After Socrates: Episode 2 - Socrates, The Monstrous | Dr. John Vervaeke

you do sing going through the labor pains of giving birth to yourself that is to be on the horizon of Wonder it is to be in a place in which you are calling yourself and your world into question so a new self in a new world can deeply be born [Music] foreign foreign welcome back to episode 2 of after Socrates last time we looked at four ways we are after the way of Socrates and we also reviewed the basic format of the series now let's continue being after Socrates right now at the beginning as we Orient ourselves to find our way let's follow Socrates in order to follow Socrates we have to understand how he understood himself and this is going to be perplexing Socrates self-knowledge he found himself and frequently described himself as atypos not belonging to any particular category like our word atypical but deeper more powerful he explicitly refers to himself sometimes and Plato refer has other characters referred to him in terms of monsters as monstrous he's like a Sater he's like a stingray he com Compares himself to a Titan many different kinds of monsters this is a recurring thing across many of the dialogues famously he describes himself as mataksu m-e-t-a-x-u as fundamentally in between in between the human and the divine we're going to come back to that because Socrates never thinks that he becomes anything other than a human being so he says we like him at least he's challenging us to realize that we like him are somehow in between human infinitude and the Transcendence of the Divine Drew Highland excellent book and we'll come back to it talks about finitude and Transcendence and the platonic dialogues Socrates does something really interesting when he says that he's mataksu he says so is Eros Eros isn't a human but it's a transhuman force it's not a god Eros is a Daemon d-a-e-m-o-n not a demon but a Daemon a being that is between and therefore mediates and unites the human and the Divine and just think about it isn't there something really insightful in that about love so Socrates he understands himself as fundamentally liminal he's within and without sort of fits our categories but he doesn't he's monstrous the monster takes the normal categories and distorts them in a way that is startling and challenging and disruptive somehow Socrates transcends our normal framing in a way that is challenging and even at times threatening how is Socrates within and without how is he liminal housing monstrous in a way that's constantly challenging and threatening to us but nevertheless beneficial to us and how does he do this while never claiming to be anything other than immortal a mortal doomed to die human being so Socrates enters into these intensive in terms of how he's involved with people but extensive in terms of how much scope they take in how much they zoom in and zoom out probative conversations with people and in these conversations questioning not just questions questioning it's even better perhaps to hear a related word to questioning questing questioning plays a central part rather than concluding these exploratory dialogues are often centered on what is virtue what is wisdom related things what is knowledge what is goodness what is real and these are questions and this is the importance these are questions we cannot ignore this is why we cannot ignore Socrates we can't ignore these questions we can pretend to ignore them but then we're just giving answers to these questions given to us implicitly unconsciously automatic automatically and we reactively acting them out rather than acting on principle yet these dialogues frequently and frustratingly and profoundly inconclusively inconclusively everybody including really hear that including Socrates they've been talking about courage at the end of it everybody says I don't know what courage is including Socrates Socrates claims to have achieved human wisdom in that he by practicing this kind of dialogue has come to know that he does not know and we go what that's it we're all ignorant I know there's tons I don't know well how is this what's going on well Socrates doesn't mean that generic belief he he means an existentially in the situation specific realization in both senses of the word it's a palpable reality and one is coming to a deep understanding awareness of how one is ignorant in this situation in a way that matters because one has been pretending deeply unconsciously automatically reactive to know know both the situation and no one's self relevant to and relative to that situation this is a profound kind of realization it requires disciplined mindfulness he has cultivated and this is going to become an important important phrase he has learned learned ignorance in fact when I say learned ignorance I want you to hear both pronunciations learned and learned he has learned ignorance he has become he has become aware of his ignorance in a way that makes a huge difference to specific actual concrete situations so let's explore the Dynamics of this a little bit better so we have on one pole we have conversation Socrates is engaging in a conversation I want you to start to get a feel for this I want you to think of those conversations you've been in where you're asking each other's questions and you're not giving sort of Pat answers you're really opening up the person's opening up and you're opening up you're reciprocally opening and the conversation starts to take on a life of its own and and it's not wandering aimlessly it's wandering fruitfully and you you both find you're getting to places and having insights realizations that you couldn't have had on your own when the conversation comes to an end you say that was one of the greatest moments of my life Socrates is like that he talks about it you may not get that sense when you're reading the dialogues because it seems like there's a lot of conflict and argumentation but Socrates says in more than one place but in one space so he specifically he says I'm willing to follow the logos Dia logos and we're going to come back to what is this logos he's talking about but he's willing to follow the logos wherever it goes like the wind isn't that amazing the wind because it seems to have a life of its own but the wind spiritus the wind inspiration aspiration spirituality