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2 episodes with i thou
2 episodes with i thou
Today's poem is Us by Zaffar Kunial. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We'll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we're revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson's time as host. Today's episode was originally released on September 27 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Since moving to the quaint village of Rochester, I come to expect visible signs of welcome everywhere. What matters in life is that space between us, formulated by philosopher Martin Buber as I-Thou. It's a sacred space of shared existence where we feel each other's uniqueness and feel our common humanity. Today's attentive poem fosters a consciousness in which we view our lives as more in relation to each other, as close as two small letters.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
A philosophical meditation on Canadian identity as perpetual becoming—exploring how a nation built through trauma and transformation embodies the sacred act of relation over conquest.---Keywords: Canadian identity, national mythology, Ship of Theseus, collective trauma, I-Thou relationship, garrison mentality, cultural transformation, national soul #CanadianIdentity #NationalMyth #Philosophy #CanadianCulture #Trauma #Transformation #Becoming #CanadianSoul #Identity #NorthropFrye #MartinBuber #ShipOfTheseus #GarrisonMentality #CanadianPhilosophy #CulturalReflection #NationalCharacter #Coexistence #Recognition #CanadianValues #Resilience
In this dialogue, Yannick Jacob talks to Avi Goren-Bar, a Jungian coach and psychologist, about his approach to coaching and the integration of Jungian psychology. Avi shares his personal journey into the field and discusses the importance of creativity and art therapy in his work. He explains his unique coaching method, which combines Jungian principles with Gestalt therapy and uses coaching cards to elicit dialogue with the unconscious. Avi emphasizes the need for coaches to have a deep understanding of the unconscious and suggests that his Jungian coaching program is accessible to individuals without a therapeutic background. The conversation explores the responsibility of coaches when working with clients' shadows and the importance of creating a safe and structured environment. They discuss the concept of the shadow in Jungian coaching and how it relates to inferiority and rejection. The conversation also touches on the role of psychological types, such as MBTI, in coaching and the potential for growth and self-discovery in encountering the shadow. They briefly discuss the intersection of coaching and psychedelic experiences.After a short break, they explore the significance of taking breaks and creating space for reflection in coaching sessions. The conversation delves into the concept of existentialism and the value of slowing down to allow for insights to emerge. The discussion also touches on the principles of Martin Buber's I-Thou philosophy and its application in coaching. The conversation highlights the power of humility, embracing anxiety, and the significance of strong emotions like crying. It concludes with a reflection on the role of the coach and the importance of creating a supportive community, the importance of entrepreneurial skills for coaches and the challenges they face in running a coaching business. Yannick and Avi discuss their perspectives on developing business skills, marketing strategies, and sales techniques to create a sustainable practice. _____________________________Never miss an episode by signing up to our mailing list:https://rocketsupervision.com/talking-about-coaching/Continue the conversation - Join the community!Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/talkingaboutcoaching Whatsapp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HLEWkFImuk60UQO2JA8HpA Find more deep dives here.Short episodes of Talking about Coaching addressing specific questions are here.You can also find us on all major podcast platforms.If you'd like to support what we do, please consider a positive review, leave a comment or tell a friend or colleague about this episode.__You can see COACHING DEMOS from many of our podcast guests as part of Yannick's Coaching Lab. In the Lab you're a “fly on the wall” for a 45min live coaching demo followed by Q&A and conversations with the coach and client and (optional) experimental breakouts in triads. Members of the Lab can re-watch recordings of sessions they've missed and VIP Members have access to the entire Vault of available coaching demos: https://gocoachinglab.com- 3 FREE taster sessions available via https://rocketsupervision.com/coaching-lab-coaching-sessions/ Thanks for being a coach. You're making the world a better place!Support the show
Unlock the secrets of Martin Luther's profound theological insights with our special guest, Dr. Bob Kolb. Join us as we explore the evolution of Luther's understanding of the devil's multifaceted role in the Christian life, through his intriguing concepts of the "black devil" and "white devil." Discover how these ideas reveal Satan's cunning strategies to lure believers into hedonism or self-righteousness, and why anchoring our identity in Christ's love and grace is essential to resisting these pervasive evils.Dr. Kolb and I also dissect Luther's groundbreaking approach to preaching, enriched by the I-Thou relationship philosophy of Martin Buber. Learn how Luther's use of personal storytelling breathed new life into biblical narratives, making them strikingly relevant to his Saxon audience. We compare Luther's critical yet engaged view of the world as a divine gift with the Anabaptist's tendency towards separation, shedding light on the modern-day challenges faced by the Lutheran Church in preserving spiritual integrity amid cultural and materialistic pressures.Finally, we delve into Luther's intense self-awareness and his journey from a works-righteous theology to a liberating faith in Christ's grace. Dr. Kolb provides profound insights into Luther's unflinching honesty and the crucial role of sacraments in his life as tangible assurances of God's promises. We conclude with reflections on the lasting impact of Luther's teachings on the Lutheran Church, emphasizing the timeless importance of justification by grace through faith. Don't miss this compelling discussion that promises to illuminate your understanding of theology and its enduring relevance.Ask Ralph - Christian FinanceJoin financial expert Ralph Estep, Jr - Daily tips for balancing your faith and finances. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showJoin the Lead Time Newsletter! (Weekly Updates and Upcoming Episodes)https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast#newsletterVisit uniteleadership.org
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast, S1
Questions? Comments? Text Us!In this episode of The Life Wisdom Project, philosopher Dr. Jonathan Weidenbaum joins Jerry to explore the fascinating world of Chinese spirituality and its connections to Western philosophy. Jonathan shares his transformative journey to Mount Jiuhua, one of China's sacred mountains, offering insights into how nature and spirituality are deeply intertwined in Chinese thought.The discussion bridges Eastern and Western philosophies, including Heidegger's idea of Gelassenheit (letting go) and Buber's concepts of I/It vs. I/Thou relationships. These ideas are unpacked to reveal how they shape our understanding of desire, values, and the importance of suspending desire.Listeners will also enjoy a powerful Zen parable about a master and a thief, which uncovers profound spiritual truths. The conversation extends to the Taoist principle of Wu Wei, or effortless action, highlighting the significance of aligning with the natural world.Jonathan and Jerry further discuss the Ethics of Care and virtue ethics, connecting these ideas to Confucian ethics, where context and flexibility are valued over rigid rules. This episode offers practical insights into applying these philosophical concepts in everyday life.Relevant Episodes:[Dramatic Adaptation] God Shares His Earliest Interactions In Chinese SpiritualityOther Series:From God To Jerry To You- A series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "These Have Been My Most Faithful Servants"THE LIFE WISDOM PROJECT PLAYLISTHashtags: #lifewisdomproject #godanautobiography #experiencegod Share your story or experience with God! We'd love to hear from you!
In episode three, we'll discuss different views on the nature of humanity and delve into Martin Buber's ideas of I-It versus I-Thou relationships. How do you view -- and therefore, treat -- the people around you? And are your children picking up on those attitudes and behaviors?
Featured photo is Mina as a child (more pics below!) 374 Anger, Part 2 You Have Always Hated Me! In the Anger Part 1 podcast (371 on November 20), Rhonda, Matt and David discussed the fact that when you're feeling angry, there's always an inner dialogue—this is what you're saying to yourself, the way you're thinking about the situation—and an outer dialogue—this is what you're saying to the other person. In Part 1, we focused on the inner dialogue and described the cognitive distortions that nearly always fill your mind with anger-provoking inner chatter about the ‘awfulness” of the person you're mad at. Those distortions include All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Labeling, Mental Filtering, Discounting the Positive, Mind-Reading, Fortune Telling, Emotional Reasoning, Other-Directed Should Statements, and Other-Blame. That's a lot—in fact, all but Self-Blame. And sometimes, when you're ticked off, you might also be blaming yourself, and feel mad at yourself at the same time. Matt suggested I add these comments on Self-Blame or it's absence:: Another possible addition would be when you identify the absence of Self Blame when we're angry. For me, it's been easier to think of that as a positive distortion, because you are blind to, or ignoring, your own role in the problem. In other words, when I'm blaming someone else, it's me thinking my poop smells great and tit's all the other person's fault.. I've wondered if we fool ourselves like this because of the desire to have a special and perfect “self,” which we then defend. Because nobody's perfect, our "ideal self," as opposed to our "real self," is just a pleasant, but potentially destructive, fantasy. Still, we try to preserve and project the fantasy that we are free of blame and the innocent victim of the other person's "badness," , and we imagine there we have a perfect “self” to defend. Or, as you've said, at times, David, “anger is often just a protective shell to hide and protect our more tender and genuine feelings.” We also discussed the addictive aspect of anger, since you probably feel morally superior to the “bad” person you're ticked off at when you're mad, and this makes it fairly unappealing to change the way you're thinking and feeling. Your anger also protects you from the risk of being vulnerable and open and genuine. Today we discuss the Outer Dialogue, and how to express angry feelings to another person, as well as how to respond to their expressions of anger. The main concept is that you can express anger in a healthy way, by sharing your anger respectfully, or you can act out your anger aggressively, by attacking the other person. That's a critically important decision! Toward the start of today's podcast, Rhonda, Matt and David listed some of the distinctions between healthy and unhealthy anger. The following is just a partial list of some of the differences: Healthy Anger Unhealthy Anger You treat the other person with respect, even if you're angry. You want to put the other person down. Your goal is to get closer to the other person. You want to get revenge or hurt or humiliate the other person. You hope to improve the relationship. You want to reject or distance yourself from the other person. You want to understand the other person's mindset and find the truth in what they're saying, even if it sounds ‘off' or ‘disturbing' or offensive. You want to prove that the other person is ‘wrong' and persuade them that you are ‘right'. You want to understand and accept the other person. You insist on trying to change the other person. You express yourself thoughtfully. You express yourself impulsively. You come from a mindset of humility, curiosity, and flexibility. You come from a position of moral superiority, judgement, and rigidity. You are patient. You are pushy and demanding. Optimism that things can improve and that there's a great potential for a more meaningful and loving connection. Hopelessness and feelings of certainty that things cannot improve. Open to what I've done wrong and how I've hurt you. Focus on what you've done wrong and how you've hurt me. I-Thou mindset. I-It mindset. You're vulnerable and open to your hurt feelings. You put up a wall of toughness and try to hide your vulnerable true feelings.. You look for positive motives, if possible, and don't assume that you actually understand how the other person is thinking and feeling.. You attribute malignant motives to the other person and imagine that you can read their mind and know exactly why they feel the way they do. You accept and comprehend the idea that you can feel intensely angry with someone and love them at the same time.. You may believe that anger and love are dichotomies, and that conflict and anger, in some way, are the ‘opposite' of love or respect.. To bring some dynamics and personality to today's podcast, Mina, who's made a number of noteworthy appearances on the podcast, agreed to describe what she learned on a recent Sunday hike. (I've started up my Sunday hikes again, but in a small way now that the pandemic has subsided, at least for the time being. I'm struggling with low back pain when walking and that severely limits how far I can go.) Mina began by explaining that when she was talking to her mom on the phone. Her mom described a conflict with woman friend who seemed angry with Mina's mom. Mina said, “I can see why that woman got angry with you.“ Mina explained that her mother, who is “conflict phobic,” paradoxically ends up with conflicts with a lot of people. However, Mina's mother sounded hurt by Mina's comment, and said, “You've always hated me since you were a little girl! You always looked at me hatefully!” Here are some of Mina's "angry" childhood photos: Mina explained how she felt when her mom said, "You've always hated me.” My jaw dropped when she said that! It was such a shock. I've always felt like she was my best friend! . . . I hate feeling angry. It makes me every bit as uncomfortable as anxiety. If I express my anger, it goes away, and I feel better. But I don't usually express it, and then it comes back disguised as weird neurologic symptoms. And that, of course, is the Hidden Emotion phenomenon that is so common in people who struggle with anxiety. When you try to squash or hide negative feelings your think you're not “supposed' to have, they often resurface in disguised form, as phobias, panic, OCD symptoms, chronic worrying, or any type of anxiety, including, as in Mina's case Health Anxiety—that's where you become convinced you have some serious neurologic or medical problem, like Multiple Sclerosis. Matt suggested that I might remind folks of my concept that “anger allays get expressed, one way or the other.” He's found this idea to be both true and incredibly helpful for “us nice folks who think we can get away without expressing our anger, thinking we can avoid conflicts, entirely. This always backfires, in my experience!” On the recent Sunday hike, Mina practiced how to talk with her mom, using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. After that, she used what she'd practiced on the hike to talk to her mom about their relationship, and then got an “I love you” message from her mom the next morning. This made Mina very happy, but because she had a full day of back to back appointments, Mina decided to spend time crafting a thoughtful reply at the end of the day, when she had a little free time. But when she went back to her computer at the end of the day to send a message to her mom, she discovered that her mother had deleted the loving message she sent early in the day, and Mina felt hurt. When Mina asked her mom about it, her mom said that deleting the message was just an error due to ‘old age.” However, Mina did not really buy this, and thought her mom probably felt hurt and angry because Mina had not responded sooner. In the podcast, we practiced responding to mom using the role-play exercise I developed years ago. Essentially, one person plays the role of Mina's mom, and says something challenging or critical. Mina plays herself and responds as skillfully as possible with the Five Secrets, acknowledging the other person's anger and expressing her own feelings as well. We practiced responding to mom's statement, “You've always hated me.” Matt played the role of mom and Mina gave a beautiful Five Secrets response. You'll enjoy hearing her response, and Matt's and Rhonda's helpful feedback, when you listen to the podcast. Then Mina asked for help responding to another statement from her mom, who had also said: All of the kids your age are angry, because you were neglected a lot of the time because of the war in Iran, and your dad and I were busy doing what we had to do to survive and avoid being arrested. All of my Iranian friends with children your age are experiencing the same thing. Matt and Rhonda did more role plays with Mina, followed by excellent feedback on Mina's Five Secrets response. Again, I think you'll enjoy the role-playing and fine tuning when you listen to the podcast. One of the obvious take-home messages from today's podcast is to use the Five Secrets of Effective Communication when you're feeling angry and talking to someone who's angry with you as week, As a reminder, these are the Five Secrets. LINK TO 5 SECRETS And to make it simple, you can think of talking with your EAR: E = Empathy (listening with the Disarming Technique, Thought and Feeling Empathy, and Inquiry) A = Assertiveness (sharing your feelings openly with “I Feel” Statements) R = Respect (showing warmth and caring with Stroking) However, here's the rub: People who are angry will usually NOT want to do this! When you're ticked of, you will almost always have a huge preference for expressing yourself with the Unhealthy Anger described above. Matt urged me to publish my list of 36 reasons why this intense resistance to healthy communication. LINK HERE for the LIST 12 GOOD Reasons NOT to Empathize 12 GOOD Reasons NOT to Share your Feelings 12 GOOD Reasons NOT to Treat the Other Person with Respect. So, as you can see, there's a lot more to skillful communication of anger than just learning the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, although that definitely requires tremendous dedication and practice. But motivation is the most important key to success or failure. When you're upset with someone, you can ask yourself, “Do I want to communicate in a loving, or in a hostile way?” The reward of love are enormous, but the seduction of hostility and lashing out is at least as powerful! This battle between the light and the dark is not new, but has been blazing for tens of thousands of years. And, of course, the decision will be yours. Thanks for listening today, Mina, Rhonda, Matt, and David
Today's poem is Us by Zaffar Kunial. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Since moving to the quaint village of Rochester, I come to expect visible signs of welcome everywhere. What matters in life is that space between us, formulated by philosopher Martin Buber as I-Thou. It's a sacred space of shared existence where we feel each other's uniqueness and feel our common humanity. Today's attentive poem fosters a consciousness in which we view our lives as more in relation to each other, as close as two small letters.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Every person has a story to be told, and today's episode of Adapting tells one individual's unlikely journey to become a Jewish educator.David Bryfman met Elyssa Hurwitz of Moishe House at a recent conference for Jewish educators when she volunteered from the audience to partake in David's interactive keynote presentation, to explore what it means, in philosopher Martin Buber's language, to strive to create I-Thou relationships. This experience had an unintended but profound impact on both Elyssa and David.What transpires in this episode is a powerful conversation about the consequences of our interactions as educators and humans, and the changing dynamics of the Jewish educator landscape today.This episode was produced by Dina Nusnbaum and Miranda Lapides.The show's executive producers are David Bryfman, Karen Cummins, and Nessa Liben. This episode was engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media.If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a 5-star rating and review, or even better, share it with a friend. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and be the first to know when new episodes are released. To learn more about The Jewish Education Project visit jewishedproject.org where you can find links to our Jewish Educator Portal and learn more about our mission, history, and staff. We are a proud partner of UJA-Federation of New York.
