This is a rough draft generated by Otter.ai. If you would like to proofread it please contact me.
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people. We’ve done about 560 Something of them now. If this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to bat gap comm bat gap, and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. And we appreciate the support we receive. My guest today is Diana Durham, and I am going to let Diana introduce herself because the BIOS she sent me is kind of long, and you know, I don’t want to just read it when she can say it. But um, I’ll let her just do that. And then we’ll get into an interesting conversation for the next couple of hours. So, Diana, go ahead.
Diana Durham: Hi. Well, I think it’s long only because I’ve done a lot of sort of different things. I haven’t had one sort of slightly, you know, not particularly coherent in terms of my career path, I would say. After university, I basically took the path less traveled. And I spent quite a lot of my 20s living in intentional spiritual community in England and in Canada, and in the US.
Rick Archer: Is that a community anyone would have heard of, or it’s kind
Diana Durham: of scary emissaries of divine light, where the group and we had, we were quite small. I came across this group, quite by sort of my accident when I was 18. When I I’d finished high school, and I came over to stay with my aunt and uncle, who I’d only recently discovered they were they were adamant in huge detail. They weren’t like blood relatives, they were relatives through a disk a marriage. And I thought they would be ordinary people living in Vancouver, you know, sort of nice, suburban safe existence. And they get, they take care of me, if I didn’t want to go to this strange community that was up in the caribou region of British Columbia. But when I when I arrived, literally, at the airport, I wasn’t met by them, I was met by someone else who told me that they lived up on this community as well. And at that time, it was the hippy time, you know, so I was used to the idea of hippie communes exists existing, but they would always be filled with very young people, young hippies. And I didn’t, you know, consider these people to be old. So I was very surprised that it had old people in it. Anyway, long story short, when I when I stayed there for about six weeks, during that summer, and during that time, they’d have little sort of social gatherings and they’d have sort of so you invited to someone’s log cabin have to have tea and cookies and conversation that was very sweet. And I was thinking to having tea with some of these people. And I had this experience of Transfiguration happen in me where, for no particular reason, I was just literally drinking tea and having conversation. But I felt as if this kind of golden sun was rising up in me. And I felt so powerful. And I felt so powerful that I got worried about it, because I thought, well, what will happen when I go back to London, I’ll take the city over, I’m so powerful. I seriously felt that way. And I thought, Oh, this is what love is. This is what that word means. And that’s what this is what the word truth means.
Rick Archer: And I was in that tea.
Diana Durham: I sort of said this, it was herb tea, tea. And I said something like this to the people present and they just sort of tried, they didn’t see, they didn’t know what was going on with me. And they just sort of tried to reassure me a little bit and then it, it subsided. But it left me realizing that this energy is in all of us. It’s in everyone. But none of most of the time, we don’t know it. But if we didn’t know it, the world would be completely transformed. And that was such an enormous insight. You know, I felt like I look back into history. The misery the suffering all these people had never known who they really were. So I can’t say that I lived from that moment, you know it, but that was like a benchmark that impacted the way, you know, the direction that I, that I, that I took. Now, I’d studied literature at university and I loved writers I loved, I love the beauty of language. And I suppose the two streams came together that I wanted to try to represent the authenticity of what we term spiritual identity, as well as I possibly could, as well as the great writers had done, you know, of other kinds of human experience. And so that’s why I’ve mainly gone in it toward writing rather than, you know, activism or, or starting a movement or something like that. So anyway, after that, I, I, I had, so I had that experience. And I came, I came back to university. In fact, I did my degree after the after that experience, then I was after that I lived in the different communities. And then I met my husband, and sort of began a life with him where we, we were, he’s a TV director. And I would work with him. And I just had children. And I just gradually began to, to write about what was important to me. Well,
Rick Archer: that experience was, I think, very significant, because as you and I would both agree, you know, all the problems in the world are ultimately due to the fact that we have this tremendous potential within us that we’re not using. And so we’re running around trying to solve all these problems. And for the most part, creating new ones, because we’re only using a tiny fraction of our, our full potential damage. That’s the key point. And in the things that you write and say that theme comes up again and again. And you became you actually met David Bohm, didn’t you and work with our study within summon?
Diana Durham: Yes, that’s right. Well, part of part of this community at in the I think it was the early 80s, there was something called the human Unity Conference. And this was an event that had been held in different parts of the world. And it, it was held at Warwick University in England. And I, we were part of a group that trying to help helping to organize this. And so I went to this conference, and the last evening, I think, the sort of, you know, Star spot, and I hadn’t heard anything about this, one of my friends, gets up on stage and hears this that, you know, very academic and conservative looking, elderly gentleman sitting on the stage, next in nothing like a hippie or anyone else. And my friend who was caught he was called Don factor, started interviewing David Boehm, it was David Burton. And I was just, Oh, my goodness, it was electrifying. I thought, How did I meet this guy? Who is this guy? Where did he come from? And I was very impressed actually, with the way Don Was it was interviewing him because he did a good job. And then, that’s where that connection to David Boehm led to a conference just with him, talking about with voids and the idea in a way the practice and possibility of dialogue, which David Bowman was very interested in, deepened at that conference. And so then after that, I would go to dialogue circles that David Boehm was part of.
Rick Archer: Now many people we should say who David Bohm? Yes, because many people may not even know
Diana Durham: Yes, yes, of course. Yes. Well, David was a theoretical physicist. And he, his field was quantum physics. And he really was a star. He was of someone like he was of Einstein sort of stature. He was an amazingly brilliant man. However, and this is what I didn’t I didn’t know this until much more recently. He had he had been part of the team had been asked to join Oppenheimer’s team Yes, at the Manhattan problem project. And he came up with some theory about plasma, plasma and metals and the way it worked, which was useful to the project, his own research, and okay, so the other piece of this is a lot of intellectuals at that time in history. America, as we probably know, you know, were interested in communism or they joined the Communist Party or they went to Communist lectures or something. And David bone was one of those because he was very idealistic all his life. And he was concerned with the problems of humankind as well as were the, you know, mysteries of physics. And, again, long story short, he became, I guess, the authorities became worried that so many of this Buckley group who were designing the, you know, the atom bomb, were also this might be a breach of security, including Oppenheimer himself. He was also interested in these ideas, but he can’t remember all the ins and outs, but he turned very mean. Anyway, later on Oppenheim, he basically sold down the river. But anyway, bone was told to come and testify and he would not reveal his he wouldn’t rat on his friends. And he was he was he was brought up before Congress and congressional hearing
Rick Archer: regarding hearings.
Diana Durham: But he wasn’t, he wasn’t imprisoned. I can’t remember why. But Princeton wouldn’t let him back in he was that he was he had a job at Princeton at that time by then. And they wouldn’t let him come back. Yeah. And he could not get a job. So he went off to Brazil, which is a relatively obscure place, really, for someone of his stature.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I just want to add that Boehm wrote a paper, which only recently research has shown, you know, was extremely important in terms of unifying general relativity, relativity with quantum mechanics. And Oppenheimer, for some reason, just stonewalled him, and told all the people in the physics community not even to read the paper. And for some reason they are they’re also lemming like that they they, they marched in step with what Oppenheimer ordered, and Boehm was, like, confused, why, why isn’t anybody commenting on this important paper? It’s because no one had read it. So, you know, the implications of that are, you know, we want people these days are distrustful of science, and they think that science is, is not as objective as it purports to be. And there’s truth in that. I mean, even the very productive the dominant paradigm of sciences, materialism, which is that consciousness is produced by the brain and is not some fundamental reality. And if you stray from that you threaten your career. So that that sort of mindset continues in various forms. And I think I think that’s a little significant diversion, maybe?
Diana Durham: Yeah, no, very much. So. Yeah, so did that was that something about David berm?
Rick Archer: And Einstein incidentally said that, you know, he considered Boehm his spiritual son. So he was very much at a certain point in Einstein’s
Diana Durham: favor. Absolutely. Yes.
Rick Archer: Okay, I interrupted you a couple of times, just to embellish those points. Well,
Diana Durham: yeah. So I mean, so bone became also he, he went to Bristol. And then from Bristol, he went to Birkbeck College in London. And while he was in Bristol, he met Krishna Mirchi. And he became very, very interested in the nature of thought itself and thinking about thought, noticing what thought is doing. And then he became an sort of as a outgrowth or part of that he became very interested in the process of dialogue, which was a sort of open free form of Congress, not not even really conversation, but a sort of form of conversation, that if it went on long enough, you could start to hear the false voices in yourselves in one another in oneself, the voice that’s just got its little thing that it wants to keep saying, you know, my agenda, my particular rant about the world, you know, rather than being open to new meaning, right. And that you could get to a deeper place in the end if you if you start with it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And so he Krishna Murthy had extensive dialogues. And at one point, Boehm asked some of his friends whether he should just give up physics altogether and spend all this time talking to Krishna Murthy.
Diana Durham: Full he was as much I feel he was as much a philosopher as a physicist. And that was great
Rick Archer: physicists can’t help but be
Diana Durham: exactly. Yeah. And his language was clear enough for laypeople like ourselves to sort of grasp what he’s saying, intuitively, even though I can’t grasp it as I’m not trained as a physicist, but you can grasp what he says intuitively, and I actually have a feeling that’s really the only way We know anything anyway. At some fundamental level,
Rick Archer: yeah, some physicists get upset because spiritual types Co Op their, their, you know, theories and their findings without really fully understanding them as they do in order to try to buttress some some spiritual principle or some spiritual point. But I think, you know, and there there there may be right and doing that I’m sure that, you know armchair physicists leap to all kinds of erroneous conclusions. But at the same time, I think there is definitely some some deep and profound connection there, which I think you and I are going to explore, which shouldn’t be dismissed merely because we don’t understand the mathematics.
Diana Durham: No, but it’s a really good point I did. You know, I’ve kind of pondered that in myself, because but the way I have come to think about all of this is that there are different languages, you see, Boehm had a particular language. And some of it you can use you can. Poetry is a form of language. symbolism is a form of language, myth is a form of language, none of them, none of them, actually, they just represent a larger reality, they aren’t that larger reality. But they represented in quite useful way so that one can think about it. But the important thing is to realize that you’re, you’re not actually dealing with the ultimate reality, or you’re dealing with your own thought. A bone was very, very interested in that he was very, he was very much aware that whatever scientific theory, you got to it was only a theory. Yeah,
Rick Archer: so in other words, we can only understand the deeper realities through theories and through experimentation, but we don’t apprehend them directly. Is that what he was getting at?
