Tim Burnett (3:19)

Yeah, Love it.

Dr. Dan Koch (3:20)

Then we're going to talk about a specific idea under that umbrella. The resonance between a pretty standard therapeutic act of attending to our anxious thoughts as well as our body, and similar methods within the contemplative prayer and contemplative witnessing traditions. I don't even know what contemplative witnessing is, so you're going to have to tell me what that is. Okay? Okay. But Tim and I have a lot of fun talking and hanging out. We kind of are belated friends from beer camp this year. And so I'm just thinking if you guys are like, that was good. If there are more bullet points under that same umbrella of a psychologically astute Christianity, then I'm sure there are at least two, three more of these that we could do on other topics, other sermons or sermon series or blog posts that you've written, Tim. So that's the one for today. Is this like anxious contemplative thing? But if you guys are like, I want more of Dan and Tim. I need more of these hype brothers, then let me know. Make your voices known. If you just send me an email with no other context that the subject line says, give us Barabbas, I'll know what you're talking about. Okay. That means you want more Tim and I, so. Okay, Tim, let's start here. So the Way Collective is like kind of a church. Kind of not a church. Let's just get that out of the way. You have other language that you like to use, but it isn't like a nonprofit. Like it. It meets sort of like a church. Right?

Tim Burnett (4:41)

Right. Yeah, totally. No, we're. We're technically a 501C3 and, you know, we have standing as a congregation, but I mean, it's.

Dr. Dan Koch (4:48)

It's not like a food co op. The way collected. The collective is not about food or clothing or whatever. It's a. It's a churchy, It's a religious group,

Tim Burnett (4:55)

It's a religious nonprofit. You got it?

Dr. Dan Koch (4:57)

Yep. You describe it as contemplative. I do now. I love contemplative Christianity. It's probably, if you wanted to say, there's only one sort of sector of the Christian world that has kept me Christian. If I could only pick one, it would be contemplative Christianity. So I'm a big fan. But churches rarely self describe as contemplative because contemplative Christianity is generally a big ask, like the way we typically think of it. It's a discipline. It's built up over years. It takes hours and hours of practice. So I guess my first question is how contemplative is the way? Like, what do you mean by that? What's the barrier of entry here?

Tim Burnett (5:37)

I would say like, as compared to a traditional, maybe liturgical Sunday morning worship gathering. Very would be the answer to that. Okay, it's very contemplative and I could unpack that. But you know, we meet basically weekly for a midweek dinner and dialogue gathering. There's emphasis on the kind of communal aspect of eating together. And then it moves into, you know, we do do a contemplative practice and pause moment at the beginning of every gathering where we ring a singing bowl. I mean, if that smells like contemplative, you know, to you, I would say it's pretty contemplative. And then. And then, yeah, then the teaching or the sharing, which we call the conversation starter, usually is pretty contemplative in nature in terms of the topics, you know, we talk about non duality and non violence and sort of a practical mysticism. I would say most weeks, a lot of the time again is spent around the tables just in conversation with one another as we're walking the path. And the whole idea of the community really came out of what if we rallied a group of people around shared practices and values rather than shared creeds or religious beliefs. So like you said, still leaning on Christianity and contemplative Christianity. But practices like connection and curiosity and creativity, collaboration and consciousness and compassionate action are the things that people who come to our community agree to walk in together. So we're trying to walk this way, you know, as good followers of the

Dr. Dan Koch (7:00)

way the old Seven Seas approach.

Tim Burnett (7:02)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (7:03)

How many letter Cs?

Tim Burnett (7:04)

Six. There's six there, but there actually was five when we started.

Dr. Dan Koch (7:07)

So if you get one more, you can do sailing the seven seas as

Tim Burnett (7:12)

a bro, trust me, I've thought Of it. I've thought of it.

Dr. Dan Koch (7:18)

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to only do jokes here, but I am going to do one more joke, which is I'm going to initiate our time here with a similar sound. All right, thank you, YouTube shorts.

Tim Burnett (7:38)

I received that. Thank you, Dan.

Dr. Dan Koch (7:40)

You receive it. I mean, that does sound quite a bit more contemplative. One practical concern I have is if I'm going to the kind of church type midweek meal that I would expect to find with you at the helm in Santa Barbara, California. I'm getting my drink on, I'm pouring some wine. Maybe I'm taking a little puff instead, but that's not a good time after all of that for anything contemplative. So the contemplation is happening before you start drinking.

Tim Burnett (8:14)

Well, I mean, it's a BYOB situation to dinner. Right. So, okay. People do bring brews and bottles of wine for sharing, but no one's like, it's, you know, aside from when we just had our Halloween party a couple of weeks ago, nobody's really partying where we had like sangria and some other fun things.

Dr. Dan Koch (8:30)

But okay.

Tim Burnett (8:31)

So I don't know, one brew might actually get you into the contemplative spirit. Who knows?

Dr. Dan Koch (8:35)

Honestly, monks, the world over and across religious traditions. Yeah. Would. Would probably agree with you and would push back.

Tim Burnett (8:42)

You can slip right into the presence, you know what I'm saying?

Dr. Dan Koch (8:48)

Especially if you've been fasting. Okay. So one other thing I wanted to get your take on just to sort of. Because it's a way that you describe your work and the community that I think just kind of is interesting to me and maybe we can draw on it later. You use this phrase, religion after religion.

Tim Burnett (9:06)

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (9:07)

And I like that you use that phrase on your personal website. I don't know if it's on the way collective website, but you know, like spiritual but not religious. You know, we talk about sort of like not religious, but I am spiritual or I have some sense of a higher power, whatever. Religion after religion is a different phrase. Right. It's like, yes, it is. And I would expect maybe for like a Santa Barbara open handed thing to maybe lean into that. You know, you're what, you're less than an hour from Ojai. You go knock on Rob Bell's door anytime you want. But like, going with religion is interesting. I wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit on why you use that phrase and what that means, and then maybe that'll come back later.

Tim Burnett (9:48)

Sure. Yeah, I mean, what I mean by that, I guess, is lowercase R religion after, you know, uppercase R. Uppercase R, religion. Yeah, religion, right. Which is, you know, the institutions that have become these, you know, what were originally religious movements. And so a lot of people, I think, as you know, and I'm sure some of your listeners do in this spiritual but not religious world, are okay to just send religion down the river, you know, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. And so for me, though, I've always been curious about my own religious heritage as a Christian. Like, was there anything there that I could keep carrying forward? And if so, what I ended up kind of feeling through my own process of development was, I think religion, the literal word there is, comes from the Latin ligare, which is where we get the word ligament from. Religion is about what binds us together, right? And so religion is not inherently bad. If it gets institutionalized and there's gatekeepers and there's sort of boundaries that are set that are keeping people out rather than helping people bridge to the sacred and with one another, then that's not healthy religion, Right? But religion, in terms of a binding agent that keeps us attuned to the sacred is vital because we need, especially in our divisive time, aspects of our communal life that keep us connected in meaningful ways. So those six Cs we were just joking about, for me, is a binding agent. You know what I mean? It's a path that we get to walk in together that is religious. I mean, how could it not be? And so I think people, when they hear that word, probably have visceral reactions one way or the other. But if we radicalize the etymology, I think we get to the heart of that. Our society and our communities need things that bind us together around connection and compassion. And I think Christianity is still a great home tradition to do that, you know, especially in the contemplative form. But I think, you know, my experience of the world is that a lot of people are still having to choose between dualisms. You know, either spiritual, you have to be fully spiritual and you can't be religious, or vice versa and want to break down those stereotypes if we can.

Dr. Dan Koch (12:00)

Well, that's a nice bridge into kind of the last thing I wanted to talk about, which is what I mentioned in the intro, this kind of. You're trying to help people understand in sort of 20, 25 terms, the way that what we are learning through psychology and biology and anthropology and all these things about humans and the human animal that we each are Yep. You like to bring that in and help people with whatever tribalisms, whatever dualistic kind of either or black and white, us versus them, like wherever that stuff is showing up for people, as you've described it. To me, that's like a major focus of your work, certainly of this particular sermon series that our conversation is stemming from.

Tim Burnett (12:44)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (12:45)

So talk a little bit about how you see that in general terms. Then of course, we'll kind of get into the sort of inner critic as one example of that.

