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Sacred Moments of Vulnerability
with James Finley
James Finely is a mystic, teacher, psychologist, and student of Thomas Merton. Today we’ll talk about the intersection of psychology and spirituality - particularly in those sacred moments where we’re vulnerable and open to the divine.
You will learn -
How to make therapy “meditation for 2”
How spirituality and psychology overlap in “thin spaces”
The 6 ways to know you’re in a “thin,” or liminal moment, where we become momentary mystics
3 practical steps to living in divine presence throughout the day, even when you're busy
Plus, a sneak peek at the new book Jim is writing - part memoir, part exploration of how trauma can open us to mystical encounters.
Jim embodies contemplative wisdom so deeply that you’ll find your insides quieted by his very presence (I always do!).
To find out more about James Finley and his work, visit www.jamesfinley.org.
TAGS
Spirituality
Psychology
Mysticism
Christian Mystics
Contemplation
Clinical Psychology
Trauma
Healing
Presence
Kelly Deutsch
Jim Finley
Thomas Merton
Teresa of Avila
John of the Cross
Meister Eckhart
Gabriel Marcel
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
D.W. Winnicott
Bonnie Badenoch
BOOKS
WEBSITES
00;00;07;03 - 00;00;35;27
Kelly Deutsch
Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves but here will follow those longings within to our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers, embodiment experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science, along with a healthy dash of mischief.
00;00;36;10 - 00;00;43;14
Kelly Deutsch
Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.
00;00;53;17 - 00;01;22;23
Kelly Deutsch
Hello, everyone. And Kelly Deutsch here. And today I am joined by Jim Finlay. Jim is a clinical psychology just and spiritual director, and if I may say so, a mystic. He's well known for being a student of Thomas Merton, as well as a spiritual director. They spent some time together as monks at the Abbey, I guess Simone. And he's also on the core faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation and host of the podcast Turning to the Mystics.
00;01;23;04 - 00;01;52;24
Kelly Deutsch
We're exploring the teaching of some of the Christian mystics, like Teresa of Avalon, John of the Cross and Thomas Merton, too. One thing that Jim does par excellence, I think, is embodying this contemplative life that we're after. And I highly recommend listening to his book. Martin's Path to the Palace of Nowhere. Jim, I have not been able to make it through your entire book because I've been listening to it on audio, and I can only take a few minutes at a time because then I'm just quieted and I have to go sit in silence.
00;01;52;24 - 00;02;00;23
Kelly Deutsch
So I just have to sip and savor a little bit. So I feel like that contemplative presence you bring is part of part of the magic.
00;02;01;04 - 00;02;14;21
James Finley
That is good. When I when I read a press, published Britain's Palace of Nowhere, and then tell me, Simon, it sounds true, asking you to do an audio set. So I did. On the Path to the Palace, of Nowhere. Mm hmm. So, yeah, it's out there for people.
00;02;14;27 - 00;02;45;12
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. It's wonderful. So today I'm excited to talk a little bit about the Intersect action of spirituality and psychology. And I love one of the beautiful things about your past is that you have both of those, you know, in spades both that clinical psychological experience, but also the contemplative, the mystical and the spiritual. And I know you're working on a book that kind of taps into both of those that is also share some of your life story.
00;02;45;12 - 00;02;53;21
Kelly Deutsch
So I'm excited to hear maybe as a starting point how you would say spirituality and psychology overlap.
00;02;56;00 - 00;03;13;17
James Finley
Oh, I would say that the reflection I'm about to share will be I'll be sharing that. Sure. I feel like walk through it and present like a poetic image of it or a poetic understanding or how they touch each other.
00;03;14;00 - 00;03;17;19
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Wonderful. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing some of it.
00;03;21;03 - 00;03;21;29
James Finley
Okay, I'll start.
00;03;22;08 - 00;03;22;22
Kelly Deutsch
Please.
00;03;23;10 - 00;03;23;19
James Finley
Okay.
00;03;25;23 - 00;03;51;08
James Finley
And, you know, in the limited time we have here, I'm looking for some succinct way to present this in a way that will be helpful or evocative for people to sit with and so on. So I'll start to say that in my childhood growing up, so I've been through a lot of trauma with violent alcoholic father. And when I was 14, I discovered the writings of Thomas Merton Signer, Jonas Journal.
00;03;51;09 - 00;04;21;19
James Finley
He kept at the monastery and read that over and over to the four years of high school. And when I graduated and I entered the monastery and lived there for nearly six years and so during that time, I would say I was immersed in this cloistered, silent, monastic life, kind of mystical Catholicism or broader kind of contemplative Christianity, or emergence of the contemplative wisdom of all the world's great religions and some poets and philosophers and so on.
00;04;22;19 - 00;04;49;07
James Finley
And with Merton's guidance, been kind of experientially exploring that, like how to live that. And with that, then I'd like to share something like a term that I want to be using your money, then combine it later with trauma and psychology. But I want to apply to spirituality And the term comes in and the passage, a draft and share on Merton.
00;04;49;09 - 00;05;24;27
James Finley
And I start to teach this insight is the last chapter of this book, New Seeds of Contemplation. And in that chapter, he teaches says he says the world and pine are the dance of the Lord and emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. So here's a very poetic imagery of the perpetual nature of creation that this infinite presence of God is presence in itself or pouring itself out in.
00;05;24;27 - 00;06;04;16
James Finley
And as the intimate immediacy of our very presence, the presence of others, the presence of all things in our nothingness without God. So here he is, bearing witness to the God given godly nature of the mystery of what it is to be Then he says, We do not have to go very far to get echoes of this game and of this dancing when we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see a flock of birds descending on an autumn, on a growth of junipers to rest and eat when we know love in our own hearts, when we see children in a moment, they're really children.
00;06;04;24 - 00;06;31;26
James Finley
Or like the Japanese poet Basho, we hear an old frog land in the quiet pond with the solitary splash. He says it's such times the turning Inside-Out of all values provided glimpse of the cosmic dance. So these are moments that are very subtle, they're very subtle, they're very fleeting. In moments like this, I think Merton is suggesting, or a momentary mystic it isn't just them.
