00:00:20.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:22.000Today I'm talking to Greg Pye and Vernon Lynch.
00:00:25.000They wrote the book Voice of the Heart.
00:00:28.000It's a pretty brilliant personal and social message for how to incorporate the Christian principles in a modern way.
00:00:36.000Sometimes I myself, as a new Christian, feel that a lot of the language that's churchy is a bit laboured and even ecclesiastically accurate language can seem off putting, like that sentence I just said then.
00:00:47.000Sometimes I wish Jesus Christ could be called by another name.
00:01:05.000Like me, you both believe that modern life has somehow captured our nature, prevents us from accessing the source of grace and power to which we are all.
00:01:23.000I mean, obviously, it's a pretty broad and general area, but you guys have generated a lot of content, literary and online, describing the need for Christian values as the center for our spiritual and social lives.
00:01:41.000But let's start with an area that I feel pretty somewhat at least competent in discussing and experienced in the fallenness of this world.
00:01:53.000Even prior to my recent conversion, which incidentally I consider to be a return to my original nature rather than any kind of conversion in the sort of true sense of that word, prior to that I knew that there was something not right about the world.0.55
00:02:12.000I recognized the kind of corruption and the hypocrisy, but most of my takes and my position on it was sort of informed by what I would call the counterculture.
00:02:24.000By that I mean it could be as Broad as the 1960s in your country, great civil rights leaders, but also entertainers, figures that came out of socialism, figures that came out of the independence wars for former British colonies.
00:02:42.000I mean, more like Gandhi, really, and maybe Stephen Beko, and like sort of civil rights leaders, like from, as I say, former British colonial census.
00:02:52.000But I didn't, even though I recognise that you can't have values without.
00:03:01.000I actually saw Christianity really as one of the tenets and pillars of the kind of establishment conformity that I was railing against.
00:03:10.000You guys seem to have a similar diagnosis when it comes to the problem, but of course, your solution is the only solution that I would agree now that is available salvation through Christ.
00:03:24.000But can you talk to us, maybe, I don't know, Greg, your name's first on the list.
00:03:30.000Will you talk to us first of all about how, what your diagnosis is when it comes to this war on humanity and what Voice of the Heart is for?
00:03:47.000And how, you say here that you work across secular and Christian audiences.
00:03:52.000And that's, yeah, that's something I'd like to sort of break down a little bit.
00:04:02.000So the opening line in the book is when the snake moved into the garden, there went the neighborhood.
00:04:09.000It's a categorical and a universal statement.
00:04:13.000I mean, one would, if we're Christian, we would say, oh, that's biblical.
00:04:18.000But the second line of the book is we sense the slither, but we never really see the snake.
00:04:25.000And so the point being is that there is a common denominator of disruption to the cycle of humanity's purpose and fulfillment that I saw through a moment in time in Africa, taking a picture of a tree called the Tree of Light, which spoke to me.
00:04:47.000After having an illustrious life of different experiences, I mean, I came from poverty and then had my own wealth and I had many different extraordinary opportunities, but never found joy and peace and happiness.
00:05:02.000And when I got to that breaking point, of course, for me, which I always believe is a personal journey, I found it through giving my life to the Lord.
00:05:11.000In fact, my wife and I together at 9 16 a.m., February 12, 2012, at the very same exact moment.
00:05:19.000And from there, The tree of light presented itself in a photographic opportunity that spoke to me about disruption of humanity's cycle of purpose and fulfillment, a universal idea, by the way.
00:05:32.000We, like you just said, Russell, we experienced this disruption, sort of even absent from knowing that salvation is available to us.
00:05:41.000I started to get a vision of the world that it was like this crime scene tape was wrapped around it, and that there was no place to hide because the enemy, and we'll talk about who that might be.
00:05:57.000And this led to the masterwork, The Voice of the Heart, a 500 page document.
00:06:04.000But it's really a framework for a movement that is both individual in nature as well as for humanity as a whole.
00:06:13.000Well, that's, Vernon, do you want to add to that?
