Podcast Episode 200

with our guest John Philip Newell

The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home

Brilliant Miller 00:16
Hello!
John Philip Newell 00:18
Hello, brilliant.
Brilliant Miller 00:19
How are you?
John Philip Newell 00:21
I’m well, how are you doing?
Brilliant Miller 00:22
I’m doing pretty well. It’s been a little while.
John Philip Newell 00:27
I realize it’s early in the morning for you. I hope this isn’t too early.
Brilliant Miller 00:31
Not at all. I’m happy to connect. Are you in Scotland now?
John Philip Newell 00:37
Yes, I’m in Edinburgh at the moment.
Brilliant Miller 00:40
Oh, beautiful. I just had the privilege to visit Scotland for the first time just a couple of weeks ago.
John Philip Newell 00:48
Ah, where were you?
Brilliant Miller 00:50
Um, we started in Royal Doorknock, just north of Aberdeen. Let’s see. Let’s see. I
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flew into, uh, what is, uh, why am I forgetting right now?
John Philip Newell 01:03
or Glasgow or Inverness.
Brilliant Miller 01:07
Inverness. Yeah. Yep. And it was a golf, it was a golf trip with some friends. So we played eight different courses, kind of made our way south, played. Yeah, we did play Aberdeen, played Cruden Bay, Castle stewards, and then ended up in St.
Brilliant Miller 01:26
Andrews. And it was, yeah, it was about 10 days. And it was wonderful.
John Philip Newell 01:33
That’s great. Well, if you were up in the Dornakha area, you were quite close to where we’re moving. Edinburgh has been home for a long time, but in fact we’ve acquired a house up in the eco -village of Fintwan.
John Philip Newell 01:51
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Fintwan community, but it’s sort of been way ahead of the game in terms of earth awareness and a type of eco -spiritual foundation to the community and expressing itself in all sorts of interesting ways.
John Philip Newell 02:11
Sort of windmill energy and solar technology and wastewater creativity without using chemicals. So we’re sort of halfway between Edinburgh and Fintwan at the moment and spending quite a bit of time up there.
Brilliant Miller 02:36
Amazing. I would love to visit Findhorn. The first, the first time I heard of it was when I read a book called The Secret Life of Plants. Yes. And I read that Findhorn like gourds and pumpkins were grown massive to massive size with no chemicals and nothing artificial.
John Philip Newell 02:57
Well, that’s right. Yes, they were they were sort of treated as slightly the lunatic fringe at one stage in that they were speaking to plants. But well, the proof was in the pudding that the plants grew in a healthy and very often large way.
John Philip Newell 03:17
And, you know, it’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because we’re now so increasingly
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aware of a type of consciousness in all matter. And so on that front, I think they were ahead of the Earth consciousness that we’re in the midst of now.
Brilliant Miller 03:41
Yeah, for sure. Well, and I think, um, last time or one of the last times I reached out to you, you were dealing with some health issues. How, how’s your health now?
John Philip Newell 03:53
Yes, I’m well. I’ve forgotten what the health issue was when we spoke, but I’m doing very well. Thank you.
Brilliant Miller 04:08
I’m glad to hear that. Well, good. Well, thank you very much for sending me a copy of The Great Search. I’ve been reading it a little each day. And then I finished it on the airplane yesterday here. And it’s caused a lot of introspection.
Brilliant Miller 04:25
And I’ve learned a lot. So I’m eager to talk with you about it. And I also picked up this book, which I hope to ask you at least a few questions about prayer in this conversation before we end as well, if that’s OK.
Brilliant Miller 04:42
So yeah, if I pace us for an hour from now, does that work for you?
John Philip Newell 04:50
That’s good, yes.
Brilliant Miller 04:51
Okay, that’s wonderful. And then I’ll also ask before we begin the interview proper. If you have any specific goals for this conversation, are there any outcomes that you’re hoping to achieve or any specific direction you want to go with the conversation?
John Philip Newell 05:11
I’m happy to feel our way forward in the conversation, and I’m interested in where you’d like to take us, so that was fun, but thank you for asking.
Brilliant Miller 05:28
Wonderful. Okay. Well with that, then I’ll just take a moment to center myself.
John Philip Newell 05:36
Yes.
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Brilliant Miller 06:20
Okay, and I’m also going to open my doors. I realize I’m in this beautiful location, but I’ve got the sliding doors closed and I know that will bring in the sounds of birds and wind and maybe some other noises, but it just it feels right right now.
Brilliant Miller 06:36
So if you’ll excuse me one moment. Thank you. all this work is it’s probably going to overexpose but I’ll turn my camera around
John Philip Newell 07:07
Oh, how beautiful.
Brilliant Miller 07:10
Lots of lots of birds, including chickens, roosters out there telling me to get up. Grateful for that. Okay, wonderful. All right, well, let’s jump in.
John Philip Newell 07:27
Great.
Brilliant Miller 07:28
and um okay so let’s begin by talking about the great search uh i want to ask you why did you call it the great search why this title
John Philip Newell 07:46
Titles are always a pretty interesting, often wrestling match with one’s editor and publisher. But one of the reasons why in the end we went with this title is that I have for many years now been aware of a type of religious exile for so many in the Western world.