00;06;32;00 - 00;06;59;13
James Finley
It isn't just that I'm in the presence of God. But rather, I want to say here poetically, and there's a term I want to use as the axial moment and I can Wilbur his work on spiral dynamics and so on. I got this in the monastery when I was studying medieval philosophy and Jacques Maritime to mystic philosopher. He says, You know, the ego and ego consciousness, we move in a horizontal line and our passage through sequential time.
00;06;59;24 - 00;07;33;02
James Finley
So one plus one plus one equals three, he said, but with a mystery. It's not like we sit in a mystery. We we were poised in a single moment in which we make a kind of a descent in which our very subjectivity turns as on a hidden axis of love. So the two and we discover this in this descend, in this sweet descent on this hidden axis of self, more metamorphosing love we're dropping down into the abyss like love of God.
00;07;33;29 - 00;08;11;21
James Finley
It's welling up and giving itself away in. And as the intimacy immediacy of the moment. So it's like it's like the the transcending of otherness and an all pervasive one is extending in all directions like this. And when this moment happens in the mists of nature, the arms of the beloved reading, a child of the night story or listening to the rain or helping somebody or whatever, it quiet our days, there when it's actually happening is too self-evident to doubt.
00;08;11;21 - 00;08;47;28
James Finley
It's too deep to comprehend, like the immediacy of it. This axial moment these moments pass and we get back to the day by day ego time. I'm already late. My cell phone's going off. So we then we start to realize that there's a certain longing to abide in the depths so fleetingly glimpsed in my most childlike hour, I was graced with the oneness, which, having tasted it, I know my life without it will be forever that the grace of that desire you.
00;08;47;29 - 00;09;16;04
James Finley
Where can I find somebody well-seasoned in such things to help me bitterly abide in the oneness? But I know was always there because the intuition is not there. In these moments, something more is given, but a curtain open. And I fleetingly tasted the infinity that's always given. So echoing Meister Eckhart, if we think of God, his generosity, the generosity of the infinite is infinite.
00;09;16;04 - 00;09;38;27
James Finley
And we are the generosity of God that we're excited. And here is the mystical traditions understanding of trauma, trauma, meaning the root word, meaning a wound or a source of suffering. We suffer from the traumatized capacity to habitually abide in. The infinite love is pouring itself out and says It beats in our very blood. We want it to or not.
00;09;39;21 - 00;10;00;01
James Finley
Hmm. And so the path in which is the path of meditation or the path of luxury or the path of silence, the path of humility, the daily rendezvous with God, the guidance, asking God help us find our way to God. You know, that devotional sincerity on the path? How can I live this contemplative way of life? How can I live this way?
00;10;00;17 - 00;10;23;02
James Finley
Hmm. So in the monastery, I was immersed in this, and when I left the monastery, I got married to children, and I wrote Merton's Palace of Nowhere on this unity of mystery, the true self I did with Christ in God before the audience of the origins of the universe. And when that book came out, I started being asked to lead meditation retreats.
00;10;23;02 - 00;10;52;04
James Finley
When the United States and Canada and one of these retreats fairly early on, I was offered a doctorate degree in clinical psychology under the one condition I integrate my work on the axial moment in mystical traditions with mental health At the time, I was a high school religion teacher at Columbia. So I moved with my family out here to California and spent five years in full time doctor work in clinical psychology.
00;10;53;27 - 00;11;19;25
James Finley
And so I kept working on how do I articulate the interface in other words, another way of looking at it is this How do I understand the ways in which this axial moment, this transformative, self mortify morph metamorphosis in moment? How does it not just happen in times of joy, like a joy with enjoy a peaceful in peace?
00;11;21;17 - 00;11;53;03
James Finley
And how does that foundation joy once found? How does that inspire us and move us to touch the hurting places with love so the suffering might dissolve in both myself and other people, but also, how is it possible the axial moment arises out of trauma itself? Hmm. That was my question. So, for example, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on the stages of dying, you as a person goes through these stages and the person first is denial.
00;11;53;03 - 00;12;35;14
James Finley
You can't believe it. And then there's anger, then there's bargaining and then there's depression. And those are all stages of the ego facing its demise. This finally is acceptance is not everybody comes to acceptance. This is to be in the presence of someone in acceptance. You know, even the presence of it. She calls it uncanny. And here's how I put it poetically to gaze into the face of the dying loved one and the acceptance, you know, that their faces, the gate of heaven, because it's freedom from the tyranny of death in the midst of this fear, not Jesus says that fear has no foundations like this.
00;12;36;00 - 00;12;56;26
James Finley
And so is Gabriel Marcellus. As we know, we learn to love someone when we've been interested in them, that which is too beautiful to die. We know we promise the truth of ourselves and we see what's too beautiful to die. Because then we see who God sees us to be forever. Mm hmm. So then I thought, well, how does this appear in psychology?
00;12;56;27 - 00;13;15;05
James Finley
In other words, how in the Mr. Palmer, how to articulate, first of all, how to discern that it's happening, how to in discerning it, how to foster it. Hmm. And fostering how to draw upon it as that inner resource of doing the healing work. Yeah.
00;13;15;13 - 00;13;22;21
Kelly Deutsch
So let me recap here. So essentially these mystical moments, would you say that's almost like what the Celtics would call sin spaces?
00;13;23;04 - 00;13;23;18
James Finley
Yes.
00;13;23;19 - 00;13;27;22
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Where it's just, you know, it's a thin between heaven and earth. And there's.
00;13;27;24 - 00;13;28;12
James Finley
Exactly.
00;13;28;21 - 00;13;56;03
Kelly Deutsch
Execution happening there. And so. And I love how you called that being a momentary mistake, because that's I think so many of us think of the mystics as these people high on the shelf somewhere, they're untouchable. But to make make it ordinary, like we all have those moments, like all those examples you are naming there of, you know, your children laughing or the rain coming down, hitting the roof, they're just these moments where you feel something profound.
