Episode 98 - THIS

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[Music] and thoughtful soul that has been such a dear and faithful friend to me even at times when very few people were willing to be my friend so this week my dear liturgists william hillary and i science mike sat down to talk with the man and not the media figure michael gunger the occasion was the release of his new book which is titled this becoming free and goes on sale today and which you will hear is a fragile and beautiful work of art about what it's like to let go of the death grip that most of us hold on to life with but i hope this podcast episode this interview and even the book this show you a glimpse of the michael gunger that i am proud to call my best friend this this is all there is yesterday and tomorrow are just wounds and stories this is not all there is there is also that desiring milk while you drink water that is suffering of course that is absurd for this is all there is does this confuse you beloved perhaps i could say it a different way if i ascend to the heavens you were there if i make my bed in hell you were there hey everyone welcome to the liturgist podcast uh on this episode we're gonna be interviewing our dear friend michael gunger about his brand new book this which by the miracle of the internet comes out today it's out today today it's not out today thank you thank you oh thank you thank you maybe i'll add extra applause in there to boost up the excitement just grab that crowd sound from the milk of abraham so you you did it you wrote a book this is your second book and there's a lot of years between your first book and your second book how does it how's that feeling to be a new author and have like this out in the world it feels great i mean i think any time you work a year or two on something and it finally comes out you're like you oh feels great well you can't judge a book by its cover but uh i'm judging my book by its cover because i have an advanced reader's copy right now and i'm pretty sad about that because yeah i want the heart copy i've seen pictures of the hardcopy book i've ordered mine on amazon.com as all of you should as well you're a better friend so this is an arc and if you're not in the publishing industry an arc is like a large format paperback book you went with that like really gorgeous cover underneath right yeah that's crazy this is a weird place to start out like deep into book design the cover well that's where you start with a book it is with the cover right i mean that's when you see a book i would say you've made a couple of unconventional decisions one if you remove the paperback the actual cover of the hardback book is like this psychedelic a vibrant work of art yeah but the cover itself is the word this in pencil sketch over a small portrait of a gentleman holding a leash underneath a raining cloud and then on the spine i was on pins and needles just because i'm so we're friends and i'm always curious about your position things on the spine it says michael gunger and then if you open the book and turn to the title page it says this very large then smaller print becoming free and then it says by michael gunger and then in parentheses it says vishnu das and now we've gone if you haven't heard the literature's podcast on names you'll learn a lot more about the experience michael had uh receiving a spiritual name from a mentor and friend of his but i was wondering like right in the beginning of the book what that tension between what the name gunger means to you and what vishnu das means to you how did that not only come in the cover and the title page but the narrative arc and flow of the book yeah so to catch anybody up that didn't hear names and maybe that hears people refer to me as different names on this podcast at different times ramdas is the guy who gave me the name vishnu das and it came at a time in my life and this is in the narrative of this book it's i don't know how far the way through but it is during a really pivotal point of the book and of my life where michael gunger was this story that you know that was my identity and it was also my brand it was my job it was really closely associated with my beliefs and when i would hear the name michael gunger it just brought up things this was almost like triggering wow my own name was kind of triggering in a weird way and so in talking to ramdas about some of that that's when he gave me that name vishnu das and it was this beautiful like sanctuary for me to find being within rather than it didn't have any story associated with it as far as a past there were no traumas associated with it there were no beliefs that were tied to it and assumed by it other than vishnu das means servant of god but using the hindu imagery of god a hindu name of god of ultimate reality that also didn't have some of the theological baggage that some christian language still i was i was clearer of than i had been when we started the liturgist for example but that name created this space for me to be within without all these stories that kind of made me go somewhere else in my mind that made me go to the past or the future or and it just kind of gave me a place to be and feel like a safe sanctuary for a little bit and it was just for a time that i felt it was really helpful so the people in my life that are really close including you guys would call me that and it would call me back to being and call me and to remembering who i really am under all those stories so that's a big part of the book we actually talked about just putting it under the name vishnu das but it's complicated because i also at this point love my story i love the michael gunger story i love being a child of gail and ed gunger and i love uh being a brother to robert and david and lisa gunger and i love you know all the the stories the i needed like a breath for a minute of not identifying with all the shit that's happened in my life um good and bad but now i i don't want to just ditch michael gunger i think that would be hurtful to people in my life and i've so i've had to kind of navigate with that with some of my relationships and be like listen i'm not running away from being in the family you know i'm not running away this is what some people in my life call me vishnu as a gift as a grace as an act of love and that has helped me for a time i don't feel at this point like i need either name i love both of them so to include them in that cover page was a way of kind of acknowledging what both have meant to me and i always tell anybody that like asks what should i call you call me whatever you're comfortable with whatever makes you happy to call me and either will will make me happy well listen if we can give p diddy a bunch of names then we can give you a lot and grace there's a funny story about the cover and why it has that guy walking his dog in