes at springtime, and it has

51:59

a beautiful song. and when you hear the

52:01

song of the Red-winged Blackbird, you are

52:03

hearing the essence of springtime. You say,

52:05

ah, it's here, yeah. And

52:08

I heard my first Red-winged Blackbird

52:10

just left week, actually. But

52:14

there's this old Irish meme,

52:16

this old Irish coin, actually, of

52:20

a monk standing at the edge of

52:22

the monastic precinct, and

52:25

he hears the bell calling him to

52:27

prayer, and he says,

52:30

that is the most beautiful sound in the

52:32

world, the invitation to

52:34

depth, to silence, to interiority.

52:38

But at the same moment that he hears the bell, he

52:40

hears the Blackbird over

52:43

the monastic wall, and he says,

52:46

and that's also the most beautiful sound

52:48

in the world. And

52:50

the interesting thing about the Irish coin,

52:52

the Irish meme is, you're

52:55

not told which way he goes. That's

52:58

it. That's all you get. Well,

53:01

I was sat here, the French doors were open, I

53:03

hear the Red-winged Blackbird. At that

53:05

moment, through that door behind me, my

53:07

wife comes with two Tibetan bells, and

53:10

she hits them together. And

53:12

you know, half the time when you hit Tibetan bells together,

53:14

you don't hit it right, and you get this awful

53:17

judgery sound, but she hit it

53:20

perfectly. The sound went

53:22

straight through me. The

53:25

sound of the Blackbird went right through me. And

53:28

at the same time, I found

53:30

a ground in this

53:33

coin, you know, this Irish meme

53:35

that I'd puzzled over

53:37

for years. And I

53:39

had to put my hand behind me and

53:41

say, I'm writing, I can't talk

53:43

to you. And I wrote this piece

53:45

in one go, it's called The Bell and the Blackbird.

53:49

It's about letting go too, in

53:51

order to be present in the moment. The

53:54

sound of a bell, still

53:57

reverberating, the sound of a bell still

53:59

reverberating. reverberating,

54:01

or a blackbird calling from a corner of

54:04

the field, asking you to wake

54:06

into this life, or inviting you

54:09

deeper into the one that waits.

54:12

The sound of a bell

54:15

still reverberating or a blackbird calling from

54:17

a corner of the field, asking

54:19

you to wake into this life, or

54:22

inviting you deeper into the one that

54:24

waits. Either way

54:26

takes courage. Either

54:29

way wants you to become nothing but

54:31

that self that is no self at

54:33

all, wants you to walk to the

54:36

place where you find you

54:38

already know you will have

54:40

to give every last thing away.

54:44

The approach that is

54:46

also the meeting itself without

54:48

any meeting at all. That

54:52

radiance you have always carried

54:54

with you as you walk

54:56

both alone and completely

54:59

accompanied in friendship by

55:02

every corner of creation

55:04

crying hallelujah. The

55:14

sound of a bell still reverberating

55:16

or a blackbird, a blackbird calling from

55:19

a corner of the field, asking

55:21

you to wake into this life, asking

55:24

you to wake into this

55:26

life, or inviting you

55:28

deeper into the one that waits. Either

55:32

way takes courage. Either

55:35

way wants you to become nothing

55:38

but that self that is no

55:40

self at all, wants you

55:42

to walk to the place where you find

55:44

you actually already know you

55:47

will have to give every last

55:49

thing away. The

55:52

approach that is also

55:54

the meeting itself without

55:56

any meeting at all. That is the

55:59

way. radiance you have always

56:01

carried with you as you

56:03

walk both alone and completely

56:06

accompanied in friendship by

56:09

every corner of the world

56:11

every corner of the world

56:13

crying hallelujah what

56:16

a gorgeous phone the bell

56:20

and blackbird I wrote

56:24

down a quote from you that

56:26

there are times when you feel

56:29

abducted by a poem

56:32

what does that mean when you're

56:34

writing when you feel abducted

56:36

well you know one of the great opening

56:40

moments in my childhood towards poetry I

56:42

mean I'd always been drawn to poetry

56:44

because my mother was a natural being

56:47

Irish she had lots of poems

56:50

memorized and

56:53

Irish and English actually and

56:56

so I grew up with it and I always thought it was

56:58

just a natural way of being in the world but

57:01

when I was 12 or 13 I

57:05

was in my local library in the little town

57:07

of Murphy old in West Yorkshire and I

57:10

the portrait was on the top shelf and I

57:12

could barely reach it you know but I

57:14

reached up at Tiptoe and I got my fingers around

57:16

this little volume and I pulled it off and it

57:18

fell down into my hands and

57:21

it was a joint volume

57:24

by Ted Hughes and oh who was

57:27

the other part I've

57:30

just forgotten his name but

57:32

I opened it and it was really

57:34

my first book of adult poetry I'd

57:37

read Walter de la Mer and Robert

57:39

Browning's poems for young

57:42

people and this was my really

57:44

and I started reading it

57:47

and I literally felt like

57:49

a passing hawk had come down put his claws

57:51

in me and carried me off

57:53

into the sky that

57:55

was the physical experience of

57:57

reading that poetry by Ted Hughes

58:00

Tom Gunn was the other fellow, Ted Hughes

58:02

and Tom Gunn. And

58:08

that sense of being abducted out

58:10

of your present identity, stolen

58:13

away, I

58:16

think is necessary for all human

58:19

beings. You need some place,

58:21

it could be music, it could be dance, you

58:23

know, where you get stolen by the other world.

