[00:00:00] DANIEL: Hey there, Spacemakers. I'm Daniel Sih, joined by my good friend and co-host, Matt Bain. We bring you The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you shift the way you live and work. More than a podcast, this pod course will take you on a carefully curated journey around a simple but profound idea, that the habits and practices that fuel success in our 20s and 30s.

[00:00:25] DANIEL: Are the very barriers that hinder maturity in our forties and fifties. Big thanks to our sponsor, Bulk Nutrients. Enjoy a 5% discount on protein powders and health supplements for orders over $45. At bulknutrients.com.au just enter the code spacemakers.

[00:00:42] VOICEOVER: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain..

[00:00:48] DANIEL: Hi, welcome back to the Spacemakers podcast, where we help you make space for an intentional, meaningful life. We've been exploring a big idea this season that the habits and practices that set you up for [00:01:00] success in your twenties and thirties might need to be re imagined and even unlearned in your midlife squeeze to live a healthy life.

[00:01:09] DANIEL: I'm here with my co-host and friend, Matt Bain.

[00:01:11] MATT: Hi Dan, how you doing?

[00:01:12] DANIEL: Good. Thank you. And this is our final episode. I know, I know. Yeah, how about that? I know, we made it. Yeah, despite what everyone said. So we're talking about a really important topic to finish this season, which is the inner life reset. Uh, it's a super important topic.

[00:01:28] DANIEL: Right at the beginning, we talked about how the transition from early adulthood to midlife and certainly beyond to the second mountain often requires a deep rethink about what it means to be a spiritual person, what it means to have an inner life versus just an outer life, how to go from doing to being, et cetera.

[00:01:49] DANIEL: And so we're going to explore some of this stuff.

[00:01:50] MATT: That's right. Cause like we're interested in people as a totality, right? every single bit of a person, and that's going to include their inner slash spiritual life. Absolutely.

[00:01:59] DANIEL: But [00:02:00] look, thank you so much. If you have been someone who's journeyed with us for all nine episodes or both seasons of the Spacemakers, we've absolutely loved hearing your input.

[00:02:09] DANIEL: We've loved your questions and just to hear stories about how this content has actually impacted your life. We'd love to ask for a favour.

[00:02:17] MATT: Yes. One of the big ideas we've had that's run through every single episode so far has this been idea of being generative. So again, being committed to people and causes that go beyond your immediate kind of sphere.

[00:02:28] MATT: So what we'd really value is that if you think that you've got someone in your life and I'm going to, you know, take the big swing of guessing everyone has at least one person who's going to find at least one of these episodes relevant. Yeah. So if you can think of that person and share that the podcast with them.

[00:02:42] DANIEL: Yeah. So either share a particular episode or maybe just have a conversation with them. Feel free to go to our YouTube channel, which is Spacemakers or my name with an underscore in the middle. And look, we hope that this has been a gift to you. It would certainly be a tremendous gift to us. We would love to be Australia's [00:03:00] fastest growing podcast to really impact people's lives.

[00:03:02] DANIEL: And we think this content can help people make space. Yeah. And regardless of any of that, thank you. Yeah. We really appreciate you listening. We do. All right, so Matt, we're going to talk about the inner life and spirituality and what it means to, I suppose, pay attention to your spirituality, or maybe to shift the way in which you express your spirituality as you get older.

[00:03:22] MATT: That's right, maybe like how you kind of approach it too, right?

[00:03:24] DANIEL: Absolutely. But spirituality and the inner life can be hard to talk about, or at least hard to talk about in everyday culture. You and I both read a Gallup research study where uh, people were asked if they had experienced a mystical moment.

[00:03:38] DANIEL: So by that, an out of the ordinary, maybe serendipitous experience that's hard to explain. And what was interesting is that 84 percent of participants said that yes, they had experienced a mystical moment, at least one in their life. Uh, but in that same study, 75 percent of those respondents said it was socially taboo to. So in other words, most of us [00:04:00] have these spiritual unusual, mystical, wondrous experiences that we find it hard to contain or understand or describe, but in secular individualised culture, you know, in our Western culture, because of our worldview, it's taboo.

[00:04:14] DANIEL: Yes. Yeah. We can talk about almost everything, but the spiritual life in a personal, meaningful way.

[00:04:19] MATT: Yeah. I can't quite recall like when that research was done, but my suspicion, my hunch would be that perhaps that's starting to shift as it's becoming a bit more kind of, I guess, socially acceptable or people have less anxiety about.

[00:04:31] MATT: sharing those mystical slash transcendental experiences.

[00:04:34] DANIEL: Yeah, which I think is great. You know, I think there's definitely a hunger and an openness for a broader, wider view of life that encompasses not just the physical, relational, emotional, but also encompasses the spiritual. So I agree with you on that.

[00:04:48] DANIEL: So let's open up a space where we can talk about some of those changes, some of the mindset shifts that happen as you transition from, let's say, your early twenties and thirties to maybe your more reflective [00:05:00] 40s and 50s and, and beyond where clearly the inner life becomes super important as you start to ask questions about loss and grief and death, uh, and significance.

