Dr. Adam Clark: Collective Change Conversations with The Hive

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and structures of belonging.  For this week's episode, we conclude a live podcast series with The Hive about Collective Change.

The Hive  is a grassroots mindfulness community curating multi-week classes, workshops and a Membership community. It has been formed by facilitators asking the question, "What are the resources that lie within our vast lineages, traditions, and modalities of healing, and how can we place them in service of the common good?" In this series we’re talking to The Hive’s 6 core faculty members, all of whom have a unique perspective on navigating collective change.

For this first conversation, Chris La Rue, the Director of The Hive, joins us in speaking with Adam Clark. He is Associate Professor of Theology at Xavier University and is committed to the idea that theological education in the twenty first century must function as a counter-story. One that equips us to read against the grain of the dominant culture and inspires one to live into the Ignatian dictum of going forth "to set the world on fire." To this end, Dr. Clark is intentional about pedagogical practices that raise critical consciousness by going beneath surface meanings, unmasking conventional wisdoms and reimagining the good. He currently serves as co-chair of Black Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion, actively publishes in the area of black theology and black religion and participates in social justice groups at Xavier and in the Cincinnati area. He earned his PhD at Union Theological Seminary in New York where he was mentored by James Cone.

Here's the poem shared by Troy Bronsink: The Inward Sea by Howard Thurman
There is in every person an inward sea
And in that sea, there is an island
And on that island is an altar
And standing guard before that altar
is the angel with the flaming sword.
Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar
unless it has the mark of your inner authority.
Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword
to be placed upon your altar
unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent.
This is your crucial link with the eternal.

This episode was produced by Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective here. Common Good Podcast is a production of Bespoken Live & Common Change - Eliminating Personal Economic Isolation.

Transcript

 One of the common threads in each of the ways that Adam will speak, but Troy and Leslie and Shonda and Daniel and Amy, they all speak to being in the world in a way that is, is brave. And what I like to offer in this last conversation is that the hive might be a place where we could apply all those things in community with each other in the way we show up as members. Even to think structurally, like the lead team and the faculty are there to make those appropriate invitations  into brave co creation. . And so I just want to start us with the grounding and so I invite you to find your feet on the ground.  We'll lean into  a mindful moment here. Just whatever way that you best know natively to yourself, how to find home base I invite you to do that.  I invite you to consider the question.  Why was it important for me to be here?  And as we sit here in this grounded space, I took some notes from each of our past conversations and I just want to read some lines that I heard from each of these past five weeks or so. And I invite you to just, internally, can you get to a place where you're both in you and you're grounded and also can receive these words  just notice how they strike your body. Notice what arises.  Leslie, in our first week said, we start with ourselves, but we don't end with ourselves.  We start with ourselves,  but we don't end with ourselves.  And then Daniel the following week  said, we will always contend with oppression. We will always contend with oppression, no matter who is in power.  Our work begins with Howard Thurman's question, which is, what do you want, really?  What do you want, really?  And then organizing from a place rooted in our self interest.  And then in our third conversation, Shonda said, we are not separate. We are not separate. We are interconnected.  The idea that we are separate is what founded the very systems that are producing genocide and atrocity right now.  We are not separate. We are interconnected.  So notice how that strikes your body.  And then our fourth conversation, Troy Brodsnick said, The world is in a type of trauma response.  The world is in a type of trauma response.  We aren't learning to come down from our trauma responses and we aren't coming home to each other. We aren't coming home to each other. And  then Amy Tuttle said,  We've forgotten that it is us who is building the world.  We've forgotten that it is us who is building the world.  This is a cry for creativity  to lift our chins up from our individuality and connect in a meaningful way to lift our chins up from our individuality and connect in a meaningful way  to fill the world with color, to fill the world with color.  So I invite you just to notice how all that strikes you in your body and then consider that  this is a type of mosaic that we're beginning to build  starting with six different voices, but then with the voices and perspectives here in this room and the desires and dreams of the folks in this room.  And then when you're ready, I invite you to open your eyes  and then maybe just take a look around  the room and notice one or two things you didn't notice when you first came in. 