00;13;56;03 - 00;14;09;09
Kelly Deutsch
But unnamable. That's right. Yeah. And to see and that makes me super curious then to see where do these action moments then show up in psychology and how why in the world would that come in a place of trauma?
00;14;09;21 - 00;14;37;07
James Finley
That's right. And so the first step for me was when I started seeing people in therapy because I was leading retreats, also locally silent retreats. So the meals are in silence in their 20 minutes sittings. And I would read a text from one of the mystics and apply it to our lives, that kind of thing. And so some of those people started coming to me for therapy, and what they wanted is they wanted to be healed from the long term internalized effects of childhood trauma and abandonment.
00;14;37;14 - 00;15;05;08
James Finley
And they wanted their spirituality to be a resource in their healing. Also, a lot of 12 step people see, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of following these steps. A lot of people started calling for therapy for the same way so that the 11 step increase in conscious contact with God and daily meditation. So how is psychotherapy meditation for to see how is it an encounter of the deepening of this thing?
00;15;05;08 - 00;15;41;24
James Finley
And that's what we're gravitating towards here. Hmm. So what I want to share now is what was the decisive moment for me where it kind of clicked. Then I stood out because I was in my fourth year of doctoral work and I wasn't one of my years of internship and I was I was interning on a inpatient alcohol treatment unit at a veteran's hospital and on the first day on the unit, I was told that that morning there's going to be an initiation.
00;15;41;24 - 00;16;05;19
James Finley
Right. There was a secret ritual developed by the men on the unit some years earlier and handed down as a secret oral tradition. And then that morning, someone was going to be admitted onto the unit. This is person. And these most of these guys are from Vietnam. There's a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder and dual diagnosis alcohol dependency, alcohol abuse.
00;16;05;24 - 00;16;29;15
James Finley
So these were people really in the trenches of suffering. And in this 12 step program. And so I didn't know what this ritual was. And the person coming in to be accepted, if he knew he had to pass the ritual again, he didn't know what it was either. Just go with the details. And drunk. And so when I walked into the room, it was a big room.
00;16;29;15 - 00;16;45;14
James Finley
I don't know many men around the unit. 80 men, I don't know a hundred men and the chairs are set up around the four walls of the room. And the middle of the room was empty except for two chairs in the middle of the room facing each other. And it reminded me of Zen Meditation Hall, sort of reminded me of.
00;16;46;04 - 00;17;07;03
James Finley
And when I went in, all the men were sitting on the in and complete silence, kind of looking down at the floor. And I stood over in the corner watching this. And the recovering alcoholic on the unit who was going to lead the ritual brought the person in and led them in and told them to sit down on one of the two chairs in the middle of the room.
00;17;07;18 - 00;17;35;24
James Finley
The person leading the ritual sat down in the other chair and the person leading the ritual asked the person what you loved the most and the person not knowing quite what to say. Also, I think often when he said, my wife, at which point everyone in the room would yell as loud as they could bull shit like this was the first time someone said bullshit on your podcast and they screamed it like this.
00;17;35;24 - 00;18;03;05
James Finley
So there was like like a startle response and they looked down again. No smiles? No, I contact like serious death, which it was. She was dying of alcoholism and all of the moves. My children bullshit was funny. You would say alcohol at which point they all stood up. They had him stand up and they gave him a standing ovation and in complete silence they fired up 100 times and hugged him and he started crying.
00;18;04;20 - 00;18;40;11
James Finley
And I knew this was the first time this person had been touched in a long, long time. And I teared up and the voice inside said, This is just like at the monastery. That is what's going on right now. Right now, this is the axial moment. Self metamorphosis in a moment. And I thought, this is my, this is what I'm looking for that I was to take this person in this moment was my mentor and I was to make a list of the qualities of himself in this momentary turning point, this and look on it.
00;18;40;11 - 00;19;22;23
James Finley
Then as the axial moment, a spiritual awakening arising out of the depths of trauma And so these are the qualities that I saw first occurred to me is that in this moment, this person was vulnerable and in his vulnerability, true invincibility was being manifested in the world. Thomas Merton says in one of his writings he says there is that in us it is not subject to the brutalities of our own will.
00;19;23;07 - 00;20;00;26
James Finley
See, no matter how badly anyone has trashed us and no matter how much we've internalized that and trashed our self, the remains that in us that remains and threatened untouched and undiminished because of sadness that belongs completely to God and so there's this paradoxical invincibility and vulnerability. Next, in this moment, this man was childlike. And in being childlike, true maturity was being manifested in the world.
00;20;00;26 - 00;20;34;03
James Finley
By childlike, I mean, there was no posing or posturing. He was guileless. This was so disarming about children. They're so open faced, you know, they're like he's like was like right there. And and I say so this is the way it is with those who are simply present, insincere, earthy, transparent and loving ways. That are free of pretense and calculating strategies on how to leverage the situation to their own interests or personal desires.
00;20;35;10 - 00;21;05;24
James Finley
So next seemed to me that in this moment, this person was all along that as he was unto himself, that he was unto himself, which is his solitude, which bore witness to the unit, to ministry, which is the psychologist. Winnicott says, we're all alone together. We're all alone together. Thomas Merton said, In the hour of your death, you can get all the people in the room that you want.
00;21;06;13 - 00;21;32;11
James Finley
They can get up in bed with you if you want, but you're dying alone and you will never find the intimacy you longed for by avoiding that solitude. That being in that solitude, you can discover the infinite intimacy of solitude, both kindnesses, nevertheless, alone in one alone, the God alone is God and you alone are you. And in that aloneness, unity shines forth in our oneness with each other.
00;21;33;05 - 00;22;15;22
James Finley
Next it seemed to me also that in this moment where the man was sitting there with tears coming down his face, that in this moment he knew nothing with all the bravado of the alcoholic, all that chatter and talk and reflecting language and excuses and all of it he all those assumptions were kind of falling away into kind of an unknowing semester to say and I would say also laying bare a kind of a luminous understanding of the poverty of spirit then was teaching medieval philosophy at the monastery.
