The Joy of Silence

Bruce Davis is the author of 9 books, including Monastery without Walls and Simple Peace: The Spiritual Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. With a PhD in contemplative psychology, he is the leader of one of the top 10 meditation retreats in the world.

Today, Bruce will share his decades of experience leading silent retreats - and pursuing a practice of silence himself. Why is silence so powerful? Why do we fear it - and why are we drawn toward it?

Bruce also founded one of the first interspiritual retreat centers in Assisi, Italy, after falling in love with the joy of Saint Francis. What does this mystic have to teach us today?

Join us for a deep dive into joy, silence, wonder, and play.

To learn more about Bruce’s work, visit assisiretreats.org and silentstay.com.

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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.

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Kelly Deutsch,

Will deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to behold. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch.

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Kelly Deutsch,

Hello, everyone. I'm Kelly Deutsch, and I have with me today here Bruce Davis. I mean, we're going to have a conversation about the contemplative life and Bruce's story. Bruce is an author as well as a spiritual and retreat leader. He's the head of one of the top ten retreat centers in the world and has written over nine books on the spiritual and contemplative life, including two or is it three on Saint Francis?

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Kelly Deutsch,

Two to one, Saint Francis. And another is would you say your most popular one is Monastery Without Walls?

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Bruce Davis

It's one of them, right?

00;01;32;24 - 00;01;49;17

Kelly Deutsch,

Yeah. Yeah. So Bruce and I connected, and we're excited to have a conversation and share with all of you as well a bit of the world of silence, contemplative life, the divine. And I'd love to hear some about Saint Francis, too. So, Bruce, thanks so much for joining us.

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Bruce Davis

Yeah, thank you for inviting me.

00;01;51;14 - 00;02;11;22

Kelly Deutsch,

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. To start us off, would you mind sharing a little bit about a little bit about your story? Like what was it that prepared you to become a retreat leader? Like you don't just become a retreat leader of one of the top ten centers in the world. Out of the blue. Where did all that begin?

00;02;12;17 - 00;02;54;11

Bruce Davis

Well, it's a long story, but briefly in the 1960s I was involved in the antiwar movement, the anti-Putin and long story. Sure, I got in trouble. I was a bunch of defendants, you know, and I what I discovered was You can't change the world unless we change ourselves. And that was a deep lesson because we had to get along there as a leader of the black movement, the women's movement, the faculty there is a Puerto Rican, was a whole group of us that were doing this process together, and we were as crazy as the people we were trying to change you.

00;02;54;11 - 00;03;22;03

Bruce Davis

Yeah. And so in those days, all these new therapies were coming out, Gustav therapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, transsexual analysis. And so after my undergraduate study, I went to graduate school to become a psychologist, and I got a Ph.D. in psychology learning all these therapies. And then I was at an opening seminar, one night, and there was a woman in our seminar who was a shaman.

00;03;22;21 - 00;03;40;18

Bruce Davis

And in those days, I didn't know what a shame it was. And that night, it was sleeping. And she came and sat on the end of my bed in my dream. And I woke up quite startled. And the next morning, I went to see her. And before I said anything, she said, Do you remember me coming to you last night?

00;03;41;08 - 00;04;11;16

Bruce Davis

And I've been expecting you. And that started a four year relationship that she would come into my dreams and teach me. Wow. And I. I come from a nonreligious farm. I was raised Jewish and just religion was doing good behavior, good deeds. You know, there is nothing spiritual about it. But then in graduate school, I discovered all these feelings, you know, early childhood feelings and all these things.

00;04;12;04 - 00;04;29;05

Bruce Davis

But the shame in coming into my dreams, she would take me to the other side to dream classes on the other side. And all these experiences I had with her on she said I was the most stubborn student she ever had. I don't know if.

00;04;29;05 - 00;04;30;11

Kelly Deutsch,

That's a compliment or.

00;04;31;28 - 00;04;56;25

Bruce Davis

Because in our culture, there's no room for any of this. There is no understanding, no space for. And during this time, during these four years, it was very intense, beautiful time. I was finishing my doctorate, and I went and lived in the Philippines for a while with the healers there and people were healing just with the love out of their hands.

00;04;57;10 - 00;05;28;01

Bruce Davis

And that was very powerful for me to see. Very special. But after all of this I'm just a normal American kid from Denver, Colorado, you know, and I was wondering, where does all of this fit in our culture? You know, there's no space for it in our culture. And so a long story short, I was in Europe and the first night in Europe, a shame and taught me to have dreams, how to learn through dreams.

00;05;28;01 - 00;05;52;13

Bruce Davis

I had a dream. Whereas in this great big valley and a bird landed on my shoulder and there was this incredible peace and I woke up thinking about Saint Francis. Now, I was not raised Christian. So for me, Saint Francis is a garden statue, but but my friend said, you know, there's a place in Italy that has that feeling.

