The School of Greatness - 641 Spiritual Truths from the Masters

Episode Date: May 16, 2018

"You have to have some kind of practice of stillness in your life." - Danielle LaPorte Have you ever wondered what the truth is about why we're here and how to make sense of life? I think we all have. It's a question I often ask guests on my podcast who have a spiritual background. I'm fascinated by all the different ideas on our purpose in life and how to find it. We've had some amazing spiritual leaders on the show, from all different backgrounds, so I thought it would be cool to do a Masters mashup episode on spiritual truths. The response to these mashup episodes from the archives has been so great, I'm going to keep them coming. This one features 4 clips from some of the wisest spiritual minds I've ever met. First we hear from John Gray about how we can see our biggest mistakes and challenges being used for good in our lives. Then we hear from Marianne Williamson about the difference between pain and suffering (and that we have a choice about how to respond to them). Next there's a great nugget from Danielle LaPorte about why it's so important to be your own guru when it comes to walking your spiritual path. And lastly we end with Rob Bell talking about why he believes God has put paradox into every truth (and why that is a good thing). I loved each of these episodes, and I think you'll get as much value as I did by revisiting them in Episode 641. In this episode you will learn: The importance of seeing each other's struggles (5:42) The difference between pain and suffering (9:16) How to create space to listen to your own wisdom (12:38) Why paradox is baked into truth (19:04) Plus much more...

This is episode number 641 with the Spiritual Masters. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Carlos Castaneda said,

we either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same. Welcome to the School of Greatness, another edition of the Masters. Now, if you listen to the last couple of editions we had with the High Performance Habits Masters or Mastering Relationships, they have been blowing up and people are telling me all about how much they're loving it. This episode is another mashup of some of the best wisdom that I've heard on understanding spirituality and how our soul works. Again, some of you have been finding the School of Greatness podcast recently,

and with over 600 plus episodes, I wanted to give you some of the greatest moments on specific topics. That's why we have one on high performance habits. Make sure to check that out after this one or on mastering relationships. And this one is with the spiritual masters. We've got John Gray in the house who shares some incredible wisdom here. We've got Marianne Williamson, Rob Bell, and Danielle Laporte. So I think you're really going to love this one. Make sure to share it with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 641. And let me know what you think about these spiritual truths from the masters. Before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week. This is from John, who left a review over on iTunes and said,

Initially, when I started listening to Lewis, I was going through a rough breakup and was severely depressed. Being an athlete and someone who struggled with expressing their feelings and being invulnerable. Listening to Lewis and his amazing guests has opened me up so many ways and unlocked avenues in my life and showed that vulnerability is okay. If you're feeling in the dumps or unmotivated, then take a listen. Lewis is amazing. So John, unmotivated, then take a listen. This is amazing. So John, thank you so much for leaving review. And we also just hit 3000 five star reviews over on iTunes. So if you haven't left a review yet, go join the party and get a chance to be shouted out as the fan of the week. All right, guys, I'm excited to dive into this. Again, if you haven't listened to the past episodes,

then this is a taste of some of the most powerful interviews out there on any podcast platform. This is the Spiritual Truths from the Masters. Let's dive in. The same creativity that it takes to write a song, it takes to write a sermon. But you can't sing a song you haven't lived. You can't write a sermon that you haven't lived. You've got to experience it first. You've got to experience it. For it to be authentic, right?

Exactly. So if you haven't gone through pain, if you haven't gone through process and trial, then you should probably sit down somewhere. Because people don't need to hear, I'm perfect, why aren't you? I don't need that. I need to know that you were broken. Show me where you failed. Show me your scars.

That's what the book was about. I am number eight. King David, he wasn't a king all his life. He was the eighth son of a man who didn't even see his value. When the prophet came to look for a king, he wasn't even invited in the house. Seven sons were invited. And the prophet said, none of these are the ones you have any more kids. He was like, well, I got another one. He's out in the field. No way. First Samuel 16, bro. And so Samuel calls for David and he comes in and he's anointed king as a teenager.

And all of his brothers despised him. There's a lot of backstory to the reasons why his father didn't see him, couldn't speak life to him. No one knew what he carried. He was invisible and hidden in plain sight. I'm sitting here learning about you when my buddy James, who handles all of the PR, wonderful brother he told me about your podcast and I just did a brief quick glance and I was like oh my gosh this is amazing and just to see how God brought you you know from this place Delaware Ohio is not the hotbed it's the smallest town you know what I'm saying and so for you to emerge from this small town and have such great influence is just what the book is about. Going from anonymous to necessary, from what's your name to we've been waiting on you.