00:06:16.000And Vernon, perhaps you could take up what, like, how there's a, he says here, a framework that works across secular and Christian audiences.
00:06:28.000Secularism is the kind of neutrality that St. John of the Cross would warn us against.
00:06:35.000That the minute you have a world set apart from God, the sort of literal definition of secular, I suppose, you have a territory for that serpent to thrive in.
00:06:47.000So, what do you mean by secular audiences and reaching secular audiences?
00:06:58.000Well, the voice of the heart is designed, well, it was.
00:07:03.000Divinely given and inspired, and was given to Greg.
00:07:07.000And he wrote what God instructed him to write.
00:07:11.000But what he was blessed with was something that not only a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu could appreciate.
00:07:23.000It's like even the person that is not a believer at all, the atheist, could still take the information in this book and be enlightened.
00:07:35.000Once we get to When we start to deal with various forms of religion and sects, we start getting the world starts to get very, very crowded.
00:07:56.000And the world needs something that's universal.
00:07:59.000And as you know, Russell, the gospel is universal.
00:08:04.000When it comes to diversity, that's not something that.
00:08:10.000That God intended to have at play when it comes to worship of Him, because He is one.
00:08:19.000He is one holy, omniscient, omnipresent God.
00:08:23.000And the gospel itself is designed for everyone.
00:08:28.000And so, Greg's book, Voice of the Heart, is also designed for everyone.
00:08:32.000It's actually the enlightening road to restoration of life and liberty, you know, so that.
00:08:42.000We can get over this hump and regain some liberty and some freedom that has been stolen from us by the enemy.
00:08:55.000See, no one ever discusses, everyone argues about the existence of God and all the different versions and the ways to get to Him, but no one ever discusses the enemy of God, which is Satan.
00:09:09.000And once that is identified, which Greg has done in this book, Through his identifying the 12 systems that the enemy works within to rob, steal, and destroy, kill, steal, and destroy, you have a fighting chance.
00:09:30.000So once we identify the enemy and that his job is to pervert everything that is meant for good, then you have a fighting chance and you get the opportunity to get out of the matrix, so to speak, and see what truth really is.
00:09:47.000And to have an abundant life like God wants us to have.
00:09:52.000But we need a roadmap because the enemy has done a bang up job.
00:09:55.000So, Voice of the Heart is definitely that roadmap to enlightenment.
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00:11:03.000Will you tell me now, then, Greg, as you mentioned prior, what do you mean by the enemy?
00:11:10.000And what are these 12 systems that the enemy will use?
00:11:17.000So, you know, when I became a Christian, I then, not too long after, became sort of a counter Christian because the wisdom that I had from, I guess, you know, that God was preparing me to use pattern recognition and just seeing things, you know, having had an isolated childhood, you're kind of separated from the world.
00:11:40.000That might sound like a terrible thing, and it is, but it also keeps you away from the world and the influences of the world.
00:11:45.000And so I was looking at Christianity and I was saying, I'm a Christian now, but I'm not like these people in the room, I'm not like these people in the church.
00:12:01.000I mean, within six, nine months after becoming a Christian, we found ourselves in Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, using my business skills with businesses' missions to help missionaries bring the gospel into those parts of the world.
00:12:17.000And I saw things wrong with that process because I saw that even though the missionaries were well intended and they were risking their lives, I saw them kind of going in, like in the back door, and hiding their faith.
00:12:30.000And I said, you know, That can't be the way it works because the only way our faith is ever shared is by expressing it by who we are, not by telling somebody.
00:12:41.000And so the voice of the heart was written on that foundation.
00:12:45.000That is a book that finds the common denominator, which is the revelation of an enemy against humanity.
00:12:52.000Now, to go right to your question, Russell, who is that enemy?
00:12:56.000So when I came to this conclusion that we're at war, an invisible war, I realized the first thing I had to do was I had to let people know there's an invisible war.
00:13:06.000The only way I could do this is to tell them who was in the war, who was fighting.
00:13:10.000So that's where the voices came from the voice of the world and the voice of the heart.
00:13:14.000Now, here's what's interesting the voice of the world is obvious.
