To Escape the Tyranny of the Self

Life is a Festival #141 - Benjamin

If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you may know that I have a mentor and spiritual guide named Benjamin, an extraordinarily generous man who seems to have inexhaustible time for me in guiding my path forward. For many years, Benjamin has been working on a process of dissolution of the constructed self.

In this conversation, Ben and I talk about the nature of the self, from a neuroscience perspective to a mythopoetic perspective. We explore completing the construction of the ego before dissembling it. We talk about Dark Nights of the Soul and Spiritual Emergence. We discuss how to navigate praise, success, and pleasure when you are working on reducing the self. Ben offers some tangible ways to see through the self: awareness through vipassana meditation, reducing self-absorption through loving kindness and reducing to zero through a gratitude practice. We discuss mental health challenges and the medicine of service, and finally, I ask Ben: “Is your life a festival?”

I'm not going to offer a biography of Benjamin because that would be counter to his very project but he is an extraordinarily generous and kind man who has influenced many, many people's lives and especially my own, and I am deeply honored to offer his wisdom for you today. Happy New Year.