Diana Durham: Well, I wouldn’t want to say what he was getting at. I mean, I think partly, I think all he meant was
Diana Durham: no matter how, you know, advanced and complete a scientific theory might be, it won’t be the thing itself is you haven’t yet ascertained the whole meaning and nature and structure of the universe, right? You may have got an approximation to some of it. So therefore, you can’t really be arrogant and you can never say that, you know, something for sure.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, that’s a good, I think that’s one of the beauties of the scientific method, which is that you never kind of can dig your heels in and claim absolute certainty. There’s always the possibility that
Diana Durham: people do or they are they sense around? Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And, you know, and, and therefore, as I forget who it was Niels Bohr, somebody said that science progresses One funeral at a time
Rick Archer: because people don’t easily change their, their perspectives, you know, they have to die and people with new perspectives, almost everything. But parents, yeah. But this brings up an interesting point, which is that, um, you know, why can’t science really understand a thing for what it is Why is it only a theory or a view or a partial perspective? And you know, can Yogi’s can mystics actually know, reality as it is, through a different approach, which may be scientific in its in its methodology, but which is uses very different apparatus, namely, the human nervous system?
Diana Durham: Well, I mean, I think that the only thing I can write about any authority is what I call my own presence. I know that now, you could say, well, all you’re experiencing Diner is is the, you know, is the source of chemical reality that your, your brains generating, and you can’t really prove one way or the other until you die. So, you know, you can think of it this way, and you can think of it that way. It’s a choice seems to me,
Rick Archer: yeah, although there are some pretty serious anomalies. I mean, their near death experiences with modern medicine, a lot of people are having near death experiences. Yeah. And they are experiencing things which shouldn’t be possible and which are verifiable, and which pretty much, you know, pretty much prove, or at least provide strong evidence for the the idea that consciousness is not limited to the body and is not merely A product of the brain.
Diana Durham: Right? Well, I mean, I believe that’s what I believe that’s what I, I think I go further than believing that that’s all I experience. Yeah. But to someone who, you can’t sort of really prove that for some Well, I suppose Yes, I suppose you’re right, in a way some of those near death experiences, especially the Eben Alexander the neurosurgeon, yeah. 1000s of others. Others I know. Yeah. So like, I mean, hopefully we’re getting there. Because I think it’s, I do think that the materialist assumption about everything has run its course. And it’s running us into a blind alley in a, in a great many different departments of our human experience. And it’s really time that the shock of the fact that we might actually be part of this amazing force of the universe. It’s time that that dawned on us. I just think it’s such a terrifying thought some people who actually take that on, it’s much easier to have the idea, although we know that in some areas anyway, Christianity’s sort of dying a bit of a death, it certainly is here in England. But you know, it’s on the rise in some parts of America, it seems. I don’t know. But no, not really. No, there’s a God some ways you feel that you live within a context where there’s a larger, there’s a larger context, other than, than just what’s here, and then the apparently material world, and that’s comforting to people it has gives them a sense of meaning. She’s valuable, I think, yeah. But that’s, it’s undermined. And more and more undermined, and it was undermined already, but because of Darwin, and the enlightenment, and Darwin and, and genetics, and so on, and so forth. You know, people are left sort of, on a little island of, well, I’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got relative, most people anyway, not everyone ever quite comfortable lifestyle now. My children’s, I’m averse and, you know, can make a cup of coffee anytime I want and mow the lawn and things like that. But is there a bigger, you know, is there something bigger here? And I think that’s a wonderful prospect that will slowly be dawning on more and more of us. The danger of it, it becomes a theory that that’s a problem is when it becomes a fit, just like theoretical Christianity allows you to go and slaughter lots of people, you know, I mean, theoretical Christianity, as opposed to really embodying the love that Christ talked about. Yeah, you know, easily becomes a distortion, doesn’t it? So a distortion of being spiritual beings would be almost worse. I think then just being materialist beings. Don’t sometimes I think about that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s an interesting thought. I mean, obviously, some horrible things have happened. In the name of distorted spirituality. Yeah, you know, Star Wars has started with the Crusades, or, you know, the Inquisition and you know, Jonestown and all kinds of turn things over the years. So just because something is called spiritual doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, it’s good. And you thought about you think about the the terror, would you say it’s a terrifying thought that, you know, that there might be a bigger reality? Personally, I think that’s a terrifying thought that we’re, we’re just biological robots in a meaningless universe. That’s terrifying. And it actually, you know, I’ve read articles about how it contributes to depression and suicide. And so and, you know, because what is the matter if you kill yourself, the world is meaningless anyway. And, and if I die, that’s no big deal. Because I, you know, I’m just going to cease to exist, and there won’t be any consequences. And, you know, it’s just, it’s a very warped view, in my opinion. And I would hate to live my life from that perspective.
Diana Durham: No, I agree. I also think the culture wars that we’re sort of experiencing at the moment to do with Black Lives Matter, and to do with gender, issues of gender, I think all of those, you know, the liberation of what? Well, I don’t know if they’re minorities anymore, but people of different gender, you know, orientation isn’t, is all a part of evolution and expansion and is terribly important. But it feels to me like there’s it’s too narrow an identity that we’re trying to sort of shove ourselves into there. Rather than remembering we’re much bigger than that we’re not we’re not just a sex, gender person or not, you know, it’s become to me, it’s become so narrow that whole argument, I find it peculiar, is it’s like an extreme of materialism. Because if that’s all you are, you’re going to fight about it, you know?
Rick Archer: Yeah. You know, one thing that you get into quite a bit in your book that I’ve been reading is the no have, you see if I can even find a quote here? Basically, that we don’t have to take an either or approach to what we are, you know, we can enrich and even accentuate our individual uniqueness and at the same time, anchor ourselves in universality. And then the two are not only, not only not incompatible, but they are complementary and mutually enriching.
Diana Durham: They’re in relationship. Exactly. So, so if you cut off, so I use that symbol of the basica. You’ve got that
Rick Archer: arrogance show that yeah, I have one here that shows inner self and personality. So yeah,
Diana Durham: that’s great. That would do. Yeah, so that this is a symbol, I’m sure your, many of your viewers will, will know this. It’s called the vase, a cup, Fiscus, or Pisces. And also people will know, as a Venn diagram. It’s just it’s two equal circles. There are circumstances that overlap, and intersect each other centers. And it’s, it’s a very ancient symbol, it’s a wonderful symbol. But obviously, in this instance, I’m just using it to indicate that there’s an inner realm and an outer realm, and that we have an inner self and a personality self. And they overlap. You know, and so that, that the Venn diagram is where you’re different, and what you what you share, you know, what’s common, and what’s common out of the two of them, you know, becomes our inner process and our, our sense of self, but, you know, both determined by our DNA and our upbringing, but it’s also determined by this much larger doper in a cell that we we have access to,
Rick Archer: yeah. And you say, Don’t worry about the dog, it’s hot over there. And I told Diana, she could leave the window open, even if the dog barks, because it’s so hot, she’s fresh air. Throwing a snack. You go into a whole interesting explanation about how kind of fragmented and fractured our thought process and our personalities become, when we don’t have access to the inner wholeness. And yeah, and the implications of that in society in terms of business, and politics, and economics, and so on and so forth. It might be interesting to explore that. And it actually alludes back to something we started with a little earlier, which is all that all the problems of the world are due to a lack of our access to inner potential.
Diana Durham: Well, yes, I think I mean, that’s been my that’s been my passion really to try to explore why that is how that happens. I, I became fascinated by the the Arthurian myth, and the Grail myth, where there’s a wounded king who rules over a wasteland Kingdom, and the kingdom, the ills of the kingdom are really just a reflection of his wound. And if you could heal that King, then the kingdom would sort itself out. And seeing that as a metaphor for human beings, when we are disconnected from that inner self from that bigger space, which makes us feel bigger, you know, it’s like having a window open rather than a window closed. So when we’re the wound is the sense of being disconnected from that. Now, when you’re disconnected from that inner self, that inner self is also really your source of power in that power that rose up in me and my transfiguration. Okay, I don’t feel like that all the time. But you’re always living somewhat in alignment with that inner energy of yourself, or you cut yourself off from it a little bit from because you miss mostly because you hold thoughts that don’t sync up with the with the vibration of that energy. So the wound is if you’re disconnected from that power, and then you feel fearful and you you might feel vulnerable, and you also might feel very empty. And so you therefore, you’re going to want to consider you’re going to want to get something to make up for that sense of diminishment. Now, in the myth, in the Arthurian myth, the Grail King at sorry, The Fisher King is called the wounded Fisher King, or it’s called the wounded Fisher King because the only way he ever gets any relief from this wound doesn’t heal him. But he gets relief. temporary relief from the suffering is when he goes fishing And I interpret that as when we feel the sense of vulnerability and diminishment and emptiness, we go get something to try to make us feel better. And it could be, we become addicted in some shape or form to a substance to alcohol, or we become sort of addicted in a way to power over others, we become a fully fledged narcissist and we sort of suck energy out of other people. Or we just buy lots of stuff that we don’t really need, you know, we consume, we consume, to try to make up for the emptiness and so then you get into a vicious cycle. Because the more you do that the more disconnected you feel something empty you feel, so the more you consume, and that, to me is the vicious circle of addiction, fundamentally, of addiction.
Rick Archer: There was a great quote from your book, he said narcissism is the psychological sense, is the in the psychological sense is defined as an inferiority complex covered over by a superiority complex. In other words, the partial sense of self is covered over by the inflation of itself.
Diana Durham: Yes, exactly. And, yes, so to make up for the sense of not being truly whole, which is that stereo sense of identity that that symbol, you know, kind of symbolizes that you’ve got this, you’ve got access to this other dimension, consciously. You always got that to draw on. But if you close off from that, for whatever reason, and we can try to understand what that is why, why that happens. You can only you can only make up for it through a form of inflation. And I did experience that I my thought process about this actually began partly when I visited Romania towards the end of shochet ESCO, who was the last, maybe the first and last communist leader there. And he built this enormous palace in the center of Bucharest, and he bulldoze people’s homes to make waves. And it was absolutely ginormous. And apparently, it’s the second largest building in the world after the pet before the Pentagon’s bigger. I mean, you may have changed by now with Utah in the Listening people but and you walked around this building, and half the rooms were unfinished, chandeliers, enormous chandeliers were covered in plastic. There was a ballroom the size of Grand Central Station just about and the finest craftsman in the whole of Romania had been cool to to create this, this palace. And then at the end, there was a little visitor’s book asking you got any ideas as to what we can do. Afterwards, I thought that was his ego. Yeah, I was walking around a physical symbol of this man’s ego, that particularly through the power vacuum in of common communism, because all the other institutions were sort of done away with, you know, it had been allowed to just sort of grow. Disproportionately.
