Solitude 01: Going to the Quiet Place with John Ortberg

[Music] you're listening to the rule of Life podcast by practicing the way season we explore an ancient practice from the way of Jesus and its relevance for the modern era this is season four Solitude [Music] hey everyone and welcome back to the rule of Life podcast I'm John Mark I'm here with Bethany Allen good morning Bethany good morning so good to be with you we're also here with John orberg but don't say anything yet John we're going to pretend that you're not here we're going to intro you and then you get to talk for the whole rest of the time but the magic behind the podcast so here we are episode two yeah episode two so today we begin to explore four conversations that we're gonna have with some special guests about the practice of solitude and like you said up first is John ortberg now a lot of you already know this but John is a long time Pastor he was the pastor of Menlo Church in the Bay Area right by Stanford um for many years but he's best known as an author of many books which I'm sure a lot of you have already read but these books include Soul keeping eternity is now in session and who is this man um John one of my favorite things about you I'm supposed to pretend that you're not here yet but one of my favorite things about you is I don't think a lot of people know because you're so known as a pastor and writer that you train as a clinical psychologist and I love the way you blend together psychology and spirituality and bring you know these two things that have been tragically separated in Western culture in recent history not historically back together and uh you just have such a depth of inside such a wealth so thank you for coming on and we are now here to explore Solitude with John orbrick John um this conversation is a companion to this four-week practice that we just put out with practicing the way which is kind of a four-week experience for a community to go through to integrate Solitude silence and Stillness into your life and so kind of in episode one that this conversation is tied to we explore this Greek word of Ramos or the Wilderness or the deserted place or the quiet place or the solitary place all how it's translated and how Jesus would just regularly kind of oscillate back and forth between time and thick community and then time alone and uh you know we said in the last session that you know Sherry turkle from MIT her idea of alone together it's like nowadays people never really go into Community like relationships are so superficial and transactional and transient and never really are alone because even when we're alone we're Tethered to the world through our devices you know so first off I mean I just would love to hear you've been in Christian spiritual formation and in the church for decades now have you seen like this practice decrease over the decades and generationally or has it just always been kind of conspicuously absent from American Christianity um I grew up kind of white bread Evangelical in a Baptist Church in the Midwest and when it came to spiritual growth we kind of only had two arrows in our quiver and that was Bible study and prayer yeah and then probably church and you know people expected that you would give something and prayer was intercessory prayer yeah prayer was it was largely a black box it's a great Point uh I I don't remember getting much teaching on what do I do with my mind when I pray yeah and so prayer would be very very hard but I didn't you know the idea of there being exercises or approaches um you know people would sometimes talk about what's the acronym um yeah ax right actually yeah yeah adoration yeah but like adoration I would find if I if I try to adore God God you're wonderful and like I've run out of steam real quick um but Solitude uh as a practice um you know the idea of intentionally withdrawing as a way to make space for God and to use for change I I had no idea what that was about I don't remember when I was a kid growing up ever hearing about that kind of idea um for me it was mostly this fellow Dallas Willard uh and his writings and life that were hugely impactful so I I began to learn a lot more about it then but not when I was when I was growing up in church no yeah and so for those of you listening you are I don't know if this is the language you would use but you were personally mentored by Dallas for 20 years or something like that right or in relationship with him you know he had a hugely dis uh proportionate impact on my life we never um worked at the same place um when I first read him I was living in Simi Valley he was living in a house um where his wife Jane still lives which coming here is very reminiscent it's over the hill from here actually yeah it's over the hill and it's also in kind of Canyon Hill Country Southern California we're in Topanga Canyon right now as we're recording in my living room so lots of uh residents with that um but uh it was really um getting to know Dallas um that the idea of spiritual disciplines and the impact that they can make first made sense to me I mean in some of the tradition you came from there's actually like a lot of resistance towards spiritual disciplines well people may not know that who listen to us much now when I was a kid growing up churches had Christian education departments nobody used the language of spiritual formation yeah that was Catholic language and uh people didn't then use the language of spiritual disciplines much now it's kind of permeated the Evangelical subculture so it's used quite a lot but no then it would have connoted Works righteousness and yeah and when I first went to Fuller I was in the school of psychology because I was always interested in how do people change why is change so hard why does how does faith intersect with that those were always the questions that felt most important to me yeah but at that time it