Sebastian Siegel on Love, Grace, and Grit

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sebastian Siegel, a British American screenwriter, director, author and actor from Oxford, England. His new movie is Grace and Grit, based on the American philosopher Ken Wilbur's memoir John McKay had to say about the new movie Grace and Grit will shake you and maybe even awaken you in some way. This movie is a must see, especially for anyone interested in love or consciousness. Hi, Sebastian, welcome

to the show. To be here. We're going to be discussing a recent movie that you directed called Grace and Grit, as well as a bunch of other things. But we'll get to all that in a moment, and we'll start like we always do, with the parable. In the parable, there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that

you do. This is a beautiful, terrible and it's a beautiful question I think for people to engage in. Hence the theme of your podcast that I want to thank you for bringing to the world. Certainly with a question like this, it's not something that gets answered, and it's always answered. We have to keep asking it, which is why this is such a great content and such a great underlying theme for a show like this. I think

of it in sort of four levels. One it was interesting, and when you sent that to me and I was thinking about it, one of the first dreams that I remember as a child, maybe just a couple of years old, was about a sort of dark kind of mythic figure like a horse or a bull, and a light mythic figure like a horse or a bull, and they'd come out of a cave and they were pushing each other back and forth, and then they went back into the cave, and then they were about to come out, and I

was sort of telepathizing that I was on top of one of them, but I didn't know which one I was on top of and which one would come out. And then I wake up, and it's very much I think this question to take that then from the personal, I think into the archetypal sense of what these two figures are in the parable of the bad wolf and the hopeful of the wolf of light and the wolf

of darkness. That in the very youngion sense, we have these art types that were born into the world with right, whether it's the Messiah or the Great Father, the Great Mother, or the thief or the hero. And I think there were always eating one of those things more and I think then to take it then to sort of a more contemporarizing of it the sense of karma and the sense of dharma. Right, that karma is sort of what is your fate? And the sense of dharma is what

is your destiny? You know that what do we come into this world in a way that we're limited by this trap, this pattern that we engage in again and again and again, right, might be this dark wolf? And then what is our destiny or what is our dharma? And that was what are we choosing to do with every day? How am I choosing to greet people with

my eye contact? There's this very beautiful term in Hawaii aloha, which is hello, goodbye love, but it also means how you make someone feel when you greet them, And it also means how do you feel when you greet someone? And I think about that ultimately as a dharma in other words, as that wolf, the one that you choose

to feed. That it's less about well, I want to give into the things that lift me up and the things that you know obviously you know when we think about I want to do the things that where I lift other people up. I want to engage in things that cultivate, yeah, joy and peace and ease and life

and abundance energy. But really it's so subtle. I think it's so simple that it starts just with this spark inside, Yeah, the spark of spirit of God, of love, and that if we sit into that, then feeding that wolf that is the wolf of hope and love comes naturally. I love that. Let's start with your latest movie, Grace and Grit, of which you were I believe, the screenwriter and the director, maybe among other things, but at least those two. Why don't you tell us about the movie in your own words.

I could summarize that I've seen it and I loved it, but I'm gonna let you sort of give the brief summary for our Listeners adapted screenplay from Ken Rob's book on the same title. Grayson GrITT and I produced it with two producing partners, and I directed the movie. And it is really a story of about love beyond life. It's a story about transcendence. It's a true story between

Ken Wilbur and his would be wife. They meet, they fall madly in love, and the film, ultimately it's experiential that we see and we experience romantic love and courageous love, and selfless love and passionate love and then ultimately transcendent love. And when I say the movie is experiential, I mean that we see these characters portraying these things, experiencing these things, but we want to experience that. I want the audience

to feel those things and sitting through the movie. So like a song, the rhythm and the sound and the music is one thing, but also what's the feeling that it evokes. So it's a film that I think people have to be ready to see it. They have to be willing to let go, to surrender into it, like the book, and it's ultimately an experience of what is it that we're touching our soul? This thing that echoes beyond.