[00:05:11] MATT: Yeah. Basically when life hammers you because eventually it will.

[00:05:14] DANIEL: When life hammers you. Life hammers you on the Spacemakers.

[00:05:19] MATT: Okay. So Dan, let's feedback on the activity that we asked people to undertake last time around.

[00:05:24] DANIEL: And we talked about the midlife money research, talked about finances.

[00:05:27] MATT: Yeah. Again, perhaps our most counterintuitive episode thus far.

[00:05:30] MATT: I would wait to, yeah. So we had two challenges for people as usual, dependent upon your age and stage. If you're in your twenties, maybe early thirties. The challenge was try to set aside a thousand dollars, and that could be a mixture of selling some stuff or putting in a regular saving plan. So you're dedicating a percentage of your income week to week, fortnight to fortnight.

[00:05:51] MATT: However it comes in, in order to accumulate a thousand dollars. So you're trying to build that habit of saving, but the end game is getting that 1,000 and investing it in something like shares. Something [00:06:00] that's going to start to garner you a hold of compound interest sooner rather than later over the long term.

[00:06:04] MATT: That was for 20s and 30s. For people like us in our 40s plus, that midlife squeeze, the exercise was, think of something, a life experience that you can likely have right now and is within your grasp, something you've been long desiring to do, but perhaps, perhaps not. Postponing, you wait too long because of either time or health, you won't be able to undertake.

[00:06:24] DANIEL: Yeah. Because we often delay things for too long when they're actually in our reach right now. Yeah. If we changed our mindset and maybe loosened the purse a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So how'd you go? Ah, what did I do? Well, I think I mentioned this last week. But I already have a plan. So in two weeks, I take my son to Townsville with a great group called Fathering Adventures, and we have 10 days, just me and my middle son, which is great.

[00:06:51] DANIEL: The middle child is often the one I think that gets neglected somehow. They just kind of squeeze in between the first and the third. So it's going to be great to spend 10 days. [00:07:00] with my son. Yeah. And six of those days, we're going to have a formal rite of passage for dads and sons experience, which is just going to be excellent to talk about what it means to be a man and for, for me to learn how to raise a young man.

[00:07:14] DANIEL: So I think it's going to be a good experience. Yeah, that's cool. So that's expensive. My wife and I talked about it about six months ago and we said, actually, this is one of those formative experiences that we think will be worth investing in. And I hope it's, you know, a great experience. I'll certainly probably take my younger son and maybe even my neighbour's daughter who doesn't have a dad and we'll do that next year as well.

[00:07:35] DANIEL: So we'll see how it goes. Great. What about yourself?

[00:07:37] MATT: Yeah, I bought my first pair of skinny jeans. Great. I think we're on the same page. Proper like spray on skinny jeans.

[00:07:44] DANIEL: Is that because of sarcopenia? You're losing the muscle and you actually can only fit in a skinny.

[00:07:49] MATT: It's just like, eventually health's going to get in the way of being able to wear those bad boys properly.

[00:07:53] MATT: Wow. No, so, uh, so, um, uh, similar to yours, um, this is a lot more of a, like [00:08:00] a planning stage thing rather than executing the next couple of months thing. But, um, but, uh, yeah. After doing some thinking over the past week, um, and, and talking to my wife a little bit, if we are going to go on a decent holiday with our sons, it's going to be sooner rather than later in terms of overseas.

[00:08:15] MATT: Cause again, they're just hitting that age where they're going to become probably too independent to want to tag along. And we may be just too uncool. Before I mentioned skinny jeans, we might just be too uncool for them to want to hang out with us. Yeah, okay. So we have to start doing some serious planning around when that's gonna happen likely over the next couple of years.

[00:08:32] DANIEL: Okay, so you're gonna take the big trip to the mainland? What do you mean? Even further overseas?

[00:08:35] MATT: Oh, the thing is so, yeah, like maybe something exotic like Bruny Island.

[00:08:37] DANIEL: Last question. Were you serious about the skinny jeans?

[00:08:39] MATT: No. No, no, no. It's testament to how well we know each other. That's, yeah.

[00:08:46] DANIEL: Thank God.All right. Let's move to the inner life.

[00:08:52] DANIEL: So let's talk about this idea of an inner life reset, particularly in midlife. I was at a Jack Jumper's game, you know, [00:09:00] the Tassie basketball, we've done really well. And I was at a game a few months ago and I was, I was invited by one of our sponsors actually into a corporate kind of area. Thank you, Bulk Nutrients.

[00:09:09] DANIEL: Just randomly met someone. And we ended up talking about, of all things, the inner life, faith, spirituality, which is not normally what I talk about at a basketball match. We had a really good conversation and there was this interesting point where he said, Oh, look, he, he finds it. He finds religion really perplexing or confusing because on the one hand, you know, there are people who are very generous and open hearted.