58:30

You become a changeling child in a

58:32

way. And that

58:35

possibility is there at all ages, not just

58:37

when you're 12 or 13. I

58:41

always think there's a particular

58:44

species of youthfulness

58:47

which is germane to every epoch

58:49

of our life. So

58:52

there's a certain youthfulness

58:54

you can have probably

58:56

in your 90s, which

58:59

is not possible for someone

59:01

in their 20s. It's

59:05

not possible. What would you say

59:07

is the youthfulness now that you're

59:11

inviting in conversation with as you approach

59:13

70? Yeah,

59:16

I rarely work in numbers, so it's

59:18

quite sobering when you say that. My

59:22

self-image is not of someone who's approaching

59:24

70. But I've

59:27

had one

59:29

of increasing freedom actually

59:32

around the essence of my work

59:34

and giving that essence. I

59:37

had an experience in Copenhagen a

59:40

couple of years ago of after

59:44

a series of intense days

59:48

walking in this beautiful rain-filled

59:54

street full

59:56

of puddles where the storm had passed and

59:58

the sun came out. out and was reflecting

1:00:00

and all. And I

1:00:03

suddenly asked myself the

1:00:05

beautiful question, what if you've done your work,

1:00:07

David? What if

1:00:11

you've done what you needed to do actually on the

1:00:13

planet? And

1:00:15

the ancient intuition behind that

1:00:18

is, of course, is

1:00:20

that if you've done your work, then you're on your

1:00:22

way out, you're not long for this world.

1:00:24

That's the ancient intuition that human beings

1:00:26

have if their work is done there.

1:00:29

So I allowed myself to actually feel

1:00:32

that fully. And,

1:00:35

and I said, Well, what if you

1:00:37

have actually not

1:00:39

only done your work, but what if you've already died?

1:00:41

And I

1:00:44

had this incredibly very physical, very real

1:00:46

experience of having come back into my

1:00:49

body and my life and everything else being a

1:00:51

bonus. So

1:00:55

I was suddenly able to let go of

1:00:57

so many things I had been holding on

1:00:59

to, you know, part of, you know, steering

1:01:01

a course and keeping your integrity

1:01:03

as a part and making sure it finds

1:01:06

all the right ways in the world, you know,

1:01:08

that you can get over controlling at times as

1:01:10

an as an individual artist. And

1:01:13

I was suddenly able to everything now unifying

1:01:15

in the meeting with my, my

1:01:18

wonderful people in many rivers, you know, I

1:01:21

feel as if Oh, yeah, I get the

1:01:23

privilege of coming back, they'd be making these

1:01:25

decisions anyway, without me. So

1:01:28

I actually get to spin the wheel

1:01:31

and actually influence it. Yeah, I'm just privileged,

1:01:33

but I can let everything go with

1:01:36

a much larger freedom. So I've had that

1:01:38

experience almost on there. And if I feel

1:01:40

far away from myself, I will get back

1:01:42

into that body again, of of

1:01:45

having died. And, and

1:01:47

then I feel fully and

1:01:50

completely here. So it's, that's,

1:01:52

that's the robust

1:01:54

vulnerability and this kind of innocence. And I

1:01:57

mean, William Blake, so

1:01:59

innocence, no, not as something that would

1:02:01

be replaced by experience, innocence is your

1:02:03

ability to be found by the world

1:02:06

in increasingly larger and larger ways. That's

1:02:09

my definition of what Blake was

1:02:12

saying anyway. So I

1:02:14

feel that, I feel, yeah. What

1:02:17

you're just describing leads beautifully

1:02:19

to the last question I wanted to ask

1:02:21

you, this phrase that I pulled out, apprenticing

1:02:24

ourselves to our own

1:02:27

disappearance. It sounds

1:02:29

like you're deeply, you're

1:02:31

doing a terrific job of being

1:02:34

an apprentice. Yeah,

1:02:37

exactly, yeah. I mean, we all are disappearing

1:02:39

in one way or another. Even when you're

1:02:41

on the up and up and things seem

1:02:43

to be, there's a part of you actually,

1:02:46

because of that success

1:02:48

is actually having to disappear. So

1:02:51

just to stay aware of that, that's what's going

1:02:54

to keep you real, that's what's going to keep

1:02:56

you compassionate, that's going

1:02:58

to make you the invitational, yeah.

