“This experience that we’re having here is very, very, very strange. Consciousness itself, the fact that you and I can be aware of ourselves having this conversation. The most basic realities of this experience that we’re having are indescribably strange and odd. So that is also what we mean by spiritual. If you aren’t at some point smiling about how strange this whole thing is, you’re not paying attention.” – Rob Bell
ROB BELL is the New York Times Bestselling author of ten books, including Velvet Elvis, Drops Like Stars, and Love Wins, which have been translated into 25 languages. His podcast, called RobCast, was named by iTunes Best of 2015. He’s toured with Oprah, been profiled in The New Yorker, and in 2011 TIME Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. He does regular shows at Largo, a comedy and music club in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife Kristen and their three kids.
In this episode, we’re talking (and so much more):
- Quantum Physics and it’s relationship to Spirituality
- When you don’t know what is next for you, that space in between
- What does it mean to be successful?
- Our human identifications
- Self-Care and how we can support ourselves
Rob & Liz Gilbert are doing are doing an online workshop on Imagining on 31st Oct 2020. For more details on that, head here: www.celebrateyourlife.com
Rob Bell’s new book is Everything is Spiritual. Find it here alongside more about Rob: https://robbell.com/
#139. Rob Bell: Everything is Spiritual on Here to Thrive Podcast [Transcription]
Rob: This experience we’re having here is very, very, very strange. Consciousness itself, the fact that you and I can be aware of ourselves having this conversation. The most basic realities of this experience that we’re having are indescribably strange and odd, so that’s also what we mean by spiritual is. If you aren’t at some point smiling about how strange this whole thing is, you’re not paying attention.
Kate: That was the delightful Rob Bell. Well, this conversation was so much fun. We have a whole range of things including quantum physics and spirituality, that space in between or what Rob terms a “liminal space” where we’ve left something but we don’t quite know what the path ahead looks like for us, our identities, and how we can get attached to certain labels, success and what that even really means and also self-care and how we can live an integrated life. We talk about Rob’s new book “Everything is Spiritual” and so much of this conversation is taken from the lessons that I felt like I learned from that. Rob also has an upcoming workshop with Elizabeth Gilbert and you can find details for that at celebrateyourlife.com. It’s about imagining which is super fun. It’s on the 31st of October. Now, if you like these deep conversations with Rob Bell, he also has a great podcast called The RobCast, always one of the top ones in the spirituality section so check out The RobCast. But without further ado let’s get into today’s conversation.
Kate [background music & intro]: Welcome to Here To Thrive. I’m your host Kate Snowise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life, it’s for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It’s a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don’t believe we’re here to merely survive, I truly believe we’re here to thrive. So, let’s get going.
Hello Rob Bell. This is a treat to have you on Here To Thrive.
Rob: [laughs] It’s great to be with you.
Kate: I came across Everything is Spiritual. If I’m being honest, I’ve kind of been sitting on the sidelines for many years watching what you’ve been doing and putting out into the world so it was pretty fun to be able to pick up this book and learn a little bit more about you.
Rob: Yeah. There it’s got some memoir, it’s got elements of memoir in it.
Kate: Where did that come from?
Rob: Well, I had done in 2006 and in 2015 Everything is Spiritual Tours where I talked about quantum physics and the multi dimensions of life and cosmology and Hebrew poetry and expansive spirituality and I was getting ready to do the third one and it was just a bunch of big ideas until I started asking “Wait, where did all this come from?” Like, what happened to me that I see the world this way, you know I mean?
Kate: Yeah.
Rob: But all these came about because of events. So the way that we see the world, the stories that we tell, the way that we make our way in the world, it’s shaped by the stories were telling and that’s shaped by what’s happened to us and what we’ve experienced. I remember typing that first line of the book “My grandma used to keep cash in her bra” [laughs] and it was like suddenly instead of a book about evolutionary, cosmology and what we’ve learned from quantum physics about the nature of time and what it means to have a body and suddenly it was like “Oh, I come from these people and I was born into a story with all these loss and pain and love and longing and a child is not a blank slate.” We were—it’s like we stumble into, we’re born onto a stage and the play is like in the second act and there’s already been some characters and drama, there’s a plot, you know what I mean, and it’s already moving and suddenly the book became “What if I went back and told the stories I’ve never told about what it’s been like to be me?” And right on the heels of that was double down on the particulars of your own story because that’s where you find everybody else. You go into your own pain and loss, I mean the story that, you know, the book is like it’s a bunch of stories about things going wrong–
[Kate laughs]
And things painful yet the universal hides in the particular so that’s what the book became. It’s as much a feeling, it’s as much a feeling as it is a story or concepts, you know what I mean.