[00:09:31] DANIEL: They have strong beliefs in a way that's kind of warm and embracing. And you, you’re kind of attracted to their surety or their faith, he said, but it's almost like their belief system makes them bigger and more open to learning and, and actually nicer people. But then he also knows a whole lot of other people who, you know, it's almost like the same belief system makes them smaller and more intolerant or maybe more closed minded or narrow [00:10:00] minded.

[00:10:00] DANIEL: You know, it's almost like the religion stops them learning and growing and seeing in a broader way and being more welcoming of people. And it was a good conversation, but I remember saying to him just a throwaway line. I said, well, I suppose it all depends on what stage of faith you're in. And he's like, what do you mean?

[00:10:14] DANIEL: And I realised, oh, actually, uh, while this is somewhat old research, you know, more than 20 years old, actually, I think a lot of people haven't recognized that there are stages to a person's faith or spiritual development, uh, and you can have the same beliefs and practices, but express them so differently based on whatever stage you're in and where you got stuck.

[00:10:35] DANIEL: So I thought it would be good to have a conversation around Fowler's Stages of Faith, what it means to have a first, second, and third experience of spirituality, and particularly because it fits the pattern we've been talking about, which is one where you have surety, you unlearn, and then you have, and then there is a simplicity or surety on the other side of complexity.

[00:10:57] MATT: So this is my take on Fowler's, [00:11:00] Fowler's framework. James Fowler, professor of theology back in the day, I think he passed away in 2015. So this is, as I understand it, a passion project of his. So he had a great interest in this, like, and researched it, and got his research kind of validated by his peers at the time.

[00:11:14] MATT: And I think it'd be fair to say that it was validated across a variety of different kinds of faiths. It also wasn't like one faith or mono faith specific.

[00:11:22] DANIEL: Yeah, so while he was a Christian, or I assume so, because he was in a theological college. Yeah, he was a Methodist. But he broadly studied faith, religion, and spirituality, and found that there were similar trends to a person maturing, irrespective of their faith tradition.

[00:11:35] MATT: Yeah, and I think like now, too, would be like an important point to mention that in terms of this conversation, when we talk about spirituality, we don't want to equate that with institutionalised religion. Yeah. So I'd probably say spirituality involves whatever someone holds as being sacred in their life.

[00:11:55] MATT: And most of us would hold something sacred. And by sacred, I mean, I'd probably go, [00:12:00] like, my, my take is that either the belief or the cause or the person has got at least some spark of the divine in them. Yeah. So it could be like, you feel that say social justice is something that is sacred to you. It's almost like a divine right.

[00:12:14] MATT: So you hold that sacred. I'd say that is tied up with your spirituality and meaning. It could be people. So again, you might think, you know, I'm so invested in my kids. I actually think they are, you know, not that you normally say this at their birthday party or whatever, but they've actually like, they've got.

[00:12:26] MATT: Part, like a spark of the divine within them. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:28] DANIEL: And I orientate my worldview around them. Yeah, that's right. So I kind of bundle all that up. Mm-Hmm. Or even, for example, broader causes, let's say environmentalism or activism where it holds the hallmarks of religion almost. Yes. And it gives you a greater purpose beyond yourself.

[00:12:42] DANIEL: So we don't wanna limit this to those who are religious. Yes. Or you and I are actually religious. Yep. We both have a Christian faith tradition. Mm-Hmm. But when it comes to this conversation, it should apply to everyone who actually has an inner life.

[00:12:54] MATT: Yeah, that's right. And later on, I think in the discussion, we'll also, you know, particularly then a bunch of stuff that we talk about, it'll be [00:13:00] relevant to people, even if they hold that there is nothing transcendent as well, because even that we're going to argue, I guess, is a kind of faith or belief.

[00:13:07] MATT: Yeah. Okay. But anyway, sorry. Back to Fowler. Yeah, back to Fowler. So Fowler came up with basically from birth, all the way through to late adulthood and passing. His three stages were child like faith. So that's the first one. And then the second phase will be like a loss of faith. And then the third one is really a mature faith.

[00:13:26] MATT: So there are three lenses that you can kind of see this faith journey through. Yep. Yep. So the first one, child like faith, like faith. And again, this could be someone who hasn't really, it doesn't even hold or adhere to a kind of institutional style religion. It's almost just like your basic worldview. So this basic worldview is often, and we're talking about like kids here.

[00:13:45] MATT: So like zero through to, you know, early, early adulthood, late, early thirties. So really, and this is typically a kind of simplistic worldview. So it's very much, you know, good things happen to good people. [00:14:00] Yeah. Yeah. If I live a, if I like live a good life in terms of like being basically, you know, virtuous, then that will be rewarded somehow.

[00:14:07] MATT: There is some benevolent figure in the sky perhaps, you know, or in heaven that I can petition and pray to, and they'll like generally kind of like do the right thing by me. This gives you, so it’s again, simplistic, black and white, provides like a pretty good container, if you like, that you can start to build like a life within and gives you some certainty and stability about the world as well.

[00:14:27] DANIEL: And it's almost like the universal God or whoever you worship is like a benevolent Santa Claus. Yeah, that's right.