That's what the book is about, that you can be overlooked and undervalued, but you are not forgotten. God has not forgotten you. And so I think, again, to go back, this is a long way around, but the greatest challenge in my life is reconciling the need for a father who's not coming. So how do you create that for yourself? I think that's where my faith came in. I think that's why my faith is so important to me, the idea of a heavenly father, that there's something eternal, that these few years that I have on this earth will not be the end of my impact. I have a son now.

I have a daughter. So the microphone becomes a baton. And one day I'll pass it to them and I'll sit down and they'll put me in the ground. And hopefully I will have lived well enough that I left something better than what I had when I started. I had an amazing and still have an amazing mother. But I think the power of legacy is for a father to speak identity and to let his children know they have value and that they are protected at all times. times and for me I want my life to be defined by what I left in place for my kids and my grandkids and I really honestly believe that that hunger for a father will never leave I don't think it'll ever be filled because that tender

place gives my gives me a heart for everybody else yeah I understand tears I understand people's longing we're all broken somewhere and we're all looking to be filled or fulfilled somewhere and that for me is probably the thing that'll always be there so what is the difference between suffering and pain then? Well, that's funny that you say that. The Course in Miracles says words are at best, but symbols.

So, you know, I know that there's a conversation about the difference between suffering and pain, but, and I know where some people go with that, the idea that, what do they say? Pain happens, suffering is inevitable, or the other way around. I do think that there is, Nietzsche said, to live is to suffer, to find meaning, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. And what I, you know, we have learned a model in terms of

medicine and healing where we understand you can't just trash your body, then experience the almost inevitable sickness, and then just try to allopathically eradicate or suppress the symptoms. You have to proactively cultivate health. Health is not the absence of sickness. Sickness is the absence of health. We have to now apply that same model to our psychological and emotional state. We can't just fight depression. We have to proactively cultivate happiness. Happiness is not the absence of depression. Depression is the absence of

happiness. And the reason we're not happy is because we're not thinking happy thoughts. So some people say to me, oh, Marianne, you can't just think happy thoughts. They might not realize what I mean by happy thoughts. You can't think of yourself as a victim and be happy. You can't withhold forgiveness and be happy. You can't fail to take responsibility for your own circumstances and be happy. You can't fail to atone for your mistakes and make amends for them and try to be a better person and be happy. You can't disengage from the suffering of other human beings or other sentient beings, not address them and be happy.

So there is a way in which our entire construct as a society is a setup for despair. And I talk about Buddha and Moses and Jesus and this sort of spiritual transmissions, all of it, all the great religious systems, all the great spiritual and religious systems have at their core, the issue of human suffering. Buddha said life is suffering. And his realization of that was the beginning of his journey to enlightenment. God sent Moses to rescue these suffering Israelites who were slaves in Egypt. Jesus suffered on the cross. Suffering is what happens when you are living within the vortex of the ego mind, the racial

consciousness of the human race that repudiates love. You can't be happy here. And then the journey, whether it's symbolized by the 40 years of the Israelites in the desert or the hours on the cross and the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection, is those painful times where we are experiencing the suffering but learning the lessons so that we are then, through the grace grace of God on the way to enlightenment, promised land, nirvana, resurrection, whatever you call it. So you're saying the only way to experience growth is through pain or suffering?

No, I don't think that. The Course in Miracles says it is not up to you what you learn. It's only up to you whether you learn through joy or through pain. And in your own work, you know, but we need to develop the mental musculature that cultivates happiness. I don't think we have to learn to pain. I think most of us have a lot of our lives. I know in my life, I don't want to learn through pain as much as I did. And that's why I've wanted to learn the lessons of painful situations so that next time I do that, I won't create suffering for myself and others. time I do that, I won't create suffering for myself and others. Really, the heart of this is about being your own guru. And after I was finished the book, I realized that I was still pretty addicted to getting outside input. Like, it was one more psychic reading. It was another intuitive something. It was like, well, maybe I need a more specific business coach for this specific issue. Just like one more psychotherapy session.