Kate: Oh, I absolutely know what you mean because just as you’re speaking about it now, I’m having tingles, like I’m having those feelings because as you open the book with those deep stories about your family and where you came from, and like you say the stage that you walked into the middle of right the story that you were born into. We’re all in the same situation, we are all born into a story that’s, like you say in the book, already unfolding. One of the things that I feel like you adding your story to this book really did is it was the glue that held it together.
Rob: Absolutely.
Kate: It is that– it’s your memoir with these teachings that are beautifully sort of latched on to the sides of what it means to be human.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. And so, for many people, especially in the Western intellectual world, the truth was the concept or the idea and then the story is like an example or an illustration of the truth as opposed to the stories, the truth, you know I mean? The stories, the truth, and then the conceptual framework or the system of thought that you used to explain it– that’s the commentary on the truth, which is the story. So, for me that was part of the maybe even the healing power of writing this book because it’s my— it’s was the eleventh book, so in some ways it felt like learning to write all over again because I was not trying to give you some truths and then I’ll illustrate them but this is the story and then the teachings are the riffs about the story.
Kate: Yeah. I mean, the teachings and the universal truths are part of every part of our story. That’s what I took away from it.
Rob: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So, you think about— people talk right now about how polarized everything is. Polarization, specifically political polarization, is the inability to see yourself in someone else. So, the invitation is to go far enough into somebody else that you eventually find yourself somewhere in there or going far enough inside yourself that you find everybody else. So when we tell each other what it’s like to be us, there’s always the chance at some point I’ll go “Oh, I know that. I know resentment. I know longing. I know betrayal. I know joy”, like “There it is, there I am right there in your story.” Because that’s the only way forward now in these— in these strange days we find ourselves in.
Kate: Such strange days, Rob.
Rob: I’ve been thinking a lot recently, we tried cynicism. I didn’t— it wasn’t— it wasn’t really that great.
[Kate laughs]
Rob: Skepticism is fine at some level and we tried standing at a distance and pointing out how lame everything is, we did that. But opening our hearts to each other and listening to what it’s like— what it’s been like to be you and what it’s like to have been me. That’s central to how we go forward.
Kate: One of the things that I took away from your book was really this idea, which we are talking about right now, is that we are all interconnected and obviously you go into that in the book and as you mentioned earlier that deeply metaphysical way. But the way you explained it where it was “Let’s take us down to what everything in this entire universe is made off”, which is energy and then what is that energy?
Rob: Yes [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Because some called the materialist paradigm but for many people in the Western world, the way that you were raised was there is this hard matter, physicality- stuff-thingness I called the book. Bones, wood, stone, glass, steel, fiberglass — all the stuff the world is made up. And then there may or may not be these other, like you used word metaphysical, squishy woo-woo, right? The stuff that, you know, other— some people are into. But then we now know from quantum physics that you take apart matter and you— everything’s made of atoms and everything’s made of particles and particles are bits and pieces of energy and you can’t really predict what a particle’s going to do. So when atom is in actuality, a cloud of probabilities, you take a picture of an atom and you take a picture of an atom a millisecond later, those two pictures will be different because the atom is this relationship of energy that’s doing something. So, everything, the universe itself, is an endless series of relationships of energy which is a very different way to think about the universe, a dynamic expansive become-place of endless becoming as opposed to a static fixed already established place that just is full of dead objects. That’s a two very different ways to view this experience we’re having.
Kate: When I read the book, I was like “Oh this is what he means by everything is spiritual.”
Rob: [laughing] Yes.
Kate: Because if we’re going down to the fact that everything is energy, which like you said we now know from quantum physics is the case, then arguably everything in that energy is spiritual.
Rob: Yes. It’s funny you say that. A number of years ago Time Magazine, which when I was growing up Time Magazine in America was sort of the standard of news and storytelling, and a couple of years ago Time Magazine was doing a story about the discovery of a new subatomic particle and the writer said— was describing, because when you get down to the very smallest scale of physical reality, you get these particles which come and go in existence, they don’t know where they come from and they don’t know where they go. They’re constantly discovering that the smallest particle can actually split and it’s made up of even smaller particles, it just completely just makes your head hurt. And the writer just said “This is spiritual” and then just kept going.
[Kate burst laughing]
Rob: And it was just so interesting, in at least in the generation I grew up in, the sort of standard bearer of magazine journalism, the writer just said “This discovery and the world of questions that it raises, this is all very spiritual” and the editor didn’t take that out, that didn’t get deleted from the story, you know what I mean? It was almost like a very “Of course. Of course, this takes us into other realms”, which obviously lots of scientists would find that troublesome but nevertheless this experience we’re having here is very, very, very strange. Consciousness itself, the fact that you and I can be aware of ourselves having this conversation. The most basic realities of this experience that we’re having are indescribably strange and odd. So that’s also what we mean by spiritual is. If you aren’t at some point smiling about how strange this whole thing is, you’re not paying attention.