00;22;15;22 - 00;22;38;04
James Finley
Once said the monastery said, I know it, I know it, I know that, I know it. The trouble is, it's I who know that I know it when I try to tell you what it is that I know that I know I don't know what to say because it's the intimacy of the unexplainable intimately known to me for which I can't articulate.
00;22;38;04 - 00;23;23;24
James Finley
I don't you know, it's it's kind of like that knowing. Yes. And then you sense that knowing is kind of a homecoming because it's an echo of God's infinite knowledge of you. I say in participating in God's own knowledge given to you in this unknowing, this trans conceptual realization thing. But then there's a language that bears witness to what words can't explain, which is every word of Jesus, the words of scripture, the words of the mystics, the words of poets, the words of lovers or the children, they all resonate and reverberate with echoes, carried the cadences of this unsayable thing and you can tell in your heart when it's happening, you can tell when someone's speaking
00;23;23;24 - 00;23;28;20
James Finley
out of that place and your access by it like that, I think.
00;23;29;17 - 00;23;50;18
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, I love that. And I remember when we spoke before you said it, you called it sharing what neither one of us can say. That's right. That's such a beautiful way to put it because oftentimes when when in these deepest axial moments, it does feel like words are stripped away. And there's almost nothing that you can say you know, it is.
00;23;50;29 - 00;24;14;04
James Finley
Yes, it's true. It's really true. I equipment and says in the spiritual order you said to understand is to understand that your understood And I also think when you're with someone who really loves us, when there's someone who's deeply present to us, you can tell you're in the presence of the person who sees in you what you can't explain.
00;24;14;29 - 00;24;33;01
James Finley
And they're able to see it because they've seen it in themselves that they can explain and the language is the language of that, which is that I think that's the deep language is healing, really. That's the depth dimension of the words of feeling that logos like that living language.
00;24;33;05 - 00;24;34;15
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Yes.
00;24;34;26 - 00;24;59;23
James Finley
I love Saint John of the Cross. Is God granted to some people to understand that everything remains to be understood and because it's a bit like an infinite in all directions. But you can see that it's a deeper way to understand what it means to understand a kind of a quiet amazement or a kind of inner certainty in your heart.
00;25;00;24 - 00;25;26;22
James Finley
You know, that you're being caught by this infinite and explainable presence to abide an unspeakable, unexplainable presence as it's it's like that's why I say these traditions. The mistake is not the person who says, Listen to what I've experienced. The mystic is one who says, look what love is done to me. So there's nobody left. Thomas Merton says, as long as you're still you there to have a mystical experience, you can't have one thing.
00;25;27;06 - 00;25;38;29
James Finley
But when you're kind of swept away by love or silence or a flock of birds descending or recovering alcoholic with tears coming down his face, the curtains pulled back and the mean it's like that.
00;25;39;18 - 00;26;02;23
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I like to say that wonder is one of my favorite shortcuts to contemplation, because that is it just you're not thinking through anything like when you're standing before that flock of birds descending or, you know, seeing some beautiful, majestic vista. You're not sitting there thinking about like, wow, this is really it's just words are stripped away and it's just in presence.
00;26;02;23 - 00;26;07;19
Kelly Deutsch
And there's a deeper knowing without needing to put it into words.
00;26;07;19 - 00;26;28;27
James Finley
That's right. And I really sing, too. I mean, there's all different ways that we're not used to think our society doesn't teach us to be sensitized to this. For example, if you go to an art museum and just observe, some people came there alone. Those who are with somebody, they speak in hushed tones. You see them pausing before a piece of art.
00;26;29;20 - 00;26;56;17
James Finley
And really they're contemplate you know, they're entering into that state of interior awareness of the depth dimension of the flower bird, the woman's face, I mean, whatever that is, like the artist sees something in their fidelity to it. They help us to see it, too, like that in the same with. So there's all these different modalities of this path and how do we be stabilized in this and how do we share it with other people?
00;26;56;25 - 00;27;10;08
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And that those qualities that you've listed, the vulnerability, the child likeness, being alone in that solitude together and knowing nothing I think that's such a beautiful description of what presence really is.
00;27;10;12 - 00;27;11;11
James Finley
Yes. I mean.
00;27;12;06 - 00;27;33;08
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And I spoke with I know you're also friends with Bonnie Badenoch. And, you know, she talks a lot about the neuroscience of presence and what it looks like inside the body to have that. But those qualities that you just listed are essentially what's happening interior early to be that kind of presence, whether it's in therapy or with a friend or with a spiritual director.
00;27;33;15 - 00;27;40;20
Kelly Deutsch
But that's really what like a prerequisite to those axial moments with another person. To have a meditation for two.
00;27;41;00 - 00;28;01;29
James Finley
Is really true. And Bonnie is the one who led me to you, a good friend of mine, and she thinks that we're sort we're leaning toward this is the depth dimension of the healing encounter. Hmm. And there's this neurobiology. There's there's like a filter to the physiological foundation for this ontological, spiritual, transpersonal reality and love.
00;28;02;03 - 00;28;03;03
Kelly Deutsch
How that all fits together for.
00;28;03;04 - 00;28;27;06
James Finley
Me to the next observation I had about this person is that he was dying. He was dying in this sense. He was dying in that the alcoholic that was claiming and had the final say and who he was was dying. And in the very act of dying, he was being born. So that moment, it was both a hospice and a maternity ward at once.
00;28;29;12 - 00;28;55;07
James Finley
That if you lose your life, you'll find it to survive and learn to die to everything less than love until lonely love is less than the day. Deathless nature of love, which is the fullness of my very presence, will shine forth in me with this in in the world the next thing that occurred to me was at first I thought of the men who were coming up and hugging him.
00;28;56;03 - 00;29;20;05
James Finley
And at first first I thought we were walking him, like walking in a board but I thought at another level, they were coming up to get a dose of the Golden Globe at one fresh from the opening or anything like this is like right there. And I also then was aware for all of them and for him that this was not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a long one.