when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and telling him he has to be born again he talks about the wind is like the spirit is like the wind it comes and goes as it would and you know know where it's coming from and you don't know where it's going to but you can get caught up in it and follow it and breathe it and been inspired to Aspire by it that's one pole it's important to realize that Socrates is being just as surprised by the way the conversation the dialogue is going he's just as much surprised by the DIA by way of by means of logos the DIA logos as anyone else participating and you'll see how much he comes to deeply value this he's not experiencing this just as a rough you know back and forth adversarial thing there's a deeper thing going on and you'll see this and what he says about this practice now this is one pole the other poll is this learned ignorance you say what's like why is that valuable well think about it what the deal logos is doing is it's taking you to the Horizon of wonder curiosity is when I don't know something I need that information there's a gap in my knowledge hey look this fills it and now I'm done I have what I need it's very much as from would say in the having mode but Wonder at least the way Fuller and others argue about it Wonder is the being mode you come to the horizon now think about the Horizon you can actually never reach it but there's a horizon and after her when when you look at the Horizon you have a sense of what is within your understanding but how it is how it is on the cusp of what is beyond your understanding The Horizon of wonder Socrates famously said that wisdom begins in wonder why what's going on in wonder you're not filming the whole you're opening it up to the horizon you are calling yourself and the way you have framed the world into question but in a way you feel called to in a way that is somehow beautiful to you that is drawing from you this is the word for to draw forth is e Deuce this is where we get the word education from but think about it's a different kind of education this isn't here's the knowledge you need and so you can service the workplace and the market until you die and otherwise meaningless death they don't mean education like that you mean you do sing going through the labor pains of giving birth to yourself that is to be on the horizon of Wonder it is to be in a place in which you are calling yourself and your world into question so a new self in a new world can deeply be born that is what's going on in this process so notice there's a discipline what does the word discipline mean it means to follow it means to track it means to follow and track so that you are transformed by that following there is a discipline to following the logos Dia logos letting it call you into question letting it call your world into question so that you and the person you're in dialogue with are giving birth to yourselves Mutual midwiving Socrates was clear that he was not only examining others and helping them give birth to themselves he repeatedly emphasized it was reciprocal he was also examining himself and giving birth to himself they were mutually interwoven this is a discipline of following the logos that allows us this Mutual midwifing allows the logos to take on a life of its own and thereby transform the way we are living Socrates and it's often talked about is using this practice called in Linkus this questioning and answering and probative and as we'll see the Olympus slowly in the hands of Plato becomes dialectic this disciplined following of the logos this mutual midwifing and affording of the logos to take on a life transforming life of its own so we've got a discipline so there are a set of practices call those with Plato dialectic this is not hegel's dialectic this is this is a way of structuring dialogue in a disciplined manner so that it will take on the features of theological so there's a practice there's something we can do dialectic it's doing this mutual midwifing and affording the presencing of the living logos but that practice can result in a process that we do not make this it's a process between us and between us and the world mataksu and it's like Eros it's like love especially in the platonic sense you know make like loving well you do we do say when you make love but what I mean by that let's let's think of it like as analogous well it's the kind of love itself too in fact it's a it's a kind of platonic Eros we call it platonic love friendship profound friendship you can't just make somebody your friend you can't say you're my friend now that's it I've decided it I make it so that's in fact that's that's going to go nowhere in fact it's probably going to have the opposite result you can't just sort of passively wait around someday a friend will come somebody will come up to me and say I'm your friend probably not that's why we use metaphors of like Falling in Love growing in love we participate in it so this is a practice we can do we can discipline ourselves to follow the logos to mutually midwife to afford the logos taking on a life of its own that's a dialectic process of theologos is not something we do it is something we participate in profoundly the way we participate in love friendship it is between us and between us and the world the practice of dialectic process of deal logos that's why Fowler put in both deal logos and dialectic in the classical tradition but there's also a state here's the dialogos and learned ignorance and they're mutually affording each other the deal logos gets us to The Horizon of Wonder and that opens us up and reciproc makes it possible for us to reciprocally open with each other and reciprocally open with the world and then that affords theologos and the theologos affords Learned ignorance and we cycle the practice of dialectic process of theologos and the paradoxical state of learned ignorance is not all of this problematic you should say to me you should say this looks like you know a lot of knowledge a lot of learning and Socrates is claiming right that all he knows is that he does not know that's actually not accurate many people put that talk all that Socrates ever said is that he knew that he no no somebody doesn't say that he said that's what his wisdom consists in it's Socrates actually claims to know a bunch of things so first of all we have to modify it but then