Dr. John Vervaeke

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The Official John Vervaeke Podcast Feed

  1. 10 Jul

    John Vervaeke & Guy Sengstock: Why Modernity Can't See the Sacred Anymore

    What does it mean to "see God again" after modernity has taught us to look for the sacred in all the wrong ways? In this special Lectern conversation, John Vervaeke is joined by Guy Sengstock for a deep reflection on John's three-part course trilogy, Seeing God Again for the First Time. John invited Guy to watch the courses and respond not only to their arguments, but to the way the courses enact a philosophical, phenomenological, and spiritual exercise. Guy begins from his own background as co-founder of Circling, describing how relational practice opened a mystery that psychological language could not fully hold, eventually leading him into Heidegger, phenomenology, and philosophy as contemplation. From there, he draws out the personal and pedagogical arc of John's work: teaching as encounter, as vulnerability, and as a way of revealing what students are already confronted with. John describes the course as an attempt to integrate rigorous argument, phenomenological exploration, and spiritual exercise in the spirit of Socrates, Plotinus, and Pierre Hadot. Rather than define religion or God and then argue for or against them, John sets out to deconstruct the modern grammar that blocks our ability to encounter sacredness at all: the fact/value, is/ought, subjective/objective, theory/data, and meaning/measurement dichotomies. The conversation moves through Paul Tillich, William Desmond, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Catherine Pickstock, Janet Soskice, D.C. Schindler, and 4E cognitive science, showing how analytic philosophy, continental phenomenology, and cognitive science converge in undermining modernity's inherited picture. Guy and John explore sacredness as ultimately real, ultimately orienting, ultimately transformative, and ultimately resonant; naming as relational participation rather than possession; wonder as calling self and world into question; and aletheia as truth that discloses beauty, goodness, and intelligibility. The conversation closes with the contemporary stakes of this recovery: AI, consciousness, personhood, the meaning crisis, and the alignment problem. John argues that we can no longer treat philosophy and sacredness as academic luxuries when our technologies are reshaping cognition, identity, and agency. If we are creating new kinds of intelligence, the question is not merely how to bind them to us, but how to orient them - and ourselves - toward truth, goodness, beauty, intelligibility, and the sacred. Guy Sengstock is a co-founder of Circling and a longtime teacher of relational, dialogical, and contemplative practice. His work bridges phenomenology, philosophy, facilitation, and the lived mystery of interpersonal encounter. Explore courses and other offerings from The Lectern: https://lectern.teachable.com About The Lectern The Lectern is dedicated to wisdom cultivation through dialogue, inquiry, and transformative practices. Through courses, live events, and community conversations, we seek not merely to discuss ideas, but to explore how they can shape the way we live. 00:00 Welcome to The Lectern 01:00 Why Guy is reflecting on Seeing God Again 02:00 Guy introduces his background in Circling and philosophy 04:00 Circling, mystery, and the limits of psychological language 06:00 Heidegger, Being and Time, and philosophy as contemplation 09:00 John's Socratic and Plotinian aspirations 10:30 Argument, phenomenology, and spiritual exercise 12:00 Seeing God Again, pilgrimage, and the Philosophical Silk Road 13:00 John the person, scientist, philosopher, and teacher 15:00 Teaching as existential confrontation 17:00 The manner of teaching as part of the teaching 18:00 Modernity, the meaning crisis, and sacredness 20:00 When teaching became encounter 21:00 Paul Tillich, cognitive science, and teaching virtue 23:00 William Desmond and philosophy as spiritual exercise 25:00 Teaching toward a philosophical-spiritual end 26:00 Involving the whole self without becoming self-involved 29:00 Revealing what students are already confronted with 31:00 Teaching, social phobia, and vulnerability 33:00 The sacred as deep teaching 35:00 Idealization, temptation, and participation 38:00 Naming God and the loss of relational naming 41:00 The four dichotomies of modernity 42:00 Out-rigoring the rigor 44:00 Deconstructing the grammar that blocks sacredness 45:00 Mystical traditions as phenomenological exemplars 47:00 Modernity's vertical and horizontal dichotomies 49:00 Recovering sight beyond modernity's glasses 50:00 Sacredness as ultimately real, orienting, transformative, and resonant 52:00 Why John uses atheist scholarship before apologetics 53:00 Counter-modern thought and the limits of postmodernism 55:00 Why these dichotomies matter beyond academia 57:00 Everything Everywhere All at Once, nihilism, and value 01:01:00 Philosophy outside the ivory tower 01:02:00 Postmodernity and living in the ruins 01:04:00 Recovery and asking "Where are we?" 01:05:00 Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and recovering meaning 01:07:00 Modernity as icon rather than representation 01:08:00 Truth, goodness, beauty, and intelligibility 01:12:00 Wonder vs. curiosity 01:15:00 Aletheia, beauty, liberation, and onto-normativity 01:18:00 Seeing God Again as pilgrimage 01:19:00 Theoria as theory, contemplation, and pilgrimage 01:21:00 AI, analytic philosophy, and consciousness 01:24:00 Meaning, relevance, and the limits of computation 01:26:00 AI personhood and disembodied embodiment 01:30:00 Why philosophy matters for technologies shaping us 01:32:00 AI agents, personhood, and the coming ontological crisis 01:35:00 The meaning crisis and the loss of sacred orientation 01:37:00 Personhood, ontology, and responsibility 01:39:00 The alignment problem and binding intelligence to the sacred 01:40:00 Why the course must be taken as a course 01:41:00 Teacher assistance, Socratic process, and future retreats 01:42:00 Socratic Salon and participatory practice 01:43:00 Closing reflections on retreat and relationship Thank you for listening!