was in the early 80s spiritual formation was starting to make inroads into the Evangelical Church Richard Foster had written his book celebration of discipline which I didn't like at all I felt like I already knew I don't pray and read the Bible enough now there's like 10 more disciplines I got to feel bad about my life before I master them um so there were people who were talking and writing about it I wasn't drawn to it I didn't move in that direction and it wasn't until 10 years later really out of my own frustration at lack of change yeah where I was pastoring a church so your interest early on is changed yes both of the Soul yes but you're resistant to practices or disciplines yeah and you know um scented candle Hush Puppies you know that kind of granola culture I was never drawn to I was Midwest kid so no I I wasn't you know not a hippie kind of person um not touchy feely so the cognitive part of Psychology was always fascinating to me and how do people change love life love story but the subcultural aspects that can sometimes be associated with spiritual formation I'm not naturally drawn to that yeah so it was much more same here eventually feel interesting I didn't know that uh eventually feeling like I'm not changing and I don't know how to change and I went to Wheaton College in Fuller Seminary and study Theology and psychology and I still don't know and then reading this book for me Spirit of the disciplines was kind of the gateway drug to say um oh there's real bright people who have thought very deeply about how does change happen and how does spiritual reality intersect with that and there is a way and it involves a kind of training not just trying and that's when the light bulb went on to me and all kinds of possibilities and even method became attractive and appealing to me that up until then we're just disconnected so they felt like random purposeless activities yeah yeah what were your first forays into Solitude and silence like yeah so uh so at some point you begin to explore this thing that you've been so for me I had read this book Spirit of the disciplines I read it over and over again that's the the book that uh for me outside of the Bible that book is all of practicing the way is based on that impacted me more than any other book I've ever read I still have um you know copy of that book that I bought 35 years ago and could tell you the seat on the plane where I read it was just a holy moment wow and uh you know it just felt like oh somebody has thought this through yeah and uh so just change my life and uh I was living in Simi Valley so I had written to Dallas and then found out he just lived a few miles away and um so went and talked with him again kind of like being here in this room and the amazing thing was uh as good as his mind was his heart was better and when you would be with him it was like um the reality of God was as apparent to him as this microphone is to me and and when you're with him you would just know this is somebody who it's just clear and it was somehow in his body you know at the cellular level so I thought I'd I want this um so as you know in the book Dallas uh his approach is to talk about spiritual disciplines as only one part of spiritual life and spiritual change but an indispensable part and he divides them into disciplines of um abstinence where you refrain from doing what you normally would do and then disciplines of Engagement where you actually do things that you normally wouldn't do and that they actually help with a sense of commission where I got a problem with my don't muscle so abstaining will help with that and then sins of omission where I got a problem with my I should be doing love enjoy so I got to strengthen my she's like oh yeah it kind of makes sense yeah it's like you know again there's a there's a reason to it and so Solitude Dallas always say is very very fundamental and I think probably especially in our day because we are so overwhelmed by stimulation yes and um a whole other topic we won't get into is this psychologist chick sent me high in his work around the flow oh yeah and uh he just passed away this last year he says the number one finding in all of the Decades of research around how do people experience flow is that the unaided Mind tends towards chaos [Music] and that the problem now is we are able that the the ultimate the ultimate Challenge in life is the art of managing consciousness that's the ultimate Challenge we're all your life is this stream of Consciousness your thoughts that is your life yeah and um if your life is miserable it's because that stream is miserable and so learning how do you manage that stream effectively so that it can be characterized by thoughts and then feelings and perceptions and then choices that are joyful and truthful and beautiful um that's the ultimate Challenge the Fruit of the Spirit and the difficulty in our day is that we can now Outsource the managing of Consciousness to screams and it's low cost let it do it for us so it doesn't produce what he calls flow it doesn't create greater complexity and capacity within us but I can avoid anxiety and anger and so just by Outsourcing it so the irony is although we think of ourselves as quite Advanced it's very possible that our ability to manage Consciousness is weaker than ever before in human history wow because there's never been people before they had the the availability to Outsource the task so so that's where Dallas would say Solitude is as a starting point uh is probably uniquely important in our day and he would say if you're going to teach people about spiritual disciplines don't start with engagement um because we already feel so overwhelmed and overloaded and over committed and one more thing to do exactly one more thing it's got to start with one less thing to do yeah start with rest and so so uh I began to read and think about that and then decided that I