00;05;52;13 - 00;06;20;23

Bruce Davis

It's incredible. Hmm. So in those days, I was traveling around leading retreats around psychology and what I learned from the shaman. And the first time I would see shows with 88 people from 11 different countries. Wow. And we landed in Assisi, and I felt like I came home you know, all these experiences I had had, they were in my culture or my religion or anything.

00;06;21;06 - 00;06;48;09

Bruce Davis

And when I came to Assisi, I felt the same energy, the same presence, the same peace that I learned from the shaman. And I felt like I came home. So a dream that time I was finishing school, and I wrote a book called The Magical Child within year. And it was the first book on the inner child, I'm told you know, there is all these ideas that you discover the painful child and all the terrible things that happen to us as a kid.

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Bruce Davis

But nobody was talking about the innocent child, the French child the magical child and the shame and awaken that inside of me, you know, because I had been to Primal Therapy and Ghost out there, all these different therapies and training and analysis. But nobody was talking about what the shaman was talking about was joy, happiness, love, peace. You know, when she took me to the other side, it was a peace without it was a peace without borders.

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Bruce Davis

So it's just incredible. And so I wrote this book called The Magical Child Within You And that's her really got me started on offering retreats and seminars. And then I wrote another book back then called the The Heart of Healing, which was a big bestseller. And that was about a course of miracles. And have you ever heard of miracles?

00;07;40;22 - 00;08;09;10

Bruce Davis

Yeah, I was one of the first students of the Course of Miracles. When it very first came out, we had to go to Sonoma Library because there was only one copy there and read our daily lesson or take a copy of Home with this so that the course in Miracles and the teachings from the shame end and the teachings in the Philippines And then after that I started going to CC more regularly and integrating all these things because it's in every culture.

00;08;09;23 - 00;08;19;19

Bruce Davis

It's just it's more difficult to find in modern Western culture. Mm hmm. So that's how I got started. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Hmm.

00;08;22;27 - 00;08;47;13

Kelly Deutsch,

It's amazing to me how certain places will give you that profound sense of peace because almost everyone that I know that's been to Assisi is had that same experience. And I don't know if that's just the spirit of Saint Francis or if it's the beautiful landscape or something else magical about that place. But there is such a like, you just feel like you breathe more deeply there.

00;08;48;15 - 00;09;14;07

Bruce Davis

That's everything. You say. I mean, we meet tourists who are walking through town and they don't know why, but they suddenly find themselves crying. Oh, wow. And frequently, because we lived in Assisi for 12 years and, you know, attended millions of tourists over 800 years of pilgrims looking for something in all those churches and cathedrals and gardens. They now embody that journey.

00;09;15;03 - 00;09;36;17

Bruce Davis

And as Americans, we don't have places like that, really. Not that not that profound. But in Europe, there are these places. In Asia, there's some these places for me, as sincere as it was, is and was the place we used to go that we still belong there and we still run retreats there and see, it's very easy. Yeah.

00;09;37;00 - 00;09;41;20

Kelly Deutsch,

Are all the retreats you run mostly silent retreats, or do you have a mixture?

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Bruce Davis

In a sense, it's a mixture because we're right in town, but we encourage people to keep their inner silence and we go into the monasteries and cathedrals and the backstreets and just sit and enjoy the silence and just listen to our own hearts. And in Assisi, it's hard to describe it. I mean, you know, it's just there's this peace there that even people who are in a lot of stress, they find another part of themselves.

00;10;11;25 - 00;10;20;18

Bruce Davis

You know, they find themselves that's underneath the stress. And there's this big space of Assisi inside each of us. Yeah.

00;10;20;19 - 00;10;33;14

Kelly Deutsch,

It's a lovely way, putting it how many of the people who attend your retreats are completely inexperienced in sitting in silence? The interior life.

00;10;35;06 - 00;10;41;09

Bruce Davis

But we have two centers. We had one in Assisi, the one in upstate California that burned down last year.

00;10;41;17 - 00;10;42;23

Kelly Deutsch,

Heard that? I'm sorry.

00;10;43;04 - 00;11;02;04

Bruce Davis

Yeah, but we relocated out of San Barbara, and we're going to start again here in a few months anyway in Santa Barbara. It's totally silent because there's no Assisi there. And when we were up north, it was totally safe. And what was interesting about 70% of the people that came have never meditated before and never done a retreat.

00;11;02;18 - 00;11;02;24

Kelly Deutsch,

Oh.

00;11;04;02 - 00;11;26;24

Bruce Davis

Wow. They just felt called the silence. And there's lots of stories. But, you know, when you have a area that's dedicated to science, and at first people feel a little bit vulnerable and naked, but we tell them it's not really about not talking. It's about like being in the library of your own heart. You know, you just want to sit and be and relax.