How does love trans form us? How can it make us better, deeper and greater service to ourselves and to everything that we touch in his life? It is a beautiful film and it is experiential. I absolutely felt it, My partner absolutely felt it. Some people are going to know who Ken Wilbury is, but plenty of people aren't. So why don't you share with us who Ken Wilbury is. Ken Wilbur is perhaps the most brilliant human being that

ever lived. And I say that in total truth that you think about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and then you know, going forward, all these brilliant sort of thinkers and writers, and he's a map maker. Yeah, And essentially from the Big Bang to now, we have books like A Brief History of Time, right, Steven Hawkins book that described from the Big Bank to now the entire physical universe and

how it evolved. And I think Wilbur has a book to compare that to just those titles, A Brief History of Everything, where it's from the Big Bank to now ultimately the extrapolation of just the physical universe, but also of feeling, of thought, of spirit, of consciousness, of religion, of what is going on ultimately and then that you know, going Outward is really an examination of what is consciousness, not our consciousness, just our consciousness, but what is the

consciousness of God, of Spirit, of the entire cosmos. And so the ideas that he writes about are so big and so vast and so complex that the reason he doesn't have a broader audiences because there are many incredible authors, brilliant authors today and you know, in the past, psychologist, philosophers,

authors of spirituality of consciousness that are accessible. In other words, you can pick up a book, yeah, by Mariann Williamson or Schopenhauer, or Tony Robbins, you know, or Carl jung Uh and you don't need any preface to read that. You can pick it up and it's successible and it's beautiful. One of my most favorite authors is James Hollis, who was one of the founders of the Young Center in Houston, and it's a dear friend of mine also, and his

work is very accessible. Ken Wilber's work requires a prerequisite of fifty other books, so to arrive to Ken Wilbur, it seems that, you know, someone has to be in a place where they're ready to not just explore those ideas, but that there's a certain vernacular that's a requisite. Although I do think that when someone is interested in consciousness and interested in spirituality, interests in philosophy and psychology, eventually all roads lead to Ken Wilber. That he's sort of

brilliant mind and radically creative and radically original. I mean, this is my thought, but also many of the most brilliant people today would say the same thing about him. Yeah, he is an extraordinarily highly regarded writer, philosopher in all those areas. What's interesting to me, and I read a bunch of ken Wilber a long time ago. Was was really when I read mult the boles of his books, and this book, Grace and Grit, though, stood out for me in a totally different way. To me, it was

a very different Ken Wilber book. Was that your experience of it. Yeah, Erica was in fact a brief history of everything, was the first book I read of his, and then I would six Eychology, Spirituality and Integral Psychology, a number of other books, and Grayson GrITT was always sitting there in my living room or somewhere, you know, on my shelf, and I just didn't want to read it because it didn't seem to be a book on consciousness. That it was the one book that had characters in

it who were people. Yeah, that all of the characters and the other books are conceptual, yeah ideas, you know, they're about consciousness, and so um. I just you know, I was looking for really kind of heavy, challenging material at the time, many many, many many years ago, and so then eventually I took it with me and opened it up, and I was just immediately struck in the heart that it was a reference point I think for

what's possible in love. To see these two people who are evolved, grounded, compassionate, tender, intelligent beings uh He and Trea. To see them at their best, shine brightly, to see them fumble, Yeah, to see them really be at their worst. I think for many people around the world. When I read the reviews about the book, it gives people a sort of permission to say, Okay, it's okay to be human. I can fumble, I can fall. We screw up. That's

what we do. That's not what's important. What's important is how do we push through that, How do we break through that, how do we feed as just saying the wolf that is love and it is hope. So in one way, the book is, you know, this epic love story and a reference point for what's possible in love. Also, people think about romantic love and passionate love and then

courageous love and selfless love and transcendent love. How far down that path and most people get romantic, passionate, courageous maybe, selfless maybe, And this really is an exemplar of what is possible. How far can we allow love to push us, in other words, to crucify us and to resurrect us in the same way that Khaligobron talks about love to

really really embody that. And I think what's powerful about this book is that, and the story is that it really shows that that these two people allow themselves to be crucified by love and then came out on the other side. Yeah, like just exploding sort of with light. So I was also reluctant to read the book, and then when I did, it blew me open and I just didn't want the pages to end, you know, at the very end, I just I didn't want to I didn't want to turn the last page. Yeah, and when