[Rob and Kate laughs]
That’s actually what I wanted. That’s almost like a— that’s like a feeling baked into the book is, I mean it’s a story about everything’s going wrong and embarrassment and failure and shame, but it’s also a story about me winking and going “Are you starting to get it?” you know what I mean?
Kate: Oh, I get it.
Rob: You know what I mean? The book is like me going “You got to see this thing in a little different way” like when I talk about blessed is the one who’s in on the joke. If you hold this whole experience with a lightness and looseness, that’s not denying the pain and heartache and injustice of life. But if you hold it with a certain lightness and looseness, now you might actually be able to do something about the pain and suffering and injustice of life.
Kate: Oh. It brings me to a quote that really stood out for me early on in your book and you were telling the stories of being the pastor at your what was termed a “megachurch” and it was the line that you said Rob that “Success broke my heart.”
Rob: Yeah.
Kate: Like I just went “Ugh!” And when you tie that with the idea of, you know, what if you’re in on the joke? What if we don’t have to take life so seriously, you know? I think that you have lived this, the “What if we don’t have to take life so seriously?”
Rob: Yeah, that came about not from avoiding the depths and ache of life. I came to that through the difficulty and heartbreak like “Oh you have to see this and frame this in a different way.” Yeah and success, I tried to do something that went really well and it was in the eyes of many fantastically successful and it also left me like exhausted and conflicted and filled with all this tension. So, it’s like “Wait, if it’s just bigger and better, if it’s just more, if I just build and expand it”— that can’t be how you think about success because I did that and it happened and it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. Yeah, it was almost like a betrayal of some sort. I played by the rules, I did it right and I am just cooked here.
Kate: That’s what I think I found so striking as you’re like “I play by the rules, I did it right. I arguably won.” You know? “I arguably won. And yet this isn’t going well for me” on the inside, right? But everybody else on the outside is saying “Rob it’s going so well. Keep going.” And it conflict between that kind of how the expectation and that in a sense of fulfillment was really striking to me in that part of your story.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who has, I don’t know, millions of Instagram followers and they asked me about social media and I said “You don’t have to do that” you know what I mean? “You don’t have to do that.” And this person, it was just wonderful to watch. It was like I was speaking to some true self and they were very honest and it’s like you could tell this person was very smart and was paying attention and was realizing, just keep feeding the machine “It can’t be the answer to everything”, you know what I mean? All this success has a trap built into it. And when they asked me about social media, the question was really there are these rules about how the game is played and I’ve been playing by the rules and I have a deep suspicion that maybe these aren’t the rules I want to be playing by. Is that crazy or is that okay? And just watching even their body relax and I was like “You just can make up your own rules, you don’t have to do that”, which is so interesting. Yeah, so interesting.
Kate: I think that comes back to the idea, right, of what is real? Is it real this charade to this play we’re putting on or is it real what’s inside?
Rob: Yes, yes, yes. And that’s the, say you’re in a meeting, running the megachurch and all the people in the meeting, I had love and respect for them like I’m so glad they’re doing this work. I’m just realizing that I’m not here to run this big organization and there’s somebody else who should be doing this because they’ll be great at it and they’ll be able to take it way farther than I could. But soul knows and my deep know in my soul was like “You got this other work here to do” so it’s probably time to just go do that.
Kate: You use the metaphor in the book of the ladders. The ladders we just—
Rob: Oh yeah.
Kate: The ladders we just climb and then we neglect to actually look what the wall is that they’re leaning up against, even in fact if they have a wall or if we just climbing completely and connected to anything.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. I was recently talking to somebody who said that their—what was it? There something-manager—their marketing manager had given them this list of things they needed to be doing and the person said “I do not like doing those things.” And the person was expressing to me all this tension about this list of things they were supposed to be doing in order to expand their thing and so I just asked “Why do you have this person? Like what was wrong that you needed to bring in this person?” You know what I mean?
[Kate laughs]
What was it about the work that you were doing that was so unfulfilling that you needed to bring somebody in a nice suit, hire them to tell you things you should be doing? What ladder are you climbing and what building is it leaned against that your paying money to somebody to tell you to do things that are like killing you? And this is a classic. It’s, in some ways, it’s the trap of the modern world is all these tools to expand and grow and reach your full potential but nobody ever got a class in “Is this ladder leaning up against the right building? What I do—what is all this effort leading towards?” Well, it’s interesting you find as fascinating how many people I’ve interacted with who found something they really enjoy doing. They found some really meaningful work in the world. And because it brought them some level of satisfaction and joy, they were quite good at it and so then they got promoted and now they’re in charge of all the people who do what they used to do.