I just want to start by introducing dr. Adam Clark Uh, Adam Clark is a  professor of theology at Xavier University. Been doing that for a while. Studied under the late James Cone, father of black liberation theology. It is the lineage that adam grows from, which is this liberationist tradition, and has his own unique very qualified voice in the field of theology for today and is also a beloved friend, fellow facilitator of the hive want to invite his voice and your perspective into this, this mosaic of a conversation that we've been building on of collective change. What is it that when you were grounding with us right now and you were hearing those lines, what is it that was arising in you? 

 Well, first I was thinking about because I know each one of those persons is thinking about how that connects with their kind of persona as I experienced that. And then, what struck me, because I teach Howard Thurman, that question that Daniel talked about in terms of what do you want, really, what emerged for me from that question, because I'm deep into Thurman, was about how that's really about not being reactionary and coming from one's own center, And not allowing the world to kind of dictate your emotional responses and being centered and rooted and anchored in a certain type of genuine selfhood. So that no matter what the circumstances are around you. What's more important than what you're undergoing is what you choose to be, and that's the power, the power is that there's always choice that you don't have to react to the left or to the right, but there's a certain centeredness that he's trying to get us to understand. And that's where our choices should emerge from. So that's what what you really want. It's like a deepening. It's going deep into the self. Anchoring there. Why that speaks to me is because that's what spiritual cultivation is about. It's about trying to cultivate that sense of selfhood, so that when you're just going about your day, you feel that sense of groundedness. And you're not always like, if someone says something nasty or negative to you, it doesn't, you don't become consumed by it.  You're just kind of noticing and letting go. That struck me, that kind of invoking of thermos struck me the most.  

Could you make it autobiographical for us? What has it looked like for you to identify what you want really? And  how have you identified that? Place of genuine selfhood. 

Here's how it works for me.  I have a certain amount of centering practices that I try to do each morning and I feel afterwards, I feel so grounded and so in tune and so aligned, but then I might go in the outside world in here, like a negative comment  or  a negative affirmation or something that frustrates me. What it does for me is that that doesn't become determinative of my day, like a kind of, I notice it, but I don't get caught up or entangled with it. So it allows me to actually shape the day, based on a kind of authentic wellsprings of my own spirit, instead of just following the reaction of others. So it doesn't  prevent bad things from happening to you. But what it does do it, it prevents you from being so entangled that they become over determined. In terms of where your day or where your life is going to. And I think that's what the best of contemplative practice does. It's not like there's some type of magical shield that bad things or harmful things won't happen to you. But what it does do, it makes them that they don't have authority, or as much authority, I should say, in your life circumstances. And that you could kind of create and reshape your own life from a more genuine and deeper place.

I think we all know in this room and anyone listening afterward, we all know what it's like to get super reactive to something that comes in and every intention we had at the start of that day, the start of that meeting or whatever, just gets completely derailed. I think we individually know what that feels like. I think you might even say collectively, you might have borne witness to maybe communities that imploded on each other. They weren't able to maintain that inner ground or the ideals from which they spoke of, they weren't able to have the kind of inner authority or robustness or habituated sense of being able to return to that in the midst of Of pressure or the midst of negativity or the midst of whatever, being able to show up in the world and that kind of grounded space and be able to return to it when you're getting pulled out of it. Like now we're talking habit formation, not just cognitively knowing that takes habit formation, right? And there's no one who's ever walked this earth who's ever been able to do that. Who didn't come from a community of practice that taught them how to do that. That they got reps in a community. I'm even noticing, I get passionate about this and that's why even part of this core faculty model, why I'm so excited about this is full transparency. We've asked these six people to make a two year commitment,  The hive wants people to be able to show up in the world in that kind of way, then they need community for the long haul to be able to do it with. And so speak from your own experience. What's the community of practice that enables you to be able to return in that kind of way. 

Well, the hive has been that for me in one sense.  I've not only been a teacher, but I've also taken classes with some of the facilitators here. And off of that actually, Troy, Leslie and I, And another person, we meet on the phone once a week on Friday mornings as a community of practice, we do these type of Gurjeevi meditations, so that's another community of practice, for me, it's a community of accountability, because when there's a check in, it's about how is your contemplative life going? And when you have people outside of you, always asking you that question it forces you to be accountable and really think, am I really being true and genuine to my practice or is it being haphazard? I mean, there are some weeks where things crowd out or you become so anxious that you're just reactive to everything and the work and the family and that type of thing. But, to have people there to really even raise the question and put that question towards you. And to genuinely answer it is a very sobering and humbling experience and it draws you back to your practice. 