Or my yoga session. Yeah. Retreat. Yeah. And so I have gone on an input fast. And it feels like really confessional. Like I feel like i'm in an a meaning saying you know i'm danielle and i haven't had a psychic reading for eight months

and yeah just much fewer like spiritual paraphernalia in my life. No, I'm just not referring to those tools as much. It's about me. And you know what? It's 50-50. If you listen to everybody else, your chances of pulling it off, still 50-50. If you listen to yourself, still 50-50. But listening to yourself, oh God, you save a lot of money. It's much more efficient and you really build that muscle. You know, intuition is a muscle and so much in the

self-help space is like, you know, listen to that small inner voice. And there's so much noise coming in. People can't hear that small inner voice, let alone trusting it, let alone acting on it. So you need to just stop with the input and create some space and then you can hear yourself. And sometimes it'll be right. And sometimes it'll lead you somewhere else that you'll think is wrong, but that'll turn out right afterwards when you zoom back and look at the whole situation. But yeah, input fasting. It's good for you. I mean, how do you think people should create a structure for themselves to have that space?

Because we're so attached to the phones and being in the digital information world. What do you recommend? To create that space. Yeah. Less seeking of external input, as I just said. I think you have to have some kind of practice of stillness in your life. Yeah. And I know everybody would like to avoid it.

I know we would like to take shortcuts. I mean, look, the first thing I do in the morning when I roll over in bed is I check my phone. And then I meditate. So I'm not saying like – Perfect. Yeah, right? So I just want to see who loves me. How many people like me?

Emails, yes. Did I get affirmation for my value on the planet? Right. And then I tune in. So whatever it is for you, if it's like, if it's your morning run, if it's your time on the elliptical, if it's four minutes, if you're really going to give her and sit for, you know, 20 minutes to an hour, like you must have that. And it's like, you know, we clean our bodies. We clean our system. You know, we clean our bodies. We clean our system.

You know, that light that you encounter when you're in a meditative state, that is a cleaning of the mind and it needs to happen so that you don't get the fog, the confusion. I mean, I think at the most basic level, so many people can relate to just waking up in the morning and not knowing exactly what the priorities are. So many people do that. Right. It's that fogginess and this can go on for years. Decades for people. Decades. And then they wake up and say, what's my purpose? What am I doing all this for? Yeah. What's the reason? It adds up and you've, you're on Prozac, you're in the wrong job. Smoking, drinking. You're in the wrong relationship. You don't feel the way you want to feel.

So regular stillness. I think there's a difference between meditation and contemplation and prayer. Ideally, you're using all of them. I meant meditation is formulaic. You're sitting. It's a process. It's an actual process, and you find the way of meditating that works for you. Contemplation is just like you're actually actively thinking.

You're very much in your mind thinking through things. You are being considerate about what's happening in your life. And then prayer is, it's a conversation, you know, and prayer can be, for a lot of us, it's just making the request over and over again. For me, I'm much happier when prayer is about gratitude and I really want to meet my maker halfway. Yeah, but those things, that's the reason everybody's been talking about it for 2,000 years. Right.

Stillness needs to happen. That's true. Hey, guys, I want to take a quick break from this throwback episode to tell you about one of my favorite online business tools with weebly.com slash greatness. Now, if you're a creative entrepreneur, you need more

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Give me an example. Okay, let's say there's some infinite divine source of everything. However you want to define, because even when people use the word God, that's so loaded. What is that? Let's say there's some divine source of it all. If you could fully know that source. Source meaning creation of it all? The whole thing flows from something.

It's sustained by something. There's something more than just the physical reality we see. Let's just say like a really basic idea like that. If it was completely knowable, then it wouldn't be infinite. It wouldn't be very big. If your mind could wrap itself around there, that's not really going to be capable of sustaining something this interesting.

Right. But if it was unknowable and elsewhere, then what about all the great art? What about all the moments of love when you're like, there's something infinite happening between us? Yeah. So source would be both known and unknown. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, of course. So there would be a fundamental ambiguity that would sit side by side with the clarity. I know that when I serve and give beyond myself, something happens that I affirm that I can't quite fully comprehend, but is real. By the way, the Germans had a word for this, grenzebegriff. The German word grenzebegriff means that which is real, but beyond analysis. So it's that which in your bones, Lewis Howes is like, when I give and serve and move beyond myself

and don't just ask what's good for Lewis Howes, but what do I have that I could share? I am at that level connecting with something much larger than myself. Yeah. And the worse off the conditions are, the more it costs, somehow it pulls something out of me even more, which is transcendent, supernatural, divine, miraculous, whatever you want to say. So that is both as real as it gets for you and yet put that on a spreadsheet you know what i mean take a photo of that on your ipad right so if it is real if there is some divine source it's going to pull multiple things so you can see then the dangers the danger of a of a of a fundamentalism

this is like this is how big God is. These are the seven steps. It's like, no, you haven't left enough room for mystery. But the, I don't know, man. We can't know anything. Yeah, but I know this guy Lewis Howes, and when he serves, it makes the world better. So we can know that.