Kate: Yeah, yup.
Rob: And so there’s like a nicer office and there’s more pay and there’s more benefits and more power and it’s a little prestigious, more prestigious title. But now they’re overseeing the people who are doing the thing that they used to do—that is the thing that they actually really love and so they’re like “Well, I can’t just go back and do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, no one does—no one goes backwards. No one takes less money to do that.”
Well, you could. You could. You can live in a smaller house, you can drive an older car, like you can do anything you want. But it looks like you took that what looked like a promotion and you discovered that it wasn’t a promotion so let’s at least be honest about that.
Kate: It brings me up to the concept of identity and you talked about sitting in the parking lot outside the Oprah Show with your friend Liz Gilbert and you’re doing a workshop with her soon, aren’t you?
Rob: I am. We have so much fun we do our thing together, yeah.
Kate: You mentioned the story that she called you and I can’t even try and say ‘pastor’ properly. My husband was giving me a hard time by the way he’s like “For goodness sake don’t call him ‘pasta’ Rob like he’s not—he’s not cannellini he’s like—”
[Kate laughs]
But she turned around to you and say “Hey Pastor Rob take this question”, and you had that moment of “Woah!” because you no longer were signed up with that official title of ‘Pastor Rob’ and I just really talking about seeing yourself in other people’s stories. I moved from New Zealand. I was a registered psychologist in New Zealand then I moved to America and I was like “Oh man, what the hell am I if I am not a psychologist?” And the reality is, I mean I trained as a psychologist in New Zealand you trained as a pastor and it’s like what made me even think that somehow I could not bring my old self with me and that just because I laid a title guard that somehow I was different.
Rob: [laughing] Right. Right. Right. We cling—we cling to these forms and grasp these titles and identities and descriptions when there’s are a core essence and impulse that is actually where all the life is and it will probably take all sorts of different forms and expressions over the course of our lives. So the preoccupation with what we are, that’s not the game to be playing. I think it’s really boring really fast. It takes so much energy wanting to make sure everybody knows that were this, not that. Yeah there’s this moment when Liz is like “Pastor Rob” and I was like “Oh that’s right. That’s what is—that is what I’m doing. That’s what I’ve been doing the whole time, yeah.” I guess I am all of these. I’m all the means, all the earlier means: in the mean now and the means in the future. All of it. You just own all of it, yeah.
Kate: That’s just the bit that struck me Rob. I was like, you know, so I was a registered psychologist in New Zealand and now I call myself a coach but it’s not like I forgot all my training. And as a registered psychologist I just I do it right through this mechanism and—
Rob: That’s right.
Kate: Arguably I’m much better at it than I was when I did have that title.
Rob: Yes!
Kate: It was confronting to me to read that in your story I was like “Oh my gosh.” You know, the CEO who’s now retired he’s still the CEO. This student is still a student even though now you’re the manager. It just—it blew my mind because you had it alongside that idea of these quantum physics idea of like time is relative.
Rob: Yes, yes. And what’s so much interesting about you is there is some impulse, there is some essence of Kate that wherever we drop down Kate, Kate would be Kate. So, there’s something about helping people discern the depths of their lives, I don’t know what you would say it is. But if we put you on a foreign planet, if we put you in some other place, we dropped you in, at some point you’re Kate-ness would arise, right?
Kate: Oh, I love it.
Rob: I like that your Kateness, you would end up being Kate. Which it sounds like we have something to do with helping people, I like to say understand their deep waters.
Kate: Oh.
Rob: So whatever the particular form that takes, that’s the play of it, that’s the game, that’s the fun is. “Oh look at one this gen– oh look at in America what we call it, look what I call it now—
Kate: Yeah.
Rob: Look how I’m doing it now.” So what happens is people grasping, clinging to a particular expression or form. When you’re grounded in the essence of your Kateness, then you’re free. Man, you can be whatever people need you to be. “How can I help? Great! No problem. Fine.” The whole thing more loosely which actually is how– it’s funny for you now you can actually help people let go of the clinging to titles.
Kate: I totally can. But it took me having to let go of my own to be like “Whatever.”
Rob: Yes. Right, right. That’s so fascinating.
Kate: You also mention in your book something that I call the space in between and you call it a liminal space and I wanted to talk about this because I see it and so many of my clients Rob.
Rob: Right, right.
Kate: And just to have you illustrate it in your own story, you walk away from this successful megachurch you have created but you walk into you-don’t-know-what and there’s this liminal space. Can you talk to us about liminal space and what it’s like to be there?