00;11;27;13 - 00;11;53;12

Bruce Davis

And then we learned through the years, after all the different therapies and the whole pilgrimage and stuff, we teach heart from this meditation, which is letting go of our busy mind and receiving the heart inside our heart. And to be honest with you, beginners do much better at this than people have been. Meditate for 20 years is interesting.

00;11;54;06 - 00;12;14;01

Bruce Davis

Yeah. Because most of people have been meditating for 20 years. They're doing this mindfulness where they're watching their thoughts and they've got this whole technique going on and they got this little system going on, and it's difficult for them to get out of their system and just be and just receive peace. Let me tell you another funny story.

00;12;14;11 - 00;12;18;24

Bruce Davis

The most difficult people to have on retreat in Assisi are ministers.

00;12;19;08 - 00;12;21;02

Kelly Deutsch,

Oh, interesting. Why is that?

00;12;21;16 - 00;12;42;16

Bruce Davis

Because they're so tied up into all the stories in the Bible and all this other stuff where people just come off the streets. They're not so tied up to be performing as a minister, you know, and they just come in and be and we've had priests come to Assisi and they say, you know, just between you and me, how do you pray?

00;12;43;05 - 00;13;08;22

Bruce Davis

They say, what do you mean? How do you pray? And they said, well, we went to seminary and everything. I mean, we're Catholic priests, but and we say all the things we're supposed to say. But honestly, how do you pray? And I tell them we listen. It's not about talking and we listen. And then we begin hearing the in the silence that God is listening with us.

00;13;11;06 - 00;13;22;24

Bruce Davis

Yeah. And in that space, the prayer begins to take form, whatever it is. Yeah. There's no techniques, really. There's no training.

00;13;23;21 - 00;13;36;21

Kelly Deutsch,

Isn't that remarkable? I've had priests, friends tell me the same thing, that they're like, I thought I knew how to pray. You know? And then somebody taught them, like, Ignatian meditation or like they learned something of a more contemplative nature in their lives.

00;13;37;10 - 00;13;54;25

Bruce Davis

Oh, and so that's true for meditation or prayer or a lot of spiritual things. People learn techniques, but there is no technique, really, that's so important. Just getting permission for a simple piece Hmm. And it's.

00;13;54;25 - 00;14;11;20

Kelly Deutsch,

Hard. I find the techniques sometimes are like our security blanket until we're ready to let go into that silence that it, in theory, can be our training wheels to help us transition to the silence and just being stillness, receiving.

00;14;12;05 - 00;14;30;13

Bruce Davis

The problem is we lived in the country outside of Assisi on a farm, and that was our silent retreat house. And then when we came back to America after being gone so long, you could feel it in America. We're hyped up. We don't even know it. Mm hmm. I can't I can't think of a better word. You know, we're just uptight.

00;14;30;13 - 00;14;45;00

Bruce Davis

We're just hyped up. You know? And when we came back, there's all these alerts on TV, and, you know, this energy and you know, it's really it's really intense. It's it's sad. Yeah.

00;14;45;20 - 00;15;07;04

Kelly Deutsch,

I was just reading in a book, and I can't remember the statistic exactly. It was either that 75% of Americans are sympathetic, dominant, you know, so, like, the flight flight, or it was Americans are in sympathetic 75% of the time, you know, either one, I believe, you know, that we just have that buzzy energy that we get.

00;15;07;20 - 00;15;19;20

Bruce Davis

I read and I read it in the article somebody is a normal American has 78,000 thoughts a day. And my God I'm lucky to have ten or 15,000 read.

00;15;20;19 - 00;15;44;12

Kelly Deutsch,

Which my gosh, most people would be jealous of you because there is such a frenetic energy I remember one person that I had in spiritual direction. She had studied art over in Florence in Italy, and she said it was just it took her an entire year to just slow down. She would always be like, Okay, ready to go, time to start the stuff and start projects.

00;15;44;20 - 00;16;01;08

Kelly Deutsch,

And our Italian friends would be like, Oh, my, you know, like, just take a breather first a bit of coffee, then we'll have a cigaret and then we'll get started. You know, there's just a rhythm that's much more tranquilo, as they say. I like just about every time.

00;16;04;04 - 00;16;08;12

Kelly Deutsch,

Yeah. And it's just different in the US Yes.

00;16;08;21 - 00;16;15;20

Bruce Davis

I think the work you're doing is really important that people need to understand. Being a contemplative is really be normal.

00;16;18;04 - 00;16;28;23

Bruce Davis

You know, slowing down, breathing It's getting this hyper, this tense, this tense realm and coming back to Earth.