we'll come back to your point because you are making a good point in posing that problem what does Socrates claim to know well he famously claims to know erotica he knew he knows about the erotic things that doesn't mean he's really good and bad or he just knows about sex he's talking about Eros in a much more comprehensive sense about how we seek to bind ourselves to things and this seems inherent to us we seem by nature to be looking for things other than ourselves to complete us and notice how that gets us into self-transcendence I'm looking some for something that's other than me to become me so that I am more than me but completed as me as soon as you think about this you start to go oh how does that make sense hold on to that vertigo we're going to come back to it Socrates knows how to track Eros do you well I know what yeah I know you know what it's like to feel Eros I do too but can you feel Eros in a way so that you don't do all the self-deceptive self-destructive things you've done because of that feeling because when you track you're following but you're also able to know and see where something is going to go when you're tracking a storm and following it you're trying to predict where it's going to go so you can avoid being overwhelmed by it Socrates knows how to track Eros he knows how to follow the trail of signs he knows how to properly apprehend and appreciate the significance of Eros he knows what to care about he would do this provocatively as I already said he would go into people and say are you spending so much time on your hair in your clothing and how you smell it's a little time on your psyche it's a little time on your mind in your soul and your character you go yeah why am I Socrates would walk into the marketplace and say look at all the things I don't need you go oh right why don't I do that that's the that's the socratic question it's a question about Socrates that reverberates back and becomes a question a wondering about yourself and the world that you live in so Socrates knows taught erotica how can we know this how can we do this in practice how can we realize it in practice we will come back to this Socrates also and he he States it very confidently he knows the difference between belief or opinion and knowledge he knows it now how can he know this when he claims to know that he doesn't know anything he actually claims to know a lot of things he knows how to do geometry we demino he'll often say he knows how this practice Works how like how this art or actually more specifically more technically how this Techni how this particular kind of expertise works see what Socrates means is he knows how to track he knows how to follow he knows how to quest after knowledge in a way that's not just haphazard that doesn't mean he's got there he knows what virtue is in the sense the way you know by being he certainly doesn't claim to have wisdom but he doesn't claim to be pure completely ignorant of it he claims to be a lover of wisdom here's the connection to love except this time it's not Eros and this is important it's philia the kind of love between friends or even more importantly Fellowship people working in concert together he knows how to work with people in order to be properly oriented towards wisdom when you really love your friend when you really love your romantic partner have you got them like I I figured you out we're done I don't need to learn it I got it we're finished I've got the perfect framing for you that holds you perfectly in place reveals everything that there is possibly to know about I've got you yep I I say to you in fact if you say that that's a strong predictor that your relationship is actually over what are you actually you have a faithfulness to this person you know how to follow them to track them they're going to change and you know how to adjust you don't know where they're going you don't know what kind of changes you're going to go through how you're going to dance with them but you keep teaching each other how to follow each other and the person although you have a continuity of contact and you're loving them and they're opening up to you and you're opening up to them reciprocal opening there's always that which exceeds it's funny you can meet people been together for a very long time on the and this this has probably happened to you our friends come up to you and saying you know I've been with her for like 10 years and then wow I just like she did that wow totally caught me by surprise I just because you have to remember learn it ignorance how much you really don't know because of how really dynamically complex another person is and wisdom and virtue are excellences of persons and you can never fully know a person how could you possibly fully know the Excellence of personhood but you can love it The Way You Love a particular person think of the connection between able to really wonder not in not in the sense we like we sometimes overlap with anxiety but wonder about your friend or your partner to be amazed by them I'm very fortunate to have a romantic partner that she's one of the best people I've met in my life and she constantly exceeds and this is something I have to keep remembering relearning Sati mindfulness means to remember not in the sense of just recalling but reminding yourself bringing that memory into action mindfulness I have to constantly remember remind myself that she exceeds all of my personal experience all of my professional expertise and she does this so regularly and yes so beautifully I have profound friends you're going to meet one of them Christopher Master Pietro same thing within friendship Wonder love the cultivation of wisdom deep continuity of growing contact they're all bound together and learned ignorance Socrates also claims to know two really deep and fundamental things he famously in his defense at his trial knows that the unexamined life is not worth living he knows this with such confidence that he is willing to die for it no propositional argument could convince you of that but somebody with such powerful presence as Socrates was willing to die for it that's at least challenging he claims a life without dialectic into Dia logos affording learned ignorance is not worth living you Socrates as ignorant as we thought where we just thought oh he just doesn't know that he knows he says