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Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voice and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Vallejo, California, is Matthew Fox. And as you can see by Matthew's office, he's a busy writer. Matthew, good day to you.

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How are you?

[B: 00:38.4]
Yeah, a busy writer. And none of you a good father.

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Well, it's a pleasure having you back on the show again. You've been on the show many times for previous books, and I think for our listeners, they're going to get a little bit of background about you, and then we're going to get into speaking with, you about a couple of your books.

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But, Matthew, was an Episcopal priest. He's author of 43 books on culture and spirituality, including original the Coming of the Cosmic Christ, a spiritual named, Compassion, and the Reinvention of Work.

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His honors include the Abbey Courage of a Conscience Peace Award. Other recipients include the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, and, Maya Angelou. And there's more here than I could say about Matthew.

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For you who want to learn more, just go to matthewfox.com we'll put a link up to the website as well. But today we have two books that we're going to discuss, and we've got a bridge in between these.

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I'm going to hold this one up and we'll actually slide this across the screen for those listeners out there. It's called the Dao of the Thomas Aquinas, Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, which we all could use right now.

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And then this other kind of opposing book is Trump the Mega Movement, or the Mega Movement as Antichrist. Interestingly, the tough times might have been caused by the Antichrist.

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But any rate, I think it's all perspective. But, Matthew, welcome back to the show. We'll put links to the previous, shows as well. It's always an honor to have you on. I know you wrote me about being on, actually quite some time ago about that book that you had on Trump the Mega Movement as Antichrist.

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And I didn't respond in time, but here we are. It's never too late. So look, in the Dao of Thomas Aquinas, you kind of present Aquinas as a bold, revolutionary thinker, rather than this rigid Systemized kind of person, that he's portrayed as.

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What inspired you to kind of reclaim this version of Aquinas? And why do you think his true character has been obscured throughout history? It is an interesting one and I think for scholars and non scholars alike, this pertains to people we're kind of moving through everyday life.

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Right, right. Well, first of all, thank you for your program. It's been a while, but I love how your program has grown and kept up with the social Media revolution. So it's good to see you again.

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Yes, I think, Aquinas has gotten a, bad eye if you will, because he was in rope for a couple of years as kind of orthodox hatchet man, to keep people in line. But I actually studied with one of the greatest, Aquinas, scholars ever.

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Father Chenau, C E G N U. A French, Dominican and great historian. And his take on Aquinas was very much his own inspiration. The prophetic side of Aquinas, rarely comes through when you're dealing with dogma and we're repeating the scholastic modality of his Summa, theologica.

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But what I did in my book that preceded this one, the sure Joy, it's a very big one. I translated books that have never been in English or German or French or even Italian before written by Aquinas, especially his, his commentaries on Scripture like Jeremiah and Isaiah and all this and the Psalms.

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And the Psalms. And I found him there to be so much more free minded because he was liberated from the scholastic structure, you see, and the scholastic structure can keep him very, cold and impersonal.

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And whereas his real passion and so really come through. It comes through in a lot of his teachings that you find in the scholastic documents. But, but they really come through in his commentaries on Scripture. For example, he says, the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth is compassion.

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Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set in the earth. And what I set out to do in this small book and very readable book, as you say, is to take one sentence from Aquinas. Each chapter title is a sentence from Aquinas. And each sentence I think is enough to wake you up.

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He says, for example, the true, first and primary meaning of salvation is this. To preserve things in the good. See, he's not saying anything about heaven and hell. He's saying the first and primary meaning of to preserve things in the good.

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Well, isn't that what the whole ecological movement has to be about? Isn't that what we're fighting with global warming? We're not preserving things in the good for future generations, not only of humans, but of any animals and sea creatures and all the rest rainforest, we're tearing it all down.

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We're not preserving the good. Now if that's not a 21st century definition of salvation, I've never heard of one.

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And he says that's a good one. Actually, they're all good. You talk about his scholarliness and him not getting this, recognition drew me to this comment by a lady who authored a book, Stop Seeking Start Finding.

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Jan Phillips. She was a nun in the Catholic Church. You maybe don't know her or you don't know her at all, but she was recently on and she spoke about when they were, when she was becoming a nun. The priests would come in and in this one class when these young women were about 18 years old.

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And this relates directly to the scholarliness of this, he said, look, you have to learn how to be spiritual. We're not going to use any of the books. All the books are going on the top shelf.

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She said, she said all these 18 year old little girls who are going to become nuns were like, oh my God, we don't know because we're programmed. We need to read all these books. And he said, no, you're going to learn how to be spiritual in my class and it doesn't require that you read all of those books.

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Now I think that was a really kind of interesting, unique approach. And I, and I, the reason I mentioned it is because, you know, I think that when people sometimes come from such a scholarly standpoint, they get like a bad rap.