Join Dr. John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Guy Sengstock as they delve into the intricacies of the dialectic process in the context of virtue in this episode of After Socrates. Christopher Mastropietro, a cultural theorist and writer, and Guy Sengstock, founder of Circling Europe, both contribute their unique perspectives to the discussion. Together, they explore the work of philosopher Martin Buber and how his ideas could transform current practices. The episode also covers the concept of the I-Thou relationship and its relevance to virtues, discussing how a commitment to this perspective renews the commitment to treat virtues as sincere vows. Furthermore, the conversation delves into the role of errors in shaping our perception of virtues, generating profound insights about humility, openness, and the path towards understanding. Time-codes: 00:00 - Christopher Mastropietro & Guy Sengstock discuss the role of interest and commitment in the dialectic process, suggesting that it's more than just imagination at play. 01:20 - Dr. John Vervaeke introduces the focus of the episode - how Martin Buber's work could influence our practices. 02:00 - Christopher Mastropietro shares insights on how the dialectic process evolves with each repetition, reflecting on the commitment to virtues. 07:00 - Guy Sengstock sheds light on the importance of relevance to virtue and the ecstatic nature of universal participation. 16:00 - Christopher Mastropietro explores the role of interest and creative errors in opening up relationships and self-perception. 19:00 - The systemic nature of errors and their role in self-accountability and personal growth. 22:00 - Dr. Vervaeke presents the 'notice and variance heuristic,' promoting a humility-centered approach to understanding systematic errors. 24:21 - Implicit learning in recognizing patterns and the essential role of the 'WeSpace' for the Geist. 25:58 - Christopher and Dr. Vervaeke explore the relationship between the emergence of the Geist and the I-Thou. 27:00 - Dr. Vervaeke suggests an increased rate of guidance from the Geist as a reward for vulnerability. 29:13 - Christopher and Dr. Vervaeke discuss the role of error in dialogue and its alignment with Socrates' demonium. 30:00 - The concept of negative theology and its relation to the Geist is introduced. 35:00 - The group explores the relationship between speech and silence in Dialogos. 37:00 - Christ and Socrates are discussed as examples of reframing dialogue. 52:00 - Error as evidence of our finitude, promoting a deeper understanding of self.
In this episode, John and Christopher explore the philosophical connections between Socrates and Kierkegaard, discussing the role of paradox, irony, and the self. They delve into Kierkegaard's stages of life - aesthetic, ethical, and religious - and his critiques of Christendom and societal expectations. The conversation also covers Kierkegaard's complex relationships with love and society, his I-Thou relationship with God, and the resolution of paradox in human existence. Throughout the discussion, Chris and John emphasize the profound nature of dialogos, the ontological claim about Christ as the Logos, and the challenges of discussing sin and its associations. 00:00 - Introduction 00:58 - Section 1: Socratic Paradox and Kierkegaard's Stages of Life 10:12 - Section 2: Kierkegaard's Critique of Christendom 20:03 - Section 3: Kierkegaard's Suffering 30:00 - Section 4: Kierkegaard's Struggle with Society and Love 40:15 - Section 5: Lingering Connection and the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical 50:00 - Section 6: Kierkegaard's I-Thou Relationship with God and the Resolution of Paradox 01:00:08 - Section 7: Dialogos, Shifting Modes of Identification, and the Concept of Sin
"Usually people think of a telos as an endpoint, but what if we think of telos as a dynamic process that sustains a thriving trajectory for the individual and the world around them? The imago Dei, which is deeply and inherently relational and social—we image God by being our unique selves in unity. So there is the particularity of personhood and the relatedness with other persons, God, and all of creation. And so that was what the reciprocating self was. It's 'How do I grow as a fully differentiated person in relationship and increasing intimacy, increasing contribution with the world around me?' To thrive then is to pursue that fullness of self in the context of intimacy and accountability and relationships—not just with those closest to me ... that's essential—but also in contribution to the world beyond the self.How does our faith, how does our devotion, fuel us to want to continue to reciprocate when life is hard? When there's a pandemic? We need something beyond ourselves, a power beyond ourselves, an orientation beyond ourselves to fuel that interrelatedness between our particularity and the greater good." (Pamela Ebstyne King)IntroductionAt the bedrock of our being as persons is relationality: our ability to be known, to be loved, and to know and love in return. But whoa whoa whoa. Wait a minute. What kind of claim is that? Is that theology or psychology? We're used to hearing that from the likes of the Jewish existential philosopher and theologian Martin Buber—he's well known for his suggestion that an intimate I-Thou relationship is what makes for our conscious personhood. It'd be impossible to become an “I” without coming into direct contact with a “You” and seeing it as a “You.” But how interesting that research studies in developmental psychology find just that. You can for instance turn to John Bowlby and the beginnings of attachment theory to find that this theological claim holds up once you start testing it with the tools psychological. But more than holds up, the claim that relationality is fundamental to personhood starts to expand and develop nuance by examining the most universal by application in the unique, particular circumstances. Famous psychological experiments like the “Still Face” show how central the reciprocal response of our earliest attachment figure is for our mental health, even as babies. (Check below for an excruciating video example of the Still Face Experiment.)But this is just one way that developmental psychology might offer some interesting tools to theological reflection. And today we're continuing a new series of episodes on For the Life of the World all about “Bringing Psychology to Theology”—we're exploring the tools of psychological sciences that might contribute to a deeper, greater, more nuanced theological understanding of the world. Last week we introduced the series with a conversation between Miroslav Volf and experimental psychologist Justin Barrett. Justin evokes the image of erecting a giant cathedral of theology—and how the task must be done with a variety of tools and subcontracted skills.Well, whether theology is the grand architect of a cathedral of human knowledge or the benevolent and humble Queen of the Sciences—either way we hope this series highlights the prospects of a science-engaged theology and how it might contribute to the most pressing matters for how to live lives worthy of our humanity.My guest in this episode is Pamela Ebstyne King. She's the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology and is Executive Director of the Thrive Center for Human Development. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, her research has focused on the intersections of developmental and positive psychology, human thriving, and spirituality.In this episode, we discuss developmental psych as the observational study of human change and plasticity in the midst of a whole complex life; relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration and ultimate purpose or meaning; the proper place of self-love; God's enabling and loving presence as the ultimate secure attachment figure; the importance of learning, gaining skills, and the pursuit of expertise; The prospects of regaining emotional regulation through relationships; the game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices to move us well beyond surviving to a life of thriving.About Pamela Ebstyne KingPamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D. joined Fuller Theological Seminary as assistant professor of Marital and Family Studies in 2008, after serving in the School of Psychology for eight years as an adjunct and research professor. She was installed in 2014 with a professorship named for her mentor, Peter L. Benson. In 2021 she was promoted to the position of Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science. Dr. King is also executive director of the Thrive Center for Human Development.Dr. King's academic and applied efforts aim to promote a movement of human thriving that contributes to flourishing societies. Her primary academic interests lie at the intersection of thriving and spiritual development. She is passionate about understanding what individual strengths and environments enable humans to thrive and become all God created them to be. She holds particular interest in understanding the role of faith, spirituality, religion, and virtues in this process. To this end she has led in building an empirical field of study of religious and spiritual development within developmental psychology that provides a psychological scientific perspective of spiritual formation.She has extensively studied and written on conceptualizations of thriving and positive youth development. Her work on telos is noted to provide an interdisciplinary framework for human thriving and flourishing from different philosophical, theological, and cultural perspectives and to provide a structure for understanding practical concepts like purpose, vocation, and joy. Her work combines theology, empirical research, and community engagement to further understand what contexts and settings enable people to thrive. She has conducted research funded by Biologos Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, Compassion International, and Tyndale House, among others. In addition to her scholarship, she finds deep joy in teaching and mentoring students at Fuller.Dr. King is coauthor of The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective and Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Theology & Human Flourishing, coeditor of The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, and coauthor of the inaugural chapter on research on religious and spiritual development in the seventh edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science. She has served on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology, Journal of Positive Psychology, Applied Developmental Science, the Encyclopedia of Applied Developmental Science, and the Encyclopedia of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. She has also published articles in the Journal on Adolescent Research, Journal of Early Adolescence, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and Journal of Psychology and Christianity. King is a member of the Society for Research on Adolescents, Society for Research on Child Development, and Division 36 of the American Psychological Association.In addition to her studies at Fuller, Dr. King completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford's Center on Adolescence; she was a visiting scholar under the divinity faculty at Cambridge University. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she has led high school and college ministries, and regularly speaks, preaches, and consults for various community organizations and churches. She lives in Pasadena with her husband and three children.Show NotesMartin Buber's I and ThouJohn Bowlby and Attachment TheoryTrolick's Still Face Experiment (Video)Justin Barrett & Pamela Ebstyne King, Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human FlourishingDevelopmental psych as the observational study of human change in the midst of a whole life of complexityPlasticity of the human speciesRelational attachment for the sake of intimacy and explorationThe Impact of environment on genetic expressionLaw if reciprocityFullness of creation, redemption and consummationTheology as establishing ends, and psychology as developing towards gods purposesHow psychology aids in the process of becoming our full selves as selfhoodThe proper place of self-loveGod's enabling and loving presenceThriving as psychological, vs Flourishing as philosophicalMeaningful life in eudaimonic and hedonistic termsImago dei“Back to the future”—understanding the end toward the beginningReading psychology through a teleological lensLinear stage theories of developmentLife as a series of cyclesWe can have a telos as a dynamic processThriving as pursuing the fullness of selfReciprocity beyond ourselves when life is hardColossians and Jesus as the perfect image of GodConformity is not uniformityParenting as helping children to become their unique selvesTelos as inhabiting the self, the relational, and the aspirational—purpose is found at the intersection of all threeWilliam Damon on purposePurpose as enduring actionable goal, meaningful to the self and contributing beyond the selfLearning, gaining skills, and pursuit of expertiseMeaning making as a dynamic life-long projectOrienting life in the present moment by tethering to a consummate vision of the futureSociality as inherent to human natureGoals: self, expertise acquisition, and what we aspire toRoles: who we are in our social networksSouls: what ideals are most dearly held and most meaningfulThe fundamental rejection of pre autonomy and independence; embrace of our relational selvesHow malleable our brains are through intentional practicesMaking meaning can change your brainsSurviving vs thrivingAttachment and regulationRegaining emotional regulation through relationshipsThe game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices—intention, motivation, and goalsPossible cutoff point — The relation of psychological science and theologyPsychology as a God-given tool to enable thriving and flourishingKnown, loved, and loving othersThe role of suffering and loss as part of the thriving processFor the cynical and jaded: thriving that is real to loss, grief, vulnerability, and daring to thriveProduction NotesThis podcast featured Pamela Ebstyne KingEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen YunA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/giveAcknowledgementsThis episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.
In this episode internationally renowned clinical psychologist Dr Elinor Greenberg talks with Dr Supriya McKenna about the various ways that Narcissists can convincingly present as being genuine when dating. She gives the tip offs for each of her archetypes - the Detective, the Hunter, the Narcissistic Love Script, The Romantic, The Casanova and the Recycler. They talk about the idea of 'I-Thou' versus 'I-It' relationships - and how in all their relationships the narcissist views the other person merely as an object. More resources for you: You can check out our Amazon number one bestseller, 'Divorcing a narcissist - the Lure, the Loss and the Law' here. It's available in paperback, and, for discretion, as an audiobook and Kindle Edition too. Click here if you'd like to read Chapter One for free. If you want to be sure that your partner is a narcissist the 'Is your partner a narcissist? Knowing for sure' online course is out now, as is the 'Demystifying the Narcissist' online course - and, due to popular demand, the 'Divorcing a Narcissist' online course is on its way. Please head over to doctorsupriya.com for online course information and updates. For more free information and blogs, and to contact Dr Supriya for 1:1 coaching, visit thelifedoctor.org. You can also follow Dr Supriya on Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin for more narcissism related insights.
Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Bruce Miller about his latest book, Uplift: How to Harness the Hidden Engine of Continuous Renewal, published this year by Miller eMedia. After studying filmmaking and screenwriting at UCLA, Bruce Miller has spent his career as a brand strategist, media producer, writer, and marketing partner in an Atlanta brand development agency. Beginning the 1970s, Bruce's spiritual search led him to English author, performer, and teacher, Reshad Feild, as well as to his subsequent long-term relationship with Dr. Bhagwan Awatramani. This journey, as well a number of personal life challenges along the way, are told in UPLIFT in the context of the principle of the Octave. Bruce and Reshad, with others, started The Institute for Conscious Life, the Mevlana Foundation, and later, Chalice Guild. In these schools, Bruce helped bring the work of Jalaluddin Rumi to America, now considered “the best-selling poet in the US.” This story is recounted in Bruce's second book, Rumi Comes to America. Bruce also collaborated and edited Steps to Freedom, Discourses on the Essential Knowledge of the Heart based on talks given by Reshad Feild. Bruce has led residential seminars on Sapelo Island in Georgia and Mendocino, CA on the knowledge of the Octave and Enneagram, ideas brought forth by P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff, and the Law of Hazard, an understanding of risk and uncertainty from the work of J.G. Bennett. Bruce's first book, FORTUNE, Our Deep Dive into the Mysteries of Love, Healing, and Success, explored the karmic mystery of why stuff happens. Bruce has also written business books. Brand Story™ – How to Position Your Shoestring Start-Up Like a National Brand, draws on his decades-long professional career. He also co-authored Seven Superpowers, a parenting guide by Dr. Maria Gilmour. Bruce is an avid sailor, yoga enthusiast, and has taught the turn of the Whirling Dervishes. His wife Karen is an ordained minister and chaplain educator. More information about Bruce Miller's work can be found at: Bruce Miller's I-Thou website: ithou.com.
Martin Buber (1878–1965) was a seminal modern Jewish thinker.Join us with Paul Mendes-Flohr, an authority on the 20th-century philosopher and author of Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent, as we explore Buber's contributions to Jewish thought, philosophy, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism.