00:13:18.000Now, people say you're hearing voices.
00:13:19.000Maybe you need to go see a psychiatrist.
00:13:20.000But the truth of the matter is, we have conscious, subconscious.
00:14:01.000You ever at a club and you have a group of people you're talking to, and all of a sudden you lower your voice, they lean into you physically.
00:14:07.000So, there's nothing that extraordinary about that.
00:14:12.000But here's the other phenomenon the people around the group who were never in the conversation, they too start leaning in to see why other people are leaning in.
00:14:22.000And that is the power and the energy of silence when God's voice can be heard, which is the only time we can hear it.
00:15:29.000I'm thinking about my addictions and like that.
00:15:36.000My first, the addiction always had this sort of pattern of solitude.
00:15:44.000I was, even though I took a lot of drugs, and people think of that as being sort of hedonic and decadent, sort of celebration enhancing outward and ecstatic.
00:16:26.000And before the drugs, bulimia, you know, I used to make myself puke in toilets and stuff.
00:16:33.000And then before I go on stage, generally, I'm realizing how sacred my life has always been.
00:16:42.000Like the sacred has always been present, even prior to the understanding of the sacred, that I was trying to improvise a kind of holiest of holies, an inner sanctum.
00:16:56.000I was trying to create a space for kind of deep intimacy with God.
00:17:51.000I am, That there is this sort of cathartic, purified version of self before it acquires the voices, which are vibrations, the disruptions.
00:18:07.000Frequencies that you may accrue, acquire, and bond with, particularly if you enter into the culture.
00:18:15.000And I mean culture both in terms of, you know, human culture as well as like a culture of bacteria self propagating glomdon.
00:18:23.000And when you described the 12 systems of the enemy there, I think a lot of parasites.
00:18:30.000I think of like how parasites in the gut and in the body create their own ecosystems and they rob and they're invisible and they contribute nothing, that they are death, they are decay.0.94
00:18:41.000The murderer, the father of lies, the serpent.
00:18:44.000From the beginning, he is the introduction, he introduces death to our kind.
00:18:51.000So there is, as you said yourself, it's a system for the individual, voice of the heart is, and a system for the whole.0.77
00:18:59.000Of course, I mean, in a sense, that's a very, they would call it, what's that word?
00:19:07.000It's an alchemic principle, as above, so below, in the individual, in the whole.
00:19:15.000The incarnation must have a fractal dimension to bring it into flesh, to bring it into flesh to show this is what it is to do it as a person.
00:19:49.000If you're stuck at the bottom of a stuck Ferris wheel, you can never ride that again until the people at the top are brought safely down.
00:19:59.000The idea is that the enemy has convinced us that we need to be divided in so many ways, and that individualism, which ironically, while they're preaching individualism, they're actually aggregating us through the data and technology fusion.
00:20:28.000We were designed to be one creation to worship the Father, not separate ones.
00:20:34.000Like a choir is one, it's one choir, but it's seven billion people.
00:20:40.000So the concept of selfless help says self help doesn't work and self sacrifice doesn't work because that leaves you available for no one, including yourself.
00:20:51.000But the yoking, And again, how the enemy works with the English language and others, yoking of our helpfulness is exactly how we were designed.
00:21:02.000If we think of the yoke as bondage, then yeah, well, who would want that?
00:21:08.000But a yoke allows us to pull something we otherwise couldn't alone, together, in harmony.
00:21:16.000So, you know, I have another quote in the book.
00:21:20.000It says, you know, even the most greatest hearts of ours.
00:21:36.000But the nuance of the enemy is where we need to understand how he operates the infiltration and the nuance.
00:21:43.000So, for example, you get on an airplane, they tell you when the mask drops down, put it on your face first and then put it on people next to you.
00:22:07.000And that connectivity is a nuclear weapon against the enemy coming together.
00:22:16.000So when we can coagulate around the idea that there's an invisible war, and again, an atheist is not going to disagree that the media is manipulated.
00:22:25.000They're not going to disagree that there's something deeply wrong with society.
00:22:29.000They're not going to disagree that even religion.