00;29;21;06 - 00;29;52;20
James Finley
Because the alcoholic wasn't going to politely step aside and let him get away with this unless unless he handled it, unless he knew that a power greater than himself to restore sanity, unless he was willing to hand his life over to that higher power to the care of that higher power, unless he was willing to make a fruitful and fearless inventory of his life, unless he was able willing to make amends and kill you, unless he was able, no matter how many times he fell down to get up over again, a little more humble.
00;29;52;20 - 00;30;12;03
James Finley
That same Benedict was once asked, in this century, what do you do in that monastery all day long, you said, fall down and get up fall down, get up, fall down, get up. And so we're trying to put words to something we all know about, but we tend to forget we all know by experience is sensitivity to things.
00;30;12;03 - 00;30;45;27
James Finley
Things actually do foster deep happiness, but we tend neglected and that's or that's what we're always looking for. We're looking for this uh, fidelity, like obedience or fidelity. I get a feeling sometimes when it comes to this, all of us are so faithfully unfaithful and we're so safe or so unsafe with faithful. So if we weren't being unfaithful faithful, we wouldn't be prone to listen to this talk, nor would it make any sense.
00;30;47;02 - 00;31;14;27
James Finley
But it's also true human nature with also tours of faithful young faithful. Mm hmm. And I think it's because it's like we're afraid almost, you know, I mean, this is very mysterious, really, both with God in herself. The bone is it possible that can be completely vulnerable and completely safe at the same time is we're afraid to lose the control that we think that we have the life that we think we're living like this.
00;31;15;03 - 00;31;34;22
James Finley
And yet we get this strange feeling we're skimming over the depths of the surface of our own life, all the more tragic because the depths over which we're skimming is the depth in which God sustains us brick by brick, by brick by brick. So it's a gift to see. This is a gift to be touched by this. It's a gift to continue on with her, with the path.
00;31;35;17 - 00;32;05;23
James Finley
And so this translates to me then it's kind of a thesis statement and because I started watching the people in therapy and I watched with endless variations how this happens in like very subtle ways. This is the thesis statement that in the axial moment of the psychotherapeutic process, the patient unwittingly assumes the stance strikingly akin to the stance assumed in deep meditation.
00;32;05;27 - 00;32;27;23
James Finley
I want to walk through that for a minute. The patient, not the medical model so much with the etymology of the word patient meaning the one who suffers is the one coming to therapy, suffers and their suffering on two accounts. The way we're looking at it here, they're suffering with the symptoms have brought them into therapy, their anxiety, depression, their addiction, internalized trauma.
00;32;28;03 - 00;32;53;12
James Finley
And they're in therapy hoping that by our time together there might be a diminishment of those symptoms, they might be restored to wholeness. And there's the commitment to do that due to the science of that evidence. Based therapy on how. Yeah, there's something else, too. There's a patient and they're suffering from this traumatized state and not really seeing how that is.
00;32;53;12 - 00;33;25;01
James Finley
Infinite love is infinitely in love with them in and as intimate details of the unresolved matters of their heart. So this infinite presence is presence. And so giving itself away, holding complete in the intimate immediacy of the very presence including permeating the unresolved matters of their mind and heart completely through and through their suffering, because they don't know that say, well, that's the foundation of so and as well as to touch each others.
00;33;25;08 - 00;33;52;22
James Finley
So the next point is the patient, the psychotherapeutic process, psyche, meaning here, the whole cell therapy, the healing of restoring fragmentation, the wholeness, the psychotherapeutic process, the transformative process of healing, that restores the person to the hornet's of myself, both psychologically and symptom reduction, but in such a way that it simultaneously opens up the step, the mention of a wholeness within themselves.
00;33;53;04 - 00;34;23;16
James Finley
It can't be adequately explained in terms of symptom reduction. You know, like I matter and matter and my life counts, that kind of thing, I think. And then the axial moment then is the turning it's a turning, and it's a stance strikingly akin to the stance assumed in deep meditation, because what is deep meditation, these moments we're talking about first and nature and art and children, and we can't make them happen.
00;34;24;21 - 00;34;53;06
James Finley
That's the thing. We can't sit down and make one happen, but we can assume the stance that offers of least resistance to be overtaken by what we can and can't even see. We cannot attain it, but retains us in an ability to attain And so meditation is a poet. Lovers cannot make their moments of oceanic communion happened, but they know with practice how to assume the stance together, which to be overtaken one more time by a moment of oceanic union.
00;34;53;16 - 00;35;34;14
James Finley
The poet can't make the poem happen, but the poet insists on the stance that offers of least resistance in which the poetry flows. Heidegger says the location of the poetry of the holy float, not from the person, kind of flows through the. So the musician, the poet created the solitary wanderer. So whatever. Our journey is like this and and therefore actually assuming a meditate, we might not think of it that way, but they're assuming this meditative stance that offers the least resistance for in the vulnerability that arises, that flash or that pause or that taste where the tears come.
00;35;34;22 - 00;35;59;05
James Finley
It's a kind of a quiet a says somewhere. He instead it's fun to play hide and seek as long as someone comes looking for you. And it really hurts when you can tell you're in an actual moment with somebody like there's a self revealing moment and the person you're with doesn't see it but strangely alone, you're invisible. It's a person.
00;35;59;26 - 00;36;35;19
James Finley
So it's so important that the the healing in the healing position that is himself or herself. The wounded healer is someone who discerns that it's happening and mirrors it back to the person because sometimes it's so subtle, they're so identified with their trauma, they're helping it learn to see the preciousness shining through the trauma. And then the person can learn once they learn to see it, once they can recalibrate their heart to this depth dimension of themselves, then as they continue its healing, they can learn to keep drawing from it.
00;36;35;19 - 00;36;54;12
James Finley
They draw from the depth, touching, the hurting places as they move on and on and on to their healing journey. So that's that's my understanding. Standing, basically. And it would be like an initial poetic overview of a way to get the sense of it. Yeah, I kind of explore that then in detail.
