Conversation | Into the Quiet Experience | When Your Mind Won’t Stop (Featuring John Ortberg)

Hello and welcome. My name is Yenka Dawson and I'm the host of Practice in the Way with John Mark Homo. A podcast featuring teachings and conversations with John Mark and other voices to help us journey into a deeper life with God. Today we begin a new series of conversations with John Mark and friends about following Jesus out at the overwhelming noise of modern life and into the silent, still presence of the God of Peace. Today's conversation is from the into the quiet experience in San Francisco, California. But John Upburg, a pastor of 40 years and a seasoned guide on spiritual formation in the way of Jesus. If you'd like to continue exploring what it means to build a life with God and solitude, we have good news for you. John Mark's newest book Into the Quiet is now available for pre-order. We invite you to get your copy today using the link in this episode's description and to discover how you can step out of the chronic noise of our world and into the still silent presence of the God of Peace. Lastly, we're a coward-wounded non-profit to everything we make including this podcast is completely free because it's already been paid for by the circle and other givers. Thank you all for your generosity. If you'd like to join these friends in the circle visit practiceintheway.org/generous and now a conversation with John Mark and John Upburg. He's made to the work of Cheek Sent Me High and his work around flow and its implications for prayer, spiritual formation seen as we're in the belly of the beast right in Silicon Valley tonight. Could you just talk to us about the implications of his work, the digital moment we're living through, and what happens to us in the quiet? Cheek Sent Me High grew up in a family that had been the had suffered concentration campers in the war. So he's fascinated by meaning of life, thought about art, thought about religion, didn't pursue those when in the psychology and was actually a student of Edmund Husserl who Dallas was also used to say. So they both looked very carefully at consciousness and Cheek Sent Me High started by looking at artists and athletes and people that would have like peak experiences where they were deeply caught up in what they were doing. And he studied that very carefully and he ended up naming it flow because there is this sense of time seems to be changed and they're deeply caught up in what they're doing intensely aware but very unself conscious. In many ways I think what he was looking at was actually what God intended us to experience with the minion, but he was not a person of faith studying talk about it that way. He said in all of his years of research the single biggest finding was that the human mind unated tends towards anxiety and anger and that the ultimate challenge of life is managing consciousness. So I said an awkward phrase is not. I love that phrase. Yeah. But we all have the stream of thoughts and feelings exactly what you're talking about into the quiet. It just never stops. Yep. It goes on all the time. And as a general rule the way the Paul put it is, the mind that is set on the flesh is then. Yes. So Cheek Sent Me High like empirically. Uh-huh. That's what we find. Psychic entropy. Yep. And so our ability to manage consciousness ironically is probably weaker than it has ever been in human history because what do we call these little square pieces of them? Yes. So what we do now is we outsource the task of managing consciousness. And that's why because I don't want to be alone with what's going on in my mind that if you look at people in line someplace everybody's doing this because I don't want to be stuck with this. And so he'll have these amazing passages in some of his books. One of them he has almost a whole chapter devoted to how important it is to memorize stuff. Interesting. And I grew up in the church so memorizing scripture we would talk about and it could be misused into you know contest where I will show you that I'm more spiritual because I had memorized more scripture. Cheek Sent Me High had no religious axe to grind. He just knew for human beings to flourish if they have the capacity to call on their mind wonderful thoughts that dwell on they will be much richer and healthier flourishing than people who don't. And I'll say one more word about that. Now mostly our muscles are doing that are weak because we don't have to do it. So for instance take a moment to do this turn the person next to you and guess what country in the world do you think is produced more poets per capita than any other country. Turn the person next to you real quick what country in the world do you think is produced more poets per capita than any other country. Okay I'll stop it there. The correct answer is Iceland. No. Didn't say anything about it being good poetry. Why is it that's kidding. Why is it Iceland because there's nothing else to do. It's dark all day. It's dark all day. You know sit around and watch the Northern Lights and tell these sabas and they're fascinating but we get it when it comes to the Bible as you know John Mark if you're preaching if you ever try to reprieche through one of the genealogies and the Old Testament you get about three names in everybody's gone. Just glassy eyes. In the ancient world people love genealogies they love to memorize then it meant I'm part of the tribe I have a story I have the people I am somebody they would memorize them why because they had