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Right? And you write that the experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old. This is the experience of God. How might Aquinas in his democratic approach to spirituality inform our understanding of this religious experience in today's fragmented society?

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Now, I would say instead of religious, I would say spiritual experience. Right?

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Yes. And that is the first chapter, that quote that you cited, that's from Aquinas. The experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old. So again, he's talking about the experience and that's not, as you say, religion so much as it is spirituality.

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And what he's saying is that the experience of ecstasy, and that's the word he uses, is an experience of God. And he says where he gets that, he gets it from the Song of Songs, the beautiful book in the Hebrew Bible about lovemaking, as a theophany, as mysticism.

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But of course, there have been people through the century who's tried to clean that book up and say, oh, no, no, no, it's not that. It's about God loving the church or God loving Jesus. But ask Getty Jew, ask Rabbi Heschel. The Jewish people are told on the Sabbath to do two things.

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Read the Song of Songs and make love with their partner. So, that's the tradition. And Aquinas, picks up on that, where he says that. He says all our experiences of ecstasy are an experience of the divine.

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And it should not be restricted, as you said, just the literate ones.

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So why is it, this vow of celibacy? And I get it. Jan was kicked out of the church because she was gay, and they found out she was having an affair with one of the other nuns. So literally, the Catholic Church kicked her out. So this kind of vow of celibacy, which has always been part of the Catholic religion and many of the Christian religions, and obviously you would know because you were there, you lived it.

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What is it? Because Aquinas stated that sins of the flesh take you toward God, sins of the spirit take you away from God. This seems counterintuitive to traditional religious teachings. So I want you to kind of explain, the distinction and how it might reshape our approach to morality.

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Because that's a big one.

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Right? Well, first of all, let me say that, of course, celibacy has not always been part of the Christian, demand on clergy that, after all, St. Peter and all the early church, were married, except for Paul.

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And so, this came later in the church, and it became a law in the 12th century. So that's quite late, really. And then, of course, the Reformation undid it entirely. But back to your question. And, Aquinas saying, the sins of the spirit take you away from God, but sins of the flesh take you toward God.

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But first of all, what are the sins of the spirit? Things like greed. There's a lot of that going on today. It's become institutionalized in our politics. Greed, acedia, which has been mistranslated as sloth.

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But Aquinas calls it the lack of energy to begin new things. So it's like passivity, couch potatoitis. That's acedia. The lack of energy to start new things or. Or to resist and revolt against current things that are off center.

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And, of course, envy. And Hatred and cold heartedness. So these. And arrogance. I don't think pride is a sin. I think pride has been beaten, up by too much bad theology.

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But arrogance is. Arrogance is the source of, of racism and sexism and homophobia and all kinds of isms that we have floating around. So these are sins of the spirit. And that's why a quantity say these things take you from God.

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Because God is a God of justice and compassion and caring. But why does he say that sins of the flesh take you toward God. His key word in saying that is the word communion. Evening. The sins of the flesh have a search for communion. There is search for unity and for reunion.

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And, again, you have that in the Song of Songs, which has been described as the Genesis story rewritten, that it's a return to the Garden of Eden. It's a return to, the spontaneity and the joy and the beauty of lovemaking in all of its forms.

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Well, he was way ahead of his time, right?

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He was way ahead of his time. Absolutely. Yeah.

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The thing is though, I want to get to this question because it's really important and not to interrupt you, but it goes along with what you were just speaking about. This book, and I'm going to hold it back up for our audience, emphasizes Aquinas non dualistic worldview, particularly regarding body underline soul and soul underline.

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How does this non dualism challenge both religious fundamentalism and secular materialism in our current cultural climate? Now, here's what I've noticed you have too. I'm sure there's been a migration away from traditional religion toward more spirituality.

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However you want to define that, you know more about this than I do. Although I observe it, you actually study it. And what I see happening is not where young people today are bringing their kids up, taking them to church.

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Right. Per se. They're finding their own path. It's almost like they're making it up. So it's a mixture of, you know, Buddhism and a mixture of, you know, Daoism and whatever it might be, Zen. And you see this happening more and more and more.

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What do you think's going on and what do you think this non dualistic worldview really, in this case with Aquinas was, was all about?

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Well, first about the non dualism. What Aquinas is doing is taking on Plato and Neoplatonists because they dominated. Pilates, lived in the 13th century. And, from about the third century on, the Neoplatonic philosophy really dominated in the intellectual, life of Christianity.

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But Plato was dualistic. He separated spirit from matter. And St. Augustine was his biggest disciple in the Christian church. And Augustine actually said, spirit is whatever is not matter. Well, that's Neoplatonic, and it's utterly dualistic.

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And Aquinas said spirit is the elan and the vitality in everything. In a blade of grass, in a tree, in a horse, in us. So he's non dualistic. And that's why he chose Aristotle over Plato as a foundational philosopher.