00:22:31.000Has been hijacked, you're going to find a lot of commonality.
00:22:35.000So, the invisible war, who is the war against?
00:23:33.000So, understanding his pervasiveness, understanding That if we call him Satan, we're going to eliminate half the population who do not know the name of Satan, but they know the weight of the enemy's devices.
00:24:03.000But he doesn't, that diffuses his interest in going and finding out what about his entire life, what I call the soil, where the roots take.
00:24:13.000What about his entire life actually led him to even work for somebody like that or stay?
00:24:17.000With somebody like that, like in a relationship that's abusive, perhaps.
00:24:22.000So when we name the enemy, we limit the enemy.
00:24:27.000I also consider that the neutrality to which St. John of the Cross refers is this kind of terrain, a field that can bear a charge, that can bear a charge, that can withstand various timbres, tones, qualities of energy.
00:24:48.000This moment in the Garden that exists somewhere between a dream and a reality, difficult to detect and define with a merely human mind, symbolizes as well as realizes the decision to move.
00:25:05.000I understand and agree with what you have said, Greg, a kind of self deification that self, that to want an independent self separate from dependency on God, to want to be a branch not connected to the vine, to want to be your own source is impossible.
00:25:23.000You will worship something because you are made for worship.
00:25:26.000And the skill of the deceiver is to redirect that worship towards him via the claim that you will get additional freedom, that you are already in a state of deception.
00:25:43.000And I suppose that my, you know, the reason I'll tell you why it's good.
00:25:48.000I don't know if either of you have had any experience with chemical dependency.
00:25:53.000But the reason that chemical dependency is a very good way into a life with God is you have lived a metaphor.
00:26:01.000You are dependent on, let's say, for example, alcohol.
00:26:04.000If you're dependent on alcohol and the alcohol is making your life worse and worse and worse, when you work a 12 step program, people will say, firstly, you have to admit that you're drinking this alcohol is a problem and it's making your life worse.
00:27:31.000And that prayer is so sort of explicitly, clearly about you've become glommed on, alloyed to a false identity of which alcohol is merely an observable practice and avatar.
00:27:48.000It's also helpful in that once you come off the alcohol, you'll be confronted with probably a spiritual void, a sense of lack, loss, hopelessness, despair.
00:28:05.000Diagnosis of one of the people who went on to influence the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous observed there have been rare cases in history where people of your hopeless disposition have changed as a result of a profound spiritual experience and the ongoing support of a community.
00:28:24.000Now, like this being Jung and this being, you know, I guess, well, the 1920s, I'm thinking also his use of the word history.
00:28:33.000He's talking about, I feel like he's talking about saints, and I think he might be talking particularly about Augustine.
00:28:46.000But anyway, but my point is that, like, because of, like, like I said to you a minute ago, that because I had those experiences of trying to find God in a very deliberate way, and because, like, because my appetite is strong quickly, oh, you can't do, you can't drink and take drugs.
00:29:08.000You know, not in the way that you are.
00:29:10.000And you can't pursue fame, and you can't, until in the end, it's like, ch It's just like gradually, like layer after layer of false God having to be shed like a serpent's skin, actually, till in the end, you know, through desperation and a total lack of viable alternatives, God.
00:29:30.000So I've had both this educational variety of spiritual experience over a 23 and a half year period of like, you know, getting off drugs, learning about mysticism in a variety of ways, and then this sudden.
00:29:44.000Theophany, where in an instant, it's weird because I try and describe it to people, but I can't describe it because it's not rational.0.73
00:29:51.000I went from, I don't, you know, Jesus, he was a great teacher, like to, oh God, oh no, oh shit, oh no, what's that?
00:29:59.000Like it suddenly, it's like, it happened, he's real, like that happened to me.0.98
00:30:04.000Vernon, I wonder, you've got anything on that, mate, whether or not, like, how you came to the Lord and whether it was a very gradual experience or a rapid experience?
00:30:12.000Because, of course, I only know what you've told me.
00:31:03.000You know, I grew up in a God fearing family, but there was no organized faith other than my grandmother, who was a Catholic, but she believed in a different kind of way.