nothing better to do. You're a shepherd sitting around watching shoot you have nothing better to do and so people would memorize illiterate people would memorize chunks of the Bible in particularly and now ironically we have access to more information than anybody ever has but we're probably weaker at the ultimate challenge which is managing consciousness yeah then people have ever been so a big part of discipleship is don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. John what do you think are some of the most important first steps we can make toward call it managing our consciousness call it the mindset on the spirit is life and peace what are some first steps that people here can take tonight. Well for sure you know the need for entering into solitude and silence is so key because then I find out what I don't know until then what actually is going on and how it and as long as I'm outsourcing that I don't really know and so I think people have to be very experimental with it when I first started to read this I grew up in the church but solitude and silence were not practices that we talked about yeah and so first I thought well I'll next time I have an unscheduled day I'll spend it in solitude and of course that never happened so I had to schedule it and then I did and I had all kinds of pictures on my mind of what it would be like and I went to um oh best waferers chapel in Southern California it's a beautiful place and had all these plans for the whole day and after about 25 minutes I had prayed through everything I had planned on birth and I had nothing more to say and God wasn't saying anything and I was so frustrated so I found out I just went down to the ocean because it's right by the ocean and just sat there and uh eventually certain thoughts came that were helpful but um what was very experiential that I had to learn was solitude Dallas will they would say is a discipline of abstinence so people sometimes ask what should I do in solitude but a discipline of abstinence is not what you do it's what you don't do so in solitude I don't uh listen to something I don't have a conversation I abstain from all that and then I will find out um what's going on in my heart in my mind and and that's that's mainly what solitude is about um and it has to be learned experientially yeah so I would say for anybody to just schedule some time don't be heroic with it maybe it's a half an hour or an hour someplace where you cut off and then at the end of that time take a few moments to just reflect what's going on in my mind yeah um I'm thinking about you know you said if you were it's about memorization of scripture you know in the monastic tradition there are like doorways into contemplation it's like very hard to just stop and all of a sudden be hold god beholding you in love like it's just hard even to even hold our attention and our gaze on God and it's even harder to go beyond just a attentional faculties to communion with God. And so it seems like our spiritual ancestors would practice in particular Lektio Divina, just slow, meditative reading, memorization on Scripture, as like a doorway in, and they'd find themselves kind of naturally finding themselves in a place of deeper communion with God. Do you think that memorization is still something that we should consider today, or is that kind of a like pre-Google world kind of thing? Yeah, it's a wonderful gift that again feels harder today because we have other things to do. And our brains are just not trained for it, not at all. And so I would say for anybody, it's a wonderful gift and don't feel pressured by it. It's thought I contest-- when I grew up in church, I don't know what I was like for you, but we had contests. I may have won the Sparky Award in Oana for the entire Bay Area. I just theoretically might have been the number one Scripture memorizer in all of the Bay Area. There were like seven of us that year, but I was number one. So do I win, John? Isn't that special? Yeah, so anytime we start measuring spiritual maturity by devotional practices, we're in big trouble. Or winning the award for the whole Bay Area, yes, totally. I just want to make sure you understand clearly what happened. Yeah, great. OK, great. We'll come back yet. But yeah, to have it in your mind so that when you're driving, when you are in line, those words can be there. And I do think-- and Dallas would talk quite a lot about this-- to pick a longer chunk of Scripture, the Surnin amount, Colossians 3 and 1 through 17 is maybe the classic spiritual formation's message. 1 Corinthians 13, that passage on love. I was in a bad place about a month ago. Had a conflict with my wife. And my spiritual gift is pounding. And I was exercising that at night. And it's amazing. I mean, when you talk about the spiritual power of thoughts and that they are spiritual and they are too much for us, but we're so used to them, we don't connect it up. Yes. And I don't realize what damage is being done to my soul and how much damage I'm inflicting on somebody else because I'm nursing these kinds of thoughts. And what happened was I'm laying there in bed and then just 1 Corinthians 13 comes to mind. So I start saying it. And I cannot say those words and remain in the same orientation that I lost. Wow. So yeah, it can just be a wonderful gift. Don't let it be legalistic. Don't feel guilty about how much or how little. Doesn't really matter how much or how little it's more just allowing my mind's shape to shift. You know, Willard wrote deeply about Psalm 23 and a little idea. I think I picked up from him first. I did it this morning. Is when I first become conscious in the morning and wake up this morning, you know, flight to catch or whatever, just line back on my pillow and just letting those words roll through my mind. 