the rain so on twitter i asked when i was starting to write this book i had these ideas that i knew i wanted to talk about and there was part of my journey that i felt like for me needed to be processed in writing form that's a lot of times how i process events in my life by either writing songs or writing about it in some way helps me see what's happening and find meaning and and beauty within it so i was just kind of brainstorming and like where else where does this want to go because a lot of times when i'm in a creative project it starts to take on a life and it feels more like i'm flowing with it as and letting it become what it wants to be more than me crafting and making it something that's just how it feels in my creative experience like it's kind of becoming and i'm trying to be a partner with it and so i was like let's see what the internet has to say so i just tweeted it was late one night i was like i'm curious what do you think my next book is called [Laughter] to the world and immediately some guy responded walking my dog in the rain [Laughter] and it just it stood out as like oh shit that's really good for some reason i have no idea why like i did not understand it it had no meaning to me whatsoever but it just kind of like stayed in my brain it was actually the title of the book for a while it was yeah that ended up like a month later or something i was in the shower and it clicked why that stood out to me like i understood why it stood out to me why my body knew that that was an important title so i wrote the book i went to the publisher's office and we were they were showing me covers for walking my dog in the rain and there was some subtitle i don't remember what it was and it was so long like i looked at the book and it was all these graphics and all these texts my name it was just so busy and it didn't feel like the book to me the book is getting down like the book is trying to take away all these stories and it felt like looking at this really loud cover that's like adding all these stories to the world i was like oh okay i don't think that's the name of the book actually [Laughter] [Music] but it is which publishers love it yeah they love it as they're designing the covers i was like i think it's called this uh can we just like write it on the and this is the designer right there who had been all doing all this work i was like just write it in pencil over here just on this piece of paper and he wrote it i was like yeah that's it first first thing he drew that was it okay now like the illustrator was there and had done all this great sophisticated artwork and i was like if you were playing pictionary and you had a minute or two with the sand timer and you had to draw a guy walking his dog in the rain go and she just sketched it out real quick yes all right can we put that at the bottom corner there's the cover and then and we it was like what about your name is it no can we not put my name on the cover which is a bold move in a retail environment it is there's a lot wrong about the cover but that's actually i think with the message of the book and where it goes is it's the perfect cover i'm so happy with the cover i love it and then you take off the paper the brown paper around it and it's this wild colorful scheme i just i couldn't be happier with the cover and thanks to whoever that was that said walking my dog in the rain it still is a very important part of the book it kind of there's three it's a three-part parable that goes through the whole book and uh whoever you were stranger in the night of twitter thank you i like the two names it has a kind of process dimension to it like one name seems so static so singular and doesn't really imbue the sense of transformation that happens over the course of a life and in particular the transformation that has happened over the course of your life so the two names create this kind of dance when i look at them on the cover there is this subtlety of of transformation and transition that comes to the surface seeing them both that kind of hints at or nudges towards the essence of the book in a way so i like that they're both there thank [Music] you [Music] so you have these experiences of transformation of knowing of unknowing of letting it all go and then encountering something again in a new way and i'm curious about how you decided to write a book right these these things were your life not an experiment that you did to come to some conclusion to make a point or to generate some sort of content for other people but at what point did you decide my my story my life needs to get into a form that allows me to disseminate it to other people when i experienced something really big in life i have found for whatever reason that me expressing it creatively somehow like talking about it writing about it writing a song making an album that's kind of been my primary form of therapy in my life really processing it really expressing it having to put it in a context having to put language to it sometimes i don't know it helps me navigate where i'm at in my life and what the stories how they've been connected and and see again me seeing the meaning or the beauty of it all so this book after some of the big events that i write about in 2016 and then 2017 with ram das and all i knew that something significant something fundamental had changed about my experience of the world and i didn't have language for it sometimes having language for it is helpful to feel less alone to live out my journey with the people around me the people that i love all of you guys on the liturgist like putting language to it helps me for some reason feel connected with others even in a weird way as i go as we as i go through my life i i recognize that there's maybe a narcissism or a silliness about always trying to live all this stuff out in public but but it's i don't know how else to do it that's kind of how i how i fully experience my life a lot of times is by by writing about it i mean a lot of books are personal right like it's not that big a deal to call a book personal especially these days but when i say i experience your book as personal i don't just necessarily mean that it was vulnerable or authentic there was an intimacy in the book at times it it reads like a letter to a dear friend a family member perhaps even a lover depending where you are in the flow uh you use second person pronouns you you directly address the reader somewhat regularly what led you to speak so intimately to the reader and who were you picturing when you made such direct addresses yeah thank you for that question as i wrote lots of different styles like one of the iterations there was a whole iteration of the book that was a story about eight-year-old mikey meeting 16 year old fundamentalist christian mike meeting 25 year old worship leader michael meeting 35 year old bishop