John Philip Newell 08:15
Hundreds of thousands, I suppose, millions of our brothers and sisters who began within the four walls of religious tradition are no longer there. And why is that? And I’ve been trying to pay attention to, well, what are we yearning for?
John Philip Newell 08:37
What are we looking for? And that was where the sense of we are in a time of enormous transition in the Western world, certainly religiously. But I think politically and ecologically, we’re in a transition as something new is trying to be born, a new vision of reality, a new way of interrelating and seeing one another and relating to all things.
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John Philip Newell 09:10
So instead of seeing the diaspora or the exile in negative terms, we might have called it the great falling away or the great exile or the great diaspora. I preferred to focus positively on what are the yearnings, what are we longing for at this moment in time.
John Philip Newell 09:38
So each chapter in the book is really looking at an aspect of the spiritual longings or yearnings of this moment in time. And I think they’re particularly pronounced in those of us who are in a type of exile from our religious inheritance.
John Philip Newell 10:01
But I think many of the yearnings are also to the fore in those who are remaining to to try to be involved within their religious inheritance and traditions, looking for more than than what has been on offer.
John Philip Newell 10:20
So that you know, the first chapter is seeking vision, for instance, wanting to to enter a vision of the sacred that is way beyond the bounds that we’ve tried to set around sacredness. And chapter two, seeking Earth.
John Philip Newell 10:42
I think this moment is characterized by desire for a spirituality of intimacy with Earth rather than alienation from Earth. Chapter three, seeking presence, seeking to know the divine, not just through concepts, but through encounter, through awareness of the deepest energies of one’s own being and so on throughout the book.
John Philip Newell 11:13
So that was how we came to call it The Great Search. And I think the subtitle is is quite indicative of where the book goes, and that is turning to Earth and soul in the search for healing and home. So that I think what most profoundly connects all of the great teachers that I draw from in the book is this love of Earth and love of the true depths of the human soul.
John Philip Newell 11:45
And knowing that by coming back into true relationship with Earth and the true depths of the human soul, that is where we will find healing and we’ll find a new sense of home address spiritually.
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Brilliant Miller 12:01
Yeah, thank you for for breaking that down. I, I was really intrigued by that term religious exile. And in the book, you, you talk about those who are in religious exile, being maybe of two sorts, those who formerly left the religion of their upbringing, or, you know, their past, and those who have stayed but are not really involved in it, they haven’t formally left but they’re maybe disaffected or,
Brilliant Miller 12:30
you know, uninvolved. And of course, there’s a lot of reasons to stay in a religion for the community, the connection that does provide, you know, the fact that it’s been a part of our history, for whatever reason.
Brilliant Miller 12:43
But that was a term that I had not been familiar with is religious exile, but it was one that resonated with me. And as we can see from research, you know, people who will identify themselves as spiritual, but not religious, that that number seems to grow year over year.
Brilliant Miller 12:59
And I do think it’s pretty easy to see that we’re looking for something more. And to me, the place that that shows up pretty boldly is in our society’s seeming new, or re rediscovered openness to psychedelics, where we’re going, okay, all these traditions that we’ve had are not working anymore, maybe I can find it in a plant or a chemical.
Brilliant Miller 13:27
So I think this book is very perfect for this moment and those who are who are searching
John Philip Newell 13:35
Yeah, and I think the use of psychedelics can be seen as very consistent with a spiritual search to experience the sacred, rather than to simply hold certain propositional beliefs and doctrinal credences about the divine.
John Philip Newell 14:03
So I think one of the important and hopeful signs of this moment in time is that there’s a desire not just to know about the divine, but to know the divine, to experience it, and not just in terms of religious belief, but in terms of experience and to experiencing it in and through relationship, in and through relationship with one another, but also in and through relationship with Earth.
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Brilliant Miller 14:35
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that, that I’d love to know is how did, okay, so you’ve talked a little bit about the first three chapters, how you structured them and you and you pointed out that the subtitle, turning to earth and soul and a quest for healing and home.
Brilliant Miller 14:52
I want to ask you, if you will, to describe more fully the structure of the book. But before we go there, will you talk a little bit more about those two words in the subtitle healing and home? Why are those two things that are important to have as the context of this conversation?
John Philip Newell 15:16
The healing emphasis, first of all, were in such a profound state of brokenness in humanity’s relationship with Earth, to the point that now the future of humanity is in question, given the unsustainability of our relationship with Earth.
John Philip Newell 15:49
Healing in our relationship with Earth, but also we’re so broken in our interrelationships within and between nations. When you think of the horror and tragedy of war and violence that is escalating in different parts of the world, think of the violence even within our nations and the brokenness of our communities, the brokenness of families.
John Philip Newell 16:23
Healing is an important word on that front. I think it points to a mark of this moment in time as being our brokenness of relationship with one another and with the life forms of Earth. Home, I think the reason that appears in the subtitle and very much throughout the book is that home, of course, can be a physical place, but I think at a deeper level, it’s a spiritual place deep within us.