'Cause it's so easy. 'Cause almost all of us already have that memorized. The Lord is my shepherd. I always think of Willard's interpretation of that line. Someone else is in charge of my life. And just I think about beginning my day with that foggy, murky orientation of someone else is in charge of my life. It's just like a true north, you know? - I was going back, I journal a fair amount. I was going back through old journals and what I found was there was this pattern in them that was really troubling. Day after day after day, what I'd write is, I didn't do very good today. I was not a very good dad today. I didn't do very good at work today. And I read through the book and it was like, it's just depressing. And I said to God, God, I feel like I'm just depressed when I pray. And best as I could discern God said, I'm depressed when you pray, huh? (congregation laughing) I like the, I'm dark. So there's this book that we've talked about by an old French piece of italian's called The Intelligence. - Yes, yes, love that. - It has a line in there that I love from about the oldest liturgy in the church. The Lord be with you and also with you. And then the next line is lift up your hearts. And then the people say, we will lift them up a little more. And the old Latin phrase is, "Circumcorda, lift up your hearts." And he says, "Every morning should be a Cercumcorda." And so I love that. And I need it because that is not my reflexive response. So that somebody else is in charge of my life. - With freedom. - So good. You said a word about how solitude is a, it's a discipline of abstinence in a while it's language. Talk to us more about that. I think in particular for careerist people or type A people or just modern people, it's hard to not go into solitude and immediately begin to like evaluate, did it go good, did it go bad? Did I accomplish what I did I not accomplish? Did God transform my life, whatever? How do, it's like we can just turn that part of our brain. - Yeah, right. - Like to see the word does have a rating scale. So you can see how good you did. And at the top of it is John Mark Comer, better champion. - That's right. - That's right. - Yeah, I find-- - 'Cause other first graders turned out they were doing other things with their free time, not memorizing versus in the King James version for a one-a-club, but. - Yeah, so I'll say a couple words about this. Dallas would divide spiritual disciplines up in the two categories, abstinence, where you abstain from doing what you often do, and then engagement, like celebration or giving or fellowship, where you do things that you don't know the idea. And then you can also divide, send up in the two categories as you may well know, there'll be sense of omission and sense of commission. So, sense of omission are when I do things that I shouldn't, gossip, lie, cheat, and those will often be helped by practices of abstinence, 'cause the problem is my don't muscle is too weak, so I can't help myself from gossip. So, to strengthen my don't muscle, don't talk, go into silence, go into solitude, that can be helpful for that. I've thought about this a bit also, but then there's sins of omission, where I don't love, I don't encourage. And that's where practices of engagement can be helpful. - Yeah. - And it's interesting, one form of sin is verbal sin, proverbs where words are many sin is not absent. And so, one of the things that silent is helpful with is that I can learn, I don't have to actually say something and I can survive. Somebody was in a class that Dallas taught once and this kid was just offensive and insulting. And so, they were waiting for Dallas to lame out and instead Dallas just said, "Well, that's a good place to end today, so we'll stop today and we'll pick it up next week." And they asked him afterwards, "Dallas, "why did you let that kid get away with it?" He was wrong and he was demeaning and Dallas said, "I was practicing the discipline "of not having the last word." (audience laughs) So, silence is one discipline. I thought there should be a name for another one 'cause the other problem, especially for those of us who are introverts, is not saying the words that should be said. So, another problem, a word aptly spoken is like apples of gold and settings of silver. And for those of us who, I ought to speak truth and I don't, I hold back or ought to express love or something, there should be like a spiritual discipline of chattiness that would be a practice of engagement. - You can write that book. - That would be, yeah, into the chat. (audience laughs) It's gonna work, it's gonna fly well. Orporic, so cool these days. - But that's where I think that the practice of solitude and silence is uniquely needed because like when Paul says, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, don't be conformed to this world, that pressure is on us all the time and it's only when we deliberately go into solitude. And then certain things can happen, folks have written about this, when you go into solitude, you will discover that you have a soul, souls kinda like a turtle. You know, it'll only come out if it feels real safe, but you'll find out that God is closer than you thought. And often we'll find out there's a lot of