I know that I don't know I'm skeptical a lot of things I'm cynical uh I live in modernity blah blah blah blah post-modernity no no this is like this is a not knowing that at the same time gives him the confidence to die as he's telling you and I because I'm I'm feeling it too the unexamined life is not worth living and what do you do with that think about it like you're just sort of like because I'm sure my life is pretty unexamined I don't have that self-knowledge uh uh my life's not worth living seems well yeah sometimes I wake up at 3am and he's sort of right I don't want to think about that are you saying that and then relatedly he's saying that doing this dialectic into Dia logos and cultivating this learned ignorance this wonderful wonderful learned ignorance is the best activity that human beings can engage in it's the best kind of life but how how could a practice that is so frequently frustrating it does not produce conclusions it does not produce clear answers it does not give us resolution in the sense of completion and finality how could that be worth dying for that sounds like an utter waste of time at best and endlessly annoying and frustrating and undermining of all of our projects how could that be how could that be Savor that question because I've actually returned to the question you asked a few minutes ago and I've made it deeper on your behalf by the way that's me exemplifying Socrates taking your question and making it deeper on your behalf take that question in savor it let it roll around in your mind try to feel into its monstrous challenge think about how it challenges all of our assumptions how it crashes into so many of our presuppositions about success and purpose and achieving your goals and completion consummation conclusion and how all of these are so Central to a good life that's that question about Socrates just smashes into all of that monstrously how could this Socratic proposal possibly be true in any way it's in fact in any way that we could actually realize in regular practice but the problematic around Socrates the way he's liminal atipos monstrous is even deeper Socrates clearly and repeatedly argues for three inter three things number one the best life is the life of virtue first of all oh like really how okay it's a provocative statement and therefore claiming to know this is again really important Socrates claims to know that the life of virtue is the best kind of life he claims to know that virtue depends on knowledge Sometimes some people have rendered that as an identity claim I won't do that because that's controversial but at least virtue depends on knowledge but what kind of knowledge does virtue depend on okay good question we'll come back to it but first of all life of virtue is the best life virtue depends on knowledge at least a particular kind of knowledge and then Socrates repeatedly and we've already seen it claims that he does not have the knowledge needed for virtue how do those hang together how can that be the case and you can say well maybe Socrates if you put those three together you can put them together and say well Socrates is just realizing he's just kind of a buffoon and of course there were people that thought that Aristotle aristophany is famously in his play the clouds but Socrates claims to know what a good life is such that he is willing to die for it how does that fit in with that right that doesn't fit in with being a buffoon and Plato clearly and repeatedly presents Socrates as the most virtuous person living the most worthwhile and virtuous life at the end of the Fado this is the dialogue in which Socrates actually dies after Socrates is dead these last words are spoken very last words super salient the culmination point of the dialogue not really but yes here Salient at the end where we're supposed to reflect upon everything else such was the end echocrates of our friend Socrates who's just died of our friend whom I may truly wow call the wisest and justice most just and best of all men best of all men whom I have ever known how is this the case how could this be the case how could that learned ignorance give Socrates the knowledge of the good life the confidence in it for which he's willing to die how could it make how could that that thing that challenges all of our assumptions about the good life how could that make him the wisest the most virtuous living the most worthwhile life how how could we possibly realize this understand it and such that we could put it into practice when you roll this around in your mind it feels like a profound paradox she's like he seems to be not knowing and yet he seems to have all of the results of the knowing that he says he does not have and does not know this feels monstrous doesn't fit in any of our category he's not a buffoon but he's not the typical successful person he doesn't seem to have knowledge but he seems to be wise like what's going on now in response to this and many people have done this they even do it in the dialogues Plato repeatedly shows that you can just reject Socrates you can say he's just confused he's just all messed up you can just turn away you can reorient yourself away from the socratic path it's easy to do but that ease is only superficial because if you stop and reflect at a deeper level it's actually harder to turn away to disorient yourself from the socratic way when you read these dialogues and when you start to practice what Socrates does you see Socrates disclosing so much self-deceptive pretense misframing failure to appreciate properly failure to understand appropriately failure to love wisely Socrates is powerful and you go I need all of that and I put it to you is this not needed now more so than ever yes it seems to be Socrates affords trans-framing what do I mean by that well it's a combination of transcendence transformation and reframing you know when you have an insight and you realize you've been misframing not properly proportioning and directing your attention I thought she was being aggressive but she's actually afraid oh I've just been mishandling this whole thing I was mistaken oh it's inside but you can also get what iris Murdock sorry with John Wright following Iris Murdoch and I talked a lot about this in Awakening from the meaning crisis called sensibility Transcendence I can get simultaneously an insight into