So it would have this, both universal and particular, would have both this absolute and this ever-evolving. And that is, I would argue, the problem is people fall to either side and aren't willing because the modern mind loves the binary. Yeah. Is it this or is it this? Are you a winner or are you a loser? Right. Success or failure.

But the problem is in failure is where all this interesting stuff happens. So essentially, even to talk about God in a way that might actually not make you crazy, you have to move from this binary thinking to what some would call a non-dual awareness, where you begin to be able to hold two truths that appear to be opposing at the same time. So I would start there. So what do you believe then? And now we have something to talk about. Now we have something to talk about.

Liking that Everything is Spiritual tour that you came to? Yes. 13.8 billion years ago, the universe explodes out of infinite compression, an infinitely compressed point of nothingness, sometimes called a singularity. That's what scientists are saying right now, is that the universe is 13.8 billion years ago, and it came out of a point of infinity,

and it's just been expanding ever since. And at first it was just subatomic particles, and then about three minutes in it formed atoms. Those atoms formed molecules. Somewhere around the 13 billion mark those molecules began to form cells and you had our inorganic and then organic cellular life and then sometime in the 13 billion that's about 9 billion 13 billion years in you have the earth with animals and then you have these sentient upright homo sapiens that can write poems and talk about this stuff like and people are like there's no mystery

that just happened so i would my starting point any discussion about god would me to me would simply be we're here and this thing has been expanding and unfolding and if you're going to tell me no it's just molecules it's just synapses it's just molecules, it's just synapses, it's just cells. I would say, seriously? The most intellectually honest thing to me would be to leave space for something. Let's just start there. Then the question becomes, well, would you name that? It's interesting in the Bible, there's lots and lots of different names for God. Because essentially when you use the word God, you're trying to name ultimate reality.

So, and that's what actually started to happen to me when I was reading, citing the Bible, is I was like, wait, there's a bunch of different names for God here. And this person uses this name, and this person talks about mystery, this person talks about revelation, the idea that there's some things you can know.

So that's what happened to me, is when you're like, well, how can you know which is which? This is what the writers of the Bible were wrestling with. Wow. You know what I mean? Or how can we know if God is on our side? Because we're slaves. Is God okay with this arrangement?

Is the universe okay with this person owning us? So the Exodus story, this big giant rescue of slaves and Moses, that was a story asking the question, is the universe okay with us being owned? And the story was about, no, it's not. God is actually the God of the oppressed. The forces are on the side of the underdog, the immigrant, the refugee, the single mom. So that's always, to me, an abstract talk about God isn't that interesting. But I start talking about if there is a God who's, well, definitely that God would be on the side of the refugee, the immigrant, the single parent trying to hold it together.

And there you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, the spiritual truths from the masters, all about how to unlock the soul and connect to a higher purpose in our life. If you've ever felt frustrated or confused about any of these things, then make sure to lean on these episodes. Go to the full show notes at lewishouse.com slash 641 to listen to one of the specific interviews in more depth of the person you resonated with the most. Again, we'll have the links on where you can go find those at lewishouse.com slash 641. And again, if you've ever been unsure of yourself, unsure of your purpose, of your mission, of why you're here, then make sure to reflect on these guest interviews, this mashup from

today, because we're all in this together. We're all trying to figure it out. And everyone has a different purpose, a different meaning of why we're all in this together. We're all trying to figure it out and everyone has a different purpose, a different meaning of why we're here. But it's important for you to discover what works for you, to keep you happy, joyful, to keep you grateful, to keep you moving forward in a positive way as opposed to a destructive way. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, Carlos Castaneda said, we either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same. Make sure you're

spending the time and energy to bring joy to yourself and happiness to those around you, as it's just as much effort to make yourself miserable and make everyone else around you miserable as well. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.