  2. 26 Jun

    Live Q&A with Brendan Graham Dempsey | Questions, Dialogue, and the Pursuit of Wisdom

    What is applied metatheory - and why might it matter for ordinary people trying to make sense of reality, meaning, spirituality, and complexity? In this live Q&A from The Lectern, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about metatheory, meaning-making, complexity, and the spiritual task of learning to feel at home in the universe. Brendan introduces his work as Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory and Director at Sky Meadow Institute, where he explores developmental models, metamodern thought, complexity science, worldview, value, and the sacred. The conversation begins by demystifying "meta" itself: not as abstract ivory-tower speculation, but as the human effort to build better maps of reality from an overwhelming abundance of knowledge. Ethan and Brendan examine how we are always philosophizing - asking what is true, who to trust, what matters, and how different domains of meaning relate to each other. They discuss the pitfalls of complexity, including conspiracy thinking, premature certainty, and the difficulty of staying with learning when one does not yet understand. The conversation moves through AI, mentorship, spiritual development, metaphor, phenomenology, and the challenge of describing transformative experience without over-reifying inherited symbols. Brendan frames metatheory as a way of relating different "data" of human experience - from mystical encounter to neuroscience to integral theory - without collapsing them into chaos or dogma. The episode closes with a question about perennialism, where Brendan makes a case for dynamic spirituality, interpretive humility, and pluralism not as a failure to answer, but perhaps as part of the answer itself. Brendan Graham Dempsey is Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory and Director at Sky Meadow Institute in Vermont. He is the host of the Metamodern Meaning podcast and author of the multi-volume series The Evolution of Meaning. His upcoming Lectern course, Matters Over Time, explores meaning, complexity, development, and the sacred. 00:00 Welcome and live Q&A format 01:30 Introducing Brendan Graham Dempsey 01:50 Institute of Applied Metatheory, Sky Meadow Institute, and Metamodern Meaning 02:50 The Evolution of Meaning and Matters Over Time 03:30 Why "applied metatheory" can sound intimidating 04:20 What is applied metatheory? 05:00 Big-picture thinking across human history 06:00 The impossibility of "reading everything" today 07:00 Making sense of reality from specialized knowledge 07:40 Metatheory as a way to feel at home in the universe 09:30 Why useful maps matter 09:50 We are always philosophizing 11:30 Meaning as reality continually disclosing itself 12:10 Development, wisdom, and the expanding horizon of thought 13:00 Epistemology, truth, and learning to hold complexity 14:50 Demystifying "meta" 15:20 Pitfalls in approaching complexity 16:00 Conspiracy theories and seeking complexity in the wrong places 17:40 AI, wisdom, and the demands of complex conversations 18:30 Learning, discomfort, mentors, and staying on the path 20:00 Rabbit holes vs. deeper engagement with reality 27:00 Complexity, integrity, and discernment 35:00 Metatheory, spirituality, and meaning-making frameworks 45:00 How symbols and metaphors point beyond themselves 55:00 Spiritual experience, interpretation, and inherited maps 01:06:40 The finger pointing at the moon 01:07:00 Bird watching as spiritual exercise 01:08:00 "Things happen. That was something." 01:08:50 Getting closer to lived experience 01:09:30 Phenomenology, Layman Pascal, and expanding spiritual vocabulary 01:10:30 The divine as doorway into experience 01:11:00 Mapping spiritual data without collapsing into chaos 01:12:10 Would Brendan consider himself a perennialist? 01:13:20 Dynamic spirituality, emergence, novelty, and evolution 01:15:00 Naturalizing perennial claims and studying causal dynamics 01:17:20 Near-death experience and interpretive humility 01:19:00 Ontological claims as proposals, not closures 01:20:00 Integrity, skepticism, and not being sold a worldview 01:22:40 Pluralism as part of the answer 01:24:50 Brendan's course Matters Over Time 01:25:20 Closing thanks Explore Brendan's course and other offerings: https://lectern.teachable.com About The Lectern The Lectern is dedicated to wisdom cultivation through dialogue, inquiry, and transformative practices. Through courses, live events, and community conversations, we seek not merely to discuss ideas, but to explore how they can shape the way we live. Thank you for listening!

