Rob Bell is a former pastor and the New York Times bestselling author of books including What We Talk About When We Talk About God, What Is the Bible?, and Love Wins. Andrew Morgan is a filmmaker whose works include After the End and The True Cost. In this special episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with both Andrew and Rob about the new documentary film that they collaborated on—The Heretic. In making this film, Andrew followed Rob over several years as the author challenged deeply held views of conservative (especially evangelical) Christianity and reckoned with some of the most highly charged cultural issues of our time. Here Tami, Rob, and Andrew discuss the evolving role of Christianity in the modern era and what it means to innovate through religion. They speak on heeding one’s inner call, as well as why the current revolution in spirituality will be galvanized largely on a local—and even personal—level. Finally, Tami, Andrew, and Rob talk about the connection between pain and the creation of art, and how art can be a force for great societal change. (63 minutes)
A doctor of Chinese medicine who was a famous bonesetter in China once said to me with a heavy accent, “Here, you [meaning Americans] don’t like to feel pain. You don’t like to suffer.” He said this as he wrung my neck as one would a chicken’s, snapping it back and forth in a way I had never experienced. I screamed as if he were breaking my bones.
For a month prior, I hadn’t been able to move my head to the left or right. My left arm was nearly immobile. I had just started a new job that probably should have ended the moment my body locked up. I went for acupuncture, then pain pills; used ice and hot water bottles. I went to medical doctors, and they X-rayed the area and gave me more pills and a brace to keep my head still—the kind used for whiplash. I later tried one of the best chiropractors in the city, and she gave me the number of a neurosurgeon, thinking I had a herniated disk and would need surgery. I did not seek out the surgeon and stayed in pain for weeks. Finally, a friend from my job gave me the number of her doctor, the famous bonesetter mentioned above. I called him at 10:00 pm that night. That’s how much pain I was in. To my surprise, he answered the phone. He said, “Come in. I wait for you.”
I said, “Now?”
“Yes!” he said. “You have pain, come now.”
Wow, I thought. Now that’s a healer. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night.
My partner at the time drove me across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, and I met my friend from work at the healer’s office. She had come to translate from Mandarin to English. The place was tiny, with photos on the wall of city dignitaries and other famous people who were his clients.
“Hi.” The bonesetter smiled like a boy. “I’m Dr. Fu.”
I sat down in his small room and showed him my X-ray. He threw it on the floor without looking at it. He took the brace off my neck and threw that on the floor, too, right next to the X-ray. Then he twisted me into a pretzel. I howled, yelped, screamed, and hollered.
All of it. No wonder he had me come when no other patients were there. He told me to breathe, and I did my best. Suddenly, at the peak of the pain, I felt my muscles release in my neck, shoulders, and back. It was in fact a miracle to me. I had suffered so long.
I carried my brace and X-ray out in my hands. It was as if I had never been in pain or unable to move. The night sky filled with stars made me feel like I was on another planet. I was in bliss. When I returned to work, everyone was shocked. Was it a miracle, or was it the ability to withstand a greater amount pain to be free of the pain? I would have never imagined that I needed to go deeper into the pain, deeper into the darkness of it. All I had wanted was out.
We are averse to pain and suffering and understandably so, given our American sensibility. We have access to a large market of remedies, products, spiritual paths, and, yes, gateways to the freedom from suffering. I wonder how many times we have diverted our own freedom when we have discovered there is more pain, more trouble, more darkness ahead and we keep adding on remedies. What is the mindset, along with fear and terror, that causes us to avoid our suffering rather than go deeper into seeing what is there? Yes, I should have quit that job on the spot when the pain started, even though I had been there for only a few weeks. I didn’t know at the time, but the pain that was deep inside was because I wanted something different for my life than the job I had accepted. The pain was my impatience, and it was at the same time physical pain in real time. I didn’t wait to allow that“something different” to be revealed in the darkness.
Since all paths—religious, spiritual, or without name—intersect in the place of darkness, darkness is the place where the mind is forced to detach itself from whatever it has grabbed onto in life. And in that nothingness, in that dark place, we awaken.
What of darkness terrorizes us so that we run from it, rather than go deeper into it? How can we bear dark times, or, more explicitly, horrifying times, with the skill of an awakened one? Misery, struggle, and sorrow are not the sole intentions of this life. Yet we can respect our interrelationship with everything in the world, including the suffering in, around, and between us. Is there a way to live in unsettling times that we have forgotten?
Excerpted from Opening to Darkness: Eight Gateways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel.
Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, PhD, is an author, poet, ordained Zen Buddhist priest, teacher, and artist, whose diverse background, education, and experience all provide a unique integral and cultural perspective within the space of religion and spirituality. She is the author of The Shamanic Bones of Zen, The Way of Tenderness, The Deepest Peace, and more. Manuel is a native of California and now resides in New Mexico. Learn more at zenju.org.
Do you have a critical voice? What do you find it saying to you?
This video is a candid, vulnerable and compelling portrait from our own folks here at Sounds True. We get their take on their own journey with self-compassion. Discover the power of self-compassion and learn simple practices to transform your moments of moments of suffering into moments of love.
We were honored at the 2012 Wake Up Festival to have with us film maker Louie Schwartzberg, to introduce and show us his short piece on gratitude. While this life has so many challenges, uncertainties and, as the Buddha has taught, will inevitably involve suffering and the breaking-open of our hearts, there is an underlying preciousness here. Just by looking up into the sky or into the eyes of someone we love, or listening to the birds, or watching a flower bloom, we enter into timelessness and eternity. Something more than meets the eye is happening here… the miracle that is this life is waiting around every corner, is part of every conversation, and is unfolding throughout every minute of every day.
Enjoy this lovely short film on the power of gratitude and the preciousness of this one sweet life, narrated by our dear friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast:
Tami Simon speaks with Shinzen Young, a pioneering meditation teacher, the founder of the Vipassana Support Institute, and an expert in the field of pain management. With Sounds True, Shinzen has created several programs to help people work with physical and emotional pain through meditation, including a book/CD called Break Through Pain. Additionally, Shinzen has called upon his decades as a meditation teacher to create an introductory audio program on meditation: Meditation. Shinzen discusses what science and meditation have in common and how these two fields can collaborate in the future to create technologies of awakening. (69 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Mark Hyman, a leading authority on the integration of conventional and alternative medicine. Dr. Hyman is the medical editor at The Huffington Post, serves on the advisory board of The Dr. Oz Show, and is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including The UltraMind Solution. With Sounds True, he has created The Detox Box and the audio program UltraCalm. In this episode, Tami speaks with Mark about why so many people are discovering that they are allergic to gluten and dairy, how we can make healthy choices so our home and workplace can be “safe zones,” and why we must seek collective solutions and social support for the changes we need to make in our lives. (55 minutes)