Rick Archer: Yeah. He also mentioned that he he ordered the digging of canals around the country that actually weren’t leading anywhere serving any purpose.
Diana Durham: And he was irrational. Yeah. And Stalin was irrational, too. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I think you mentioned Stalin was killed all of his best generals, just before World War Two or something. Yeah.
Diana Durham: Yeah. So I mean, we laugh now, but I mean, it’s no irrationality goes along with with this condition. I mean, you could you could call it a sort of a mental illness, really a fundamental mental illness.
Rick Archer: And I think we’ve all experienced that, personally, you know, to some extent, because we’ve all been cut off from our inner nature, to varying degrees. And but, you know, there are these larger than life figures who somehow maneuver their way into political prominence, who become like, you know, caricatures. They’re just such extreme narcissists. And then it’s on display for all the world to sit in.
Diana Durham: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I don’t know where to how whether we’re proceeding here very coherently, but
Rick Archer: what are your favorite words? So we have to we have to be coherent?
Diana Durham: Well, but I was thinking, you see the idea of what spirituality is, obviously is evolving. And in that I mentioned my experience of Transfiguration. It didn’t last. And I don’t think it’s supposed to see I don’t think we’re supposed to always be in this high, high high thing and I think actually people take drugs because it gives them some of that doesn’t it? Isn’t that high but What we are supposed to do in this, this, the beautiful myth of the Grail story is all about this, we’re supposed to sort of become aware of this, and then learn to use it learn to let consciousness work the way it’s designed to work. And by that I mean something very simple, which is really to do with using drawing on what we, we tend to call our intuition. Because everyone has those experiences, of pondering something, and it can be something immense and difficult, or it can be something simple, simple. Or it can just be Well, should I do this now? Or should I do that now? And if you attune to your inner self, you can start to feel when it kind of lines up with Yes, we’ll do it, we’ll go this way. But sometimes you have something really startling. It’s like, Oh, I’ve just downloaded a really amazing idea. I know, it’s, I know, it’s right. And I quote Einstein here because he, in my in my book, I quote him because he was a big proponent of the importance of intuition in his own process of evolving his scientists theory about relativity. He said, sometimes I know I’m right. But I don’t yet know the reason. Now, if you think about that, that’s really interesting. How do we because we all know, we’ve all had that experience. So how do we know we’re right? We know this is the next thing to do. Out of all the chaos of our lives of the world of our mind, of our condition of our circumstances. How do we know that? Well, it’s because there’s a sort of a line lining up between that I don’t know if so, is there a picture with the lining up? Or maybe not?
Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. Well have the one that’s inner, inner and outer and heart and mind. And the circles are sort of intersecting? Yeah. So there’s like a more a pattern in the middle,
Diana Durham: right. So if you think of the two, two centers and circle as, as your heart and your mind, and the heart is more sort of, in listens more to the inner, and the mind pays more attention to the outer to our circumstances. Every now and again, that a line gets drawn between those two centers, in our awareness, it’s like, Should I do this? Should I do that, and then suddenly goes, you know, and the thing forms and the line is drawn between the two. And that’s when that field that you’re talking about there that the centers have have joined up, the circles have aligned. That’s it geometrically, that’s when you can draw a straight line from one center to the other. Yeah. And that’s the beginning of all the shapes of sacred geometry. Well, that’s, to me, that’s an analogy. I’m just talking about it as a metaphor for the experience we have when our heart and our mind line up. And it’s like, we’ve, we’ve got this intuitive flash, and we know what we know what to do next. So why do we know where right because it’s connecting to the inner self, when it’s there, it is actually there, you can, and you can feel it, you can feel it, guiding you, in quite, you know, in large ways and and in minor ways through your life. And I think that’s so exciting. And that you don’t have to be a physicist to have that experience. Do you, you don’t need to understand quantum theory
Rick Archer: may help not to be well, you know, a minute ago, you said, you know, we can’t really be in this super high state all the time. And I would still like to suggest that we can be and that many people have been, but it’s not necessarily going to be flashy, or overwhelming or incapacitating, because we will have integrated it, we will have acclimated to it. But it I fully believe that it’s possible to function in that way all the time. And you know, and it doesn’t necessitate sitting around in a loincloth and not being able to really do anything. You know, a surgeon could be in that state, an airline pilot landing 747 in a snowstorm, and it’s just a matter of having deep and frequent and clear experiences of that interstate and then alternating those with activity until eventually becomes stabilized. And this thing about intuition that you mentioned, there’s actually a term in the Yoga Sutras which is written by a ProGear which means that level of intellect which knows only truth and you know, and theoretically, ideally, one can become accustomed to functioning from that. And, and then once intuition is is, I wouldn’t want to say that it would be hubris to assume that one has become infallible. dangerous, but it becomes reliable. And you know, perhaps it can always be checked against common sense or something. But there’s a lot of really cool stories of saints and sages who took some course of action, which even they didn’t understand why they were taking. And then it then the reason became obvious after a while they met such and such a person. And it was just they were there at the perfect time to do such it’s just, you know, because you’re just sort of operating on cosmic intelligence, which is larger than your individual perspective.
Diana Durham: Well, I mean, I totally agree then. And, in different words, I think that’s exactly what I’m at the best, exactly what my book is about. Is that is it that you, it is possible to live from this. I just, I just that intensity of energy. I don’t live from it. I mean, it was it was, you know, that was rather exceptional. Sure. It’s there. I don’t experience it is like, I guess the fire is there. But I don’t experience it that way anymore. But I think that that’s that that calm that sense of, as you say, contacting whatever words, we use, Intuit intuitive certainty or sense of well being. That’s it, it’s, it’s the same thing, it’s just kind of an I agree with you, I think we do get used to it. I think you do. And so the high you know, if if you’ve been in a rut, and I think that’s partly what happened when I was a I was an 80, I was a teenager, you know, so that you’re very up and down as a teenager. And I think I had that breakthrough. And it was as extreme as it was, because I’d probably been quite, you know, moody, and, you know, sort of ordinary teenager. And so to some degree, it was like something cracked open in my mind in my heart, and that I had that particular intensity. But I agree with you, I think we can live from from our NSL I think I think that’s I think we’re supposed to, I think that’s how we’re supposed to learn to think, yeah, and obviously, you don’t just download everything, because you’re from nowhere, because you’re in relationship with the world with you think about things, whatever your particular focus of interest is, you know, you’re in get you engage with that you become interested in it, you learn about it. So then you can become a good airline pilot. Because A, you’ve learned you’ve trained, you’ve got the skills as an airline pilot, I mean, I couldn’t be an airline pilot, even if I was very, you know, in think and assumed, because I don’t have that knowledge and in my, you know, in my psyche, and my brain, and in my body, but so you see you learn those skills. But then if you’ve also got this balancing this attunement, whatever you want to call it, then you’ve got both things happening. And that’s when you act in a way that isn’t going to create damage in the world, you know? Yeah, and that’s, and that’s when the waistline gets restored, you see that so you don’t have to, you don’t have to sort out the land, you have to sort out a king, or the airline pilot for whoever it is.
Rick Archer: Yeah, one way of putting it is that a light bulb isn’t isn’t a toaster isn’t a refrigerator isn’t the, you know, an electric blender, but they, they each have their function, but they’re all plugged into the same electrical field. Exactly. And so we as individuals, you know, variety is the spice of life, all the all the plants in the Amazonian rainforest, as diverse as they are, are all planted in the same ground and derive their nourishment from that. And so you know, that what you’re getting at is that we we just have been deficient in our accessing that ground.
Diana Durham: Yes. And I think I think we have been trained away from it, as well, through our education system through the through the cultural assumptions that surround us now. I mean, I probably it’s a good and that necessary, evolution overall, you know, because before, as we mentioned, you’d have had more traditional structure, let’s say, a church. And with that, you could sort of exist within that without necessarily really coming to know that in yourself, you know, you just, you just sort of anointed by the priests and told that you’ll be right when you’re dead, and that sort of thing. You know, it’s different, isn’t it from that really learning to live in this sense of grace or in this intuitive, the lined up sense? So then we, you know, we lost but but but we have been in an era of really, really deep materialism. And it’s, it’s been damaging. I think it’s been damaging. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And if anything, I think the churches have contributed to it. Because what always seems to happen is that administrative types take over when a religion gets started, and pretty soon they start persecuting the mystics who are actually having the experience that the founder of the religion was talking about. You know, then the whole thing just becomes an outer shell without any inner juice. Yeah. Did you ever see that movie The Fisher King with Robin Williams?
Diana Durham: I did. Yeah, I can’t remember it very well, that was years ago. But
Rick Archer: he was dramatize and damaged. Right? He became a homeless person. I don’t remember if he actually literally finished but it was a it was a great movie.
Diana Durham: It was a great way.
Rick Archer: Okay, so I have a bunch of notes in front of me. And I could start us off on something. But where should we go without being too jumpy in our train of thought? Well, there’s the whole thing about David Bohm and his implicate an expert s, explicate orders, which I think ties into what we’ve been talking about. Maybe we should go there and want to explain what that’s about?