I read the book. It made me sad in two key ways. The first was the obvious sadness of the book. These two people fall in love, and as they're preparing to go on their honeymoon, she's diagnosed with breast cancer, and the book walks through their experience together, ultimately ending in her death. And so it's both incredibly uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. So that was one way that it made me sad. The other way that it made me sad at that point in my life was

I thought, I'll never have anything like this. What they had was so beautiful. That sort of made me sad at that point. I'm happy to report that now I feel like I have found something that beautiful. But it's just such a profound story about, like you say, these different parts and different aspects of love. It's beautiful you're saying, you know. I think the sense of a lot of people who write about the book online is very much that that you see people saying, like this book maybe

not afraid to love again. Yeah, this book made me not afraid of death. This book gave me hope in some sort of future. And I like what you said very much about connecting with someone and finding that. And I think that ultimately where that hope is because I think, what is that ingredient inside this book that inspires that? And it is in the same way that Killoguban talks about It's not about finding other person, it's about locating the courage inside of ourselves to say I am comfortable

to be crucified by love. It is going to hurt me, for sure, but in that it will transform me. Yeah. That if we are vulnerable, we are going to be more sensitive to pain and more sensitive to joy. But we cannot allow ourselves to be less sensitive to pain without numbing joy. If we dim the light of a fire, we dim the heat that it may inflict upon us, but we also dim the light. Yeah, that guides us, Yes,

very much so. In the story it says, Look, if you're willing to be crucified by love, it's going to hurt, but it will be the most delicious and spectacular thing that you can possibly experience in this short instant of a human life. And at the end of life, people are always you know, when people have regrets, it's to say I didn't love enough, I didn't give myself enough. I could have dealt with the pain of the thing. You know, you go to a restaurant, you go out

somewhere and you see two people. The other day, I saw this animous woman and they were sitting outside on the bench, and he was talking, you know, very emotionally, like sharing something with her. And there was a window between us, and I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I was looking at and she was really looking at him. And then she reached out and just caressed his head and he looked up and they held this long gaze of eye contact, and I thought, that's the

most beautiful thing to see and be seen. And we all love to see that when we see it out in the world, because we want to experience it ourselves. So I think anytime we can use media, whether it's music or movies or books or poetry, to use that as a reference point what's possible with our own soul, then that's time well spent and it's attention well spent. And that's very much choosing them when you feed somewhere.

You wrote in talking about the movie, you said, the purpose of relationship is to magnify the beauty of the human experience and act mutually as catalysts to increasing growth in one another. This is the requisite of relationship for

me in any dynamic friend, lover, or family. So again us I would ask, how do you know in a relationship of any different sort, whether it's romantic or family or whatever, whether you are acting as catalysts to increasing growth in one another or whether the reaction that's happening is not a positive catalyst. Well, a great question. It's beautiful because they all come to the same end ultimately

in terms of the growth happens when we're ready. So sometimes that nurturing and that uplifting is the thing that lifts this up. By nurturing and loving someone else, we lift ourselves up. By caring for someone who's ill, we feel better. If we are all someone cares for us, we also feel better. And that's a powerful electrical current that goes both directions. Also, sometimes heartbreak, sometimes devastation is love and it's many disguises in the way to lift

us up. Just like if we take a ball and we slam it against the floor, the heart are we slam it against the floor the higher it goes. Many people have to go through something devastating to have an awakening so sometimes unintentionally, I think we're in relationship. It's not so much that someone hurts us or that we

hurt someone, but sometimes we're seeking that out. We're seeking some sort of pattern, yeah, from our childhood, or some sort of karmic pattern again again again, and that no matter who the other person is, no matter what they do, we're going to keep seeking that thing and tell it hits us in a way that breaks us open until we can become aware of it. So, in terms of the question, how do we know if it's a positive catalyst,