Rob: Yeah. I’m trying to think who first used the word liminal like which means threshold. It’s like you left one room and you’re not yet in the next room. But sometimes a chapter ends and it doesn’t end because it was bad, it ends because it was good, it’s time to go. If you stay too long something sours, something that isn’t life giving happens so sometimes you leave simply because the chapters over. Now there’s a next chapter and you have a rough idea of which way to start walking but you don’t have too much detail because that would take all the terror and mystery and wonder out of it. You get just enough. Just enough direction, just enough light on your path. But in between the one chapter and the next, when you’re out of the one room but not yet in the next room, generally we race to get from the next one room into the next room because the tension and the in between-ness doesn’t feel good and yet that’s where all the interesting things happen. You’re so much more open and vulnerable and you’re paying attention you’re like, yeah, there’s some tenderness of heart because you step into the unknown. That’s where all sorts of interesting things happen. If you rush that, you skip over it, you just settle on the next thing as fast as you can, often that next thing won’t be as fulfilling as it could have been but you miss all of the interesting things spirit does in the in between. So yeah, all I knew was my wife Kristen and I, the whole thing was always an adventure and we just knew go west. And I knew I’d be doing what I do but I knew it would be new spaces, new people, new places, and yet man we still have– you know 1000% your in and this is the only way to do it yet thought these moments of like “What are we doing?”
[Kate laughs]
Rob: “What is this going to be?” And what’s interesting in that little space is you can’t go back.
Kate: You can’t go back.
Rob: It’s going to cross your mind. It didn’t even– it never remotely crossed our minds and so it’s like you’re building the musculature to not fight the liminal space but to see the little, little space as a sign of life and vitality. Like, of course isn’t what the unknown feels like. What else would the unknown feel like?
Kate: I feel like as a society, what– you know as a culture I would even say we’ve been lead to believe that it’s like a brightly lit path and if we just have a goal out there then we’ll be able to light beautifully, met back exactly what route the path it needs to take. And I always sort of say to my clients like that’s a fallacy. More often than not we, like you said, we have that general direction but we’re only just seeing the very next step in front of us.
Rob: Absolutely. Absolutely. And instead of resisting, if you can come to see, the only place you can ever be is here. Most of the anxiety and agony of life, a good chunk of it, comes from not being here. Regret, stuck in the past, worry, stuck in the future, what might be. But the only thing that goes on forever is now, the only place a person can never be. So a good chunk of our fears go away when we re-center ourselves in the present moment because most of our fears are about what might happen which takes us out of the present and you can only take one step at a time anyway.
Kate: I actually say to a client today I was like “I know you can see that castle that one day you ultimately want to get to but like the rest of the path is completely black. You know that you do that one single brick at a time, right? And that like you’ll only ever to be able to lay the one break in front of you and who knows if it’ll eventually get you there but stop being so overwhelmed and just spinning in a circle and just start laying the old brick.
Rob: Absolutely. What’s interesting for the past six months with this pandemic is so many things are up in the air, so many things can’t be planned because we don’t know and it feels like it’s an aberration or temporary but it’s actually a revelation of how it’s truly been the whole time. We just easily sort of blew ourselves into thinking that we can plot this out in nice and neat ways but it’s a far more spontaneous affair than most people realize.
Kate: And it’s more fun that way. It’s more fun that way, right?
[Kate and Rob laughs]
Rob: Yeah. Obviously with the work that you do, you’ve interacted with very smart, accomplished, articulate people who are all bound up in something and when they sit with you I imagine and there’s some space to just take a deep breath so much of the tension and anxiety and questions and angst dissipates when the person is simply invited to reflect on what you do have in this moment how everything you need you do have, how the next step, if you’re quiet enough, will reveal itself you know what I mean? There’s a certain innocence and simplicity to it underneath it all. When the mind stops it’s endless chatter and the soul he is given space to speak, usually the next step makes itself pretty clear. In my experience, I don’t know about yours, is often the person goes “Oh my god it’s just so simple.” Yeah, yeah.
Kate: That takes me to another thing you said in the book Rob about how someone gave you the blessing of calling you a mystic at one time.
[Rob laughs]
And I bring this up because I had three coaching sessions today before I got on this call and so far we have talked very in depth about two of them. So you just touched on the other one which was she’s literally turned around and was like “Wow. It’s not as hard as I was necessarily making it and I actually have all that I need”, so like you’re tapping into some universal energy here right now Mr. Rob Bell.
Rob: That’s what we do.
Kate: What is that word mystic mean to you? You come from a very sort of traditional Christian background, is that fair to say? And then you become a mystic.
Rob: Sure. I don’t know if—maybe I was the whole time.