would try Solitude and of course when you name it it becomes this different special thing and in my mind I had a picture of uh it that was quite romanticized and you know so I would go away and be with God and it would be profound and deep and I would have these remarkable experiences and so I remember the first time I was going to try it for a day well first I thought well I'll just wait till I have a free day and then I'll go spend it in solitude and of course a few months later so three years went by then just a very simple but maybe helpful observation for folks that are listening to us you actually will have to commit to this you actually have to get out a calendar whatever that looks like for you and block it out make that commitment okay I did that and then I went to uh a place near Wayfarers Chapel uh it's a beautiful beautiful spot the chapel was built by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright and it's like just this gorgeous space where you can be a few feet away and because of the use of glass and wood you don't even know it's there and it's just quite near the coast and um so that's where I went and I had a list of things to pray for and so I prayed them all and I was about I've been there maybe 20 minutes I had run out of things I wasn't saying anything and so then it was very frustrating for me it's very difficult and I did not know what to do so I just went uh across PCH Pacific Coast Highway down to the beach and sat in a chair and looked at the ocean and um and then began to learn that Solitude is much more experimental than what I had known yeah and that actually um the pursuit of spiritual life and deliberate spiritual practices I mean the practices are not all of life they're a means to an end but they are something to engage in but that that Pursuit was much more experimental than than I ever had any idea I always thought it was just here's the stuff you do then you've done your devotional things and then you'll change and to realize um now I will have to approach this with a very curious open mindset to see what is there that I can learn from this and what how does it impact my life or does it impact my life so it's much more like conducting little experiments and um so I just didn't know what else to do we sat there and looked at the ocean and eventually certain thoughts came I I love pelicans and so I would watch pelicans and one of the thoughts that came was just like I have designed them to live and that means that they will do certain things I have designed you to live in Freedom and to do certain things and that thought just came to you in that space But I wasn't trying to have a thought yeah it just came so part of what took a long time to come to understand is again if you think of practices as engagement or as abstaining Solitude is a practice of abstinence so it's not marked by what I do it's marked by what I don't do in solitude I refrain from conversation stimulation having another person or noise come into my life that's all it is and if I do that certain things will happen and um one of them is generally I'll get a sense of Freedom yeah could you name those for yeah us uh so I'm a three on the Enneagram so I always wrestle with John you're looking for me good today you win yeah that's right that's what it's all about you're doing a great job so how's it going what do you think so far I think we can get better come on we can do it this could be the best episode ever [Laughter] um and uh so again that's in me at the cellular level it's just if it's another thing I didn't understand about Sin a lot when I was growing up I would think of sins as you know I lied or I stole or I lost it or whatever and if I just worked at it hard enough I could stop it and then to realize um you know there is just ego and self-promotion going on inside me and I am powerless to stop it there is no switch and it's just in me willpower is not enough yeah yep uh and it's in my Consciousness it's in that stream and it taints it it befouls it um but when I when I'm all by myself I can start to feel after a while in my body oh I am not who everybody says I am I am not how everybody thinks that I am doing and I'm here away from all that and it's really good I'm really glad to be alive and I'm glad and so I will begin to experience freedom and you know it will be so um uh in solitude there's a gift of Freedom yeah and uh if I don't go into Solitude I will miss that gift so Dallas used to say sometimes about the disciplines um they are all self-validating meaning meaning uh if I'm engaging in solitude and it's something that's helpful I will like my life better because I engage in it right than my life when I don't engage in it when I don't engage in it it will be like missing out on some vitamins there will be Health that I start to lose yes so that idea they're not religious Duty exactly it helps to get it out of the category of that I think a lot you're a good Christian you do these nine things yes or yeah and that they're arbitrary that there's no particular point to them um and uh they're merit badges and the way that you demonstrate how spiritual you are is by showing how committed you are to these disciplines tick the Box yeah yeah so to recognize no insofar as their spiritual disciplines they are only a means to an end yeah and so if you don't need them don't do them talk to us about that you know you've said that several times and I think it's so crucial that the disciplines they're not the spiritual life they're just a part of it and really they're not even the main part of it they just posture you before the main part of it they are it means to an end so what's the end like why go into Solitude what's the driving motivation so that God is not interested in something called your spiritual life he's just interested in your life just your life as that stream that's going on inside you the inside of the