Ultimately it's always a positive catalyst. It's just like how long do we have to yank on the tooth before it's ripped out of our mouth? You know, ideally we can feel that pattern and see it soon enough to say, okay, I've had enough of this. I think you know, now is the time I'm ready to step upward, to move onward,

to not feel this pain anymore. I think that the shortcut to that there is a tool, and I think that shortcut is really to be in service that if we are in relationship and we think about the little self and the ego excelf, what do I want and what are my passions and what are my pains and what do I need? If we put that aside. For instance, just so you know, I'm fortunate to know this person, friend, family,

or lover. How can I be supportive of them right without damaging my own self in terms of not having any boundaries, you know, how can I be supportive and loving and appreciative and full of grace and exuberance, you know, in a way that's still healthy for me? And then when we start to feel something intuitively um to pay attention to that intuition, to say, okay, this this feels good,

where this feels like I'm robbing myself. Yeah, to never think, look, this person is is robbing something from me or damaging me. I'm choosing to in this engagement because I think that in the personal responsibility there's help. We have this choice to say I'm in control, right, that I have a say here, and in this reference, you know to I

think concentration has an extreme example. You know, in Victor Frankel's book You, he talks about stimulus and response and that freedom exists between that in that gap between stimulus and response. So in applying that now to the relationship of love, and where the catalysts for joy, there is a moment we can get touched or slapped, I think, where we feel it, but we have that moment between stimulus and response where we can decide what it means.

And it's the meaning that determines whether the catalysts is positive and helpful. And yeah, yeah, Victor Frankel did say very clearly that the thing they couldn't take from him was his ability to choose his response. That remained his you know, and you look at this movie Grace and GrITT. Bringing it back to the movie, is this idea of like, they tried everything they could to get out of her cancer diagnosis, and and they didn't, but they did very

much choose how am I going to live this? You know, how am I going to respond to this? What's the way that we're going to live through this? And I think you explore that beautifully in the movie. I guess at the very end of the movie, she writes the title of the book, it takes Grace and grit. You know, the book's called Grace and Grit. She writes, it takes grace and grit. I'm curious what that phrase means to you. What does that actually translate to in the way you

live your life, thanks for that. Everything that we delve into intuitively, vocationally, for play or for relationship, ultimately someone inside we're seeking to be more, to grow, to fulfill something in our fingerprint that we haven't touched, and that takes grace. It takes a little bit of breathing deeply and letting go, allowing the music to guide us that overthinking it. It also takes grit, having an affortitude to be bumped on the dance floor, to hit roadblocks and

to push through and to say it's okay. And I think that that paradox in life holds true. I think to anything that we engage in, whether it's light and dark or the end breath and the outbreath, you know, the sweetness or the bitterness. I think even in the loss of someone that we love or the loss of something that we aspire to, whenever we're sad, it's really a reflection of how much joy was there, of how

much something allowed us to grow. Talking about relationship, when people lose someone in any capacity, friend, family, or lover, pain that they feel is really a celebration of some sort of joy that existed some sort of beautiful path.

I've had a couple of people in our community this week who have lost animals, you know, and we've been trying to reflect on that, like without trying to turn the sadness off or get past it, you know, feeling it going all the way into it, but remembering that in the midst of that, you're only in this much pain because you had that much love. I'm going to switch directions very far here because in addition to being an actor and a director and a writer, you're also

an extraordinarily physically fit person. You've been a cover model a bunch of times, and I want to ask a little bit about that, because I think the way you've talked about exercise is very interesting, because there's a perception that people have, like, well, if somebody's a cover model, that must be just a vain sort of thing, or they're not that smart, or different perceptions, and that's not

you at all. And you've talked very eloquently on what it is about exercise, and and really I think you've talked about how it ties to your entire spiritual path. Can you say a little bit about that the physical form that we have in this world is one aspect of our being, and it's also the vehicle for our own mind and our own soul. And people talk about mind, body, soul. You know, to sit just up in the mind is just as ridiculous as it is to sit just in

the body. To honor all of these aspects of being, to honor as many facets of being that we can. The more the other aspects of our being are growing and are capable. Scientific study show that, you know, when we're exercising the blood flow to the brain, the endorphins allow us to be sharper doing things physically often and pushing it to a certain place. We're engaging in something that's been happening for billions of years since before we

were human. You know, you look at you know, even on an evolutionary level, you know, when the sun comes up, the movement of molecules in the ocean's physical and then when we evolve into different species. Yeah, the hunting and the running and the casing, it's integral to to who we are. So this idea that just in the last hundred years, that all of a sudden we can now sit still is insane. That we have to engage things that are fundamental in order to reach up higher into

things that are more transcendental. Yeah. So in other words, we don't want to you know, cut off from here down or here down, or here down or here down. We want to engage all these aspects of our being. So for me, physicality was never about building great thighs or you know, a beautiful physique or something like this. It was really about pushing it physically to the limit.