  3. 26 Jun

    Why Wonder Is More Than Curiosity with William Desmond

    What happens when wonder is reduced to curiosity, and curiosity becomes a drive to master everything? In this second conversation with William Desmond, John Vervaeke returns to the question of astonishment: not as a passing emotional state, but as a deeper opening of the mind to reality. Desmond frames scientism as a philosophical interpretation of science that tries to make all essential questions answerable through determinate method, precision, and control. Science remains valuable, but scientism forgets the more original wonder from which inquiry arises. The conversation distinguishes astonishment, perplexity, and curiosity. Curiosity seeks determinate answers, while astonishment opens us to what exceeds our mastery. Vervaeke connects this with his own distinction between the having mode and the being mode, arguing that genuine wonder is bound up with transformation rather than mere information. From there, the dialogue turns to Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, logical positivism, AI, computation, relevance realization, and insight. Desmond and Vervaeke ask whether intelligibility can be reduced to determination, or whether the most important forms of understanding depend on a living act of insight that formal systems cannot generate on their own. The final movement turns toward spiritual practice, Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha, religion, trust, and forgiveness. If modern culture suffers from a dearth of astonishment, then the recovery of meaning may require more than better arguments. It may require practices, communities, and forms of dialogue that reawaken porosity, reverence, and an openness to the sacred. Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction and the Desmond conversation so far 03:00 - Science, scientism, and the desire to make everything univocal 06:30 - Astonishment, perplexity, and curiosity 14:00 - Plato, Aristotle, and the purpose of philosophical wonder 16:30 - Having, being, mystery, and transformation 22:20 - Whether knowledge dissolves wonder 26:10 - Logical positivism and the failure of total certainty 31:30 - The four kinds of knowing and propositional tyranny 34:00 - Insight, inference, and logical systems 41:40 - Relevance realization, computation, and AI 46:30 - What intelligibility means beyond determination 50:40 - Inexhaustibility and the hyper-intelligible 58:20 - Dialectic, dialogos, and the practice of astonishment 01:03:40 - Porosity, the buffered self, and vulnerability 01:07:00 - Meaninglessness, spiritual practice, and cultural homelessness 01:12:30 - Reawakening astonishment without commodifying experience 01:14:10 - Ancient dialogue as a response to skepticism 01:17:30 - Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha, and embodied wisdom 01:22:00 - Religion, the sacred, and suspicion of God 01:27:30 - Trust, forgiveness, and cultural metanoia 01:30:20 - Closing thoughts and the next conversation Key Insights Scientism totalizes science by treating scientific method as the answer to every essential question. Astonishment is more original than curiosity because it opens inquiry rather than merely directing it toward control. Perplexity matters because some mysteries are not failures of explanation but enduring features of the human condition. Insight depends on living participation in intelligibility, not only inference or computation. AI and formal systems can imitate aspects of thought, but they do not resolve the deeper question of living noetic activity. Modern meaninglessness is intensified when institutions, practices, and role models no longer help people recover reverence and connectedness. Religion must be discussed at the level of human vulnerability, longing, trust, failure, and mystery, not only at the level of institutional critique. Resources Astonishments and Science: Engagements with William Desmond - edited by Paul Tyson William Desmond, "The Dearth of Astonishment: On Curiosity, Scientism and Thinking as Negativity" William Desmond, God and the Between Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having Bernard Lonergan, Insight Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Augustine's Cassiciacum dialogues About William Desmond William Desmond is a philosopher whose work engages metaphysics, religion, art, science, and transcendence. In this conversation, he and John Vervaeke continue their exploration of astonishment, scientism, the between, and philosophical practice. Follow The Lectern for conversations on philosophy, meaning, wisdom, and the recovery of deeper forms of knowing. Thanks for listening!