Tim Burnett (12:54)

Yeah. So we're up against a lot in our society. I mean, part of that, like you said, is the human animal. Right. The biopsycho aspect of it. And we've inherited some things from our evolutionary biology that are sort of functioning, I think, at subconscious levels and keeping us in certain ways of operating that are actually fragmenting us more. And we can unpack those if you want, but I think we're up against a lot in terms of our own DNA. I think my curiosity around this came from my own story of sort of being diffused out of evangelical Christianity. And first of all, I was like, what the heck just happened? You know? And then I was like, well, why do people not change and how do we change? And so I got curious about that. And then there's this aspect of like, what could be a balm or a. An invitation for us to reconnect amidst those challenges. And so that's where the contemplative path kind of came in. So again, for me, nonviolence and non duality are really important aspects of that. Non duality may be applying more in this context to recovering a curious mind and a mind that's attuned to connection and compassion. And then nonviolence saying, like, how do we overcome the in group, out group loyalty dynamic that is now become so exacerbated that it's like tearing us apart at the seams. Right. So, yeah, so that's kind of the bigger picture is recovering our connection. And. And I think that, like I said, we're up against a lot, but there's great wisdom to draw upon.

Dr. Dan Koch (14:27)

I want to have you follow up a little bit on nonviolence in general before we get into this particular idea. Because you're using it in a way that I have seen sort of used in this broader context. You know, I'm familiar there's a whole modality called nonviolent communication which is often used. Some therapists, a lot of, like, social workers and other people will use this, but you're in. And there's, of course, like the sort of original nonviolent use, at least in American culture, which is like the black civil rights movement, which is drawing on Gandhi's non violent, you know, civil disobedience in India. So people kind of have that understanding. But you're using nonviolence in, I think, a much more robust way. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit?

Tim Burnett (15:11)

Yeah, I mean, I think. Well, it stems from my own theological convictions. And I mean, Richard Rohr has said that God is supreme nonviolence. Right. And you mentioned the process theological tradition that I'm an inheritor of as well. We would say the same thing that God, like Tom Ord would say. God is uncontrolling love. Right. That's nonviolent love. And so there's something about God's nature that we want to say as theologians who center or orbit around love. Right. That means that, you know, one of the ways I say it in a more practical way for our community is violence is an affront to the moral fabric of our society. So what's the opposite of that? That's what we're after, you know. And so for me that's just a core kind of conviction. And then like you said, it gets fleshed out in, in our, you know, nonviolent direct action. But it's also about nonviolence to the self and it's nonviolence toward others and towards all beings. Like that's a good Buddhist threefold kind of paradigm there. But, but the point being that when we learn to bring that kind of non violent awareness and attention and compassion not only to our inner life, but allow it to extend to the circles of relationality that we're connected to, it starts to promote a different mode of interaction and connection. And from there it leads to a lot, I think, of deeper kind of opening and wisdom about how we can be better neighbors and all that.

Dr. Dan Koch (16:44)

Yeah, I mean, I've got thoughts on a couple things there at a pretty high level that I'll save. We may get to them today or another time maybe. Maybe we could do an episode where we kind of actually just unpack. You know, speaking of bringing, giving, you guys Barabbas, maybe there's. Hey, that's really good. Because to choose Barabbas over Jesus is actually to choose violence. Wow. So that's, I like that. That's fun. That's fun to have your job listeners, if you want us to talk about nonviolence is to send me an email with a subject line that is about choosing violence. And then we, we can all Appreciate the humor. So we'll see if we have time for that or not. But that's helpful and that kind of helps me set the stage. So let's move into this kind of general, this main topic of sort of inner critic, maybe nonviolence toward the self. We can use that language there. So this is a phrase that people know. And what's interesting to me is like, everybody seems to know it. Like, my college age clients know it, my boomer clients know it. It has become a phrase that is. And as far as I can tell, I've never heard a client, like, use it wrongly or anything like, generally, pop psychology is pretty fraught along the front of, like, definitions and understandings. But inner critic seems to be like a fairly widespread term. You know, it's getting really critical with yourself, to yourself.

Tim Burnett (18:03)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (18:03)

Like, is that a term that you are using or drawn to? Is that a term that you know? And like, do you have a different term and anything just about that overall concept.

Tim Burnett (18:12)

I can speak first from my experience as someone who has an inner critic.

Dr. Dan Koch (18:17)

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Burnett (18:17)

I think each of us has many parts to ourselves, many, perhaps, tapes that play voices that echo in our inner lives. And one of those is what I would call the accusatory voice or the inner critic. Right. And again, on that same theme, like Richard Rohr will bring, when he brings up God as supreme nonviolence, says that anything that passes through you as a message or a voice that's graceful, you can trust as the voice of God. Like, if it comes and it passes, it's the voice of God. And he says if there's a voice that comes at you, like in an accusatory way or a critical way, it's simply the voice of Satan, which is the voice of the accuser. I mean, that's what that word means in the Greek, like hosatan. Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:02)

Is this roar in one of his

Tim Burnett (19:03)

books or this is Rohr, probably in one of his CAC letters or blogs or whatever he does.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:09)

But yeah, okay, I don't like that formulation. I know that. I'm not talking to him. I'm talking to you.

Tim Burnett (19:15)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:16)

So it's not your job to argue for him, but I'll just register some displeasure.

Tim Burnett (19:20)

Sure, sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:21)

That actually sounds to me.

Tim Burnett (19:23)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:23)

A little fucking non. Dual roar.

Tim Burnett (19:26)

You mean a little too dual.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:28)

It's a little black and white. A little too. Sorry, it's a little too dual.

Tim Burnett (19:32)

Yeah, a little too dual. Yeah, I hear that. I think that for me, the general insight there is that again, we all have these tapes. Right. There's tapes of grace, tapes of acceptance and welcome. And then there's these voices that are these inner critics. Right. I don't need to demonize them. I don't think he's ontologizing them as Satan or anything like that. That's not what he's after.

Dr. Dan Koch (19:55)

No, but. And I wouldn't that my issue is not even that far, like, oh, that's literally Satan. Of course I don't mean that, but I just mean like, I think we're going to get to this actually, and it might not be bad to just lay it out here.

Tim Burnett (20:06)

Sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (20:06)

The way that you sent me a screenshot of one of your. Part of a sermon. And I've just been using that to kind of think through some of these topics to prep. And you like internal family systems, which gets talked about a fair amount on this show, even though I don't have any training in it.

Tim Burnett (20:22)

Sure. Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (20:23)

So Dick Schwartz, who founded ifs, is the one who is primarily credited with the actual term inner critic being popularized. Like he seems to have done that in that world in the ifs, understanding yourself as having various parts. And these parts have sometimes been wounded. They play different roles. Whatever.

Tim Burnett (20:43)

Correct.

Dr. Dan Koch (20:43)

The inner critic is not external to you. It's not demonic, it's not some outside force. It is a part of you.

Tim Burnett (20:51)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (20:51)

It's like a part of you that's trying to protect yourself and doing that in an unhelpful way.

Tim Burnett (20:55)

Totally.

Dr. Dan Koch (20:56)

And that actually feels really different psychologically to me.

Tim Burnett (21:00)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:00)

Than if it's graceful, it's from God. If it's accusatory, it's from Satan or whatever.

Tim Burnett (21:06)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:06)

That's fucking dualistic, dude. I mean, literally, what is it? Is there another term for that? That's dualism.

Tim Burnett (21:13)

I think you're right.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:14)

It's not mind body dualism. This is the problem, by the way, though. And it's not roars fault.

Tim Burnett (21:20)

Sure, sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:20)

I think it's a broader problem with writing things that are catchy and understandable by millions and millions of people at once is they almost always are wrong.

Tim Burnett (21:31)

Oh, right.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:32)

Because the world's too complicated to do unless you're the absolute best at it, you know?

Tim Burnett (21:37)

Well, see, but though what you're framing is there is it's either right or it's wrong. Right. It's also dualistic as well.

Dr. Dan Koch (21:43)

Okay. Inaccurate or. Yeah, loses accuracy is really what I mean to say. It loses accuracy.

Tim Burnett (21:50)

Yeah, but Right. Like the problem is that you're kind of laying out. And I actually agree with you on a couple of fronts there is that he's writing for a popular audience and making pretty black and white claims, Right?

Dr. Dan Koch (22:02)

Yes.

Tim Burnett (22:02)

And that's. Isn't that a rhetorical move, though, as an author, that you're just trying to write something accessibly for others? Maybe My hunch would be if you pushed him on those categorically, like, he would probably cave.

Dr. Dan Koch (22:13)

Sure.

Tim Burnett (22:13)

So the point then is that this is actually really helpful from perhaps like a pastoral or a practical perspective. Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (22:20)

Okay.