they're all like having a conversation together and it was like this fictional kind of weird second i don't even know how to describe it but it was a whole iteration of a book i have i have a book that is that my hard drive so that being said i tried out different ways of writing there's parables that i've written there's really philosophical ways of writing there's personal anecdote there's what when i really came down to why am i writing this book and when i would read through what i was writing and what resonated as like oh this is the book what i was really getting at is speaking to myself capital s self and the way i see it at this point we there's all of us there's seven billion of us on this planet and we're suffering and we're going through this crazy experience of being a human being on this floating planet soaring around the sun through the galaxy and like what the hell is happening and we're going through these crazy experiences and so many i look out and it's almost like i'm inspired by humanity at this point we're so brave we're people doing it every day waking up and like i want to try it again and going through the hell of it whatever they're going through and but standing up again and saying fighting for their lives day by day fighting for a good life for love taking care of their kids loving each other i feel the way that i see it because this book is it's about spiritual realization it's about seeing who we are under all of our stories the one united all that is everything i think that is the one thing happening to me i don't see that as some sort of like when you see that as though you're somehow above other people that you're that when i saw through my own ego story that that like gave me a badge of honor of some kind like no i'm an enlightened being now i'm a higher up on the god scale or whatever um in fact it felt to me more like like somebody we're all out there serve humanity we're all out there surfing the ocean in this like crazy brave way we are god in the way i see things we are god out on this crazy adventure of forgetting who we are and experiencing all that can be experienced and this body at some point kind of like couldn't handle it couldn't handle it anymore and just crying out earnestly for years and years and years daddy i need you i need you i need you i can't do this that was my whole christian upbringing i couldn't take it it was like a weakness a a dying a death of like i don't know that i can handle these waves anymore and for me what what i would call salvation or enlightenment or awakening or satori or whatever the words that all the different traditions have used it's not like an elevated thing it was almost like mama came up and held me and said it's okay it's just a dream it's okay i'm here here's who you really are and it's it's more like you don't have to keep surfing if you don't if you can't and so it's not an above thing it's almost like my body gave out and mama held me and told me who i was who we all are and so i'm writing this book to myself to mama to the mama in all of us who those who might be tired those who might be getting ready to be done being battered by the waves of their stories and the adventure and it's beautiful the adventure the waves the crazy suffering i see it as all beautiful but i know that there's some that could use a whisper in their ear of who they really are and so that's who it's for i'm whispering to myself i'm whispering to god in me and in you and in everything and it's a love letter and it's a it's a letter to say i know who you are and so do you if you just want to if you want to remember it as well so that's why it's written in that way because i'm not writing to a demographic i'm not writing to an audience i'm writing to my beloved who is my very self [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a 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h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists [Music] i am did you forget who you were for a moment there myself do you think you are simply the sum of a million little accidents a finite set of tubes skin blood bones and goo what a story what an adventure next time if you get caught in that dream within a dream and you want to remember just lean in and i'll whisper your name i am i felt like that just gave me an another lair of the book i mean i'm hearing echoes in my head of collections of words that in one context would have meant something but in this context means something different and those collections of words are something like if you want to find your life lose it yeah right and for the weary i will give you rest and all of these things that i think so many of us have associated with like okay go into full-time ministry sell everything you own and like work for a big mega church that's how you that's how you lose your life and that's where you'll find it and and you lost the life that you had and found this this this i love that you said it three times that's perfect this is actually this yeah we're always looking for a different this aren't we and that's yes certainly it has to be some other this certainly yeah god has to be somewhere else not here certainly my true self has to be something other than what's happening right now because what's happening right now i don't want it to be that that's really the center of suffering that's why the book is structured around the buddhist noble truths because that's how that realization of i can't suffer if i don't identify as something separate than this if i don't identify as something that's over and against this then what is what's the problem and that's a complicated thing to say and it brings up all sorts of problematic things and i i hope that i address that maybe not adequately but at least i try to in the book but that that is the letting go of my clinging to need this to be other than this i had the characteristics that i demanded of god i needed god to be a certain way in the universe rather than letting go to thy will be done as this it's so funny on this other side of it seeing all the language and all the different traditions that all pointed to the same thing but yeah this this this [Music] if you'd like to hear the audiobook of this for free i've got great news for you you can go to audibletrial.com the liturgists and sign up for an audible trial and audible will let you download and listen to the book this completely free and you might find like me that you enjoy listening to audiobooks and therefore you keep your subscription and you'll get a new book every single month at no additional charge so if you'd like to check out this becoming free by michael gunger hear it in its entirety for free just go to audibletrial.com the liturgists and sign up and then pick this as your free book i met her near the pier in santa monica it was late and she was crying hysterically [Music] sometimes parts of my body still instinctually react to strangers bodies as though they were separate some things to be feared pitied or avoided but not this time this time this stranger felt like she was my mother my very own heart my friend mike science mike and i approached her asking if she was okay she was beside herself her breath smelled of alcohol her dress was tattered and torn she told me that she had just hit someone that familiar sense of separateness peaked its head out did i need to be worried here this woman was obviously not well and not sober was she dangerous she asked me what was wrong with kids these days she had promised herself she would never hit a child again but only moments ago she had all she had wanted she said was a little help getting down the stairs in the park i told her i was so sorry for what she was going through and encouraged her to take a few deep breaths to help her calm down a bit as she breathed i noticed her hands one hand was trying to hold her torn dress in place over her body on the other she wore a black wrist brace on the weathered fingers that extended from the brace she wore several jeweled rings standing there wailing next to the pier filthy drunk and homeless late on a monday night our mother still longed for dignity she still wanted to be seen as beautiful looking at her i could see that she was but i didn't know how to tell her that without coming across as weird or creepy her sobs gradually began to slow as her breath deepened she told us she was thirsty could we please get her some water yes we could do that could we please help her sit down somewhere while she waited her health wasn't good and she had a hard time getting around by herself yes we could do that too we led her to the bus stop she thanked us and begged us to please come back with the water she really was so thirsty we promised we would be back shortly we found a mcdonald's that was open late and full of the sorts of interesting characters that hang around the santa monica pier in the middle of the night i thought about my life my clean and comfortable house my family and friends i live within a bubble of privilege that such a small percentage of human beings have ever experienced i ordered a bottle of water and some french fries we walked back with the goods and found her seated in the same place we had left her she had calmed down a lot since we left she thanked us for coming back and asked if we could help her with one other thing could we just help her find a spot to lay down so she could go to sleep i felt a pang of sadness through my chest it was rough out here for a sick elderly woman with nothing but a torn dress and some jewelry on her fingers there were drunk stoned and shady looking characters everywhere i had seen a couple rats dart across the grass just a few minutes before i couldn't let her sleep here what could i do could i get her a hotel room or something money was a bit tight for us as a family but if we had to we could afford it but no i had heard what can happen if you try to provide hotel rooms for homeless people mike knew firsthand he had once tried to get a few rooms for some people he met on the street who had nowhere to stay the hotel had not only refused but had called security and had the rejected guests escorted off the premises the manager warned mike that if he ever tried something like that again he would be permanently banned from the hotel as well that may sound cruel at first glance and maybe it was but when you try to imagine the scenario from a hotel manager's perspective it's complicated after all hotels operate their business on the necessary assumption that the guests will not destroy the rooms or steal things from them and how could they ensure such a thing from someone who could not take enough care of themselves to maintain consistent shelter what if the person was mentally ill or addicted to something and ended up stealing from the hotel wrecking the room or scaring other guests how could the hotel ensure a non-disastrous stay from people with no credit cards or other assets to guarantee that they will behave responsibly the woman with the torn dress pointed to a spot on the ground near a bush and asked if it was too wet there i reached down and touched the grass it was a little damp she asked if the sprinklers would come on there in the middle of the night we didn't know out of the corner of my eye another rat darted from one bush to another probably hunting for more food scraps from the beach visitors i looked at the woman's face my eyes burning with tears it wasn't that i simply felt sorry for her in that moment i could feel that her heart was my heart i saw her i loved her i felt no distance or separation from her she was my mother my sister myself my god my god it hurt could i get her to a shelter it was already so late the shelters were probably all full or closed now and i didn't know of any shelters around there to check anyway there were so many homeless people around i couldn't imagine that there was an easy fix to be found still my mind continued to spin trying to imagine a possible solution to this woman's predicament i wanted to take away her suffering i wanted her to be back with her family i wanted her to not have hit those children but deep down i knew that i couldn't fix this this was not a simple problem that ended with one woman not having anywhere to sleep that night i was walking into a vast matrix of problems that involved an entire lifetime of patterns and stories of systems and generations and layers of complexity that i simply had no way of getting to the bottom of on a monday night while holding a bag of french fries in my hands as much as i wanted to i couldn't fix this but was that just a cop out a justification of my own privilege she reached out her braced hand to me and asked me to help her lie down but how could i do that if my actual mother visited my house would i allow her to sleep on the damp ground with the rats while i slept inside in my warm king bed of course not i'd rather sleep in the grass myself but what could i do drive her back to my house and ask my wife to let her sleep in our bed with us have her sleep with our little girls downstairs that didn't feel wise i felt so powerless i took her hand and lowered her frail body onto the cold damp earth i couldn't keep the tears contained in my eyes anymore i quickly wiped my face so she wouldn't see and feel ashamed she asked if i could open the bottle of water for her i opened it and handed it back still holding the brown paper mcdonald's bag i awkwardly asked her if she wanted any french fries she politely declined as another couple of rats scampered a few feet away so in reference to your statement earlier about this piece of the book that never made it into the to the final version that we're holding but the narrative of younger