John Philip Newell 17:05
Where do we feel rooted? Where do we feel grounded? Where do we find our deepest sense of identity and essence? The book is trying to address that restlessness in the human soul and realizing that we are searching for a new a new rootedness of identity within the spiritual depths of our being and in our relationship with Earth as both a physical and a spiritual reality.
Brilliant Miller 17:44
Yeah, thank you for for sharing that. You know, something that makes me think of
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says a personal side. I was years ago at an event, a personal growth, like self improvement event hosted by Tony Robbins.
Brilliant Miller 18:01
And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Tony Robbins event live, but I think he’s pretty masterful in his showmanship, but his facilitation, where he’s able to work with one individual in a room of thousands, and then lead them through whatever
they’re dealing with in a way that gets to the heart of it, and then help them reframe it, or create a new, you know, let go of a belief or embrace a new belief or whatever.
Brilliant Miller 18:27
And it was a really touching story where two brothers were there. And one had been in prison, and had, I think this, you know, need of healing, like we’re talking about. And in fact, had expressed a desire to end his life, and his brother had brought him to Tony Robbins, not knowing what else to do.
Brilliant Miller 18:46
And so here he is having this intervention with Tony and Tony, I don’t even remember the whole thing other than that kind of context. But then as Tony worked with him, I remember Tony said, make this your home.
Brilliant Miller 19:00
You know, the guy had talked about I don’t belong anywhere and prison, you know, was the result of dad and I call this and when Tony was saying, you know, make this earth make this community your home.
Brilliant Miller 19:12
And it was just such a powerful thing. I that was years ago, and I probably think about that, at least once a week, you know, what home even means and how to be home and not always searching or restless.
Brilliant Miller 19:24
Although there’s something in us, I think that is searching
John Philip Newell 19:28
Yeah, yeah.
Brilliant Miller 19:30
powerful concept home.
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John Philip Newell 19:33
Yeah, and, you know, many of our religious traditions have identified external places as home or the center, you know, like Rome or Mecca or Jerusalem, these places outwardly that have been revered within our religious traditions.
John Philip Newell 19:56
And that’s fine, I think, to cherish certain places outwardly. But one of the points I make in the book is that we are increasingly aware of living in an omniscientic universe, that the center is everywhere.
John Philip Newell 20:16
And that’s true spiritually as well. And I think that these places that we outwardly revere, like Rome and Mecca and Jerusalem and so on, they, I think, are primarily to serve our true center, our true sense of home, and that is deep within us.
John Philip Newell 20:41
So they are a value and blessing for humanity, I think only to the extent that they really enable us to be deeply at home within our souls and deeply at home in a true relationship with Earth.
Brilliant Miller 21:00
Yeah, no doubt. Will you talk a bit about how you structured the book and why you and as you do, if you’ll talk about why and how did you choose the teachers you did to fill that structure?
John Philip Newell 21:23
These nine teachers have been important to me over the years. And as I began to reflect more intentionally on this time of religious exile or the sense of so many people being in a type of spiritual diaspora and disenchanted with much of what was happening within the four walls of their religious inheritance, I began more intentionally to identify what teachers I felt did deeply address the yearnings and the search that’s going on at this moment in time.
John Philip Newell 22:14
And there are, of course, other teachers that I could have drawn from as well, but I sort of followed the instinct of my own spirit, knowing that, well, these teachers have really fed me and realizing, well, if they’ve fed me, maybe I can transmit their wisdom and to distill some of their wisdom for this moment in time.
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John Philip Newell 22:46
A number of years ago on Iona, at the end of one of our retreats, we often invite people at the end of a one -week pilgrimage experience on Iona to speak one word as an expression of gratitude. And I remember one of the gentlemen present, he was a Buddhist and he was there with his wife, who was Christian.
John Philip Newell 23:12
And the word that he spoke was transmission. And of course, the word transmission is very important in Buddhist sensibility and spirituality, because they see the teacher not as necessarily an original fount of wisdom, but the teacher is someone who transmits the great wisdom of those who have gone before us, but transmits it in a way that tries to distill it and tries to utter it in new ways for the present moment.
John Philip Newell 23:54
And when he used the word transmission, I thought, ah, yeah, that is what I love to be and that is what I think I can do, not to inflate my abilities, but I think one of the gifts I’ve been given is the ability to distill wisdom and to try to transmit it to today.
John Philip Newell 24:20
So there was this feeling of these nine teachers have blessed me in my journey. And the sort of formulation of the vision of the book came very much in relation to my own journey. It’s not a book about me, but I think it’s a book that reflects some of what my journey has been.
John Philip Newell 24:46
So a couple of years ago, I relinquished my ordination as a Christian minister. And someone gave me a better word for it recently when they said, well, you’ve given back your ordination. And I think that’s a better way to put it, because it no longer felt like it fitted.
John Philip Newell 25:10
So it was important for me to give back my ordination, because the way so much Western Christianity, and in my case, the Church of Scotland has been rooted in its beliefs in the sort of credal formulations of the fourth century, that very complicated time when Christianity got into bed with empire.
