The Labyrinth

In today’s The Labyrinth podcast, retired psychiatrist Henry Cretella joins us to share both his philosophy and personal experience with surrender. We begin our conversation with Eckart Tolle’s view that surrender requires an expansion (and often suspension) of our rational mind. From there, we discuss the general nature of surrender and the role of intuition. We move into sharing stories about times when we felt a deep intuition/calling to stretch the boundaries of our limited rational frameworks and take a leap. The podcast ends with Hazrat Inayat Khan's essay on the future of humankind.

Biography

Henry Cretella, M.D., graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and completed his psychiatric training at Strong Memorial Hospital of the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. His professional career spanned over 40 years as a general and child and adolescent psychiatrist and included teaching, administration, clinical practice and consultation in the greater Rochester and western NY areas. This, along with his spiritual and especially mystical interests lead him to certification as a mind body practitioner through the Center for Mind Body Medicine and Dr. James Gordon. He retired several years ago from active psychiatric practice, but continues to incorporate what he has learned into his spiritual practices and offerings.

Henry studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism for several years along with training in martial arts. He then immersed himself in the more universal Sufism of Inayat Khan, an Indian mystic, for close to twenty years. He functioned as a senior teacher in the Inayati Order and the Sufi Healing Order before pursuing his independent practice and study of mysticism. He now integrates what he has learned and experienced over these many years.

In today’s The Labyrinth podcast, I’m honored to join one of my closest spiritual companions, Shobitha Kedlaya and her spiritual friend Ramesh Krishnan.

I met Shobitha four years ago at her organic farm and community in Andhra Pradesh. We immediately connected through a shared narrative of our complex maternal identities. Shobitha is a trained dancer, holds an MBA, and left a thriving career in the textile industry to cofound Protovillage, a model back-to-our-roots village that has become a magnet for educators and seekers from across the world. Most recently, Shobitha took another more personal leap, transforming her own journey as a seeker into a space of inquiry into the ways our identities often become the obstacles to awakening our purpose and interconnection with reality itself.

We are joined also by Ramesh Krishnan, author of The Urban Monk Diaries, who inspired Shobitha’s journey more than a decade ago. As Ramesh Babu will share with us, his own journey began in his twenties when he felt unsure of what to do, who he was, and which path to choose. In his writing, he explores the Eight Chambers of the Urban Shaolin which begins with discovering the Real nature of objects and moves toward a meeting with our mysterious I. Shaolin is a temple and we journey within the temple of Reality as we walk the labyrinth: with intention, curiosity, and above all, faith.

Originally posted on the Unraveling Religion podcast, Joel David Lesses lassoed Rich Grego and Lisa Carley into a conversation recorded weaving threads through time and space and love, itself.

This conversation meanders among these three old, dear friends, and touches on nihilism, dissolution, and romanticism, Dharma decay and Dharma renewal, changes and transformations.

Is there room for Hope in the world today?

Optimism?

Does the state of the world allow a falling away so that things might improve, a sense something better might come.

What does Enlightenment look like?

What does Enlightenment feel like?

Rich, Lisa, and Joel explore aspects of the existential path requiring courage and bravery, and the conversation deconstructs aspects of the work required to build a strong existential or spiritual foundation.

They continue to examine challenging and evolving social constructs, darkness versus light, mission and meaning and purpose, how do we find mission, meaning, and purpose?

Asking 'how' versus asking 'why?'

Fundamentally, what makes us feel we are far from where we should be, what makes us feel we are far from 'home.'

Lisa, Rich, and Joel explore knowing the 'why' and knowing the 'big picture' versus being in the flow of life.

The talk continues in the examination of life asking 'What is being asked of me?

What do I need to learn about this situation?

What do I need to perceive in this situation?'

Also, asking questions of life, and responding to life's obstacles in a way that challenges our mental health and our existential paradigm, and the relationship to reconstructing ourselves, Phoenix like, after allowing ourselves to 'fall apart.'

Deeper into the conversation, the topic of the Existential Abyss and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Heidegger, and looking at 'being true to [oneself] in the deepest possible sense.'

The talk opens to the complexities and wonders of being human.

The existentially reassembling ourselves and its relationship to mental health and mental health distress.