selves and present-day self meeting and having a conversation together i'm curious if you could go back and give the book to one of them if time worked that way which younger self would you give the book to and perhaps how might you respond i don't think anybody would have been ready for it maybe i i don't know that i would have given it to any of them maybe until until you know thir maybe 30 year old would have been ready for it on some level i think he still would have been kind of horrified that when even seeing the mushroom story and the like you take mushrooms oh god no uh you went off the deep end better stay away from that so i don't i don't know if i really would have given the book to any of them but it gets back to this this right i mean like i s the way i see it now the journey is so great i mean in the in the moment of 16 year old michael being like i'm so dirty for being sexually attracted to women and masturbating or whatever like i i just need to be pure i just need to think about god all the time if i think about anything else i'm not worshiping to not have experienced that drama and pain and suffering where would the earnestness have been then later and even that like i don't to think of where i ended up now as some sort of destination i think kind of demeans what it was it was it was thrilling what a thrilling life so much of it was painful but i don't regret it i don't wish that i hadn't experienced my life i'm grateful for my life and i would never it's a tricky thing to talk about because i'm certainly not saying that people that are in the middle of suffering should like be thankful for it or not regret things i'm not putting any of this on anything other than or anybody other than at this point for me to regret my life would cause suffering for me for me to embrace where i've come from as the perfect only way that anything could have been brings me joy and so on that level i wouldn't have changed a thing i wouldn't have given them anything because they had everything they needed but please don't take that outside of that context because i wouldn't say that about someone else's life it begs an interesting question like why write a book then right because in essence kind of what you're saying is that is that there's no need for the information that everybody is on their journey and will get to where they need to get by the manner in which they get there and and that they're where they are and that there isn't necessarily any need to intervene so i'm curious about one not necessarily you going back and kind of regretting something about your story but what what you just said means about the potential reader and how they read the story in light of everything you just said about yourself well what's also perfect is my desire to write that book and try to tell some people about it and what's also perfect is the people who feel like something is missing in their life and they need to read a book about spirituality that's all part of it as well so it's like right and maybe there had to be some degree of longing and desire and some sense of lack for me to write a book you're correct like you'd think if i'm totally at home with what is why bother doing anything and that's that's a really kind of rational way of looking at it but the ego's like claiming for responsibility for all sorts of things but what is really the ego doing the truth is that this body this what we this michael over here is a creative person in the same way that a rose is red it's what i am i write things i make things i create things oranges grow from orange trees that's what happens and so i find this joy and this fulfillment when i make things and i write and i tell people about how they don't who they are and i show them love that makes me happy and it makes me feel fulfilled even though on some level i understand that it's meaningless it's still it's still just business doing what is-ness is doing that's when the nihilism jumped out right there that moment don't forget [Laughter] but then it's my choice to when i'm writing the book not my choice it's i can either like cling to it and be like this is very important serious work and nobody better question anything about this and nobody better and i'm i better get all good reviews and if not i'm gonna suffer that's still just okay how much am i gonna suffer over this this is what's happening the book's happening and i think it already has i have people that have already written me that it's had a very significant impact in their life already and i love that uh so this is part of the journey of some people and it's not the journey of a lot of people most people but it was part of my journey and it's becoming part of other people's journey and i don't know i think it all goes together somehow well you're clarifying some important assumptions that some people might have which is that if there is a sense of oneness that there's also meaninglessness so that there can't be beauty or there can't be something about the expression of this one cell of the larger body and and it sounds like what you're doing is saying that it's all part of the whole thing and you're allowed to be on your own journey within it yeah not even allowed it's it's beautiful that you're in your own journey there is oneness is not the same as uniformity i think i say it a few times in the book like unity is not the same as uniformity in fact unity can't be uniformity otherwise it's not unity unity demands differences and i think like if you were thinking about an ocean common metaphor that i use in the book is that old beautiful metaphor that many mystics have used about were all waves in the ocean and if a wave somehow became aware of itself as a wave even if it thought oh i know i notice i'm a wave now that the ocean is just waving me i am the ocean waving why bother waving what good is that thought what good is that thought gonna do it's still the wave like the ocean is still waving it the thought oh i'm a wave all that can do it doesn't actually affect what the wave is it just affects that wave's experience of being a wave is it going to suffer and wish it wasn't a wave wish it was something else or can it just kind of enjoy the ride that's kind of a simple like me thinking oh i'm just a wave in the ocean doesn't make me less creative more creative it doesn't make me taller or shorter or anything else this is what is happening your specific experience of being a bill or a mary or whatever is what is happening that sense of separateness that's how the ocean is waving but by me realizing that i'm a wave in the ocean it does help me enjoy the ride i feel like in this conversation i've i've been intentionally kind of downplaying the beauty and importance of seeing through the ego of of becoming uh fully at home with your true self of oneness of god and i did that because because of that