[00:14:34] MATT: Life's like the kind of cut and dried black and white, simple and God is like, or whatever the divine is, it's just a bigger version of a human. So that's a childlike faith. Yeah. Well, I'd say again, I'd go as far as simplistic.

[00:14:44] MATT: Okay. Simplistic. So then you move to the stage to like the loss of faith. So again, this usually corresponds with someone getting older. So maybe you're like young adulthood. And again, as we've talked about before, this is when people are kind of finishing up identifying and establishing their own identity, which may be separate and [00:15:00] defined almost against their family of origin and that kind of stuff as well.

[00:15:02] MATT: Yeah. So it's got to be a bit more robust and independent. And classically you're starting to run into some. I guess some speed humps to that simplistic notion of the world being that black and white. So you've encountered other people again, whose lived experience may be different from the good things happen to good people.

[00:15:18] MATT: If I just follow the rules, like all this good stuff's going to happen to me, right? Yeah. So you'll encounter, you know, suffering, you'll encounter perhaps some of the evils or the darker sides of your respective faith or religion as well. So you'll hear about institutional abuse. For example, you start to wrestle with those really thorny theological problems around again, why does bad stuff happen to good people?

[00:15:37] DANIEL: Yeah. Why does good stuff happen to bad people? Maybe even just contradiction where things that you thought were so clear have alternative perspectives or ideas and therefore it starts to throw up your very simplistic faith because you don't actually have the capacity to hold complexity or wonder as part of your world view yet.

[00:15:55] MATT: Exactly, because you haven't been exposed to a way of doing that. And so that can leave people, to use a 5 [00:16:00] word, discombobulated, right? Feeling, uh, at sea, lost, like, where do I, like, what do I do with this faith that, again, I was cherishing before? Or at least, even if it was kind of unconscious and not really well articulated, it was part of me.

[00:16:11] MATT: But now my worldview is being really challenged. What do I do with that? So you may find yourself, again, this is where you think, well, you know what, if I belong to some kind of more institutional, traditional form of faith. I'm going to instead divert to basically having a very customised kind of individualised spirituality that's going to be removed from all those more traditional forms.

[00:16:30] DANIEL: Yeah. That doesn't kind of robustly grow and learn and continue in that journey. Yeah. Look, that when I see the questions that people often ask and the ones I've asked or I still ask sometimes, you know, they're often either the big questions like, you know, why does suffering exist? Why do bad things happen in the world if there's a good God or, you know, how can all beliefs lead to the same place when they're different, you know, or.

[00:16:50] DANIEL: Although kind of those big existential questions that make you start to question whether there's anything that's out there. Uh, the other questions are often, but if I'm really [00:17:00] honest, most of them are usually personal. Actually, I got hurt by someone in my community and now I find it hard to believe that anything is good about it or why is this bad stuff happening in the news or I prayed lots.

[00:17:13] DANIEL: And I ended up with anxiety or I did the right things and I got divorced. And so how can it be true? So a lot of the time, these grey experiences of life where doubt really starts to shake you and you throw up your worldview are often in response to some type of personal pain, even though they might be couched in terms of bigger pictures.

[00:17:34] MATT: Yeah. And that doesn't make it any less real. No, of course it makes it even more real. Yeah. And the other point I think alongside that that we'll probably circle back to later is that regardless of what faith you started off with, that pain, it's going to be real. And again, for most of us, if you live long enough, in fact, I'd say all of us, it's inevitable.

[00:17:50] MATT: So there will be something that life throws at you if you live long enough, either to yourself or someone who you love dearly that you wouldn't wish upon yourself or that person that is going to rock your world. And so [00:18:00] whatever you believe or don't believe, you need to have a way to handle and process that.

[00:18:04] DANIEL: And that's where we move to that third stage, which really does give you the ability to hold light and dark, positive experiences and suffering into some holistic framework, but not in a simplistic, childish way that you see in the first stage.

[00:18:19] MATT: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So we can call that mature faith. The mature faith is really more about, again, some grey within the confines, if you like, all the boundaries, all the supports of some black and white certainties.

[00:18:30] DANIEL: Yeah. So it's almost like you return to a lot of the beliefs or practices that you once had. They might even look the same on the outside. to an external observer, but the mode through which you approach it is much more generous. It's much more open. There's more mystery. There's more paradox and nuance.

[00:18:46] DANIEL: So you might still have black and white, but it's shaded by grey, which is, I suppose, a simplicity on the other side of what you're doing. Complexity.

[00:18:54] MATT: To add to that, I'd say humility as well. Humility.

[00:18:57] DANIEL: I actually do think I'm the most humble person I [00:19:00] know. Sorry, I had to get that dad joke in.

[00:19:01] MATT: No, but it's like, it's, it's, it's again, like realising perhaps the limits to our powers to some degree as well.

[00:19:09] DANIEL: Definitely. Yeah. You've lived long enough to have the skills and knowledge to achieve something, but also enough to know that you're completely deluded and know nothing. And I think that's the case. You know, I, I, I pray because I know it works and I've seen the value in it and I know I'm probably deluded and there's lots of areas that I don't understand.

