Name: James Finley Author of The Healing Path | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes
Uploaded: 2023-05-24T14:00:31.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Finley Author of The Healing Path | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Finley Author of The Healing Path | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-24. Transcript available.

James Finley Author of The Healing Path | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

You made it weird. You made it weird. You made it weird. Oh yeah. You made it
weird. You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird. Oh yeah. You made it
weird. With Pete Holmes. Yes, you did. You made it weird. Oh yeah.
What's happening, weirdos? This is an incredible and very, very special episode.
Very special. Like Family Matters, one that have like a special one. But it is.
This is James Finley, who's an incredible, I'm going to say it. He's like a
mystic. I feel like Katie and I, we drove towards the beach in California here
and we went up into his house and we sat with, at first I was like, this is
like a hobbit. But then as we chatted, I was like, no, this is Gandalf. This is
a magic, beautiful, eloquent gift of a person. And I'm so glad you guys are
here. A lot of you probably don't know who James is.
It does not matter. Just imagine that you're sitting with me and him by a crackling
fire and just absorb, crackling fire, but just absorb the wisdom. That's what I
did. This conversation touched me, changed me. Everything he says and does is
just poetry, including his new book, which is called The Healing Path, which is
incredible.
He also has a podcast called Turning to the Mystics, where he dissects and
breaks down a different mystic from different traditions. He's incredible.
He teaches at the CAC, the Center for Action and Contemplation, which is
Richard Rohr. As you know, I love Richard Rohr. That's his organization. And
James is a master teacher there. So I'm so glad to have been able to visit with
him. And I'm so glad we recorded it. And I'm so glad you guys are here to
listen to it. Do check out The Healing Path. It is incredible.
Uh, and it is out. It is available right now. Um, I'm also on tour. If you're
hearing this the day that this comes out, I'm going to, I'm about to tape my
special. Uh, I believe it's on the 6th, June 6th. That sounds right.
Early June. I believe on the 6th, uh, in Minneapolis. Uh, I'm also going to be
in a bunch of other places coming up. Cleveland comes to mind. Denver comes to
mind. Go to PeteHolmes.com. I'm going to be touring for a while. Uh, so if I'm
coming to a town near you, it would mean a lot. The shows have been so great.
Madison and Milwaukee this past weekend were incredible. So hope to see you out.
I'm so proud of this hour. It's so fun. Uh, and the special taping for tickets
to the special taping.
Uh, which is going to be incredible. Go to PeteHolmes.com for all of that. We're
also brought to us by our friends at Magic Mind. You guys hear me talk a lot
about Magic Mind. It is definitely the product, uh, that has changed my life
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right, everybody, let's get into this chat with James Finley. So glad you're
here. Get into it.
I thought, I mean, I set it off, but now we're recording. I'll say what a
pleasure. It's so nice to be here with you. Thank you. And with Katie and your
beautiful home. I thought it started. I felt, it felt appropriate. I was
looking for a bathroom. I wonder how much wisdom or truth we could extrapolate
from just the experience of me driving to your place. And I had to pee. And I
was looking for a bathroom and I parked. First of all, finding parking, very
difficult.
And then I went into a Starbucks and I don't know if you know, the Starbucks
closest to you just doesn't have a bathroom, which I tried to do, which is
inappropriate. They're in the bat. They're in the public BM business. Yeah. And
they also serve coffee.
Creating the reason why you need a bathroom. Exactly. And they don't give home.
It's full circle, but they're only, it's a half circle. It's not right. It's
not right. And I went in and I was shocked.
I literally thought that's one of their main functions in society is it's not
just me, but on house people and stuff. They know Starbucks has got them
covered, but I couldn't go.
But I was looking at the suffering meaning using Richard's definition out of
control. I like that, that definition. And I was noticing how much I was
creating at the anxiety that I was like, what if I never find one? You know,
you have that childish voice.
I'm going to explode or be humiliated or something. Or for me, it's like, I'm
not special. I'm not loved. If I, if no one will let me in and give me the help,
I feel that. And then eventually I did find a restaurant and I walked in and I
was just real honest. I was like, they seemed close.
I was like, look, I'll, I'll buy something. It's a real hat, man. I'll buy
something. I just need a bathroom. And he was like, he got, and, and there was
real love in it. There really was. I felt it. He, he made a choice to go,
please use the bathroom. Tell me, tell me what you take from that little story.
Here's what I take from this story.
Tiny story.
I look on it as the physiology of spirituality.
And Thomas Merton says, he says, perhaps a great deal of our difficulty in the
spiritual life could be cured by a simple respect for the body.
Like we're incarnate beings, you know.
And that includes the mind.
Yeah, it includes, yeah, we're incarnate bodily in the mind as incarnate as in
the brain.
The brain, that's, yeah.