tendency for egos to make it a hierarchical hierarchical like badge of honor sort of thing where you get the cookie the gold star now you're a really special enlightened ego and that's not what happens when somebody sees who they are but i want to offer one other thing that i actually do think makes it important in our society and that's where we're at in society i actually when i look around at what's happening in society and i see artists and bands and media and p all sorts of things that people are saying it seems to me that people are waking up to the unity of all things in ways that is historically unprecedented i don't think there's ever been so many people waking up to our connectedness to having our consciousness expand this whole psychedelic kind of re-emergence and people wanting to break out of their current molds of consciousness and i think there's something happening on earth and i don't know how it's not connected on some level with how precarious of a place our species is in right now we are really on the brink of either you know going full like cyborg integrating technology artificial intelligence with our biology with our experience of the world or ending human civilization with climate change or war or whatever human created climate change has put our species on a precipice of that is existential and it i really think that if more of us don't wake up to a realization and experience of this planet not as a separate something that we have to take care of in the same way that we take care of our dogs or our homes but instead our very body if we don't have a more inter-connect experience of earth we don't have a more interconnected experience with people of color and marginalized people of lgbt people of of different stories of other religions of other countries of other ways of being if we don't have a fundamental experience of seeing everyone as my brother as my sister as my father as my mother we are not gonna make it i don't think i i don't i think there's a there's a survival mechanism that is happening in the species to see who we actually are we don't we're too big we're like there's too many cars on the road now to just be running around with blindfolds on we have to look both ways we have to like pay attention to what's happening and to pay attention to what's happening we have to question some of our fundamental stories some of our fundamental myths some of our fundamental sense of who i am and who they are who we are who who the us is who the them is all those things are better i think navigated with a more unitive experience of reality rather than this egocentric i'm gonna get what i'm gonna get which has helped us survive as a species early on like to hunt and to gather we needed this like i'm gonna get whatever whatever i can no matter what it costs and that was really helpful and now we're too powerful to not address some of those fundamental ways of being in the world we can't be the pillagers of a separate earth anymore we have to love her as our very mother in order for us to survive so i think that the enlightenment that i talk about in this book it's not it's not just a like bonus level for the super privilege to get to sit around and contemplate their navels all day long it's actually in a society that is starving for justice and starving for connection and starving for equitable treatment and loving the earth and taking care of ourselves we need more people to not be so caught up in their own ego separation we need more people to to feel the unity to experience the unity of everything and i think when we do that we're in a better position to be agents of change agents of justice agents of creativity agents of love in the world because we're not just walking around spreading our own fear and division but we're actually becoming agents of shalom we're actually becoming the shalom of earth itself that is that would be my preachy side of it is actually important that some of us wake up and to stop throwing our shit all over the ocean and stop treating people as though they're products or resources for us to extract wealth out of and so i think philosophically religiously and experientially looking at these stories that we've inherited from our cultures more carefully trying to tell better stories and trying to see more clearly is key not only for ourselves and our own experience of the world but for the world itself and for the future of humanity one of the things i appreciate about this is the dance that you do between experience on the ground and enlightenment how have you personally danced with the four noble truths with the pain of the moment [Music] yeah um it's interesting that in the moment of pain you either see it and identify with it or you don't and i don't know that you've to talk about choice in that is kind of a funny story to thrust into what's happening and there have been times the the couple stories that i tell in the book about the suffering of of the time i took the did the super long float on mushrooms and smashed my nose smashed my nose into a glass wall and felt zero suffering it was just sensation it was just like wow look at that that's just like colors everywhere um or the time that i had the scope put up my penis at the doctor i mean it couldn't have hurt that bad but it was the it was hell it was like i went back and was like in the fetal position on my couch shivering like oh my god that was so traumatic and like this horrible suffering even though the pain of the glass wall had to be significantly stronger so i've experienced varying degrees of pain that had nothing to do with the amount of suffering that i was experiencing the noble truths for me have been more like oh looking back wow that's i see the truth of those i didn't grow up buddhist so i never had like fundamental buddhism where i had to quote oh you're suffering better what's the first noble truth better quote it you know um i never had that it was for me it was more like oh wow that would make it happen but in my experience of of pain and suffering and how they relate and i know i'm using these terms in the buddhist sense not in like a medical sense or anything or psychological sense right however else you could use these words but i've felt and experienced the noble truths as being true to my experience again i didn't grow up with those being uh you know my my toolbox was index cards with notes on them uh scriptures on them like romans 12 1 offer i urge you therefore brother and if you feel full view of god's mercy offer your body's living sacrifices um holy and acceptable holy acceptable this is your spiritual service worship those were my like training wheels so i i'm sure for a lot of buddhists the noble truths are part of their spiritual practice as far as like reminding themselves of it but for me it was more like wow look at this is true and it's true