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Because Aristotle, he says Aristotle does not denigrate matter. That's what Aquinas said about Aristotle. And it's true. Aristotle was a scientist and he was trying to be. He talks about active potentiality, that they go together, that matter and spirit are, form and matter, and they go together.

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And that's how our bodies work, and that's how things work in the world. So from that point of view, Aquinas really was a revolution in the 13th century, and he got condemned for it. After he died, three bishops condemned him.

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Three.

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Two in Oxford and one in Paris, where he was actually teaching. So it was very controversial, but he really hung in there with that. But now question about religion versus spirituality. Obviously, the Christian religion has played a tremendous historical role in the West.

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And, when it came, when Europeans, European Christians, so called, came to the Americas because Columbus got lost and ended up here, he did not discover America. It had been discovered a long time before. These continents we now know.

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But the fact is, though, he brought with him these missionary types, and their whole emphasis was on redemption. What they did to these indigenous people is horrible. The numbers went from 80 million when he landed to about 8 or 10 million after a few generations.

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Now, a lot of it was disease and not intentional, but a lot of it was intentional, et cetera. So the church carries a big burden, organized religion does when it gets wrapped up in politics, which of course takes us to today's situation that you want to talk about soon.

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But the point is that, as more and more Westerners read our history and the church's involvement in it, it is not at all, edifying or pretty. For example, these stories have come out last few years about the indigenous schools in Canada and the United States, where they rip these kids from their parents, from their culture, from their language, from their religion, and put them all into these schools and beat them, to beat the language out of them and everything else.

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I mean, horrible things. Now, they were done in the name of the church. Some were church schools. But some were government schools, so they're also done in the name of the American government. But in any case, it's obviously colonialism at its worst, and, those realities have to be addressed.

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Now, to his credit, Pope Francis apologized for the document written in the 15th century, right at the time that Columbus was setting sail for the first time, which was called the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave permission to the kings and queens of Portugal and Spain and so forth, who were Catholic countries, supposedly to steal Africans from Africa and to abuse the indigenous people of the Americas.

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Because according to those popes of the 15th century, they were pagan and they were not Christians, or what do they know about God? So that horrible, green light was given in the name of papal encyclicals in the 15th century.

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Pope Francis, finally here in the 21st century, apologized. But, you know, apologies are not enough. You have to look harder at these traditions and say, how did you this happened, that the Christian church went from being a persecuted church by their own empire in the first century to being a persecuting church in the 15th, 16th, 17th century.

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And a lot of people are, And then also how much life that is, how much spirituality is there in the current structures I do think we've had. Professor was a good pope. I think I have hope for this new pope. I think that trying to recover the healthy teachings of Christianity and practices, is a real important effort today.

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And the fact is, the Catholic Church is one of the oldest organizations in the world and largest in terms of, being present on all the continents. So humanity can't just throw off his past that easily. It has to renew it.

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That's what the Vatican Council tried to do in the 60s, and then, two popes for 34 years resisted that. And now with Pope Francis and this pope, I think they will try to bring out a new version of Christianity that is closer to the teachings of Jesus, and one that's ecumenical, that finds the wisdom in Buddhism and in other, churches and so forth.

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I hope you're right, because we need a major shift, we need a seismic shift in what's going on. And, you know, that leads us now to kind of this book. Okay, so this is Trump. And the mega movement.

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And as Antichrist, and, you know, for as long as I've been alive, and I'm not quite as old as you, but close, I've seen religions, and I'm just going to say this, it's my podcast, do more to divide people than actually unite and bring people together.

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I've also seen this Antichrist raise its head, so many times through leaders throughout countries, not just Trump. I'm talking about leaders in all other areas that want to repress populations of people from expression, abilities to express themselves.

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Pope hall, you know, the list goes on and on and on. We can see where these improprieties to so many people, to control people, to control their thinking, to control what they are, is there.

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So in both books, you explore this concept as Christ is an archetype. And so how does your understanding of the Christ archetype and form the interpretation of what we're referring to? And what I've just talked about is the Antichrist archetyped.

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And how do you apply that to contemporary politics? Because I'm just going to say, for anyone listens to this show, they're probably in an age range where, you know, they're in their 30s to their 70s or maybe 80s. They've seen enough of this.

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And I would say most people are fed up.

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Yes. And I'll say, too, in all my writings, I don't know if I've ever talked about the Antichrist before this book, because that term Antichrist has been owned and hijacked by the very right wing, the fundamentalist version of Christianity.

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And I'm no were in that circle.

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Well, until Trump came along.

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Until Trump came along. And not just Trump, but his Christian nationalism and his enablers who claim that they're Christians. And they're doing the opposite.

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Do you want to know something, Matthew, that we've seen Now, I know you and Dennis, who's there. This is important to note. My listeners need to note this. So when we take this podcast and we put it on YouTube and we put ads on YouTube that say something negative.

