Corbin: There's this just kind of gobsmacking amazing wondrous aspect to it which can't really be reduced to any kind of explanation. He says that part of what's needed to respond to the meaning crisis is recovery these lost kinds of knowing right and and and Corbin of course and the imaginal was let me just say one thing about the imaginal I mean if I understand Corbin correctly the the imaginal is very much sort of, he talks about it this way.
Today's guest is John Vervaeke, PhD. John is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. John joins Emerge to discuss the meaning crisis, it's consequences, and how we might design ecologies of practice to chart a path to new vistas of meaningfulness.
We cover: what is the meaning crisis, how does the meaning crisis intersect with the ecological and political crisis, how our consciousness prioritizes what is most meaningful out of the totality of perception and how much flexibility we have in adjusting and transforming what we find meaningful, why it’s problematic to ‘unbundle’ and decontextualize practices like mindfulness from a larger integrated ecology of practice, how everything from literacy to rationality to mindfulness could be considered a ‘psychotechnology’, what the highest leverage practices for resolving the meaning-crisis in our own lives, how to think about building the religions of the future, why new communities of practice ought to focus on process instead of personality, John’s own journey in amplifying the meaning in life, and how our bodies can function as ‘meaningfulness’ compasses in our lives.
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis