The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Snapshots in Eternity: Stitching Together the Four Corners of Existence by Jeffrey C Starbuck

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Snapshots in Eternity: Stitching Together the Four Corners of Existence by Jeffrey C Starbuck https://www.amazon.com/Snapshots-Eternity-Stitching-Together-Existence/dp/1935914227 Jeffreystarbuck.com "What is That, which, when known, everything else becomes known?" Poet, psychotherapist, spiritual mentor and "Renaissance healer," Jeffrey Starbuck's first volume of collected poetry masterfully weaves together "the four corners of existence" as it uncovers the common thread of truth - that "unrecorded yet definite resonance" - running through all the world's sacred traditions. By translating, integrating and synthesizing the deepest spiritual and psychological truths, this collection draws the reader, listener, friend, student into an odyssey to decipher and appreciate the essential "strum of existence."

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or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from bookstolifemarketing.co.uk. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. We're talking about his book of poems, and it is entitled Snapshots in Eternity, Stitching Together the Four Corners of Existence out May 16th, 2012 and we're featuring today, Jeffrey C. Starbuck on the show. We're gonna get into the details of his book, some of the other work that he does in consulting and helping people and all that good stuff. He is a poet, a psychotherapist, meditation teacher, life

coach, and spiritual mentor who has been listening to humankind and delving into the world's sacred traditions for decades, while guiding countless individuals into greater wholeness and fuller self-expression. The poems within are intended to inspire readers to an ever-increasing joy and awe at the marvels and existence of life. Welcome to the show. How are you, Jeffrey? I'm excellent. Thank you for having me and it's great to be here. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us any dot coms. We want people to find you on the interwebs. Yes, Jeffery Starbuck.com. That's J-E-F-F-R-E-Y-S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K.com. That's the website and the... shall I leave a phone number or do I need to? If you want people to call you, I mean, it's up to you.

609-759-0108. Yep. And people can find that also at your website if they need to look it up? Yes. They can find what was the question? The contact information, the phone number and stuff, email? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yep.

On the website. Yep. So give us an overview. What's inside your new book? What's inside the book are works of poetry, what I call poetry. It's not modern poetry. It's not really personal about me or behavioral. It's about existence.

It's about being alive and it's about one's mind and it's about the world and there's humor in it and there's levity and there's irreverence and there's a book called Intellectual Property, the second line of which is, to your right on the next bar stool, God sits doubled over in laughter and it goes on from there. So that's, but it's serious. It's not a joke as such, but it's very important to learn to take yourself lightly and to not take yourself, oneself too seriously in life. That is true. You got to have some, uh, you got to laugh. You got to,

you got to, you know, I mean, we, uh, human beings are funny people and it really comes down to it. You know, I mean, even the, you know, some, a lot of times we can look back at tragedy and find something to find a silver lining of it. Hope springs eternal, you know, and I think laughter and being positive helps you find that hope. And you know, because otherwise it would just be ugly. We'd just be like, we crawl up in a ball in the fetal position, which is what I do every Friday. So, uh, uh, so

what was the title of your books? Kind of interesting snapshots in eternity, stitching together the four corners of existence. What is that based on? What does that mean to you? Or what do you think it should mean to readers? The snapshots in eternity, that was suggested to me ages ago by somebody who was listening to me talk and I liked it. It really sort of stuck and it conveys the idea of snapshots are little like little blurbs, little flashes, little you know flashes of insight. Snapshots in eternity. My thoughts are that this we live in eternity and eternity isn't necessarily something in eternity is the the present moment and that's where we spend our lives in the present we don't we think about a

past and a future and it is there it is true but it's always now and and then stitching together the four corners of existence was an attempt to convey the idea of bringing together any, all of creation is kind of ambitious maybe, but the Four Corners of Existence, so to me it's a spacious and expansive and inclusive type. That's and subtitle. That's, that's what the attempt is. You covered all the bases basically. Yeah.

Everything's in there in the kitchen sink. Right. Uh, and so was this your first book? It was. Is there any other books that people should be looking for? There aren't as of yet. Uh, there will more, but this is the first and the most recent. So for aspiring writers, what was your journey in writing the book and becoming a writer? When did you like kind of have that epiphany moment where you're like, I think I should write some books. Were

you always writing? And then what was finally the epitomists of bringing this book to publish? I was always, I was always writing. I get, I get, I get what are called downloads. I get bursts of where I end and I have to, sometimes I grab a pen if I have it and I take dictation as rapidly as I can and try to get because it's like a burst of inspiration. Yeah, the back cover of the book has this on it and it sort of addresses your question. There are so many Niagara's of inspiration that daily rain down upon me that I must watch most of them flow back into this bountiful earth being reabsorbed into that matrix which generated their mischievous emergence in the first place. mischievous emergence in the first place. Pete So, what brought you to poetry? I mean, was there, were you a fan of poetry or did

that sort of prose just come natural to you in the downloads? Dr. David Pryor The poetry, their bursts and they've always been kind of poetic and yeah. And it was sort of natural to, there's a sense in which I'm not a very linear person in a certain way. But poetry in a way is not linear necessarily. But there are inspirations, there are thoughts about that come to me about, about existence. It

happens when I when I'm working with clients, sometimes I see the, the next sort of intervention, I sort of get it in the form of a picture. Sometimes it's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, which may sound horrifying, but it's totally entertaining. I mean, I'm very serious in the sense. Some people paint with, some people in their mind, in fact, one of the things I'm surprised with most people don't have an inner dialogue with their with their uh with themselves but some people see in video and some people see their inner dialogue in like i guess audio or text uh and so do you maybe see videos in your inner dialogue i see yeah yeah i could i had never

thought of it that way but yes i do i see i I see, I see little pieces of action. I see images. I, I, it really does sometimes. I don't know how it sounds funny saying this, but it comes as a kind of Disney cartoon. Oh, really? But it's, but it's apropos to whatever the situation is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And some people see that way. Some, I was really surprised because I haven't heard a dialogue because it never shuts the hell up. And, um, and it's always working on stewing on stuff. And then when I heard that some people don't, I was like, well, what do they do inside their brains? And I guess a lot of people, they have like either a video stream or maybe an audio.

I guess, I don't, I don't know. I've never been in anyone else's head yet. So I'm working on that. The, uh, so you, you, what was the epitome is for when you finally wrote this book? Was there a moment that said, Hey man, it's book time. Well, actually it was a friend. Yes. There was such a moment. There was a friend who said one day, because I had been talking about it, and she said,

basically she said, it's time. And she said it's time. And it's not that she determined that, but it sort of struck me. And I thought to myself, yeah, it is time. And so that's when, and I had a lot of work already written and so I used that, then I continued to write. Yeah. And there's an introduction, a four-page or four or five-page introduction to the book also, which is prose and which sort of gives a little bit of the foundation and the sort of philosophy, if you will, of the outlook.

And there are notes in the back about the poems and the works. I don't always call these poems, I don't know what to call them. That's the closest to what I know to call them. They're little delightful snapshots. Little bite-sized munchies. Bite-sized munchies, yeah. Of stuff. So yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, it's great that you have that talent. Any future books you're working on that we should know about? Any future stuff you want to tease out? Well, I've been writing on topic, sort of more pros, sort of, it would be nonfiction. It would be, there's a term for it, but it's instructional nonfiction. That's not the right phrase. But on working on forgiveness, understanding what forgiveness is, understanding what's important about for a human being to do in order to be happy and satisfied in life.

There are certain things that we have to do. And it's, and it's not, we don't have to do them because I'm saying so, but I just perceive this, there are certain kinds of things that we have to do. But only if we want to be happy, you know, we have to know ourselves, we have to understand our mind and how it works and accept ourselves as and that's not necessarily, for a lot of people, that's not that they may think they do, but they really haven't in the full sense. And that's what I try to help people with

and do help people with also. Well, that's really good. Now, I noticed in your website, you're into a lot of interesting stuff there. Let me see if I can find it again real quick here. And you're into some different things that people can take a look at. Here, I just had to pull this up. You're into psychotherapy, Tai Chi and Qui Gon. Am I pronouncing that right?

Chi. Chi. Chi Gon. It would be C-H-I if you spell it in that. Okay. Mindfulness training, sound healing, semantic, soul integration. And imagine, is this some of the remote services that you offer to help people consulting, coaching, things like that? Yeah, and some of those can only be done in person, but the shamanic work is, well, it's sort of hard to describe in a simple way, but certain listeners will be familiar with that. Yeah, and I have some noise on the outside. I don't know if it comes through where but yeah and working in person or virtually with people.

Yeah and so how do people work with you? They do usually like an hourly thing with you. They come on it looks like you have video remote services available. How do they what kind of clients do you work for if someone's out there listening right now, how do they know they're a good prospective client for you? If they want to be happier, if they want to be more content, if they want to, and it could be of any age. I've worked with young children and young adolescents, but I'm not so much focusing on that. I've worked with couples and with families, but I primarily work with individuals and adults and people who are interested in growth, who are interested in

expanding their world and understanding themselves more and being able to deal with some of their issues, their stuff, so to speak. This stuff. Stuff, yeah. We all got that stuff going on. Yeah, we do, we sure do. We need to work on.

And so people can communicate with you through that. Is there, I suppose anybody can work with you. I mean, sometimes we have investors on, so there's like a net worth they have to beat or anything like that. Is there, I suppose anybody can work with you. I mean, sometimes we have investors on, so there's like a net worth they have to beat or anything like that. What do you find, most of your clients are asking for help for or struggling with? I don't know, any stories maybe you want to share of helping clients or results or things of that nature where maybe they saw some significant changes working with you? One man came for a while and there were some difficulties with his wife at the time, and difficulty accepting the fact that she had had, there had been an affair, but I worked with him. I worked with him individually, but I

was able to work with him. I worked with him on various things, but it included, because it appeared from his description that his partner was still in and, committed sufficiently. So I worked with him on being on his own anger and on being able to understand that and transform it. Because if he didn't understand and transform his anger, it could have just sort of destroyed the relationship. But I was successful in that. Yeah, in that. So that's one story.

You know, that's a tough thing to overcome and deal with the issues. You are working right now to, it looks like a 13-month course to expand into OCD, depression, chronic medicalisms, trauma, alcoholism, or that's what I like to call Saturday nights around this house. It's a cocktail of fun, folks. Here you go. But no, these are things that a lot of people definitely need help with, trauma,

especially childhood trauma. I see so much unresolved childhood trauma in my world. It's just insane. Um, and, uh, yeah, so that's, we all have to deal with, with trauma. Um, um, we all have to deal with trauma and we have to understand it because there's more serious trauma like being on a battlefield or seeing somebody murdered. That's super trauma. Everybody has to some extent ways that we have been traumatized during our life.

We need to come to terms with that and to understand it and to accept it as we proceed, as we go along. Definitely. I mean, we need as much of that as we can. And, you know, it's funny how childhood trauma shapes the whole of our life and has an effect on us that just is everlasting. Until you get that trauma resolved, it just becomes generational trauma. You just keep passing it down to, from one generation to the next and...

But it can be done. Yeah, yeah. People do heal from it. And you have to be willing and able to work on it and to apply yourself to it. But it can be done. I want to add that message of hope, and many people do do it.

Anybody who really applies themselves to it can do it. Yeah, yeah. You just have to do the work. That's right. As they like to say. And that's what I help people with doing the work. What else do we want to cover here that I wanted to ask you in my notes? You talk about the shape poems.

What does that mean, the shape poems? I use different, in the book, I won't be able to show it, but I use different size font. And one of the poems is in the form of a tree, and it's called the Tree of Life, and it's in the shape, sort of the way that's typed on the page is in the shape of a tree. And there's another one that's in the shape of a cross. It's called Chalice. And that one is, I'll just read that shortly. You can't... Sure.

I am forever building up and... I'm sorry, I am forever building up the sides of this clay vessel to shape and contain that boundless light which endlessly pours through, spilling out everywhere. And so, you know, we all need inspiration. We all need to find a reason for hope. We all need to find a way forward in everything you're doing. But yeah, it's something we all need to lift. It's good to have lifters. And so, that's the reason you use the different font size in there.