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YouTube doesn't approve it.

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Okay, negative about what?

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Plus, the censorship is alive and well in these companies because of the fear of the repercussions of Donald Trump.

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Well, that's what I say. The first sign.

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Wake up.

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Is fear, the spread of fear. And lies. And lies. And of course, Trump's whole public life has been a, a volcano of lies. And, in the tradition, lies are the sign of Satan, of the Antichrist.

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The Antichrist is a, is a shortcut for evil, but it's an archetype. And Carl Jung wrote about it as an archetype, and he said it's very attractive because it leads with what you think is spiritual power and beauty.

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But in fact, when you go deeper, you get lies, you get fear. You get, like, you Have. Now, this book was born over an experience I had last summer. I was teaching for a week in Orvieto, Italy. And, I went to visit the cathedral there.

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It's a very beautiful cathedral. And an Italian friend took me, didn't say a word, but took me to this large chapel inside the cathedral that had this huge fresco painted in 1501 and didn't say anything about it. I just stared. And the first thing I said, I said out loud, I said, it feels like Donald Trump.

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Then I looked at the title, and the title said, Antichrist Deeds and Preaching. And there are about. I counted 172 figures in the painting. And I'm glad we're going to show the painting because in the background there are these ninja figures, young people in black.

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One interpreter said, this is a Ku Klux Klan in black instead of white. But to me it pictures exactly Musk's teams that are going around destroying usaid, destroying Social Security, destroying Medicaid and all the rest.

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That, I mean, it's unbelievably, intuitive, if you will, and prophetic. But that is where I said it's time for the left to pick up on the, on the language of the archetype of the Antichrist. Because obviously the archetype of the Christ stands for justice and peace and beauty and goodness and all those things we can project on Christ, or it can project it on Isaiah or on the Buddha or wherever you want to project it on, but that's what Christ is.

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But the Antichrist would be the opposite of those things. Not truth, but lies, not light, but darkness, not joy, not. But control, not, love, but hate. And I mean this whole system now and then Project 2025, and I have two chapters on that in this book.

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You can see there what's in stake for us and what is really going on. That's the blueprint, and it is a fascist blueprint. And remember that fascism is intrinsic, what I call Christofascism.

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There is a fascist movement in Christianity, in the Catholic Church. The Opus DEI is a very obvious example of that. And it is through the Opus DEI that we have people like the six far right Supreme Court judges we have, they came through Leonardo Leo, who was very influenced by that right wing fascist movement begun by a fascist priest in fascist Spain in the 1920s.

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That movement, and it was pushed by popes John Paul II and Benedict xvi, but not Francis. He didn't make any fascist cardinal or bishop. A cardinal, including the bishop of the largest diocese in North America.

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Which is Los Angeles. That fellow archbishop there went to a Opus DEI seminary, et cetera. So we have to name these, movements in religion. And, it's not just, of course, Christianity.

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It's the evangelical wing, of course, of the fundamentalists and Protestants too, who are so out front in this administration. One of them, we know, has an office in the West Wing, where she's putting her version of religion and Christianity into a mix, because he's close to Trump.

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And so there is a very sick religion involved in this whole movement, of, neo fascism that America is, inventing at this time.

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Well, and I'm happy that you've disclosed it through this book. And I think that disclosure like this. One of the things I want to talk with you about is you've written extensively about what you call creation spirituality.

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How does this perspective kind of inform both the reading of Aquinas, and your critique of contemporary politics? Because that really, I mean, your new evolution of creation spirituality is something people need to know about versus all of this dogma that has been fed through all these other sources.

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And as you were speaking about the fascism that exists that I don't think many people really have an awareness of, you know, that the politics and the fascism that's going on in the political system is alive and well.

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Yes. And a lot of it is wrapped in religious, covering. Yes. Well, Aquinas was so in love with creation, he takes this line from the psalm. The psalm says, they should be drunk with the beauty of thy house.

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And he says, that is the universe. Then we're here to get drunk on the universe. Now, what a moment in history to get drunk in the universe when we've discovered in our lifetime the universe is 2 trillion galaxies big, each with hundreds of billions of stars.

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We're receiving daily these amazing pictures and stories through Webb telescope and so forth about the history of this universe. I mean, it is such a time for the human mind to explode with this new creation story from science about how we got here, how Earth got here, how special Earth is, how our sun came along at the right time, and the moon, et cetera, et cetera.

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I mean, it's just full of miracles. If you define miracles as experiences of the sacred and. And marvels, as Einstein defined miracles as marvels. Yes, it's a marvel that we're here at all. And it took 13.8 billion years.

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So this is a way for us to start over. Because this new creation story from science, it holds all people and all religions and all cultures together. When you look at creation stories in the history of humanity, these are what keep tribes together.