John Philip Newell 25:35
And I think we need to ask all sorts of questions about what was happening in the
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fourth century, in terms of what was convenient to empire and religion was often used to sanction what empire wanted to do.
John Philip Newell 25:52
And I mean, I’m not just speaking about the Roman Empire, I’m speaking about how empire has used religion over the centuries, whether that is the British Empire, or the American Empire, or any nation that has often set itself up over against the rest of the world, and has been sort of willing to exploit and use other nations for its own purposes.
John Philip Newell 26:19
and religion again and again has been wheeled in to sanction the wars of empire or the exploitation of empire. So a couple of years ago, I realized there was a profound disconnect between what I’m trying to teach, what I’m trying to write, and the formal beliefs and doctrines of Western Christianity.
John Philip Newell 26:45
So it was really important for me to relinquish my ordination and try much more intentionally to simply speak from within the human soul today and to access great teachers who I think are feeding the human soul.
John Philip Newell 27:07
So the nine teachers that I draw from, I mean, in their own day and in their own time, these were often figures that were considered theoretical or way out on the edge of their tradition. And here they are, and now actually speaking right into, I think what is very much at the heart of the quest of the human soul today.
John Philip Newell 27:33
So that was how I sort of went about choosing them. I had been blessed by them, and I felt that by distilling them, by transmitting them, I could offer blessing to others who feel in exile or who are searching for more than what their traditions have been offering them.
Brilliant Miller 27:58
Thank you. How do you intend or how do you hope or how do you suggest readers use the book? And I ask because I find myself as I think I’m probably in your target audience, so to speak. I think I think I’m the kind of person you wrote the book for.
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Brilliant Miller 28:19
Part of what was fun for me was that this was a mixture of people whose work I was familiar with and some that I had never heard of. And whether it was to go deeper with people that I already, you know, like Rumi, that I already enjoyed and appreciated.
Brilliant Miller 28:35
Probably haven’t spent as much time with as you or others like Nan Sheppard that I’d never heard of, but deeply resonated with. And then I see I enjoyed just reading it, but of course I read it to prepare for a conversation with you to share with others.
Brilliant Miller 28:51
So even though I’m in that that target audience, so to speak, probably. I wonder, how do you hope or suggest readers work with the were engaged with what you’ve written.
John Philip Newell 29:03
Yeah, I think the book sets out to certainly address our conscious search for where healing and a sense of home spiritually is to be found. And the other thing I try to do in the book, because at the end of each chapter I include a sort of meditative awareness exercise or discipline by offering some words that are offered in a more sort of contemplative and meditative practice way.
John Philip Newell 29:46
And I think that will allow the book to address the heart as well as the head. And I think at this sort of moment in time, this time of exile or diaspora, it’s very much the case that we don’t quite know where the journey is taking us.
John Philip Newell 30:13
And so I think that it’s okay to not know exactly where we’re going to land or what it’s going to look like in another 25 years. So I think it’s a matter of sort of trusting some of the deepest yearnings of our being.
John Philip Newell 30:35
And it’s those yearnings that I’ve been trying to pay attention to and then drawing on teachers to address the yearnings. I think I mentioned earlier in the book a saying from Simone Weil, the young Jewish philosopher, writer, who managed to escape Paris just before the Nazi occupation of her homeland in the Second World War but then tragically died before the end of the war.
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John Philip Newell 31:10
But she uses a phrase that has been really important to me over the years. And I think it’s very central to this book. She speaks of the efficacy of desire, the efficacy of desire. And by that she means that getting in touch with the deepest yearnings or the deepest desires of our being and getting in touch with them, becoming conscious of them, trying to give expression to them.
John Philip Newell 31:39
These things are efficacious. That is, they help bring about and they help realize in our lives what it is we’re most deeply yearning for. So I think in essence, I’d want to say that I see the purpose of the book as further giving articulation and expression to some of the deepest yearnings of the human soul today.
John Philip Newell 32:11
And by trying to give expression and trying to provide some articulation of what those yearnings are, not only in me, but in you and in so many others, to allow those desires to move up much more into consciousness.
John Philip Newell 32:32
And then from that realm of consciousness, they can more readily be applied to action and how we choose to live and how we choose to interrelate. But how it’s going to play out, I think, is there’s a lot of uncertainty.
John Philip Newell 32:51
I mean, it’s quite interesting when I sometimes speak of the collapse of Christianity as we have known it. And in a nation like Scotland, that collapse is seismic. I mean, one only has to look around in a church, in a typical church on any Sunday.
John Philip Newell 33:12
And you ask, well, what’s the situation going to be in another 25 years? And the situation looks like it will no longer exist as we’ve known it. And so we’re in this time of enormous collapse and sometimes when I speak about this as being a collapse of religion as we’ve known it, people will say to me things like, but what will happen to Jesus if the church collapses?
