Exploring Faith, Spirituality, and What It Means to Be Human

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A former hardcore atheist journalist reflects on his journey in covering faith and spirituality, admitting his initial ignorance. He struggled with the God question and the literal interpretation of Christianity. However, he found theology intriguing not for understanding God, but for exploring what it means to be human. He discovered the wisdom of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who recognized that man is his own most challenging problem. The journalist acknowledges the power of failure, frailty, and mistakes as transformative spiritual breakthroughs, contrary to Western and American cultural norms. The depths of religious traditions offer growth and insight that politics cannot provide.

From Krista: I loved being interviewed by Dan Harris as much as I've ever enjoyed being on the other side of the microphone (as the saying goes). He drew things out of me I didn't know I had to say. And I'm so impressed with him as a human being, and what he's created with Ten Percent Happier. I hope you might enjoy this!

Listen to Ten Percent Happier in all the podcast places: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast

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The host of On Being shares lessons learned from 20 years of interviews, including: how to live with open questions, counterprogramming against your negativity bias, and getting over the God question.

In this episode we talk about:

Getting over the God question when it comes to contemplating religion
Why Western culture has such a dearth of ways to talk about love
Why she thinks the core of relationships is not about agreeing but about navigating differences
Tuning in to our generative agency
Her definition of a wise life as distinct from a knowledgeable or accomplished one
Why she believes it is as important to know what you love as it is to know what you hate
Learning to love big open questions instead of rushing to answers
Why the things we get paid to do may not define whether we're living a worthy life
And getting our intentions straight and then trying not to tie them too tightly to our goals