Diana Durham: Well, yes, what we’ll hear here was a language that David bone has came up with a remarkable new idea. And it emerged out of him trying to basically try to sort of figure out why, you know, why do electrons appear and disappear, and what the double slit experiment and all that sort of thing, which I, you know, I’m not completely, I’d have to always have to look those things up to talk about them with with total authority, or some authority. But essentially, he said, you know, instead of looking for a little building block somewhere, some sort of quark or something, rather than that the rest of the universe is made up out of, he turned it all on his head, and he said, the universe itself has an interior quality to it, its and its, and its material, pneus, including the little electron that pops in and out or Quark, or whatever it is, emerges out of this deep interior order, displays itself for us for a while, and then it folds back into it. He called this the hollow movement, or the or was it the unbroken wholeness, beautiful phrase, and obviously, unbroken wholeness. So our bodies appear and grow, and then gradually, gradually sort of start to sort of fall apart a bit, and we die. So we have an idea, but where does the idea come from it, it comes into our mind and takes form and then sort of becomes archived, I suppose. But meanwhile, that that body, you know, me, in the world of I’ve emerged out of what he called the implicant, let’s say, emerge, which is the inner using simple words, into the explicate, which is the dimensional, the outer, and I’m interacting, both with that outer world and with the inner world. And by doing so, I expand meaning, I expand the meaning of both of those things, I expand the meaning of the inner world, and I expand the meaning of the of the outer world. So that every this has happened is everything. This is what everything is, you know, an idea of sunflower human being emerges out of an interior order. And, and it’s here for a while, and it looks like it’s really solid, this table that I’m sitting by, looks very solid, but eventually it will, you know, rot and all away or be burned or whatever it is, and it will, it will disappear. Actually, it never actually leaves the expert does it because it’s it’s, it just changes its nature, I suppose within the within the export order, but some of it substance will disappear. So he was saying that, rather than be thinking in terms of separate realities, separate human beings, separate countries. Things in conflict, to be thinking in terms of, of a state of profound oneness, and that everything like you’re saying about the Amazon forest, is really a differentiation of this deep in order. And this is a very different way of looking at the world thinking about the world thinking about ourselves and human consciousness, by means of that inner and outer. We’re designed to participate in this expansion of meaning. Because you know, we see something i don’t know i You in my book, I use an example of having coffee with a friend and the idea of having coffee is The implicant having coffee is the X bucket. But then having sitting there having coffee, I see a tree of something and the tree makes me begins a poem in my head. So then the tree is the X bucket, but it started something in the bucket in me, that then will come back out into the active bucket as a poem or a draft of a poem. So that the universe is continually expanding through through our consciousness.
Rick Archer: There’s a couple of Boehm quotes that state what you were saying, in terms of the implicit order, one can ascribe the phenomena or behavior of some subatomic particles to a deeper reality that underlies them. So there’s that. And then according to Boehm, this is the fundamental application of quantum theory, there is no ultimate material building block to be found. It is not commonly realized that the quantum theory implies that no such bottom level of unambiguous reality as possible. So in simple terms, I think he’s just saying that there is a deeper reality to anything which could be said to be manifest to any degree, including subatomic particles, and that those subatomic particles and that all the various levels of manifestation above them derive their orderliness and their organizing power, which makes them to coherent to any degree from the ocean of coherence that resides at their at their core at the root of their foundation.
Diana Durham: Yes. Something along those lines. Yes. Yeah. Very, very different vision. And what’s so interesting is that he, I mean, I don’t know when he first said this, but quantum physics etc, as he said, he, yeah, what he said was, people don’t commonly realize that there is no you. The implication is there isn’t anything there, there isn’t any fundamental building block, and not a material nature know of a material nature. And what I didn’t know quantum physics was emerging in the early 20th century, right that the 1920s and 30s. But we’re still we’re still hit, we’re here in 220, it’s 100 years later, we’re still fundamentally operating from a material, you know, a building block perspective. In everything, I say, we I mean, the main so called mainstream culture and everything we do. And get including looking for meaning, you know, what is meaningful to us, is mostly just a lot more money, you know, certainly in America. It is in many places, and what’s meaningful to human beings is his relationship, meaningful relationship with other people, primarily nuts, and with it with their own, with their own sense of self. So our values are skewed. And our thinking to skewed us, our sense of who we are, is skewed. And that’s been trained, that’s been trained into us, through our education through other people. And therefore, that’s one of the reasons why we’ve we tend to negate our intuition, we don’t learn this, this subtle thing or we lose it as we grow up, we doubt it. You know, and we’ve we’ve probably come and get up against not very helpful mentors who perhaps didn’t encourage us or who tried to make us be different to the way we were and different ways you know, that that can also squash that process, a bit content of connecting with your deeper being
Rick Archer: well, because the mentors themselves aren’t in touch with their deeper being. And it carries on, you know, inherited from one generation to the next. There’s a verse in The Gita, which I’ve quoted many times, which I think pertains to this, and that is that goes for many branched and endlessly diverse or the intellects of the irresolute. But the resolute intellect is one pointed. I think a good analogy for that is like a bicycle wheel, where you have the hub and then you have all the spokes radiating out from the wheel, from the hub, and most people are out on the end of some spoke. And from that person’s perspective, all the other spokes seem to be a jumble they don’t, there’s no coherent pattern that you can discern. But if you are, if you reside at the hub, you see all the spokes radiating out from you. And so, you know, the resolute intellect is one pointed and so you are no longer many branched and endlessly diverse. You can explore the various diversities. You can go out on this boat without spoke, but you maintain contact with the hub you maintain, that’s your scent, essential identity. And so everything a coherent Dawn’s in your perspective, that isn’t possible if you’re stranded out on the periphery someplace.
Diana Durham: Yes, very much. So I think that, again, to use it to use that symbol of the intersecting circles and the idea of the of the wounded king as this symbol, the wounded King, that you’re also, you know, you can be controlled, you’re controlled, then by your environment, you know, rather than being in under the sway of your own authority in a way, yeah. You’re, you’re under the thrall of what’s outside of you watched one way or another, whether you dominate it, or whether even if you seem to be dominating it, you know, like a narcissist, you’re still actually under its role. It’s, it’s really, it’s in control of you, the environments in control of you.
Rick Archer: Yeah. There’s another verse in The Gita where I think Arjuna asked Krishna, you know, what is it that compels a man to commit sin? Even though he knows better? You know, why is he sort of driven blindly to do what he, I think do Yoda or Judas opponent said, I know what’s right, but I can’t do it. And I know what’s wrong, but I’m impelled to do it. And I think it’s again, like, lack of grounding groundedness in the source, you are at the mercy of forces that are beyond your control, kind of like trying to control a river from halfway downstream, or from all the way down the stream, the river has already run its course you can’t control it. From there, it has to be controlled from its source, if you hope to, you know, have any influence on it.
Diana Durham: Oh, what I think about there also is that I can’t, you know, I know I’m wrong, but I can’t control myself. In a way, it’s because you’re searching for something you want you want, you’re trying to find something, some beauty, perhaps some something to, to sort of take you out of yourself. Yeah. And
Rick Archer: limit itself
Diana Durham: Exactly. As you know, limited self. Because when, when you’re lined up, and it does, as I say, I mean, it’s you’re not always it comes and go, right. But the, the experience of being lined up is like, it’s, it’s like the sun shining through the window. So the world becomes illuminated by that light. And that’s what beauty is, and that’s what’s that’s so satisfying. Doesn’t happen all the time. You know, it’s like those epiphany, that’s what it’s like an epiphany, right? When the world is lit up, as you look at it, it’s the most satisfying experience. And all the hunger and all the sort of edginess, you know, doesn’t cease forever. But it’s, it’s, you found what you’re looking for you found this sense of meaningful relationship with the world. And then that feeds back into you with a sense of beauty, and fulfillment. And that’s, you know,
Rick Archer: yeah, that’s nice. I guess maybe one way of phrasing what you’re saying is, you know, once once one is established in the self, then the appreciation of the world can really become sublime. And that appreciation kind of creates a feedback loop where there’s greater and greater sort of expansion of the heart and greater enrichment and further refinement of sensory appreciation. You know, so it just sort of grows and grows a kind of saying that,
Diana Durham: yes, I? Yes. Yes. It seems to me that that’s what that hunger in people is when they just can’t, you know, they just want that. I see, I don’t even think it’s wrong to want things and to get the shiny car or the lovely house or anything, because that’s part of the joy of life. But it’s, it’s the it’s whether it’s done to fill the emptiness or whether it’s done as a sort of outflow of creativity, you know,
Rick Archer: icing on the cake or something? Yeah, I think. Well, I think we all know, intuitively, that a great reservoir happiness resides within it within us. I mean, not that many people could actually articulate that. But I think it’s built into us just like our desire to breathe, you know, we just kind of breathe it says human impulse, I think I think deep deep down will realize that, you know, that there’s this vast reservoir of happiness and energy and intelligence within us. And we must also realize that we’re estranged from it. And like you say, you know, we want to fill the gap. There’s a natural tendency to seek greater happiness and oh, maybe it’s here, or maybe it’s there. And You know, we’re constantly disappointed, because that’s not it. But there’s nothing wrong with those things. It’s just, you know, who was it? Thoreau said, you know, go ahead and build your castles in the air. That’s where they belong, just put foundations under them. Or it might even Emerson, I don’t know. So the question is, how to do it? You know, the easier said than done perhaps, or maybe not, you know, how do we access that inner source that we that we dimly or clearly realize exists exists?
Diana Durham: Well, I think that, you know, prime sure, like yourself, I just do some very simple meditation every morning. I don’t meditate very long, any about 15 minutes. And all I’m really doing is trying to is just clearing clearing the mind of thought. So that I really tune to the frequency of my source, which can happen quite naturally, I think,
Rick Archer: yeah. You’ve been doing that for a long time.
Diana Durham: I’ve been doing that for a long time.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And you feel that there’s a progressive, familiar familiarization with that source?
Diana Durham: Yes, I and, and also, I find that I’m much more aware, much more familiar also with how the feeling of the day goes. And when it’s out of kilter, and when it isn’t. And I think this i, this relates to what you said earlier, I think that the more this becomes quite natural, it becomes sort of subtle and natural, you don’t really, it doesn’t seem like anything very special. You know, it’s not like fireworks or anything going on, you’re just living your life in your day, but you’re enjoying yourself. But what you do notice is when you’re out of kilter, it’s almost unbearable, having been in in kill, to go out to kill, so you just can’t bear it. And that’s, that’s very interesting. And, you know, you see that lots of people around you. That still, it’s been like, caught up in your unconsciousness of caught up in your own is that you’re trapped in your own apparatus in a funny sort of way. And that becomes a bit that’s just unbearable, I can’t I can’t bear it. I can’t. I know, it can be in band it anymore.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I particularly went through a phase of I got it, I lost it back in the 80s. And it was like, I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight. So I can just sort of be unconscious. Again, you can imagine how somebody would take heroin or something, because they just want to blot out the pain. But, you know, relative relative to what I had been experiencing 20 years earlier, I was probably in a very blissful state, but I had just become accustomed to that. And if it’s lost temporarily, then it’s it’s rough.
Diana Durham: Yeah. So I don’t know that that, that that process is, you see, I’m very interested in, in the language of myth, that myth is a language about all of this stuff. I don’t know if you’re for if you want to go there.
Rick Archer: Let’s go there. But let me just ask you a couple of questions that came in that seem to be related to the things we’ve been talking about. First one from John in western North Carolina, which is his question, because of our culture and the way we are taught to learn in western education. Is there a step by step approach to aligning our heart and mind and going further? Is there a step by step approach suggested for attaining enlightenment? What is the first step, the second etc? It’s kind of alludes to what we were just saying meditation is one way but is, is there anything more you can say to John’s question?
Diana Durham: Well, I think nowadays, Amanda, you know, having some form of mentor can be helpful and there are so many people around now who’ve got some training in meditation or whether you meet them physically or whether you listen like now online or or read a book. You know, that might be what would I do? It’s a good question, isn’t it? I don’t I do think meditation is the key meditation and noticing when your thoughts go out of you know, noticing, trying to notice what your thought process is doing. Yeah, during during the day so that when it starts going, which it does, it goes off or you start getting fearful or critical you start getting angry. You might just try to write something down, right writing things is I do that I make lists of things i i write things I notice when something really bothers me and I’ll work with it a little bit and try to get to the core of it. There are so many books with steps in them. I don’t have I don’t have like a formula that I, I’ve never really thought about it that way. Right? I’ve just been fascinated by deciphering these myths and sort of trying to say, lay out the, the anatomy of who we are and how that works. So, to me, meditation is is the first step for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Rick Archer: And I think another thing is to have realistic understanding of the nature of spiritual evolution, which is that it’s, it’s, it’s not a McDonald’s approach, where you’re just going to sort of have some big flash, and then it’s over. It’s really a lifelong project, which is actually not a discouraging idea. It’s inspiring, because once entire life is an adventure of exploration and growth. But it’s, but it’s, I think, it’s important to understand that there are many degrees of awakening. And I’ve seen instances where people have some degree of awakening, and then just assume that they’re done, or that they’re at a state where whatever they wish to do, must be okay, because they’re kind of an enlightened dude. And that can result in your downfall. And it has resulted in the downfall of many. So it’s good to sort of have the parmesan Baba approach, which is that he said, although my awareness is as vast as the sky, my, my attention to karma or action is fine as a grain of barley flour. So to walk the razor’s edge and be diligent and mindful, as you go along without being overly neurotic about it.
Diana Durham: Yeah. I mean, I also think just acting in the world, you know, doing things getting things done, is quite challenging. But I think, and I think that’s good for that’s, that’s kind of, you grow by doing things, don’t you by achieving things, I mean, I don’t know my own experience, writing a book and trying to write it as well as I can. It’s very demanding, it’s not easy. I’m not in a state of bliss doing that. So, but the experience of doing it works the mind, it’s just like exercise, you know, works. You’re not just the mind, it’s a, it’s stamina, is the ability to stay with things. And, and sort of building a belief in yourself. So I think, as much as we want to be spiritual, working in the world, working with the sort of challenges of the day of our daily lives, that’s, that is a spiritual practice, I think, being present within it, being patient, you know, there’s always well, in my house at the moment, there’s always the washing up, because we haven’t got a dishwasher. But I mean, there are always routine things of life that seem to seem to kind of defeat us, you know, because if we want to great destiny, but we’ve got to go and do the washing up, or we’ve got to write this letter or, you know, clean, I’m trying to think,
Rick Archer: Oh, well, writing a book, you know, that draws forth, it forces you to draw forth your inner resources. So in that sense, it’s, it’s like you’re, you’re drawing forth potential that otherwise might not be drawn, and you’re infusing that into your mind body system. So it becomes more your customary way of functioning, and having to wash the dishes and do mundane stuff, you know, that can culture patients, where you can, you know, rest in contentment in the self, even though you’re doing something that is not intrinsically gratifying. So I mean, life is our guru, you know, and every everything has some intelligent lesson for us.
Diana Durham: And it seems to me that, it to know that one is this powerful being even if it’s only a theory, to know that you are incredibly powerful to meditate, so that you start to tune into it, and quiet your mind. And then notice that and then to take on whatever it is, you really want to do that something that challenges you, that inspires you, whatever it is, knowing, knowing you can do it, but you can’t just do it instantly. It’s going to take engaging with the world continue engaging with that skill set. You know, again, coming back to the airline pilots, good analogy, always that one, you’ve got to learn to do it. Sure. You’ve got to learn to do it before you can fly the plane and have it having the spiritual stamina. I think that’s I think that’s, that’s probably its most useful. It can get can encourage you to do difficult things. Yeah. Or hard work or tricky things or taking on odd interactions with people that are uncomfortable that you don’t quite know what the are the goalposts. To it challenge it makes you feel safe. Even the unknown to take on what’s unknown. Because you’ve got you’ve got guidance.
Rick Archer: You’ve got guidance and your, your intent, your contentment is not contingent upon the fulfillment, or the failure of your enterprise.
Diana Durham: Know, your sense of worth, isn’t your sense of? Yes.
Rick Archer: I mean, one way of looking at is like somebody who has $10 to his name, gaining or losing five bucks is a big deal. Someone who’s a multimillionaire could gain or lose 1000s, you know, and it wouldn’t really shake him much because he’s got that foundation.
Diana Durham: Right? I don’t know if that helped answer that question.
Rick Archer: I think it did. And there’s one more here from Eric in Sebastopol, California. How does one recognize their true nature or self guided by these teachings? I see substantial and complex references to many ideas of self and culture, myth, archetypes, bones, implicate and explicate orders that appear so overwhelming to me. How can these be more accessible?
Diana Durham: Oh, gosh, well, I mean, it is very that. Okay, so what I can see why he’s saying that, because I became very interested in the fact that there’s this fundamental pattern in a self, personality self. And I like that idea. Because we’re familiar with the idea that we have an inner self, you know, a deeper self, or a spiritual self or soul or something along those lines, we may not know exactly what that means, what it feels like, who it is, how to contact it. But we were familiar with that idea. But what we’re not so familiar with is the fact that that self is in relationship, it’s in partnership, with the sense of self that we are more familiar with, in daily life, I should say, rather than as an idea, which is our personality self. That’s, that’s the one, the person who was born here and had these parents and his brown eyes. And as, you know, this, this kind of heredity, or that kind of heredity, those kinds of experiences, these two, these two sense, these two aspects are put together, that that whole package is us. So here’s your post, you’re already hear your, your, you’ve got your personality self. That’s done that’s there. So now it’s about becoming aware of the inner self. And you can do that through meditating. Just quieting the mind. And you can do it through noticing your how your intuition works, you can do it through noticing, when you have an idea, or noticing when you feel a sense of happiness and joy for no particular reason. You know, it’s not something nice has happened to you. So you feel nice, you just feel a sense of well being for no particular reason. That’s, that’s you, that’s who you’re experiencing then. So then all this other stuff about the myth and David Bowie and everything, I’m, I’m used, I’m just showing, here’s this fundamental, this fundamental presence we have that’s at the core of ourselves. So I’m looking, looking on top. You’ve got this, we’ve got this presence. It’s, it’s right there. It’s there all the time. There’s nothing mysterious about it. It’s, it’s a resource that we have. And it’s just about quieting, perhaps quieting the mind. And looking for the like, I was saying that sense of something lining up an idea that works, or I think I’ll do this now not that or something very, very simple to begin with, and then we get better and better at doing it just like any other skill. Yes. Does that begin to answer that?
Rick Archer: I think it does. And he can always ask again, if he is not satisfied, but I really believe in that saying, you know, seek and you shall find knock on the door shall be opened. I’ve seen it so many times that if a person has the sincere intention to get into this stuff, you know, to to discover the deeper spiritual reality, then just take the first step, you know, and, you know, you’re not going to get enlightened tomorrow or anything, but just start start exploring and see what resonates with you. I mean, one of the ideas of this show is that it’s like a smorgasbord of all kinds of different teachings and teachers and perspectives and everything and some may resonate with you and some may not. But you know, if you if you have the sincere intention, nature will organize and you know, the right thing will come along at the right time and then then the next thing will come along and and so on. And, you know, it’s just, it’s a, it’s a delightful journey and you know, it bears fruit, in my opinion. It’s, you won’t be disappointed if you sincerely pursue it. Yeah. Okay, so you want to get into myth. And well,
Diana Durham: just before that, that makes me want to say something about the power of consciousness itself, like you’re saying there the power of intention there. Because one of the implications in the myth and in Beaumes work and in spiritual traditions, is that consciousness. The reason why it’s so important to be attuned to our deepest self, is because our consciousness and the world are woven together, you can’t separate our consciousness from the world. And this is really the mystery at the heart of quantum physics. So what that means is that how we live and who we are, impacts the world, whether we like it or not, it does. But it, it also means that we have power over the world. So if you put out intention, I want to discover my inner self, what or whatever it is, that’s like a seed. It’s a vibration, that stirs matter, it’s stirs that sort of deeper matter of the world, should we say, it starts to stir it to bring to you what you want to do, or how, what you need to take your next step, just like you said. And that’s the other thing that I think we’re going to start understanding more as we go along into the next few decades that we shape the world consciousness shapes the world. And that’s what magic really is, you know, that the spell the spell of making, casting the spell making, God said, Let there be light, and there was light, that’s, that opening part of Genesis is a poem, talking about the power of consciousness to create, you know, to summon up what you want from the world.
Rick Archer: And I think it’s a very precious and much needed intention to to know oneself and, you know, to, to unfold one spiritual nature, it’s still, even though in the circles of people who watch this kind of show, it’s seems very commonplace, it’s in the world at large, it’s still rather rare. And I think that everyone who steps on that train is very much appreciated, as and supported by whatever powers there be. It’s critical and for the survival of the world. And so if, you know, if you really pursue that, endeavor, you you’ll, you’ll be appreciated, and you’ll receive support. And that may not have always been the case. I mean, there are times when you could have been burned at the stake for dabbling in this stuff. But in this day, and age, you know, ancient secret teachings are just there on YouTube for everyone to see.
Rick Archer: All kinds of nonsense on YouTube for everyone to see, which can totally confuse you if you indulge in it. So you know, be careful when you put your attention.