And I think as a kid, you know, exercising just as hard as I possibly could, and I have that feeling, you know, when you're seven, eight, nine, ten or whatever and you're running in your heart rates just pounding, pounding, pounding, feels like it's going to explode out of your chest. But no matter how hard you push it, you can just keep pushing it. It's the greatest feeling in the world, right, It's so amazing. And I think that I got so hooked on that as a kid that I always that's

why I look for when I exercise. And then the byproduct of that, you know, I eat very healthy, and so there's just a by product of the of for that of making being consistent and doing that every day in my life and eating healthy resulted in me being in exceptual physical shape, and so I was able to

do the over a hundred magazine covers. It wasn't something that I aspired to so much, but it was just sort of the right place at the right time, and then that gave me, I think, also a voice to be able to talk about and discuss and explore the power of physical fitness in terms of what that means for our emotional fitness and also our mental acuity to you know, draw an analogy. Even you have like Einstein, when he was coming up with his greatest theories, he

would go on a bike ride. You know that the physicality he would talk about about being on the bike and feeling the air and pushing himself that he would get all of a sudden these ideas. You know, it's not coincidental. You know, he was doing that by choice, knowing that that writing a bicycle was healthful for him. So the interlink of all things has become sort of cliche and pop culture. Yeah, mind, body, soul, we're all connected. But for so many people, these things are all up here.

They gonna become actual when we actually engage them, when we really feel Yeah, my mind my body, my soul. And I think a great misconception on this something that we see in sort of New Age spirituality or pop psychology is, you know, start the ego, feed the soul. You here, this this kind of thing, you know, And and I get that at a certain level that's appropriate to draw someone in who's lost in a sense of self identity and just being lost in the sense of self.

This tiny ego, right, feed the soul. Right. But in actuality, the ego is not a bad thing. Ego doesn't even exist. The ego is just a concept that's our sense of self and how we operate in the world. And so a very healthy ego is a vehicle for an even more healthy soul that has to be tempered by focus. But what are we doing with this ego? Are we here to absorb and take? Are are we here to give? And we here as a mechanism, as an aperture through

which light can shine come out. So in the same way egoically we have a sense of ourself, have a sense of our body. Yeah, and the body is an amazing, you know, vehicle to do everything we do, from eating to laughing to crying to sexual rapture. And reproduction. So why would we not want to take that vessel and celebrate it every day in some capacity. So for me, it's a very spiritual practice. I get a lot out of exercise that's way beyond the physical health benefits. It

is probably my major emotional support tool. When I'm not exercising, I don't do well mentally. And you know, when you would depthtail back into something in an earlier conversation about how do we feel the catalyst as positive or negative, something somewhere inside someone, some story happened where you needed that physicality to break through to feel this emotional high, and that might have been a negative at the time,

but look at now, it's become this huge positive. Yeah, And I feel very much the same way, and so many people who are incredible athletes feel the same way. That there was something that held them back and that through by swimming across an ocean or climbing a mountain or doing a workout, that they felt like, okay, I'm gonna be okay. So that ultimately that negative catalyst, what felt like a negative catalyst, was ultimately an ultra positive catalyst.

It's just we don't see it yet. And I think that you know devethtail back into that one is that when we feel something painful, to say, hey, look in the very chungy and trumpet type of way, this is just a sensation. This is just an electricity at any junction in our life if we feel pain and angst, if we could start to apprehend it as it comes on the way in and say, there's something painful here,

and this is a powerful ingredient. This is a powerful salt to make the cake even sweeter and more delicious. I'm gonna feel this pain, I'm gonna allow it to him, but I'm gonna know that I'm gonna transmute this into something spectacular. And I think exercise is one of the

easiest ways to immediately do that. In a day, you can say, Okay, i'm feeling pain, I'm gonna go hike, I'm gonna go run, i'm gonna go work out, I'm gonna go swim, I'm gonna do something, and then immediately that energy is transformed into something that is uplifting and enabling. Let's move from physical practice to some of the spiritual

practices that you do. And I get actually that you don't necessarily make a distinction right there, They're all the spiritual practices in a way, but let's move to more dedicated spiritual practice. What does that look like for you today? The conventional response, I think would be something about what is the zazen practice look sitting? How much time is in meditating? What types of meditative practice? There are a number that I engage in. How do we think and

feel about the food that we eat? What is it doing in my body with my choice? What kind of joy or pain am I causing in the world? Why what I choose to eat? How am I receiving other individuals in my life that I know or that I don't know? In the Martin Bouber terminology, having an eye vow relationship. Am I running into someone on the street that's upset and I don't know them? Am I allowing them to feel seen? Or am I just avoiding them?