tree uh and particularly love and that you be able to love to love God all the time and I'll think about that I have been reading through this book The Cloud of Unknowing many centuries ago recently and it will be quite challenging around that notion of just deeply loving God yeah that's Islam about just arrows of love going to heaven yep and uh you know when I think about boy how often do those arrows go from me uh not nearly as often as they could or I wish they would and then just to love other people so that when I'm with somebody to not be thinking about how am I doing how do you think I'm doing but how are you doing yeah to be genuinely interested in you and wanting to know and seeing Beauty in each person so that's what God is interested it's just life I've come that you might have life um and uh uh I grew up if somebody asked me how's your spiritual life going I would translate that as how are my quiet times going yeah and as long as they were quite regular I think my spiritual life is going quite well so it took a long time to realize um you can't gauge your life by devotional practices or else in Jesus day the Pharisees would be the ones that are always doing great yeah um so it's really just about my capacity to be able to experience love and joy and peace through the spirit and then the practices are a means towards an end of growing in that so they're kind of making space to God making space for god um disrupting the automatic flow that usually dominates my life so don't let this world squeeze you into its mold Romans chapter 12. you know the idea there is that when I'm with people all of those modes of thinking and responding and talking and presenting myself are deeply deeply habitual it's just hard to get free it's impossible Victor Frankel line the other day it's famous but you would be able to quote it verbatim I'm sure but you know Freedom lies in that little hair breath between stimulus and response what you do between stimulus and response that's who you are you know but I just find in the busyness and the noise of life I'm almost powerless yeah in between my body just takes over before my heart can actually live but you're saying Solitude like enlarges that gap between stimulus and response and you pull away from the world is that what is that what I'm hearing and you get more space to respond differently I think it can enlarge the gap between stimulus and response but it's also an opportunity to develop another response to the stimulus that's good and so that's where um to a large large large extent you know spiritual formation is really about habit formation habit is a tricky word one of the problems with habit is we often think of habits like having a quiet time or exercising or rather than realizing actually um uh almost all that I do is habit so what do I see when I see people um do I see someone who's really interesting do I see this person as attractive and this person isn't this is somebody that I can use uh this is something this person's in the way yeah yep yep you're saying that's a habit uh yeah having to perceive people yeah it's like uh I grew up playing tennis so if I'm watching a movie and there's tennis players in the movie I if they're serving and they're not a good tennis player I cannot not see that um same thing between the baseball player or or whatever my son is a great Surfer we can both be looking at a way if he can tell immediately take that wave that's habit you you are learning to see and um so we have a hard time I I swear that I wish there was better language for that yeah because our lives are just simply by far mostly outsourced to have it and so mostly if I'm afraid it's simply because I habitually generate fear producing thoughts um and um if I'm always trying to impress people it's because those are the thoughts that I generate so when I go into Solitude which goes back to Consciousness you're saying management of Consciousness exactly yeah yeah and uh there is the possibility there uh that uh I might experience more and more freedom which we which would get into my body so that then when I come back out and I talk with you if I can carry some of that freedom then when you say something to me instead of thinking oh how can I be clever in response to this I might think oh that's a really interesting thing I wonder what's going on I wonder as I look at John Mark's eyes what's he feeling right now or you know what's going on with Bethany smile so it's you know uh it's changed at that level where um uh the stuff that comes out of you can be genuinely different yeah good question John because I think what you're naming especially for people who are newer to this practice is really helpful I come from like a similar more Baptist like quiet time do the um do the list and these are the two things we do read the Bible we pray so even my journey to engaging in the practices sounds similar I'm buying a lot of resonance with what you're sharing about your journey but I think it's really helpful to hear um the breadth of the experience that you're naming um the emotional world yeah just there's a lot of texture for lack better word to what you're saying but I'm thinking about people who are listening and going I'm just trying this for the first time could you help close the gap or speak to yeah like I've been a checklist person I love Jesus I love the church I'm trying to figure this out how do I move from being that person of existing or understanding communion with God through these this more narrow lens to actually moving into a place internally and externally where I can experience the encounter you're talking about or the freedom you're talking about because that path no you know do you know where I'm going here I totally do and it's a great question and ironically or paradoxically or something the first place is you let go of the demand to experience any of that or actually to experience