Tim Burnett (22:21)

And what I found in my own life is that through my own journey with my inner critics, there has been some truth and some, you know, some nuggets of wisdom in that teaching. In so much as part of my journey, I think of kind of like attuning to the divine would be kind of leaning into, like I said, some of that more inclusive, welcoming kind of the voices within where everything in my story belongs, rather than the critical voices that come in and say, well, either shaming and condemning or saying, this doesn't belong. This cannot fit in the constellation of your inner life. And for me, just at a pragmatic level, that's really helpful because what happens when we start to lean into the voices of welcome is that we actually find that those critical voices, those parts, like you said in ifs, belong as well. They just don't need to be the dominatory voices. And when they become that, I think that's where we get into psychological issues because we start to believe the narrativizing of the inner critic, and it can run us down some really wild paths that we don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time on. So there we go.

Dr. Dan Koch (23:40)

Oh, that's. That's where we're headed next. Okay, so. No, I appreciate that. I'm sure I've lost listeners from criticizing the Enneagram. If I were to be anti Roar, I don't know, there might mutiny on the ship. Patreon. Patreon would be cut in half.

Tim Burnett (23:55)

That's funny.

Dr. Dan Koch (23:55)

I think you're right. I'm half kidding about that.

Tim Burnett (23:57)

Yeah, I know.

Dr. Dan Koch (23:58)

I'm 80% kidding. The 79%, the roar thing there is like, yeah, probably in context, you know, whatever within that whole post or something, I would find more to agree with. But I do think that that distinction that Schwartz makes, that this is a part of you. Yes, it is a real part of you. And that matters psychologically, especially if you're thinking about, like, family of origin issues. So if this is a part of me, then I might think, where's it come from? And that might get me curious about mom and dad and what dynamics I saw growing up or other formative people in my life, early formative experiences. If I think, oh, this is the voice of the accuser, the. I'm unlikely to get very curious about it. And I think to the extent that it would lead to that, that would be therapeutically unhelpful.

Tim Burnett (24:44)

Totally.

Dr. Dan Koch (24:44)

And in fact, that's sort of the spirit. Like, I'm not accusing Rohr of this, but were someone to go that route, that's kind of like the spiritual bypassing that my friends and I are always arguing against. You find some quick spiritual language so you don't have to sit, you can avoid, and you can just kind of push that thing off.

Tim Burnett (25:00)

I think you've actually completely laid out the importance of it in a way that I again, can fully endorse, which is when you attune to those accusatory voices, it's not just a reason to again dismiss them and repress them or deny them. Because we know what happens when the shadow goes underground like that. What it does is it should make you curious about your family of origin. Like, whose voice is that that you inherited? You know what I mean? And where did that come from? What were those influences and what needs to be tended to. But that's kind of your realm. I think about that more from like a spiritual direction kind of vantage point. And so for me, I would say the answer is never divorce. And by that I mean, like divorcing yourself from those parts of yourself. Right. Like, what I mean is that all of it actually, when the light is shone upon it, find space to belong in the inner constellation of your life. And then you can attend to those thoughts that will come, that will continue to speak accusatorily, you know, to you. And then you find ways to welcome them and let them pass. Right. Like, so this is a contemplative practice for me. But I think you're right. If it becomes dismissive of the inner critic or the accusatory voices, they're just gonna go underground and come back up in maybe more insidious ways. And so it should be that the loving voice creates space for them to exist. And then a curiosity emerges, and then more self knowledge and wisdom comes. And then, you know, you continue to grow.

Dr. Dan Koch (26:29)

Yeah. So what I thought I would do, I love that. And you're leading me right into where I wanted to go. I'm gonna give you, from my perspective as a therapist, how I would describe some healthy internal criticism becoming inner critic. Unhelpful Beautiful. Into the area where we'd wanna be working on it.

Tim Burnett (26:49)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (26:49)

And then maybe you could speak pastorally and you kind of have been describing that, but if you have anything to add, you could do that. So it's very similar to, like the guilt versus shame dynamic, which has come up on the show before. You know, guilt is I did something bad. Shame is like, I am something bad or someone bad. Right, right. It's about the action versus sort of a global label about oneself.

Tim Burnett (27:12)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (27:13)

So similarly, I would just say it becomes the unhelpful inner critic when it stops being about specifics, specific things that I have done or said and could have done otherwise, and when it becomes. Moves into broad, harsh judgment of who I am. And I would add one little wrinkle to that, which is that sometimes the thing that makes it broad, harsh and overbearing is simply that specific criticisms repeat over and over and over again to the point where it sounds like it's about a discrete event or a thing I did that I might regret, but really it's not because I will just find a new one in two hours and then it'll go for another 90 minutes. And, you know, it's like, yeah. So when on the whole, it's really about me, it's constant, it's inflexible, it makes it harder for me to function, adapt, or treat myself with general kindness. Then that's where we are in inner critic territory. As opposed to the kind of guilt shame thing, like, if I do fuck up, it's good for me to feel bad about it. That's good. Like, if I. What would it be like if I didn't feel bad about it? That would be sociopathy. So we want, you know, I mean, at an extreme level, I'd be a sociopath.

Tim Burnett (28:28)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (28:29)

So what we do want, we want some of that. We want guilt, we want. I want to do better. We want values driven change. But we don't want this kind of. It's the snowball rolling on its own down the hill, and it's just picking up its own momentum and it's not really actually responding to anything specific in my life anymore. It's. It's just doing its own labeling thing. And honestly, that gets into kind of spiritual type imagery for me. Kind of. It does golem demon type energy imagery there for me. But anyway, that's my therapist lens. How does that hit you? Would you nuance anything or add anything?

Tim Burnett (29:04)

I think that you're hitting the nail on the head in the sense that when the guilt transitions to shame, which is an identity piece, Right. That labeling, it gets us out of what we call in contemplative circles, the true self. Right. Which I think is very similar to the capital S self of Dick Schwartz's thought and things like that. I mean, okay, without trying to lapse into ontology here. Yeah. I think any other. Okay, this is gonna be theopoetic in nature here, right?

Dr. Dan Koch (29:32)

It's fine. You just have to explain your terms. You can get as nerdy as you want, but we're not assuming. This is not homebrewed Christianity, okay? Listeners do not have master's or doctorates in theology for the most part.

Tim Burnett (29:43)

Okay, so I guess what I mean then is that any label that you place over your identity that is less than love is not a label that you should be interested in. Right? And again, I'm sort of.

Dr. Dan Koch (29:56)

Say that again. Say that again.

Tim Burnett (29:58)

Any label that you place on your identity that is less than love is not a label worth being the final name of who you are. So that, for me, right, is not necessarily therapeutic language. It's pastoral, it's spiritual. Because love is the poetic placeholder that we use for that universal inclusivity and that relationality, that interconnectedness. God, I mean, would be another way to talk about that. And so if we are. I love that the mystic Jim Finley says that if God stopped loving you into the present moment, you would disappear. Right. That's a very concrete image to say. That's how closely tied your isness, your beingness, is to love. And so why do we settle for other identities? Right. There's probably another whole episode on intersectionality and how that has actually co opted what I'm talking about here and identity politics and all that. You know what I mean?

Dr. Dan Koch (31:00)

Oh, okay. All right. Give us Barabbas, guys.

Tim Burnett (31:03)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (31:04)

Give us fucking Barabbas. Send those emails.

Tim Burnett (31:07)

That's for another day. But my point, I guess, is to kind of resound with what you said from your psychotherapeutic perspective that. Yeah. When that switches from a feeling, a sensation, to tend to a label or an identity marker, that's less than love. We know we're going to get into some muddy waters. And so, yeah, from my perspective, if we can find a way to stay grounded in God's love, which is also a statement about your identity as beloved, then we can allow those voices to come that do even want to take us and drag us into the inner critic and allow them to again exist within sort of the constellation of the bigger self, the True self.

Dr. Dan Koch (31:56)

I hope that this is helpful for people and doesn't feel like a non sequitur. You tell me if it feels like one to you, Tim.

Tim Burnett (32:02)

Sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (32:02)

I'm taken by this concept of labeling yourself anything less than love. The first thing it made me think was that in the psychological realm, this is closer to what we call positive psychology. Right. This is. We are. We are well beyond using IFS or CBT or something else to help us resolve, you know, debilitating depression or anxiety or OCD or something. And we're into the realm of like, what is a maximally beautiful and good human life look like.