goodness in the world, often find other people are not as bad as you thought, but we don't go into solitude to find those things. They come by in direction. - Yeah, should we take some questions? - Love to, yeah. - We're just gonna do live Q&R. So we're just gonna take any question you have for John or myself. What's the biggest takeaway you want readers to take away from this book after we read it to the quiet place? people to think of it as just as indispensable to their life as community. I think a lot of us intuitively know like hey if I'm going to really flourish in God I need to be a part of a community and many of us ache for more than even what we experience in the church or what have you but I think often we're less intuitively in tune with our equal and parallel need for moments of silence with God and I just want to help people get in touch with that so they can experience God more deeply. Hi I'm a dad of a couple 30-somethings who have deconstructed their faith and I guess I would ask what would you say to me or to them who have taken this concept of silence and solitude with the Lord and converted it to a pragmatism of mine for this. Yeah I'll say an overall word to parents because which is here from lots of folks where the spiritual path of their children may not be what they wanted it to be and that could be a painful thing and I can remember many years ago often hearing the phrase a parent can be no happier than their most miserable child and I now violently disagree with that phrase I do not think it helps our children when we place our well-being as parents on the shoulders of the choices that they make that is not a gift to them and so finding if my child's going down a path that I wish that they were not they'll be paying if I love that child that's part of being a parent but finding a way to embrace life and have joy as well as pain and not put on the shoulders of my child the burden of my well-being based on their decision I think for parents as their kids grow that that's a huge issue and then I know my own experience one of the difficulties if I sense that happening is I will have a kind of OCD about my child and I want to take their temperature all the time and did they read this book and if they just read John Marks book if I can get a John Marks book and they could read that start listening to John Mark because he's cool and he's cute and he writes really good stuff and over just gonna do that then that'll do it it's like I'm as a parent I'm probably not going to be the one to you know lead them spiritually because our conversations are probably going to be pretty fraught so I think a wonderful word for parents is curiosity and if my child is into mindfulness even though I might wish that they were invited Jesus into that probably if I raise that wish it's gonna do more harm than good so just to be genuine the curious tell me more about that what are you experiencing and and wanting to know about what's going on in their life and then it comes back to trusting that child has his shepherd and it's not you and it's not me well said thank you John take a few more hello hi can I get your name really fast my name is Emma great Emma thank you so I agree with like what was the invention that made up 10 15 minutes ago where people when we ask people we need this moment of silence to be able to briefly come retrospective and look inward and collect all souls but at the same time we need community so that we can live in the body of Christ be able to be connected and learn your hand and feet and on different body of person but they all learn from each other and grow together my question is we are on a special of various degrees of the need the neediness for solitude and for community but without a pretty that understanding of ourselves which is like the whole point of we are what we're doing right here to help us grow deeper and we more in touch our heart and soul so when like the taxes being spread out and reach to the audience or the readers school are trying to figure out which that in which spectrum that they're belong to on my question is how would an easier way that you would convey to the readers or people who are seeking for what they actually need whether they're like moving more towards the soul part like the soul part or moving more towards the other reason I'm asking this question is that commonly we do not have a good one-spending ourselves which means that we tend to self-meditate and tell us we need this but actually we need the opposite and that is where I'm trying to take that oh she thinks Mr. Bible I would just throw a whole book of the Bible back to her and that's just not helpful yeah it's a wonderful question around discernment and the need for discernment what comes to mind initially is Dietrich Bonhoeffer and life together a wonderful statements about exactly that let the one who hates solitude beware of community and let the one who hates community beware of solitude yeah and so on the one hand there's a capacity and if I'm more integrated I probably have a greater capacity for solitude and so I might want to engage in that and benefit from it but realize I'll have to push myself in the direction that I tend to resist if I'm going to be fully obedient to God yeah so I think it's okay to recognize I have a natural aptitude for this and I want to lean into that but there will be a need to push in the other direction you know the danger with community is I never even know what's going on in my own mind and I never