The Pocket Contemplative

We love to talk about neuroscience on The Pocket Contemplative and here a prominent scholar helps us understand what happens as we pursue contemplative practice. Namely, we move out of our fundamental "left-brain bias" which has been fooling us that the things we think are, like, mostly "true" and helps us experience the often-uncharted waters of our more holistic right brain. We'll talk about fascinating ideas of what constitutes our "self." We'll hear about a prominent neuroscientist who had a stroke and lost use of her left-brain for a bit, only to discover a kind of gratitude and well-being that informed a generation of research in itself. And much more.

Mentioned on this podcast

No Self, No Problem, by Chris Niebauer, Ph.D.

Last episode, Dave Schmelzer did a scholarly tour through five scriptures that on the surface appear to address LGBTQ people's relationship to some churches. Today, he concludes this exploration of this central issue for many congregations with a look at one more scripture--the creation narrative--along with offering a number of considerations that he and other church leaders have found to be invaluable. 

Mentioned on this podcast:

A number of helpful books are touched on here, but one that's proven particularly useful around the idea of a "third way" has been Roger E. Olson's The Mosaic of Christian Belief.

A hot-button issue in many churches in recent years has been the place of LGBTQ congregants. For progressives, this seems like an obvious justice issue. But for many traditionalists this seems like a holiness issue that the Bible addresses unambiguously. In this episode, Dave Schmelzer offers context to this conversation before offering a scholarly tour through five of the scriptures that commonly come up as he discovers that the Bible is more complex on this than we might think.


Mentioned on this podcast:

Alongside the many books mentioned during the episode, one helpful exploration of these issues is Ken Wilson's A Letter to My Congregation. 

In the last TPC, Dave Schmelzer talked about how a profound union with God is what 1,200 years of Christian spirituality teaches is what you and I most want--though you might not have been taught this after the Reformers went in a different direction. In this episode, Dave dives into the most lasting theory in the Christian tradition about how we might get this union, Teresa of Avila's seven-stage "The Interior Castle."  (A note: The Pocket Contemplative will break until September after this episode.)

Mentioned on this podcast:

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Some books Dave touches on about Teresa of Avila:

Julienne McLean's Towards Mystical Union: A Modern Commentary on The Interior Castle

So, that said, McLean's book is out of print. Amazon will sell it to you for a robust $77. So maybe a summary of her look at Teresa will be enough for you. You can find that in the chapter on Teresa in Kim Nataraja's Journey to the Heart: Christian Contemplation Through the Centuries. Also technically out of print, but you can get that book (a good one) for a mere $37 on Amazon. 

The Lutheran pastor Dave mentions who wrote on Teresa is R. Thomas Ashbrook. His book is Mansions of the Heart: Exploring the Seven Stages of Spiritual Growth

When you explore the history of Christian spirituality, you run across a big surprise. For 1,200 years, the biggie Christian teachers told us that we've been created to profoundly want one and only one thing--union with God along the lines of what Teresa of Avila calls "mystical marriage." Maybe you weren't taught that! If not, you might want to blame John Calvin, who wrote at the same time as Teresa and shouted her down, saying that we instead were profoundly separated from God. Dave Schmelzer will discuss how that union has been described and will suggest ways in which we already at a deep level know that that's the good life we've been circling. He'll tell a bit about Teresa as well and about how she made her way to this major insight... which, in the end, she realized was what the great Chrisitians had always been teaching. 

Mentioned on this podcast:

If you'd like to receive Dave's Thursday notes in your inbox, you can sign up for that here.

Some books Dave touches on about Teresa of Avila:

Julienne McLean's Towards Mystical Union: A Modern Commentary on The Interior Castle

So, that said, McLean's book is out of print. Amazon will sell it to you for a robust $77. So maybe a summary of her look at Teresa will be enough for you. You can find that in the chapter on Teresa in Kim Nataraja's Journey to the Heart: Christian Contemplation Through the Centuries. Also technically out of print, but you can get that book (a good one) for a mere $37 on Amazon. 

The Lutheran pastor Dave mentions who wrote on Teresa is R. Thomas Ashbrook. His book is Mansions of the Heart: Exploring the Seven Stages of Spiritual Growth

In this longer episode, Dave Schmelzer reviews fascinating research about how prayer--and faith--can work so powerfully. He reviews a new book by Nir Eyal which explores the crucial role of injecting hope into our lives and how, that done, our bodies can thrive and we can develop what Eyal calls the "high agency" that can empower us to take meaningful action when life throws obstacles our way. Dave considers how this ties in with how churches look to develop strong faith in you and me and how this might inform things like prayers for healing. 

Mentioned on this podcast: 

Nir Eyal's book Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results

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Generations of people exploring contemplative spirituality, both in the Christian tradition (Thomas Merton) and outside of it (Thich Nhat Hanh) have gone back again and again to one brilliant and confounding teacher, the German academic and mystic Meister Eckhart. He's the mystic other mystics look to. Dave Schmelzer will take just a bit more time than normal to unpack why this might be so and to give you a window into his own enthusiasm for Eckhart.

Mentioned on this podcast:

• You can sign up to receive Dave's weekly "Thursday notes" here. 
• Journey to the Heart: Christian Contemplation through the Centuries, edited by Kim Nataraja

We talk about happiness every now and again, but how can we find it if we realize the things we'd been pinning our happiness on, our biggest dreams, just aren't going to happen? Or even if the bottom really seems to fall out, if we get a terrible diagnosis or someone we love does? What then? Dave Schmelzer discusses research from Sonja Lyubomirsky that suggests potent ways forward. 

Mentioned on this podcast:

Sonja Lyubomirsky's book The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does

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Dave's guesting on the "Shit My Pastor Said" podcast

The connection between contemplative practice and psychotherapy is often noted, but how that came to be is a fascinating story. Dave Schmelzer offers a look at fourth century monk Evagrius of Pontus as a key example of what came out of desert spirituality and, in particular, as the (possible) originator of things you might know and love like the Enneagram, the seven deadly sins and, yes, what Freud and Jung spun into modern psychiatry. Dave closes with a brief look at Evagrius's student and champion and a major player in his own right, John Cassian.

Mentioned on this podcast:

• Kim Nataraja's lecture on Evagrius of Pontus (and another on John Cassian) from Journey to the Heart
• You can learn more about the Faith Part 2 course or register interest for it here.
• You can sign up for Dave's "Thursday notes" essays here. 

Cutting to the chase, getting what we want won't make us happy because of what the researchers call "hedonic adaptation." The good news is that these same researchers tell us these desires for our lives absolutely can be central in helping us create a happy life. So what gives? How can our dreams for our lives work for us and not against us? Dave Schmelzer will explore this key question by way of famed happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky's research and insights. But before getting there, he'll look at this question a bit more broadly by considering Carl Jung's "Five Pillars of a Happy Life" along with some commentary by Arthur C. Brooks.

Mentioned on this podcast

• You can sign up to receive Dave's weekly "Thursday notes" here. 
• Sonja Lyubomirsky's book The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does
• Arthur C. Brooks's book The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life