Diana Durham: And then the authorities don’t really care about it. So they’re not going to burn your steak interested in? Yeah, myth myth is like a dream. Like, sometimes you have a very powerful dream that you remember, when you wake up, and it stays with you. And then I know I’ve had the experience sometimes have you think about something of the dream, you suddenly make a correlation between this thing in the dream and something in your real life. And suddenly you understand, ah, that, Oh, the dreams about that. But then you also know, oh, but this also shows light on that, you know, this thing in the dream or the way it was being moved around, or whatever was happening, was saying something about that thing that in my real life that correlates within you go backwards and forwards between understanding the dream in terms of the world and understanding the world in terms of the dream. And it sort of stretches out a fabric of understanding, which I find very pleasurable when that happens. I I like doing that with some of my own dreams. And I interpret the dreams of my family and friends when they’ve had particularly dramatic dreams. While Miffy is like that, to me anyway. And the the myths of King Arthur and the Grail quest, are like a collective dream. I think the big myths, they’re like a dream that we’ve all had. And so they’re not just about us as individuals or they are about us as individuals. They’re about the whole culture. And the King Arthur myth is the collective story of moving towards wholeness, the round table. And the ground story is the individual thread of what it takes to emerge might meet your King Arthur, or you might meet a mentor, and you might be inspired by him or her. But you’ve got to go off on the quest to find your own path of that, you’ve got to find your own deep connection with that. In other words, a mentor is great. You don’t need to be weaned from them, eventually, you need to get weaned from whoever it is, because I’ve seen it, and I’m sure others have seen it, where you just stay dependent, and you never grow up. And you can always tell a true mentor, because they don’t want that to happen. Is the one who wants you to stay around, that’s more the wounded King, because they they’re driving their power from you. So what do you do? So how do you do this? So this is going back to question, you go off on the quest. And the quest begins in the thickest part, where there’s no path, you know, there’s so you begins usually in chaos. And bit by bit, the story unfolds, you meet certain characters. And so the Grail story of personal, there’s different ground stories, but the one I focus on is is got a young lad called Percival and his name means Percival minster pierce the veil. And thinking about my two circles again, the centerpiece can become veiled. I haven’t sent you that, but it can be it can become, you know, is there other worlds joined? Or are they separated? You know, is there a veil in your heart so that they the worlds are separated? Or, or is it open? And are they joined? So that’s what his name is, is asking purse, persevere, pierce the veil, got to pierce the veil. That’s his job, because he doesn’t know it. Anyway, he has various adventures, and he overcomes lots of wicked knights. He also is mentored by a very well meaning Knight, who teaches them the skills of knighthood. And, but he also realizes that possible is a bit foolish and naive and unsophisticated. So he advises him not to talk too much, so that he doesn’t show to others that he’s a little bit naive. So he sets up a game. He’s trying to get home to find his mother again. But of course, he never goes home again. Because once you start on the quest, you can never go back to your normal world, you’ve changed, we’ve changed so your world’s going to change. He comes to the, to the Grail Castle, which is where the wounded king lives and is invited into the banqueting hall, he sits down next to the wounded king.
Diana Durham: And they start having a lovely meal served to them. And then suddenly, a door at one end of the banqueting hall opens. And a young woman comes through carrying the Grail Chalice, Golden Bowl, golden cup. And as she comes into the room, there’s so much light in this cup, that it’s a bit of sun has come out, and personal looks at this Grail. And he thinks himself I really, really wish I knew who that Grails for who’s going to be served from that Grail, what’s it all about? But he remembers his advice from his his kindly mentor, and he thinks though I mustn’t ask any questions, I’ve got to keep silent, so he doesn’t ask. And the growl carries across the room and disappears into another door on the other side of the hall. And that’s it. That’s the end and he goes on his way. And he’s, he’s been told off by various females, that he should have asked him the Grail served, because if he’d asked who the Grail was, for, he would appeal the windy king. And then he did he’ll, he had restored the wasteland. So of course, personal doesn’t understand any of this. Why would his
Rick Archer: asking have healed the king? Because the Grail,
Diana Durham: okay, so at this point, that scene in the Grail Castle turns into a symbol. And the Grail the golden cup represents the heart represents our heart. And as it moves through that Banqueting Hall, it’s moving from it’s giving its attention to the outer, and it’s moving through into an inner room, we don’t see into and in that inner room, an elderly man lives who’s very refined and he really is a symbol of God in a way. So it goes, it goes from the outer into the inner, where it serves, the being your inner being your inner self, right, that’s, that’s what that’s symbolizing. So it’s saying Your heart serves this inner being it serves your inner self. That’s what it’s supposed to connect to. That’s your intuition. When it tells you, yes, this is the way to go, that’s the way to go. You’ve got to disengage from being so distracted by the outer, and connect again. And that’s when you have the, that’s the light comes in. That’s your epiphany. That’s your sense of epiphany. So what personal is learning at this point is that he’s, he’s no longer kind of finding meaning from being in the world and adventuring and having overcoming nights and training, you know, up to this point, all the sense of meaning has been outside of him. But what he has learned from his experience in the grill Castle is that meaning lies within him. And he’s got the power after that, to change the world. And that’s what that myth is telling us. So it’s like, a narrative about our own consciousness. And this is why myths are so so here’s a dream, you know, it’s not completely logical, it’s a little bit surreal. But it’s telling us about how consciousness works, and that, we have to understand exactly what you said, why does it you know, what does it mean that question, whom does the ground serve? Well, it’s about becoming consciously aware of how you work, you’ve got to understand you may have the Epiphany, you have the experience, but you don’t understand the meaning, right. But you’ve got to come to understand that what that means.
Rick Archer: Interesting, there’s a section in your book, where you talk about how the loss of wholeness in ourselves leads to the loss of wholeness in the world around us to unethical behavior to depleted values, we increase short term gain at the expense of the long term well being of others, we extract commodities from the environment to buy and sell, no matter the impact. And you even talk about the, you know, the 2008 financial crash where, you know, all that weird complex derivative training and Enron’s crash and all these people sort of really lost to themselves, but having gained great power in the world, and really messing things up for large portions of humanity, creating a
Diana Durham: wasteland. Yeah. Well, that’s what the wound does, it always creates a wasteland.
Diana Durham: And that was a very good example of extremely arrogant people who believed only really that meaning is just about more, you know, more, more money more, ever crashing the economy, and there’s there, there it is, again, and they weren’t supreme leaders like Starlin. But they they were still operating under that wound.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, even today, I saw this thing from Bernie Sanders yesterday, which I didn’t read in its entirety. But he was saying how, you know, the some 400 billionaires in the country have have become $700 billion richer during the financial crisis caused by the pandemic. And you know, whereas meanwhile, they’re, you know, the, the politicians in Washington are arguing over, you know, cutting the $600 in unemployment benefits that weekly that unemployed people are receiving. So there’s, there’s still something really rotten at the core of the policies, it seems to me that govern govern our society and our economy. And I think it does stem from what you’re talking about that this is sort of, there’s not a sort of a national, the Self Realization, or enlightenment or higher consciousness or something is far from being the norm and collective consciousness. And we’re still very much suffering the consequences of that
Diana Durham: very much, but it shows you how important it is. Because because otherwise you create a wasteland. Yeah, actually, you’re creating a waste. And and I don’t think it’s going to come from our leaders. Now. I think I think the shift is going to have to come about in the, in the grassroots, in shifting the nature of the culture and ship coming to understand that quantum physics actually has enormous spiritual implications coming to understand what these myths have been telling us that there are there are psychic dna that are telling us how we work and who we are. And it’s not just about a nice lifestyle. It’s not about just relaxing, you know, or blissing out or something like that. It’s fundamental to the well being of the ecology of the planet and of society being in balance. See, when we lived in America, that was something I could not understand was that fundamental values didn’t seem to even be known that anymore. It I mean, the The other myth that comes to mind is the story of Midas, who, everything he touched turned to gold, which is wonderful to begin with. But then he touched his wife when he touched his beautiful black beloved daughter and touched his food
Diana Durham: if there’s only one thing you value, you kill off, you kill off the ecosystem of what really brings joy. Yeah, which is a functioning society, you know, like, where people are enjoying themselves and thriving. You know, why would you do that? It’s, it’s not rational.
Rick Archer: I think it really matters, what leaders we elect, because if you have a, you know, a malignant narcissist in the White House, he can do a lot of damage. But on the other hand, if we assume, as you’re just saying, that, you know, changing leadership is going to solve things for us once and for all. Well, then look at the history of that. You know, it, obviously, you know, many, there are many extreme examples, such as Germany, which has learned that the wrong leader in power can can destroy the country. And, you know, but on this, ultimately, I think the time has come, hopefully, to finally realize, collectively, that we, we’ve got to just shift the collective consciousness, because and that will give us better leaders and everything else will
Diana Durham: fall out of that I think it does in ecology. And that takes time to build to build up and unfortunately, you just just kind of pulling things apart doesn’t necessarily help either. You know, you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work with what is and and let it sort of gradually ameliorate and improve because because the fundamentals starting to shift, I mean, you could say materialism has taken us down this route, you know, that the only meaning is more and more money.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And it’s kind of reached the end of his rope, hasn’t it? I mean, we have the whole environmental crisis, which some don’t even see as a crisis is right, you know, potentially able capable of exterminating all life on Earth, within this century. And so it’s like, you know, do or die at this point in terms of spiritual Renaissance?
Diana Durham: I mean, I’m an optimist. I think I think these are changed. I think this is changing. I think what you feel like a small, a small, a small beacon, but in a large, oblivious world, but I was what I really wanted to try to do through the nonfiction books I write was to make the case to take spirituality seriously. It isn’t just a nice little new agey add on, thing me jig, it’s, it’s front and center. Yeah.
Rick Archer: How do you say that in some of your other books, I’ve only been reading one of your books, what are some of the points you make?
Diana Durham: Well, I’ve only read it Well, I mean, I, I take the whole, I’ve only read to sort of any written to nonfiction books, because I try, I want to also try and explore this through as I do through poetry and more through fiction, but the way I use it is because I’m not a you know, I, I’m not a physicist, so I can’t use I can’t use that I can’t write about that. But I can write about my own experience of alignment, my own experience of working within communities. And the myth, you see, so I, the myth is our collective dream that King Arthur myth, because Miko had this new book career itself. Coherent world talks about the ground myth, again, it brings it back in to explore as another language along with Boehm and Buddhists and whatever else I’m touching into. I just want my aim is to make the case of how important this is that that that myth when it says, if you’re wounded, you create a wasteland. It’s not kidding. It’s absolutely accurate. It accurately symbolizes the, the sort of circuitry that’s going on in consciousness in all of us that we need to understand and learn about.
Rick Archer: Did you ever watch that movie? Cleona squatty.
Diana Durham: I think it was pronounced. Yeah, a long time ago.