Tim Burnett (32:34)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (32:35)

And positive psychology is sort of psychology's attempt to have something to say and to be able to look at questions like that, which is wonderful. It's an awesome part of psychology to have and not only be diagnosing and dealing with symptoms and all the sort of negative symptomatic psychology you might call it.

Tim Burnett (32:57)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (32:58)

It's also a level of abstraction and flourishing that like many of the people that we see week to week are not capable of for various reasons. And there's a real problem of evil and suffering issue there theologically. But what I was thinking is like, it's kind of like the difference between. It highlights for me the difference between what therapy is good for, which is helping someone get back to baseline.

Tim Burnett (33:25)

Yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (33:26)

Again, if you've got time and resources, then you can get into some positive psychology stuff that is above baseline, more into flourishing type of territory.

Tim Burnett (33:36)

Sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (33:36)

And the coaching work that I tend to do with clients is more above that baseline because I can't do therapy.

Tim Burnett (33:42)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (33:43)

But theology and pastoral work has a distinction because I can do my job as a therapist whether or not God exists. Like, it doesn't really change the job. Interesting to hear from therapists for whom it might change it. For me, it doesn't change it much. But what I think of a theologian doing, or a theologically minded pastor, or even just a pastor, maybe even a practical, more pragmatic pastor, is like, look, here's the good news. The good news is all of this actually matters. You are actually loved by the God of the universe and go to therapy and work on your cognitive distortions. And maybe there's some, you know, there's gonna be some shared fabric. We're gonna talk about some of that shared fabric today. But also, at its best, a religious life. A spiritual leader is actually just helping me live into the truth of the wildness of that claim that, like, no, it does it all in the heart and Mind of God. And you can participate in that right now. That is just a different. It's a different job, it's a different message.

Tim Burnett (34:54)

Yes. Yes, it is, Dan. Yeah, I mean, I think I have friends who are both Christians and therapists, right? And they kind of talk about or they story their interactions with folks, and it sometimes borders on that. Like there's an aspect to what they recount to me that is pastoral almost in the sense of like helping people recognize. I mean, you could secularize the language, right? And say you use Mary Oliver's phrase, like helping people find their place in the family of things is a way to say you belong and you belong to the human race, you belong to this planet, you belong to this community, and you have irrevocable dignity. And some people can't believe that about themselves, right? So we could theologize it and we can again, you can say, you can connect it to like the Christian claim that there's a God of universal love who loves you individually, uniquely and personally in you, through you, and as you, I would add contemplatively, you know, and you could do that, but you could also. I see that there's a real stark similarity there, but for me, the kind of the jump from, like you said, getting people back to baseline, getting them attuned to their. Their belonging and helping them on that journey of homecoming, and then saying again with theopoetic language, you know, that you, again, you are not separate from love like that there's a real. I mean this philosophically, I mean this metaphysically. There's a through line from love as the poetic name that we give to relationships that promote life. Beauty is the pride product of loving relationships. And peace, says Alfred North Whitehead, is trusting in the efficacy of beauty. And so for me, if we, I mean, again, from our different modalities, we sort of help people to find self, love, connectedness to love, rooting themselves in love from. From again different vantage points that hopefully leads them to be able to on some level. For me, and part of my work is to see again that the eyes of beauty outstair the eyes of death. And that in trusting beauty, which I also think is another word for God that's really beautiful or that's poetic, we find peace. And so that's how it kind of works for me.

Dr. Dan Koch (37:19)

I like that a lot. I feel like there's a lot for me to chew on there. I want to be clear. I'm not like knocking my profession. I do think of it as one fabric. Ultimately, it's one Thing.

Tim Burnett (37:31)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (37:31)

And we've got different tool sets to sort of get at different aspects of it. But I wonder if I just have a little bit of space now after five years of training and everything and a little bit more time to kind of like luxuriate a bit in the theology stuff. I don't know. We'll see. Well, I want to get to this particular question of attending to our anxious thoughts.

Tim Burnett (38:05)

Yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (38:06)

And you have a particular example from this sermon clip that you sent me, this section of the sermon. So can you tell that story?

Tim Burnett (38:14)

Sure. So my personal journey is one where I've had to deal with anxiety. This wasn't at least something that I dealt with directly for most of my life, but really there was a period of my life where it really emerged.

Dr. Dan Koch (38:29)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (38:29)

I started to have even like panic attacks out of the blue. Like things that again, I had not had for the first 30 plus something years of my life. And I wandered into the office of an anxiety specialist therapist who's a gestalt practitioner. What he did was invite me to again some specific practices of inquiring of my anxiety. And it really through, I mean through years of work and kind of tending to it in a specific way. And we can talk about that if you led me to be able to work through it, with it and through it and release a lot of it or. I would say that part of the pedagogy was like it sort of self relieved, you know, like on its own.

Dr. Dan Koch (39:14)

Well, we. This is a big thing in cognitive therapy.

Tim Burnett (39:17)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (39:18)

Is you are training your clients to be their own cognitive therapists, bro. That is, that's mainstream. So. Yes.

Tim Burnett (39:26)

Yeah. And we, I've talked about that with friends too for like you don't see him anymore.

Dr. Dan Koch (39:30)

And certain kinds of therapy lend themselves more than other types. Like you can't really train someone to be your psychoanalyst.

Tim Burnett (39:37)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (39:37)

Freudian psychoanalyst. You have to just go to school for that. But cognitive therapy is very much about. And you know, my bachelor's is in philosophy. I think that's partly why I'm drawn to it. It is very much. It is a, it's an ideas based thing and you can actually kind of learn to think that way.

Tim Burnett (39:53)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (39:54)

And for a certain type of person that can provide like literally lifelong support. In fact, I believe that that's what I did without knowing that's what I had done before I ever started training to become a therapist. That I had that bent already. And I had. And I had a few people who helped me out a bit. But A lot of it was. I just became my own cognitive therapist. And so, yeah, that is like, how I think of it. So that makes sense.

Tim Burnett (40:21)

No, totally. I. You reminded me, I recall telling another therapist friend of mine that I had a little flare up over the summer, and I went back into my notes from my conversations with my therapist and yes, yes. And I was able to soothe that anxiety because it was like, case by case, like, exactly what I was going through those years. I was really dealing with it. And so what he spoke over me, what he invited me to do in terms of my own practice, I was able to just speak over myself. And my friend goes, it sounds like you just, you know, like, you've learned how to do this for yourself now. And I was like, I kind of feel like that's why I haven't seen him in a couple of years. A few years, you know, is like. Is like I have the tools now in my belt to deal with this if it comes up. But you know what? It doesn't as much anymore, you know, if at all, most of the time.

Dr. Dan Koch (41:10)

So, okay, so that's the good news. But walk us through the shitty part before you got there. So, okay, what did he have you do? Because this was really the kernel of our idea for this episode was getting into the weeds on the sort of contemplative practice of attending and how that mirrored yours and other people's therapy process around anxiety and other thoughts.

Tim Burnett (41:35)

Yeah. So first day I went into his office, he had me take a test. And essentially this test is to diagnose where your anxiety is coming from. Right. Like, and the conclusion of my test was, it was worry. So there were anxious thoughts that were persistent that I would go and wrestle with, and in the wrestling, I'd get tangled up. And then as you start to wrestle some more, you just become a ball of anxiety. Right. And so I did not know how to disentangle myself from those. Even if he said to me, like, hey, that's just a thought. You can tend to it. Why don't you just, like, remember that it's not who you are? And it wasn't that.

Dr. Dan Koch (42:13)

If only it were that easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Burnett (42:15)

If it only were that easy. So one of the practices he gave me was, he goes, go out alone on your own, and I want you to pick a few anxious thoughts, rehearse them out loud to yourself with your own volition and your own voice. And he says, when you do that, say the thought, do a body scan, check in with your body, and ask this question. Is it tolerable? Is what I feel tolerable in response to that anxious thought that I said out loud? And the secret behind the thing is, like, it's always tolerable, right?

Dr. Dan Koch (42:47)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (42:47)

Because when you're having a panic attack, it feels like you're about to die, but literally, it's not even dangerous for your health, but it feels like you're dying, like when you're in it. So the secret behind it is that it's always tolerable. But you do that practice. And again, you can say the same one over and over. You can say different ones that you say. So I would go out and do this, and I remember there were a couple times that I literally laughed out loud at the things that I would say to myself in my head that I was anxious about.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:14)

Are you comfortable sharing some literal examples, like word for word examples? It's okay if you would rather not. I can. I could supply some generic examples.