00:33:43.000He's been able to show me how the truth of the matter.
00:33:50.000I can stand in a room with any pastor and talk about the gospel.
00:33:54.000I'm not intimidated to talk to a Bible scholar because I know what I know.
00:33:58.000And I read the book, which is the master text.
00:34:03.000And it's very important when you want to build a family to try to do it, do your best to do it in a godly manner, a godly way, so that when your kids grow up and they get older, and they may depart, right?
00:34:19.000But they'll return back to the ways that you taught them as they get older, in their 30s and their 40s.
00:34:27.000They won't get kind of lost in the sea of religion.
00:34:51.000They all understand that they're individuals and that loving the Lord is not a bad thing.
00:34:58.000Where this world teaches you that to be a devout Christian, to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, the world teaches you that you're going to lose something, you're missing out on something.
00:35:09.000And it's been a blessing that they understand that you only gain, you don't lose.
00:35:17.000That's a lie of the enemy, so that he could have you on his path, which is the broad path versus the narrow path, which leads to salvation and leads to eternity in the presence of our Almighty God in heaven.
00:35:35.000Tune in for the second part of this conversation on Friday's show.
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00:37:19.000We are away still, and we're kind of managing, not talking about where we are, not out of being needlessly clandestine, but because part of the process is one of enhanced sanctification as well as preparation for the literal and figurative trials that we face.
00:37:40.000And in part, in honor of both the time itself and the generosity of the provision, we're Being respectful of that and keeping that privacy.
00:37:56.000But it's interesting because of the much of the topics around obviously the physical experiences we're having in this remote, wonderful location, and also the personal experiences we're having as a result of living a different life for a while.
00:38:10.000Last week, we, for a start, time feels like it's something I can't even really keep a hold of.
00:38:16.000I mean, we're on a totally different time zone.
00:38:19.000And because we have like family in England and we have kind of a life in America and we try, I'm I'm trying to juggle these different times.
00:38:27.000And at the end of the day, nothing teaches you to be more present and in the moment than, I mean, you have to just entirely give up trying to trace and track time for other people.
00:38:56.000I feel like I'm in a different position with Sunday service because of living a different type of life in this place, which, yeah, feels like a kind of a private time.
00:39:08.000That's what I said to you earlier, didn't I?
00:39:09.000I said it's difficult to talk about things we're experiencing because I feel like it's kind of private and it's very family orientated.
00:39:19.000But actually, like Russell said, it's actually no different from what we're doing because we always have quite a family orientated life.
00:40:04.000That's the sort of Christian theology, and it's obviously by its nature profoundly difficult to conceptualize.
00:40:12.000The people here have an unusual attitude towards time, and yet we're in the middle of the World Cup, so which is by its nature a global sporting event.
00:40:21.000And in such highly politicized and fractured times, the World Cup provides in some ways a sort of opportunity for unity, even though football by its nature is competition, sport is.
00:43:10.000And like, you know, you were talking about dreams earlier.
00:43:13.000Actually, I just want to say before we move on from the football thing, did you read or did I see something that looked like the American team uniquely prayed before the match?
00:43:42.000Because it was like different and people online and stuff were like commenting, look at the US team like praying as a group before going on.
00:43:49.000I just thought that was an interesting thing because, of course, you know that each of those.
00:43:56.000Talented sportsmen are channeling something, and what they're doing before going on is presumably honoring God before they go and play in a big game.
00:44:06.000Well, when you use the word spectacle, spectacle sort of like it refers to the visible dimension, as in a pair of spectacles.
00:44:13.000And Aristotle, in his poetics, said that as drama degenerates, spectacle is in theater, spectacle is all that is left.0.85
00:44:22.000Is them praying the same as taking the knee, you know, like from the Black Lives Matter?0.72
00:44:29.000Wearing a poppy in our country to honor the dead of war, or wearing rainbow bootlaces to commemorate or acknowledge sexual orientation and diversity of sexual orientation.0.54
00:44:56.000Well, we obviously don't know what the prayer was, and we don't know how.