that person and a reflective insight into me that the way I have habitually been framing or thinking about things or being with people also needs to be reframed and I can reframe I can be reframing that person and reframing my sense of who I am and how I look at the world and they that means I start to reciprocally open I start to transcend myself I start to afford that person to transcend my conception of them I start to be transformed they start to be transformed in how they are and can be to me transframing Socrates affords that and here's the thing her trans framing ability seems to be Central to becoming wiser it seems Central to a lot of spirituality and if we want wise spirituality and don't we can we afford to turn away from Socrates Socrates deeply inspires affords aspiration of the platonic tradition the stoic tradition and the neoplatonic tradition and all of these are going through significant revivals right now and for good reason they are needed in our times and if they are needed so is Socrates because Socrates is at the heart of them you can't pull apart Plato and Socrates stoicism is the religious philosophy or the philosophical religion I don't know which what to call it of internalizing Socrates at least Central aspects of everything I've been talking about neoplatonism is and you will see this the profound pathway into the deepest possible learned ignorance you can't turn away from Socrates Socrates is like all the other sages who are paradoxical atypos and strange if we turn away from Socrates we turn away from Sitara Gautama we turn away from Jesus of Nazareth we turn away from Strong's uh we turn away from loud say we turn away from cetera Etc can you afford to turn away from all of those sages are you so confident that you can reorient away from all of them and find the path to wisdom virtue meaning in life think about it be honest I propose this is an honest proposal in the sense that this isn't my life this is how I try to live I propose trying to move deeply into this problematic of Socrates I want to allow it the real possibility of challenging me of transforming me of calling me into trans framing I want to move through like the through of my lenses I want to move through this Socratic problematic I aspire to this I have tried to dedicate my life to it to do this deeply we need to confront further dimensions of this problematic Socrates does not have a method so how do we move forward in a practice how do we forward into the problematic is Socrates just Plato's mouthpiece is you know is is are the words of Socrates equivalent to what Plato wants us to get from the dialogue that's problematic too the third wave people like Gonzalez and Highland so uh just sort of rape just so many people so many of those books all argue no Plato wrote in a dialogue form in which he is only in one I think in in the apology and just very minor way actually present he's absent he never puts himself in the dialogue and and the dialogue is not there as sort of literary ornamentation around Socrates in fact and this will be Central to following Socrates the collective intelligence in the distributed cognition of all of the characters in the dialogue is actually Central to us following the socratic path Socrates is Central is important in the dialogue but he's also in service to the deal logos the way other people are drawn out the way other people represent alternative perspectives alternative ways of being that Socrates takes into account which is one interpret one translation of the word logos by the way taking into account giving an account one way in which we can understand this is can we get into a flow state logos with a life of its own of the collective intelligence of distributed cognition that has the capacity to cultivate both individual and Collective wisdom can we be Socrates to each other because if we need Socrates to do this and all of the Traditions say in one sense we do but in another sense we don't then of course we couldn't do it we need to know how to internalize Socrates both within us individually and between us collectively foreign one function of the dialogues I think and how they're not replaceable by just capturing this is an argument made by Socrates and this represents Plato's Theory right one function of the dialogic format the dialogue format is it affords internalization what's internalization this is a notion drawn from bugotsky this is the notion that let's say a child is learning for some of you you've heard this before but for some of you maybe not how does learning they're taking a particular perspective on a problem the adult comes in to try and teach them I've raised children the Adolf has a more encompassing and penetrating perspective that includes but transcends hear that it includes but transcends the child's perspective what the child does they imitate the adult and as they imitate the adult they start to enact the perspective that the adult has as they presence the adult in imitation they start to fill in the perspective that the adult had on their perspective and eventually they do this to such a degree that they do not need the adult present they can do it for themselves and then they get metacognition they can step back and reflect on their own cognition they could perhaps come to know that they do not know do you see that see when you're in a perspective remember when we compared the first person perspective to the third person perspective when you're asking your friend about the problem that they're having when you're in a perspective that framing it blinds you to what's outside the perspective you can't see the biases of your perspective and you can't take on new interests beyond your perspective but when you internalize other people you transcend and you get the capacity to self transcend you get the capacity to self-correct to overcome bias and to orient more properly and appropriately towards reality but as the child is to the adult the adult is to the sage just as a child you needed to internalize adults as an adult you need to internalize a sage why could you possibly think you're done okay but Socrates problematizes this what how well he often speaks and presents himself ironically in fact this is one of the most famous aspects of Socrates he's ironic now he's not ironic in sort of our modern cynical sense of irony