  4. 19 Jun

    Why We No Longer Know What We Should Do with Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro

    What happens when a society possesses extraordinary technological power but lacks a shared sense of what that power is for? John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro reunite for a sustained inquiry into normativity: the structures by which human beings perceive direction, value, responsibility, and the difference between better and worse action. The question becomes urgent in the context of artificial intelligence, where increasingly consequential decisions are being made inside a culture that struggles to articulate a coherent basis for judgment. The conversation begins with Guy's encounters with the AI community and the fear that humanity may soon make decisions it cannot reverse. From there, the group investigates modernity's technological understanding of being, the reduction of creation to artifacts, and the modern self's attachment to sole authorship. John and Jordan propose that meaning is participatory: intelligibility is not manufactured by isolated selves but emerges through shared authorship with other people, traditions, practices, and reality itself. The dialogue then turns toward virtue. If the problem is not simply ignorance but malformed attention and desire, knowing what should be done is insufficient. The deeper difficulty is how people become capable of wanting, perceiving, and participating in what is good. Socratic aporia, vulnerability, kenosis, embodied practice, pilgrimage, and dialogue are explored as ways of undergoing reorientation rather than merely acquiring information. In the final movement, the speakers discuss bad-faith dialogue, leisure, lingering, tourism, linguistic lostness, and doomscrolling. These apparently different subjects converge on one insight: when people remain sealed inside environments engineered around their existing capacities and preferences, they lose access to the forms of friction, surprise, and participation that can transform them. Key Insights Normativity is the directional structure through which actions appear better, worse, appropriate, or necessary. The AI crisis exposes a deeper cultural inability to answer what technology should serve. Modernity often confuses participation in creation with ownership of the resulting artifact. Meaning and intelligibility require shared authorship rather than sovereign individual control. Virtue cannot be transmitted as information alone; it requires transformed attention and participation. Embodied practices can reorganize abstractions because higher cognition remains rooted in sensorimotor life. Pilgrimage, leisure, and dialogos help people cross boundaries between worlds rather than consuming only familiar inputs. Doomscrolling is an efficient example of technology feeding hypertrophied capacities while narrowing participation in reality. Timestamps 00:00 - The group reunites 01:10 - Normativity as the central concern 02:40 - Guy's San Francisco radio work 05:20 - Inside an AI thought-leader conference 08:30 - The danger of irreversible technological decisions 13:50 - Intrinsic normativity and attention 16:00 - Liminal navigation and the limits of simulation 20:30 - Art, creation, and artifacts 23:00 - Heidegger's technological understanding of being 25:40 - Participation and shared authorship 28:30 - Modernity's reinforcing attractor 31:00 - Socratic aporia 33:20 - Finding the right orientation 37:50 - Exposure, vulnerability, and displacement 40:10 - Sole authorship and identity 42:20 - Kenosis and the emptying of privilege 44:20 - Reconstitution and commitment to truth 49:10 - Virtue and its opposites 51:40 - AI and humanity's final decision 54:10 - Knowing what to do versus becoming able to do it 56:10 - Can virtue be taught? 58:20 - Remediating participation in ordinary life 01:00:20 - Pilgrimage and unfamiliar worlds 01:02:30 - Embodied cognition and reorientation 01:04:30 - Rilke and self-emptying 01:09:20 - Sacred directionality 01:11:20 - Crossing the threshold into action 01:13:50 - Bad faith and dialogical boundaries 01:18:40 - Leisure and time 01:21:20 - Lingering beneath atomized time 01:23:30 - Tourist and pilgrim 01:25:50 - Modernization and tourism 01:30:10 - Being linguistically lost 01:33:00 - Situation and participation 01:35:10 - Doomscrolling as narrowed reality 01:37:30 - Returning from pilgrimage Resources Plato and Socratic aporia Charles Taylor Martin Heidegger Rainer Maria Rilke Christian concepts of kenosis, theosis, and synergy Embodied cognitive science Pilgrimage Dialogos Follow Lectern for more conversations about wisdom, meaning, philosophy, technology, spirituality, and cultural renewal.