John Philip Newell 33:47
I would say we don’t have to worry about Jesus. Jesus is all about resurrection. Jesus is all about new beginnings, new beginnings that we couldn’t have
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imagined. And I think one of the interesting things for many of us in diaspora or in exile now is that we haven’t lost contact with the wisdom of Jesus.
John Philip Newell 34:12
If anything, we’re more focused on the wisdom of Jesus and his way of love and his way of love even towards the enemy. Even though we don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out in terms of the new emerging shape of what Christ -related belief might be for the future, it’s okay to be letting go of a lot of what is not working in order to, in a sense, free up the birth canal for something new to emerge.
Brilliant Miller 35:02
Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And, you know, to go back for a moment to that idea of the efficacy of desire, that that’s an interesting thought to me. And someone once told me that the word enthusiasm, you know, the root of the word is entheos, like the God within and whatever we’re enthused by or enthusiastic about.
Brilliant Miller 35:28
The suggestion was, well, there’s a divine purpose to that. So honor that, foster that. Yeah. And I’ve thought about that. And in the great search, you talk about something that I want to ask you about, which is, I love the, forget which of the teachers now, but there was a concept where it was talking about the ego is meant to serve the center, not be the center.
John Philip Newell 35:54
Yeah.
Brilliant Miller 35:55
and the reason that that comes up for me now is when I think about the desire that is deep in us and the yearning or however we might think of it and then as we go to honor that or follow that how can we be sure that that that what we’re doing isn’t coming from a place of ego but it is from the soul or from the essence or from that deepest place within us what’s your what’s your take on that
John Philip Newell 36:19
Yeah, it’s a really important question and it’s one that I think we constantly need to be alert to because the ego is quite clever at trying to be the centre rather than to serve the true centre, the centre of the divine at the heart of every human being and every life form.
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John Philip Newell 36:46
And this is certainly not to put down the ego. The ego is our amazing faculty of consciousness and willpower. So it’s a matter of, as someone like Teilhard Chardon said, it’s a matter of centring the ego, allowing our consciousness and willpower to truly serve the divine at the heart of our being and at the heart of one another.
John Philip Newell 37:25
And my own belief on this and the practice that I’m committed to is to surround myself with people who love me enough to challenge me and to say, well, what you’re saying is sounding pretty convenient, John Philip.
John Philip Newell 37:53
And so I think that this is one of the disciplines or practices that’s so important. I mean, very early in the Celtic Christian tradition, there was a spiritual practice related to the practice was to show to one’s animcara, to show to one’s lover of the soul everything that was emerging.
John Philip Newell 38:36
And I think the role of the animcara is to listen to, you know, my animcara is there to listen to what is trying to emerge from within the soul and come up into greater consciousness. And I think to ask questions and to be alert to, is this the ego trying to, even through spirituality, trying to sort of claim central place?
John Philip Newell 39:11
And so I think the journey of searching, this journey of yearning, this journey of paying attention to the deepest desires of our hearts, this is a journey that has many challenges attached to it. And I think it’s really important that we not naively think that every yearning that comes up is going to be sort of free from the way in which the ego can distort and manipulate and try to simply produce what is most convenient to me as an individual or to us,
John Philip Newell 40:03
you know, think of the ego of our nation or think of the ego of the human species, which has repeatedly thought just in terms of itself rather than in terms of all life and the wellness of all things.
John Philip Newell 40:21
So, yeah, let’s remain very wise and very alert to the way in which the ego can
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even distort great spiritual vision and end up turning it to serve the self in a limited way.
Brilliant Miller 40:41
Yeah, that’s wise. And I have the sense that something that can assist us in this effort, right, and you focus on teachers who talk about this, of course, is love. And this to me is such an interesting and challenging topic, right?
Brilliant Miller 41:03
And so I wanna ask you specifically about some of the words you’ve included from Tagler. And I wanna preface this by saying, you know, there are certain things in life that it’s easy to talk about, right?
Brilliant Miller 41:17
Like, and there are things that are easy to tell others how to do or even tell ourselves how to do. And the two examples that come to mind for me often are, well, here’s how to have a successful business.
Brilliant Miller 41:28
You just have more revenue than expense, right? Or you win a baseball game because you score more runs than the other team. Well, that’s easy, right? And so it’s like, oh, the way to navigate this ego thing is with one strategy could be love or just love can connect us with the divine or whatever.
Brilliant Miller 41:47
And the thing with Tagler’s words that I thought were beautiful, it’s a beautiful description, is the widening of love.
John Philip Newell 41:53
Yeah.
Brilliant Miller 41:53
realizing of the divine in every human being and every creature and and also in your book you write the greatest liberator of the self is love for when we truly love another we find our soul in the highest sense voting tagler but as a practical matter how can we be how can we be more loving how can we be love how can we do that and be that
John Philip Newell 42:21
Yeah, I think Tagore has such wisdom for us on this front, because he, you know, when he says that everyone needs to be twice born. And by that his meaning, you
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know, in our sort of journey and relation to our nation, for instance, I mean, he’s particularly alert to the way in which the ego of the nation can become very swollen.