Tim Burnett (43:22)

You can supply some generic ones if you want. Yeah, I think.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:25)

Okay. So just pulling from. Okay. Pulling from a lot of clients or whatever.

Tim Burnett (43:29)

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:30)

So this sounds like more generalized anxiety. That's the sort of worry.

Tim Burnett (43:33)

Yep. Gad.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:34)

Kind of in the classic sense of worrying.

Tim Burnett (43:37)

A little.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:37)

A little.

Tim Burnett (43:37)

Gad.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:38)

Gad. Worrywart. So that kind of thing is generally the worries are about, you know, discrete upcoming, you know, realities in your life or something that are things that are actually ongoing in the world.

Tim Burnett (43:50)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (43:51)

Just briefly, to contrast that panic disorder. The anxiety is about having panic attacks. That's what I had for much of my life. Right. And that's distinct. A distinct type of anxiety. Okay.

Tim Burnett (44:01)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (44:01)

So for generalizing anxiety, you might have something like, I always fail at things. Of course I'm going to fail at this. You could have something like, well, nobody thinks I'm any good or nobody cares what I think. I'm seeming to go. One particular kind of flavor here. I don't know.

Tim Burnett (44:25)

Well, I can add one. I'll add one of my specifics, which was, I'm a cancer survivor. And so a lot of my anxious thoughts that would come up were around things in my body. Right. So when I would have, like, a little side ache, I would go, well, there's a tumor.

Dr. Dan Koch (44:41)

Yes.

Tim Burnett (44:42)

You know, and I'm going to die. Essentially. It was always like the fatalistic conclusion. Right. And so it was, you know, it wasn't.

Dr. Dan Koch (44:50)

I've got. Okay, I've got one for you that I've done before. But you've never heard it.

Tim Burnett (44:53)

Okay.

Dr. Dan Koch (44:54)

Maybe listeners have. So I Was trying to lose weight a few years ago, and I was using Noom because I was.

Tim Burnett (44:59)

Oh, yeah, I know. Noom.

Dr. Dan Koch (45:00)

I was apparently just a total shill for all the podcast advertising companies.

Tim Burnett (45:06)

Okay, okay, there you go. True Confessions.

Dr. Dan Koch (45:09)

No. Free ad. Well, this is not a free ad. I'm actually going to kind of knock them. There was a calorie calculator within the service. Right. So that's a part of setup.

Tim Burnett (45:19)

Yeah. Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (45:20)

And it gave me a number. I stuck to that number really well for three weeks. And I had done calorie counting before, and I had always had, you know, at least that first five pounds of water weight that would come within a week or two. And. Yeah, and I wasn't even making that progress. And I was. I was starting to get desperate, and one morning I step on the scale and the number is, you know, I've lost one pound in three and a half weeks or something. Just abysmal.

Tim Burnett (45:44)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (45:45)

And instead of thinking about that it might have been the software, I thought, something's wrong with me. The last thing I got was, like, bordering on pre diabetic. So I'm gonna get diabetes, I'm gonna lose a limb. I'm gonna die 10, 12 years earlier. I'm gonna miss my son's life, bro.

Tim Burnett (46:05)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (46:06)

So that's where I went directly.

Tim Burnett (46:08)

Yes, that's the one.

Dr. Dan Koch (46:10)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (46:10)

And my connection to it was I literally remember lying anxious on the couch and thinking, like, I won't get to show my children the world. Yeah, that's what it was more about.

Dr. Dan Koch (46:21)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (46:21)

So it's funny because even yesterday, my wife showed me my back and she's like, you have a lump right here. And I was like, are you serious? Like, that's what you're going to tell me right now. And then it's the same thing, though, right? It's the same. That same kind of ridge that's run to that foregone conclusion of the fatalistic end. Anyway, so that was one for me, you know, that oftentimes I still deal with is like, instead of thinking that this ache in my side is like, where I got elbowed playing basketball at the Y last week, or that burrito that I had that was bad for lunch, I go to the other extreme. And so that's just one example.

Dr. Dan Koch (46:57)

Okay. Now you can tell me if I'm jumping too far ahead here.

Tim Burnett (47:02)

Okay.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:02)

But here's where we're already getting into this kind of. Well, is it therapy or is it spirituality? Because you can respond to those thoughts in some different ways in Multiple different ways that I would still deem, like, healthy and helpful.

Tim Burnett (47:18)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:19)

So one way you can respond as your own cognitive therapist as you build up that skill is you can say something like, I am catastrophizing.

Tim Burnett (47:28)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:28)

I am only considering the worst futures and none of the better possibilities. Or you could say, I'm fortune telling, I'm predicting the future, or I'm mind reading. I am telling myself what this person thinks about me, but I actually have no idea.

Tim Burnett (47:41)

Yes. Love it.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:42)

What they think. Because they don't know what I think either.

Tim Burnett (47:43)

Those are great.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:44)

So that's the, that's the kind of more straight up like a cbt. You're training yourself to respond with cbt.

Tim Burnett (47:50)

Yep.

Dr. Dan Koch (47:51)

But. And I know where this is going, listeners don't. You also did some exposure response prevention therapy is what it sounds like. And that is a different way of responding. And this is, this is done with phobias and ocd.

Tim Burnett (48:04)

Yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (48:04)

That's sort of the kind of primary, straightforward non trauma usages of it. But it can be used for other things as well, including generalized anxiety. And it sounds like your therapist also was having you do some of this, which would be more like, you know, so as opposed to I'm catastrophizing. I probably don't have cancer. You can kind of lean into. We all will die. I will die. I probably will die of some form of. I mean, most people die from cancer ultimately. Right. Like even that's what old age often is. Is a form of cancer.

Tim Burnett (48:37)

One out of two men or something.

Dr. Dan Koch (48:39)

Something like that. Yeah. So it's a huge number. So. But you could, you can, you could take that path of like, yeah, I will die probably of cancer and just sort of try to. And this takes longer and you, you'd want to make sure you have more buffers around it. But yeah, when you do exposure therapy, you're going fucking straight at the darkest one. Like you saying earlier, I won't be able to show my kids the world like that, Tim. That's probably going to be true. Yeah. Now, how old will they be when you're no longer able to show? Hopefully they're 50 or something like that, but like, exactly.

Tim Burnett (49:13)

And they're no longer kids and they

Dr. Dan Koch (49:15)

don't need to see the world. But you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you are going to die before them in almost all cases.

Tim Burnett (49:21)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (49:21)

And we don't know when we're going to die. That is factually true. So it's interesting. You can kind of take those two paths and they're both like, yeah, great paths, depending on the details.

Tim Burnett (49:32)

Oh, yeah. And I think for me, existentially, there was a path too, right? The philosophical exploration. I dealt a lot with death and process thought and cosmology and metaphysics, and how does death fit into the natural order of things? So for me, that was a big deal. And that's, again, that may be another episode. Right?

Dr. Dan Koch (49:49)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (49:50)

Email Dan about Barabbas. Right. Like, and so that.

Dr. Dan Koch (49:53)

Okay, that subject line should be give

Tim Burnett (49:57)

us Kierkegaard or give us death.

Dr. Dan Koch (49:59)

That's if you really want the exit. Oh, give us death. Give us Kierkegaard or give us death.

Tim Burnett (50:04)

And give us death. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (50:08)

Give us thoughts about our own death.

Tim Burnett (50:10)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (50:10)

I'm gonna get the weirdest set of emails. Someone's gonna have access to my inbox and be like, dan, what the fuck is going on?

Tim Burnett (50:15)

Right. So all that to say there was this exploration of the existential. That was actually also a balm for me, philosophically speaking. And I feel like a lot of my worldview now has been so shaped by that. Having death fit into the natural order of things, having a different perspective, contributing to more life. So there was that. But I wanted to also connect what we were just talking about with something that was really meaningful for me was that the exercise. And I think this connects to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the spiritual and the psychotherapeutic and the labeling.

Dr. Dan Koch (50:50)

Good.

Tim Burnett (50:50)

I was gonna take us there, the labeling. So for me, what I was doing in that exercise was not identifying with those anxious thoughts any longer. Right. I was separating myself out. No longer were they intrusive. I, through my own volition, was taking the reins and expressing them on purpose. And what that did was steal their power. Right. And so there's that aspect to that practice that really helped me to take those labels away. Like, I'm an anxious person or I'm a ball of panic, or I'm fearful about, you know, my body and cancer. Like. And so it started to separate out that true self that we were sort of alluding to earlier to go, oh, wow, is there a larger self that can hold those bodily sensations, those feelings, those emotions in loving care and so that they can find a place to belong. And through that process of kind of disentangling my core identity from those other sub identities, I feel like they literally started to just go away on their own. And it was such a gift. I can't even tell you to have that therapist. And. Yeah, but then again, I noticed the resonances with the Contemplative side of things, so we can explore that. But I don't know if that brings up anything for you.