it's amazing yeah and so that's like the prerequisite it's a prerequisite it's just it's like falling asleep good you know try really hard to fall asleep see how that works it's true there are certain things that can come to you but you cannot force them yeah so with Solitude for anybody who's listening let's get real practical set aside a time don't try to be heroic with it yeah trying to do it for a day was probably too much I'm an introvert so it's easier for me Nancy's an extrovert so she hates Solitude like for her Solitude wouldn't be so bad if I could just take a few friends along with it so set aside a period of time you can decide what it would be and then all you're trying to do is don't talk with somebody don't look at a screen um don't distract yourself by reading it's about what you don't do now it's kind of like a jar where you can pray you could do self-examine you could read scripture you can do certain things but initially don't worry about that um all you're trying to do is don't do anything to distract yourself yeah and then you'll see what and then and then you win okay so like yeah that's it you did what you needed because things will happen one of the things that will happen is you'll find out what's going on in your mind yeah so you allow thoughts to come and uh I would find uh a lot of thoughts that would come would would be either success fantasies which because I'm in Ministry there's so I'm being really successful or passive aggressive anger fantasies so and my anger fantasy and I'll hurt you I make you feel terrible for hurting me so so to allow those to come and then I had a real wise person that I would talk with about this stuff sister Jean and uh when I would describe what had happened because when I was done I would take a few minutes just to write down what took place and what what were the what were the um volcanoes in the black holes what were the hot spots where it felt like there was energy and stuff going on where were the Dead Space is and for instance very often I would find myself the main thing I would experience is I'm really tired yeah and so sometimes I would just need to go to sleep yeah and then she would always ask me and did you tell the Lord that you were tired and very long time I said no and she would say do you think it would be a good idea so that idea of uh when I'm in solitude and then thoughts or experiences come um if I think to do it actually talk to God about it just tell him I'm really tired right now um and then see perhaps a thought would come but for anybody who's listening to us carve out of time don't try to be heroic with it and then don't try to have an experience my one of my big problems was uh I felt like I needed to generate having these deep experiences with God or else I had failed yeah yeah and I remember one time fairly early on going on a Solitude time where a few of us went it was kind of a retreat thing and then we went off on our own and then we were going to come back together and process together what happened while you were alone and I can still remember it was probably about five minutes or so from the end thinking gosh I haven't had a thought to tell him about I got to come up with something I want to tell them about it we've all been there John and it's like so okay that's what I need to learn yeah to stay with yeah my life mostly consists of um how can I get people to think about me the way that I want them to think about wow and that's a miserable way to live but that's where my life is and uh because I was alone I had the opportunity to come to that and uh you know I remember reading there's this book uh Thomas wingfold cure it by George McDonald that I love a lot and uh Thomas wingfold is this pastor who discovers he doesn't know what he believes and so he goes on this journey it's a remarkable it's very meaningful book to me but at one point the guy who's kind of his guide knows an Insight that wingfold needs but he deliberately doesn't tell him because he doesn't want to Rob him of the impact that will come if he gets it by discovery rather than by presentation yeah and I think for those of us who are teachers it could be very tempting to think I will tell you yeah and uh uh Again part of the beauty of solitude is you can come to Discovery um in a way that will stay with you uh that it never would if somebody just presented it to you I I think uh another thing about Solitude is it slows me deeply yeah so ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life it's not a fast process no no no it's uh yeah it it can't be you can't Solitude and hurry are just utterly incompatible with each other another uh aspect of it is um uh you will discover that you have a soul and I often think of a soul kind of like a turtle you know where it will only come out of the shell yeah if it's real safe yeah real slow yeah it's like Oh and it will be this sense of uh there is something unspeakably deep about being alive and about me being alive and it is so precious and it's so stupid that usually I miss it and don't pay attention to it and somehow it it manifests yeah in those moments but but never if you try to get it to I love seeing whales and I was with my son Johnny not too long ago and he was saying you will never see a whale if you're looking for a whale and and the soul looks kind of like that Parker Palmer you know and let your life speak has that and that similar analogy of like it's like waiting in the woods to see a wild animal you just go out and you get as still as you possibly can and you have no control it might be two seconds later or two days later before you see a deer or yeah you just go and he said the soul was like that it's like this wild animal that if you rush it if you're loud if you're noisy you will never see it you have to wait in the quiet room and and I think along with that um often in solitude there will be this realization