For the pronouns in your book, for God, divine, the universe, the spirit, you sometimes use he, sometimes she, sometimes it, sometimes plural. What's the reason that you do things that way? David Because to me, the thing that we call God, it cannot be that it's male or female. In other words, it has it because something which is boundless, which is everywhere, which is the maker of all things, doesn't necessarily doesn't have a particular form. In our in some of our religious traditions, we have given a form to it, and that's fine. And I have no, pardon me, I have no problem with people using he or she, and it certainly is traditional to use he, but in some ways, as I had a teacher one time who spoke about, if God were a gender, it's more likely, it'd

be more like to call it a she, because God is something which is inclusive, which is loving, which is embracing, you know, and we sort of think of those as being feminine qualities. But those exist in all of us. I mean, I mean the masculine and the feminine, I'm not talking about gender here, I'm not talking about like gender identity or doubt about that. I'm talking about the truth of our existence that the truth of our existence, that the divine is, which is ever present, it takes many forms, and there are some actions which are sort of masculine in terms of they're decisive and focused and the like, and then there are sort of the feminine which is inclusive and embracing.

And for us, this is men and women, to be whole we have to find ways of that, those qualities, both of them, all of them within us. And that doesn't mean that we are vague or, you know, not strong or whatever, but we are actually a resonance, a spectrum of beliefs and of behaviors and of thoughts. And it's very useful to know that and to sort of accept oneself as such, for all of the plethora of variety we can take. Pete And so, it helps kind of go through all that stuff. So, would you say you have a very traditional sense of what God or the divine is? It sounds like you kind of have your own version there. So, not really traditional,

maybe? Dr. Sussman It's probably not very, pardon me, probably not traditional. I don't see God as a Caucasian grandfatherly guy sitting on a throne up in a high heaven who has an anger management problem. Pete That's kind of how it reads in the Bible. Dr. Sasson I don't see that. I see that God has many moods, many modes. God is the divine God and I'm comfortable, I use the word God, I'm comfortable with it. I don't, I'm not stuck on that particular word. And that, of of course is an English word and we forget that

in other languages, you know, and we forget for instance that the person called Jesus from like in Christianity did not speak English. Jesus spoke an ancient form of Aramaic. And it's very, very interesting to hear the Lord's Prayer, for instance, just refer to a Christian thing, in ancient Aramaic. The feel of it is much different. And people can Google that and look it up. And we get stuck on language. Human beings get stuck on language. We, and we have, we fight wars over what to call something. Yeah. We kill people for, because they call it this or that.

And that's not really a way to have a lot of fun and to have a lot of joy in life. Yeah. It's not very joyful to be murdering. No. But I suppose it depends on who's doing the murdering. I'm just teasing folks. We're just doing jokes on the show there. Don't be doing the murdering.

So final thoughts as we go out to pitch out people on how they can onboard with you, some of the work you do with them in one-on-one consulting, where to pick up the book, etc., etc. Yeah, well, it's available through the book is available through the website. The book is available on Amazon. My full name and the full title, which is Snapshots in Eternity, snapshots in eternity, sketching together the four corners of existence, and all of my offerings, many of them are available on my website, and my website is being updated as we speak, and a lot of things. I have a lot of interests which are unusual, like overtone

singing. Pete Slauson What is overtone singing? Overtone singing is when you create two sounds with one bass note. The examples of it are in Tibetan Buddhist monks chanting, I use it, but also in Mongolian humi singing, where you... I would demonstrate it, but I don't know if... Well, actually, let me give it a shot. My throat isn't really in shape right now. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Pete It's interesting. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, definitely interesting. So, as we go out, giveusyour.com, where can people find you on the interwebs? jeffree starbuck j-e-f-f-r-e-y-s-t-a-r-b-u-c-k dot com and which is my website and at the

phone number that was given and then that information is available on the website and I'm available for in person if you're geographically close, I can't very easily see someone in person who's in the United Kingdom or in Afghanistan. That's more difficult. Or remotely using video. And I deal with people. And I'm going to, and I have been, and I'm going to be doing more of it giving talks in like libraries and for businesses and and

That sort of thing. So so I'm available available for that Yeah Well, Jeffrey, it's been wonderful insightful to talk to you and thanks for being a lifter for making people's lives better Thank you very much for coming on the show. You're welcome. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you and thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, CrisFos, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, CrisFos, CrisFos1, The Tiktokity, and all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us up.