Dr. Dan Koch (52:07)

It does. I'm gonna do like one more little therapy drive by on our way back to contemplative to truly talking about the contemplative side.

Tim Burnett (52:15)

Cool.

Dr. Dan Koch (52:16)

Two things you said made me think of acceptance and commitment therapy, which is just called a second wave cognitive therapy. So I do some of that stuff, and a lot of modern day cognitive therapists will be using ACT in their sort of repertoire. The overall project of acceptance and commitment therapy is defined as cognitive flexibility. And one of the major keys of that is defusing. So you go from I am my thoughts to I'm having my thoughts. That's the basic defusion. And yeah, you're giving me thumbs up and okay. Signs. And you said earlier, defusing myself from the Christian tradition or evangelicalism, I think is what you'd said.

Tim Burnett (53:02)

Oh, I had gotten diffused from evangelicalism.

Dr. Dan Koch (53:05)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you were unfused from it, right?

Tim Burnett (53:09)

Secreted, Sent out?

Dr. Dan Koch (53:11)

Yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Oh, you were like, shat out is what you were trying to say. Okay. Like a. Like an aerosol would diffuse you into the air. Okay.

Tim Burnett (53:20)

Yes, yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (53:21)

Okay. Well, anyway, that's a different use. But yeah, defusing here, like, unlike no longer being fused to where, like, oh, my thoughts are me.

Tim Burnett (53:30)

Yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (53:30)

And there's a really great analogy that they use to help people do this that I like to share, and I can do it very quickly. It's a driving the bus analogy.

Tim Burnett (53:39)

Okay.

Dr. Dan Koch (53:39)

They say, like, imagine your anxieties, you're anxious, depressed, whatever. Thoughts. You're a bus driver and you're doing your route around town and they hop on the bus because they're there and they're a part of you or whatever.

Tim Burnett (53:52)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (53:53)

And what ACT says is you don't argue back to them directly. What you do ultimately is you say, you know what? You guys are welcome to ride the bus, but you have to sit in the back because I have a route to do. And that's the commitment part. So you're committed to some goal, and toward that goal, you just tell those thoughts, hey, I accept you. I accept that I have you as thoughts, but you're not me. You can go on the back of the bus. I'm not gonna forget about you. But then the nice thing is eventually you do forget about them. You do that over and over again and they just lose power. So when you said those identities or whatever, like, they just faded, like. Yeah, that's Kind of how we would think of it through an act lens.

Tim Burnett (54:37)

Love it. Yes.

Dr. Dan Koch (54:39)

Cool.

Tim Burnett (54:39)

Yes. Fully endorsed, no notes.

Dr. Dan Koch (54:42)

So let's talk about contemplative. So the phrase that you said that I want to just throw back to you as a prompt to connect this contemplative practice is, is there a larger self? I just grabbed onto that. So talk to me about a larger self in the context of maybe the contemplative practice that you guys do at the way Collective, if you want to get real practical with it.

Tim Burnett (55:06)

Well, yeah, I mean, there's. There's a fair amount there that could be unpacked. I think the question of is there a larger self? Again, sort of borders on ontology to me, which is like the discussion of what are you, you know, what is being.

Dr. Dan Koch (55:24)

Well, okay, in the context of, like, how you said it, though, is there a larger self that can, like, hold this stuff or where I can, you know, that will help me think of it differently? That's sort of what I meant you to mean, how I took you. What I took you to mean.

Tim Burnett (55:39)

Yeah. So the first thing I would say is there's no phenomena of your inner life that is not a part of divinity. Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (55:45)

So, okay, say that again for the people in the back.

Tim Burnett (55:49)

There are no phenomena in your inner life that are not a part of divinity, that are not a part of God's inner life.

Dr. Dan Koch (55:56)

What do you mean by phenomena?

Tim Burnett (55:57)

I mean, from phenomenology, we could say like your thoughts, your emotions, your inner sensations, your bodily sensations are all a part of the divine life because they're a part of you and you are a part of the divine life.

Dr. Dan Koch (56:09)

Okay, so you're expressing a panentheistic view of God. Right. Or something like that, where, I mean,

Tim Burnett (56:15)

if you wanted to get real nerdy, and maybe this is for homebrewed Christianity, we would say trans pantheistic. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Dr. Dan Koch (56:22)

Trans, pantheistic. I know panentheism as like the entire universe is within God, and God is also something more than just all the parts of the universe.

Tim Burnett (56:35)

Yeah. And I would say that transpantheism is that that holds a dynamism for becomingness and sort of novel expressions of creation kind of continuing to flow forward in time.

Dr. Dan Koch (56:45)

And so on that view, every part of my conscious experience as a human being, my particular experience in my body with my brain, is within the divine because all of it is within God.

Tim Burnett (57:01)

So that means that. And again, we could unpack self and what is meant by self or, you know, soul or, you know, true self. Or that kind of a thing. But essentially then your embodiment, you know, that which facilitates your personal experience of your related world is all a part of God. And so in that, I think the insight is that everything belongs to. Again, we're back to Richie Rohr here has a book called that by the same title. I think it's really beautiful and helpful pragmatically, again, not ontologically.

Dr. Dan Koch (57:34)

He's not a. The. That's okay. Yeah. He's not a theologian.

Tim Burnett (57:37)

In fact, I would take issue with his use of the immortal diamond as the image of the true self because it's too static and hard. Right. For us process people who like the becoming.

Dr. Dan Koch (57:46)

Well, let me ask you this. So the larger self thing. Right. So. Yeah. Here's one way to put it. I have never come across a contemplative or mystical writer in any tradition.

Tim Burnett (57:59)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (57:59)

Either reading it myself, which I've maybe read 10 of them.

Tim Burnett (58:02)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (58:02)

In their own. And then I've probably read about another 40 through Karen Armstrong Rohr, other writers, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, whatever. So call that 40. And I'm sort of dimly aware of 40 to 50 of the most popular contemplatives in human history. Right. I don't think a single one of them would say that. When you really calm yourself and connect with yourself and the universe, however they would in it, whatever language they would use, not a single one of them would go. What you realize is it's just you, dog. It's just you. The individual disconnected from a larger organ. Like. No, nobody ever says that. Right.

Tim Burnett (58:43)

100%. No one says that. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (58:45)

So let's start there.

Tim Burnett (58:46)

Well, so then, I mean, again, Cynthia Burgo, who's another contemplative teacher who, you know, was a CAC faculty member, wrote in the beginning of her kind of book on centering prayer, that we need an updated concept of the soul that deals seriously with not only non. Duality, but, like, just not abstract, concrete images because there's too much going on. So I ended up writing about that in my dissertation. That was kind of what I took on in part from a process kind of philosophical view. But for me, I think kind of what you're hitting at there is really important because not one of them would say that. In fact, like, Ken Wilber talks a lot about, like, big. His recent books on, like, finding radical wholeness is about finding a big wholeness. But the initial insight he calls waking up and waking up to wholeness is not that you've finally done your work. Like, we're talking about and like, you know, integrated yourself and whatever he says, it's having just one experience of interconnectedness. Just realizing one time that you are not just a solitary, alone being in an otherwise, you know, sort of like distant universe.

Dr. Dan Koch (59:59)

Yeah. Void, otherwise. Yeah.

Tim Burnett (60:00)

That if you have one experience of being interconnected, it wakes you up. And so it starts for me with that idea that, that what we're doing. Like, I think you said it beautifully. If you, you know, you scour the mystical writings, you're not going to find somebody who goes, well, I figured out I was just fully and finally alone. You will in the existentialists, right?

Dr. Dan Koch (60:21)

You will. You all amongst the existentialists. Yeah.

