🌀 The Journey from Avoidance to Deep Intimacy with All That Is
Turning break downs into break throughs, developing a better relationship with conceptuality, leaving Buddhism, and creating a dharma capable of addressing the meta-crisis.
Nearly four years ago, I spent ten days living and training at a modern-day monastery.
There, I went deeper into meditation, learned the transformational practice of Circling, and connected with many people on a similar path.
One of those people was
—a dharma practitioner who, at the time, had spent several years living at the monastery and many months in solitary retreat.What I didn’t realize then was that Daniel was also the host of the Emerge podcast—a pioneering platform that helped catalyze emergent dialogues and shape what many now refer to as the Liminal Web.
Daniel struck me as someone who wasn’t just engaged in important cultural conversations but also committed to living a deeply ethical life.
I continued to follow Daniel’s journey through his podcast, which he brought to a close at the beginning of this year.
He soon re-emerged with
— a Substack where he’s been releasing a stream of thought-provoking essays exploring his spiritual journey, the role of artificial intelligence in human transformation, and a number of incisive critiques of Buddhism.His writing has been generating a buzz because—much like his podcast— it stays close to the pulse of what’s emerging around human transformation, while being grounded in deep contemplative practice.
As I continued to find many threads of resonance between our paths, I felt that the time was ripe for a conversation.
Click the video below to tune in as we speak about Daniel’s extensive experience living and training at a Monastery, turning break downs into break throughs, developing a better relationship with conceptuality and rationality, secure attachment with reality, leaving Buddhism, moving towards a translineage spirituality, and creating a dharma capable of addressing the meta-crisis.
Insightful Quotes 🗣️
“It feels different to play with concept from a position of safety and love than it does to use concepts to defend our pain.”
“Secure attachment with reality… does not by any measure mean you won’t have painful experiences. But you become the kind of person for whom it’s safe to have them.”
“Buddhist practice, at least in the West, seems to allow for a kind of reification of avoidant attachment structures in the mind… we end up perfecting avoidant attachment through practice.”
“The dominant religious paradigm on the planet is secular humanist materialism—and many Buddhist institutions have made a Faustian bargain with it.”
“A dharma capable of addressing the meta-crisis must be rooted in both contemplative depth and relational attunement—it must meet the moment.”
“We should place sacred world at the generative center of all things—not as something handed down, but something we create together.”
“When clarified, desire is ethical… which runs so counter to what many religious traditions believe.”
"I feel myself deeply informed by Buddhism, increasingly informed by Christianity... I hope I'll be a Jew too.”
Dive Deeper 🤿
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