00;36;54;12 - 00;37;14;00
Kelly Deutsch
And I love that I, I've sometimes struggled also to describe what that stance is like, that habitual stance, and I sometimes call it the Marion stance, you know, like where you're so vulnerable and open and childlike and receptive that the word becomes flesh, you know.
00;37;14;08 - 00;37;27;03
James Finley
And that's good. Yeah, I know. The way I put it, it's a stance of sustained attentiveness infused with love by the way I put it. But it is that Marion's that we had done it to me, according to your word.
00;37;27;09 - 00;38;03;18
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah. Which is such a beautiful thing. And I one thing that struck me as you were also talking was how much all of this ties together the contemplative and the active life because I think sometimes the assumption is that the act of life is like a life of social justice, you know, which is a good thing. But I think historically in, you know, spiritual traditions that it's more a life of virtue, just like you were saying, you know, for these, you know, alcoholics that were going through this.
00;38;03;18 - 00;38;22;23
Kelly Deutsch
Right. You were like, this is this is the beginning of a very long journey. And that journey includes essentially that life of transformation of making amends, of taking inventory, you know, and it's all the inner work that comes after that because it's not like we have these axial mystical moments. And then it's like, look, I'm a mystic now.
00;38;23;20 - 00;38;24;25
Kelly Deutsch
You know, everything's great.
00;38;25;02 - 00;38;59;27
James Finley
It's not so, so important. It's really to say, I think traditionally this is the link between mystical awakening and the corporate works of mercy. And this is the link between mystical awakening and social justice. This is what Merton saw in his book Seeds of Destruction. And Conjectures of the Guilty Bystander. He says that really what happens is that the more authentic he wants to me direction, we were in this cloistered monastery and he says, you know, we did not come here to this cloistered monastery to breathe the rarefied air beyond the suffering of the world.
00;39;00;11 - 00;39;35;11
James Finley
We came here to carry the suffering of the whole world in our heart. You said otherwise. There's no validity in working in a place like this. And so what happens is this translates to All Things Considered. Let's say I'm in my city unless I'm grounding myself in this. And then I asked for the grace as my sitting ends and I head to the day how not to break the thread of this awareness thing so that whatever I'm walking down a hallway, meeting somebody, sitting around dry how is this how is this habitually going on?
00;39;35;28 - 00;39;46;16
James Finley
And how in the midst of this activity might it manifest itself? There is how can I become a healing presence in an all too often traumatized and traumatized world?
00;39;48;18 - 00;40;22;16
James Finley
And how can I be someone in whose presence others are able to see mirrored this dimension of themselves by the way I listen to them, the way I'm real with them, the way I care about them. And so really it goes on continuously, you know, the axis of the turning world manifests itself in this activity, which is really participation in creation, because creation is an ongoing activity of the self donating love, pouring itself out as the sun going across the sky, breathing and breathing out.
00;40;23;06 - 00;40;24;22
James Finley
Yes, it's like that.
00;40;24;22 - 00;40;51;21
Kelly Deutsch
I think I know you've received this question before, but I'm curious how you answer it now. It's one thing for monks to meditate in a monastery and and to be able to continue in that stance and that presence offer that healing presence throughout the day in a life that's really centered around that, that's meant to be conducive to that, at least in intention.
00;40;53;03 - 00;41;04;07
Kelly Deutsch
What advice do you have for those of us who live in the Day-To-Day world when it's really hard to bring that presence in the midst of, you know, meetings and crying children and all the stresses of daily life?
00;41;04;08 - 00;41;32;13
James Finley
That's a great question, really. It's really, really true. There are those for whom it's a vocation to bear witness to this habitual, abiding, believing that in their fidelity to it, it touches the whole world, which we don't understand. That's true. But let's say this is say I'm drawn to this thing is I'm really drawn how do I deepen my experience of God's presence in my life and deepen my response to it?
00;41;33;08 - 00;41;56;17
James Finley
So these are the three guidelines. I think they're woven into the way The first is to find your practice and practice in a practice as any act habitually entered into with your whole heart that takes you to your deeper place. The Zen Master Roshi said, if you're faithful to your practice, your practice will be faithful to you. So what you do is you set aside a time like a rendezvous with God.
00;41;57;03 - 00;42;17;22
James Finley
There's no agenda but love to this. No. Thomas Merton once said, with regard to little sincerity goes a long, long way. And you sit there, here, and Lord like this, and so you do your let's see, oh, your word, whatever, whatever practice you're drawn to. But it's a practice. It's something you do which if you do it with your whole heart.
00;42;18;08 - 00;42;42;02
James Finley
Little by little by little, it stabilizes you in this state. And you need to be very patient with it because it takes time. You know, you have to do that. It's like learning. It's like someone who as long distance swimming or running, you can't do it every so often. You know, you almost has to be something. You're in the flow of it where unless you're faithful to it, the rest of the day doesn't go well.
00;42;42;21 - 00;42;58;19
James Finley
And so you have to develop the habit of it. And it goes against the stream, as the Buddha would say. Someone once said, trying to live this way in the world is like trying to make a U-turn on the freeway at rush hour. It goes in the opposite but if you let yourself be carried along by that, you'll lose your way.
00;42;59;01 - 00;43;26;27
James Finley
The somehow simplicity of a child. I'm right here like this. And then little by little by little, over time, all life becomes practice becomes individuated, stable over a lifetime. The second the second aspect of the way is to find your teaching and follow it. And the teaching is any teaching. The various witness to this and offers guidance in the path to be stabilized in it.
00;43;27;16 - 00;43;50;14
James Finley
So right now, this is the teaching we're bearing witness to this. So a contemplative understanding of the Scripture open up everything Jesus says, how I put it, it's like falling off a cliff that you'll never, never, never, never, never get to the bottom of anything says because it drops down into the bottomless abyss of God, welling up and giving itself to the world in everything that he says.
00;43;51;17 - 00;44;09;21
James Finley
It's like that. And yet everything he says approach from the standpoint of the ego is like a wall of sheer granite. How can I get out of this? How can I do this? How can I be good? If I sit with it, I can unlearn a child in this open stance. Then see the teaching, see. And so find the Zen master.