John Philip Newell 43:05
And we think in terms just of what is good and secure and safe and prosperous for our nation. And given our sort of growing consciousness of the interrelatedness of all things, I think one of the things we’re now being invited to see more clearly is that the part cannot be well if the whole is unwell.
John Philip Newell 43:33
So our nation cannot be well, even though we may think we can be well by dominating other nations or by exploiting other nations. So Tagore says that we’re born, first of all, into a particular people, into a particular nation, into a particular religion.
John Philip Newell 43:59
But we need to be twice born, he says, we need to sort of enable that movement from being simply part of a nation to what he calls a world worker or a lover of the world and not just a lover of our own nation.
John Philip Newell 44:24
And the role of in that this sort of deepest energy, someone like Teilhard de Chardin very prophetically said, after humanity has harnessed all of the energies of Earth, sea and sky, we will finally realize that our greatest energy is love.
John Philip Newell 44:54
And on that day, we will have discovered fire for the second time. And so this energy for love in which in a true relationship of love, we find ourselves wanting to to give ourselves. And it is in the giving.
John Philip Newell 45:21
And it is to the extent that we give ourselves that, of course, we are blessed in, in relationship that we I mean, we can’t even use the word love about a relationship, I think, in which we’re not giving ourselves.
John Philip Newell 45:37
But, but we know an experience that to the extent that we give ourselves in love, is the extent to which we are most deeply and truly blessed. And, and Tagore applies
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that, you know, not only at the national, individual level, but the national level and the species level as well.
Brilliant Miller 46:04
Yeah, it’s it’s a beautiful description. And I’m thinking that each of us, at least speaking for me and kind of projecting more broadly, I suppose that each of us has to learn what that looks like in our own lives in our own way.
Brilliant Miller 46:20
Right? Yeah, you can have the concept but then what that looks like when I wake up and what my particular circumstances are and whether I’m raising kids or they’re I didn’t have kids or where they’re already gone and what my work is and yeah, all this and, and to again, if I can make this personal for a moment, I think of two examples.
Brilliant Miller 46:41
The first one is, there were many years where I would organize a 50 mile walk. So in in one day, 20 hours, the goal was to do 50 miles in 20 hours. And the first time I did it was such an incredible challenge that I wanted to organize it for others.
Brilliant Miller 46:59
And so as I did, and I would walk it as well, I would see it invariably, there were people who wouldn’t finish. It’s just such a arduous undertaking. It’s so painful. But I would want everyone to finish who could finish.
Brilliant Miller 47:13
So I would find that I would, I would fall back to support and encourage people. But then it was the challenge for me personally was knowing when there were people who just weren’t going to make it. And if I stayed with them to try to support and encourage them, I myself wouldn’t make it.
Brilliant Miller 47:30
So there was always this challenging moment for me of going, do I think they have what it takes to get through what they started? Or should I go forward to myself finish and help everyone I can who’s ahead of me.
Brilliant Miller 47:43
And like this thing of walking past people who are homeless, you know, many people have had this experience where you walk by someone with when you’re
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with your kids, and they’re so touched. They’re like, we should do something or what’s wrong.
Brilliant Miller 47:57
But to me, I’m so calloused that it’s like, oh, and I tell myself these stories, well, this, the system’s broken. And I, if I give them money, they’re just going to use it, you know, for alcohol or whatever.
Brilliant Miller 48:09
And so that decision of when do I do what’s in my interest versus trying to help someone else that maybe can’t really help. Yeah, I’m making a good point here. But the overarching thing where I started was when it comes to loving others, how can we know how to do that without it coming at a cost at too high of a cost to ourselves?
John Philip Newell 48:33
Yeah. Yeah. Important question. Brilliant. Can we pause the recording for a minute? I just need to go to the next room.
Brilliant Miller 48:45
I’ll hit resume. Okay, cool. So I think just the last thing, and if there’s anything residual from that thread of conversation, of course, you’re welcome to speak to that. But yeah, one thing I want to be sure to ask you also, while we’re on the topic of love, I thought this was so beautiful.
Brilliant Miller 49:05
In the conclusion, you write that love has two distinct impressions. One is a DPS, and the other is an empathetic no. Will you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?
John Philip Newell 49:20
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I think on the love front, Jesus’s wisdom here is really important to me as a Christian and as someone trying to pay attention to the true nature of relationship. And that is love your neighbour as you love yourself so that it’s really important to get that one right.
John Philip Newell 49:55
It’s not about loving the neighbour at the expense of loving yourself. It’s a matter of repeatedly paying attention to what does it mean to truly reverence and to truly cherish the depths of the divine in oneself.
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John Philip Newell 50:23
And so I think the love of the other, the love of the neighbour, the love of the enemy can only be held in a true sense of balance and integration if one is repeatedly focusing also on how to truly love myself.
John Philip Newell 50:49
And I think that we can grow in wisdom on this front. And again, not just individually, but in community and with people who are prepared through love to truly challenge how we’re living, how we’re seeing ourselves in relation to our neighbour or seeing ourselves in relation to other life forms or seeing our nation in relation to other nations and seeing ourselves in relation to our enemy as well.