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And now we are one tribe trying to, trying to survive on a planet that we're destroying. And hey, let's wake up is just what you said. We need a, seismic shift. Here is the shift. And again, Aquinas said 13th century revelation comes in two volumes.

[B: 31:23.9]
Nature and the Bible, not just the Bible. Since the 16th century, all of Protestantism told us that Revelation is in the Bible. It's all in that one book. Well it ain't, it's in science because it's in nature.

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And we need both things humming. And besides, now we all know there are many Bibles, there are many sacred books. There are the Upanishads and the Vedas and the Dao Te Ching and so many scriptures, sacred books around the world.

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We can, we can honor them all. There's the Quran. And look, what do they have in common? What they all have in common is they're trying to teach, humanity that we're capable of compassion. Most used adjective in the Quran for Allah is Allah, the compassionate one.

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And in Judaism, compassion is the secret name for God. And Jesus being a Jew, let the secret out of the bag. And in Luke 6 when he says, be you compassionate as you grew into heaven is compassionate. So all world religions are saying we're capable of godlike activity of love, forgiveness, beauty and compassion and justice.

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Justice guarantees compassion because you need structures that are balanced and fair. These strive for it in order that compassion can flow. So, this is the time we're living in. And this is where spirituality really comes alive.

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And this is where the Project 2025 is the opposite of what Christ is teaching. And all major religions are teaching because it is about a small, powerful group. Now we're seeing their names and their bank accounts.

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These are the billionaires in America who want $400 billion, deal less taxes. But of course, who's going to pay for that? It's the poor and the middle class. We're already paying for it. So that's what's going on in American politics.

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And that's why you can say it's about the Christ archetype, the Christ energy versus the Antichrist energy.

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What is it? I mean, look, social media has played such a big role in this whole evolution of. We can go back to the election of Donald Trump, and see that social media played a big role.

[A: 33:51.1]
You and I are on social media today. We're on a channel which is, I thankfully say, is espousing goodwill and compassion and hope and understanding. And it's one of the reasons I still do it, because the airwaves are so filled with so much of the other stuff.

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And that stuff created the chasm which created the divide. And so what I would like to ask you about is, you know, we find people taking these roles and doing just heinous acts of crime on other folks, as a result of being influenced by what's going on.

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And just even social media or the airwaves. You describe the Antichrist as seductive and alluring. What spiritual practices or perspectives do you believe help people resist these attractions and return to what you call biosphilia rather than necrophobia or necrophilia?

[A: 34:59.8]
Hopefully I said that right. But I get what you mean. The point is, is that are we going to return to some place where we treat our brothers and sisters with understanding, with compassion, with the kind of things that bring the world together, not divide them?

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We've seen so much, though, Matthew, and it hits in so many different areas in the airwaves every day. Something happens, some shooting at a school or somebody shooting up somebody else.

[A: 35:39.7]
And it just seems like it is chaotic. I know you don't have a prescription for this, but maybe you have some kind words that might get out in the airways to help our listeners see that this isn't really the world we live in.

[B: 36:00.6]
The word chaotic that you used I think is really powerful word today. And it's interesting. In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen, who was a great mystic and healer and musician and many other things, she painted a picture of the Antichrist. So, we Talked earlier, the 16th century picture, but this is a 12th century picture.

[B: 36:19.5]
And she's also now declared a saint and doctor of the church. But she. In her picture, she has three different, sections. But in one of them, there are these animals. And she, she says what they stand for, these wild animals. One stands for greed, one stands for war likeness, and so forth.

[B: 36:39.5]
And she says these, they're. They're. They're chewing on a rope. And she says these creatures, these energies are, decoupling. They're unraveling the order of the universe. So that's what chaos is, isn't it?

[B: 36:56.4]
The unraveling of the order of the universe. And these for her, therefore, are symbols of Antichrist too. And so our powers for unraveling the universe versus our powers for creating community, for bringing us together for.

[B: 37:14.0]
And that's, of course, I think, what the American Constitution tried to do 250 years ago. It was, imperfect, for sure. And it took a civil war, and it took the civil rights movement of the. Of the mid 20th century and all this to bring anatolic women marching for what was there 50 years before they could get in on the action.

[B: 37:35.7]
So, I mean, it took a lot of work and energy over the centuries to bring it to a fuller, expression. And then, of course, in the last 40 years, they've been undoing it. Citizens United is, I think, number one contribution to undoing the order, because Citizens United invited all the billionaires and all these corporations to jump in and put up as much money as they want to promote their particular political, agenda.

[B: 38:07.9]
And so this is what we're fighting with today. It's very serious. It is about whether America will be a democracy, and a better democracy, or whether it's going to just yield to this oligarchy, to authoritarianism, to a rule of the few, by the few, and for the few.

[B: 38:29.8]
And that is what is the agenda, in this latest, budget proposal from, the Republicans in Congress. I really can't. It's so hard to believe, but that politicians have so sold their soul to this alluring antichrist figure of our time that they don't even care that they're going to be putting millions of people.