Rick Archer: Yeah. It was about world out of balance. I think that’s what With the word clouds, clouds he met and it just had all this kind of, I remember tense music and all this footage of just the pace of life and everybody just running around neon lights. And you know, it just gave you a real sense of how out of balance the world is. Yeah, and then I think they made another movie about world coming back into balance or something. Okay. But, um, but I think most people watching this would concur that that, you know, that’s what we really need the spiritual Renaissance to create balance with
Diana Durham: and to go and to grow up, you know, to go to its next stage, I think to to, to have to mature from what I’m not that it’s been immature. But aspects of you got what we used to call the new age have have sort of, you know, well, I know people try to put it down, I don’t, I think the new age has been an enormously important development. It’s been totally grassroots, it’s been, it’s, you know, it’s differentiated into myriads of myriads of different fields. Most of them very beneficial, beneficial. But it’s, I think, we’ve got to take the next leap, we’ve got to make the connection between that and outcome. It makes a difference to the way you actually think the way you the thoughts, you have the ideas, you come up with the extent to which you are coherent. In your world. It’s that that’s what makes a difference. It’s not necessarily just becoming super smart. And studying. You know, that’s important. But it’s this other component. You know, that the two together?
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, there have been plenty of superstars. We were referring earlier on to super smart, smart people who develop the atomic bomb. Well, right. Yeah, so
Diana Durham: you know what it’s called, it’s called Vision, where there is no vision, the people perish. It’s vision, having an idea having an eye a vision, and vision, me meaning, a coherent plan, a coherent idea, one that’s going to work as a leader, let’s say, it’s having that instead of just, you know, band aids. Where does vision vision come from? Well, it comes from knowing your stuff. Again, you can’t find our payments, learn how to do it. But vision comes from your inner self. That’s where it comes from. Now, that doesn’t mean that some that someone’s got to be meditating and doing whatever we think spiritually, Spiritual things are, you know, I’m saying I think really good leaders are spiritual people, because they have vision, they have vision, by whatever means they’ve, they’ve tuned in to their deeper self that tuned in to a deeper intelligence, and a deeper, it’s, it’s kind of an innately moral sense. It’s not the morality of rules and regulations. It’s the morality of thinking in terms of a whole thinking in terms of benefiting the whole, rather than just grabbing for yourself.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And your book, you said, we can begin to see that that morality emerges out of a whole identity, that intuitive mind is the inherently moral mind. When we lose that balance, we lose the moral center of ourselves.
Diana Durham: Yes, I think that’s true. Yeah. You talk about people who study ethics of AI, and it’s it’s just all kinds of rules and regulations. It’s awfully complicated. And there’s a rule for every situation for fun. Yeah, really. It’s got to come out of an innate sensing.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a there’s a phrase in spiritual literature spontaneous, right action. You and I’m referring to the Gita again, here, it says that, Krishna says the the intellect actually cannot grasp the complexities of karma of all the ramifications of any action. It’s far beyond our ability to compute. But if we, if we act, as he puts it on, established in yoga, perform action, if we establish if we act from oneness or from wholeness, then without being able to compute all those ramifications, we act as though we were able to and all the details are kind of worked out by cosmic intelligence. We’re just sort of a little.
Diana Durham: Exactly. Exactly. So you’re in alignment with this larger, this larger sort of resource. And then that’s, that’s going to flow out into this world in a way that is harmonious. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: The Delta Ching talks about that too, about how a society can an individual or society can be aligned with the Dow. And if it does, so then they won’t need to be very many rules and regulations because people will spontaneously are exactly in the right way.
Diana Durham: I don’t know if you have brought up kids, but no, it was dogs, dust dogs, well, bringing up children, that you, you can have a role at last for about two weeks. Because in two weeks I’ve changed. Yeah. So yeah, it’s like kind of this and that all the time.
Rick Archer: Interesting. Well, that whole thing about, you know, morality in Spanish, I’ve helped to establish a thing called the Association for spiritual integrity. Along with along with some spiritual teachers, we founded this organization, because there’s been so much misbehavior in, in spiritual circles, you know, various gurus and teachers acting badly. And oh, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and students will sit there, you know, with a teacher going more and more off the rails, and, and be thinking, either because he’s saying it or because they assume it, well, this guy is enlightened. And it seems like what he’s doing is crazy. But hey, what do I know, I’m not enlightened. So I’ll just kind of go along with this. And then the whole community ends up getting dragged off into, you know, I mean, Jonestown is the extreme example. But there have been other ones. And so our hope in establishing this thing was to sort of enliven in spiritual community, a sense of what may or may not be appropriate, because we can’t assume that any any one who proclaims himself a spiritual teacher is necessarily impeccable in his behavior. And as a result of having attained the highest possible level of consciousness, not you know, there are not too many routes Ramana Maharshi is kicking around.
Diana Durham: So, by the fruits, you shall know them Exactly, yeah. You know, that you don’t have to reach a high level, you just you need to act with intent, you know, yeah. It’s, it’s what you do, isn’t it? Yeah. You know, how you act with people? And, and, you know, and we are fallible, too. I mean, we were, we’re learning all the time. So we do make mistakes. But that’s, I mean, that’s a good example, isn’t it of where I’ve what I was saying earlier, that I sometimes think that there’ll be just as many pitfalls, when this idea of, well, where are our own source, you know, becomes more institutionalized. If that’s the right word, maybe there’s hope? Maybe it should never be institutionalized? I don’t know. That’ll be so many. The mind can take off on all of these things. And, yeah, the car itself to be this, that and the other.
Rick Archer: There’s a great story where God and the devil are walking along the road together, and God reaches down, picks something up and puts it in his pocket. And the devil says, Hey, what’s that? And God says, it’s just, it’s the truth. And the devil. Oh, give it to me. I’ll organize it for
Diana Durham: you. When you talk to him ago, Chris, about the left and the right brain, that’s very much like the left. That’s very much sounds like the left brain doing that. Yeah. And the right brain has the truth in the sense of a larger vision. Uh huh. he’ll, he’ll talk to you about that after like a
Rick Archer: couple of questions have come in, let’s do another one. And feel free to bring up anything. I don’t want to be taking up all your time and not letting you say some other things you wanted to say? Oh, I’ve been enjoying the conversation. Okay, good. So this is, I’m not sure how she pronounces it. I, it looks like Annie but it’s ai n na from Cape Town, South Africa. I have children. Sometimes I live in fear of them repeating painful mindsets I was prayed to, then I wish to direct them control their negative behavior. It’s kind of what you’re talking about. But other times I feel encouraged to try connected allowing, just trusting their innate wisdom and allowing them to essentially autocorrect when it can cause me to shake inside with fear or judgment. What is your understanding? This your guidance on this?
Diana Durham: I think that children have Well, the way I worked with my children was that I did fundamentally trust that trust there being a trusted there being and I tried not to override that. Most of the time, children don’t want to self destruct, you know, if they’re not reacting to something to some strange sort of, they’re not in some strange angry mode that they’re trying to kind of revisit, you know, take revenge on on you as a parent that they don’t they don’t want to do self harm. And they want to be close to you and they want to they value that relationship, you know, so I would tend to definitely there on the side of trusting them, trusting them with a little bit of corrective, you know, inquiry and here and there. And whatever. Also whatever you as a parent can handle an account What, you know, you can’t you can’t override your own needs and your own sense of what’s right. So, in other words, there aren’t any rules you have to you have to sort of feelers out bit by bit rather, like it sounds like you’re doing. But I tend, I tend to say that being is in them. And in some ways, it, it hasn’t been squashed. You know, as it tends to, as we get older, it’s strong, and they’re not frightened of the world. And you wouldn’t want them to be frightened to the world. Children have less fear than we do usually, about adventure and about new things. I share the story of Percival is very funny like that, because the mother’s terrified of him going off he, he, she’s her other funds for duck were killed as night, and her husband died of something or other. So she’s kept Percival in the wilderness, not knowing anything about the court, and the sophisticated world of the king, you know, the court and the Knights and, and so he’s a simpleton. All he all he does all day, his practice javelin throwing in the forest. And that’s how his adventures begin. Because one day is out in the forest. And he meets this is this depot, lovely thing about this story is quite comic is out in the forest. And he meets three nights, five nights, and the Qusay are dazzling to him, because it’s beautiful armor on and colored ribbons on the horses, and he’s never seen a knight in his life. And so he says, What are you they said, well, when knights is when I’ve never seen knights, and so on and so forth. So they tell him about King Arthur, and he just rushes back home, he says, to his mother, I want to become a knight. And she immediately thinks it’s the very thing she just been trying to keep him from. And he, but he has to go, you know, he has to go off on his quest. And so
Rick Archer: kind of reminds me of the story of the Buddha where his father, you know, it was prophesized that he would either be a great saint or a great king, right. And so, you know, his father said, on, I want him to be a king. So he sheltered them and tried to prevent him from seeing anything, but eventually Buddha got out and saw, you know, a sick person and an old person and a dead person. And, you know, he was he realized that the all those things could happen will happen to him eventually, too. And, and yet, then he that was the beginning of his Grail quest, you know, to understand his true nature and eliminate suffering.
Diana Durham: I was just thinking that that’s gone, might come
Rick Archer: crashing, and maybe it’ll come back. This is from Paul in Santa Cruz, California, many people become spiritual seekers in order to find healing from their psychological suffering, even upon reaching highly awakened states, they find that the relative issues of personal mental and emotional suffering remain, or in some cases become more pronounced. What counsel, do you give these people, the psychotherapy have a role to play here?
Diana Durham: Well, I’m not really, I wouldn’t say I’m really qualified to answer that fully. I don’t know of people who’ve attained high. I mean, what do we mean by a high state of enlightenment anyway, I never quite know what we mean, because I tend to believe that it’s something quite ordinary, rather, like we’ve, you know, Rick, and I’ve been talking about that you, it’s just rather gentle thing where you live your life in a mindful way can connecting to this sense of well being and let that guide you, rather than some sort of altered state. You know, and I would tend to say that if you’re, that if you do have, if someone does have great psychological difficulty, I’m not really sure that they are enlightened, or I’m not really sure that they’re aligned anyway, in the way that we’ve been speaking about. Because the one thing I do know, I’m not a therapist, but I worked with I had some good friends who were colleagues and we did workshops together using the ground myth, and they were psychotherapist and they, they agreed that the cycle of addiction that that I described earlier in the myth is actually let me just make this simpler. They agreed that the art of therapy was really to get someone to connect with their own self to connect with their own authority and their own power in whatever way and if that hasn’t had when that happens, it brings some form of healing and resolution because because that is the end of of mental mental dis ease. Now, are there are there sort of severe conditions that are, like schizophrenia or, or things which I have no knowledge of, and I can’t I can’t I can’t speak about them. They’re to do with chemical imbalances in the brain, it seems. Can that can that person be helped? I don’t know. i That’s a puzzle. I don’t I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on? You know,
Rick Archer: it’s good answer. It raises some interesting questions. I’ve had people argue with me that you can be an enlightened sob or an enlightened alcoholic, or one of these things. And, you know, I would always say, Well, if that’s enlightenment, you can have it, you know, I think if we’re going to use a term like that, we need to reserve it for something much more holistic, much more healthy. And that if someone is behaving in those ways, then they’re working progress, they may have made some significant progress. They might be articulate, eloquent and charismatic. But they’ve got a ways to go. That’s my opinion. Clearly, and it’s a confused, it’s a source of confusion for people, because there have been some famous teachers who’ve been real pieces of work.