Lisa, Rich, and Joel examine the secret to the existential delimma and how to resolve it.

The answer, 'service.'

Also, surfing and meditation and the story of Reb Zusha, a Hasidic Master.

A Jewish Kabbalistic look at death, judgment, and Heavenly Decrees, ultimately who judges us?

Does human life have spiritual veils and what do they hide?

Also discussed is American Zen Buddhism and the two most influential books in American Zen 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' and 'The Three Pillars of Zen.'

From Zen Mind, Beginner Mind, 'The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transcency or change' and 'That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence.'

What actually determines the quality of our life: is it what we receive from others, or what we give to others?

What is our relationship to Death?

What are we forced to let go of in life and what returns to us in the future?

These explorations build into a final poem Lisa wrote and reads.

Biographies:

Richard Grego is Professor of philosophy and cultural history at FSCJ. His research interests focus on cross cultural themes in religion and science— including philosophy of mind, comparative world religions/world civilizations, and the metaphysical - theological implications of theoretical physics and cosmology. His publications have included studies in the history- philosophy of science and conceptions of nature in the history of western philosophy, as well as cross-cultural perspectives on mind/ consciousness in western philosophy - psychology and the neo-Vedanta Hindu tradition. Prior to his academic career, he was a criminal investigator-polygraph examiner for the Florida Office of the Public Defender and in the private sector Instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute and International Academy of Polygraph Science in Florida, and national Academic Director of the Criminal Defense Investigation Training Council.

Born in Buffalo, NY, Joel David Lesses has lived in Nepal and Israel, along with hosting Unraveling Religion is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey are the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan “What is the matter with me?” which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. Other passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science and phenomenology shared and disparate in the human experience, and transformative power of self inquiry and introspection through contemplative and medi...

Lifted from the archives of Lisa Carley's history with her good friend Joel David Lesses, this from July 2013, into the deep of night, armed with Mike's Hard Lemonaid, American Spirits, Pringles, Eckhart Tolle and Rumi, in Lisa's 2001 Black Hundai Elantra in the parking lot of Allentown Trading Company Gas station, at the corner of Buffalo's Allen Streen and Delaware Avenue, Lisa Carley and Joel Lesses explore the nature of the existential condition and its relation to identity and reveal an enduring friendship.

Using psychological, poetic and spiritual lenses, Lisa and Joel laugh, talk, drink, and smoke their way through a terrain that is both deeply personal and exploratory, introspective and hilarious.

A version of this talk is also on the Unraveling Religion podcast.

Joel and Lisa talk about identity and examine it through the psychological lens, relationship as a model of teaching, repressed memories; poetry begins to emerge in this second segment, existential psychology and mental health distress are examined.

What do we attach or connect to in the world.

Is the world physical spiritual or both?

What does it mean to be a 'good father.'

Past lives and poetry intertwine.

What are we as human beings 'holding together' and what does it mean when we fall apart?

More hilarity as the conversation loosens up.

The poetry continues, talk of Bardos (spiritual realms), what does it mean when we first meet someone and time slows or stops, spiritual signs are discussed.

The special evening ends with a favorite Rumi poem.

Biography:

Born in Buffalo, NY, Joel David Lesses has lived in Nepal and Israel, along with hosting Unraveling Religion is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey are the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan “What is the matter with me?” which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. Other passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science and phenomenology shared and disparate in the human experience, and transformative power of self inquiry and introspection through contemplative and meditative practices with a belief that the fundamental transformation of individuals and our collective comes through barreling inward, relentlessly, the question, "Who am I?" or "What am I" or "What is the matter with me?" the latter being his question which after years of examination, shattered a false sense of self, the work of integration of that experience being an ongoing work in progress.

This conversation with Lisa and Joel explores the podcast 'The Labyrinth' and its slogan 'Destination Unknown' and its relationship to the 'Unraveling Religion' podcast, whose own slogan 'What You Are Is More Than What You Want.' These two old friends share deep vision of hope and work toward a brighter future as they deconstruct meaning, mission, and purpose, and the mechanisms of what comprises the most vital aspects of life and relationship. In this brief discussion, Lisa and Joel outline the parallel journey of spirituality and curiosity that forms the basis of their timeless bond.