Kate: [laughing] Well, this is the truth right?
Rob: A friend of mine earlier this week was like “I’m so glad you said that whole thing about being a mystic.” Like he said “I’ve never heard somebody just own it.” But a mystic— lots of people are mystics. A mystic has had an unmediated experience of the divine mystery at the heart of light, and by unmediated what I mean is a direct experience. You didn’t need an authority figure, or a patriarchal structure or an expert, or a tribal elder or a family member to tell you that the experience was real. You had an experience and you know it and generally the religious traditions don’t know what to do with the mystics because the mystics don’t need the institution to rubber stamp their experience, you know hat I mean? They don’t need somebody to say it was real, they know it was real. And generally, if you look across the sort of broad sweep of history, the experience of the divine mystery is a feeling of oneness. It’s an experience of the interconnectedness of all things, it’s– often it involves a different understanding of time and experience of a timeless eternal now in which everything you ever needed or experienced along for is all right there. When people say things like this is what it’s all about in moments of joy, what they’re actually witnessing too is an eternal now. Oftentimes the experience feels like waking up, coming out of a sleep. It often involves a glimpse of the dynamic nature of creation instead of just dead trees and rivers and rocks, there’s an aliveness to creation the person can feel. Yeah, so lots and lots of people have had lots of different names for it: waking up experiences, transcendent experiences, experiences of the numinous, the ineffable, the wonders, the holy, the sacred. And they didn’t know what to call it and they didn’t come from a tradition that knew what to call it or even what to do with them. So generally, people either keep quiet or they huddle together quietly somewhere else, you know what I mean?
[Kate laughs]
But for me, like the person I came from, I didn’t come from like a denomination or a specific like– I know I’ve met people who said that they were confirmed or they went to something called a catechism like they were taught this is how– this is the stuff, you know what I mean? And then they were tested and I didn’t come from a tradition that did that. I had just had from a young age these experiences of a sense that the whole thing was alive and some hard to explain way or– but there was some point to it. Yeah, yeah. And I’m at– this is what 20 years ago, I’m leading this massive church and yet what I’m trying to say in a thousand different ways to all the people who are coming is “No, no, no. This isn’t about this big structure, this isn’t about this show we’re putting on, this isn’t about this machine. It’s about you having an experience of love, of peace.” But it’s hard to say that when people like “Can you come back next week and say that?”
[Kate laughs]
It’s like the structure itself was helping people have an experience but the structure itself was also in the way because it was “Wow you really—that was—you really did great this week.” No, no, this is not about how good my sermon was, this is about you having a life in which you’re waking up all the time. Yeah, so I try to capture some of that sort of contradiction in that section of the book then there’s wonderful older woman Carol says “You’re a mystic” and then she points to the thousands of people gathering for the church services and she says “and they don’t realize it.” [Rob laughs] Such a moment.
Kate: You talk about how when you look back at the stories from the Bible, what else would you call Jesus?
Rob: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We go across every spiritual lineage. Somebody somewhere had an experience and then they tried to give it language, that’s why poetry. You generally end up at poetry, cones, riddles, you know what I mean? You end up metaphor, parable. Yeah, you generally end up linear, straightforward, technical language, sometimes work but sometimes it’s woefully inadequate to the task.
Kate: Rob, I ask everyone some intermission questions, so I literally failed here but what I was thinking was pretty funny is a couple of the ones at the end I’m like “Oh can I ask anyone better these?” So, I’ll start with the easy ones. What do you do for self-care, Rob?
Rob: All the basics. Get plenty of sleep, eat good food. For me, I surf and my wife Kristen always says don’t answer the specific questions about your rituals or routines because everybody has to find their own.
[Kate and Rob laughs]
She always says don’t tell them about your routines. Ask people questions about what it is that feeds their soul because they’ll have their own. It doesn’t help people to hear yours, it helps people to be asked about what it is– because everybody already intuitively knows, which I think is such—is so brilliant, because she’s brilliant. But–
Kate: I think that’s so good Kristen. I love it.
Rob: There’s also actually another answer to your question – architecture. And by that I don’t mean nice buildings, I mean architecting your life so that the spaces that you would have it are reminding you of the goodness of being you. So, art on the walls or even pictures on the walls or closets full of stuff you don’t use, what are you doing, that’s not— you know what I mean? Like there’s a physicality to life and I’ve just noticed how many people, the architecture of their life doesn’t reflect their ideals and hopes for their life. It’s cluttered, it’s random, it’s a lot of stuff that’s got energy attached to all things and not presence in the new creation of this moment. So, our stuff has physical weight but it also has other kinds of weight to it. Actually, I would say when to talk about self-care, before any of the other things I would say “Let’s just start with your physical space”, and that doesn’t mean you have to have a big house, by I mean the opposite. You might need less house because all that extra just adds weight to your life so been incredibly intentional about the– or even the people who will tell me they were all in a funk about something, “What’s the problem?” “Well, you know I was on Facebook reading the comments.” Well, there’s your problem right there. Why are you on social media? I don’t understand, how did that help you in any way? It’s like a dumpster file, you filled your head with a whole bunch of things from people you’ve never met and never will, who have no idea what they’re talking about in regards to your life. No wonder you’re thrown off.