other people are not as bad as I thought yeah um it's kind of like if you're a parent you have kids when they're sleeping you just feel so much love for them and then they wake up and they wake up but that sense of love when they're sleeping is not um an illusion yeah um and and and often in solitude things are not as bad as they seem yeah yeah I feel that a lot and and I think it's because in solitude um all of the attachments are dropping away hmm and I realized how this event went how I got graded on this what these people think as I'm here none of that really matters yeah and so if all of that stuff doesn't turn out well I can still just come here yeah and I have this um yeah and God's bigness is there too I mean in my mind I'm like I the experience in solitude for me is just also remembering the gift of Being Human like you were saying the gift of the soul but the gift of knowing god is everything and he's the biggest thing and so I get to be I get to have a deeper awareness that's so interesting how does that happen how did you notice that how did that begin for you oh through panic and I mean all what you're talking about of letting the attachments go yeah you know I think and we talked about this earlier in a different episode but just about being stripped of what you normally hold up before god of what you normally can cover yourself with I mean it's very identic in some ways you know in that that sense but I think I'm you know especially as Leaders as pastors as teachers these things you you often assume you you occupy space in a big way you have you're leading you're thinking about what are other people thinking about me no there's that exchange that's continually happening and when I'm with God I'm reminded I'm slowed down enough to be reminded that I'm the kid I'm not the parents because I'm also running out of the answers that I normally try to offer other people and subconsciously offer myself my own dependency my own strength um and so there's just I think through that stripping for me over years of this um one of my favorite favorite realities of sounds and Solitude even if I have even when I should say I'm always resisting it going in um is the experience of God being genuinely everything and so much bigger than what I thought my world really was yeah no I think that's true and I think um uh at least for me nature is a big part of that creation yeah oh yeah I love going to the ocean um or it could just be a tree yeah and you get the sense of the immensity of what's going on in time and scale and how small I am next to that yes yeah yeah interesting Jesus did not go into a closet right you went out into the wilderness [Music] yeah I mean the the stripping of attachments thing [Music] you know John one like tragedy I'm thinking of somebody I love deeply I was in a conversation with a couple days ago this is a good person loves God faithful to Jesus in the way of Jesus but she just kind of confided yeah I've never really experienced the love of God before and I don't know how to architect that for someone because when I go into Solitude my brain goes a thousand directions and I spend 20 minutes just being really mad at somebody who I think is the evil one and then realize actually I was even more at fault but you know I mean my brain is all over the place but in those fleeting moments and in all honesty it's probably three percent at best of my time in solitude but in those fleeting moments where I can make contact with God in my mind I mean it's an experience of being loved I've been well loved my parents were loving my wife is extraordinarily loving but I mean the experience of love from God it's overwhelming and um I want that so badly for other people but then I hear other people don't have that experience you know yeah yeah and I think that's where um Solitude is incredibly powerful and can be incredibly painful yeah and that's why you know solitary confinement is yeah the worst of the punishment we've come up with other than death yeah and uh and again the unaided human mind tends towards chaos all that it is is just uh uh forcing you to live with your Consciousness without a distraction wow that's all it is sheesh um but it says something about the nature of the way that our Consciousness runs yeah apart from God yeah and that's you know primarily the love of God and it's interesting these last few years have had lots of pain for me and folks that I love a lot and in the process of keeping numerous therapists uh busy uh I I would uh work with one of them quite a lot on just what are the thoughts that I'm having and when I'm feeling depressed uh getting quite clear on what's the thought that's underneath that what is it that I'm thinking what is it that I'm afraid of and How likely is it that that's true and then working to find another thought that I genuinely believe that expresses what I really do think is true that I can think instead of this one because I do believe that this is true and so there's a in doing that over and over it's kind of like doing push-ups or something where your mind kind of gets used to oh yeah I can think this thought and I realized when as I was going through that behold the love that God has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God and that that I could actually choose to dwell on that thought [Music] so that you know generally we all hunger to feel loved by God it almost never is effective to try to force a feeling yeah you know we're just not emotions don't work that way well you can't will yourself into a feeling we often want to do that and then it becomes even more painful because when I don't I feel like there's something wrong or other people can do that and something's wrong with me yeah exactly yeah maybe God doesn't love you I don't experience him that way or he's not that he doesn't exist yeah and it was very helpful for me to realize actually um I can as