[00:19:31] DANIEL: Hopefully there's some humility in that. If I go back to that Jack Jumpers conversation that I had, I think this is where you can have people who say they believe the same stuff and who actually look like they do the same stuff, but they don't. One is coming from a position of fear. Like, it's great when you're a kid to have a black and white faith, but when you're 40 or 50, if you still have a black and white faith, well then all you can do is basically have a tick card like a political checkbox, I believe these things, and anyone who believes what I believe is right, anyone who doesn't believe it is [00:20:00] wrong.

[00:20:00] DANIEL: It's a very ugly type of spirituality, because it hasn't been brave enough to go through the loss of faith in order to find true, mature faith. But at the same time, you can have someone who does exactly the same stuff and actually believes in the same tick box items in terms of their worldview. But there's a generous not knowing, a kindness and a wideness that is in that worldview.

[00:20:23] DANIEL: So do you want to read a quote that you and I think summarises this beautifully, and that has actually meant a lot to us over the years?

[00:20:30] MATT: Yeah, so this is from a guy called Oliver Wendell Holmes, and it reads, For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.

[00:20:45] DANIEL: It's a nice quote. I think it describes it well. There's actually a Richard Rohr quote, which I'll read from the book, Falling Upward. He says, It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, [00:21:00] and personally find it again, but now on a new level.

[00:21:05] DANIEL: I think that describes it beautifully. You have to lose your faith, your spirituality, and your sense of purpose. Yeah. Which actually follows the whole process we've been talking about, which is about unlearning life in midlife. Yeah. In order to rediscover a better second season.

[00:21:22] MATT: There's this great, relatively recent, uh, interview that I heard between Joe Rogan and an author called Sebastian Junger.

[00:21:29] MATT: So he's a former war correspondent - non fiction writer, war correspondent, and journalist. So he's seen people like literally die around him in combat and all that kind of stuff. So like a relatively hard guy as well. But in this interview, uh, I think it was in 2020, he recounted being out in the woods with his wife in his cabin in the middle of nowhere.

[00:21:44] MATT: Everything was locked down, blah, blah, blah, started experiencing really bad, his wife convinced him to go to hospital. Turns out he was experiencing massive, like, internal haemorrhage, just losing blood copiously, but they couldn't pick out from where. So by the time he made it on the operating table, he [00:22:00] was virtually dead.

[00:22:01] MATT: And he remembers distinctly, and we recounted this in the interview, and he's written a book about it recently, In My Time Of Dying. He remembers having this distinct vision of seeing his deceased father say to him, come with me, it's okay. Come with me. Come with me. Yeah. And afterwards he's like that, that messed him up.

[00:22:19] MATT: That messed him up big time because he was a devout atheist, didn't believe in a God whatsoever. And I think he still calls himself an atheist, if not like a kind of almost like kind of soft agnostic, but that really messed him up. It dove him into doing all this research about near death experiences and visions and that kind of stuff to try to warrant or substantiate what the hell happened to me because I thought the world was like this, but then I had this firsthand experience where it turns out it's not just this, it's not just what I thought.

[00:22:46] DANIEL: I love that idea because you've come to the conclusion that there is no God, there is no spirituality, there's no broad meaning in the world. All you see is what you have. You might be very sure of it, very confident and actually could work for you in the sense of it could [00:23:00] give you a lot of comfort and it could actually guide you to live a great life and to make some great decisions when you're young.

[00:23:05] DANIEL: But whenever you face that second stage, which is unlearning your own beliefs, no matter whether you're a devout Muslim or Christian or atheist, it takes faith and bravery to unlearn what you were once so sure of. But that's the very process that all of us need to go through. In this situation, it sounds like he needed to unlearn his surety that there was no spirituality.

[00:23:29] DANIEL: And I actually think that's a very brave thing to do, to go from someone who was sure there was nothing.

[00:23:33] MATT: Yeah.

[00:23:34] DANIEL: to at least being open handed to what it looks like to live a spiritual life. But I think that bravery is part of what we're talking about, no matter where you start. So Matt, we've collected a number of quotes from some of the spiritual authors we've read.

[00:23:48] DANIEL: I know that we've probably over quoted Richard Rohr, but he's highly quotable. He's highly quotable. Yeah. So do you want to read a quote?

[00:23:54] MATT: Love to. So again, this is from his book, Falling Upwards. It is probably necessary to eliminate [00:24:00] most doubt when you were young. Doing so is a good survival technique. But such worldviews are not true, and they are not wisdom.

[00:24:07] MATT: Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and unknowing, and in such living ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree. I've never figured out why unknowing becomes another kind of knowing, but it surely seems to be. It takes a lot of learning to finally learn ignorance.

[00:24:27] DANIEL: Wow.

[00:24:28] MATT: Yeah, powerful stuff.