Kate: Right!
Rob: So, all that is part of how you love yourself so that you can love others well.
Kate: Oh, it’s psychic weight, pulling all of that stuff off of social media, it’s psychic weight.
Rob: Yeah. So, obviously traditions like, when I love Zen for its– for the adherence to intentionality and simplicity like get rid of all the excess and clutter. You only need a few things, those things, those few things you do keep, you keep because they have tremendous power to remind you of who you are what you’re doing here and that’s—yeah. Yeah you get rid of everything else.
Kate: Be intentional with your space. I love it.
Rob: And then I go surfing [Rob laughs]
Kate: Yeah, I was going to say you know I did read the book Rob Bell, there was a lot of talk of water in there.
Rob: Yeah, yeah water. And well– and the reason why I did that, once again double down on the particulars, is because of everybody interact with. You start asking people questions, people have their own water, you know what I mean? People have they’re things that help them be reborn, that help them center themselves, that help them reintegrate because the world just pulls you in all these different pieces you disintegrate. But everybody, if you ask them enough, and you ask “When was the last time you did that?” “Oh, it’s been a while” “Why” “Well, you know” It’s like wait, wait, wait. We need you to be healthy and whole and vital. That’s your gift to us, it’s not selfish that you would do these things that you love. It’s how you serve us, you– your filled with life and that fills the rest of us with life.
Kate: Oh my gosh. You know there was a woman, Tara Pringle Jefferson who was on the Here to Thrive podcast and she—she sort of conceptualize what Kristen was saying. She said we all have our own care instructions just like it this sweater you’re wearing–
Rob: Oh, nice.
Kate: Isn’t that good?
Rob: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. That’s great.
Kate: She’s like, you know, you buy a poplin and you pull out the tag and it tells you how to take care of it, you look at your clothes, you pull out the tag and it tells you how to take care of it. And we all just need to work out our own care instructions.
Rob: Oh, that’s fantastic. It’s interesting when I grew up and went in the world to do what I do I wasn’t told like what you eat and sleep and caring for yourself is central to the work you’re going to do. It’s not liked a luxury or something that you might have time for, you know what I mean? It was– but what’s interesting is my older son– our older son is twenty two and it’s fascinating to see, I mean obviously we grew up in our in our home, but for him everything has always been integrated, you know what I mean? Like for him self-care is just like a duh.
Kate: [laughs] That’s awesome.
Rob: So, it’s so fascinating. For him the idea that everything would ever have been split but so the idea that nutrition would be something other than the other most vital elements of your life is like it’s just inconceivable to him.
Kate: Oh, that is so–
Rob: Or the impact on the environment wouldn’t be something that would be central to all the decisions and it’s fasting to Kristen and I to see how we like gradually kept continually learning and stumbling into the integration of everything, how everything’s related to everything in your life. And then our son and– our son and our daughter we just see how they just like intuitive. Obviously, they caught a lot of it but nevertheless, for them anything, so even you think about racial injustice or economic inequality or environmental degradation– all of it is related to all of the rest of it. None of it is isolated, everything has to do with us, you know what I mean? And we just think that’s so fascinating how it’s just for them like the fact that you would say that that person being brutalized by that police officer isn’t a problem for all of us. The fact that you would see that as a very personal act, it just would blow their mind like how could you not– like how could you split the world up that?
Kate: That is so cool. That is so cool. Rob, what is the life lesson at that you feel took you a good long while to learn?
Rob: [laughs] That is awesome. Well, I mean, the book has a 94,000 of them.
Kate: I was going to say the book. People read the book, it’s an illustration of his life.
Rob: I’ll tell you the section in the book about—a section, essentially a big chunk of the book is about non duality, moving beyond the standard categories of good, bad, success, failure, and coming to see something present in all of it but when that person who most annoys you comes your way, seeing them not as somebody to be resisted and avoided but turning it into “This is my teacher and they have some gift to give me, they have something to show me, they set me off, they get under my skin, they provoke me more than other people. Why? What is it about them and instead of how can I get rid of them, what is it that they’re here to show me?” If you can gradually build up the musculature to think about it that way, oh god, everything– it’s really interesting, really interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Kate: So, Rob, these are the standard questions that I ask everyone. These are the two I was really excited to ask you. What does fulfillment mean to you Rob Bell?