1:03:01

That's what's going to make you, make

1:03:04

other people want to be around you, that's

1:03:08

what's going to make you generous. Can

1:03:11

you just say more about that? Because I could

1:03:13

see someone on the up and up saying, what

1:03:15

do you mean? I'm not apprenticing to my own

1:03:17

disappearance. I'm right in the midst of making my

1:03:19

mark. That's

1:03:22

right, but there's also part of them,

1:03:25

which is having to, is not

1:03:27

facing up to the consequences of

1:03:31

their success and their responsibility and

1:03:34

everything they're neglecting at the same time while that's

1:03:36

going through. And it's a necessary part of our

1:03:39

youthful lives. And

1:03:45

so I always

1:03:48

think that we don't need to

1:03:53

be lecturing people about this all the

1:03:55

time, because life will take care of

1:03:57

humiliating you into your maturity.

1:04:00

Yeah, of course, you can choose

1:04:02

not to take the lesson

1:04:04

and become this narrow resentful

1:04:07

complaining person. But

1:04:12

but if we're paying attention, then then

1:04:15

the natural humiliations of life will

1:04:17

take care of our arrogance. Can

1:04:22

we end David on some poetic

1:04:25

note about our disappearance? All

1:04:30

right, poetic note about our disappearance.

1:04:34

What about this is a

1:04:37

poem called Santiago Santiago

1:04:39

and it's it's the

1:04:41

end of a pilgrim cycle that's with the

1:04:44

theme of the Camino de

1:04:46

Santiago de Compostela, which so many people

1:04:48

are familiar with this 500 mile walk

1:04:50

across northern Spain, used to

1:04:52

be a Catholic privilege pilgrim

1:04:55

pilgrimage. It's now a now

1:04:58

a worldwide ecumenical pilgrimage,

1:05:01

including people who don't believe anything at all

1:05:03

in the sense of of

1:05:05

finding something at the end of the road that's

1:05:09

going to change you and the intuition

1:05:11

that you're actually going to be changed

1:05:13

as you go along. So this is

1:05:16

this is about that supposed arrival at the

1:05:18

end of our lives. Santiago

1:05:22

the road scene, then not

1:05:24

seen the road

1:05:26

scene, then not seen the

1:05:29

hillside hiding, then revealing

1:05:31

the way you should take the

1:05:33

road scene and not seen the

1:05:36

hillside hiding and revealing the way you should

1:05:39

take the road dropping away from

1:05:41

you as if leaving you

1:05:43

to walk on thin air,

1:05:46

then catching you holding you up when

1:05:49

you thought you would fall and

1:05:51

the way forward, the way forward,

1:05:53

always in the end, just

1:05:56

the way that you came, the

1:05:58

way forward, always the end. always in

1:06:00

the end, the way

1:06:02

that you came, the way that you followed, the

1:06:04

way that carried you into your future, that brought

1:06:06

you to this place, no

1:06:09

matter that it sometimes had to take your

1:06:11

promise from you, no

1:06:13

matter that it always had to

1:06:15

break your heart along the way. The

1:06:18

sense of having walked from

1:06:20

deep inside yourself out

1:06:22

into the revelation, the sense

1:06:25

of having walked from deep

1:06:27

inside yourself out into the revelation, to

1:06:29

have risked yourself for something that seemed

1:06:31

to stand both inside you

1:06:33

and far beyond you, and that called

1:06:36

you back in the end to the only

1:06:38

road you could follow, walking as

1:06:40

you did in your rags

1:06:43

of love, walking as you did in

1:06:46

your rags of love, and speaking in

1:06:48

the voice that by night became a

1:06:50

prayer for safe arrival. So

1:06:52

that one day you realized that what you

1:06:55

wanted had already happened and

1:06:57

long ago, and in the dwelling

1:06:59

place in which you lived before

1:07:01

you began, and that every

1:07:03

step along the way you

1:07:05

had carried the heart and the mind and

1:07:08

the promise that first set you

1:07:10

off and then drew you on, and that and

1:07:12

that you were more marvelous

1:07:15

in your simple wish to

1:07:17

find a way than the

1:07:19

gilded roofs of any destination you could reach.

1:07:21

You were more marvelous in your simple wish

1:07:24

to find a way. You

1:07:26

were more marvelous in

1:07:28

that simple wish to find a

1:07:30

way than the gilded roofs of

1:07:32

any destination you could reach. As

1:07:35

if all along you thought the endpoint might be

1:07:37

a city with golden domes and cheering crowds and

1:07:39

turning the corner at what you thought was the

1:07:41

end of the road, you

1:07:43

found just a simple reflection

1:07:47

and a clear revelation beneath the face looking

1:07:49

back, and beneath that another

1:07:52

invitation, all

1:07:55

in one glimpse, like

1:07:57

a person or a place you

1:07:59

had sought for. forever, like a

1:08:01

bold field of freedom that beckoned you

1:08:03

beyond, like another life, like

1:08:06

another life, and the road, the

1:08:09

road still stretching

1:08:11

on. Santiago.

1:08:19

Thank you, David, for your deep generosity

1:08:21

and being a guest here. Well,

1:08:24

thank you, Tammy, for your lovely invitational

1:08:27

interview. And if you'd

1:08:29

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1:08:31

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