00;44;09;21 - 00;44;36;15
James Finley
Dogon says, Find that person whose words have awakened your heart with the desire for the great way. Then forget everything else. And so you find your teacher. So for me, Thomas Merton is on my teachers personal. I read the cloud of unknowing or some other teacher, a certain poet. I don't know what it is. Whenever I read this person, their words, the cadence and rhythms of their words helped ground me in the reality of this unity ministry.
00;44;37;20 - 00;45;06;13
James Finley
And they offer guidance and how to be faithful to it. So you journal it out, you think it through becomes a path And so little by little by little, you realize that life is your teacher. Little by little. There is no lack there is no lack of spiritual direction. There's only a lack of the awareness, the direction being given, because every moment we're being directed, the question is, are we supple enough or delicate enough or humble enough?
00;45;06;23 - 00;45;28;07
James Finley
To discern, you know, the guiding light leading us on and on and on. So we find our practice and practice that the law life becomes practice. We find our teaching and follow it. You realize that life is your teacher, and next you find your community and follow and join. Enter the deepest community of you and God trends subjective communion with the infinite community.
00;45;28;08 - 00;45;31;26
James Finley
We were taken to the Trinitarian oneness. There's your destiny.
00;45;34;24 - 00;45;56;14
James Finley
And then it's just one other person in whose presence you know, you're not alone on this path. The person you might live with, the person lucky you may be the person who's been dead for centuries. John of the Cross, with the deathless presence of their fidelity to this. When you read them out loud now you know that you form a community with them.
00;45;56;14 - 00;46;19;11
James Finley
And then Buddhists say it. When we study the Dharma, when we study the way of the Buddha, you said it's like your forehead is pressed up against the forehead of sages down to the ages, and the hairs of your eyebrows are entangled with the eyebrows. Their hair like this and you're in this kind of state. You know, we're in the purity of a word you and you can tell the teaching guide.
00;46;19;18 - 00;46;42;04
James Finley
Yeah. When you read it even before you think about it, your heart realizes that it's beautiful and your mind knows it's beautiful because it's true. Hmm. And find the person whose words speak this way sometimes. Also, we realize that our people don't maybe think this way. Sometimes like a grandmother, a grandfather, or mother or father, lover or spouse, friend whatever.
00;46;42;04 - 00;47;05;10
James Finley
If we're lucky, there's a certain person where they're kind of earthy, real ness, you know, they're kind of self giving and questioning, whether present to life. And you you can tell their presence makes the world a better place to be. And they form a community where birds of a feather flock together. And so we seek our kinship with people.
00;47;05;10 - 00;47;30;23
James Finley
That's why I think websites like yours are podcast. Like, that's what it's all about. Monastery in cyberspace, just like an interconnected gathering. Yes, the transcend space and time. And so that community and you realize the whole world is your community. God, soul of the world that you send is only begotten son. It's the world. And so you find your practice and practice it, find your teaching and follow it.
00;47;32;10 - 00;47;50;21
James Finley
And those are the kind of archetypal or transcendental qualities, the way the woven right into our very nature really And so as we learn to be faithful to them in our own pace, in our own way, little by little, we can discover in our own way that we're living this way. Mm hmm. Yeah.
00;47;50;21 - 00;48;08;14
Kelly Deutsch
That's beautiful. And I think that's very practical advice for those of us who recognize I'm not living in a monastery. You know, some of us, you know, you and I have had that experience. And it is a wonderful thing where you have hours of prayer. And but it's also not all it's cracked up to be sometimes.
00;48;08;14 - 00;48;29;04
James Finley
Seriously or another way, another way to look at it, too. So the people who listen to your podcasts think how many people clicked on your podcast and said, I'll pass. So the very fact they're drawn to listen bears witness to their heart that they are on this path, because on this path, it's where they find being meditatively present to it is their practice.
00;48;29;11 - 00;48;44;02
James Finley
They find it at the teaching, they find it in the community. And so, like, the soul knows where it needs to go to find what it needs to find. And you can tell when you've landed in the place where the slowest happening. Yeah. You just go with it. Yeah.
00;48;44;25 - 00;48;46;11
Kelly Deutsch
Do you have time for one more question?
00;48;46;16 - 00;48;47;14
James Finley
Uh huh, yeah, I do.
00;48;47;14 - 00;48;47;25
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00;48;50;01 - 00;49;13;01
Kelly Deutsch
You mentioned that these you know, you had this aha moment that these axial moments can happen in therapy and in this healing of trauma. And I'm wondering if there's a moment and axial moment in your own life that you'd like to share of when that trauma and maybe some of the difficult things that you would experience know how, share how much or however little you would like.
00;49;13;12 - 00;49;19;16
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. But when that became a moment of encounter and receptivity to the outlook.
00;49;19;17 - 00;49;42;16
James Finley
Okay, I'll share three more. I'm writing my memoir and this segment of this short window myself these days. So let me share it for me for this. After all, briefly had it the first time for me, very briefly was my father was a violent alcoholic and I was about three years old. And I was lying in dark and a bit afraid because I was listening to my father beat my mother outside the door.
00;49;43;17 - 00;50;01;10
James Finley
And Jerry said, because maybe earlier that day he hit me and I knew that if he wanted to tomorrow he hit me again and no one was going to stop him. My mother was a devout Roman Catholic. We would take she'd take us to Mass. We'd ask us to pray to God, to give us the strength to get to the things that happen when she puts it, when daddy gets angry.
00;50;02;08 - 00;50;25;26
James Finley
And so lying there in the dark, I took my mother's words to heart and I prayed the way frightened children. My experience was that God heard my prayer, came to me in the dark and merged with me, letting me know that I was in my own What was the earliest experience? And I realized later when I got up the next morning and when out the violence still went on.
00;50;25;26 - 00;50;49;13
James Finley
But it was better because when my father was hitting me, he thought he was hitting me, but he was hitting that effigy of me. He didn't know the real me had been taken by God. Into a secret place he didn't know about. Later, I became a psychologist and realized I was dissociating. And really, I borrowed my mother's religious imagery and I lived in his dissociative state with David.