I'm still stuck a little bit on this phrase, genuine selfhood.  I'm thinking about Thomas Merton and Parker Palmer and all these people who are tapping into some a similar idea. So when you think of your selfhood Adam,  who are you? What is that genuine selfhood that you're referring to? 

That's a great catch.  

I was not willing to get away easy.  

Oh, that's a great catch. Cause we use these type of rhetorical phrases not intentionally all the time. Well, you know, all of those questions are about how we understand our inner architecture, like about soul, spirit, selfhood, genuine selfhood, authentic selfhood,  I'm trying to drop down as I'm trying to like, give voice to this, because it's not obvious. It's not well, well let's do it kind of negative theology way, way. It's not the ego, It's not just your personal identity. It's more of a sense.  I'll use a Thomas Merton phrase, there's a hidden wholeness behind all of the antagonism and all of the strife. There's a place in us that is not broken, not shattered, that has invaluable integrity, That no matter what the wounds and the hurts you have, there's someplace in us that's been unmarked by that. and trying to drop down deep, you can kind of touch that type of coldness and that wholeness the belief is that that wholeness is something that's connected to the universe, so that we are all expressions. So it's not just in uss, it's in everything that exists. So it's kind of this almost panantheistic thing that we are expressions of a larger force. And that when we dig down deep, there's something that's eternal about ourselves that we can have, a sense of, but not fully grasp. 

So when you're able to touch that part of you, what is your  affective bodily reaction to that?

That's a great question. We're going more and more. So I like it because it helps me clarify. , yeah, it helps me come to clarity about that. The sense I have is assuredness. What I mean by assuredness. It means everything's going to be all right. Regardless of the craziness out there, like it's a certain type of, everything's okay. There's a certain okay ness about it, but bodily speaking, I guess it's more of a relaxation and whatever the opposite of anxiety is, like all the anxiousness goes away.  Sometimes it will even be exhilaration and delight. There's a certain happiness because you feel a  connectedness with all that is good and true, The way it works in terms of my personal practice, it makes me want to be more loving to my family so I might feel like on this high spiritual level that I want to be a loving service. And then, you get a wake up call from your family in terms of a low vibrational energy. It's like, oh my gosh, I can't even, they can't receive what I'm trying to give here,  or something like that and that's the comedic that comes in. It's kind of comical. Like I was thinking all this high minded stuff and all of a sudden I get hit with a kind of low frequency energy.  It's like, so you have to kind of laugh and give it a cosmic smile to it. But that's the feeling. If it feels like a certain form of alignment and connectedness, and for me, it makes me want to be more in loving service.  It's much more of looking at things of how I add value to it, rather than what I'm receiving.  So it's not like being so obsessed with my ego self. I'm like, I'm not getting this. I'm not getting that. No, I just want to give.

So the reason why I just kept going there because it feels like there's a way in which contemplative practice can be pragmatic and mechanistic. Like, what does it do for us though? Right. It makes us non reactive. Which is great. I think that's good. But, if you're coming from that place of depth, that place of hidden wholeness, that place of genuine selfhood. And it's not just throw away, but it's actually like how you're experiencing contemplative life. Then we're talking about collective change. We're talking about reacting to what's happening in front of us. And I also hear in what you're saying that it leads you to, what did you say? Loving kindness, which for me sounds a lot like Chris, but you said is our birth, right? so I wonder, could you make that connection for us? 

That's been something that's been humming along based on just my experience with The Hive this year, is it's our birthright to be agents of loving change in the world. I said something along those lines that was like, We ought to be agents of loving change in the world. And then Shonda called me on it and said, I think that's actually our birthright. I've had this paradigm shift this year where the things I once perceived as aspirational have been moved in as fundamental and original to who I am.  So to think collectively, like what's our birthright and our birthright is to be able to move in the way,  have a kind of encounter with ourselves and with spirit or source or whatever languages for that in a way that emboldens us to be an agent of loving change. That's not just a, just a privilege. It's actually a birthright for everybody. And so having that kind of ground in us, like this is our birthright I think gives us a context when then we go out in the world and we're not living up to that. I think what it does for me is it says there's untapped potential in all of us right now in this moment. Like the conditions are here. There's something greater than us that is ready for this and it's our birthright to tap into it. 