00;16;29;14 - 00;17;04;29

Kelly Deutsch,

Right? Yeah, right. And that's I'm intrigued that you also have this psychology degree, because that's something that I find absolutely fascinating is that intersection between psychology, neurobiology and the spiritual life, because most spiritual practices are essentially trying to get you to be back in that parasympathetic state or, you know, they call it the rest and digest. But it's really just our default mode of I'm just present, I'm here calm in my body and in Western culture where it's so buzzy, it takes a lot of spiritual practice to.

00;17;05;17 - 00;17;40;12

Bruce Davis

Yeah, the problem in psychology and now little psychology is so much about drugs. Even when it's about feelings, it doesn't really understand that our mental realms is just the surface of our awareness, all the thinking and all the feeling. It's like the waves on the ocean and our spirituality is the ocean. You find this big vastness inside. And so we spent, as a psychologist, or therapist, we spent all this time thinking and feeling and understanding our feelings and talking about our feelings and going back to old feelings.

00;17;40;28 - 00;18;07;23

Bruce Davis

But that is still just a surface of our awareness. There's just the waves. And most people, they spend their entire lives trying to be comfortable in the waves, and they're never really comfortable until they come into the ocean. And here we're comfortable. So what happens in psychology and emotion and culture are separate from our ocean of awareness, which also makes us separate from our spirituality.

00;18;08;13 - 00;18;30;24

Bruce Davis

Most people, they have faith in God, but when you know the ocean, it's not a matter of faith. You know God. No, you experience it directly. It's inside of us. And so I don't really practice as a psychologist because we're much more than our thoughts and our feelings. That's just the surface. That's just the language to get through this every day.

00;18;31;12 - 00;19;01;12

Bruce Davis

But underneath the waves is an entire ocean of who we are. And most and even a lot of religions or meditation techniques They're still in the waves. They're not teaching the ocean. People are not directly experiencing this big piece. And that's why we live there. We keep going back to Assisi, Italy. He brought the church back to the ocean, to nature, to the feminine, to the heart.

00;19;01;27 - 00;19;38;09

Bruce Davis

Now, all these are part of the ocean, spirituality. And so, unfortunately, my field of psychology is really limited Even the inner child right now, it's normal. When I was doing this, it was not normal. No, it's just beginning. But even the inner child that it's still the waves, that's our personal things are thoughts or feelings. It's our joy that underneath the inner child is a great big heart and includes the inner child that includes our innocence, a profound peace, you know, love.

00;19;38;09 - 00;20;05;29

Bruce Davis

People have their own experiences coming home. And so it's a mountain of beingness. And the inner child is just one door into the heart. There are many doors into the heart and the journey that the journey for me is opening the doors in the heart and receiving our. And unfortunately, most of meditation is about observing and it's not about receiving.

00;20;06;29 - 00;20;36;05

Bruce Davis

And I don't want just one observer all my thoughts. I teach people that meditation in most people is 20 minutes thinking about not thinking that's not really that much fun, you know, boring. Yeah. Meditation is going underneath our thoughts and receiving our deep heart receive fear. And then the thoughts naturally fade away. And you're not involved in the waves.

00;20;36;05 - 00;20;56;11

Bruce Davis

The surface of our mental of our mental energy. There's something much more profound that is present. Hmm. And you can, you can call it what you want to call our spiritual self guide. Christ, that we don't we never discuss religion because it's not really about the words. It's about the love. It's about the heart, the experience.

00;20;57;10 - 00;21;23;07

Kelly Deutsch,

I wonder if that sounds like a good way to distinguish between meditation as prayer versus meditation as mindfulness one. Is that more like, okay, I'm trying to not think my thoughts, like, I'm just observing. Just observe, just just observe. You know, when you're training your brain to do that, versus meditation as prayer to me has always been about some sort of relationship with whatever that is.

00;21;23;07 - 00;21;50;08

Kelly Deutsch,

The Divine Spark, love being existence but there is that that inner this is my favorite, an interior stance. You know, I like to call it a Marion stance, like like Mary received the Divine Spark as well. And that's, that's really, I think, what we're trying to achieve and that's not even the right word. It's that's a Western ism popping out achievement.

00;21;50;08 - 00;21;55;21

Kelly Deutsch,

But really trying to relax into is perhaps a better way of putting it yeah.

00;21;55;21 - 00;22;36;08

Bruce Davis

That's beautiful said it's like so during prayer but virtually most meditation, most prayer in the West for me is still to mental. You know, we're exercising our mental bodily and what I learned from Saint Francis and also spending time in India and in Hindu and Buddhist cultures is the importance of emptiness and in our emptiness, not only does our mental worlds get smaller and not so on top of us, you know, we're not so loaded down and emptiness freezes of our mental worlds, we get another perspective of our personality.

00;22;36;22 - 00;23;06;10

Bruce Davis

But more important, when we're in our emptiness, the heart of our awareness naturally comes forward. And we're now most people, their hearts have been stomped on all they noise in trucks and trauma. Life is like on top of their poor little heart. But in our emptiness, all that is unloaded and we find this big space inside. And then naturally the heart of our awareness comes forward.