but he's often saying something that's opposite to what he actually holds to be the case even though he asks people to always State honestly what they believe so Socrates is often speaking and presenting himself ironically imagine if the parent was constantly being ironic with the small child that's going to destroy the internalization Socrates irony seems to thwart the function of the dialogues which is to help us deeply internalize Socrates have his prospectival knowing see the way he sees realize the way he realizes have his participatory knowing transform our character our identity the way he does transform our self-knowledge the irony seems to be undermining all of that is the irony just so that Socrates or Plato can avoid political censure ah people have argued that but most people most of the people I've been reading the scholars I've been reading saying no is it because Socrates can't sort of directly challenge people there's truth to that but many of the people that he's talking with know he's being ironic and he does seem to really challenge them at times yet maybe in a deeper way irony is actually connected to learn it ignorance and in that sense it affords the right kind of internalization I'm going to throw that out tantalizing and we're going to give a special place to that when Chris and I enter into dialogue and hopefully deal logos about Socrates and kirkegaard because kirkegaard reflects deeply on Socratic irony and other people especially people like Drew Highland Kirkland in his work on the ontology of Socratic questioning they all do great work around this so what are some points to ponder points that we want to reflect upon so that we can realize them in practice we want to realize on one hand the dialectic and to deal logos and how it's in this reciprocal relationship with learned ignorance on the horizon of wonder we want to really let it roll around in our mind banging and crashing like a loose cannon on a ship at sea this problematic around Socrates only by passing through this problematic this paradoxical problematic will we have any chance of genuinely following Socrates and for those of you who follow other Sages is it hard to Jesus maimonides I put it to you that following the way of this Sage has the real potential to deepen your ability to be a disciple of the sage that you are most trying to internalize perhaps even it would be best if you had an inner Symphony of sages one of them can be preeminent I do not want to call anybody away from a living allegiance that is breathing into them wisdom and orientation towards reality that's maturing them in virtue but perhaps a symphony of sages not only will help disclose what any particular Sage is but also allow you to participate in a way of wisdom that allows you to understand not superficial polite liberal tolerance or ideological yelling at and not really quite sure you know what it means diversity or whatever word you're using these can be good they can be bad but I'm trying to point to something more profound could you understand other people's sages such that you could enter into deal logos with them you don't have to agree with them they don't have to agree with you you don't have to come to a conclusion if Socrates is right but if Socrates is right that would still be part of the best maybe the best kind of life we could live with each other it is superficially easy to turn away from Socrates and not Orient ourselves socratically but it's actually in reality hard to turn away before we move into learning our new practices rooting and humble Wonder I remind you to continue always doing your dialogical reflection your imaginal engagement and enactment and your study so we're going to do two practices the first one is going to help us build on uh the mindfulness practice of centering this first practice is called finding your route it has to do with developing the right kind of relaxation in your meditative practice many people come to meditation because they want to learn how to relax the problem is our normal way of relaxing is opposite to what we want to be doing we are making our body more insensate we're letting our mind slowly shrink and become clouded somewhat confused sort of warm and fuzzy until we lose Consciousness because the point of that relaxation is to move us towards sleep we may not go all the way but that is his function and it often ends in us falling asleep that's not what we want to be doing in a meditative practice in which we are trying to learn when we're trying to become more aware of the forms the formations the functions and the processes within our mind and body I think of the kind of relaxation that a martial artist engages in so very often you'll see martial arts I teach Tai Chi Chuan and you'll see them take a particular stance they'll bend their legs they'll sink they'll sink their arms into a position they might close their fists they might have open hands but they do this thing it's called rooting why aren't they doing that well they're trying to do two things right they're trying to stabilize their arms their legs their body they're trying to stabilize but they're also relaxing so if you tense your arm like this and you touch you'll feel there's not very much sensation but when you relax you find that sort of stable point and you can relax into it you'll realize oh wait this is a lot I've really increased my sensitivity so you see what's happening here the rooting is a kind of relaxation that simultaneously sensitizes the mind it makes it more alert more acute but also stabilizes it so it doesn't start running off and getting scattered so you're trying to get this sensitization and stabilization that are interpenetrating to each other now think about how much that would matter in a martial arts situation you're coming into a situation there's going to be all this unexpectedness if you start flailing around because of the unexpectedness you're easily uprooted if you just sort of lock in your ability to sense what's going on and respond is lost you want to find this optimal relationship between sensitivity and stability now you may be saying well I'm not going to get into any fights I hope that's right by the way because when you have your fight even if you win you lose you lose a little piece of your soul so what's the point of TR well the point is transfer think