[B: 38:54.2]
The number I saw, lady, is 13 million people off of insurance, health insurance, with this latest bill of theirs. Just think about that. 13 million people. And then snap money for poverty, people living in poverty for their food, et cetera, et cetera.

[B: 39:13.3]
And of course, they did this thing already with usaid. They're literally killing millions of people in Africa today that we weren't killing six months ago because they took away the money for inoculations of vaccines and food for the poorest of the poor in Africa, et cetera.

[B: 39:32.2]
So we humans, we are capable of so much beauty and grace and goodness on the one hand. And we need people like the Buddha and Lao Tzu and Jesus and Muhammad and Isaiah and White Buffalo Woman and Sojourner Truth to come along and remind us that we're capable of that stuff is called compassion and justice.

[B: 39:54.2]
Or we're also capable of unraveling the order of our society and of our, times. You know, that's why I talk about the dark night of the soul that we're in. It's a dark night of society and a dark night of our species, because we are facing our own extinction with global warming.

[B: 40:13.3]
And we have a party in the White House now that is in complete denial about global warming. They want to drill, baby, drill. And what does that mean for our grandchildren? What does it mean for the future of other species? Hundreds of millions of species are going extinct at this time because of humans.

[B: 40:31.2]
Now, it's just what you said. We need a seismic shift. And that's what real spirituality is about. It is about waking up.

[A: 40:40.0]
Is there anybody, Matthew? And I don't believe it's one person. But is there any entity, one person that can carry the message such that the individual people of the close to 8. What are we, 9 billion people on this planet, even if we reached part of them, could actually, elevate consciousness to a level that they could see the world in a different light.

[A: 41:10.2]
Because we have so many areas where even in our country, the United States, people are at, you know, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they're at survival level, right? And when you're at these levels, you're not at the level of consciousness where you can re.

[A: 41:28.7]
See the world in a new way. Right? It's like you. I mean, if we went to Africa, if we went to all Sudan. I mean, look at the reports coming out of Sudan, the number of kids that are just starving right now because there is no aid in there. There is no water.

[A: 41:44.3]
You mean you're. You. Look, we could go on infinitum about this. The point that I would like to make and the question that I would like to ask you. If somebody wants to bring God into their heart so that they could have this reunion with God, because so many people haven't made that union.

[A: 42:08.2]
They're mechanistic about what they're doing. They just go about whatever it is. And that's what this party seems like. The party that's in rule today seems very mechanistic, very like nothing else matters.

[A: 42:23.8]
We just got to do it for the money. We don't care about the people. You get what I'm talking about. In your humble opinion, not that you have an answer, but you studied enough. What might flip the tide?

[B: 42:42.3]
Well, moral outreach. And it's got to be from grassroots. Got to be from grassroots. But actually from every angle. Those who have power in the structure and people like yourself with a.

[B: 42:57.9]
A platform, and there are many others with platforms today, and newspapers, so journalism and writing and so forth. But also, even here, we have a new pope. And given today's realities of how the papacy is made for television, it just is.

[B: 43:16.4]
Because there's one person who's Got all this prayer familiarity. But, I mean, if he can speak with, in tandem with the leaders of Buddhism and the leaders of other Christian, denominations. I noticed that even Mormons sent a representative, to the funeral of the previous pope.

[B: 43:38.2]
That's kind of a breakthrough.

[A: 43:39.6]
That's interesting. I didn't see it.

[B: 43:41.3]
It is interesting. So all those who have a voice, but above all, it's the grassroots people that have to wake up and take on their own adulthood, their own sense of responsibility. And, so that's the question, whether our species can survive or not.

[B: 43:59.8]
And to survive, we have to get, this awakening going at all levels of society and certainly at the grassroots. This is what's going to change politics in America if it's not too late. And there are people who are speaking out.

[B: 44:15.7]
I think of Tom Hartman. He did a piece on my, on my, interview with me on my Trump book, for example. Rachel Maddow. And people who have these programs that some people listen to. But again, it has. And of course, artists. This is what artists do.

[B: 44:32.0]
Films and TV programs and so forth. That, this is the artist's job to bring the prophetic. Rabbi Heschel says that the prophet interferes. So we all have to be asking, how can we interfere? Well, these groups all over the country, in all cities that are protesting, the demise of Medicaid, the demise of Social Security, et cetera, attacks on the young and on education, these are stirring things up.

[B: 45:00.1]
They have to. That's where we have to find our hope. My definition of hope comes from the eco philosopher, who says hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up. So I like your question. It's about action. Where is the work? How can we bring this forward in our work.

[B: 45:16.7]
Lawyers, for example, on the one where we have some big legal companies yielding to the Trump situation and just bowing down and offering them all kinds of free lawyership. But on the other hand, some legal firms are saying, no, we're not going to go down that rabbit hole.