00;23;06;29 - 00;23;25;26

Bruce Davis

And in the heart of our awareness Meditation naturally happens. There are no thinking. It's just you just being in the heart of your awareness and prayer. And naturally happens again. There's not so much to pray about when you have emptiness because everything is present.

00;23;26;09 - 00;23;27;01

Kelly Deutsch,

Right?

00;23;27;17 - 00;23;28;03

Bruce Davis

You know.

00;23;28;03 - 00;23;33;01

Kelly Deutsch,

That's such an interesting paradox that in emptiness you have the most profound presence.

00;23;33;22 - 00;24;11;08

Bruce Davis

Right? And so after living in other cultures, even with the Italian farmers in the countryside, they're much more peaceful than our farmers. You know, they can sit around the entire afternoon and just have a coffee and just be there on the farm. We had a farm do next door, these old farmers, and they have emptiness. They were really poor people, simple people, but they had everything and in our culture, we now live in a wealthy community in California, and people have everything, but they don't have emptiness and you can feel, you know, they're missing something.

00;24;13;01 - 00;24;19;22

Bruce Davis

And so that was a big gift from Saint Francis. And a lot of people don't really understand what lady poverty is about.

00;24;19;23 - 00;24;25;13

Kelly Deutsch,

I was just going to ask that. I was like, do you think that was Francis's word for emptiness was lady poverty?

00;24;26;00 - 00;24;48;26

Bruce Davis

Yeah, So he would sit in his cave and there's many caves on mountaintops all over Italy, middle of Italy. Maybe you visit somewhere, and he would just sit in the silence but he was not alone because he was with Lady Poverty and with Lady Poverty is his profound beauty of sitting in emptiness. And she's always giving you always provided in the church things.

00;24;48;26 - 00;25;10;08

Bruce Davis

Poverty is about being poor and having nothing and, you know, giving everything away. It's about materialism, but it's not about materialism at all. Poverty is about lady poverty, and she gives you everything. And Francis being Italian and being a romantic and everything, he would call her a lady poverty, of course.

00;25;10;08 - 00;25;10;22

Kelly Deutsch,

Right.

00;25;11;05 - 00;25;11;09

Bruce Davis

Next.

00;25;11;28 - 00;25;14;07

Kelly Deutsch,

Or that he was exactly there.

00;25;14;18 - 00;25;18;06

Bruce Davis

Yeah. So I'm a lover of lady poverty, too. Yeah.

00;25;18;13 - 00;25;51;25

Kelly Deutsch,

I love that understanding of it. It's more of a spiritual poverty than a material poverty. Of just what you were talking about, the emptiness, the inner spaciousness and feeling that. And to me, it's been something that it's like a recognition of our utter dependance on something greater than us, because that's also what material poverty forces us to do, is recognize, like, I need something outside of me.

00;25;53;16 - 00;26;00;25

Kelly Deutsch,

I suppose the flip side of spiritual poverty is that you recognize that you need something higher, but it's also somehow profoundly within.

00;26;02;05 - 00;26;20;05

Bruce Davis

You know, that's the problem in modern culture. All the answers are outside. So we need more money or we need more God, or we need more of this or more of that. Let's begin because we live on the waves of our awareness and not the ocean. And when you live more in the ocean, the answers are not out of sight.

00;26;20;11 - 00;26;41;23

Bruce Davis

Yeah, the answers are inside my shame and always taught me that all the answers to your questions are within three feet of you. And this was before the Internet, before there was any of that and it was she was trying to teach me that the answers are always right here with us inside. Mhm. Yeah, yeah.

00;26;42;13 - 00;26;54;27

Kelly Deutsch,

Yeah. And I just as you mentioned, you know, being in such a kind of inter spiritual place where you teach that core of the religions, I mean that core, I mean is what I and some other is called mysticism.

00;26;55;13 - 00;26;55;29

Bruce Davis

Right now.

00;26;56;00 - 00;27;21;15

Kelly Deutsch,

And that, that beautiful center place where mystics of every religion will tell you like I love John of the Cross, you know, he said Dios se and central della anima, you know, you didn't say that God is the center of our soul, not that God is located there, but he is that's, that's the core of us. And you can find that among almost any mystics of any religion.

00;27;23;04 - 00;27;48;27

Bruce Davis

Yeah. I've been involved in this community, the near-death community. People have died and come back. Wow. It has. And I've had some my own experiences of that. Wow. And it's not separate from us. It's in the core of our own heart now in this profound love, this profound connectedness and that's the prayer and meditation when it's it takes us to that place.