Well,  the way Richard Rohr talked about it was being in the image and likeness of God. In terms of that, he says that we're born in the image but the likeness is something we grow into so what you're saying is, is certainly the birthright is the image that we're all born as, as child. But the likeness is something that's cultivated. We're cultivated into goodness. We're cultivated into justice. We're cultivated into freedom. And that's something we have to choose,  Catholic talks, talk about formation, that formation becomes important that you can have a formation that's a positive formation, or you can have a malformation that  causes you on a negative or destructive path. So it's important just to to acknowledge people's birthright, but to also acknowledge that we need places like the hive to actually sustain to grow into the likeness. And that's where it feels like it's connectedness when we're centered, because we are going back and recovering that image in a way, and our actions are aligned with that image in terms of being in the likeness of God. 

I love that idea of recovering. I wonder, do you think it's true for you that when you're in those spaces with Leslie and Troy serving as some type of accountability and some of community practice. Are they confronting you with your hidden wholeness and that in those times?

When you say confront, I would say remind, remember, bring, bring back. Yeah. There's certain things. I think The process of hearing someone else's story and hearing someone else's narrative,  it calls you when you see someone  mindfulness to kind of express their personal biography, then it calls you. Into a depth on this about your own personal biography when you when you hear it. So if I hear Troy or Leslie talk about using, you know, a contemplative method to kind of talk about their week. It kind of makes me be reflective So, I tend to think of as a community of accountability to you. That we need accountability partners on this. Another way of trying to talk about this in a less I guess academic would be companions on the path or fellow travelers. Or, accomplices and that kind of thing, but whatever it is.  Maybe companions may be the best that you need companions on the path of spiritual growth, because you don't do spiritual growth by yourself, right?  It's always, you always have to grow with, because it's not just about oneself and it's not just some type of navel gazing. The very idea of spirituality is about how do you relate to the other.

This is interesting now because we're talking about birthright, which could sound kind of individualistic, right? Like, what's my birthright? But, uh, what about this notion of like, what if we actually need each other to inherit our birthrights, which is a paradox, like you, you can't inherit your birthright by yourself. You need people. You need a path, you need to be walking down this path with others in order to create the conditions for you to even inherit your own birthright,  

I mean, even the birthright,  I was hearing that more as a metaphor  and as a substance,  I would say that you're born with a certain type of intent, in terms of, is there a certain type of moral intent or moral purpose at the core of one's being and that There are certain inherent possibilities of existence, and that we're being lured into our highest possibility by a divine force or greater force,  but we could choose to say no, we could actually say no and go on a destructive or just self enclosed path. And many people do say no, but what religion as best as kind of binds us to that and people who are in the spiritual community want that to be  the lamp that lights their path, that's what the religious life is trying to always feel connected to that and that their action should usher in that type of connectedness.

What  strikes me as far as this conversation goes is, and it strikes me because it's the most vulnerable place for me right now, the idea of this is a been a pull into community and invitation into community as in. Look for a healthy community and even the idea that this is a podcast is the idea that there's a digital world, where things are absorbed, not in an embodied way, right? They can become really mental and people can go on those paths where this is an invitation to come back and be next to people to be in the room. And what is coming up is I'm wondering if there's safety in, there's an opportunity with all the information that's out there for someone to curate their own spirituality and growth. And could that remain a carrot to stay in that position. When most community is stratified, in a sense, and what I'm noticing is that, in my experience, even  fully well intentioned communities are stratified because it takes leadership to lead things, but the idea, when you said it, it was the really good example of how that becomes organically stratified in my mind is you said you have weekly meetings with people that have done so much mental work, spiritual work, they are representing a certain amount of health, but the invitation to come inside of a community where that's accessible to you. Because it's relational because what you bring to the table has pulled other people in and your vision is higher and actually just the whole vibe is high, right? But if people are coming in and they're hurting and they're just functioning at a lower level of their own place, then  are they better off growing in this safety of people that have flooded the Internet that are processing and of course some of them are backwards as hell, but there's a lot of processing there that might be safer for people on their own, and I'm just sort of wondering what pops up there.