Our identity is multifaceted, but people love the simplicity and tend to reduce people to a singular trait, which objectifies them. This reduction leads to violence, in part because it allows an "us vs them" narrative. Amartya Sen points out the ramifications in his book "Identity and Violence". To consider it personally, we look at Martin Buber's "I-thou" to show how most of the time we are in an "I-it" relationship to the world, and must "self-surrender" to have an "I-thou" whole relationship, and not objectify others. Ryder closes out with David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water" in which to be a better person we must be attuned and aware, even imaginative. Matthew Crawford counters that unfortunately, even Wallace remains stuck in his had manipulating mental models to relate to the world as a good person. The solution, says Crawford, is to take action in reality by engaging with others and the world. https://www.letusthinkaboutit.com/step-58-identity--violence/0:00 Intro3:56 Part 1: reductive Identity7:38 Part 2: I-it, I-thou11:57 Part 3: Mind Games17:09 Outro
on the possible or probable, Poetic structures in Psalm 148 and the I Thou relationship with God and others in congruent communications
In this brief episode, I discuss what Buber calls the I-Thou and I-It attitudes to life.
In today's podcast I break down another James Hillman quote, "Simplistic thinking fulfills too many wishes." I discuss the implications of approaching the unconscious as an "I-it" perspective, rather than an "I- Thou" perspective. To find more information on the Wounded Woman Workshop Series, head to https://www.drdaniellemcginnis.com/wounded-woman To join my free community, head to https://dr-danielle-mcginnis.mn.co/share/ To follow me on social media, head to @drdaniellemcginnis To find my website, head to www.drdaniellemcginnis.com Be sure to rate, review, and share the show with those who you feel like would enjoy the show! Thanks for listening!
Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Martin Buber (1878–1965) was a prolific author, scholar, literary translator, and political activist whose writings—mostly in German and Hebrew—ranged from Jewish mysticism to social philosophy, biblical studies, religious phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, education, politics, and art. Most famous among his philosophical writings is the short but powerful book I and Thou (1923) where our relation to others is considered as twofold. The I-it relation prevails between subjects and objects of thought and action; the I-Thou relation, on the other hand, obtains in encounters between subjects that exceed the range of the Cartesian subject-object relation. Though originally planned as a prolegomenon to a phenomenology of religion, I and Thou proved influential in other areas as well, including the philosophy of education. The work of Martin Buber remains a linchpin of qualitative philosophical anthropology and continues to be cited in fields such as philosophical psychology, medical anthropology, and pedagogical theory. Buber's writings on Jewish national renaissance, Hasidism, and political philosophy made him a major twentieth-century figure in Jewish thought and the philosophy of religion. Buber's extensive writing on the political dimensions of biblical historiography and prophetic literature not only made contributions to the history of religion but also to contemporary discussions on political theology with an anarchistic bent. His translation, with Franz Rosenzweig, of the Hebrew Bible into German remains a classic in the German language.From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/. For more information about Martin Buber:“I and Thou: Philosopher Martin Buber on the Art of Relationship and What Makes Us Real to One Another”: https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/18/i-and-thou-martin-buber/“Modernity, Faith, and Martin Buber”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/modernity-faith-and-martin-buber“Martin Buber”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/
Welcome to Table Talk! In this week's episode, Shawn and Nathan discuss "I/Thou", from our series entitled "Us". Pull up a chair, and let's dive in!
This episode continues to explore the question "How Do We Know?" by considering Martin Buber's "I –– Thou" knowing or encounter as a fourth way of knowledge–– relational knowledge as epistemology. In doing so it raises the importance of the question of whether we see reality as essentially a physical process or relational. It also looks at the difference between treating others as "things" rather than "persons."
Philosopher Martin Buber unpacked the idea that we are constantly in relation to others. We cannot escape that fact, but we do get to choose what type of relationship that becomes: an "I-It" relationship or an "I-Thou" relationship. Our guest, Zyanya Aguilar-Nelson, has made a career out of building relationships. While that is an expectation for all of us in life, it is her actual job in the communities where she lives and works. She has learned an immense amount regarding what works and what doesn't work in building relationships. We get deep into the topic and discuss what relationships look like with people we don't like, people who bother us, and even with those we don't know personally. This is worth a listen; all of us have relationships we need to improve.
This week we explore and reflect upon a wonderful poem by narrowboater Steve May (NB Blue Phoenix), ‘The Magnificent Heron'. There is a growing appreciation of genuine encounters with animals and birds and, with the help of Martin Buber and Jacques Derrida, we reflect upon changing attitudes and understanding about how we relate to the non-human world. Journal entry:“9th July, FridayThe air is oppressive and sticky. At this hour only jackdaws have the energy to yap.Chance meeting with a stranger. The water is cool while we talk. He speaks with not just his voice but his face and body. I try to follow the coiled labyrinth of his thoughts. What strange creatures we are. We people our cosmos with such gods and monsters that we can scarce tell them apart.” Episode InformationThis episode features the poem, ‘The Magnificent Heron', by Steve May (from the NB Blue Phoenix). You can follow Steve and read his poem and see the accompanying video on Twitter: @bwannabes.For those interested in reading more about Martin Buber's writing on ‘I-It and I-Thou' you might like to read his book I and Thou (1923/1937). There is a free open-access English translation (by Walter Kaufmann) of it on archive.org: I and Thou.Jacques Derrida's essays featuring his cat can be found in his The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008) published by Fordham University Press. All the soundscapes featured in this episode are all recorded on site apart from the sample of the grey heron (Ardea cinerea) night call. This was recorded at Berkel en Rodenrijs, Lansingerland, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands by Susanne Kuijpers on the night of 10th May 2021. It is available under Creative Copyright licence at Xeno-Canto: Sharing bird sounds from around the world. General DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPodI would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com
Do you think you could have an "I-Thou" connection to a tree? Well, not sitting in your house you can't! And, likely just walking up to a tree and saying "HI" won't work either. Rabbi Mike Comins offers us a practice to help us cultivate our capacity to be outdoors and really BE there, perhaps ultimately to meet it as a "Thou".
“God is Reality with a personality.” —Rev. Michael Dowd Today we’re sharing a very special Living in Oneness broadcast with you featuring Rev. Michael Dowd, an evolutionary theologian, best-selling author, and evangelist for Big History and an honorable relationship to the future. His 2009 book Thank God for Evolution was endorsed by six Nobel Prize-winning scientists, noted skeptics and by religious leaders across the spectrum. Michael and his wife Connie Barlow, an acclaimed science writer and evolutionary educator, permanently travel North America promoting the inspiring side of science, religious naturalism, and one-story spirituality. Tune in to this podcast, "Thank God for Evolution," to hear Rev. Michael and Steve discuss... Betraying the future by living the Good Life Planting seeds of a healthy religiosity and spirituality The “I-Thou” vs. the “I-It” relationship Treating beings as creatures not tools The personification of Reality And much more! (Note: this is a special rebroadcast and any websites, links, programs, or events mentioned may no longer be active. Thank you!) To hear more about evolutionary reality, please join Lynne McTaggart, Gregg Braden, and Bruce H. Lipton for their Free 3-part online video series, ‘Smarter, Stronger, Faster.’ Explore Humanity’s Team and the timeless truth that We Are All One. Learn more about the Humanity’s Team free education programs. Explore Humanity Stream, our streaming subscription service with unlimited access to our most popular masterclasses and additional inspiring conscious programming, providing 550 hours of total content with a 7-day free trial here! Join us every Friday at 12 noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern for our LIVE Accelebration program, a global community gathering to celebrate and support one another on the conscious journey.
Lament as Agency A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, February 21, 2021, Lent 1, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series. Text: Jeremiah 12:1-4 For some cultures, lament is simply part of life. This shows up sometimes in the personal and communal rituals of people’s faith traditions. Sometimes, lament emerges as music rising from a people’s soul, art formed from the lived reality of their lives. The Black Spirituals that many of us know well in the church and their cousin, the blues, are examples of this. The late, venerable Black Liberation Theologian James Cone says plainly, “I am the blues and my life is a spiritual. Without them, I cannot be.” However, for many people, there is a natural aversion to the idea of lament. This arises from a variety of influences, religious and cultural. In many churches, it is communicated mostly through un-written rules that tension, anger, and really any emotion identified as “negative” are not appropriate or welcome. I’ve heard often over the years that someone stayed away from church when they were suffering—because they might cry or because they felt they couldn’t be the way they thought they needed to be in church. And in an effort to balance what was (and still is in some places) an overwhelming focus in the church on sin and guilt, the tendency is to avoid the “downer” topics of failure and fear or the practice of confession. Stadiums and sanctuaries fill up where the “power of positive thinking theology” and “happy, clappy” worship downplays, denies, or distracts from the deep pain, loss, struggle, injustice, and feelings of confusion and powerlessness that many experience every day. One author writes, “It seems safe to say that within American culture there are deeply conflicting attitudes toward expressions of grief, rage, and other negative emotions. On the one hand, there is the oft-noted tendency in our culture to cover up experiences of loss and failure in both personal and public life and to uphold what has been called official American optimism. On the other hand, there is a strong counterpressure in therapeutic American society, often encouraged by the mass media, to ‘let it all hang out,’ to demand that all emotions be immediately and publicly vented.” The “let it all hang out” impulse, without any safe or guided channel, simply spews painful emotions in every direction in ways that don’t lead to healing, but rather do more damage. This is not what the spiritual practice of Judeo-Christian lament is. I was tempted to pre-empt a variety of concerns by sharing a whole list of things lament is not. However, I have chosen to simply say that over the course of this Lenten season, we will explore some of what the spiritual practice of Christian lament is. As I said this past week in our Ash Wednesday service, if ever a time called for lament, this is it. // Over the years in pastoral conversations, I have discovered that often, the key question, the question that loosens knots of confusion and stuckness is this: Who is God to you? How do you think about God? What is God like in your experience? The answer affects how we feel and act in relationship with God. If we think of God as remote and “hands-off”—a benevolent but uninvolved creator, that will affect our engagement. If God is understood as controlling all things in a micro-managing kind of way, that will evoke a different kind of relationship. If our conception is that God fixates on our mistakes or is mostly about punishment, well, you can imagine that makes a difference in how we feel about God and about ourselves. In these common ways of thinking about God we are left in a pretty crummy place. We are on our own and left to our own devices, powerless and manipulated on the gameboard of “God’s plan,” or fearful, never feeling we measure up, and weighed down with guilt. And these feelings may hit closer to home than we care to admit. None are appealing or helpful, especially when we are faced with suffering, persecution, anxiety, injustice, and death. Thankfully, we are not left with only these conceptions of God. As feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson highlights, the tendency has been to think about the God-human relationship in a “power-over” or “powerlessness” paradigm. She invites a shift to a “power with” image. This invokes a different kind of relationship altogether. I remember years ago, a member of my then congregation noted that she felt really solid about the words I say at the beginning of worship every Sunday except for when I get to God “knows you by name, loves you, and wants to have an ever-closer relationship with you.” She said, “The relationship part is where I need work.” This is where I want to ground our understanding of lament—in all the various ways we will explore it through this Lenten season. God doesn’t just want to be around you or to observe you or to be a vague “energy” in your life. God wants to have an ever-closer relationship with you. A relationship. As Jewish theologian Martin Buber described it, God wants to be in an “I-Thou” relationship, subject to subject, free agent to free agent. This is understood as a relationship that is mutual, that is respectful of the others’ freedom, that honors the uniqueness and dignity of the other. It is a sharing of two selves, a “power with” kind of meeting. Perhaps this sounds obvious or simple. But do keep in mind that scripture and particular images of God have been used to justify subjugation of women, people of color, and minoritized groups—to make us feel that we don’t have agency or voice of power. Some of you will have watched the PBS series The Black Church this past week and been reminded how slave masters feared enslaved persons learning to read because once they could read the Bible for themselves, they would understand even more clearly both who God is—a God of justice and liberation—and who they are to God—beloved children of dignity and worth. The Spirituals were, according to Howard Thurman, “an expression of the slaves’ determination to be in a society that seeks to destroy their personhood. It is an affirmation of the dignity of the black slaves, the essential humanity of their spirits.” Likewise, feminist and womanist theologians highlight the ways that biblical prayers of lament provide a model for women’s resistance to domination and abuse. “Women who have been taught (like children) to be ‘seen and not heard’ in relation to faith and religion should notice that the very act of putting anger, impatience, and frustration into words often enables the speakers in the Psalms to come to a renewed sense of assurance in God’s continuing care.” My friend and teacher, the Rev. Jesse Jackson gave voice to all of this with his famous call and response lament and affirmation… “I may be poor, but I am somebody! I may be on welfare, I may be uneducated, but I am somebody! I may have made mistakes, but I am somebody! I must be, I’m God’s child.” The core affirmation is that you are a person. You are somebody. You have agency. Your voice, your experience, your perspective matters—and not only if or when you are successful in the world’s eyes, but also when you’ve hit rock bottom. You can cry out from that place and be met there by a God who knows you by name, loves you, and wants to have an ever-closer relationship with you. And in that relationship, you don’t have to clean it all up or have “the right answer.” I’ve observed over the years, particularly when teaching about prayer, that there is a strong tendency to feel that being angry at God, talking back to God, or accusing God is off-limits—that it’s wrong or breaks the “good, faithful Christian” rules. Our scriptures contradict this over and again, as persons reveal faith in God’s steadfast presence precisely through their anger at God, their arguing with God, their accusations against God. This, you see, is a sign that they know themselves to be in the kind of relationship with God that allows them to be somebody with God, to be free to speak, to act, to feel. Our text from Jeremiah is a good example. In this lament, the prophet brings formal charges against God saying, “let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (v.1) Jeremiah implies that the wicked continue in their destructive ways because God “is blind” to their ways. (v. 4) Jeremiah speaks of how the treacherous have God in their mouths but not their hearts. And then he cries out, “my heart is with You and look at what I’m going through! This is unfair! Give the guilty their due, God!” // Our focus today is not to try to answer Jeremiah’s perennially valid question of why so often the guilty not only get away with their crimes, but prosper. Our focus is on the fact that Jeremiah lifts his voice with this complaint and request to God. Notice that Jeremiah didn’t just spew his anger and complaint all over society. He brought it to God in relationship. This is what we are talking about when we speak of Judeo-Christian lament. I can already hear some sweet Church People responding to Jeremiah. Can you imagine what some would say in the presence of Jeremiah’s outcry? “Now, now. I know it’s hard. It’s not fair. But God has a plan. God is in control.” And I then imagine Jeremiah firing back: “If God is in control, then I don’t want anything to do with that God or to be anywhere near that God because none of this is OK…” One teacher writes, “A lament is a passionate expression of distress. To lament is to wail and to complain and to ‘sing the blues’—of loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, grief, exhaustion and absence of meaning. It is the voice…of a person in turmoil. Finding this voice for ourselves and learning a vocabulary with which we can honestly engage…in a way that does not deny or dishonour…very real anguish, is vital…Availing ourselves of the language of lament is the alternative to disengagement.” If we aren’t given permission to lift our own voice, to name what is real for us in our lives, to lament, then we may very well disengage—from other people, from the church, from life, from God. I distinctly remember a woman in one of my prayer courses explaining how she felt that God had abandoned her in her time of greatest need, the suffering and death of her loved one. As we engaged in some conversation, it became clear that she had never felt she could name how angry she was at God for all that had happened. She realized that she didn’t believe she had permission to bring that anger directly to God. She lost her voice…she denied her true feelings and experience…and, as a result, put distance between herself and God. She said, “I wandered away. Maybe God has been waiting for me all along…” You have permission to lament. You have permission to bring your charges against God. You have permission to come into God’s presence as the somebody you are. God is there. Waiting. https://foundryumc.org/
"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." (The Brothers Karamozov by Dostoevsky) Learning to love well in an emotionally healthy way is a big part of becoming an emotionally healthy adult. Many of us are stuck "emotionally." We may be an emotional infant, child, adolescent, adult, or have qualities of each of these emotional maturity levels. It's important to be aware of where we are now, so that we can do the work of growing emotionally as God desires us to. We need to grow from seeing the world and relationships as I-It, (we are the center of the universe, seeing the other person as an object for our own purposes) to I-Thou (we are each sacred and of equal dignity, therefore we see the other person as a unique "I" and we connect with them across our differences while still remaining our own "I.") We took the quiz (linked below!) and we discuss what it looks like to be where we are emotionally, and how we can try to grow into the emotional adults God created us to be. A big part of this is how we deal with conflict. Are we false peacemakers or do we see true peace? Scazzero gives us practical ways to grow emotionally and resolve conflict in an emotionally healthy way: 1) Communication - learning to speak and listen in an emotionally healthy way 2) Stop Mind Reading!! Being willing to speak how we are feeling vulnerably. 3) Bill of Rights - what are our rules for relationships, how we will be respected by and respect the other person 4) Clarify Expectations - make them conscious, realistic, spoken, and agreed upon 5) Allergies and Triggers - be aware of the way past hurts come into our current relationships and be willing to share and heal (see our Episode in Season 1 - How Triggers Lead to Healing) Resources we mention: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero How Emotionally Healthy are You? Assessment Thank you for your ratings and reviews! Email us at markandkatiemartinez@gmail.com, or visit our website at www.markandkatiemartinez.com. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Episode 1 - The two Ken's dive right into Ken Fong's principled change of heart as an Evangelical Pastor - specifically, with respect to the Asian American LGBTQ Community; how it came about, and the consequences of that change - from criticism to new open doors. The Beached White Male shares some thoughts on I-Thou and Us vs. Them. SEE SHOW NOTES: https://thebeachedwhitemale.com/ken_fongSupport the show (http://thebeachedwhitemale.com)
How do with engage with the dislocated and disavowed parts of our inner being? In an exploration of what Martin Buber called the I/Thou relationship, this seminar excerpt starts at the beginning – where we face the truth of our experience and, by not trying to fix it, find a pathway to reconciliation, in the…
Can a marriage and family counseling model help bridge political divisions, or are there deeper forces at work that require us to re-think American identity and the unmoored self of post-modernity? Our show pushes back against the unexamined, often unconscious ways that we frame public questions using political or economic modes of thinking. We aim to be part of a growing movement of people who are critical of the narrowness of political and economic categories, and who want to revive a vision of human flourishing that is grounded in the wisdoms of theological and moral philosophical tradition. We see these habits and ways of thinking as being pre-political, and foundational to a healthy and civil shared life in families, communities, economies, and polities. In short, we want to create a community that is grounded in curiosity, going deep, and shining light. Let us know your thoughts and reflections on our Facebook Page: @whatingods. Our email: whatingods@ribeye-media.com (mailto:whatingods@ribeye-media.com) . Learn more. Our website: http://www.whatingods.com. Here are timecodes to help you navigate through today’s show: 02:19 Shayna takes the armed anti-lockdown protestors as a point of departure: how do we imagine these people? Are we invested in our view of others to the degree that we will purchase our justifications? 05:45 How does Martin Buber’s notions of I/Thou, I/It help us understand the objectification of other people? Can we have pre-judgments about others and still treat them fairly? 11:30 Do we want this relationship to work? It’s the question of marriage and family therapy; how would we answer this with regard to those in our society who have a different view of the world than we do? Is civil discourse all we need, or are there deeper issues? 18:30 Is our political situation a product of the failure of the moral imagination?