00;27;49;15 - 00;28;20;14

Bruce Davis

If it's not if it's not entertaining our mental body and our, you know, our neediness yeah. We have a lot of these people used to come to us for retreats because people have an automobile accident or heart attack, and they have this profound experience and then they come back to like, oh my God, what's going on here? You know, because they're so used to our material world and personality and everything is outside and now ultimately nothing is outside.

00;28;20;14 - 00;28;40;00

Bruce Davis

It's all inside. And so I tell them, you don't need a heart attack to discover this place inside. You don't need an automobile accident. There's a much easier way. Just go into the silence of your heart for a few days and just be like a sponge. Yeah, yeah. So we need to be a sponge in the very heart of our awareness.

00;28;40;19 - 00;29;02;20

Bruce Davis

And then these experiences that people have on the other side, we discover it's right here. Now, it's with us. And but emptiness is an important part of it because we're so mental in our culture. And that's all a filter it's just as separates us from this profound light from the grace. Yeah.

00;29;04;05 - 00;29;26;24

Kelly Deutsch,

One thing I wanted to ask you was about suffering, because I feel like suffering can be one of those doors to the heart, and it's perhaps the greatest draw to religion in making sense of suffering in life and all of that. But it can also be the greatest obstacle to religion or spirituality, you know, when people are like Well, what does this mean?

00;29;27;19 - 00;29;38;27

Kelly Deutsch,

And so I'm curious what you have learned from suffering in your own life personally and what role you see it playing in spirituality Well.

00;29;39;10 - 00;30;03;21

Bruce Davis

I was raised Jewish and in Judaism we have this whole history of suffering and sort of like a history of supporting you in a community, and it sounds like it's in your bones. And then after I met Saint Francis, I became a Catholic and and for me, I wasn't raised inside the church, so I have no problems with the church.

00;30;05;06 - 00;30;31;06

Bruce Davis

We have all these Catholics coming to our retreats, you know, and I'm not interested in guilt and sin and all that stuff, but I am interested as a France first. Francis gave the cross of resurrection, which means as you grow closer to that cross, it's resurrection. And that's a big support that's the God inside our heart is offering resurrection.

00;30;32;12 - 00;31;07;04

Bruce Davis

And then very beautiful, even the crucified Christ only in Christianity they know about. There's God so deeply with us in our suffering and our struggles. And so I'm not into like I feel bad about Christ's sacrifice, sacrifice and all this Christian dogma about the cross. I don't believe in any of it. The only thing is true for me is that the crucified Christ is a symbol of this God being born and carrying so deeply into the human experience and being with us.

00;31;07;15 - 00;31;35;00

Bruce Davis

We are not alone in our suffering. And for me, that's very powerful because in other religions, no Buddha and Hindu Hindu is for the great teachers. And so not that I know of. Did any of them come so deeply into the human experience of crucifixion? And so for me, those are the two gifts of Christianity. One is the resurrected Christ and the other is the crucified Christ.

00;31;35;07 - 00;32;05;13

Bruce Davis

Hmm. Yeah, I think that's oh, go ahead. As I say. And the third part is it was the religion is missing the feminine. And Mary is really important I spent a whole year of my life seeking that feminine, and she talked to me every day for a whole year. And I wrote this little book, My Little Flowers, the it was the best year of my life.

00;32;05;26 - 00;32;27;01

Bruce Davis

And what happened during that year was a year of my divorce. I when I was single and it was three interesting that when I meet people often in our profound nakedness or difficulty is the time that God is the closest to us. And so it felt like no accident that that was the year I heard that voice. Yeah.

00;32;30;27 - 00;32;40;15

Bruce Davis

That in our profound nakedness, our heart is very present, which is also the heart of God. Mm hmm.

00;32;42;19 - 00;32;42;24

Bruce Davis

Mean.

00;32;43;04 - 00;32;50;03

Kelly Deutsch,

I feel like there's a resurgence of the feminine, or at least of a hunger for the feminine. Why do you suppose that is?

00;32;52;03 - 00;33;22;14

Bruce Davis

Because we're a way to masculinity, Yang. We're destroying the planet with all this mental male energy. And the feminine brings us back inside to the mother, to our feelings, to our heart. My wife has spent a lot of time in Hinduism and Christianity but in Hinduism, there's not just Mary, there's all these goddesses, and each one is a different aspect of the feminine goddess.

00;33;23;01 - 00;33;51;18

Bruce Davis

And she teaches people to come in and pre-retirement from new moon to full moon to embody this goddess in your life, to restore basically the feminine. So it was Boggle. There's Tara, there's all these aspects. There's Carly, there's all these aspects of the feminine. And you in the end, you bring them in and in your body, they're already part of our heart.

00;33;52;02 - 00;34;13;16

Bruce Davis

But by taking them up from formal to new moon, you allow this part of the goddess to come forward into your awareness. What happens is that people have emptiness, but then they fill it right back up with thinking and materialism. They don't know what to do with it, you know, because even in meditation, you can have ten, 20 minutes of just thinking it's wonderful.