here learn to hear God's voice the danger and solitude when I am in solitude I love everybody all of all year I know yet I just I love you so much and then when I'm with you so I realize my capacity for self-deception and solitude yeah can be enormous and so God gives us people and so it's down on his foreshore both hands I love how you know some teachers talk about upstream disciplines and downstream disciplines just meaning there are some spiritual practices that are in the life of Christ that should make their way into our lives as followers of Christ that are just going to be downstream they're just going to come easily for you just go love on this you're gonna not even a feel like you're something I'm gonna feel like a discipline it's just gonna feel like I love this I find life in this and then there are other disciplines that are gonna feel upstream they're gonna feel like man this is hard or I feel awkward or when I do it it just feels like counterintuitive or it's like resistance training and we need both I think generally we need more downstream disciplines like follow the life of God in your heart don't be a spiritual masochist you know if you find great life and just singing for hours at a time to God then meet God there if you find life in study of philosophy or whatever then open your textbooks and meet God there but all of us need upstream disciplines as well or we become severely malnourished and malformed and so that's just my main point is I don't want us to think of solitude for example as a thing for introverts and that one of things I name this in the book but I got my hands on a bunch of like social science research and social scientists did you know this John when they study solitude they have to distinguish between solitude and aloneness aloneness being when you're not with other people but you might be doing something you might be folding laundry or reading a book or listening to a podcast or mowing your lawn or drawing and solitude when you're like literally just block out other inputs and when they isolate that in studies they find that introverts have no higher enjoyment of or desire for solitude than extroverts it's exactly the same it's aloneness that we introverts love I just want to be alone with my novel and some poetry and no people because I love the world it's people that drive me nuts but solitude is no no easier for me than it is for my most extroverted friend we're just all naked and ashamed before God and there's a beauty in that and so I just think some of us might need more than others at this stage of life some of us might have more capacity than others you know if you're an empty nester versus if you're got a six-month-old but it's just like oxygen or sleep or nutrition that we all need it to flourish and thrive you know hi what's your name Capella Capella lovely name but John and John and I really enjoy it's John Mark actually it's twice as yes it's a very John Mark yeah it's okay John Mark and done and I read I'm I'm actually doctor or bird oh my god I'll sit down now Thank you so much for such a lovely experience this evening. I read practicing the way, and after going through the experience, and I know that there's a number of other cities that you're hitting, I'm actually going to recommend this to some Christian, but also some non-Christian friends to attend who are just generally curious. And during one of the practices, you had us like pretty caught about what we want, and that's something that like Jay has talked about, you can't take a bending machine, you know, kind of idealistic to God. How would you dress like making sure we're not, during that practice, asking God, like a bending machine, like I want this, I want this, I want this, but really taking that reflective and that work? Would you also, for your non-Christian friends, also like challenge, then say, how is that practice? How can I encourage them also to not go to God, like a bending machine, because they might just be disappointed if it's not his will? Even when I give God my desires, I'm naming my sin before him. You know, one of the best ways I know to deal with temptation is to tell God the sin that I want to do. And that's like embarrassing, to even like name a sinful desire before God. And sometimes it's a silly thing, and other times it's not a silly thing. And there's a powerful act of just naming that to God, because that desire is in me, whether I want it to be there or not. And I want to get it out of me at some level, right? But the key part of that prayer is just you have to get to piece three, which is giving God your trust, which is your surrender, which is the not my will, but yours be done. And the bending machine approach to God doesn't end with not my will be done. And the Jesus story ends with God saying no. To Jesus prayer, take this cut from me. The answer to that was no. And we're here today because of it. Because Christ let death into his body so that life could come to us. Things are listening. This podcast is from practice in the way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. We're a crowdfunded non-profits, and everything we make is completely free, because it's already been paid for by the circle and other givers. Special thanks today goes to Ruth from Dallas, Texas, James from Johnson and Iowa, Christian from Aurora, Oregon, Paul from Iowa, C. Georgia, Maddie from Lubbirk, Texas. Thank you all very much. To join these friends in the circle, or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.