Happy Saturday, Brothers and Sisters! Today's Bible passages include Leviticus 22. Psalms 28 and 29, Ecclesiastes 4, and 2nd Timothy 1. Sharp-eared listeners probably noticed yesterday that we skipped over Ecclesiastes 4, and went straight for 5. Today, we rectify that mistake by reading chapter 4, and tomorrow we will go to Ecclesiastes chapter 6. I know that is confusing, and I feel like if Robert Murray M'Cheyne were alive today, he'd be quite disappointed in my performance. Our focus passage is from 2nd Timothy 1, which contains all sorts of wonderful nuggets of Scripture. We could focus on vs 12, which is fantastic and was made into a song that I sang much in my youth: But I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day. 2nd Timothy 1:12 We could tie into our discussion yesterday on fear with verse 7 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. 2 Timothy 1:7 We could talk about holding on to sound teaching and guarding it by the power of the Holy Spirit: 13 Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 2 Timothy 1:13-14 Or, we could talk about how Paul imparted a spiritual gift to Timothy by the laying on of his hands: 6 Therefore, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6 But as great as all of those might be, we're actually going to focus on verses 9-10, which is one of those short passages in the Bible that are miles and miles deep. This is one of the briefest yet deepest and most theological summaries of the Gospel/Good News in the entire Bible: 9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. 10 This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 2 Timothy 1:9-10 Let's go read the whole chapter in total, even though we just read several chunks of it. It's quite helpful to read it all fully in context to understand what's going on. So - here are some giant diamonds of truth from just verses 9-10. #1 God Has Saved us and CALLED. He didn't save us because of our good deeds, or our goodness, but by His intentional choice and grace. Salvation begins in the heart of God not the mind of man. When did God decide to extend grace to us - BEFORE TIME BEGAN. HOW did God decide to extend grace to us? In the person of Jesus! His plan, which Paul says was a mystery in past times, was made realized and obvious by the appearance, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. What did Jesus do? #1 He ABOLISHED death. Interesting Greek word there - it means Jesus rendered death inoperable, ceased it, destroyed it, caused it to no longer function. How did He do this? By Himself overcoming death! Remember the promise of John 14:19 "Because I live, you too will live!" Yes, believers in Christ will still die if He doesn't return soon, but that death doesn't work anymore - it doesn't end things - it doesn't cease! Progressive revelation is a principal of hermeneutics (or, Bible interpretation) that shows how the Bible truths, covenants, commands, etc, progress over time from Genesis through Revelation. Remember Luke 24 - Jesus with Cleopas and his friend on the Emmaus road, and then Jesus with the disciples in the locked room? In that chapter, Jesus explained to the disciples all of the Scriptures that were written in the Old Testament concerning Himself. The appearance of Jesus brought the Old Testament messianic prophecies into much clearer understanding as He fulfilled each prophecy. New Testament believers knew more about the nature and character of God - and His commands - and the future because of the ministry of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles. This is especially true of life after death, and the eternal fate of those who have trusted in Jesus. There is definitely hope for an afterlife in the Old Testament, but because Jesus had not defeated death yet, it was a foggy and unclear hope. Maybe you remember two days ago when we read Ecclesiastes 3 - perhaps you noticed that Solomon's conception of the afterlife was not what you might have expected? The reason for this is, of course, that he was unfamiliar with what Jesus would do, and how Jesus would overcome death and provide eternal life in Him: 19 For the fate of the children of Adam and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; they all have the same breath. People have no advantage over animals since everything is futile. 20 All are going to the same place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows if the spirits of the children of Adam go upward and the spirits of animals go downward to the earth? 22 I have seen that there is nothing better than for a person to enjoy his activities because that is his reward. For who can enable him to see what will happen after he dies? Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 Solomon was one of the wisest in the Old Testament, but he had no idea what happened after death. Once Jesus came and ABOLISHED death, it became much clearer. Not only that, but Jesus also brought a much clearer focus on what is meant by eternal life and immortality. For instance: “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. John 14:1-3 So, in sum - Old Testament believers in God knew very little about what we call the afterlife. Yes, God revealed to them many things, but the coming of Jesus and His abolishing of death revealed FAR more, and shined light on eternal life, eternal hope, and the Heavenly Kingdom of God. Spurgeon has a great answer to the question of how Jesus abolished death, so let's close out with that: Let us remember that death is AN ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ has already wrought a great victory upon death so that he has delivered us from lifelong bondage through its fear. He has not yet destroyed death, but he has gone very near to it, for we are told that he has “abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” This surely must come very near to having destroyed death altogether. In the first place, our Lord has subdued death in the very worst sense by having delivered his people from spiritual death. “And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Once you had no divine life whatever, but the death of original depravity remained upon you, and so you were dead to all divine and spiritual things; but now, beloved, the Spirit of God, even he that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, has raised you up into newness of life, and you have become new creatures in Christ Jesus. In this sense death has been subdued. Our Lord in his lifetime also conquered death by restoring certain individuals to life. There were three memorable cases in which at his bidding the last enemy resigned his prey. Our Lord went into the ruler’s house, and saw the little girl who had lately fallen asleep in death, around whom they wept and lamented: he heard their scornful laughter, when he said, “She is not dead but sleepeth,” and he put them all out and said to her “Maid, arise!” Then was the spoiler spoiled, and the dungeon door set open. He stopped the funeral procession at the gates of Nain, whence they were carrying forth a young man, “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,” and he said “Young man, I say unto thee arise.” When that young man sat up and our Lord delivered him to his mother, then again was the prey taken from the mighty. Chief of all when Lazarus had laid in the grave so long that his sister said “Lord, by this time he stinketh,” when, in obedience to the word, “Lazarus come forth!” forth came the raised one with his graveclothes still about him, but yet really quickened, then was death seen to be subservient to the Son of man. “Loose him and let him go,” said the conquering Christ, and death’s bonds were removed, for the lawful captive was delivered. When at the Redeemer’s resurrection many of the saints arose and came out of their graves into the holy city then was the crucified Lord proclaimed to be victorious over death and the grave. Still, brethren, these were but preliminary skirmishes and mere foreshadowings of the grand victory by which death was overthrown. The real triumph was achieved upon the cross,— When Christ died he suffered the penalty of death on the behalf of all his people, and therefore no believer now dies by way of punishment for sin, since we cannot dream that a righteous God would twice exact the penalty for one offence. Death since Jesus died is not a penal infliction upon the children of God: as such he has abolished it, and it can never be enforced. Why die the saints then? Why, because their bodies must be changed ere they can enter heaven. “Flesh and blood” as they are “cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” A divine change must take place upon the body before it will be fit for incorruption and glory; and death and the grave are, as it were, the refining pot and the furnace by means of which the body is made ready for its future bliss. Death, it is true thou art not yet destroyed, but our living Redeemer has so changed thee that thou art no longer death, but something other than thy name! Saints die not now, but they are dissolved and depart. Death is the loosing of the cable that the barque may freely sail to the fair havens. Death is the fiery chariot in which we ascend to God: it is the gentle voice of the Great King, who cometh into his banqueting hall, and saith “Friend, come up higher.” Behold, on eagle’s wings we mount, we fly, far from this land of mist and cloud, into the eternal serenity and brilliance of God’s own house above. Yes, our Lord has abolished death. The sting of death is sin, and our great Substitute has taken that sting away by his great sacrifice. Stingless, death abides among the people of God, but it so little harms them that to them “it is not death to die.” Further, Christ vanquished death and thoroughly overcame him when he rose. What a temptation one has to paint a picture of the resurrection, but I will not be led aside to attempt more than a few touches. When our great Champion awoke from his brief sleep of death and found himself in the withdrawing-room of the grave, he quietly proceeded to put off the garments of the tomb. How leisurely he proceeded! He folded up the napkin and placed it by itself, that those who lose their friends might wipe their eyes therewith; and then he took off the winding sheet and laid the graveclothes by themselves that they might be there when his saints come thither, so that the chamber might be well furnished, and the bed ready sheeted and prepared for their rest. The sepulchre is no longer an empty vault, a dreary charnel, but a chamber of rest, a dormitory furnished and prepared, hung with the arras which Christ himself has bequeathed. It is now no more a damp, dark, dreary prison: Jesus has changed all that. The angel from heaven rolled away the stone from our Lord’s sepulchre and let in the fresh air and light again upon our Lord, and he stepped out more than a conqueror. Death had fled. The grave had capitulated. Well, brethren, as surely as Christ rose so did he guarantee as an absolute certainty the resurrection of all his saints into a glorious life for their bodies, the life of their souls never having paused even for a moment. In this he conquered death; and since that memorable victory, every day Christ is overcoming death, for he gives his Spirit to his saints, and having that Spirit within them they meet the last enemy without alarm: often they confront him with songs, perhaps more frequently they face him with calm countenance, and fall asleep with peace. I will not fear thee, death, why should I? Thou lookest like a dragon, but thy sting is gone. Thy teeth are broken, oh old lion, wherefore should I fear thee? I know thou art no more able to destroy me, but thou art sent as a messenger to conduct me to the golden gate wherein I shall enter and see my Saviour’s unveiled face for ever. C. H. Spurgeon, “Christ the Destroyer of Death,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 22 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876), 702–705.