[B: 45:34.5]
The same is true as our justice system at other levels. So there are so many levels where this has to play out. But every one of us has to do our. Our share of contributing, of interfering. Because, spiritual adulthood is both about love and moral outrage.

[B: 45:53.4]
It's saying yes and no. Yes to biophilia, love of life, and no to all this pseudo, noise that is about, not a government of and by, for the people, but of by and for the billionaires.

[A: 46:12.3]
You know, you said a lot. And in that, as I'M reflecting. There's been statements many times that this administration's job is to create lots of chaos and confusion. And the reason they do that is because it distracts people from even understanding where they're going so that they can reprogram people to think that they are the saviors.

[A: 46:38.0]
Okay, now, whether that's accurate or not isn't important. What is the challenge is, is that you've given, warnings in your second book, but you also give hope for the future. And I love the fact that you're giving hope for the future.

[A: 46:55.3]
Because we don't want to be Debbie Downers here. We want to talk about what can be. Are there signs that the Christ archetype at work in contemporary movements or leaders that offer a counterbalance to what you've identified as the Antichrist?

[A: 47:13.1]
In other words, where is it? Matthew?

[B: 47:19.2]
Well, I do find. I find a lot of it among the young. I think the young are beginning to question everything. What kind of a country do we have? One of their basic question is, do we want to bring a child into the world? You know, there are a lot of young couples in their 20s asking that serious question.

[B: 47:36.1]
But it wasn't even people's minds when I was, you know, a young man. It was, of course, we want to bring young people into this country and into the world. So this just underscores, I think, the seriousness of what we're facing.

[B: 47:51.3]
But, a lot of young people are feeling, I think, a call, and many are going beyond academia as we know it. They don't want to get a college degree. It puts them in too much debt, et cetera. And besides, half the universities are yielding to the Antichrist agenda just to play safe, to be safe.

[B: 48:13.2]
But some are beginning to stand up now, finally. So the whole thing needs so much alternative. We need our creativity and imagination, and we do have tools. The social media, obviously, and these other inventions that have happened in our lifetime are ways to democratize, to get the word out to greater numbers.

[B: 48:35.5]
And, I was kind of touched when, they asked the cardinal from Hong Kong, who I do not know at all, but he looks like a young man, actually. But they asked him what happened at the conclave electing this new Pope.

[B: 48:51.2]
And he said, we elected a pastor for the world. Pastor for the world. So, that was a pretty nice angle from an Asian about this thing that's been going on for 2,000 years in Rome, which is getting a spokesperson out there supposedly standing for the values that Jesus stood for, in contrast to the statues of values that the Antichrist stands for.

[B: 49:19.4]
But this is just one example, I think, of how the word gets out today. And, we are more and more of a global village. And, we can draw on the wisdom of all our traditions, including secular traditions, including science, for sure.

[B: 49:37.7]
We, got a new pot, to work from today. And it can't be done without science. It can't be done without artists. It can't be done without journalists and media. It can't be done without good teachers. And that means parenting, because a lot of parenting is teaching and passing on values and grandparenting, too, and good citizenship.

[B: 49:58.3]
I mean, all these works are these professions. Are involved in this awakening, this resurrection. That's it.

[A: 50:10.6]
I like the fact that you are saying awakening and there is hope. And, you know, there is a theory that has been talked about for, and I would call it a theory or a postulate, that Trump was elected at this particular time because we needed this disruption to make this seismic change.

[A: 50:38.5]
Now, I don't know if I believe that, but I do understand what people are saying. Were we on course or were we off course? And if there is a course, what is the course? Right?

[A: 50:53.9]
And I think right now the confusion and uncertainty that this administration has created just, here in the US But I think you look at other countries as well. They're all dealing with their own issues. But it seems like worldwide, turmoil in some respects.

[A: 51:12.5]
Right? We're seeing China having difficulty with their economy, US now because of this trade imbalance. You go to all these other countries, and I'm not saying the whole world falling apart. I'm saying, were we supposed to, at this time, by God, have been shaken up to actually rethink fundamentally who we are as a species and how we potentially will treat this planet so that we can survive?

[A: 51:39.5]
Or are we going to perish in the process?

[B: 51:43.5]
Well said. And that's what I mean by the dark night of our species. That what the mystics teach about the dark night is that it's like a school. It's an occasion to really become transformed and to wake up. There's a beautiful teaching by Hafiz, the Sufi mystic of the 13th century.

[B: 52:02.3]
He says sometimes God wants to do us a great favor, turn us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. But most everyone I know, he says, who sees God in such a playful, drunken mood quickly packs their bags and hightails it out of town.