[00:24:29] DANIEL: I love it. Hey, why don't we take a moment of silence? We've talked about some, but, have a moment, what, where are you at in your spiritual journey? Are you on the first stage? Are you on the second stage? Are you on the third stage? Are you at risk of getting stuck? And not being able to move forward, uh, are you brave enough to unlearn what you thought you knew in order to find a more generous form of unknowing?

[00:24:57] DANIEL: Have a moment and reflect what stands out.[00:25:00] [00:26:00]

[00:26:04] DANIEL: Hey, hopefully that's been a helpful pause, helpful time to reflect. I really appreciate you taking that space to think deeply. Let's talk about a few practical things that people can do if they feel stuck, or if they're in that place of unlearning in order to relearn the inner life. I remember reading an old study now, but it was a good study.

[00:26:26] DANIEL: It was well designed. It was based on a PhD by Alan Jamison. And it's from a book called A Churchless Faith. And it was a fascinating study because he studied people who were in church leadership who had been, you know, preachers or worship leaders or people heavily involved in religion and followed what happened when they left their faith when they stopped being part of a church.

[00:26:50] DANIEL: And he tracked the journey of a lot of people and then did a PhD on the process. And he described that people go through three stages, [00:27:00] the black and white stage, the grey stage, which is often when they leave an institution and then black and white on the other side of grey. But what's fascinating is he actually tracked why people left and what actually allowed them to move through that dark night.

[00:27:15] DANIEL: And he looked at a lot of different factors. You know, some people left because of minor grumbles. You know, they didn't like Betty singing and they got annoyed that the piano got moved. Other people left because of major grumbles, which was the most common. So basically, you know, big theological questions or asking questions.

[00:27:29] DANIEL: Why do we sit here every Sunday and listen to a man preach? You know, those kinds of big questions. But then the difference between those who move forwards and those who ended up with a kind of a privatised, individualised faith that didn't really mature. The one statistical factor was that people who move forwards into a mature, enlightened type faith had at least one friend that they connected with on a regular basis through that time of not knowing, where they could voice their doubts and actually get answers.

[00:27:59] DANIEL: [00:28:00] Again, guidance and support and encouragement in that journey. So, in other words, the most important thing of this relates to our friendship conversations and research that we've talked about. If you're stuck in a moment, you can't get out of it, then find someone who you trust, who you can walk alongside, probably who is going ahead of you, someone who you can, to have support.

[00:28:21] DANIEL: It's a space where you can doubt and question and wrestle and yell and argue and not know and yet still love you and say, Hey, you're on the right track. Keep going. And that usually moves people forward. I think that's really helpful. It's very important. It's also important that if you have a friend who starts to doubt and wrestle, then actually be their friend and recognise that these questions are part of maturing in the journey of faith.

[00:28:47] MATT: Yeah, certainly. Yeah. The only thing that I'd add to that is that, and hopefully I don't sound like a broken record here, but I really do believe that, and I'm not alone in this, this is hardly an original idea or an opinion, but [00:29:00] suffering, suffering is kind of inevitable. If you live long enough, eventually it's going to hit you or someone.

[00:29:04] MATT: Who you love.

[00:29:05] DANIEL: I've noticed doing enough podcasts with you, there's definitely suffering. Yeah, but to be clear, that's voluntary suffering.

[00:29:14] MATT: You keep on asking me to come back, like what can I say?

[00:29:16] DANIEL: But seriously, um, it is important. Tell me more.

[00:29:19] MATT: So, so, so one of the really, let's say, you know, there's that old, uh, quote that I think is attributed and probably, uh, rightly so, to Nietzsche about like, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[00:29:27] MATT: I don't actually believe that. I don't, as far as I know, the psychological research doesn't back that up, that up. There's actually a good chance that while suffering, like real suffering and the stuff that you don't voluntarily walk into, it can be a catalyst for growth, a personal growth. It can also be something that just erodes you as a person and breaks you down.

[00:29:45] DANIEL: Leaves you bitter, unforgiving, like in an unhelpful way. Yeah, that's right.

[00:29:49] MATT: So it's like, okay, how do you go about, so if you believe that suffering is both inevitable and also risky in the sense that it may actually erode you as a person, what are the best ways to go [00:30:00] about coping with that inevitable suffering?

[00:30:02] MATT: And there seems to be like a growing body of research that says like there's obviously a heap of good ways to be able to cope and grow from suffering. But a kind of regular spirituality will give you a framework to be able to process that suffering and it will help you integrate it somehow into the rest of your life and make it cohere with the rest of your life and your life's big story.

[00:30:24] DANIEL: Yeah, and I would agree with that. The other thing that you and I have talked about a lot is that actually we have a tendency in the Western world to see everything through the lens of the individual. Look, I think there is also something that's very mature and difficult about joining a community of some sort and actually having a communal spirituality.

[00:30:42] DANIEL: We are communal beings. Yeah, so I suppose all we're saying is when we look at these three stages, don't just think individual, but look at what it might look like to do that with others.

[00:30:52] MATT: Yeah, look, um, and again, I think this is born out by a bunch of research and data. And again, this is all, this is all assuming [00:31:00] that your spiritual community, whatever it is, is healthy.