  5. 5 Jun

    Ish Peregrino: Pilgrimage Is More Than Travel. It Changes How You See Reality

    What if pilgrimage is not primarily about reaching a destination, but about learning how to be addressed by reality again? In this episode of Lectern Dialogues, John Vervaeke speaks with Ish Peregrino, a practitioner, facilitator, and pilgrim whose very chosen name carries the meaning of pilgrimage. John met Ish during his own pilgrimage in Spain, and their conversation returns to the question of what pilgrimage makes possible: spiritually, psychologically, relationally, and culturally. Ish begins by describing his background in contemplative practice, community work, Latin American and Asian contexts, and his long apprenticeship under a teacher who exposed him to Hindu, Buddhist, Zen, ecological, and indigenous traditions. This opens into a discussion of the "beyond human": the sacred, the more-than-human world, distributed intelligence in community, and the goodness that calls a person toward transformation. The heart of the conversation is pilgrimage. John proposes pilgrimage as a meta-practice: a living practice that places one's whole ecology of practices under a kind of positive stress test. Ish extends this by describing how pilgrimage changes one's environment, identity, pace, attention, and relationship to grief. It is not merely a practice added to life, but a passage that can reshape the life to which one returns. The conversation then contrasts the pilgrim with the tourist and the explorer. Tourism seeks experience and pleasure; exploration seeks conquest, achievement, and control. Pilgrimage, by contrast, is marked by participation, willingness, availability, receptivity, reverence, and deep listening. It is not just movement through space, but a transformation in the way the world is allowed to speak. Toward the end, John and Ish explore pilgrimage's relationship to God, sacredness, memory, dreams, community, and integration. Ish offers one of the conversation's most memorable images: after pilgrimage, the path was still walking him in his dreams. The episode closes with the claim that pilgrimage is not only for the Camino or other famous routes. It is a way of relating differently to what is already around us: with attention, reverence, openness, and love. Key Insights Pilgrimage can function as a meta-practice that renews and tests an ecology of practices. Transformative experiences require humility, discernment, grounding, community, and integration. Tourism, exploration, and pilgrimage represent different forms of attention and agency. The pilgrim is moved less by will than by willingness, availability, and receptivity. Pilgrimage can awaken a deeper relationship to God, sacredness, land, grief, and community. The return from pilgrimage is not an afterthought; integration is central to whether revelation becomes transformation. Pilgrimage can be practiced locally through reverence, attention, threshold-crossing, and renewed relationship. Timestamps 00:00 - John introduces Ish Peregrino 03:20 - Ish's chosen name and the meaning of "pilgrim" 06:30 - The beyond-human, sacredness, and mystery 10:00 - The danger of trying to grasp sacred experience 13:50 - Why pivotal experiences need grounding 18:50 - Pilgrimage as a meta-practice 21:10 - Hearing the call and entering a new environment 25:10 - The pilgrim, the tourist, and the explorer 29:00 - Curiosity versus wonder 33:00 - The explorer, conquest, and modernity 38:20 - Participation beyond pleasure and power 39:30 - Willingness, availability, and receptivity 44:10 - Metanoia and voluntary self-emptying 49:10 - Archetypes encountered on pilgrimage 54:20 - Pilgrimage and the relationship to God 56:50 - Seeing one face of God 01:03:50 - Dreams, memory, and the path walking the pilgrim 01:05:20 - Hospicing modernity and the crisis of relationship 01:09:40 - Loving wisely and calibrating care 01:12:10 - Courtesy, ceremony, and reverence 01:13:20 - Encounters with strangers on the path 01:15:00 - Revelation, integration, and covenant 01:17:50 - Making the near world sacred again Resources Camino de Santiago Shikoku pilgrimage David Abram Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow David Whyte, "Everything Is Waiting for You" Christos Yannaras Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity Thich Nhat Hanh Hartmut Rosa, Why Democracy Needs Religion Iain McGilchrist William Desmond About Ish Peregrino Ish Peregrino, also known as Mauricio-Ishwara González G., is the creator of Modo Peregrino, a living space of inquiry, accompaniment, and public reflection where the inner journey and the outer crisis of meaning meet. His work accompanies leaders, organizations, and communities through cultural transformation and regeneration, weaving applied complexity, transformative learning, deep dialogue, and contemplative practice into long-term, context-rooted processes. He is co-founder and Academic Director of DeUmbrales: Experiencias de Transición and a tutor-facilitator in Ronald Sistek's international Organizational Regeneration program. For more than 22 years, he has worked across Latin America, the United States, Spain, and Greece in universities, executive programs, organizations, and liminal spaces where real transformation tends to happen. Ish's links: Modo Peregrino: https://ishperegrino.com/ DeUmbrales: https://deumbrales.com/ Letters: https://nosuneelmedio.substack.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ModoPeregrino Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ish_peregrino/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ish-peregrino/ Follow Lectern for more conversations on wisdom, meaning, spirituality, philosophy, and the renewal of culture.