Happy Saturday, Brothers and Sisters! Today's Bible passages include Leviticus 22. Psalms 28 and 29, Ecclesiastes 4, and 2nd Timothy 1. Sharp-eared listeners probably noticed yesterday that we skipped over Ecclesiastes 4, and went straight for 5. Today, we rectify that mistake by reading chapter 4, and tomorrow we will go to Ecclesiastes chapter 6. I know that is confusing, and I feel like if Robert Murray M'Cheyne were alive today, he'd be quite disappointed in my performance. Our focus passage is from 2nd Timothy 1, which contains all sorts of wonderful nuggets of Scripture. We could focus on vs 12, which is fantastic and was made into a song that I sang much in my youth: But I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day. 2nd Timothy 1:12 We could tie into our discussion yesterday on fear with verse 7 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. 2 Timothy 1:7 We could talk about holding on to sound teaching and guarding it by the power of the Holy Spirit: 13 Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 2 Timothy 1:13-14 Or, we could talk about how Paul imparted a spiritual gift to Timothy by the laying on of his hands: 6 Therefore, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6 But as great as all of those might be, we're actually going to focus on verses 9-10, which is one of those short passages in the Bible that are miles and miles deep. This is one of the briefest yet deepest and most theological summaries of the Gospel/Good News in the entire Bible: 9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. 10 This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 2 Timothy 1:9-10 Let's go read the whole chapter in total, even though we just read several chunks of it. It's quite helpful to read it all fully in context to understand what's going on. So - here are some giant diamonds of truth from just verses 9-10. #1 God Has Saved us and CALLED. He didn't save us because of our good deeds, or our goodness, but by His intentional choice and grace. Salvation begins in the heart of God not the mind of man. When did God decide to extend grace to us - BEFORE TIME BEGAN. HOW did God decide to extend grace to us? In the person of Jesus! His plan, which Paul says was a mystery in past times, was made realized and obvious by the appearance, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. What did Jesus do? #1 He ABOLISHED death. Interesting Greek word there - it means Jesus rendered death inoperable, ceased it, destroyed it, caused it to no longer function. How did He do this? By Himself overcoming death! Remember the promise of John 14:19 "Because I live, you too will live!" Yes, believers in Christ will still die if He doesn't return soon, but that death doesn't work anymore - it doesn't end things - it doesn't cease! Progressive revelation is a principal of hermeneutics (or, Bible interpretation) that shows how the Bible truths, covenants, commands, etc, progress over time from Genesis through Revelation. Remember Luke 24 - Jesus with Cleopas and his friend on the Emmaus road, and then Jesus with the disciples in the locked room? In that chapter, Jesus explained to the disciples all of the Scriptures that were written in the Old Testament concerning Himself. The appearance of Jesus brought the Old Testament messianic prophecies into much clearer understanding as He fulfilled each prophecy. New Testament believers knew more about the nature and character of God - and His commands - and the future because of the ministry of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles. This is especially true of life after death, and the eternal fate of those who have trusted in Jesus. There is definitely hope for an afterlife in the Old Testament, but because Jesus had not defeated death yet, it was a foggy and unclear hope. Maybe you remember two days ago when we read Ecclesiastes 3 - perhaps you noticed that Solomon's conception of the afterlife was not what you might have expected? The reason for this is, of course, that he was unfamiliar with what Jesus would do, and how Jesus would overcome death and provide eternal life in Him: 19 For the fate of the children of Adam and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; they all have the same breath. People have no advantage over animals since everything is futile. 20 All are going to the same place; all come from dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows if the spirits of the children of Adam go upward and the spirits of animals go downward to the earth? 22 I have seen that there is nothing better than for a person to enjoy his activities because that is his reward. For who can enable him to see what will happen after he dies? Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 Solomon was one of the wisest in the Old Testament, but he had no idea what happened after death. Once Jesus came and ABOLISHED death, it became much clearer. Not only that, but Jesus also brought a much clearer focus on what is meant by eternal life and immortality. For instance: “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. John 14:1-3 So, in sum - Old Testament believers in God knew very little about what we call the afterlife. Yes, God revealed to them many things, but the coming of Jesus and His abolishing of death revealed FAR more, and shined light on eternal life, eternal hope, and the Heavenly Kingdom of God. Spurgeon has a great answer to the question of how Jesus abolished death, so let's close out with that: Let us remember that death is AN ENEMY TO BE DESTROYED. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ has already wrought a great victory upon death so that he has delivered us from lifelong bondage through its fear. He has not yet destroyed death, but he has gone very near to it, for we are told that he has “abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” This surely must come very near to having destroyed death altogether. In the first place, our Lord has subdued death in the very worst sense by having delivered his people from spiritual death. “And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Once you had no divine life whatever, but the death of original depravity remained upon you, and so you were dead to all divine and spiritual things; but now, beloved, the Spirit of God, even he that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, has raised you up into newness of life, and you have become new creatures in Christ Jesus. In this sense death has been subdued. Our Lord in his lifetime also conquered death by restoring certain individuals to life. There were three memorable cases in which at his bidding the last enemy resigned his prey. Our Lord went into the ruler’s house, and saw the little girl who had lately fallen asleep in death, around whom they wept and lamented: he heard their scornful laughter, when he said, “She is not dead but sleepeth,” and he put them all out and said to her “Maid, arise!” Then was the spoiler spoiled, and the dungeon door set open. He stopped the funeral procession at the gates of Nain, whence they were carrying forth a young man, “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,” and he said “Young man, I say unto thee arise.” When that young man sat up and our Lord delivered him to his mother, then again was the prey taken from the mighty. Chief of all when Lazarus had laid in the grave so long that his sister said “Lord, by this time he stinketh,” when, in obedience to the word, “Lazarus come forth!” forth came the raised one with his graveclothes still about him, but yet really quickened, then was death seen to be subservient to the Son of man. “Loose him and let him go,” said the conquering Christ, and death’s bonds were removed, for the lawful captive was delivered. When at the Redeemer’s resurrection many of the saints arose and came out of their graves into the holy city then was the crucified Lord proclaimed to be victorious over death and the grave. Still, brethren, these were but preliminary skirmishes and mere foreshadowings of the grand victory by which death was overthrown. The real triumph was achieved upon the cross,— When Christ died he suffered the penalty of death on the behalf of all his people, and therefore no believer now dies by way of punishment for sin, since we cannot dream that a righteous God would twice exact the penalty for one offence. Death since Jesus died is not a penal infliction upon the children of God: as such he has abolished it, and it can never be enforced. Why die the saints then? Why, because their bodies must be changed ere they can enter heaven. “Flesh and blood” as they are “cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” A divine change must take place upon the body before it will be fit for incorruption and glory; and death and the grave are, as it were, the refining pot and the furnace by means of which the body is made ready for its future bliss. Death, it is true thou art not yet destroyed, but our living Redeemer has so changed thee that thou art no longer death, but something other than thy name! Saints die not now, but they are dissolved and depart. Death is the loosing of the cable that the barque may freely sail to the fair havens. Death is the fiery chariot in which we ascend to God: it is the gentle voice of the Great King, who cometh into his banqueting hall, and saith “Friend, come up higher.” Behold, on eagle’s wings we mount, we fly, far from this land of mist and cloud, into the eternal serenity and brilliance of God’s own house above. Yes, our Lord has abolished death. The sting of death is sin, and our great Substitute has taken that sting away by his great sacrifice. Stingless, death abides among the people of God, but it so little harms them that to them “it is not death to die.” Further, Christ vanquished death and thoroughly overcame him when he rose. What a temptation one has to paint a picture of the resurrection, but I will not be led aside to attempt more than a few touches. When our great Champion awoke from his brief sleep of death and found himself in the withdrawing-room of the grave, he quietly proceeded to put off the garments of the tomb. How leisurely he proceeded! He folded up the napkin and placed it by itself, that those who lose their friends might wipe their eyes therewith; and then he took off the winding sheet and laid the graveclothes by themselves that they might be there when his saints come thither, so that the chamber might be well furnished, and the bed ready sheeted and prepared for their rest. The sepulchre is no longer an empty vault, a dreary charnel, but a chamber of rest, a dormitory furnished and prepared, hung with the arras which Christ himself has bequeathed. It is now no more a damp, dark, dreary prison: Jesus has changed all that. The angel from heaven rolled away the stone from our Lord’s sepulchre and let in the fresh air and light again upon our Lord, and he stepped out more than a conqueror. Death had fled. The grave had capitulated. Well, brethren, as surely as Christ rose so did he guarantee as an absolute certainty the resurrection of all his saints into a glorious life for their bodies, the life of their souls never having paused even for a moment. In this he conquered death; and since that memorable victory, every day Christ is overcoming death, for he gives his Spirit to his saints, and having that Spirit within them they meet the last enemy without alarm: often they confront him with songs, perhaps more frequently they face him with calm countenance, and fall asleep with peace. I will not fear thee, death, why should I? Thou lookest like a dragon, but thy sting is gone. Thy teeth are broken, oh old lion, wherefore should I fear thee? I know thou art no more able to destroy me, but thou art sent as a messenger to conduct me to the golden gate wherein I shall enter and see my Saviour’s unveiled face for ever. C. H. Spurgeon, “Christ the Destroyer of Death,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 22 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1876), 702–705.
The word “communication” is often overused, yet undervalued and taken for granted... I got together with Joe Hendley who is a Sales Coach and Consultant for his own firm Prometheus, and he passionately drives the topic of communication, the psychology behind it, and the tools around it amongst other things. One of the things we were discussing was about I-It, I-You, and I-Thou. which by the way there is a great book that talks about it, “Interpersonal Communications by Julia T Wood” In I-It we treat others impersonally, almost as objects. A lot of the times salespeople get treated like an It or waiters or people living in the streets In I-You which accounts for most of our interactions we acknowledge one another yet we don’t fully engage each other as individuals And I-Thou is the rarest kind of relationship and the highest form of human dialogue because each person affirms the other as cherished and unique We can only have so many I-Thou around us because of the level of effort, time and deeper connection one has with the other person Though one thing that gets me is that too often we treat others like objects that is clear, so in all reality can we get rid of having I-It communications? You can find Joe on below links: https://www.prometheus-cs.co.uk/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joehendley/
Pastor Mike teaches us on the concept of “I-Thou”
Dr. Janet Smith Warfield interviews Amy Agape, Ph.D., who, during three, actively dying experiences, learned to become a contemplative companion and I-Thou witness to conscious living and dying. Her contemplative, body-based practices create support that is mutually transformational rather than transactional for those experiencing any of life's transitions.
Deborah Mills-Scofield Show Notes Deborah Mills-Scofield helps mid- to large-sized companies make “strategic planning” a verb. She is also a partner in an early-stage venture capital firm. Deb has written for Harvard Business Review and other venues, including her own blog, and has contributed to several books. Deb graduated from Brown University in three years and helped start the Cognitive Science concentration. After graduation, she went to AT&T Bell Labs, where her patent was one of the highest-revenue-generating patents for AT&T and Lucent. She is on the Advisory Council of Brown University’s Engineering School and lectures at Brown. Deb also mentors student entrepreneurs of all types, advises in the Brown Design Workshop, and supports those involved in STEAM. She measures her success by her clients’ success and their impact. Most passionate about There are two parts to that answer. The first part is my ‘work’ work, the paying kind, in which I’m working with mid- to large-sized companies, helping them discover where they want to be in three to five years and how they can get there. I help them encourage or enhance themselves if they already have a culture of innovation, or think outside the box—think of the old differently. To me, it starts with the customer, client, or end user (depending on what words they use). The second part is that I mentor and advise students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where I went to school. Working with these brilliant kids keeps me young mentally. It keeps me learning, keeps me challenged. If I can keep up with them, I’ll have no problem keeping up with my clients. My students study engineering, biology, chemistry, math, English, education—totally across the board. I mentor them and sometimes I also teach them. Then I get to introduce my clients to really cool kids, which helps them get interesting perspectives. Plus, I help my students find really interesting internships and jobs. It’s a nice symbiotic relationship. It all works really well for me. Deb’s three tenets There are three tenets I live my life by. These three tenets apply to my work life, my personal life, and my mentoring. There are three kinds of phrases: The first is not mine; it’s from a Jewish theologian and philosopher called Martin Buber: (I–It) and (I–Thou): “I” is I, meaning the person, while “It” means “Do I view the other person, or nature, as a function versus as a relationship?” “I-Thou” means that the other is a “thou”. They are not an objective; they are a person with a relationship, with a life. For me, it’s a key to how to view your customers internally or externally, because it’s all about them, it’s not about you. The second is: Rush to discover, don’t rush to solve. If you look at the world, at least the Western world, whenever you see a problem, you immediately try to fix it. You don’t try to find out why that’s a problem and what that means. You just try to fix it without knowing many things you probably should. And the last is: Your entire life, your approach to things should be: Experiment, Learn, Apply and Iterate. That’s how I live my life. I’m insatiably curious, which is a good thing but can also be a frustrating thing. I just really love learning … and then I try to discover patterns. Deb’s career and entrepreneurships’ development It started with growing up in the Northeast: New Jersey and New York City. I went to Brown and then to Bell Lab, which was the think tank for AT&T. I was 20 when I graduated and went there. I got paid to play and experiment with ideas. I had fantastic bosses and amazing mentors. They were all males, and they did everything to help me succeed. Later, my husband, who was a physics professor, got a job and we had to move to Chicago. My bosses did everything to ensure that I would keep working there. So, I flew all the time. Then, when we had children, my bosses...
Of Timelessness, Flow States, Psychedelics & Death The ancient Greeks had two words for time: Chronos (consensus time or mechanized time) and Kairos (archetypal time or dream time). Jason Silva, the host of Brain Games and the award winning creator of Shots of Awe has spent his life capturing and sharing the timeless. From his adolescent anxiety about transience to his sensational viral videos, Jason has always had an eye for collecting and souvenirs that he has lived. Jason and I met in that Mecca of Kairos, Black Rock City, a year ago and I am honored to share our rich musings with you today. On the podcast we discuss Burning Man as a timeless heterotopia. We go deep into Flow States, for which timelessness is key. We discuss psychedelics and whether Jason himself uses them. Finally, fittingly, we end with a conversation about death and impermanence. May death tremble to take you. Jason Silva: https://www.thisisjasonsilva.com/ Shots of Awe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClYb9NpXnRemxYoWbcYANsA Brain Games: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/channel/brain-games/ Mentioned in the Podcast Ernest Becker “The Denial of Death” : https://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernest-Becker/dp/0684832402 Erik Davis previously on Life is a Festival: https://www.eamonarmstrong.com/lifeisafestival/erik-davis Stealing Fire: https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Fire-Maverick-Scientists-Revolutionizing/dp/0062429663 Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/ Martin Buber “I and Thou” : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou Mr. X by Carl Sagan (Marihuana Reconsidered 1971): http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/ David Pierce “The Hedonistic Imperative” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pearce_(philosopher) Allan Harrington “The Immortalist” https://www.amazon.com/Immortalist-Alan-Harrington/dp/0890871353 Time Stamps 7: Kairos & Cronus: Silva’s youth and trying to capture time and his anxious relationship to transience. 15: A home run podcast for Jason is to allow ourselves to find new reflections and counterintuitive ways of seeing ourselves 18: Heterotopia and why Burning Man is so full of beautiful synchronicities 22: What took Jason so long to get to Burning Man 30: How did Burning Man change Jason 38: Flow State, a state of conscious where you feel your best and you perform your best. 45: “I-Thou” relationships & “I-It” relationships 49: Jason Silva as celebrity philosopher and the commoditizing of art 58: What psychedelics has Jason Silva used? 1:17: Experiencing love without fear of loss 1:27: I invite Jason to do Ayahuasca 1:33: Raging against the dying of the light: How Jason understands death
Martin Buber used familiar words but in unfamiliar ways to name a way of relating that is as present as it is surprising, as commonly open to all as it is a rare treat when it arrives. Pentecost Sunday is the perfect day to consider I-Thou relating as it calls to mind Jesus, Resurrected, breathing on the disciples and saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit." By this sermon, may thou so receive as well. For more information, or to be in touch, go to our church website: www.montereychurch.org.