an act of the will dwell on that thought anytime yeah which is just a line from scripture yeah it's just a line from scripture um and I do think it's true I think there's good reasons to believe that it's true um but it was it was actually kind of liberating and very helpful and again I think it was probably more because I wasn't doing it to be spiritual I was actually just doing hard work on the rapy of Life side and it brought with it this realization actually John what's that no spiritual life just life uh so anybody who's listening to us you can uh when you go into Solitude if you want to just take with you one thought uh for God so loved the world uh and bring that with you and then when your mind goes someplace else don't beat yourself up at all just very gently uh now I will dwell on this thought yeah and you can choose to do you run this make it an experiment uh you know you can do that other thing I'd say just on a real practical level folks that will talk about habits talk about how important it is that there be a reward attached to a habit that you want to develop so if you do uh go out and practice Solitude when you're done smile yeah or get a milkshake yes okay yeah yep yeah have something like that you might take a few moments to reflect on it but it's real important not to end it by saying I didn't do it good enough yeah and I say that partly because I experience that so much for so long it's not something you do right it's just yeah no and I think we just tend to have so much guilt associated with yeah spiritual life and spiritual practices and I'm not enough but the problem is it doesn't help yeah it doesn't build it doesn't grow so at the end of it no matter how imperfect that you think it was um celebrate it have gratitude do something um to Market positively to help it recur the next time we're out that's a really important uh small piece but I think it'll help folks a lot in a real practical way you know John there's a theme I'm hearing from you just about how when we go into Solitude we can't force a feeling or an experience we can't control it the whole point is just to make yourself available it does make me think of you know there's a very helpful idea in Willard's thought paradigm of the practices or disciplines are something we can do to make space for God to do what we cannot do yeah so how I think about that you know I like to think of like there's the disciplines which are all within the reasonable range of our willpower and then there's all the commands of Jesus most of which are outside of the French of my willpower you know love your enemy be anxious for nothing you know and I genuinely want to do that but I am not yet the person that can consistently not not be anxious for my future but what I can do is turn off my phone and practice Sabbath I can you know take an hour and put everything away and go in the backyard and just sit with God that's within reasonably the range of my willpower I can't control my Consciousness I can't be there and be perfect but I can I can give God that and then then it's on God you know I can't you know I'm thinking your stuff in willpower has been so helpful but Leslie Jamison has a beautiful Memoir and addiction and she says I needed to believe in something stronger than my own willpower and everything in the cultural messaging of a Peloton world you know is everything's about you and you take control and you have power and you have strength and you're a boss and all this stuff I just want deluded thinking I mean there's truth in that but I think the moment you begin to move toward love you quickly come to the end of your effective willpower so I mean I would love to any any thoughts you have to that you spent more time in Willard's mind than any of us but that idea for me seems really key to Solitude into all of the practices they're what we can do so that God can do what we cannot do yeah yeah um I think when I first heard Dallas talk about the difference between trying to do something versus training to do something yeah and that we overestimate what we can do by trying and underestimate what we can do by training and most of his commands for life don't worry about tomorrow those are things that you cannot do by trying really really hard but you can do practices by trying that's those are things that are in the court of our will and their training methods and then I think another piece that took me longer and it Maps very much to what you're talking about to understand is um in many ways I can still be in charge of training so if I want to run a marathon it's important to recognize they need to train not just try but I can still be in charge and I can map out I'll do these practices and I'll get to this point and so that's where uh well in the addiction issue is a nice one because where that begins is um I uh acknowledge that I am powerless in my life has become unmanageable and that I come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to moral sanity yeah and I turn my life and my will over so uh you're quoting from AAA from yes definitely 12 steps which those the first three are often summarized as I can't he can I think I'll let him I can't you can I think I'll let him it was the first three steps so that uh it's not it's not just that trying doesn't do it but I can cleverly engineer the life I want through training yeah um it's uh surrender yeah and and uh Dallas would often say the will is made to surrender to God the Willis made the surrender to God and it's fascinating this social psychologist Rory bellmeister who's written a wonderful book on Willpower and uh uh it touches on these issues of trying versus training and how the will is very important but it's very quickly depleted so uh anytime you you're trying to do impression management you go on a date or a job interview resisting temptation uh being creative um trying to solve problems all of those