00:44:59.000I mean, one would assume it was like a Christian prayer, and I guess the assumption is that the American team are sufficiently and significantly Christian.
00:45:07.000Yeah, I thought it was not interesting and nice, but I'd like to look into that a little bit more.0.85
00:45:54.000I mean, sometimes you think with sports, like when it's like a genius sports person, you do think that they're outside of the culture because really they're doing the thing that they're intended to do.
00:46:57.000Because, like, that's what I was thinking about Muhammad Ali, why perhaps he truly is the greatest, because Muhammad Ali refused to be owned by the culture, like that.
00:47:06.000His famous moment, like when he refused the war draft to fight in Vietnam, he said, I ain't got no beef with a Viet Cong.
00:47:16.000And so pointed out that he, as an African American, Why was he being enlisted to fight in a war against a nation of people that you don't even know anything about?
00:47:27.000And he had the bravery and the courage, and indeed the greatness to say it.
00:47:31.000I think that all genius is an indication ultimately of God's presence because whether it's a work of art or, as you said, Laura, an athlete, that sharp intake of breath, that gasp, that awe is how on earth can a human being in a split second make a decision that leads to that goal or that turn of pace or that pass or that punch or whatever?
00:47:54.000And indeed, as most of those great athletes, and you have one in your family, and so do I now by marriage.
00:47:59.000When talking about how did you make that putt, land that punch, make that basket, score that goal, as the great American writer David Foster Wallace said, it's always unsatisfying to read sports biographies because you want insight into what it was like to experience that moment.
00:48:17.000And they can't tell you because they weren't there.
00:48:20.000They were in the zone, they were completely in the flow of life.
00:48:25.000And I suppose perhaps that, yeah, the excitement of sport.
00:48:29.000There's a suspension, there's an agreed upon set of rules, and grace might appear within it grace, glory, diligence, values, and virtues that we all sort of recognize as magnificent.
00:48:41.000But, like, well, what we wanted to talk about somewhat, Laura, I believe, is depth.
00:48:47.000And I thought that you and you bring in dreams, and we've been having extraordinary dreams in this place because we're living a different pace of life.
00:48:55.000And why don't you sort of introduce that subject?
00:49:07.000I had had just this nightmare, like a real proper full on nightmare where I was scared and I woke up feeling like, oh, I don't want to be, I'm glad I'm out of that dream.
00:49:17.000It felt like, I said it's like born identity, but I was the Matt Damon born, but it was also like I was out of breath.
00:49:27.000But before people get too on board with how terrifying a dream it was, let's let people know that there was a key role played in the dream by Nicholas Lindhurst, aka Rodney Trotter, in the much beloved Fools and Ourses.
00:49:39.000I said, Laurie, it's difficult for me to believe.
00:49:41.000This dream's as terrifying as you're saying, when there's such an important part in the dream played by beloved actor Nicholas Lindhurst.
00:49:49.000I know, who American audiences might know from, I think, being.
00:50:03.000Years ago, I saw Piers Morgan on a TV show, sort of generally talking about probably the hacking and all of the hacking of British media into the phones of the royals and celebrities, et cetera, which was sort of.
00:50:14.000It's demonstrably true and further indication of the deep corruptness and malevolence of the British media in particular.
00:50:21.000But there was this bit where Piers Morgan, who was still working in sort of tabloid media at that time, said, You know, look, these celebrities, they don't have to turn up to the opening of a paper bag if they don't want to.
00:50:44.000It appears Morgan just like does know where everybody else lives, like just naturally, and also that Nicholas Lindhurst he's purely was about go in, do Rodney or whatever, and get out.
00:50:57.000He's not bothered about any of that other stuff.
00:50:59.000And with Leanne, the relationship we've had with celebrity, doesn't it show you?
00:51:03.000Oh, it is, it's Babylon, man, it's Babylon, and like you, but you can only blame yourself for being a participant in whether it's financially or culturally or socially or psychologically or whatever you've done, whatever you've taken from the culture.