Rob: I’m going to finish this interview and then I’m going to say hi to my daughter, make sure she has a little dinner and Kristen and I are going to go to this Mexican takeout place that we love around the corner and we’re going to go in with their masks and get burrito, she’ll get a salad. And then we’re going to go over this park a couple miles away. I’m going to take these two beach chairs and we’re going to sit under this tree. The two of us are going to eat dinner and talk and then maybe we’ll walk from that part just up into the canyon next to the park. That’s my answer.
Kate; So, fulfillment is in the precious moments and the now.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Like a word like fulfillment—yeah that’s the only thing– the only thing that comes to mind is talking to you and then connecting with you and hearing your questions and being fascinated that this is what you want to talk about and then going from this back house I’m in into the house and what I’ll do next. Yeah, honestly.
Kate; You get to go into the real house which is pretty–
Rob: All the action— yeah, the actions here.
Kate: I think that’s incredibly powerful. how would you describe the soul?
Rob: Soul doesn’t have a sense of time that’s why when you connect at a soul level with someone, one of the first things you say is time flew by. We found out, we realize we talked for seven hours. This is why when you talk about somebody having an old soul, something about their essence seems out of sync with their physical circumstances. Their birthdate is that year but there’s something about your experience of them that they feel like they’ve tasted and seen more than that period of time so time– soul doesn’t play by the rules of time. Soul doesn’t do clinging or grasping because soul sets in love, doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody, it’s not worried about what people think, it can’t be jealous because it’s only here, it can’t be envious because it knows who it is. Soul, like the soul singer, you say that she’s a soul singer because the ache in her voice is an ache that you know. So soul isn’t happy and– soul isn’t a happy positive shiny gloss of life. Soul steals all of it and all of it is redeemed and embraced because soul can only be hear and soul is all use that ever were. That’s how I talk about soul. Soul is as real as anything you can hold in your hand and yet you can’t access it in any of the ways that you can access things that you can hold in your hands. So, it’s both the most real thing and the most mysterious thing. Souls fine with paradox, two things being true that at the same time that shouldn’t be able to be true at the same time, soul doesn’t need to reconcile them. Okay. There’s a few thoughts on soul.
Kate: Oh, it just—it’s resonates with mine. It makes me just– I’m sitting here smiling because I know all of those things to somehow be true.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you have a soul connection with somebody which means you’ve moved past who do you like, where you go, what’s your job, when were you born, what’s your favorite food– soul connection is when you connect with the depths of another’s experiences. You connect with some shared experience of the depths of life.
Kate: Rob I’m going to let you go and have that parade with your lovely wife I just–
Rob: Under a tree, in a park, next to a canyon [laughs]
Kate: Sounds really good. You’re making me hungry. If you were to leave us with just one thought to carry us right now, what would that be?
Rob: That within every disruption, upheaval, tragedy, pandemic, and disorienting experience, there is always an invitation to a new creation. So, you got to give it expression. If you’re angry, or sad, if you’re lost, if you’re hurt, confused, if you’re overwhelmed, you have to give it expression, and be honest about that. That’s all part of it. But then you keep your eyes open because spirit is always lurking in the mess waiting to bring about some new creation and generally in times of upheaval, lost, tragedy there these two ways it can go. The one way is to dig in your heels, to resist to, want to go back to how it used to be before you were disoriented, to just try to make it great again which means you generally idealized how it was as something greater than it actually was, which always leads to bitterness, resentment and disempowerment. Or you allow the pain of the present disorientation to break you open and to help you expand and to see new possibilities that you wouldn’t have seen before so the whole thing can keep moving forward. So that’s the that’s the invitation right now in this moment we’re in and you get to say yes to that.
Kate [music]: We covered so much in that conversation. I hope it gives you something to ponder and maybe just become a little more curious, a little bit more involved with what is going on in the world and also with yourself, a little more questioning. Rob’s book is called Everything Is Spiritual and it really is a great read. You can get that on Audible or in book form, it will go deeper into so many of the topics we discussed here today. I also mentioned at the start that he’s doing a workshop on the 31st of October with Liz Gilbert, that’s a virtual workshop. You can find more details for that at celebrateyourlife.com. I so appreciate the reviews people, they do help others find the podcast so if you have a spare moment and you have appreciated Here To Thrive, please it would mean so much to me if you would take the time to go and rate and review the podcast. Quick-link if you’re in iTunes. If you can’t find that thrive.how/review. I’ll be back week after next. Until then beautiful people, keep thriving.