But then also the mind is ontological and spiritual. It's not material.
Right.
And so we're this incarnate alchemy of the physical and the, and the invisible
and the spiritual.
And there was, so God hiding and needing to pee or, or God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
God's hiding until you have these kinds of sensitivities and it's not hiding
anymore.
Right.
You know, go take a holy pee and be grateful.
It was a glorious pee.
Yes.
It wasn't a pee.
And you know what?
I was totally there for it.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
Mindfulness.
Yes.
And it was the, I often think of the bowstring of, of the tension.
So we're putting tension on the arrow was me not being able to find parking, me
not finding
a bathroom.
And, and, but it informed Val, my wife Val and I talk all about how we want to
push the
pleasure buttons, right?
We want to feel good.
Even spiritually, I want to feel transcendent.
I want to feel peaceful.
I want to feel bliss or joy, but everything, no matter how many times I've
learned this lesson
is informed by the, the tension that came before it.
Is that?
Another insight I've had too, is that, um, that God is, God is, uh, being
infinitely poured
out and given away, whole and complete in it as the primordial rhythms of our
days.
So standing up and sitting down, waking up and going to sleep, being alone and
being with
others, God's the infinity of those rhythms.
Then I say, and God's waiting for us to discover her there.
It's like God forever comes to visit, but we're rarely at home because we're
probably out buying
a spiritual book somewhere.
Oh no, don't say that.
A lot of monastic life is about this.
It's like an endlessly ordinary life.
You know, it's just endless ordinariness.
You live in silence.
You chant the Psalms.
You work in the fields.
Yes.
And you have one bowl.
Don't you have like one bowl?
You had a, no, you had a, when I was there, you had a soup bowl.
It was vegetarian meal.
Yeah.
You had a soup bowl with yesterday's vegetables in it with water mixed for the
soup.
And then you had a plate on top of that with two vegetables and bread and water.
You got to do bread because Jesus said it.
And fruit drink in the summer and then coffee, a mug of coffee.
Okay.
At least they give you coffee.
That was a meal.
But I liked the, when I, have you seen the movie Into Great Silence?
No, I love that movie.
It's a great movie.
No one knows this movie.
I love that movie.
Whoever wrote that knows.
That's really, that's the life I lived at the monastery.
Yes.
They had the intuition.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so for people that don't know, they led this French documentary crew into a
monastery.
The Carthusian Monastery of Hermits.
Carthusian.
Isn't it fun that we sometimes do live in a Tolkien book?
Like there are people called the Carthusians that live in a castle.
And a lot of Tolkien, really, I was thinking about it on the creative
imagination.
Yeah.
And that came out of Tolkien's imagination as a religious sensitivity to the
nature of reality.
Yes.
On the mythic rhythms and layers of reality.
Yes.
It was brilliant.
Okay.
I'm going to write down Tolkien so we don't forget that.
Because I completely agree with you.
Going back to those rhythms.
Have you, I'm assuming you have.
Meaning I don't want to feel silly for asking you an obvious question.
But has there ever come over you that even in our physiology, there's give and
take, there's
inhale, exhale.
Do you know those moments where it seems so obvious?
At other times, the mystery seems so distant.
And then other times you're just like, it's right, it's right here.
It's in my breath.
It's in eating and excreting and sleeping and waking.
Yeah.
Here's one way I put it.
It's when we inhale, the body doesn't stop to see whether or not it's going to
accept the
inhalation.
Like, we've got to question you first.
Right.
Because the body is the acceptance of the next inhalation.
The body is the acceptance.
Which is receiving the gift of life.
Completely.
Because if you don't inhale, the rest of the day won't go well.
You know what I mean?
It's like we're running roughshod over the depth of what we're looking for and
it's present
in the breath.
And likewise, when we exhale, we exhale ourself.
And also notice that although we don't know how many times we've inhaled and exhaled
from
the day we were born, no matter how many times you have inhaled, it's equal to
how many
times you've exhaled plus or minus one.
Right.
So there's a rhythm built right in.
That's a big plus or minus one right there.
It's a huge one.
It's a huge.
Yeah.
When Maureen died, she died right here in the living room in the house hospice.
Yeah.
And I watched her sitting right next to her holding her hand and she exhaled
and didn't
inhale.
And I thought, that's what death is.
Death is, it's not an event.
It's a cessation.
It's the end, you know?
And I could tell right away she wasn't there anymore.
Huh.
She was right there.
And then she wasn't.
And then she wasn't there.
Yeah.
Greater than the sense of human heat or body warmth.
Exactly.
That we're not, we're not, we're incarnate in and as our body, but we're not
reducible to
the body.
Right.
Yeah.
I, is it the, I think it's Chinese Zen that says it's like breaking a vase.
And the air that was in the vase is released.
Yeah.
It's an image that stuck with me about death,