00;34;13;24 - 00;34;34;13

Bruce Davis

But then you go right back out there and fill it up with materialism and thinking and worried. All the stuff that we do, you know, right? So people need to learn spiritual practice, which is receiving from the many hearts inside our heart. And here a whole bunch of goddesses from Hinduism. There's Mary, there's Christ. You don't need the labels.

00;34;34;13 - 00;34;55;02

Bruce Davis

But they give. They give us words. They give us a path into these different aspects. Of our own heart. Hmm. And I think there's a big hunger for this because materialism and just being in this mental world is it's just stress. And ultimately, it's not real. Yeah.

00;34;56;07 - 00;35;24;10

Kelly Deutsch,

There's some aspect of, you know, how we've been talking about the techniques of meditation are more of that masculine energy, like do, achieve, follow the rules and the structures. Whereas that feminine kind of formless ness and unknowing, if you will, the receptivity, that's a very feminine kind of energy stance. And that's something that I guess about meditation.

00;35;24;23 - 00;35;45;23

Bruce Davis

Too much about meditation and religion. You feel guilty for not doing it right. Sure. There's so much. There's so much. I mean, in almost all the religions, you meet people in all kinds of so-called spiritual communities but after ten or 20 years, you know, I always feel guilty about this part of me or feel guilty about this or that.

00;35;46;04 - 00;36;06;09

Bruce Davis

And because I wasn't doing it right, whatever the pictures are how they're supposed to be. And I think as we go into our heart, we realize that we're all human beings and we don't need to feel guilty about our personalities. We don't need to be so upset about the personalities of others. It's just are clothing of our awareness.

00;36;06;10 - 00;36;28;15

Bruce Davis

You know, it's not who we are. And meditation and religion can separate us from our heart because we don't want to feel guilty about anything. We just want to enjoy It's not easy being human being. You know, we're all doing the best we can. Mm hmm.

00;36;32;06 - 00;36;53;14

Kelly Deutsch,

How does I'm thinking in my Catholic upbringing. We would talk about how contemplation and action are two sides of the same coin, that we can't just go away and, like, lose ourselves in meditation for the rest of our lives when it's like, we're also called to be present to the world that is suffering and to live our own lives.

00;36;53;26 - 00;37;18;12

Kelly Deutsch,

And I'm curious your thoughts on that and how those two are tied together like I can see people being a little curious about, like, okay, so you go on a silent retreat and, you know, your your heart full, your mind full, but why not? Then just go back into life and fill up the emptiness with doing good things for others and social justice and working for the poor and racial equality and, you know, all the things that are important to be done.

00;37;19;13 - 00;37;21;14

Kelly Deutsch,

How do you see those things right away?

00;37;22;20 - 00;37;51;26

Bruce Davis

For me, it's quite sad, but I always tell people the first step is we have to receive our hearts as deeply as we can and then express your heart. And it's not we always get to do something big in my life. You know, if I get to meet Kelly in a video, that's important. That's beautiful. You know? And so life is three things a meditation regime in our heart and its service expressing our heart and community and don't make it complicated.

00;37;53;13 - 00;38;13;14

Bruce Davis

I had a program that we were feeding homeless people every Saturday morning for many years in downtown San Francisco. And it was incredible how many people are living in boxes, living on the streets. And this is not India. This is downtown San Francisco. And the rules we ran is ten years. And the rule was this program, there was no meetings.

00;38;13;23 - 00;38;31;26

Bruce Davis

We had no meetings. We were working with teenagers from one of the wealthiest high schools in Marin County. And every week we invited we wanted to come down and we met at my house every Friday night and made 500 sandwiches. And you could bring donuts, whatever you wanted to breed. But the rule was we never had a meeting.

00;38;32;12 - 00;38;49;18

Bruce Davis

And we said two or 300 homeless people every weekend and with no meetings. And we never know how much is going to show up or whatever showed up. We served it. We gave it out. And then my wife came along and she was a little bit organized. We never had a table until that we were just giving it out.

00;38;50;01 - 00;39;12;05

Bruce Davis

And she's always you could have a table know, you could put it all on the table and it'd be okay, you know? And she got us a little bit organized but we still had no meetings. You know, I don't like meetings. I've been involved with organizations, but I can't go to meetings. I mean, so waste of time. We just practice our service and do whatever we can do.

00;39;13;08 - 00;39;13;14

Bruce Davis

Hmm.

00;39;15;00 - 00;39;36;14

Kelly Deutsch,

And one thing that is common in all, at least Catholic circles, is to talk about our call to holiness. You know that we're called to be saints and whatever language you want to use. But I find perhaps a more accurate or modern term for that is is wholeness instead of just holiness. And I'm curious how you would define what that is.