things require willpower and they deplete us very quickly so our little store willpower that's your kingdom so it's what makes you a person it is utterly precious and indispensable but uh habits heated for breakfast it's very very weak the one thing the will can do that doesn't deplete it is surrender wow and now Baumeister doesn't talk about that yes that's not him but it's deeply true AAA recognizes it and it's so interesting if you ever read through the big book there's a section in it where um Bill W is talking about you know you can't stop drinking by willpower but he talks about when you are um confused when you're agitated when you're upset thy will be done thy will be done he says that's the proper use of the will wow which is that's exactly the will was made to surrender to God and if you look at acts of the will everything else depletes the will very quickly anybody listening to this right now do this on your own thy will be done that's not a thought that is an act of the will wow yeah that is an act of the will I Surrender God your will be done uh Richard Foster used to talk about there was this old old um ad for a kind of iced tea you guys are way too young to know this but it was called nesti and they had this big ad campaign it was called take the nesti plunge and it's this real hot day somebody takes a glass of Nest tea and then they're just falling backwards into this beautiful cool pool and so that became this thing take the nest and that picture of surrender yeah so now I just utterly let go into the arms of a loving God and it is an act of the will and it is available to you anytime all day long and it never depletes the will the will was made to surrender to God yeah Thomas Keating has that line in the human condition what is it that the chief Act of the will is not effort but consent oh yeah same same idea I think yeah the exact same in the highest yeah now if you look at yeah if you look at Jesus the ultimate example of the true human being and at the height of his spiritual Powers what does he say yeah yeah and so what you're saying is that Solitude is a space where with our whole body We Just Surrender and it may well be that that simple prayer your will be done um is the most helpful thing for people to carry into Solitude and then whatever it is that comes up whatever the thought whatever the distraction whatever the being tired whatever it is your will be done your will be done your will be done yeah beautiful there's one more question I want to ask you when Bethany and I and Brian were chatting about what all to ask you and uh Brian said we need to ask him about this and I think he was right but just you've been around leadership your whole life you are a leader you've seen a lot highs lows rise fall is this an especially important discipline for those in leadership yes yes yes yes for sure that's a rhetorical question so maybe the question is Solitude is particularly because um you cannot lead people effectively unless you're free of the need for their approval and uh cannot lead people you need something from that's right yep um you know part of what is unique about leadership is there's a whole nother topic it touches on our kingdom so deeply yeah you know uh the main reality of being a person is you have a little kingdom and it's very hard to lead people without violating Their Kingdoms and that's why Jesus has so many warnings about leadership yeah and um so uh for people who are in a position of leadership um you know the desire or need to uh misuse it if you're a three it will be you may well surrender power to get people to do this and uh not be willing to engage in Conflict not be willing to challenge so you gotta your kingdom has to be healthy that will come in solitude if it comes at all yeah if you're an eight um you may trade having people like you to get power and make sure everybody else is obeying your will so now you're violating their Kingdom in a whole different way through coercion and intimidation and steamrolling and you will have to go into Solitude uh and realize it's his kingdom it's not my kingdom yeah so yes I believe for people who are in leadership positions Solitude plays a uniquely indispensable role not only in their well-being but in the well-being of the people who are around them well John I mean thank you the path that you've chosen you could have chosen so many other paths and it has been long and winding and story's not over yet but you've given yourself to surrender for many I'm just sitting here just thinking man you know what you said about Dallas that his life was even you know better than his mind and I know you enough to say the same is true of you you're brilliant I wish I could just talk off the top of my head like you but the spirit that has been formed within you is a gift to us all right so may it be true I I know a lot more about that Spirit than you do yeah in the background but she'd be throwing up in her mouth a little bit but I take that as words of aspiration and blessing and no it's a gift so thank you um for those that want to follow more of your work hear more about um your teaching where would you point people uh so there's a little online community uh called become new and that comes really from Dallas's statement the main thing God gets out of your life is the person you become so most of the time I do about a 10 or 12 minute teaching Mondays two Fridays and people could check that out become new beautiful thank you thank you thank you and thank you for listening thank you to the circle for your generosity to make all this possible again we're a new podcast feel free to spread the word we're so grateful to be with you and we'll be back next week foreign

Channel: Practicing the Way

Views: 18,847

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Id: TPWUy81YHiA

Length: 54min 0sec (3240 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023