00;50;49;13 - 00;51;15;12
James Finley
A religious meeting with the fact I was dissociating does not mean at all that God did not hear my prayer, that God did not sustain me and be given to me and to be one with me. The second moment for me was in the monastery where one it was cloistered and we got up at two 30 in the morning and all this chanting the Psalms and we didn't talk live in complete silence.
00;51;15;13 - 00;51;40;14
James Finley
You sign language and if they do, they're in the draft Cistercian. That's interesting. And so it was this cloistered silence, manual labor and simplicity and prayer because and the cumulative effect of that silence was really something. So the big turning point for me was I got permission from Merton to spend time each day in a band in the life of an abandoned sheep barn.
00;51;41;18 - 00;52;10;02
James Finley
And one time I was up there and the doors were always open out on this meadow. And I was walking back and forth reading the Psalms. And all of a sudden there was a vivid realization that we tend to think of the air as really God. And I was literally walking back and forth through God breathing God, and there's a God, this oceanic God, I was breathing new me through and through and through and through was compassion.
00;52;10;20 - 00;52;28;02
James Finley
And I knew that if I would try to run away from God at running away from God in God and wherever I ended up, God would be waiting for me when I got there. And I didn't need to run away because it was it was endless mercy in all directions. And I walked around like that for three days or and for three days.
00;52;28;02 - 00;52;48;08
James Finley
It just so I don't know. It just really a third day I was walking up this little dirt road I share reading God and this little lake I used to go to, and there was a low lying branch of a tree. And I reached out and I touch one leaf on the tree and looked up in the sky.
00;52;48;08 - 00;53;05;12
James Finley
There was one cloud in the sky and I said, Oh, Lord, it's one if the God I was breathing the cloud in the sky, the belief that I was touching myself. And I left the room. He went over into this field is a very windy day. It's had all afternoon like that changed my whole life. No, it's never left me.
00;53;05;12 - 00;53;44;14
James Finley
I mean, it's left me a lot of later traumas, things I had to go through, but in some foundational sense. And so I feel that when I teach, I'm teaching that when I left the monastery, I asked in Walsh, how can I conveyed this unity of mystery to people out here? And he said, You can't communicate it, but it will communicate itself through you if you're convinced in what you say and if you are what you say, because deep calls to deep and you know, to be communicating itself because something deep within them will know is being addressed, written, called the spiritual communication and have always based it on that.
00;53;44;25 - 00;54;10;28
James Finley
And then I see therapy as the modality of that you know, the depth of the therapy has it has the same kind of quality to it. Sometimes it's latent, it's in the background. Depends on the person but so for me those would be three moments for me. And so my wife died was when she died right here in the living room last March of Alzheimer's, sitting next to her.
00;54;10;28 - 00;54;17;27
James Finley
When she died, there was another moment for me. So there you go. It's my life. I go.
00;54;18;10 - 00;54;42;26
Kelly Deutsch
Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. It is. Just as Dan Walsh said, you know, that deep calling into deep because it's I find it's not just the words, but the presence that you share as you share those stories that, you know, it's I can feel even just in my body, you know, the quieting and being drawn into that deeper presence.
00;54;42;26 - 00;55;03;14
James Finley
That's right. That's right. And see that presence is the presence of God. Giving yourself away is the intimate immediacy of the gift of your presence. And so when we're together like this, each and anyone who's listening to this who feels that they're with us, too. Yeah, it's like this. And I think this is the was this contemplative community.
00;55;03;16 - 00;55;09;03
James Finley
I mean, this is what we're trying to honor and walk with and help people with and. Yeah.
00;55;09;13 - 00;55;18;05
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Well, I appreciate that you were able to share some of that today. The contemplative community and speaking of the things that no one can express.
00;55;18;23 - 00;55;27;09
James Finley
Yeah. Thank you to you for the work you do in making this available to people this session. Of teachers, you know, beautiful.
00;55;27;14 - 00;55;33;05
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. And Jim, if people want to learn more about your work and some of the things that you're up to, where should they go?
00;55;33;21 - 00;56;03;15
James Finley
I would say if they go to my website, which is run by CDC just to instantly dot org, they'll see their videos and things like this. They'll also see recorded, the ones that professor that I gave, I think it's 10 hours that I gave on two contemplative weekends where I lay this out of seven steps and at the end of it is a printout, a PDF file of the seven steps with the list of readings in the mystical traditions in depth psychology.
00;56;04;08 - 00;56;32;24
James Finley
And there's also the smaller previous version, which sounds true trauma and transcendence, but it did with Carolyn Mace. So there's a sounds true audio. There's The Longer Audio Files, there's another audio set that's going to be put on later. And then there's those talks. And I would hope this book that I'm working on I would I would hope that at the present rate I hope to have it done within the next four to five months maybe.
00;56;32;24 - 00;56;34;04
James Finley
So shouldn't be too much longer.
00;56;34;27 - 00;56;37;25
Kelly Deutsch
Wonderful. Yeah. Well, keep an eye out for that.
00;56;38;00 - 00;56;51;24
James Finley
And also, I think to the turning to the Mystics podcast, there's a lot of that in those as a lot of this, the tonal quality of those podcasts with personalities resonates with this, too. So those would be places that could go.
00;56;52;03 - 00;57;07;08
Kelly Deutsch
Absolutely, yes. James Finlay, dot org. And turning to the Mystics, you'll find all of that on his website. No, Wonderful. Well, this has been a great gift. I feel like I could ask you questions and talk about these things for hours, so I'm glad we at least got some time.
00;57;07;22 - 00;57;10;00
James Finley
To me, too. I'm grateful. Good.
00;57;10;08 - 00;57;12;08
Kelly Deutsch
Thank you. Thank you all for joining us today.
00;57;12;08 - 00;57;16;07
James Finley
And thank you very much, everybody here. Thanks. Thank you. Yep.