Tim Burnett (60:23)

Right. So that moment of realizing that my selfhood is mediated by my relationality, my relationship, we could say to God, to others, to the environment around me, to the earth, to the universe, like, is wonderful because it frees you up from your self obsession egoically. I mean, and thinking that just again, your intersectional identity markers are the only thing that matters about you and that, you know, my isness is constituted by, you know, what I like, what I don't like, my, my race, my. My beliefs, like what, all that, all that stuff. And you go, no, I am you, you are in me. In fact, just last night I taught on this a little bit and read this writing from the end of Thomas Merton's diaries where he says, like, essentially like when you get to the silent point, he says, what you realize is that there's the emergence of a life within life. I and you, you and me, they and you and they and me. And he starts to just get so non dual, he can't even say it. Dispossession within dispossession. Dispassion within dispassion. Wisdom within wisdom. And he says, I am alone, you are alone. He's speaking to God and he says, the Father and I are one. And so there's this experience in which when we recognize or we have this moment of awakening that our little selves are never really enough to give us this homecoming that we're longing for. It's only in our connection to divinity, which you could even say multiplicity to the relationships that have given birth or become a nest for my unique individual life history and becoming, then we've got a really fertile ground to play with and to become, I think, healthier people in the world because we transcend self obsession and again, in that egoic way, and we're invited to compassionate, interconnected lives.

Dr. Dan Koch (62:15)

Yeah, I think where I can fall off the treadmill. Sometimes I don't know if it's, like, jargon or if it's like, just, like, logical steps followed by other logical steps. And maybe we aren't showing our work always or. I know there's things that can kind of derail me a little bit around this stuff. So I wonder if, for like, my sake and any listeners who might be like me, we could. Let's try and rebuild what you just said, but, like, slower and from the ground up. So here's a place we could start.

Tim Burnett (62:50)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (62:50)

Is just with, like, the 10 or so people around me the most. Yeah. So Justin Barrett and Brad Straughan, both previous guests of the podcast, I'm pretty sure they co authored a book, and I can't remember the exact title, but it's about extended cognition. This is the concept. And the idea is they're psychologists, so they're talking about how every person who has cognition in their own, you know, that is our minds come out of. They emerge from our brains. Okay. So that's why I'm assuming that. So, okay, great. I got a mind. It emerges out of my brain. If I didn't have a brain, I wouldn't have a mind. That's true. But the way that my mind actually works is that there are three to ten people around me. Family, maybe close coworkers or partners in business or something. Teammates. Or if you're in the military, maybe your unit mates or something. Right. Like, you are around people who you actually use their mind. Like you're using their mind and they're using your mind as a part of your own mind and as a part of their own mind.

Tim Burnett (64:00)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (64:01)

Like, so when I'm making decisions, I am always consulting my wife.

Tim Burnett (64:07)

Yep.

Dr. Dan Koch (64:07)

And it's not just that I'm getting her stamp of approval. Sure. I actually want to know what she thinks about it.

Tim Burnett (64:13)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (64:14)

Because my mind knows the best version of me is one that can take in the best parts of her as well.

Tim Burnett (64:21)

Love that.

Dr. Dan Koch (64:22)

You know, maybe mentors, people who know you well. Old friends. Right. Supervisors, if you're training to be a therapist. Right. So let's start there. That's like a first step of, okay, already there is a larger self than just me in at least that sense. Where would you build the next step from that? In my kind of slower pace here.

Tim Burnett (64:48)

It's a great insight, I would say, for me, as a sort of process relational panpsychist or pan experientialist kind of a person, there's something like fundamental experience that runs all the way down in nature. Right. So it's porous enough and we could get into the definition of mind and brain and what we mean by that. Right. But I think it would maybe derail us a little bit. I think that what you're saying, there's something in that that resounds for me as really important because you recognize in that illustration you gave that there's more to your mind than just your brain. Right. And so that perhaps is a great invitation for us to talk about like from there, what does that lead you into? What sort of soul wisdom or insight might come when you recognize that Dan is not a static entity, but perhaps different in his relationality to his wife and to his friends and to his podcast guests. And that in the tapestry of that. Right. I love that Bob Dylan has that song I Contain multitudes or whatever. But that's from a book, Right. There's a book of the same title. Is that in our multitudinousness, if that's even a word. Right. We come to know ourselves as many and not just one. And then we come to realize that there's an invitation there again to resist the temptation to reduce ourselves. Right. To one thing. I mean, psychotherapeutically, you'd say, to this one thing that happened to me in my past, to this one, this one concern, like we were talking about this anxiety that I have about the future. Now we can reduce ourselves to all these things and we resist reductionism in that way.

Dr. Dan Koch (66:41)

I like that. I think about sizes of lives sometimes with clients.

Tim Burnett (66:45)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (66:46)

That's where that's taking me is like when I think about clients I've had who have been just, you know, a combination of very tough life circumstances and like being dealt a bad hand. So genetically upbringing, trauma, whatever.

Tim Burnett (66:59)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (66:59)

One of the ways that I kind of at the highest level conceive of their life versus maybe other clients lives and my friends lives and stuff is it's so small because only something small feels safe, is often a part of it.

Tim Burnett (67:14)

Wow.

Dr. Dan Koch (67:15)

You know, like the more kind of anxious and alert you are, the fewer things will feel solid or something like that. So you just learn to sort of not stray.

Tim Burnett (67:28)

Yep.

Dr. Dan Koch (67:29)

And then when I think of my clients lives getting better, it's often that they are expanding in some way. It's kind of. It's like psychopoetics really. Yeah, yeah. Because it's not. That's not really a term of art. Like that's not a particular. Particular term, but it is a kind of like. Well, you as a poetic Image, it's like, okay, so if you get bigger, then maybe you're even big enough to sort of look at yourself from the outside. That's a boon. That's helpful. You can use that extended cognition of other people that are already in your life. But if you can trust them enough, then you can ask them to describe you and what they're seeing, and you can take it seriously. There's another expansion of your world, and in some ways, actually to go all the way back to the exposure therapy you did around your anxiety. I feel like there's something there that is in this same world of, like, will you respond to that? Like, do you think that Was there an element of expansion going on when you're, like, saying those thoughts out loud to yourself, feeling if you can handle them or not? Like, was that a way of opening and broadening up? Of course.

Tim Burnett (68:41)

And I love that you brought up expansion, because there's actually another process theologian who has a book called Fat Soul Philosophy. She kind of makes the claim that, like, as you go through your life, you're expanding, and that's a. It's a positive term, like, that your soul is fattening. And for me, I sometimes think of, like, the inner life. Yeah. Like, it was almost like when I would go through these different things from, I mean, cancer, my own journey of suffering and chemotherapy, to having to, you know, be diffused from evangelicalism. Like, we talked about moving away from my family and everyone we ever knew. Like, and then dealing with this anxiety. Like, it was like my soul was being carved out. Like, there was just a widening of a cavern that was happening. And it created a spaciousness within me where my suffering could then be tethered to or relate to the suffering of other people, even if it wasn't the exact same form of suffering. Like, it was my cancer, my anxiety, those kinds of things that led me to maybe be a little bit better ally to people who have been marginalized their whole lives and are suffering under the boot of late capitalism. Right. But it was like, I did feel. I think you said it beautifully. Like, it felt like this expanding work. It's almost like the soul then has more room to include more of the actual world and the lived experiences that are more difficult or different than yours. And it was like, you know, it's like looking back, you can kind of say, it's such a gift to have gone through cancer, but I would, again, looking forward, never choose it for myself or my kids. And yet, if we let it do its work of growing us, I really think it does. And I just. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up.

Dr. Dan Koch (70:24)

I want to just try and get this nonviolence of God idea in here. This is my last kind of line of inquiry.

Tim Burnett (70:30)

Yeah, sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (70:31)

Just see if we can connect it.

Tim Burnett (70:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (70:33)

Because you could also look at a small versus big through a violence versus nonviolence lens. Right? Violence.

Tim Burnett (70:42)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (70:43)

In a way. Violence says these items are not worth or not able to be included, and it doesn't matter what they think about it, you know, so that doesn't have to be. It could be people, it could be animals, it could be whatever. But violence is like. Well, we were just not. Maybe I'm like, using violence in a theopoetically underdeveloped way or something. But I just think of like, violence is like last resort. Doesn't matter what you think. This is how it's going. So, chicken, you were raised on this farm to be slaughtered and eaten, so your time's up.

Tim Burnett (71:22)

Sure.

Dr. Dan Koch (71:22)

And that we're gonna use violence for it.

Tim Burnett (71:24)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (71:26)

And violence is often thought of, I think. Well, I'll tell you, I won't speak for all psychology. I'll just say one way I would think about when someone would resort to violence is that they feel that they are out of other options. And in some cases. Here's where I break with a lot of my kind of pacifist, fellow liberal Christians is I think there's. I think there's like plenty of those times that are understandable, especially at the nation state level.