John Philip Newell 51:24
So that the rooting of that practice of love in terms of a self -respect and a self – reference is really important. And where I go in the conclusion of the book in terms of speaking in both the yes and the no of love, I think that it was Mahatma Gandhi, I think, who said that one of the most powerful words in the English language is the word no.
John Philip Newell 52:03
And no, I will not be part of a disrespect for other castes, other religions. And no, I will not tolerate my nation being dominated by the British Empire. No, no, no. And then he goes on to say, and an even more powerful word is the word yes, saying yes to the true essence of the other, yes to the divine at the heart of all life.
John Philip Newell 52:45
So I think the way of love is repeatedly inviting us to live in that dynamic of why are we to passionately say no to the abuse of Earth? Why are we to passionately say no to the way in which women have been subordinated and abused in so much of our Western culture and religion and society?
John Philip Newell 53:22
And it’s because that no needs to be rooted in a deep yes to the essential sacredness of Earth, to the essential sacredness of the feminine, to the essential sacredness of the powerless who are sort of dominated and abused.
John Philip Newell 53:44
So it’s not enough, I believe, to just say the yes. I think if we’re truly saying yes to the sacredness of one another and Earth, then we’re drawn into some pretty
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passionate and prophetic nos to how we’re living and how we’re relating and how we’re sort of often wronging the powerless.
Brilliant Miller 54:15
I think there’s a very profound concept, you know, what you’ve just articulated and all of, you know, a no being rooted in a yes, being in service to love. I mean, this is, it’s really a beautiful and nuanced possibility for us, again, to decide what that means for us and what we’ll do about it.
Brilliant Miller 54:34
But even thinking of it in those terms is, it’s pretty interesting and it’s challenging. It’s challenging me, which is good. Thank you. Okay. Well, I know we’re coming near the end of our time. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about in this, it’s in this book or otherwise that you’d like to talk about before I ask you just a couple of questions about prayer.
John Philip Newell 55:03
Um, I mean, you know, there’s so many things we could, we could, of course, than speaking about in relation to these nine great prophetic teachers. I suppose, one that we haven’t touched on that, that I’d like to briefly touch on, because I think it does reflect on this sort of bigger theme of love.
John Philip Newell 55:35
And that is the chapter on Seeking Meaning with Ettie Hillisam. And I think one of the sort of important things about that chapter is how to look for for meaning in life, even in the midst of suffering.
John Philip Newell 55:59
And so Ettie Hillisam, this young Jewish woman who experiences the Nazi invasion of her homeland in Holland, and then sort of ends up dying at Auschwitz. She keeps a journal, a journal over these years from the beginning of the Nazi occupation of her homeland until just before she’s sort of deported to Auschwitz.
John Philip Newell 56:30
And the most sort of frequent phrase that she uses in her journal and in her letters that are collected is, I believe that life is beautiful, and life is meaningful. And so when suffering comes or when we find ourselves in the midst of great struggle, we’re being invited to identify meaning, not just in terms of success, not just in terms of safety, and not just in terms of the path taking us where we think we would like to go,
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John Philip Newell 57:21
but the spiritual stature to be looking for meaning in life, even in the midst of suffering. And I think that Ettie Hillisam’s accessing of meaning is very much through the path of love.
Brilliant Miller 57:44
Yeah, that was by far the the hardest chapter for me to read. Yeah, which is no surprise. But it did. Yeah, it brought up in me this whole thing about if someone can maintain this perspective in the midst of such, you know, intensity of challenge, I mean, truly life and death, not only for Eddie, but her family and, you know, so many others.
Brilliant Miller 58:10
And then there’s me being so blessed going throughout each day, finding myself irritated or disappointed by comparatively such trivial things. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s really a, again, a like a beautiful possibility for my life.
Brilliant Miller 58:27
That sometimes I wonder if I need more adversity to elicit that. Or if there’s a way I can just make a decision to be grateful or, you know, even to be present, you know, to the beauty and goodness that’s right in front of me.
John Philip Newell 58:44
Yeah, the spiritual practice of gratitude is a great strength, I believe. My mother, who died at the age of 98 a couple of years ago, she died in a spirit of tremendous gratitude, and that was how she lived.
John Philip Newell 59:18
Last year I was having a conversation with a religious sister who was 103, she’s now 104. And I was saying to her, what’s the secret of your long life? And she’s so full of life and so sort of fully alive in her spirit.
John Philip Newell 59:43
And without a moment delay, her response to me when I said, what’s the secret? She said, gratitude. I mean, it doesn’t always translate into 103 years, but I take her point and I saw it in my own mother, every time I would phone her and ask her how she was doing.
John Philip Newell 01:00:11
The first thing she would say is, I’m so grateful. And that’s a tremendous strength.
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And it’s not to say that life was always easier for my mother. And she knew sorrows and bereavement, which is the way of family life and the long journey.
John Philip Newell 01:00:34
But she kept returning to a spirit of gratitude.
Brilliant Miller 01:00:43
Well, I know we’re at the end of our skittle time and I want to honor that. I do want to just ask you a question about prayer, if I may. Yeah. So since October, I’ve been working on a project of my own related to prayer.