00:51:16.000But back to your Terrifying dream.0.79
00:52:33.000That's equivalent to Golded Girls or something.1.00
00:52:35.000I woke up this morning and I needed to decompress it.
00:52:38.000And I said to Russell, isn't it weird that we are in this place and we've found real peace and serenity in the daytimes and we're really, you know, we're still, we've still got things we've got to deal with, but it seems that we've got more time with each other to.
00:52:52.000Play, like there's more, like I'm engaging with the kids in sort of a great way.
00:52:57.000We're having funny, funny chats and conversations.
00:53:01.000We're reading together, although Russell and I are enjoying it a lot more than the kids because they're falling asleep pretty quick.
00:53:08.000We're reading Swiss Family Robinson as a family.
00:53:10.000We're doing individual, like little one on ones, like, you know, kayaking and all this stuff.
00:53:16.000And we're having a good time in prayer together.
00:53:18.000And then I said to Russell, but then these dreams, like, why the vivid sort of nightmares waking up in the night?
00:54:09.000You actually, someone said it today in the restaurant, actually, where we were.
00:54:13.000Someone said, you know, spiritual warfare.
00:54:15.000And I said to her, oh my gosh, my friend just said that to me.
00:54:18.000But it's commonplace to say that, isn't it, in Christian conversation and culture?
00:54:24.000Anyway, so my friend said, spiritual warfare.
00:54:26.000You're being attacked like in your sleep because in the daytime, you're sort of getting to a place of like good, a good place of wholeness and peace.
00:54:47.000And so, the night times, the times of processing, is where we're still clinging and holding on to stress.
00:54:54.000And really, it made me think about how when we do wake up, as we all, I'm sure, do, because it's a common idea that wake up at 3 a.m. and totally be just kind of overwhelmed by anxiety and fears and everything, whether you've had the bad nightmare.
00:55:12.000Dream or not, or whether you've just simply woken up in a start and just been like, I've not done those things tomorrow.
00:55:18.000I'm nervous and worried about this, this, and this.
00:55:20.000I feel like I've got to do all these things.
00:55:44.000And frankly, becoming unbearable because of the comments about them.
00:55:48.000But like, when we pray together, like when it's actually that kind of prayer, not just a commonplace prayer, we pray every morning, pray all the time.
00:55:56.000But like, I mean, when I'm like, Laura, I think we need to pray because I'm feeling this is on me.
00:56:05.000But those prayers where you pray on our behalf, I always feel that has a, is deeper and more, frankly, more effective.
00:56:13.000Well, when it's, well, thank you for saying, but also, I don't, I always think I'm not going to know what to say.
00:56:20.000And then when, because when it's in the dead of night and you sort of think, and also you might not both be feeling the same.
00:56:26.000Like if one wakes up and is fearful and the other's just like, oh, I was asleep.
00:56:31.000I'm all right in my dream, whatever's going on, I'm going back in there.
00:56:35.000But you have to be, that's when you have to be there for one another.
00:56:37.000And that's when you have to think, oh my goodness, there's a moment where I think, what am I going to say?
00:56:43.000Like I said, explained last week before I get, before I pray, I get nervous about what I'm going to say.
00:56:48.000But what happens in the night, I suppose, is because it is so, it feels like so raw to be awake in the night because it's like, like there's, it's dark.
00:56:59.000It's dark and you have to find your way.
00:57:03.000You are in the dark and you have to find your way.
00:57:05.000And the way of doing that is by almost like thinking, what am I feeling right now?
00:57:48.000Oh no, Trigger and Boise have turned up.
00:57:52.000But the truth, the thing is that that led us to talk.
00:57:55.000Well, we talked a little bit about this, and you, of course, know more about the sort of the psyche, I guess, and what's happening to the mind in sleep.
00:58:07.000Yeah, I don't know that one can be entirely.
00:58:09.000And funnily enough, one of the colleagues was talking about us using secular analytics in spiritual terrain.
00:58:16.000But of course, dreams, whether from a religious perspective, From every religion in the world.
00:58:23.000And of course, Christianity, there are many examples of dreams throughout scripture, dreams and dreamers.