Am I engaging different modalities, whether it's meditation but also a prayer breath practice. I think about ultimately being here in this world as a human. It's so radical if we just sit for an instant and think about, Wow, like this is so bizarre it's occurring. It's really outrageous. Yeah, we just take it for granted because we've been doing it every day as long as we can remember in

this life. But we look up at the moon and we think, well, in the moon, that's real, you know, are sure it's two miles away, it's made of iron and dust and dirt and whatever, but that's it's real. It's in free fall. The earth is in free fall, the sun is in free fall. And the reason I bring all these things up is to say, this entire

existence is a spiritual game, practice play. And if we're not bringing that kind of poetry and that kind of dance and that kind of play to life in every capacity, it doesn't mean we're wrong or we're bad or anything. There's nothing to lose, but we're missing out the moment we bring a spiritual practice into exercise, into how we eat, into how we greet one another, into how we work,

the moment the world opens up. So for me, my work, my primary practice is in remembering, in cultivating always that away arness that right now is a spiritual practice. No matter what I'm doing, how am I letting life come through me? And how am I apprehending everything to allow this play to be something original and truthful. I love that idea. By choosing the things you do, you can actually be reminded more easily that life is about a

spiritual practice. It's like for me in this podcast, the work that I do is naturally sort of reminds me. And I love the way you said that, and not only do I deliver it, it delivers me. That's a that's a beautiful idea. So I wondered if maybe we would talk about written about some people that have really

inspired you. And I picked three of the ones that show up most often, Ken wilbur Ramana Maharshey, and Alan Watts, and I was wondering if for each of those people, you could just give us one idea from them that's really important to you or has been really meaningful to you. Alan Watts, you know, as a sort of scholarly writer

and intellectual, has such a devious sense of humor. And I think that when I had this sort of love affair with his books and his talks and his writing, and you know, he was really one of the authors that I think just shape me so enormously because he had this underlying sense of radical sense of humor, and so I think he was embodying really the sense of godliness in that way that it is a play that yes it hurts, but it's play. It's all in the

name of play. And so I think that, you know, he, being such an intellectual, talks about things in very simple, beautiful and accessible terms with this radical sense of humor. And so I just adore that man for that. Ken Wilbur in the same way, is brilliant and right is you know, scholarly and spectacular, and he also has this

radical sense of humor. Yeah, I laugh aloud when I read his books, and and sometimes people will say, what, there's something funny in these books, you know, And I mean there is, you know, He's he's really he touches the sort of paradox between everything in life, the breath and the outbreath of the salt and the honey, in such a way that's spectacular. It's like fireworks on the page.

It's out of control. Every time I read cans Work, Um, I see something and I thunderline and I write notes and all his books, you know, and everything that I read. But you know, when I'm writting this, just I'll read something that I haven't read in a while, and I think, God, that's amazing. That's just outrageous. It's so smart and brilliant, it's so good. Yeah, I mean it's so it's out of control. I mean, his mind is just like a spectacular old But I don't want to be reductionistic about

his work. Yeah, I mean he's touching so many things, you know. But anybody who's interested ultimately in philosophy and psychology and consciousness and spirituality and transcendence is going to end if they're voracious in discovery and curious, they're gonna It's all roads I think lead to his work, not that it's the end all, you know, But he is, you know, a voice that is just so pivotal in terms of defining and exploring and describing and knowing, you know,

what are we? What are we doing here? What's really going on here? You know? What is going on? What are we? In aspect though he writes about it intellectually, and he writes about it pragmatically and simply, and he writes about it's in in a way that's scholarly and intellectual, and he writes about it in a way that's poetic. It's quite powerful. Romanomo Harshy his writing is so gentle and graceful, and you know, when I read his work, it's like a deep breath ultimately about service that we