  6. 28 May

    William Desmond and John Vervaeke: Strong Transcendence, Plato, and the Between

    Can transcendence still make philosophical sense after modernity? John Vervaeke speaks with philosopher William Desmond about Platonism as a living tradition, the meaning of strong transcendence, and Desmond's philosophy of the metaxu: the between. The conversation builds from John's proposal that relevance realization and transjectivity are philosophically grounded in Desmond's ontological account of the between. John begins by distinguishing modern psychological accounts of transcendence from the ancient and Platonic sense of strong transcendence. In this stronger sense, transcendence is not merely a better state of mind. It discloses truths that are otherwise unavailable and changes the knower's relation to reality. That claim challenges modern assumptions about flat ontology, the buffered self, representational cognition, and the fact-value split. Desmond responds through Plato. He presents Plato not as a dry theorist of two worlds, but as a philosophical artist of the between: a thinker of mimesis, eros, mania, dialogue, singularity, and participatory transformation. Plato's dialogues are not ornamental containers for arguments; their drama, characters, and dialogical movement are part of the philosophy itself. The later conversation opens into deep memory, imagination, eternity, possibility, God, Daoism, intercultural philosophy, pilgrimage, and the life-world. Desmond and Vervaeke converge on the need to move beyond the view from nowhere and return philosophy to transformative practice, embodied dwelling, and a richer contact with the sources of intelligibility. Key Insights Strong transcendence has epistemological and ontological significance, not only psychological benefit. The metaxu, or between, names a porous relation before, beneath, between, and beyond modern dichotomies. Modernity's fact-value split risks producing default atheism or default nihilism. Participatory knowing offers an alternative to treating cognition as internal representation of an external world. Plato's dialogical form is integral to his philosophy; the drama cannot simply be stripped away to extract arguments. Mimesis involves relation between image and original without collapsing their difference. Eros and mania point to two directions of transcendence: from below upward and from above downward. Deep memory is a source of imagination and ontological depth, not merely storage of past facts. Possibility should not be reduced to logical possibility; living possibility points toward enabling power. Pilgrimage and theoria are linked: philosophical transformation requires being on the way, not merely observing from nowhere. Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and setup 01:00 Relevance realization and the philosophy of the between 02:00 Platonism as living tradition 02:40 The need for strong transcendence 03:50 Transcendence after modernity 04:40 William Desmond introduces his work 05:00 Between system and poetics 06:00 The Western tradition as conversation partner 08:00 John's paper on strong transcendence 09:20 Psychological transcendence in modern thought 10:00 Truths disclosed through transcendence 11:00 Flat ontology and layered reality 12:30 The buffered self 14:00 Fact-value dichotomy and default atheism 15:10 Contact epistemology and participatory relation 17:20 Being realized as you realize 18:20 Anagoge and the cave 18:40 Interior, exterior, and superior transcendence 20:10 Autonomy, heteronomy, theonomy, and theosis 21:30 Desmond responds 22:00 Plato's philosophical art and the Sophist 22:30 Art, origins, and otherness 23:40 Originality, creativity, and modern art 25:20 Mimesis and the difference between image and original 28:20 Plato as thinker of the metaxu 29:00 Eros and self-transcendence 30:00 Mania and divine inspiration 31:30 Inspiration as transmission 33:20 Metaxology and Hegel 34:40 The Sophist and participatory knowing 36:40 The who of the sophist 38:10 Periagoge and the turning of the soul 39:40 Philosophy as a way of life 40:30 Exiting modernity's frame 43:20 The dialogue form is not ornamental 45:30 Socrates as an image of courage 46:20 Dialogos and method 48:00 Diaphanous logos 49:00 Singular incarnation and witness 51:10 Theoria as contemplation and pilgrimage 52:00 John's dialectic-in-dialogos practice 53:20 Anamnesis in practice 54:20 The logos beyond the participants 55:20 Deep memory and imagination 57:00 Muses, memory, and hidden springs 58:20 AI and outsourced memory 59:00 Memory as ontological depth 01:00:30 Eternity and the other to time 01:02:40 Inward otherness and ultimate otherness 01:04:50 Plato's sun and enabling light 01:06:20 Porosity and the buffered self 01:07:00 Living possibility 01:09:00 Possibility, transcendence, and God 01:10:40 What makes intelligibility intelligible? 01:11:40 Eastern and Western approaches to possibility 01:13:30 Coming to be and becoming 01:15:40 Nicholas of Cusa 01:17:00 Wu wei and giving way 01:18:20 Daoist practice and Socratic midwifery 01:20:20 Philosophical Silk Road 01:22:10 The intimate universal 01:23:20 Against philosophical tourism 01:25:30 Elemental porosity 01:26:00 Pilgrimage and practice 01:27:40 Being underway 01:29:30 Theoria as metanoetic passage 01:30:10 Symphonic language 01:34:00 The life-world 01:35:40 Rejecting the view from nowhere 01:36:20 Closing Resources William Desmond, Being and the Between William Desmond, Ethics and the Between William Desmond, God and the Between William Desmond, Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art Plato, Symposium, Ion, Sophist, Republic, and Laches Plotinus and Proclus Hegel Charles Taylor Catherine Pickstock, Aspects of Truth Paul Tillich Thomas Aquinas Nicholas of Cusa Pierre Hadot Henry Corbin Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson, The Blind Spot Follow John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos X: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke

  7. 21 May

    Reconnect to the Real: John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Kyle Koch Announce the Whistler Retreat

    Why is the modern world making us lose our "taste for the real," and can ancient practices like animal tracking and Socratic dialogue actually save our personhood from the "virtual matrix" of AI? John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Kyle Koch announce their second "Reconnecting to the Real" retreat and outline what each will teach: Kyle offers nature-connection practices such as tracking and bird language to cultivate belonging; Guy brings Circling Method relational practices to deepen listening, communication, and group connection; John brings reconstructed Socratic practices including dialogos, dialectic, imaginal reflection, and a two-hour Socratic salon for questions. They describe the retreat as a non-vacation "pilgrimage" meant to transfer skills back into everyday life amid increasing virtual mediation and AI-driven risks of losing the "taste for the real." Logistics: Aug 31–Sept 4 in Whistler, British Columbia at Brû Creek Lodge, with lodging and meals included, costing $3,995 USD, and limited spots remaining with many returning participants.   Guy Sengstock Co-founder of The Circling Method: He has spent 30 years developing this relational practice to transform peer-to-peer communication into a profound "asana" of listening and presence. Relational "Maestro": He uses spontaneous inquiry and formal circling to help groups move beyond intellectual concepts into direct contact with "the real". Personal Blog/Website LinkedIn   Kyle Koch Nature Connection Expert: He bridges the gap between philosophical concepts and embodied reality through tracking, bird language, and nature-based core routines. Embodiment Practitioner: Coming from a background in Evolve Move Play, he focuses on reclaiming our innate sense of belonging to the natural world EARTHKIN WILD - Kyle's Website   Reconnecting to the Real The Circling Method Evolve Move Play Nature Connection Mentoring with Kyle Rewild your Week-7 day nervous system reset Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to the Lectern 01:00 Kyle nature connection 02:30 Guy circling practice 06:00 John socratic practices 09:30 Whistler logistics 14:00 Why reconnecting real 16:00 Guy ear for real 20:00 John true good beautiful 30:00 Kyle beyond virtual 33:00 Tracking as truthing 35:30 Primordial skills return 38:00 Biases and feedback 40:00 Games reveal patterns 43:00 Beauty as practice 46:30 Pilgrimage not vacation 49:00 Screens and ai mediation 53:19 " The real is becoming option, like optional in some strange way." 53:30 Losing taste for real 58:00 Bring it back home   Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/ Support the Lectern and join a growing community of wisdom seekers https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke   John Vervaeke: https://johnvervaeke.com/ https://twitter.com/drjohnvervaeke https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke   Thanks for listening!