 I feel the energy of what you're getting at here, which is like especially previously in our conversation, we were talking about this encounter with, I think we use the word authentic selfhood or Howard  Thurman's notion of, what do you want really? And,  I'll come back to the, one of our mottos, which is find your people, find your practice, I don't know if there's ever a pure blissful moment when someone is finally ready to find their people and find their practice. You even talked about notions of like healthy community. I think one nuance I want to add to that is there could be a community who's found a type of momentum and healthy ways of relating, but that doesn't mean unhealth isn't in their midst. This is where Leslie's work on projection is really helpful because we could start to Project the unhealthy parts of us or the toxic parts of ourselves on other people, right? so I had a mentor like seven years ago who told me Chris you're never gonna be in a circle of people in which something toxic isn't there Because we're humans. We're just humans and so In that sense, there's never a kind of transcending of that. We're always bringing that to the table. And in the way that Sean invited Daniel, bring your armor and come be, but it's a different thing to say that toxicity that has the authority in the room. That's toxic community. But I've experienced community in which I encourage to connect, for example, in which we've been able to be in a room and conversate with the toxic parts of us that have been built up by systems of white supremacy. And we've, been able to encounter those places of each other without them having authority in the room or ultimate authority. The thing that had ultimate authority were our intentions of brave space.  But again, there could be someone who's not really ready for all that, right? should they just stay in their silo and be exposed to that stuff on the internet? I think that maybe there could be some precedent to that. My sense of the collective right now is the ceiling for actual transformational growth is really low. Because when it comes to just the information of it all, there's a lot of Artificial maturity. I think that this podcast could even be engaged in that kind of way in which someone's just like, Oh, I'm just going to listen to all this stuff. 

Careful, Chris, careful.  

I'm just going to listen to all this stuff, but where really where the rubber meets the road is like getting reps in community. It's talking about this stuff and then it's being community with y'all like that, that's when it really starts to get integrated. Also the last thing I'll say is. Shonda, it is specifically on, on her heart to hold space for folks to whom that kind of community will be very new and vulnerable. So we've talked about the hive. Is there an introductory class or like a mindfulness one on one or like a Shonda one on one? Like some of the other people learn how to get into their bodies and be able to be in a room in a way that they don't have to fight to survive. So it's my hope that we'll have as accessible an entryway as possible for folks to come into community and start to learn some of that.

It makes me think of the movie crash, which is like 15 years old, something like that, which the idea is it's just a bunch of sort of miserable people in LA that are causing misery to each other. But if you look below the surface, they're just desperate to connect. And so it's like the idea that we want to connect so bad that we crash into each other is that if y'all are healthy then you can play together and explore these deep things but if the model is everybody in this room, because there's authority in this room to protect, there's intention, everybody can play well here. If they walk out and people are like, I can play in that community in that one setting, but that's not really accessible in my life. Because I'm not cool enough to get past this room. I can only be in this room safe, but I'm not really part of the next community of people that are really sort of controlling the show, which is why millions of people have left Christianity or the standard Christian church and so the idea when you're like reps in a community, my response is I need reps in a good community. Cause I got plenty of reps in where I'm like, not really expressing myself, where I'm trying to put my best foot forward and I didn't know it the whole time. So, I don't trust that part of myself, and I'm wondering how much health there is in that question. 

That's a great insight.  The way I would respond to that is that Cause I had a similar question too, especially when I first got on the path and what my mentor said to me was that, yeah, not everybody's going to come into these type of communities and access some type of spectacular self development. But even if you just get a sense of care and you go back to a hellscape. That sense of care, even that capacity to encounter will have increased the quality of your life. So it's not about everybody does these radical kind of personal and social transformations. It's about even experiencing,  encountering something different that, you know, there's a contrast from what you came from, and sometimes even that knowing that that there's more to humanity than that hellscape I came from and I can feel that that sparkle that dim bit of light could actually get people through. 