[00:31:02] MATT: Cause again, it's not without its risks, but if it goes well, then usually it's good for people's health. Cause usually there's some, um, some correlation there with say eating okay, not abusing drugs and alcohol. So it's good for your biological, physical health. You're rubbing shoulders alongside other people, which you get.

[00:31:19] MATT: So you just got that kind of built in sociability, which is also good for us. It's going to make it much easier to make friends and connections, which you've heard about is so critical for mental, psychological, and physical health. And lastly, it's kind of committing you to a cause that is larger than you.

[00:31:33] MATT: So immediately you've already got the baked in piece of being generative, which is also good for you because it gets it gets you out of your own head and it's got you effectively rubbing shoulders at the very least if not believing it yourself that you're living for a higher purpose. Nice. Yeah.

[00:31:48] DANIEL: I'm going to finish with one last quote because we love quotes.

[00:31:51] DANIEL: David Brooks, Second Mountain. It's a fantastic book. I loved it. He says this, a commitment to faith is a commitment to stick with it through all the [00:32:00] various seasons of faith. And even those moments where faith is absent. To commit to faith is to commit to a long series of ups and downs, to intuitions, learning and forgetting.

[00:32:11] DANIEL: Knowing one sort of God when you're 25 and a very different God at 35, 55 and 75. It means riding out when life reveals itself in new ways, and faith has to be reformulated once again. To commit to faith is to commit to change. It includes moments of despair, or it is not faith. I think that says it all.

[00:32:36] MATT: Yeah, although, just quickly, the last thing that I want to do is kind of make out that it's linear, which I don't think that quote is saying all that, but Fowler's model could be seen as, it's just a pretty steady up and up and up. To pick up on that quote, I want to think of someone like Mother Teresa.

[00:32:55] DANIEL: You had to end with her, didn't you? I was ending with Richard Rohr.

[00:32:58] MATT: Yeah, yeah, well, sorry, but like, I just think like Mother [00:33:00] Teresa, who obviously a huge life of influence and service and self sacrifice. Uh, a woman of devout faith, but then at the very end of her life, as we know, because of her published memoirs, she had dark nights of the soul.

[00:33:11] MATT: And she doubted her own faith.

[00:33:12] DANIEL: She doubted her own faith. And I think that's part of the journey. It's not once off. It's a cyclic thing and you do it in different areas. Yeah. That's a good point.

[00:33:25] DANIEL: Hey Matt, normally we finish with some type of practical activity and we followed up. But this is the final episode of season two. So I suppose let's just finish by saying that all of this in terms of the inner life needs a bit of space, you know, space to reflect on your beliefs, space to consider the way you live, space to think about those you love and the people you want to invest in, uh, space to make space for doubt as well as space for hope.

[00:33:55] DANIEL: So I suppose if you take anything out of this episode and maybe the season as a whole, [00:34:00] we would encourage you to have space, carve out some space to reflect on anything that you've heard about in this season. Maybe download the podcast season two toolkit at spacemakers.au/s2 for season two. But do something because it's what you do that counts, and the space is needed to actually reflect on what comes next.

[00:34:20] DANIEL: That's great. So Matt, we've done it. We finished season two. It felt like a marathon, but a good marathon. So what, what have you learned? What's changed or what stood out from all of our conversations, reading, research?

[00:34:33] MATT: Yeah, so two things. I think like one directly related to the podcast and one as a kind of indirect consequence.

[00:34:39] MATT: Uh, so the direct thing, um, this has been really good for me in the sense that it's reinforced and made it just blatantly obvious how I need to better treat and have intentional time set aside in the busyness of life, uh, for old friends. I think like that's the biggest, that's like been the biggest takeaway for me in terms of what's been at risk.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] MATT: I think it has given me some impetus to actually not rely on spontaneity and not fall back on my more like youthful idealism about if you're a good friend, close friend, and then like, you're only able to, like a phone call away. Like that's true, but that's not enough. So to kind of, um, have to reassess, I guess, just my, my diary, my calendar, and my practices of regularly building out stuff to see, to see mates.

[00:35:18] MATT: That's the first thing. The, um, the indirect consequences that, um, cause again, life's been pretty busy and hectic when I've been in the midst of doing this podcast of, you know, It's all about not making life too busy and hectic. So it's reinforced, uh, the danger of just how easy it is, even when things are going well, how it's way too easy, way too simple to unthinkingly and unintentionally lose space.

[00:35:42] MATT: Somehow I have to, I don't know, it's like get the tattoo or the t shirt, but I need a constant reminder. of that. Yeah.

[00:35:49] DANIEL: Actually, I think a season two tattoo would work for you. You go first and I'll see how it works out.

[00:35:56] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So that's me. How about you?

[00:35:57] DANIEL: Uh, look, there's a few things. [00:36:00] So, I mean, there's some very practical stuff that's been useful.