[B: 52:20.3]
I just love that passage because it laughs. It made you laugh. It laughs at the dark night. Of the soul. We're being turned upside down as a species to shake all the nonsense out, to grow up. I think we've been adolescent Homo sapiens for long enough, and we have to move into our adulthood now, or we're not gonna make it.

[B: 52:41.8]
And one thing I meditate on a lot these days is all these cousins of ours that we're discovering. You know, we knew about Neanderthal, we knew about the Denisons, but now we're naming, I think, a dozen others that we found, we're finding, especially in Asia, you know, all of our cousins.

[B: 52:59.6]
And what they all have in common is they're extinct. We're the last ones standing. So there has to be a lesson there someplace. For the Chinese, for the atheists, for the Americans, for the Africans.

[B: 53:15.4]
Hey, this is our last rodeo. This is our last time around. We've got to, wake up and shake up. And, you know, there's a great teaching in Aquinas to go back to the little Aquinas book. He says there are two resurrections. The first is waking up in this lifetime, and if you pay attention to that, you don't have to worry about the second.

[B: 53:38.5]
I really love that teaching because I'd never heard it before that there were two resurrections. I thought it was all about, after you die. No, he says waking up. Just the word you've been using, I've been using. That itself is a resurrection. And that's where we should be putting our energies. And of course, we have to reinvent politics, law, academia, education, religion.

[B: 54:02.2]
The whole caboodle has to be reinvented. But, hey, what a marvelous task to be called to do. What a moment to be alive in.

[A: 54:10.7]
History and have the opportunity to actually participate in this reinvention is actually a gift. I want to leave our show today saying that, you know, Matthew, you've been a gift to my audience. Your wisdom, your understanding, your knowledge is always something that actually shifts my perspective.

[A: 54:34.1]
You give me a different way to look at things. And I hope my listeners today found the same thing happen as a result of us speaking about two kind of different books. But this one, you know, and that is the Trump the Mega Movement as Antichrist and the Dao of Thomas Aquinas.

[A: 54:59.2]
So these two books, we're going to have Matthew back on, because we're going to speak actually about a book that he sent me as well, the Reinvention of Work. Now, this one, we're not going to do today, but we will get to it.

[A: 55:14.9]
And the reason I was so interested in this one is. Even though this one is a little bit old, it's one of his older books. We all have work to do. We have lots of work to do. And the question is, as we said, if we reinvent ourselves, what is that reinvention going to look like?

[A: 55:34.4]
And then we're going to be putting him on for this one as well. This is Julian, of Norwich Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic and beyond. And we all know we went through pandemic, but the reality is I had a gentleman on this morning, Matthew, who literally had an awakening as a result because he was put in ICU and the priest called him on the phone and when he was reading his last rates.

[A: 56:05.1]
And he is doing such amazing work now after he came with this near death experience, got out of the COVID and completely since COVID has changed everything in the way in which he's doing so.

[A: 56:20.9]
You know, I think awakening comes in different ways for different people. That was truly awakening of one soul that's trying to change so many other souls as a result of his, Ned. Right. And so beautiful story.

[A: 56:36.3]
Yeah. Any other comments you have for our listeners before we wrap up? Are you good with it?

[B: 56:44.0]
I'll leave you with one short sentence from Aquinas. Joy is a human's noblest act. Joy is a human's noblest act. To bring joy back into politics, education, family, life, art, this is, is part of the awakening too.

[B: 57:03.6]
You know, the. There's a struggle, there's work, but there's also a path that we're on that includes joy. You gotta make room for the biophilia, the love of life. That's the joy isn't. Drink it in like a camel, drink some water at an oasis.

[B: 57:20.0]
Before going across that desert, before going through the dark night, you got to fill the hump of our souls with joy to make it through dark times like we're in.

[A: 57:33.0]
Well, and I think, and I'll end on this, frequently for many of my listeners, they probably speak to God and God doesn't respond and they speak to God again and he doesn't respond and they speak to him again and he doesn't respond.

[A: 57:51.4]
And he isn't playing a joke on you, he's waiting for you to be ready to actually hear. And what I'd say is, if whatever method you're using, whether it's prayer or it's meditation or it's picking up a book like this and sticking your finger in it and saying this is what I need to read here, this paragraph, because I need to reflect on that.

[A: 58:14.1]
Just like you did with this book, right? That's really it. So each and every day, we have an opportunity for that joy, and the joy is in asking for help.

[A: 58:29.7]
And I certainly believe that God is there. I believe the angels are there. I think we're going to get through this, Matthew. Or as you said, we're going to go extinct. So thank you, so much for being on Inside Personal Growth.

[A: 58:47.2]
Namaste to you and to Dennis. Thanks for this opportunity.

[B: 58:52.4]
Thank you.

[A: 58:53.3]
Thank you for listening to this podcast on Inside Personal Growth. We appreciate your support. And for more information about new podcasts, please go to inside personal growth.com or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast. Thanks again and have a wonderful day.