That feels like a real closure on a lot of that questioning is because if I'm honest with myself, there's a hole into the experience that I have had  in these conversations and so that's the pole is the experience itself. So it's like, am I selling this? Am I in? Am I out? I know I keep going because my body feels better when I walk in those rooms and start talking about stuff. 

And some people might have like drug dependency, other types of like abusive tendencies and all those other types of things. So if you're dealing with those type of like personal dysfunctions, it's hard to say you're going to come to a contemplative community and all of a sudden, boom, you're rid of it, you know, that kind of thing.  It's a deeper thing. But what you can is be open to the capacity to encounter. And that can be the light that lights other lights. And we could just hold that flicker 

and say more about being open to the capacity to get to encounter. 

Yeah, it's like people who live lives of darkness and maybe even dealing with certain senses of shame or levels of guilt, right? When they come into a space where that's not that, the rainy norm in the community, they're like, life can be different.  Like these people are not like the people I came from. People can be good and decent. And just knowing that, and experiencing that, and them being attentive to you, is such a contrast from where they came from. It gives them hope. It fuses you with a sense of power, that I can change my life and I can be different because I haven't seen that before. So that contrast, that it was the contemplative community being a contrast community from all the hell, negativity and stuff that people are out of. It's like, don't put your light in a bushel. Let your light shine.  That the Catawba community lets its light shine when it invites other people in. 

Go ahead, Barbara. 

I was going to say, one of the things I keep thinking as I'm listening to you is, I really believe there's only one, and that we're all part of that one. That's one piece of it. The other piece is we're connected. So, my energy is affecting you, and you're affecting me. And that also, for me, gives me hope. Because how do we change? You know, if I change myself, In ways I don't know, I will affect others. And that's how it emerges, you know? the other thing I believe is that I get everything I need to keep moving forward. Sometimes I have to say yes, and sometimes I don't, and then I'll get it again or I'll get something else that hits me on the side of the head, so I have to say yes. But, that's another piece of how I think this whole thing has evolved, we're evolving as a whole, and becoming more conscious. It's not individual. That's why community is so important and it's funny because you asked, why do we come, what do we think we're going to get out of this? I never know till it's over because I don't know how it was going to evolve with us. And it always evolves. So I'm learning to trust. That's my big thing in life, is trust me, trust you, trust the world, trust the divine.  Absolutely.  But I think the fact it's what the hives trying to embody, but the the intention. That's almost the belief we are moving together. There's no other way

so the two phrases, Adam, that I'm going to take away from this conversation are number one, genuine selfhood.  And number two, open to the capacity to connect and where that took me in my mind is this moment when I was 19 years old and, life was darker than it had ever been in my life. And my dad said, Joey, just be open to God, just be open to God. And I opened, I did what I thought that meant and what actually ended up happening was a group of people who I still love to this day came around me. So that moment, that moment came flooding back to me. So thanks for saying that.

Yeah, yeah. Thurman talks about it in terms of not the authentic self, but the literal self. So he had this idea that personality was like an onion and that you strip until there's a literal self. And that's how he looked at the kind of the human personality and the spiritual path. That the spiritual path is a way of shedding all the excesses. So it's like going down to your bare bones, a bare kind of structure. So that's the way he kind of conceived of it. It depends on who you read and who you follow in terms of it. I mean, I think there's like multiple truths, right? Like they're happy, you know, simultaneously. I think the key thing for beginners is to follow someone that you have confidence in and follow that one path and then you could cross fertilize with other insights from other different traditions. But to have that one path is helpful, especially if you're a beginner.

The thing that's coming to mind right now, like, why are we asking this question about what's the one story getting in the way of the collective living to its birth, right? When you think of healing, right? I remember when I was a little kid and I bunny hopped my scooter down the steps outside and I scraped my knee. And I was crying and my grandma came up to me and she wanted to see the wound, but I was covering it. Like it hurt and I think part of healing both individually and collectively like, you have to approach the wound, Which that hurts and that can be a vulnerable thing. I think this question is trying to get at what's the collective wound that needs healing. And for you, me knowing you and your heart and your practice, I would love for you to speak as you, and also as a mouthpiece for your ancestors, and Howard Thurman and Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day, like, if we believe that those ancestors are among us still, and still  Participating in the healing of the world, this question is one way of asking what's the wound that these people and you are gathering around?