  8. 18 May

    Brendan Graham Dempsey: Matters Over Time

    What if the question is not simply whether life has meaning, but how our capacity for meaning develops? In this Lectern conversation, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about his upcoming course, Matters Over Time: How the Sacred and Significant Evolve in Self and Society. Brendan introduces the course through his own experience of a meaning crisis, which led him to ask how meaning-making frames are constructed, lost, reconstructed, and developed. The conversation begins at the personal level. Brendan explains why studying meaning-making can help us understand our own minds, other people's worlds, and the recurring patterns by which human beings organize significance. Ethan presses him from two sides: the person who feels life is already meaningful enough, and the person who has searched for meaning for years without finding it. Brendan's answer is careful: the course is not meant to force existential confrontation, but to invite a wider and deeper participation in reality. From there, the discussion turns toward relativism, nihilism, and pluralism. Brendan argues that once an inherited worldview breaks open, people often either double down on a single frame or collapse into the idea that all meaning is merely private. His work tries to find an order beyond that pluralistic chaos by looking at developmental patterns in meaning-making across individual lives, cultures, and history. The final movement of the conversation brings the course into its largest register: the sacred. Brendan frames meaning as a kind of knowledge that links us to reality in a viability-enhancing way, and he interprets the sacred as that which deepens flourishing, widens participation, and draws us into awe, wonder, and transformation. The course becomes not only a theory of meaning, but an invitation to see ourselves as participants in a much larger learning process. Key Insights Meaning-making can be studied as a developmental process rather than treated as a private feeling or arbitrary construction. Brendan's work is shaped by his own meaning crisis and by John Vervaeke's account of the cultural meaning crisis. Complexification does not mean abandoning what already matters; it means situating it within a wider and deeper horizon. Ethical growth requires widening meaning beyond the self and becoming more responsive to other people, cultures, and perspectives. Faith Development Theory and interview-based research offer ways to study how people answer questions about purpose and significance. Relativism can be an advance beyond rigid absolutism, but it can also become chaotic and disorienting. The course links individual development to cultural evolution and the history of human meaning-making. Brendan resists both triumphalist progress stories and simple decline stories. The sacred is presented as evolving through human history as our relationship to ultimate concern becomes more complex. The course is meant to be dialogical and exploratory, not a closed system. Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and introduction 01:30 Brendan's background and research focus 02:00 Personal meaning crisis and meaning-making 03:30 John Vervaeke's influence 04:00 Course frame: sacred and significant in self and society 06:00 Why study meaning if life already feels fine? 08:20 Patterns and structures in meaning-making 09:30 Learning as meta-meaningful 11:40 Does growth threaten existing meaning? 12:30 Expanding the meaning horizon 13:20 Ethical widening beyond the self 14:40 Widening and deepening 17:30 Searching for meaning and fearing interior work 18:40 Growth, effort, and challenge 21:10 Comfort, hollowness, and the "so what?" question 22:40 How do I know my life is meaningful? 23:00 Faith Development Theory and lived interview data 24:50 Different answers to meaning 28:40 Is meaning merely private? 29:20 Absolutism, worldviews, and the bursting of the bubble 32:30 Relativism and pluralistic chaos 34:10 Ordering different meaning-making frames 36:40 Recovering from nihilism 39:40 Understanding our 2026 epoch 40:50 Individual meaning and cultural evolution 41:40 Similar patterns across life and history 44:00 The cosmic scale of meaning-making 46:20 Already connected to something larger 48:10 From abstract framework to embodied worldview 50:20 The cosmic fluke story 52:40 Human meaning-making and cosmic complexification 54:00 Responsibility and the call toward wisdom 57:40 Meaning-making and the sacred 59:40 The sacred, viability, and flourishing 01:00:30 Awe, wonder, and reality beyond our current frame 01:02:10 Sacred symbols and tradition 01:03:10 Updating the sacred through prophets and sages 01:04:00 From tribe to common humanity 01:05:40 The sacred as evolving 01:06:10 God and cultural evolution 01:09:30 The course as contemplation 01:10:20 Seeing oneself as part of the process 01:12:30 Re-homing modern people in relation to the sacred 01:14:40 Participating in a new movement of the sacred 01:18:10 Epistemic humility and dialogos 01:20:20 Closing Resources Matters Over Time: How the Sacred and Significant Evolve in Self and Society  Brendan Graham Dempsey Institute of Applied Metatheory Sky Meadow Institute John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke, Seeing God Again for the First Time James Fowler, Faith Development Theory Friedrich Nietzsche Joseph Campbell John Thatamanil Meister Eckhart Paul Tillich The Silver Road Follow John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos X: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke

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The Official John Vervaeke Podcast Feed

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  • Creator
    Upfire Digital LLC
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    249
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023 | The Vervaeke Foundation
  • Show Website
    Dr. John Vervaeke

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