Diana Durham: Yeah, well, charisma. Yeah, the word KING AND operation because they feed off that energy. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. But on the other hand, it raises interesting questions like, Could you be a, what if what a brahmana had somehow come down with Alzheimer’s? You know, towards the end of his life? Is that possible? And if he had, would he still be self realized? Or would the malfunctioning of the brain cause Self Realization to somehow be lost? Is the consciousness we know that consciousness is more than just a product of the brain, but the brain is like a transmitter receiver for consciousness. And if the transmitter receiver gets damaged enough, can we lose? The realization of consciousness we may have acquired in life? Oh, actually,
Diana Durham: that’s, that’s interesting, because the thing is, I just, it just made me realize we’re all enlightened already. At the level of the inner self. It’s not, it’s not a problem, we still realize it. Yeah, if we don’t have that inner self doesn’t have to do any work really, to be what we call Enlightened, it’s enlightened it The point is, is our person, what I call up as I use that phrase, personality self? Is it is it linked into that sufficiently to benefit in terms of the way we think, the way we act towards others, the ideas we come up with, etc, etc. Yeah. So, if the brain is damaged, which presumably schizophrenia must, might involve Sure, then that will, to some degree, impact that personality self, and probably, we probably would be limited in a way we are going to express that at the other side of the veil, that was, there’s no problem. And at some deep level of an extremely autistic autistic person, there can be joy, you know, there can be a sense of joy, they may have huge frustration dealing with the realities of picking up a pencil and whatever it is trying to write. And that will bring up frustration, that that’s natural, I mean, children get frustrated, in learning to grow, is a fifth they want to grow. You know, they fiercely want that they want their freedom. So I don’t I don’t think enlightenment is some sort of, you know, state where we’ll just sort of float along serenely forever.
Rick Archer: You know, you write a lot about multi dimensionality. I don’t know if you quite caught that, but about being able to live in two worlds simultaneously. And, you know, the outer world is always going to be blooming, buzzing confusion, in a way there’s always going to be a lot going on, and challenges and, you know, wars and diseases and all kinds of things. But by definition, enlightenment is a state in which the inner world has been realized not just glimpse not intuited, not just sort of felt like it’s down there somewhere. But actually, we’ve shifted into that being our primary orientation, a primary vantage point, it’s so
Diana Durham: and it’s a it’s a resource. It’s a, I think it’s a resource that we, it’s practical, it’s something we’re using all the time.
Rick Archer: It has huge practical implications for and, and one of its characteristics traditionally, is bliss or Ananda. You know, such chit ananda Excuse me. So, you know, traditionally, enlightened people are characterized as being blissful You see, a laughing Buddha, you know, and, and all the various scriptures Talk about the, the the bliss of that state and how how intrinsically fulfilling it is. So it’s a bit to me it’s a bit of a oxymoron to say that one could be enlightened and yet suffering. Superficially, they may be suffering. I mean, when Rama was dying of cancer, you know, people were all concerned about his suffering and about his dying and all and, you know, he would make comments like, you know, you don’t get it this this isn’t touching me. I’m not, you know, I’m not that which can suffer or can die, and so on.
Diana Durham: Oh, well, I am. Yeah, I mean, this. I’m not a student of Buddhism at all. I just touched into a little bit of it. Because I Ramadan
Rick Archer: is more of a Hindu Advaita guy. Yeah.
Diana Durham: What the reason I talked about, but it’s because there’s something in there about life is suffering, isn’t it? And not at
Rick Archer: all. That’s one of the main principles. Yeah, life is suffering. And you have to get out of it.
Diana Durham: And you had to get out of it. I must say, I don’t, I don’t know how that evolved, or who evolved there. But I don’t feel that I think joy is joy is the nature of your inner being. joy and love. That’s what it is. That’s who we are. That’s our that’s our frequency. That’s our prime frequency, actually. So I mean, laughing at things and having a sense of humor, you know, enjoying things. Like, there’s lots of things that’s very enjoyable about life. You know, so yeah, I agree. I think lists, definitely, we know if your life is blissful. I mean, I don’t want to do the washing up all the time. But overall, I think life I find life blissful i i think there’s so much to appreciate, I think that might be one thing to do is to develop a habit of appreciating things. Or just thinking about things that you can naturally feel appreciative of.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I like washing the dishes. It gives me an excuse to get my hands clean, and it gives me a chance to listen to stuff on my iPad. Yeah. Well, there is that. Yeah. But you know, the thing about life is suffering or bliss or whatever. If you if you bite into an orange, without having peeled it, you might say, oh, oranges are really bitter, or, you know, there’s sour or something. But the problem is you haven’t peeled it. So you peel it and you get to the inner orange and you find oranges that actually sweet. I was just, I was just tasting the outer value of the orange. So there’s that’s an obvious metaphor here for what we’re talking about. Yeah,
Diana Durham: no, indeed. And the bitter, the bitter parts of life and the difficult parts of life. You have more traction, to work with them. When when you’re sort of living from the oranges living from the sweetness of the orange. Maybe some of this is also just to do with aging getting older and wiser. It might be a part of things. One’s always very much more impatient when one’s younger ones 20s and 30s. I
Rick Archer: think it depends on how you live. Also, if you live well, then getting older does result in getting wiser.
Diana Durham: Yes, I mean, you can get more and more lost as you get older, you can use you can feel more and more disconnected from your inner self.
Rick Archer: One time Abraham Lincoln was considering a cabinet post someone for particular Cabinet posts, and he rejected the guy and he said I don’t like the way it looks. And someone said, How how can someone help the way he looks? And Lincoln said, I consider everyone over the age of 40 to be responsible for the way he looks. That quote comes from That’s what I heard. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. You can see it in someone’s face. You can Yeah, it’s etched in the face
Diana Durham: to quite a degree.
Rick Archer: Oh, well, we’ve rambled on and covered all kinds of points. Is there anything that you want me to just quickly show your books on the screen? Oh, yeah. See what we’ve got here. Here. I’ll just do them in the order put them up here. Or do you? Do you tell me the order in which you want to?
Diana Durham: Well, well put up my first the one I have the book I’m sort of trying to promote? Yeah, is is the coherent self care? Well, I
Rick Archer: don’t have the I do have the cover of that. Yeah, there we go. Yep, coherent, self coherent.
Diana Durham: It’s got that nice picture of the vase occur on it with the with the faces that I really like. Sort of showing the different aspects of self.
Rick Archer: So the few sentences What’s this one about?
Diana Durham: Well, the subtitle is a new synthesis of myth, metaphysics and bones implicate order. And so it’s using the language of those three things, myth and metaphysics and bones thinking, to explore the fact that if you are coherent as a self, and by coherent I mean inner and outer self are in relationship, then your world will be coherent it will reflect that. That’s
Rick Archer: the world is as we are. So well this is where? And then what’s the next book?
Diana Durham: Well, which one is that? Is that King Arthur? Is that the novel?
Rick Archer: Well, I can show you the King Arthur book if you want. Let’s do the King Arthur book return of King Arthur, the return
Diana Durham: of King Arthur, finishing the quest for wholeness. So that book takes the main event of the Arthurian legends and the Grail legend to talk about and talks about what they mean in terms of the society and the individual and the change from leadership being when we’re not, we can’t wait for a hero or heroine to come and save us. That’s not going to happen. The return of King Arthur is to me is the collective return of just what we’re talking about, of enlightened individuals of people who are grounded in their spirituality and therefore allowing that coherent world to take place around them. So that’s what that’s about. And it goes into huge depth about the about those myths about what they mean about the symbols, the sword, the broken sword, the chalice, the Grail castle, the wasteland the different characters, what they all mean Merlin, Morgana. What was the one? What’s his name versus the one? It will first of all, and then the Lancelot. That’s King Arthur and Wendy king. And it goes into in depth that whole circuitry of how the wound and the wasteland how that operates. And I look, because I knew a little bit more about the history of Romania and Ceausescu. And I look and talk about David Boehm there about what he said about identity, and I really go into depth. So it’s, it’s it was a lot of work that that book came out of 20 years. And I, I wrote the second book, the coherence of really, because I just wanted to really make the point, even more clearly about the connection between consciousness in the world. So that that’s my nonfiction work. And then the curve of the land is a first novel, you’ve got that one there. And that is a story of people going on a tour of the ancient sites through stone circles and Dolman, of Western Britain. And the lead character has she has a sort of shamanic experience where she kind of goes down into depth and connects to this, this energy. And then the there’s a poetry book, they’re called between two worlds. I included that that’s a series of sonnets exploring these ideas in poetry. And of course, there’s more on my website people interested. Dinah daarom dotnet.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll link to that from your page. Oh, yeah. Sure. On that gap. com. Yeah. Good. Well, thanks. Yeah, it’s been fun getting to know you and getting to know your work and having this conversation.
Diana Durham: Likewise. Yes, I really enjoyed it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Good. Well, um, Thanks. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. Let’s see, next week, I’ll be putting up an interview I did a few months ago with Scott killaby. As part of the science and non duality conference. They had an online webinar thing. And then the following week, I’ll be interviewing Ian McGilchrist, which, who? Diana’s very familiar with in fact, you’ve done some kind of a video about him. Have
Diana Durham: we made a film with him? Yeah, we wanted to do a bigger project, but it didn’t. It didn’t work out. But his book is absolutely amazing. Right.
Rick Archer: I’ve got two weeks to read it. Yeah. Alright. Thanks. Again. Thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching and we’ll see you for the next one. Take care Diana.
Diana Durham: Thanks.
Diana Durham: Thanks, Rick.
Rick Archer: Bye bye.