00:58:29.000But in, say, psychiatry and the dreams, and it seems to me often that dreams feel like a process.
00:58:39.000I'm sure there are prophetic dreams, insightful dreams.
00:58:42.000And indeed, one of my mates, Carl, actually, years ago said, like, people talk with such fascination about DMT and ayahuasca and LSD and the encounters one can have on psychedelics.
00:58:54.000Without really paying attention to the fact that every night you go to sleep and enter into this sort of kingdom.
00:59:03.000What is the reality that takes place when stripped of sensory connection to an apparently external world?
00:59:09.000An apparently external world being the key phrase.
00:59:11.000But it does seem to me the analysis I was offering, and although I do prefer your friend Fran's spiritual warfare conclusion, is that because we are in general in peace while we're here, being cared for and surrounded by incredible nature.
00:59:28.000Both human and botanical, and you know, in every conceivable form of nature, that when we actually sleep, we're dropping to a deeper and more cathartic, and pure, therefore, purifying, sanctifying, purging, purgatorial kind of place.
00:59:49.000There was this time where, um, do you remember when there was a time where people sort of were into the idea that you could control your dreams?
01:00:35.000And of course, I guess that's what sort of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse or the various virtual realities that we're being offered are sort of pledging that you will enter into a reality where, as far as you're concerned, you could be and look at what the culture offers you pornography, pleasure, et cetera, that you can just be in a state of constant stimulation.
01:00:53.000And beloved Ruth Burroughs here talks about how your prayerful experience might not be rewarding often.
01:01:07.000Pointed out that in my personal questing for enlightenment or what it would have been, as I would have regarded it and perhaps described it then, are you not really just finding fancier ways to say, I want to feel good?
01:01:21.000Is that not what you're saying all the time?
01:01:23.000And what she's saying, Ruth Burroughs, is that living under the touch of the living Christ, there will be suffering.
01:01:31.000And I think about saints all the time, Laura, because I mean, what's it like to be.
01:01:38.000Uh, Saint Francis or Saint Paul or so, you know, any of the saints, Saint Teresa.
01:01:43.000Yeah, like I think what was it feel like on the inside?
01:01:47.000You know, one might imagine that there's quite a lot of suffering involved, quite a lot of it's not like this is brilliant, but then Saint Francis, I think that he was he sounds like he was having a good time, right?
01:01:56.000Birds landing on his hands, butterflies flying around.
01:02:30.000So, in fact, they might not feel any different from a person who's not a saint because.
01:02:38.000Because they're just, that's just absolutely, they're totally at one with that behavior.
01:02:43.000Well, I guess we have the writing of saints, don't we?
01:02:46.000We have the writing and the significant writing of St. Paul and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
01:02:52.000But, like, you know, from scripture, what, like, say, Paul in Romans, he, like, he's really what he's describing is a transcendent state of bliss in which suffering is irrelevant.
01:03:03.000And, like, that's Eastern mysticism talks about that, you know, like, a good example is, say, Thomas Merton, who was both a Buddhist monk and a Catholic priest, correct me if I'm wrong, but he said that in the end, sacrifice need not include suffering.
01:03:20.000And the way he explained this was there's a point where you're so connected, like the sacrifice is a portal to another reality, is one way of putting it, and you are so engaged by, overwhelmed, in tune with, enmeshed with, an expression of this supreme reality that suffering isn't part of sacrifice.
01:03:38.000The presumption of suffering as part of sacrifice is, oh, I don't want to give up.
01:03:43.000Having sex or eating nice food or status.
01:03:47.000You know, the asceticism, what St. John the Cross calls animal penance, the domination of which he was actually using as a sort of a pejorative term, like the animal penance, just the sort of annihilation of the flesh, mortification, flagellation, overcoming the body.
01:04:06.000That itself could become a kind of vanity.
01:04:08.000But there's a point where, like you were saying, the saintly are so identified with God that they have no identity outside of their identity in God.
01:04:19.000What I'm just saying is, I am obviously so human, so full of longing, so easily stimulated, you know, that it's just sort of difficult to imagine these wonderful states.