[00:36:02] DANIEL: You and I talked about blood flow restricted training and cold showers and they're both things I do now on a regular basis. You know, I'm nearly a month of cold showers in a row, but look, the bigger overarching thing, reflection, I think has been around friendship and relationships. Hmm. Uh, you know, I think in earlier, in an earlier episode, I talked about how I wasn't Okay.

[00:36:22] DANIEL: Yeah. And recognising that, uh, and I think I'm, I'm a lot more Okay now, which is great. Yeah. That is great. But, um, I think part of the process has been really reflecting deeply about the tension in my life. Uh, I've always been a good doer and I like working hard and I have a, a really deep desire to impact people's lives and to contribute in a really wide way, you know, podcast, YouTube, keynote speaking.

[00:36:48] DANIEL: And so that's in my DNA and I naturally gravitate to wanting to contribute through what I do. But at the end of the day, I know, I know in my head, you know, that kind of prefrontal cortex part of myself that actually at the [00:37:00] end of my life, it's my, investment in my wife and my kids and my friends and community that will really make a difference.

[00:37:07] DANIEL: I don't want to be one of those people who looks back and had says, uh, loneliness is having had friends. So I've made some steps and it's been really good to see friends on a regular basis.

[00:37:19] MATT: Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's that kind of, you know, investment for one of their term and activity involving your friends.

[00:37:26] MATT: That's going to lead to having like a whole bunch of grasshoppers around y'all. Deathbeard saying, thanks Dan for like putting a roof over our head and clothes on our back and paying for my violin lessons. That sounds good. That does sound good.

[00:37:38] DANIEL: So, um, let's finish by unravelling season three and the topic that we're going to explore.

[00:37:44] DANIEL: Yeah. You and I have thought long and hard about this for next season. We want to talk about moving from resets to getting unstuck. I was watching a video on YouTube by Jordan Peterson, uh, and it was more the title that [00:38:00] actually stuck out to me. I think it was something like, what do you do if you're in your 40s and life sucks?

[00:38:05] DANIEL: And so I watched the video and basically he said, well, you know, it's good to give advice to people about what to do. To have a great life. But what do you do if you're in your midlife and you've kind of stuffed up the first half? Mm. You know? And you know, I dunno, maybe you've had some broken relationships.

[00:38:22] DANIEL: Maybe financially you're in strife. Maybe your health isn't so good. Maybe you've had some really big significant setbacks in life and you're feeling flatlined. Uh, it's easy to talk about a reset. What do you do if you genuinely feel stuck?

[00:38:36] MATT: Yeah, that's it. And I think it's a fair, a fair assumption to think that regardless of who you are, you're probably not firing on all cylinders, so to speak.

[00:38:45] MATT: You're not, all the areas we've covered finances, inner life, health, friendships, happiness, chances are no one is stuck, feels that they're excelling in all those different domains, yeah? So chances are everyone is stuck at least one or two of those points, feel stuck, or they've got someone who they care about in their [00:39:00] lives that is stuck in at least one of the, one or two of those points.

[00:39:02] MATT: So we want to bring in some external experts to talk to some of those particular areas of life and give some practical concrete advice as how people can get unstuck. Yeah.

[00:39:12] DANIEL: And there's also a few areas we just wanted to cover, but we don't have the expertise like menopause and grief, forgiveness. Uh, some of those areas.

[00:39:20] DANIEL: where we'd like to bring in some extra voices for next season. So if you're interested in continuing the journey with us from moving from the midlife reset to getting unstuck, well then I'd love you to tune in next season. Uh, but also email us. Please email us at [email protected] and let us know what you think about that topic.

[00:39:42] DANIEL: Does that interest you? Does that kind of fire you up? Tell us what has changed. If you have stories or questions and you want to record them, we might even be able to put them into the next season. So please do that as well. And of course, please tell your friends about the Spacemakers podcast, uh, help other people in [00:40:00] your relational world find a little bit more space in the whirlwind of life.

[00:40:04] DANIEL: And look, to finish, we really want to thank our sponsors. They make this show possible. Uh, thank you so much to Bulk Nutrients, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, and St. Luke's. Uh, we're so grateful for your partnership. It absolutely allows us to get this on the air. Yeah. And all proud Tasmanians.

[00:40:18] DANIEL: And look, final thank you.

[00:40:19] DANIEL: We really want to thank you, our listeners, because you make it possible. truly possible. Uh, you encourage us, you inspire us. We hope this has helped you with your own resets to make space for what truly matters. But until next time, season three, we'll be back. Make space. Thanks everyone.

[00:40:37] MATT: Thank you, Dan.

[00:40:38] VOICEOVER: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:40:42] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, Bulk Nutrients. Enjoy a 5 percent discount on protein powders and health supplements for orders over 45 at bulknutrients.com.au. Just enter the code Spacemakers.

[00:40:56] VOICEOVER: Want to change your habits through this pod course? Download our [00:41:00] free Season 2 Toolkit. It's packed with activities, reflective questions and print ready handouts to guide your midlife reset.

[00:41:06] VOICEOVER: It's our gift to you. Visit spacemakers.au/s2 and make space.