Well, the wound in this, I would say is a form of alienation, but the alienation takes different forms and different circumstances. So, even if I had to talk about it in terms of the way Joey framed it, in terms of the narrative, like, what's the dominant narrative? I would say any narrative that degrades our capacity to connect and there are multiple narratives that do that. There's not just one dominant narrative.  If I was going to talk about the modern world, I would say the dominant narrative that degrades our capacity to connect economically would be our market culture or capitalism, because it posits this idea of this autonomous self that is disconnected from others, right? It's not a relation. It's a non related self, the self as an abstract individual entity comes from our kind of market consciousness and culture, Where our relations become transactional and not reciprocal. So that everything is a transaction. Everything has a price. Martin Buber talks about it's a relationship. So we're taught to objectify instead of a relationship. So that would be the dominant in the other narrative. I would say would be kind of the self other anything that other rises. The ranking of that autonomous self. So that could be racism, sexism, all these different types of phobias. So that the other rising. So there are so many different narratives that kind of fund that but it all gets back to, it degrades our capacity to connect both with ourselves and with others. So that different people from different origin points start to say, well, this patriarchy is something that alienates me. It causes me not to connect. I need to work on that. White supremacy is something that causes me just to connect. I got to work on that. So it depends on how you're situated within that, that you see that, but they all do the same thing. And I think what the contemplative life helps us to see is that it really is contemplative life is really a protest against the oppression of the world, Because you're looking for an alternative, it starts with rejecting. Like, for example, if everything was okay, and you were totally affirmed by the world, there'd be no need for contemplation. The world would just affirm you the fact that we actually look for alternatives. It's a critique of the things as they are. And then from that type of visionary insight, we try to birth something new and give a new energy to the world through our practice. So contemplative practice isn't just some type of quietism. Or kind of ego stimulation. It's actually trying to generate a new quality of being so we could give birth to a new human being that lives in the world and have structures that support that.

Recently I've been getting more in touch with the importance of tuning into my body in a very basic way and how that's trying to tell me when I'm in alignment with my true self and when I'm not, can you speak to that and how you're thinking about it or 

I've recently come back from my parents and their bodies are failing. So really talking about contemplative practice in a body that wakes up in pain and is failing. It's really, really challenging. So one of the things in part of my centering practice is always to  lift them up in prayer. And my prayer for them is not just healing. It's actually having joy in your heart as well. Like I want them to live joyful lives, even if  they're kind of homebrown right now. So I'm like, even though they can't really move the way they used to, I hope they're really sure that joy comes into their heart. And in that sense, contemplation may not be a city meditation. In that sense, contemplation may be a walk. Looking at nature, maybe noticing, like there are so many different forms of contemplative practices. It may be drawing or looking at beauty. There's something called the contemplative tree that many people who are in contemplative education and it has all these different like routes, like activism can be a form of contemplation. Art can be listening to music, having a good meal, that kind of thing. So alignment can be a bodily pleasure. Like good food, right? You can feel really aligned after a great meal with friends and laughter, So that's the way I tend to think about it instead of just sitting on a cushion with your legs folded, I tend to think about this as a harmony with others with laughter and with joy and deep satisfaction so I think about the practice. So it's not necessarily internal always. It can't be just feeling connected to the whole, to the kind of energy of the room. you know, When my body's in pain, it's not so much going deeper into my body. It's about drawing from the positive energy of others. 

I want to connect a couple dots here. What you had just said about the idea of receiving the energy of the room. I don't know if you might have even used the word pleasure, the joy in a space, right? Two weeks ago when Troy was talking and we were grounding with Howard Thurman's Inward Sea. 

One of the interpretations of that being a metaphor for our trauma \ response.  Right, which keeps you exiled from your original blessing or keeps you exiled from your regulated state for good reason for many times, right? Mm-Hmm. . Adrian Marie Brown writes a book called Pleasure Activism. Yeah. Think she's getting at this notion of like,  you could fight so hard against the world that you know shouldn't exist but pleasure is another way of tuning into like, but do you have the receptors to receive the world that you want? So the idea of like, when you do get to the promised land or when you find it, do you even have eyes to see it when it is among  So I'm curious how you would speak to that. When we talk about collective change there's so many things we need to fight against. There's a very necessary inclusion and prioritization of the notion of resistance, And can you also talk about the inverse of that, like resistance and also openness and the role you see that playing in collective change? 