about entering into a situation in which you want to enter into a deep dialogue with another human being the way Socrates does if Socrates is all just sort of scattered right and he right and you just uh then his capacity for entering into the deep conversation it's lost but he's if he's just rigid and closed in upon himself and holding on to his position no matter what you can't move me I am so stable it's true I can't but then what's the point of the conversation how will the dialogue take how will it lead both people you want to be sensitive yet stable stable yet sensitive so that you can optimally flow Within any situation especially situations of dialogical encounter being able to root really important so often when I'm doing these discussions that I have with people and engaging in these Socratic practices in a way that they might not know I'm doing Tai chichwan they don't know it sometimes they do I've had people look at one of my videos especially when the other person was sort of very interruptive or hyperactive and they'll say you were like doing really good Tai Chi there yes exactly I take that as a very encouraging compliment for which I'm grateful because I aspire to that I aspire to be able to have that rootedness so that I'm not easily overwhelmed but I can also flow into the situation I'm aware of what's going on in the meditative tradition this is called sitting as still as a mountain but as alert as a warrior this is a phrase used by the way within Buddhist Traditions that are often committed to non-violence so how do we do it how do we do it how do we get that how do we learn it in a way that can transfer to most of our life well if you think about taoism you can think about you know that the very famous Yang Yin symbol you know with the black and the white and the black dot and the white dot and the white dot in the black area right showing that they're flowing they have this flowing balance and they interpenetrate each other we're trying to get a mind that is open yet centered and stabilized we can it can flow out into yang but it can also return to Yin and it has these so that they interpenetrate each other now how would you do this practice well first of all you go through your centering practice you do all three centers I won't repeat that now but you make sure you Center mind and body you Center your attention you Center your attitude get centered and then I'm going to describe the practice to you and what it looks like what it feels like so let's say you're centered your eyes are closed I want you to imagine a space just slightly above your head and then as you inhale you're expanding in all directions almost like you were inflating a balloon a perfectly spherical balloon in all directions you inhale this is you opening up this is you expanding your awareness expanding your connection to the world right as they inhale don't hyperventilate but you inhale and you expand and then as you exhale you let everything gather back together this is the end you come in you come in so inhale exhale and then you find that spot oh right there that's about right where it is for you is where it is for you don't imitate what I'm doing independent imitate the way I'm doing something inhale exhale in the last little bit of the exhale and that little space in between the breaths it's like I'm opening and melting and draining and I'm coming to What's called the the third eye traditionally and from there but even from the center of my head on that axis I inhale out exhale in opening melting draining to the throat inhale remember all directions 360. inhale opening exhale Gathering opening melting draining to the heart inhale opening exhale Gathering opening and melting and draining to the solar plexus inhale opening exhale Gathering and falling back towards the center Yang into Yin Yin into Yang do you see opening melting draining to this area called the dantan this is eventually what you want where you want your breathing to be when you're meditating Don't Force It there let it naturally fall there over time but here you center around there it's about said the tradition says one finger below your navel three fingers in I don't know if that's precise but something like that inhale exhale and then opening and melting draining to where that Center axis is touching what you're sitting on feel that point everything is drained there like a pool of liquid and now you let it sink into the Earth imaginably imagination for the sake of enhancing perception you let it sink like the root of a tree rooting it's sinking into the Earth connecting you stabilizing you downward but also nourishing you energizing you sensitizing you upward so that you're then sitting as still as a mountain but as alert as a warrior so you Center find your three centers go through that rooting practice you may want to replay that sequence and so I can talk you through it while you're doing it once you feel that sweet spot that optimal grip between yin and yang you feel rooted into the Earth then begin your meditation following your breath labeling your distractions befriending yourself that is the rooting practice the other practice is specifically oriented towards the Learned ignorance that we've been talking about in this episode this is a practice that I call the humble Wonder practice humility and wonder were both Central and integral to the socratic practices especially the practice of learned ignorance how does this practice work I recommend first centering and rooting and doing two or three minutes of basic meditation then bring your awareness to your heart area you can put your hands on your heart I won't put them right there because I don't want to screw up my mic and then I say as mindfully and you've been cultivating mindfulness now I say as mindfully as I can there is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts there is so much you do not know about your mind your psyche your body the amount of information available to you is combinatorial explosive but instead of it keeping it as a safe propositional thing you store over here you're realizing it there is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts if you want to add all the facts about myself feel fine feel free to do so next there is so much I shall never know about myself because of all of the Fate what do you mean by faith