are in service to love. He's one of my faves, you know. And I still feel so grateful to discover his books and his writing because of that, Because I read that, and I think, you know, each individual is not so important, you know, what's what's important is this stream of being of love, and as one individual, I'm part of this stream. I'm an aspect rather of this stream. Uh. And so I think his his work kind of takes me there. It reminds me of what's really going on

in a very simple and fundamental way. I love that description of reading his work being like a deep breath. There are people for me, it's the same thing. It's just I read it and it's like, oh yes, I remember, and every part of me relaxes. Every part of me just goes, oh yeah, all right, it's okay, it's okay, it's better than okay. Even so, I I think it's a great description. The last thing that I would like to talk about it is an Instagram post you did recently.

It was this idea of the bent finger and I'm wondering if you could just sort of explain that metaphor for us. Yes, on the sailing of assistein Chapel Michelangelo's glorious painting of God and Man of Adam of the creation. Ultimately, God's hand is reached out yea, and man's fingers slightly bent. Yeah. This is so spectacular that in one way, when we think about destiny, it's not a final location. God's hand is always reaching out and we must always reach out

to touch it, to touch our destiny. And that's guided by our intuition. Yeah, I know. Those Our intuition tells us what to engage in. Not that one is wrong or one is bad, or one is right, or one is this or that or the other. But it just it guides us, this deep intuition, something we see in life. So so I really want to do that. That'll be easy, that's the right thing to do. But then something deep down says is no, no, no, this is the path, that's the deep intuition, that's the thing that helps us

touch our destiny. Yeah, and we always have to keep reaching out for it, you know, we have to keep reaching out for it. So I think about destiny is that continual process of engagement. This thing that I wrote online on Instagram in this case about man's finger reaching out, is that in order to touch God, or to touch the grace of God, we have to have the courage to take initiative. That it's our responsibility, and so much

that the power of prayer. You know, what prayer does for us is it makes us feel a certain way, maybe puts us at ease, but then also it brings an awareness and to what it is that we want to feel or do. And then ultimately though, it's got to be acted upon. And so by praying, saying something out loud, it lets us know. It vocalizes from something concept roll bringing outward into something actual, to saying this is what I want. And then our step is then

to engage in it. So, in other words, that spent finger reaching to God, God happens through us. It's not out there, it's not something we pray to to get. It's happening through us all the time. And so to touch that to complete that circuit, that circle, a complete electrical current. In this painting on Assistant Chapel, man is depicted in the image of God. But man must reach out to touch the godliness within him, to become God, to allow God to move through us. We must engage.

And we have this sense so often that it's out there happening to us. Rather not only is it happening for us, it's happening through us. And the moment we choose that take that responsibility of initiative, the moment all these energies fuel us and source us and pulse through us. Why because the circuit becomes complete. Yeah, because the circuit

becomes complete. But it only becomes complete with action, with doing, with reaching our own finger out this word becoming, you know, and these two coming coming into you know fully and be. You know, one is a state of being and one is a state of doing. Becoming. Yeah, and becoming only happens from a complete circuitry. You know that we have to both feel and be present and stillness, but also engage in doing. And I think that paradox in life, you know, is written into so much of what we

are and how we breathe. Yeah, the in breath and the outbreath, you know, stepping in and stepping out, you know, sleep and wake, eyes open, eyes closed, Yeah, hold on, let go, hold on, Let go that circuitry, that paradox is what always is the is the trickery and life, yeah for us, but it's also the paradox that's woven into that is the all, the the ultimate game of joy in life. It's the waves that crash on the ocean.

You know, every wave is completely different, It sounds different from any any every other way right there, unlimited waves like every fingerprint. But when we hear it, we hear this thing, this pattern is becoming, like the breath that's going again and again and again again and again. We are just one fragment, just one instant, yeah, in that play, and the only way to allow that play to be beautiful is to let go and allow it through us

to do. By letting go that becoming, be and coming, we could take it all the way back to where we started, which is that's another way sort of of saying grace and grace very much. Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up. Sebastian, thanks so much for coming on the show. I have really enjoyed this conversation. We'll have links in the show notes to where people can find Grace and grit, where they can find your work and thank you so much. Eric,

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