00;39;36;14 - 00;39;37;09

Kelly Deutsch,

What is wholeness.

00;39;40;12 - 00;40;04;23

Bruce Davis

I don't know. I wrote a book called The Calling of Joy, which which is a magical child within you 30 years later. I thought it'd be interesting to see who am I after 30 years of the magical child. And I guess the book is about that when we reach our real awareness as a calling to joy Hmm. And that's what we offer in the world, is that we offer each moment to try to offer to each other.

00;40;05;03 - 00;40;31;11

Bruce Davis

And that's our calling. Because in Joy, we feel alive you know, and it's not complicated. We do the best we can. We're all human, and we're called the joy. And there's always 100 excuses why I need to do this, and I'm trying to do that or whatever. You listen as deeply as possible and see. And that's why I learned by listening to the mother for that whole year and to call into joy.

00;40;31;11 - 00;40;32;19

Bruce Davis

It's a calling to love.

00;40;35;14 - 00;40;42;13

Bruce Davis

And being a human being is not so easy. But we try our best. Yeah. Hmm.

00;40;47;11 - 00;41;11;12

Bruce Davis

And out of that, as you listen to your deep heart, you have many, many holy experiences You know, the angels become more real. Christ becomes more and more present. You know, there's these golden realms in Buddhism. They're all totally real. All the religions are really tapped into something very real. And most of the time, we just think about it, or maybe we believe in it or not.

00;41;11;29 - 00;41;37;13

Bruce Davis

But once you get, again, underneath the waves of our awareness into the ocean of our awareness, all these realms are real. And you can we can directly experience them. So we still live in the world with thoughts and feelings. Hopefully not 78,000 thoughts, but we have thoughts and feelings. And but all these realms are with us. And then we're called to much more simplicity to enjoy these realms.

00;41;37;24 - 00;41;51;28

Bruce Davis

You don't want to make life complicated. It's already complicated to make simplicity as possible. And I think that's why your work is important to this, to return people to the contemplative path. Mm hmm.

00;41;52;11 - 00;41;54;02

Kelly Deutsch,

Yeah. We're definitely hungry for it.

00;41;55;10 - 00;41;59;05

Bruce Davis

Because that's where these realms are waiting for us. Mm hmm.

00;42;00;27 - 00;42;07;08

Kelly Deutsch,

Bruce, as we wrap up here, what is one thing you would like to leave with our listeners?

00;42;08;07 - 00;42;33;21

Bruce Davis

Silas? Hmm. I can never have enough of the oh, it's so hard to find true silence. You know, Saint Francis used to sing his favorite brother to the marketplace and pray, and I said, in Charleston. Why do you go there? It's so noisy. He says, Well, when I find my silence in the marketplace, I know I've really found the silence that's true.

00;42;33;21 - 00;42;36;13

Bruce Davis

But I still like having the silence on the outside.

00;42;36;13 - 00;42;43;15

Kelly Deutsch,

So there's a much easier onramp for for sure.

00;42;44;00 - 00;43;01;02

Bruce Davis

We have silence restores us. That's why we offer these silent retreats in California. And then the silence in Assisi is full of peace. So we keep offering the retreats in Assisi. You want to drink this deep well of silence inside of us? Mm hmm.

00;43;01;24 - 00;43;06;20

Kelly Deutsch,

If people wanted to learn more about your retreats, either in California or Assisi, where should they go?

00;43;07;25 - 00;43;19;16

Bruce Davis

Silent steakhouse and silent like silent night, sight unseen air or a sea retreat stored in retreats that are.

00;43;20;16 - 00;43;21;09

Kelly Deutsch,

Wonderful.

00;43;21;27 - 00;43;32;07

Bruce Davis

We wish everyone well. We're all in this together. We're all doing what we can there. And we pray that there's more silence in the world. And then there would be much more heart.

00;43;32;25 - 00;43;55;01

Kelly Deutsch,

Yes. Yes. Well, beautiful. Bruce, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing a bit of your story and sharing some silence with me before our call started. And we invite everyone listening as well to just take a moment after we close here to spend a few moments in silence and stillness. Doesn't have to be long, but even just a minute.

00;43;55;29 - 00;44;17;28

Bruce Davis

To refer to a free silent meditation every Sunday morning for your time and they can find it on our website. And it just caused in this deep emptiness of pure silence. Beautiful people are welcome to join us Jerry, it's beautiful to meet you every day. Lots of lots and lots of blessings and lots and lots of grace for you.

00;44;18;12 - 00;44;20;11

Bruce Davis

You're very beautiful. Everything.

00;44;22;18 - 00;44;24;10

Kelly Deutsch,

Blessings to you. Thanks for joining us.

00;44;24;24 - 00;44;25;18

Bruce Davis

Thank you.