John I don't mean your Cosmic Destiny or something written down I mean fate in the sense that's in the word fatal you're born at a particular time in a particular place you're exposed to particular people to particular events none of which you have control over and they deeply shape you if you do not acknowledge your faith in that sense your inherent finitude then your capacity for really realizing your self-knowledge is truncated and hamstrung there's so much I shall never know about myself because of all the faith next and they they're all F's to help you remember there's so much I refuse to see about myself because of all of my foolishness all the processes that make us adaptively intelligent make us perennially and sometimes pervasively beset by self-deception how often be honest really honest please how often do you really not in thought or in belief but actually in perspective and in how you participate in your identity how often do you actually challenge your egocentrism and the way it might be biasing you Igor Grossman found he asked people to describe a really hard problem there involved in they inevitably describe it from the first person perspective without thinking automatic Framing and then if you say to them and think about Socrates here questioning people if you say to them well can you redescribe that problem from a third person perspective how your friend might see it and describe it and when people do this they inevitably have an Insight they realize oh I didn't see this I didn't realize that you know that what I'm saying is true think about how wise you are about other people's problems don't you realize it Jim you're doing that same self-destructive pattern in your romantic life I can see it so clearly and Jim was like I don't really see it and you think but then the rules are reversed and Jim is saying to you hey you're doing that thing you do with relationship to your career you're doing it again don't you see and you go I don't really see you know that part of what we're going to learn in these Socratic practices is how to be Socrates for yourself and that's inexorably bound up with how can we be Socrates to each other okay so back first let's repeat let's review there is so much I do not know about myself because of all of the facts realize it don't just state it live it there's so much I shall never know about myself because of all of the Fate realize it you come into deep awareness make it real there's so much I refuse to see because of all of my foolishness realize it and then there is so much I'm unable to see about myself because of all of my faults and you're probably saying oh this is a real Downer stick with it stay with me it doesn't end that way and you can turn your hands outward like this we go through the same procedure there's so much I don't know about the world because of all of the facts there is so much I shall never know about the world because of all of the Fate there is so much I refuse to see about the world because of all of my foolishness there's so much I am unable to see about the world because of all of my faults and relax your hands back down to your meditation and here's now where it flips we did the humility and if it was just humility it could be humiliating but it's not just the humility now as I inhale both inwardly and outwardly I experience Wonder not curiosity where I'm trying to find missing information and we'll talk more about this but Wonder I'm able to call the world and myself into question but in a way that is positive that is enriching that is growing me as I inhale I wonder into the center of my mind outward to the circumference of the world inhaling wondering and that exhaling receiving receiving being open to receiving from the world and receiving from the depths of my psyche the depths of the world and the depths of the psyche receiving inhaling wondering inward wandering outward exhale receiving receiving from the depths of the psyche receiving from the depths of the world through that practice with the breath at least four times you may want to do it longer until you get the sense of the Wonder and the receptivity actually interpenetrating mutually affording and enriching each other so that you have wonder filled receptivity wonderful wonderful receptivity you have profound humility but a Transcendent Wonder that is the humble Wonder practice I recommend still doing your basic meditation practice centering and rooting and then do this practice both sides of it the humility practice and the Wonder side and that usually only takes about five to ten minutes you can shave a little bit off the meditation if you really want to limit limit yourself to staying under 25 minutes in total but try it see if it goes to full length and it doesn't bother you if it takes maybe 25 minutes and you may be saying John you're going to add all these practices and I'm not going to have time for them I bet you do take out your phone how much screen time have you put in today how much did it actually make you wiser how much did it actually make you more virtuous connect you to yourself to other people to the world how much I bet a significant portion of it maybe even most of it was wasted time how about fasting a little bit from your phone so that you can feed more from the fount of wisdom as always thank you very much for your time and attention what is dialectic into D logos and how does one practice it the related question is what is this logos that I've sort of been only referring to intuitively that's so Central to theologos we're going to start with the first question and as we answer it it will give us what we need to answer the second question so what is what is dialectic into deal logos everything is coming down to this

Channel: John Vervaeke

Views: 49,260

Keywords: after socrates episode 2, after socrates, john vervaeke after socrates, john vervaeke, jordan peterson, john vervaeke jordan peterson, socratic method, western philosophy, ancient greek, philosophy (field of study), john vervaeke awakening from the meaning crisis, john vervaeke meditation, john vervaeke lex fridman, john vervaeke jonathan pageau, john vervaeke neoplatonism, john vervaeke bernardo kastrup, john vervaeke mindfulness, Ancient greek philosophy

Id: erxLwlk6RCQ

Length: 80min 58sec (4858 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023