Brilliant Miller 01:00:59
And I’ve interviewed now about 40 people from many different backgrounds and persuasions about prayer, just trying to understand what is it? Does it work? You know, does it have any effect of the universe?
Brilliant Miller 01:01:12
Is there a right way to do it? Why would we want to? Who or what are we praying to? This kind of thing. And then I’ve been practicing it in my own life in a way that I hadn’t before. And even still with that, it’s not, although I am praying daily, sometimes I wonder, what am I doing?
Brilliant Miller 01:01:30
Yeah. So I think knowing that this could be, I’m just going to close this door. Obviously, you know, this could be its own whole lengthy conversation. And it won’t be today for us now. But I think I just ask you, maybe this, and then if there’s anything else about prayer that you feel is worth sharing, I’d love to hear that.
Brilliant Miller 01:01:56
But I think we’ll just ask what is with everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve experienced. What is what’s your understanding of what is prayer?
John Philip Newell 01:02:13
Yeah, a great question. And I’m not sure that there are any neat answers. I think in relation to prayer, we’re into this realm of the mystery that cannot be sort of neatly reduced to words. But I have found the way the sort of Celtic tradition from which I draw so heavily in my teachings.
John Philip Newell 01:02:42
The Celtic tradition often refers to God as the soul within our soul. And that for me
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has provided a way of understanding what’s happening when I pray. And I believe prayer is trying to give expression to and in relation to the soul within my soul.
John Philip Newell 01:03:19
And it’s trying to, I mean, we’ve already touched on the importance of getting in touch with one’s deepest yearnings and the desires of the heart. And I think that that is one of the features or characteristics of prayer, that I think we’re trying to express the deepest yearnings of our soul.
John Philip Newell 01:03:47
And to know that give articulation to it, to give expression to our longings for wellness, our longings for beauty, our longings for meaning, our long use for vision in all of these yearnings that I’ve explored in The Great Search.
John Philip Newell 01:04:18
The giving expression of that depth of our being is how I would understand prayer. And it’s quite interesting for me as someone who writes prose, on the one hand, and also writes prayer, which I see as more poetic, on the other hand.
John Philip Newell 01:04:51
And it is quite interesting for me looking at a piece of writing that is prose when I’m sort of writing about Tagore, or writing about Rumi, or these other figures, and my books of prayer. Because when I read my sort of prose, I can see myself all over the page, in a sense, because it is drawing much more from my mind, my thoughts, my reflections.
John Philip Newell 01:05:25
But when I go back to a prayer that I’ve written, I often don’t recognize myself. And I think that’s because in prayer, we’re speaking from that place that is within us, not just within me. So I think it’s a place that is often sort of deeper, deeper than ego.
John Philip Newell 01:05:53
So speaking from the soul rather than from the self. And I think that those stirrings, those yearnings of soul, it’s really important to give expression to them, not only in terms of greater awareness of what is stirring in our soul, but I think, given this sort of mysterious interwovenness of life, and knowing that that place within me is that place within you and that place within every human being.
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John Philip Newell 01:06:37
That I think that when we’re trying to utter, when we’re trying to express that depth, there is a type of communion, there is a type of communication happening at the soul level that leads us into this realm that is truly beyond words or beyond definition.
John Philip Newell 01:07:02
And I think that’s one of the reasons why so many great spiritual traditions have wanted to to say that the soul within our soul is, it cannot be named. Or, you know, as the Sufis say, the true name of God is, we have 99 names of God, but the true name of God is the hundredth, and no one knows what that word is.
John Philip Newell 01:07:34
So I think the deeper we’re moving within ourselves, I believe the closer we’re coming to the soul within our souls. And prayer is an attempt to give expression and articulation to the one who is beyond names.
Brilliant Miller 01:07:56
That’s, that’s wonderful. Thank you. Would you be okay if I end up using some of this or maybe all of this in the podcast I’m creating or the book I’m writing?
John Philip Newell 01:08:10
Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely.
Brilliant Miller 01:08:12
Yeah, that’s a beautiful, beautiful description. Okay. Well, John, Philip, this has been so wonderful and I am grateful for the time we’ve had together today and in the past and for the words that you’ve written down and sent out into the world.
Brilliant Miller 01:08:28
I hope the great search finds a very broad audience. I know that a lot of people are looking for this, whether they know it or not. Yeah, that’s right. I do hope they find it and thank you.
John Philip Newell 01:08:43
Thank you. Many blessings to you, Brilliant.
Brilliant Miller 01:08:46
Thank you. Same to you. Okay, I will I’ll talk to you later and I will let you know when this gets edited and ready for release.
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John Philip Newell 01:08:54
Yes, that’s right. We can provide a link or whatever would be helpful through our earth and soul network.
Brilliant Miller 01:09:01
Wonderful. Okay. Well, thank you. I’ll talk to you later.
John Philip Newell 01:09:05
OK, bye -bye.
Brilliant Miller 01:09:06
Bye.