in my experience i'd imagine there's some big news for a lot of podcast listeners right now twice in this episode you've mentioned that you used mushrooms and that's going to be news to tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of people so uh out of the closet out of the closet in the psychedelic world what would you say to potential buyers of the book this and liturgist podcast listeners who experience extreme fear and anxiety with the mention of psychedelics in a positive light yeah i don't know how i feel my one of my favorite worship leaders just said that they take psychedelics i'm currently struggling right now in this moment i didn't really want to say that but i'm going to know i get it i was there for my entire life i was a say no to drugs you're going to fry your brain what are you thinking and then now you're gonna talk about some spiritual experience that you had on drugs oh boy okay you were on a substance hello why would you trust that and i don't trust it nor do i trust my current interpretation of the world around me as being the accurate representation of what is it's being filtered through very specifically tuned organs very biased stories and conditioning and culture and language all my experience of this is always going through all that stuff also there are long lineages of people using other substances for liturgical work you know there's this one religion called christianity that always like takes bread and wine does stuff with it yeah man the body of christ the blood of christ and that really is how i approach the psychedelics as a form of sacrament and i know not just some but probably most people that may sound not only a little iffy it might sound outright heretical blasphemous i get it i am not pushing that view on anybody by any means but for me it was grace and i don't know how to it was enough such an important moment of my life when i couldn't break out of the way that i was seeing the world and i think we're going to do an episode on psychedelics eventually here and we'll talk more about all this but at that moment when i was gifted that it was a it was a religious ceremony that i went through with intention it wasn't like just a party drug it was like i am stuck in a way of seeing that i know in my experience isn't the full picture but i'm stuck in this really reductionist view of the world and myself and this kind of segmented experience of reality that i i really think isn't true um but i can't see it otherwise and it was a it was a prayerful full of love full of surrender experience that absolutely changed my life for me it was the perfect thing at the perfect time and for most of you i mean it's illegal it's a probably a horrible idea for most of you so i just want to say that clearly this is not becoming a drug podcast i'm not becoming a drug pusher be like this is what you need to be enlightened just take a ton of lsd um i also don't want to hide my story i don't why i don't know something's broken in me i guess i don't know so often between you and other spiritual leaders is that you are honest about your life experiences yeah well as my grandma used to say that's between you and jesus [Music] i'm wondering just from what you've said there too that there might be other ways besides mushrooms and the story about mushrooms that some readers will struggle with the book i'm wondering if you can anticipate what the struggle will be for some readers and and what you might suggest about that struggle first of all anytime you start talking about what you consider to be yourself might not be accurate you're gonna get ego defenses that are really clever and masked and sometimes just outright fuck you man or whatever you know like you're confronting a really healthy beautiful part of the human organism and our experience that's helped us stay alive and it really isn't like that but back to that metaphor of needing mama on the in the while surfing to take you out of the ocean what most of us are doing is surfing and that's fine it's great it's what how i see it god is doing but it'll be interesting to see how i'm sure that ego defense will take on all sorts of different ways it can take on like theological objections it can take on well what about what isn't that selfish just to focus on your own suffering what about the suffering of everybody else and that's a that's a great one that's a really great subtle ego move because you get to feel like superior by being loving um that's a good one i don't have any problem with the objections i i look forward to hearing some of them because i'm sure that i've missed the mark in all sorts of ways of what is the best way of saying something or even what's true or accurate or who knows but that's also why i try to ground it in my story i really don't feel like i have things to teach people it's more like this is my story of how unlearning these things how letting go of these things impacted my life and by framing it like that i hope to get around some of the ego defenses because i really am not trying to make anybody do anything or or change their beliefs and and i say that in the book like i think you can be free within whatever sorts of stories you're living in i think you can be a free christian a free buddhist a free muslim person a free hindu person free atheist whatever so i'm not trying to change your beliefs but in my story the way that i held on to my beliefs the way that i related to my beliefs and found identity within my beliefs caused me suffering so i i hope that by anchoring it in my own story that people can hear it as that and not at me preaching at them and i love disagreements i think they're fun to have and and they sharpen me and they make me better and and maybe i'll see all kinds of things in the dialogue that happens from this book about what i would say differently next time the spirit of it really is coming from a place of of love and of trying to whisper that love to to the beloved that's found in everyone and i hope even if the ideas aren't always uh super clear or accessible or even agreed agreeable that something about the spirit of it can still ring through that's my hope for it i don't want to answer your question for you because please do you did it one thing you didn't mention here is that the book itself provides answers for the suffering that may come up while reading the book and in that way there is this this beautiful loop that goes around and around that as the reader notices what is emerging for them in resistance to what they're reading in the book you also are walking them through what to do about that if they're open to it and that i thought that was such a unique feature of this of the way that you wrote it and if people choose to enter an into it as a dialogue with themselves with their old stories with their parts and with you that reading the book about becoming