 I would say that part of contemplative practice is about developing new capacities, So new cognitive capacities, like how you think, how you feel and how you walk in the world and just even categories. Like if you say instead of pleasure, if you come from a  conservative Christian, you know, pleasure being something negative to have pleasure being a source of resistance and joy, right? That's a new capacity. To actually look at that, that way, that's a new cognitive capacity to kind of reframe what pleasure is in the spiritual life. So I'm saying that part of what's happening is developing new qualities, new capacities. We had a conversation earlier and I was talking to Chris about the Buddhist idea about the difference between a gross body, which is our physical and a subtle body, which is our energetics. We as Westerners don't commonly think of that, but if you really thought about it in terms of you are not just your physical body, there's a certain energetic that's around you. That's a new capacity. Chakras are a new capacity. If you think about like turn type energy centers in your body, so that's what I mean, like kind of delving into the contemplative life. It's about developing, cultivating new capacities to just see the world and walk in the world differently.

That's where you could get real practical with things that have happened here at the hive. Like I think of Chagang,  Chagang teacher here for a long time.  And that practice of just learning to listen with more of you, coming up is like Leslie's class on embodied shadow work. Yeah. Even chanting next week, like all these practices of bringing more of you online to listen and receive. Absolutely. Yeah. 

It's an expansion, so you have a broader range, right, of tools to use. Like most people, if they just like go to church, They don't have these type of you could call it spiritual technologies to actually like kind of navigate the world.  Christianity as it's been practiced in the West is much more of a declaration, not giving you instruments in order to kind of navigate the difficult circumstances. And when contemplative life does, it gives you practical instruments to navigate the world and to walk a life of goodness and a life of truth in a way that's more pragmatic. 

when we were imagining this conversation series, Chris said to me, you know, so many people who come to the hive are in this transitional state in their life. They're going through a change. I assumed he meant by that was that there's a fair amount of people who are leaving institutional religious life and looking for a spiritual, a community of practice.  And this new kind of awakened moment of their life. So if you were to encounter somebody like that, who walks into the doors of the hive, what are some of the things you would be saying to them as they begin this journey?

Well, first it's not so much about saying it's about the feeling of belonging, right?  I think the hive does a good job in terms of the idea. I guess the term we use is hospitality, Or welcoming, make people feeling welcome before you actually say things to them. But I think what's happening in terms of, because we get similar things in university settings. Is that people know what they're angry at, but they don't know what they want to work for. So they know what they dislike, but don't know the world they want to create. So I think what happens. It's like people don't want to see. They don't want the their whole moral universe to be exhausted between a choice between Trump or Biden. Life has got to be better than that. There's got to be another approach between voting for a Trump role or a Biden role. So I think contemplative practice gives you an alternative by Going to your spiritual ancestors or your spiritual guides and like drawing from your own experiences, the best of human experience and really trying to say it with a group of people. And trying to cultivate that quality within yourself so that you can push for that in the world.  Part of it would be about getting quiet, getting still and listening for how your life speaks to you, and really sitting with how your life is speaking to you without judgment, without resistance and seeing what bubbles up. And that's where your truth lies.  

I think would love to end Adam with you kind of giving us a blessing, to us in the room and also to folks who listen afterward just  in the way that you talked about and got all sorts of ways about what our birthright is and then the kind of resources we get in the spiritual practice, the resources we tap into and work together on a spiritual path, right? sometimes returning there takes courage, oftentimes it takes courage and oftentimes it takes a blessing from someone else or all that to say a blessing doesn't hurt for sure. So for everything we've talked about today, would you give the, the world a blessing or of an addiction as we close this practice? 

I'm gonna just gonna do a word affirmation. Great. Yeah. Right.  We come into this world  as caterpillars  and our aspiration.  are to be butterfly.  Let us let this contemplative moment  transform us so that we can take our wings and take flight.  So let it be.