Tim Burnett (72:00)

Totally.

Dr. Dan Koch (72:01)

Okay. But at an individual level, I'm far, far less likely to cosign violence. Right. And one thing we might say about that is, well, if I could expand my view of a situation, might other options come into that expanded view that aren't violent?

Tim Burnett (72:17)

Right.

Dr. Dan Koch (72:18)

Maybe that's a way to kind of start to bridge the concepts. But I'm curious, what comes up for you?

Tim Burnett (72:22)

Oh, goodness. Yeah. I mean, I. Again, I think you and I may not have talked about it on this episode yet, but nonviolent communication is a really helpful tool for getting in touch with how to communicate in a way that promotes connectivity rather than, you know, division or violence in some. Some respect. And I say that as like a. As an aside to say that, like what we are endeavoring in and learning the pedagogy of nonviolence. And the practice of nonviolence in communication is just one form that it takes. Right. The goal is to disarm our hearts, as the activist John Deere says. He says we really are in the business of teaching Ourselves training ourselves to disarm our hearts so that violence is not our first responder. Right? And we have, many of us, again, given our situations, our life histories, our socioeconomic statuses and different things, have been trained into needing to respond violently to get ourselves out of the oppression or the experience that was traumatizing or harmful. And again, I think there are times, even as I would call myself a nonviolent practitioner, where it's absolutely necessary to reduce harm. Right? And the process of sort of contemplative inquiry around nonviolence is to disarm our hearts, to not let them become shelled up and hardened to the point where we can't see, again, the beauty of the world anymore, any longer. And we have to acknowledge also that it's tragic beauty. You know, that's what we're talking about. But so what is this work of disarming our hearts, of cultivating not only communicative nonviolence, but also, like a nonviolence of direct action? Like Judith Butler, the philosopher. Her a recent book a couple of years ago is called the Force of Nonviolence. Right? This becomes an energy, a movement, an active force in the world that is necessary when you're dealing with violent regimes, like perhaps maybe people who are sending troops to fight the frogs in Portland. You know what I mean? Like, who knows? You know what I mean? I think that's such a funny, timely image of nonviolence is that people in frog costumes are meeting troops. Like, I love it. I love it because it's exactly.

Dr. Dan Koch (74:46)

Now, I did. Like, I thought Kendall Jenner handing the Pepsi to the riot gear cop was a little more effective.

Tim Burnett (74:52)

Just a smidge.

Dr. Dan Koch (74:53)

Yeah. But the frogs were pretty good.

Tim Burnett (74:55)

I see. You okay? Yeah. To each their own.

Dr. Dan Koch (74:57)

Dan, do you remember. Do you remember that super bowl commercial, by the way? That was just, like, the biggest swing and a miss ever. Yeah. Okay.

Tim Burnett (75:04)

Yeah. At least they swung, you know, they swung for the fences, but they whiffed hard. They whiffed hard?

Dr. Dan Koch (75:10)

Yeah, they whiffed hard. No, the frog. The frogs. They are. That actually is super clever. Yeah.

Tim Burnett (75:16)

Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (75:17)

I like the humor in it, too.

Tim Burnett (75:18)

Oh, comedian. I was just gonna say comedians are prophets. They're exposing the absurdity of the violent occupation of something like Portland. You know, it's just, like, hilarious. They'll be like, oh, you're coming with guns. We're coming in frog costumes. It reminds me of what we were talking about earlier. It makes the violence laughable. Not in that it's laughable in terms of its oppression. It's that it's like that strategy is the one you're gonna use. That's laughable. You know what I mean?

Dr. Dan Koch (75:53)

Yeah. I mean, that's so much of how I think about President Corleone and his minions sometimes. It's hard for me to know when to use laughter and when to be sober. But you certainly need them both. You gotta find a mix, because so much of it is so outlandish. And if you can't laugh at it, that's bad. That's like someone who doesn't feel bad about. It's like you want some guilt and you want some laughter at. Yeah. The lengths to which these spineless politicians will go. And, like, it should make you laugh a little bit that people who spent 25 years of their public career espousing a particular set of principles would just immediately go back and say the opposite to keep power. That is funny.

Tim Burnett (76:49)

It is. It is.

Dr. Dan Koch (76:50)

That's like a Monty Python sketch.

Tim Burnett (76:52)

Like, you know, well, there's a time for everything under the sun, Dan. For laughter and for anger and for. And maybe for violence, you know, as a liberatory. I don't. I don't know. You know, like, there's a time. There's a time.

Dr. Dan Koch (77:06)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (77:06)

We have to laugh. I think it's how we're making it through at least some of. Some of me and my friends, I

Dr. Dan Koch (77:11)

feel like, well, here's my. Okay, so here's my last attempt at that. And again, this is only for. I think you should leave fans. But it's kind of like Trump is shirt brother saying, I just think maybe there are no rules, dude.

Tim Burnett (77:25)

He's definitely testing those boundaries. Right? Like it's adolescent. Yeah, right. Like it's.

Dr. Dan Koch (77:31)

Oh, it's totally adolescent. And most of the jokes on I Think youk Should Leave are about kids. Kids jokes. Yeah.

Tim Burnett (77:37)

It's like junior high is going low. Like, I'm almost big enough to maybe punch you. Like, let's see how this. This would play out if I try.

Dr. Dan Koch (77:45)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (77:46)

You know, maybe us height brothers, our kids maybe will be as aft, you know, depending on how tall they get, but we'll see.

Dr. Dan Koch (77:53)

That's true. Both of my boys are short thus far.

Tim Burnett (77:57)

Mine are big.

Dr. Dan Koch (77:58)

I don't know. I don't know if they're gonna be a height brother.

Tim Burnett (78:01)

Yours are big, mine are taller, but my daughter's tiny. She took after my wife's family's height.

Dr. Dan Koch (78:07)

I mean, my wife and I are both tall, but we both have. We are, like, the tallest. Like, we're both taller than both of our parents kind of a thing. So it might just be that we got those recessive genes or something, those gene pools. Anyway, Tim, we're not gonna make people listen to that conversation, but I think that they enjoyed the previous hour and 20 minutes or so. And again, if you want Tim to come back and like, we'll pick another subtopic here, email subject, Give us Barabbas and we will have a link to your personal website as well as the Way Collective website in the show notes. Anything else you want us to link?

Tim Burnett (78:48)

No. Yeah, check it out. Yeah, it's good to be with you. Yeah. We have a podcast, Way Collective. We're doing these contemplative teachings weekly for you, for the world, for Santa Barbara.

Dr. Dan Koch (78:59)

So. Okay. Is that kind of like your version of like a sermons podcast feed?

Tim Burnett (79:05)

Yeah, it's literally the contemplative teachings from every week of our dinner and dialogue gathering and the contemplative questions that we share around the tables each week. So anybody can listen to that.

Dr. Dan Koch (79:15)

About how long are those episodes though? That's interesting.

Tim Burnett (79:18)

15 minutes. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (79:19)

Okay, cool. And it's you. Is it often you or are there other people who are sharing these things?

Tim Burnett (79:24)

It's often me and there's others who share too, from our community or. Okay, you know, we'll have like, when Brian McLaren came out, we have him on and do things with him and those kinds of things. So. Yeah.

Dr. Dan Koch (79:34)

Rock and roll. The big. The big BMC. BML. Does anybody call him that?

Tim Burnett (79:40)

B. McEl? I don't think so.

Dr. Dan Koch (79:41)

The big. The big BML. Should I lead with that next time I see him?

Tim Burnett (79:48)

I think you should lead with the big bm.

Dr. Dan Koch (79:50)

That's okay. Someone needs to revoke your. Your. Your joke license is all. Is suspended at the moment temporarily.

Tim Burnett (79:58)

I was like, it's like Spider League.

Dr. Dan Koch (80:00)

All right.

Tim Burnett (80:00)

You know what I mean?

Dr. Dan Koch (80:00)

It is like Spider. Okay, now we're going to deep into Seth Meyers Instagram reels with Tim Robinson. So let's just. We're gonna shut that shit down. Thanks, Tim. You might be back. It depends on if the people speak or not, but I had a fun time.

Tim Burnett (80:13)

All right, Dan. Well, thanks for having me. Either way, it's been really fun.

Dr. Dan Koch (80:16)

Yeah.

Tim Burnett (80:17)

Appreciate you, bro. All right.

Dr. Dan Koch (80:17)

Thanks, dude.