What if there were a guide written to help you not only communicate better with your partner, and experience love more deeply - but that would also heal the triggers that keep creating conflict between you and your partner? As it turns out - that guide exists! This week, our guests are Harville Hendrix Ph.D. and Helen LaKelly Hunt Ph.D, authors of the classic book, Getting the Love You Want which was just updated and re-released. Both are internationally-respected couple's therapists, educators, speakers, and New York Times bestselling authors. Together, they have written over 10 books with more than 4 million copies sold, and created Imago Relationship Therapy, a leading tool for helping couples bridge the gaps and deepen their connection. In addition, Harville appeared on the Oprah Winfrey television program 18 times! This week, hear them reveal how they have put Imago into practice in their own relationship - which will give you some helpful direction on making this work practical for your life and relationship as well. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Our sponsor today is Blinkist. Blinkist is the only app that takes the best key takeaways and the need-to-know information from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to. Go to Blinkist.com/ALIVE to start your free 7-day trial. Resources: Visit Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix’s website to learn more about their work. Pick up your copy of Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix’s book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/imago3 to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Past Episodes: Please check out our earlier episodes with Helen and Harville: Episode 22: Essential Skills for Conscious Relationship and Episode 108: Creating Positive Intensity in Your Connection Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. Here on the show, we are having conversations with the pioneers of what makes relationships work well. And today's guests are celebrating the recent re-release of their classic book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. And along with celebrating that re-release, we are so excited to have them back here on Relationship Alive to take an even deeper dive into their work so that we're not going to reinvent the wheel. If you want to know more about things that we've talked about, well, we have two other episodes that you can listen to. But we are going to cover some new ground today and also, hopefully, get some personal insights from our two esteemed guests. Their names are Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix. Neil Sattin: And like I said, they've been here on the show before, and it's... We, Chloe and I, have actually taken a workshop of theirs at Kripalu in Massachusetts. And it's just always such a treat to have you back, especially to be able to celebrate with you the re-release of your groundbreaking book, Getting the Love You Want, which has created a difference for so many people. In fact, I posed the question in my Facebook group, "Does anyone want to ask Helen and Harville anything?" And I had a couple of people who said, "Their book changed and saved my marriage. Saved my marriage." So I know you probably hear that all the time, but I just want to tell you, there are at least a couple more people for whom that's true. Harville Hendrix: Good. Thank you. Neil Sattin: So as per usual, you can download a transcript of today's episode by visiting neilsattin.com/imago3. That's I-M-A-G-O. And it's imago3 because imago2 and imago are other episodes, episode 22 and episode 108, where Harville and Helen have joined us previously to talk about their work. And you can always text the word "Passion" to the number 33444, and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode. And we have show guides for their previous two episodes. I think that's it for me. So Harville and Helen, thank you so much for being here with us again today on Relationship Alive. Harville Hendrix: Thanks, Neil. We are delighted to be here with you. Thanks for having us back on. Neil Sattin: It is... Helen LaKelly Hunt: Yes. Harville Hendrix: We're becoming a regular. Neil Sattin: You are. Yes. And it's a pleasure. I couldn't think of two people I'd rather be regulars with. Harville Hendrix: Aww. [chuckle] Harville Hendrix: Thank you. How kind of you. Neil Sattin: So I'm curious, for you, what... Let's just start by talking about when you were surveying Getting the Love You Want, which is such a classic. You were on Oprah 18 times to talk about Getting the Love You Want. What needed to be revised in the book? Why the new revision? And what were some of the main things that you felt needed to be updated, from your perspective? Harville Hendrix: Basically, what is in the new book, as a revision and update, is a first chapter, which is a contextualizing of the book in today's cultural environment. The first chapter sort of brings us up today's... Sort of speaking to today's audience and making... And acknowledging how a relationship, culture has changed in the past 10 years or some, but certainly a lot in the past 30 years. And obviously, the thing everybody is concerned about is social media, and iPhones, and text, and what is considered to be the dissolution of connecting and as replacement with technology. And so that the audience reading this would know that we are speaking to, with some self-awareness, a new market. So that's the major thing, is to... The major first thing is the social context. And the second is that, since 19... Since, yeah, since 1988, especially, and even since it came out a new issue, but not too modified, 10 years ago, at its 20th anniversary, we have made some, I would think, two major shifts. Harville Hendrix: One has been a clarification that connecting is the code word for Imago. Connecting is the code word for human yearning, how that connecting is the sort of... Misused everywhere by everybody now that even tech people and telephone people do sales and all that, you'll see connecting everywhere. But we posit that connecting is the nature of nature, and that we are living in an interconnecting universe of which we are participants, and that we have moved out of a universe set up by Newton in which individuals were in... Were separate and independent and isolated and in competition with each other, to a new universe in which we are not individuals and cannot live outside of relationship. So we made really clear that there's a... Quantum physics has given us a new view of what humanity is, what nature is, therefore what humanity is, and we tried to bring that into an understanding of marriage. Harville Hendrix: The basic yearning, we think, with couples is to be connected, and to feel connected, and to know how to sustain connection. And so we brought that into consciousness and gone all the way through the book, removing the vestiges of the individual, isolated individual that was there in 1988 because that... That was the... The foreground in 1988 was the self. And now we're saying the self is a derivative of context, of ourselves conscious enough at the time that we were simply espousing what was ordinary in the culture. Although, behind what we were doing, was this un-languaged awareness of that... Of interconnectivity, but now it's languaged. And then we have some additional exercises at the end of the book. The part three is basically exercises that help people work with that. One of them is the removal... One of them is the addition of a process we call zero negativity. And Helen wants to comment about that. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Yeah. Could I please mention then... Harville Hendrix: Please. Helen LaKelly Hunt: In addition to what Harville has said, may I mention three things? Harville Hendrix: Sure. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Absolutely. Helen LaKelly Hunt: To add, we have a new definition of the self that typically... I'm sorry, a new definition of a relationship. What is a relationship, people think, "Well, Harville and I have a relationship. The relationship is Harville's and me talking to each other in our history or whatever." But our new definition of a relationship is, there's Harville and then there's me, but there's a space between us. It's a space, and it's actually that space between us that determines... How we steward that space between us that determines the quality of our relationship. It's sort of a whole new definition of what is a relationship. And second, we bring in ideas like zero negativity. Helen LaKelly Hunt: And you all know the dialogue process that helps the space between become safe, so that when you're talking, you know who's talking, you take turns talking, and there's a structure, but also zero negativity. And then third, we used to have a process that, oh my goodness, we thought was going to be the best process for Imago therapy, which... This is way at the beginning, that if people could express their anger and not keep it locked inside, just let it out, like express... Take turns expressing your anger. And it was called the Container Exercise, where one partner would contain the anger of the other, and not only did we recommend it to couples, but Harville and I did it all the time... And... [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Oh, yeah. I know where this is going. Helen LaKelly Hunt: We had a horrible marriage. And that was before neuro... The neurosciences say that with neuroplasticity and all the brain, what you focus on is what you get. And Harville and I looked at this exercise and went, "Uh-oh. I think this wasn't the right thing for a couple to do practice being angry to each other." And this is where we tossed that out and we've put in exercises only that creates safety between the two and help focus on what our partner is doing right instead of all the things they're doing wrong, even if there are many, many, many. You just try to focus more on what your partner is doing right. And we also then had that process of what to do about the things you'd like them that you wish they did differently. Harville Hendrix: Yeah, and that's... It was important not to say to people, "You can't have your anger." What we had to say to people is, "You can't abuse your partner with your anger. So here is a way to talk about it so that... " And it's not the Container Exercise, it's more of a behavior change request process. Here's the way to talk about it so that the need behind the anger gets expressed, rather than the anger becoming so toxic, too. Because the other thing Helen and I have discovered, it was really interesting, because psychotherapists always work with memory. But somehow, there was like, "Well, all the memories you have are in the past." And one day it dawned on us that we're making memories all the time. Harville Hendrix: And since our partners look at us, and cannot not look at us through the veil of memories they have of us, it's really important that you decide what memories you want your partner to have of you, and then create those memories. And if so... If you have a, even a therapy exercise in which there's a screaming face, your amygdala doesn't care whether this was in therapy or not, it just remembers the screaming face. And you may have regulated it. So we've gotten tremendously focused on this space between being the domain where safety is there so that you can deal with difficult issues without hurting each other, and that way you maintain connection while you're dealing with the difference. Harville Hendrix: I think the other last thing is that we have emphasized more now of the need for affirmation, and that affirmation has become not just a, "Thank you, that was nice," but affirmation, sort of like Martin Buber long ago in the I-Thou relationship talked about, to affirm another person in their being is the function of the I-Thou relationship. And that has impacted me again, and many years after reading Buber, that to affirm another human being... But what we've added to Buber is that, "When I affirm you in your being, I simultaneously experience my being as affirmed." That the brain is a twofer; what you do for and to another person is simultaneously experienced by you. So that I think nature set it up so you couldn't cheat, because if I hurt you, I hurt me; If I care for you, I care for me. And that it works that way, that principle of simultaneity. So we've done some stuff like that in the new book. Neil Sattin: Wow. There's so much that we just covered, so many directions to go. In reflecting upon what you were saying, Helen, about anger and realizing its effects on if you were giving it full expression, and also what you both were talking about, in terms of how we've evolved from a very self-oriented theory of relationship to a very... A more relationship-centric orientation, a relational orientation with the space between. I'm thinking about how going through the dialogues, in particular, how that helps everyone get to the hurt that's beneath that anger, and how that creates safety to be able to identify with your partner, the wounded part of your partner, as opposed to be identifying with a part of yourself that's really angry about whatever it is they did. Or for them, identifying with their angry part instead of by really getting in touch with, "Oh, this is how I've been hurt." And from there, it's a much more generative place. It would be like if your relationship space is a garden, to borrow maybe an overused [chuckle] metaphor, if you find a little plant that has broken in places, you want to tend to it. You wouldn't just necessarily yank it out if it was what you were trying to cultivate. Harville Hendrix: Right. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Right, right. And so what I think we try to do is stay away from anger as much as possible, because it releases cortisol. And you know who feels horrible when cortisol is in their own body, and that's the person being angry. You think you're hurting someone else, you're also hurting yourself. So we do as much... What I appreciate about Harville is he has people more and more, in a simple way, circle what my wound was from childhood, just circle it, and not necessarily re-experience it. The cathartic thing that in the '70s and '80s, psychology said to get your feelings out about your parents, what they did wrong. Like if you express it, then you'll be getting it out of your system, and you don't have to carry it locked inside anymore. Well, guess what? That theory was wrong. [chuckle] Do you remember primal therapy by... Neil Sattin: Oh, yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Yeah, okay. So you would buy therapy or books to lay down on the floor and scream, and express your anger to your parents, your pretend-parents, to get it out. Well, so we are realizing that that's really damaging for the brain and damaging for the person expressing it. Harville has ingeniously headways a couple can identify the wound by circling it on a piece of paper. This wound is then a challenge from the past that they've brought to the relationship. And then they circle what is the need that they have from their current partner now, and changing an anger and frustration into a need and making a request. So we quickly accelerate someone on that path of something that your partner did wrong, well, you gotta name it. You gotta name it and maybe say how that made you feel, but say as quickly as possible what your partner should do, so you'll never feel that way again. And so the whole emphasis is making a request of what you want instead of telling your partner of what you don't want. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. And in the dialogue process then, what we do to operationalize that is that we'll give people the sentence stem. Which when they say what their frustration is, then Helen is very adamant about moving from frustration to, "What do you want?" And then we're giving a sentence stem as when I have that frustration that reminds me when I was little, and people then go to the hurt. And that hurt that I go to when I say, "It reminds me when in childhood my dad was not there," or, "My mother yelled at me," or whatever, that hurt then triggers in Helen, as my listening partner, empathy for me instead of judgment about me. And that revealing of the safety to reveal my hurt is created by the structure of the dialogue process, because I... By the way, the dialogue process works. We finally figured out is something that Dan Siegel said one time was, "Do you know why meditation works? Meditation works because the brain needs to know what's coming next." Harville Hendrix: And in meditation, the brain knows you're going to breathe in and then you're going to breathe out, and there won't be any changes in that. And the brain doesn't care what you're focusing on, whether it's God, or a mantra, or your breaths, or whatever. The predictability of what's coming next helps the brain relax. And in dialogue, when I heard him say that, I thought, "Oh, so that's why dialogue works." The brain knows that when I talk to you, you're going to say, "Let me see if I got that," instead of, "What in the hell did you mean when you said that?" Or, "No, you shouldn't say that." So I can predict, when I talk to Helen, that she's going to say, "If I'm getting that," rather than, "Why are you talking about that?" So, that predictability. So in the dialogue process, you know that your partner is going to check and say, "And that reminds you in childhood of?" And I'm going to say, "Well, it reminds me, blah, blah, blah, when my mother wasn't there," and then she's going to mirror me. Harville Hendrix: So what's happening is that she's regulating her prefrontal cortex by holding me in the dialogue process. And when she asked me, "And what did it remind you of?" and I tell her about my hurt, she is then going to experience, in the amygdala, an emotion called empathy. And so she will get empathy at the same time that I'm feeling safe with expressing my vulnerability with her. And when we shift that, we then move into curiosity rather than judgment, and when we go to curiosity, we've been deep in safety, and therefore, we can talk about vulnerability without fearing that somebody's going to say, "Well, that sucks, it's just too bad. You need to get over your childhood", which is kind of what is interesting, is what the message underneath psychoanalysis is, is that you finally have to go to adulthood and give up that fantasy that you ever... I remember my therapist now, nearly 40 years ago, when I was in analysis, saying to me, "Harville, you are never going to get what you want from Helen." [laughter] Harville Hendrix: "You must come to terms with that." [laughter] Harville Hendrix: I was like, "Oh, let me give you a book." I think we had... No, I think this was after Getting came out, that I was working with that therapist and I said, "Could I bring you a book?" [laughter] "Getting the Love You Want, in which I take opposition to your point of view." And he said, "No matter what you wrote in the book, it is still an illusion." [laughter] Harville Hendrix: What we have to say is, I got it from Helen. I didn't have to give up. You can't give up the desire, it's connected to your survival. It has to happen, but it has to happen with somebody with whom you are engaged, who will be present so that you can have your vulnerability and they stay in the curious and empathic place. Helen LaKelly Hunt: And partner isn't going to do it unless their partner asks in a respectful way. Like Harville has brought his needs to me, explaining what it was like in childhood, and thus exactly what he needs from me, and he and I actually work on this not just once, but over time. Because I'll say, "Honey, I just still want to know exactly what you wish. If I did it perfectly... And tell me exactly what it is you need from me." And he'll say it to me kindly, instead of saying, "You never do this and you never do that." Well, that... What is it? Squelches my motivation. I get discouraged when all I hear is what I'm not doing. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. It disempowers you. Helen LaKelly Hunt: And so the power for a couple just to shift from judgment to curiosity and wonder to each other, and shift from being critical to asking for what they want with sender responsibility. Neil Sattin: Right. And when you say sender responsibility, you're talking about, as the sender, the one speaking, the one making a request, taking responsibility for how you are making that request? Helen LaKelly Hunt: How it lands. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Such as your partner sticks their fingers in their ears and goes, "La la la la la." [laughter] Helen LaKelly Hunt: Let's say... And then you could ask your partner, "Could you coach me in how I'm asking for what I want? Could you coach me so that I could ask for what I want in a way that might make it something that we could have healthy dialogues around?" And just be curious about your partner, when they do shut down, were you part of the reason they shut down? Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I'm thinking back to what it feels like when there is anger, or disappointment, in the room, and how disconnected. I can feel that cortisol and maybe the powerful anger response happening, but in the end, what I really want to get back to is connection with my partner. And so I love how this process creates that shift back to the ways that we open to each other. Curiosity, understanding, compassion, versus staying in that shut-down place where you might be making demands or levying your judgment of the other person. Harville Hendrix: Yes. Right. Neil Sattin: I appreciate, too, that you're using yourselves as examples a little bit, and that makes me curious, and you can pass on this question if you want, but I'd love to know, for you, what are the things that... If you could name something that you continually have to revisit? Because I think a lot of people have this illusion that we who are talking about relationships all the time and writing relationship books, we have perfect relationships, meaning there's never conflict, there's never negativity. None of that. So I'm wondering if you could share a little bit with what that journey is like for you, and what is the thing where you might revisit, you might find yourself revisiting over and over. "Oh, right, that's my thing that I'm working on." Harville Hendrix: You want to go first? Helen LaKelly Hunt: Right now, it's easier for me to share something that I always do wrong, or get feedback that I'm doing wrong. So could I start with that? Harville Hendrix: Sure. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Because I am so great at multitasking. Oh, I am awesome at it. [laughter] Helen LaKelly Hunt: But when Harville is talking to me, that is so insulting to him. Like my great gift is making him feel invisible. And I get that, and I love that when he speaks, and especially if he's excited about something, excited positive or excited negative, my job is to stop what I'm doing right there and then, and turn around and be as excited as he is about something, or as frustrated as he is, and just be present for him as he's experiencing his feelings. And I used to try to fit that into my schedule, but I was doing important things, and he would understand if I wasn't looking at him while he was saying something important... Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And no, if he wants me to stop, "Wow, your... " What's more important, or what's more holy than getting to be present for Harville's experience of life. So over time, I've gotten clear that, "Wow, that's my number one job." So that's what... Neil Sattin: And just I'm curious, Helen, is there something that you've done to remind yourself so that when you find yourself... Harville is sharing something with you, and you're in the middle of 20 things which you excel at, do you have a way of bringing yourself into presence in those moments? Helen LaKelly Hunt: I do. When you came to our workshop, do you remember the video, the Still Face experiment? Neil Sattin: I do. Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Okay. If anyone listening would look up, Google online the Still, S-T-I-L-L, Still Face experiment. A lot of psychiatrists at Harvard and psychiatry schools all around the country conducted this experiment, and Harville had picked that three-minute video to show in our workshops. And when the mother was present for their child, when the child was looking at the world, boy, was the child happy, but the moment the child... The mother had a still face that is not animated with the child, but just still, not angry, not distant, but just a still face, the child would try to get their caretaker to respond. Neil Sattin: Engage. Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Engage. Engage and resonate with what the child was feeling. And in this little three-minute video, the child begins to go into shock that the mother has a still face and decompensates and starts screaming and yelling, even though the mom is about five inches away. The mother is right there, but it's the look in her eye that the child is missing. The mother is present but doesn't have presence. And so after watching that video for some years, I woke up to the fact that, "Oh, my goodness. Why don't I practice being the mother in the still face that is resonant face?" It's like... And it's a whole lot of fun to do that. I am having so much fun doing my best to when Harville might need me to drop everything, turn around, and just practicing presence. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. And what's interesting, and... But ordinary, is that you can imagine, therefore, that I grew up with a mother who had eight children plus me and no husband, he had died on a one-horse farm, and she was always busy. I have no images of her paying attention to me. None. Neil Sattin: Wow. Harville Hendrix: She died when I was six, but I, in that six years, I do not have a single picture. She was a wonderful woman. When I talked to my oldest sister, who at the time was an adult when I was a child... She is the most wonderful woman you can imagine. She was kind, loving and caring, and you look at all my family. They had to have a pretty good mother, because nobody went crazy and did drugs, and nobody killed anybody and so forth. But I was the last, and my primal memory of her is trying to get her attention and failing. So when I walk into the room and Helen is busy at the stove, at the fireplace, doing what my mother did, but hers is on the... Usually on the phone. That memory pops in, like I'm not going to be able to get her attention. So Helen has a practice of when I walk into the room, she'll take the phone away and check and see if I want to talk to her or... Or the other thing is, on Helen's side, is that asking her, "Is now a good time to talk?" is a way of establishing her availability, and she can say no. So we've moved out of, "You gotta always respond to me when I walk into the room," to, I can ask, "Are you available for a question right now?" And she can say no, and come back to it later. Helen LaKelly Hunt: And the key thing for me in terms of being vulnerable is, a big request I've asked is if you would coach me before presentations. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. So it's that... Helen LaKelly Hunt: So that's a childhood thing. Harville Hendrix: That Helen did not grow up being empowered by the people around her to function. Helen LaKelly Hunt: He's such a great speaker. Oh, wow. He just is so good, and I don't mind not being as good, I just want the memories of him coaching me. So that's been our thing. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And when you say that, I just... I get the feeling of what that must be like to be supported by him, to have all that attention and encouragement coming from him. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Exactly, exactly. Harville Hendrix: Except that right now, she's so good on the stages that people... There is a line up with her at the end of the workshop, and I'm over putting away my computer and nobody's talking to me. Everyone's talking to her. [chuckle] That's how good my mentoring has been. [laughter] Harville Hendrix: Yeah, but I get that. But that was you were not empowered as a child. And so to say, "Here's how you could do that, practice projecting, clear up this concept, make eye contact when you're talking, move around," anything that makes it charismatic, because speakers who had done it on stage a long time know how to hold an audience, and you don't hold them by standing there lecturing out of your throat. You engage them. And so she is... You do that with such magnificence. Well, you saw her do that with such magnificence, so... But the thing that's important is, we have talked about the new book. I think we finally clarified that healing is a medical term, and that it applies to the body getting well of a wound, but psychic healing, memories are not healed ever, that they are always resident in the... The emotional ones in the amygdala, and the event ones in the hippocampus. They're always there and can be activated by a behavior. So that what we work on is creating a relational environment in which we don't trigger the memories. And if we do, we have a repair process, in which we'll quickly put those memories back in the background, but they're not going to go away. Harville Hendrix: We used to think, when we were working out of the medical model for psychotherapy, which came from Freud and he was a physician, so he did what he knew how to do, that all emotions were a disease and had to be treated, and now we know that emotions are triggered by memories and that those memories will always be there. And what you wanted is... When we talk about creating new memories to replace the old memories, but when the old memory is triggered, that you move quickly in and all old memories are triggered by the absent caretaker. Whether they are missing in their bodies or missing emotionally, although they're in the room, they are not present to the child, and like that baby in the Still Face experiment, not being able to get the resonant face is terrifying. So if we... We know that all the time we have to live with that kind of conscious intention that we want a play... Our relationship to be safe enough that we don't trigger each other's painful childhood memories. And when we do, we move to repair quickly. Neil Sattin: Can you talk for just a minute about... And I want to make sure we don't lose sight of you also offering if you have something to share about your own personal thing that you revisit in the relationship, that you've been working on, Harville. But before we do, I'm curious, how do you encourage reciprocity in a relationship? I think, particularly in processes that require a lot of generosity of really listening with intent and being present and helping someone through a hard moment and being willing to come back to the table and repair, all of these important things. There's a danger that people perceive, which is like, "Well, I'm always giving and/or I'm always willing, but my partner isn't necessarily." So I'm just wondering if you have some guidance to offer around how to encourage partners to both be able to come to the table. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Do you have a comment about that? Helen LaKelly Hunt: Thank you. Harville Hendrix: Well, I'd have to think about that because I'm thinking that I'm not associating that with us. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Well, actually... We actually did when we were in a low point. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: We created a calendar of on-duty and off-duty days where before going to bed at night, one person was in charge of making sure that they and their partner were connected before they turned out the lights, and the next day it was their partner's job to make sure they were connected. And that was something that really brought us both in charge of participating and making sure the relationship was healthy. Because in most relationships, one person might be a little bit more active doing that. And if one person is more active, the other might go, "Well, it's their job to do that," [chuckle] or withdraw. Every relationship has a turtle, as well as a hailstorm. So these on-duty... This calendar that invites a couple to co-create accountability for reciprocity is a beautiful way that, no matter what, you have to be connected before you go to bed. The other person on their on-duty day has to figure it out. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. And I think we've talked about that some. I'd say that was a really good training process, but I don't experience now, you and me saying, "Well, I did five things that were positive and you didn't do any," that we're not in the tit-for-tat consciousness. We do have a ritual every night that, before we go to bed, we give each other three appreciations, and rather than point out three things that we did wrong in dealing with the zero negativity calendar, that we moved that out and... Helen LaKelly Hunt: We both are really responsible for the relationship these days. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: But if someone... If it's one-sided, that's a suggestion. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. And so that really is an amazing structure, that you have a day on which you are the one who is going to contain whatever is chaotic, and the next day you're off-duty. What we discovered, though, is we like the days on-duty better. [laughter] Helen LaKelly Hunt: It felt better to be on-duty than off-duty. Harville Hendrix: Yeah, because you're working out of your prefrontal cortex and you're not into your reactivity. And if you do feel reactive, "I'm on duty, I can't drink." [laughter] Harville Hendrix: So you go and do the other piece, and you wind up feeling better because you have not gone into your negative emotions. And then after a while, we were both feeling better so that we kind of made that we are both on-duty every day for the quality of our relationship. And given that, we don't have a whole lot of things to clean up, and when we do, I think the thing I would say about that is we have got this repair process down so that if one of us does miss out, we just go fix it in the next five or 10 minutes. Helen LaKelly Hunt: So that's the zero negativity process. Harville Hendrix: That's the zero negativity process. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Which Harville could talk about for a long time. We do a better job at that, but... Harville Hendrix: Let's see what Neil wants. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Well, I would definitely love to have you share that, but is there something, Harville, in particular, that you'd like to share about something that you've had to revisit in your relationship with Helen that's kind of your thing, that you've been working on, and maybe a struggle that is less and less of a struggle over time? Harville Hendrix: Well, I'm thinking about that. I think that my growth edge is to listen until Helen finishes her sentences. That I interrupt her, and then that triggers her invisibility vulnerability. And to... Because my brain quickly is listening and has something to say to add to it, or an alternative, and I rationalize it by, "Well, it's a conversation, it's not a dialogue. We're playing tennis, we're not having a dialogue." But all interactions are and should be dialogical. And I still work on, as the co-creator of all of this, implementing it all the time. I would think that's... Would that fit with you? Your view of my growth edge? What else would you see as my growth edge? Helen LaKelly Hunt: I think me finishing sentences. Harville Hendrix: Finishing sentences, not being interrupted and deflected. [chuckle] Helen LaKelly Hunt: Mm-hmm. And I said the coaching. Harville Hendrix: And the coaching. Because I think when you were little, nobody listened to you in the household, the family, the parents. Helen LaKelly Hunt: I didn't talk. I didn't even try. [chuckle] Harville Hendrix: Well, and you didn't talk because nobody was listening. That was not cool. [chuckle] So interrupting her, but... And also appreciations, to notice what excellent things, more than just the ritual at bed time, that during the day I'm trying to grow into awareness that the way she just handled that phone call was amazing, and to say that instead of, "Well, we got another task done." That's the affirmation process, to be engaged in that. Because I grew up on the farm, and where I grew up on the farm was people didn't spend much time thanking you. It was like, "Did you milk the cow?" And then they didn't say, "Wow, what a good cow milking you did." [chuckle] It just was, "Did you do it? And did you feed the horse before you came in?" [laughter] Helen LaKelly Hunt: And all of those affirmations... Harville Hendrix: So appreciations was not a part of that, and affirmations. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Appreciations and affirmations create safety, and that's bottomline. Harville Hendrix: Yes, absolutely. And they then empower you, you know what you did that made a difference. And if you do something, like you did feed the cow or milked the cow real well, and nobody noticed it, then you don't know whether you did it right or not, or if you even want to do it again. But if somebody says, "Good milking. Wow, see the horse was fed. Good job." That's the kind of affirmation, appreciation, that becomes spontaneous rather than just the ritual at the end of the day. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and that reminds me, too, of John and Julie Gottman's work around having that ratio of 20:1, positive to negative, interactions in normal day-to-day life. They were just on the show talking about the importance of cultivating cherishing in their relationship as well, so... Harville Hendrix: Yeah, I like them. Neil Sattin: It makes sense that you'd be on the same page. Harville Hendrix: Yeah, yeah. John and I were talking one time at his home on the island, in San Juan Islands, where he lives, we'd gone out there to visit him. And at the time, there was some kind of... We're not sure we're on the same page and so forth, but he pulled me aside and he said, "Having been here for two days and talking, so forth, I think we're basically all doing the same thing, we just phrase it differently." And I thought, "Good! That means we pass your approval." [laughter] Neil Sattin: It does feel good. Harville Hendrix: And I love the word "cherishing", that... I love that word, "cherishing". And I think the repair process, we prefer to call it the "reconnecting process" because repair seems so mechanical, but the methodology of that, the quickness of repair as a sign of a healthy relationship is another thing they threw into the world that we have picked up and said, "That's really important," is how quickly you get this thing fixed and get back on the road. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about your approach to repair that you've brought up a few times? Harville Hendrix: Well, yes. The zero negativity is a pledge that you make, and we know that because of the wiring of the brain to be paranoid means that to change your brain to affirmations, goes... Is by changing the evolutionary patterns so big, so that when you commit to zero negativity, you gotta blow it. And we say to people, "We're telling you a great thing to do, but we know you gotta have difficulty doing it. So let's just say that upfront. But it's okay if you blow it, if you repair it." And because when you blow it, you'll disconnect, and what we want you to do is reconnect, which we like the word "connecting". So what we... There's a range of repairs, and one is to say, "Could I just do that again? Could I send that again?" Or Helen might say, "Would you be willing to send that in a different way that doesn't sound negative to me?" Harville Hendrix: So, the re-do process. And then a sort of parallel to that is, if I'm not clear what you want, I could say, "Will you model it for me? So I can see how you want me to look, the tone of voice you want me to have, the words that you want to say." And the agreement is that we will let our partners teach us. Then the third thing is that we discovered some people don't need to do all that, they just need an apology. "I'm really sorry that I had that tone of voice." Helen likes apologies. I like behaviors, because when I grew up, people who apologize just hit you again. So apologizing means nothing to me. But if, stop hitting me and do something different, so then I will have to ask her how something she wants. A hug? We both respond to hugs, sometimes, "Just hug me," or, "Look me in the eye." A connecting behavior of some sort may repair it quickly. Harville Hendrix: And then if, however, the memory that was a real sensitive one, we have the option of going into a full dialogue and talking about how that negative thing I experienced from you, triggers this memory for me, so that she can know or I can know that, then get curious, can know that I need to go to empathy and to holding that. And then we have a really complicated one. If it's really difficult, I may need more than empathy. I may need an actual request for behavior change, and we call that the behavior change request process. And that means we go through a process to arrive at a behavior that I need to have from you so that I can predict my safety with you. And then Helen will agree to initiate that maybe, or if it's on my side, I will initiate that behavior, so that the repair... But that's when it's really deep. Neil Sattin: Right. I remember, in going through that dialogue in your workshop, how nice it was... I believe you have us come up with three or four options. Harville Hendrix: Right. Neil Sattin: So it's not just like, "This is my request, honor it. Please honor it." But, "Here are a few options for you. And any one of these things would satisfy me, or would feel like a step in the right direction." And I feel like that's important. Harville Hendrix: It really is important because if it's just one thing, "Here's my hurt, here's what I want," it sets up a power struggle instead of a collaboration. But if they're, "I'm hurt. Three things, any one of three things would help with that," then I get a choice about which one of those I can do, which one I will do, and which one will not stretch me at all if I did it, and so I'll pick one that's challenging because I want to grow. But if I have choices, then I can participate. But we found that if I don't give you a choice, it's going to trigger your resistance. Then even if you did something, it wouldn't matter, because the psychological energy of a generosity is not there. But if I have a choice, I can be generous; If I don't have a choice, I'd be resentful. We don't want a therapeutic process that creates resentment. Neil Sattin: Speaking of, I'm curious about the way that Imago handles shame. I could see, for instance, you take the zero negativity pledge and one person or the other dumps something toxic into the relational space. It happens. So how would you want to handle the shame that one might feel from having done that? Or we're in the Getting the Love You Want conversation, a lot of people have shame attached to their desires and to the very thing that they want to ask for. It might bring them shame to ask for it. So I'm just wondering if you have a way of holding that? Harville Hendrix: Well, to me, the shame is dealt with by holding the request or holding the failure, so that you... I think the reparative or the healing or the reconnecting process always is that if it's guilt that you mirror back at, so you're feeling guilty about that, so shame... So that felt shameful to you. I'm getting that, there's some more about it, so then don't shame back or guilt back. But once a person has become... Has had their... And you know those emotions are all connected to developmental processes. If you're always into guilt, you're probably not into shame, you're into... You did bad behaviors. But if you're into shame, which is an earlier developmental issue, you're into not being a good person. And so... Harville Hendrix: But in either case, they are all created by the parent who does not hold the child's behaviors and experiences at the time. And when those are held without judgment but with curiosity, that for us is what restores connection, whether it's shame or guilt, is it's... I don't end up... Haven't been able... I know there are shame books and guilt books and all kinds of things, but as I have read the literature for the past 40-50, nearly 60 years now, underneath all of those things, there's something that repairs everything. So it's not a shame repair. And what repairs shame and guilt and anger and all of that is presence. If I can be present to you without judgment, and hold you with curiosity, something will happen inside of you around that transaction, whether it... Whatever it was, guilt or shame. And it will be mitigated by the fact that it's not repeated in our interaction. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I am so appreciative of your time and wisdom again. I just want to remind everyone that if you want to download a transcript of this episode, we've had so many valuable action items and takeaways from this conversation, you can visit neilsattin.com/imago3. That's I-M-A-G-O 3, after their Imago therapy and Imago dialogues. And I also encourage you to listen to our first two episodes together, episode 22 and episode 108, where we go into more detail about how to do dialogues in the structured way that we've been referring to today. And also, we talk a lot in episode 108 about creating lots of positive force in your relationship. Neil Sattin: Before we go, I just... I want to mention something that feels super important to me, and it's kind of funny that we waited until the end to chat about it, but one of the most important changes that I noticed in the book, along with all of the wonderful updates to the content that you mentioned, is that now, Helen, your name is also on the cover of the book as an author. And I just want to acknowledge that you write about it beautifully in the preface, both of you, about your process of how that came to be. Do you want to give us just a quick snapshot of that now? Because I know a lot of people ask about that and why, for so long, Helen, your name wasn't on the cover when you so clearly were involved in creating this work. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Well, thanks for asking, and maybe I'll go first. Harville Hendrix: Okay. Helen LaKelly Hunt: I look back now and am surprised at my own disassociation of the idea of being on the cover. At the beginning, I vehemently fought against it because I had a prominent last name and was from a family that had sort of, not world recognition, but in certain industries, world recognition. [chuckle] My last name is known around the globe and in certain places, certain industries, and Harville was a sharecropper's son and both parents had passed away by the time he was six. He was the youngest and was almost sent to the orphanage. So while I saw his brilliance, I didn't think his last name... Well, I just wanted this chance to have the theory so powerfully presented in this book, I just felt like it should be his name. It was his idea to focus on this book and so much of the content was him, and I was the ideal number two for him, we both think, but I wanted his name on it. Helen LaKelly Hunt: But I just kept... Once he became so famous, I really missed that I wasn't recognized very much at all, but I dreamed I would be on the cover, and that was Harville's idea. But from the very beginning, there was some sort of dissociation that women have that I was a part of, that I had been, and that I recently wrote a paper on all of the things I did to prepare myself as a therapist before I met Harville. I got a master's in counseling psych, went halfway through a PhD in clinical psych. I love this stuff, but I just sort of dissociated from it. And it's a tremendous, joyful, beautiful thing that Harville had the idea of including me, and that I get to be visible as his number two. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Well, and the reason her name is on the cover is that she is the co-creator of Imago. The first few sentences in the first year, in 1977, when we met, the conversation led to Getting the Love You Want, and Helen facilitated finding a writer and facilitated the research, all kinds of things, plus the conversation about content was there and the contribution, like Helen invented dialogue, it was her idea to do that structured process. Zero negativity came from Helen. And so I pick up a lot of things that she would say, and since I'm a systemic thinker, I then build that into the system, but... So a lot of pieces in the system... I take full credit for the structure of the system, but not for all of the limbs on the body of the system. So it was clear that we are co-creators with equal and unique contributions to it, and that Helen refused to have her name... That she was offered to have her name on in 1988, then she said no. But after a while, it began to agitate both of us that there was something wrong with this public recognition of me, part of which could be explained, because I was on the Oprah show. Harville Hendrix: But that was also part of the problem that Helen, not being on the cover, didn't get on the Oprah show. So I'm the visible person, and she is the supportive housewife, even if she does have a famous name. I suddenly became as well-known, if not better known than her last name. So it began to just look like that. So when we got to the 30th, it occurred to me, and then I had this epiphany that it's not like a deserved thing. She deserves to be on it, or I want to be generous. It dawned on me one day that I colluded with the cultural devaluation of women, and that I'm married to one of the most powerful women in the world, who was a co-creator of a book and she's invisible around one of the things she loves the most. Helen colluded, too. She's a feminist, she is probably ranked as the second most influential feminist in America in terms of her contribution to women. But somehow, she disassociates herself from... Not from that work, but from our work. Harville Hendrix: So it dawned on me, as we were getting ready to write the preface to the new book, that, just like an epiphany, "Wow, look at this. Can you imagine, if we colluded with the cultural trance, how could we understand everybody else's collusion with the cultural trance? No wonder it's so hard for women to get the right jobs and break through the glass ceiling, and be pastors in churches and bishops in Catholic churches, and everything where women are unequal. It's just wrong, and it needs to be righted." So we did it to cleanse our own souls and to make a statement to the culture, that gender inequity is basically a pathology. And hopefully, we have awakened from that trance and into at least a smidgen more health as a result of that. So her name is where it belongs. And another thing, it's a justice. Social justice is when equity shows up. And so this is a relational justice or partnership justice, in which we are truly partners, and she's not my helper. She's a partner, and we are equal in this project. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Well, and for me, I was known for being in the Hunt family and getting dividends. I started using dividends and I'm known as a donor, and my work in feminism is my head, but Imago is my heart and... Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Helen LaKelly Hunt: That's who I am at my heart. And so it's a beautiful experience, getting to have my heart seen more and being more of a partnership. So thank you for asking. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And just, for me, it was super powerful to pull the book out of the wrapper and to see both of your names there. I had a visceral experience, so... Harville Hendrix: Are you... Neil Sattin: Yeah, I did. Harville Hendrix: Yeah. Great. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Harville Hendrix: Oh, we're glad. And I think, as it occurs to me, while we're talking, is you cannot really become without the resignating other. And so it's really helpful to me, and I think probably helpful to you, that people can say, "Yes, you all are equal partners. And Helen is an equal partner with you." Makes her an equal partner. There's something about the resonance of you and the public to that, that helps Helen integrate it. Otherwise, the disassociation is hard to overcome for both of us, because I was disassociated too. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And for me, this is a reminder too, for everyone who's listening, to just think about what you, in your relationship, what you are creating together, and to acknowledge that the ways that we do create things or support each other, but even in the support, it's truly a co-creation. Harville Hendrix: Yes. Neil Sattin: Things wouldn't be possible without... And that's the beauty of it, right? Is we get to create amazing things that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Harville Hendrix: And you're co-creating each other all the time, just like you create a baby together, then you co-create each other as parents, in where every interaction changes us. So we're constantly co-creating, but we don't know it, but it's so subtle. But it is the primary reality, we think. So thank you for asking. Neil Sattin: My pleasure. And thank you both for being here and being willing to talk about the theory, the mind stuff, and the heart stuff, and to share some of your own personal journey. It's super powerful and such a treat to be able to talk to you again here for Relationship Alive. Harville Hendrix: And for us, Neil. Helen LaKelly Hunt: Thank you. Harville Hendrix: Thank you. We love talking to you. Neil Sattin: My pleasure. Harville Hendrix: We read your newsletters every time they come out. Neil Sattin: Do you? [laughter] Harville Hendrix: Yes. Neil Sattin: Well, hopefully, you've been entertained lately. [laughter] Harville Hendrix: We keep up with you. Yes.
Finding your voice, learning how to say what you mean, and how to listen deeply: this is one of the most rewarding journeys you can take.” — Oren Jay Sofer Today we have Oren Jay Sofer on the podcast. Sofer teaches meditation and communication nationally. He holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University, and is a member of the Spirit Rock Teacher’s Council. He is also a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for healing trauma, and he is the Senior Program Developer at Mindful Schools. Sofer is author of Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. In this episode we discuss: The importance of slowing down Marshall Rosenberg’s system of nonviolent communication How our behaviors can viewed as an attempt to meet a deeper need Entering relationships from a sense of deprivation vs. a place of growth The importance of relational awareness The undervalued skill of healthy communication Why intention is the single most important ingredient in dialogue Martin Buber’s distinction between the I-Thou vs. I-It relationship The importance of the “do over” How to heal after a breakup The importance of forgiveness and how it happens on its own time schedule
Imagine a world in which our encounters and unique connections with one another could change and transform society for the good, free from judgement and cynicism, much like a window reveals the outside world without distortion or alteration. Pastor Tony Minear, Ph.D. explores Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” principles of human relationship and connection and how the ultimate meaning of life and our connection to God can be found in this awareness. Reading: Janelle Tapphorn Message: Pastor Tony Minear, Ph.D. Visit us online at www.beatitudeschurch.org/ Like what your hearing? Your tax deductible donations help continue our show and can be made at www.beatitudeschurch.org/online-giving
Imagine a world in which our encounters and unique connections with one another could change and transform society for the good, free from judgement and cynicism, much like a window reveals the outside world without distortion or alteration. Pastor Tony Minear, Ph.D. explores Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” principles of human relationship and connection and how the ultimate meaning of life and our connection to God can be found in this awareness. Reading: Janelle Tapphorn Message: Pastor Tony Minear, Ph.D. Visit us online at www.beatitudeschurch.org/ Like what your hearing? Your tax deductible donations help continue our show and can be made at www.beatitudeschurch.org/online-giving
In this episode I present my paper dealing with the Noetic Affects and Effects of Sin and Grace and explore the ramifications of sin for the breakdown of what Brunner called the “I-Thou” paradigm. Don't know what I'm talking about? Listen in and you will! Enjoy the show! For the full text of this paper including footnotes, citations, and bibliography please visit: http://rts.academia.edu/TylerVela
www.RobertSchullerMinistries.org RobertSchullerInspiration.com Join Pastor Robert and Donna Schuller on this recording of their monthly "The Call." This episode's guest is Dr. Chris Knippers, psychologist, lecturer, author, who has worked in the field of addiction for 40 years. Dr. Knippers answers some of the most difficult questions including "Why do people get addicted and how do they find recovery" He also reveals some of the latest studies on what the addicted brain looks like. You will learn about the powerful "I-Thou" relationships as well.
In our ever increasingly more technology-driven world, it is becoming even more imperative that we drop down into our physical bodies to understand what we feel and notice how it shows up for us in our bodies. There is so much information to be had in our sensory and intuitive experiences, if we’ll only take the time to notice it. And this information can show us not only how we react or respond to others, but also how we can shift cultural paradigms. So, it is only fitting that this week’s guest, Benjamin Reisterer, created a remarkably simple, convenient smartphone app called MetaFi, which guides users through noticing what emotions they feel, where they physically feel it in the body and the story around the emotions in three quick steps, so that users can begin to notice patterns in their emotions and physical responses and consciously disrupt those patterns with newer, healthier habits. In our conversation, Benjamin and I talk about how app users can use what they learn to make changes, the neurobiology influencing the relational, and what happens when we shift from an I-It relationship and an I-Thou relationship. Resources Referenced in this Episode: Why Therapy Works by Louis Cozolino The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice by Diana Fosha PhD, Daniel J. Siegel M.D., and Marion Solomon Ph.D. The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change by Diana Fosha PhD Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) I and Thou by Martin Buber Where to find Benjamin Reisterer: MetaFi.me and MindfulCounselingGR.com Facebook: MetaFi and MindfulCounselingGR Instagram: MetaFi and MindfulCounselingGR If you're interested in working with Rebecca Wong, you can find out more about her services here: 1. If you're in New York and would like to schedule a relationship therapy session start here: https://connectfulness.com/therapy/ 2. If you're a therapist and are interested in mentorship with Rebecca, find out more about services offered here: https://www.practiceofbeingseen.com/work-with-rebecca/ 3. To learn more about Rebecca’s Private Couples Intensive Retreats, start here: https://connectfulness.com/intensive-private-retreat/ 4. And if you want to dive in deeply into building conscious relationship with your beloved consider sharing an experiential gift of deeper connection and intimacy over valentines in our Divine Mirrors: A Valentine’s Couples Retreat Rebecca is co-facilitating at Menla. To join the #POBScast Community practiceofbeingseen.com/community For more information and resources, visit the website at practiceofbeingseen.com. To join the conversation on social media, use the hashtag #POBScast. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you have questions or inquiries, email us at practiceofbeingseen@gmail.com
062 – First Contact with Clients – Philosophy of Martin Buber – Challenging Our Own Prejudice In episode 62 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes offer tips on how to make the first contact with a new client. ‘Theory with Rory' summarises Martin Buber's concept of ‘I–Thou' versus ‘I-It'. Last, the […] The post 062 – First Contact with Clients – Philosophy of Martin Buber – Challenging Our Own Prejudice appeared first on Counselling Tutor.
062 – First Contact with Clients – Philosophy of Martin Buber – Challenging Our Own Prejudice In episode 62 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes offer tips on how to make the first contact with a new client. ‘Theory with Rory’ summarises Martin Buber’s concept of ‘I–Thou’ versus ‘I-It’. Last, the… The post 062 – First Contact with Clients – Philosophy of Martin Buber – Challenging Our Own Prejudice appeared first on Counselling Tutor.
This episode of A Sound Heart wll explore the power of Jesus to transform life into something wonderful. Jesus never gave a soft invitation to come to him, he demanded persons to come to him. Jesus was/is the Son of God. He alone has the words of life. Think about it carefully, do you really trust the words of self-centered politicians. Their words are word of I-IT not I-Thou. They merely objectify the person as a means to an ill-conceived end. Jesus speaks to people with words of life eternal. Come to Jesus for real and substantive healing of the burdened soul.
This episode I talk to the love of my life, comedian and husband Tom Segura. We usually talk about farts while podcasting, so this is a little bit weird. We discuss the idea of the Other and whether or not you can really know another person. I mean, I think I know Tom, but he really enjoys shows about murder...We explore Martin Buber's idea of I-Thou vs I-It relationships. What does it mean to really love someone? Does it mean you love them even when you don't feel like it? Sometimes...You'll just have to listen to find out.
"How dare you assume that I am . . ." Well, fill in the blank! In an opening series of sermons on the ABCs of spirituality and life in community, our new Senior Minister promises that if we don't make too many assumptions about him, he won't make many about us. Then we can really begin to meet, connect and grow spiritually through I-Thou encounters. The Rev. Dr. John Buehrens, Senior Minister The Rev. Margot Campbell Gross, Minister Emerita Dr. Mark Sumner, Music Director Reiko Oda Lane, Organist & Bell Choir Director Jonas Magram, Guitarist, Pianist and Vocalist Jonathan Silk, Sound, Order of Service & Worship Archives/Podcast
"How dare you assume that I am . . ." Well, fill in the blank! In an opening series of sermons on the ABCs of spirituality and life in community, our new Senior Minister promises that if we don't make too many assumptions about him, he won't make many about us. Then we can really begin to meet, connect and grow spiritually through I-Thou encounters. The Rev. Dr. John Buehrens, Senior Minister The Rev. Margot Campbell Gross, Minister Emerita Dr. Mark Sumner, Music Director Reiko Oda Lane, Organist & Bell Choir Director Jonas Magram, Guitarist, Pianist and Vocalist Jonathan Silk, Sound, Order of Service & Worship Archives/Podcast
On Buber's 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically, we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like mom). Before that, we have no self-consciousness, no "self" at all. It's only by having these consuming "encounters" that we gradually distinguish ourselves from other people, and can then engage in what we'd normally consider "experience," which Buber calls "the I-It relation." Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this "I-Thou" phenomenon, through mature relationships, art, and nature. With guest Daniel Horne. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.
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