free might expose places where there needs to be freedom but then you also walk people home to that it's nice to hear so there's a common question that i get asked all the time and it's what it what exactly does michael gunger believe it's a i mean it doesn't matter where i go anywhere people think or know i'm associated with you and they go so what is what's exactly his what's his deal like is he a christian is he and it's funny because i think i say something different to everyone there's no common answer i'm like i'd love to hear what you say i'm always like a lot of times i tell people like you know you should ask him i really do i'm like you should ask him i'm like i don't really know that's probably my most consistent answer that i do give but sometimes i'm like well you know he's a little buddhist or he's you know he feels a little hindu these days she's a little bit christ i feel like i've just watched you go through so many minor like phases to just in the four to five years five years that i've known you in terms of you being a bit more in your atheistic space and then being in your mystic space and then being in your buddhist space like so if there's any controversy that's attached to your name the name michael gunger it's this like what do you believe and i feel like this book does a really great job of presenting the frames by which you see the world thank you i think the language is going to be new for a lot of people even just the language of non-dual consciousness is very new even remotely using anything eastern uh is going to be new and i want you to go into your ego for this one as someone that has had their name caught in the mire of controversy around spiritual beliefs and all this stuff do you feel a little vindicate it in a sense because i personally think this book is brilliant i think thank you you do a great job of articulating what so many people that have gone through a deconstruction of faith are experiencing i wonder in your ego of egos do you feel like a little like vindicated because i'm like if i'm reading this book if i'm taking you from somebody that doesn't know you like the people that come up to me and ask me about you i would go and i read this book i would go this guy's brilliant like this guy is like really smart and he's well like he's thinking through things and oh that makes sense like i don't know if it puts you squarely in any camp necessarily but i just i would imagine going through the things you've gone through and then writing this book to feel a little like pat on the back of like yeah i'm not as crazy maybe as everyone thinks that i am could you own any of that or i'm just making that up my general egos position through most of my life this is this is funny because i feel like it i'm read completely opposite of this most of the time has been michael you're shitty laughing i'm such a terrible friend i just have to do that i know sorry you're being very sincere no i mean that that is my ego's voice that is usually it would be more like what business do you have writing a book like this michael okay um okay who do you think you are that my my ego voice has generally been one of telling me what's wrong with me that's usually the loudest voice for me and so i think sometimes me fighting that or trying to ignore that has resulted in people feeling the opposite about me that i think i'm amazing um i don't i don't know why maybe but recently like my ego's behaving better i remember it was just a few months ago i passed a mirror and normally i don't spend a lot of time in mirrors and it's and i think it's usually because when i look in a mirror it's like problem solving it's like oh well shit ah that's what amir has been for my whole life i guess we could do this and at least like mitigate some of the problem but i caught myself in the mirror and felt absolute love and like wow you are beautiful and that was a rare that was the first time i experienced that of like a deep like i would see someone else and think you're beautiful it would it took longer for my body to be able to do that for itself than anybody else and so i don't know where the if the ego is just kind of like pissed at me and just kind of being quiet [Laughter] or it's waiting for these book reviews but vindicated i don't want to like dismiss it because there may be maybe maybe something in there is like yeah see you read it i'm smarter than you than i than you thought i was i don't feel that but but it's an interesting question it may be maybe somewhere down in there that's happening listen this is why you're writing the book and not me because i would totally feel that i was like see you you told me i wasn't that smart but look what i just wrote y'all gonna learn today like that's what i would i would have felt that well thank you it makes me feel nice it makes the ego really puff up its chest right now i think it i think it deserves after everything you've gone through i think it deserves a little thank you yeah yeah i have a really visceral response to you saying the words i'm horrible like i i don't hear you talk about that side of your story very much and and i often feel like even right now as i'm listening to i can feel myself moved to tears knowing that that's part of your story and i feel so so close to you when you talk about that maybe it's because that's been a part of my story maybe it's because i feel like you let us in in a way but i'm just noticing my sadness hearing you say that those words were there but then this roller coaster of like delight and ah that you had this encounter with yourself like what a beautiful transformation that's taken place that you could see yourself like you see others because i've seen how you look at me i've seen how you look at mike the other anyone really and there is just this compelling love song that comes through your eyes to beings and i feel sad that it's not been that way for yourself but also so so moved that you had that experience thank you so much for saying that well you got tears in my eyes now too thank you hillary we'd like to thank michael gunger for being our guest instead of our leader this week on the liturgist podcast i'd like to thank william matthews and hillary mcbride for hosting the conversation alongside me science mike thanks to brent cradle victory palmisano and corey pig for making the trains run on time and organizing this crazy collective that we call the liturgists thank you greg nordine for editing and sound design thank you michael gunger for editing sound design and executive production and of course we want to thank our patrons on patreon for making the liturgist podcast possible if you'd like to learn how to be a part of this work and in exchange get access to additional podcasts meditations and early access to our events go to theliturgist.com and click join us thanks for listening [Music] you